Okay...so I lied. It's like the end of The Lord of the Rings - there's like three different endings, and they're all kind of necessary but also unnecessary. So this is the second ending...and there's one more after this, full of lemony goodness (my first...I'm kind of terrified...so it's taking awhile to write since I want it to be perfect [horrible analogy]).
Thanks for all the good reviews! Happy New Year!
Her body is cold, so beyond hypothermic that she doesn't actually feel her knees give out on her. The only reason she knows she's falling is the ground reaches up to meet her, snow covered and unforgiving. In some lost recess of her brain, she thinks she's dying. She knows the symptoms of hypothermia, remembers them from her first aid training all those years ago. She opens her mouth to say this to the approaching figure, but she can't pull her thoughts together well enough to verbalize it. Instead, her teeth chatter and she forms the one word she can remember.
"Nathan…"
She shifts in and out of consciousness, aware but unaware. The snow is gone and she feels heavy, numb and weighted. She can hear a heartbeat in her ear, much faster than her own, and she manages enough energy to move her cheek against the sold mass surrounding her.
She feels the scratch of wool.
She attempts to look up, cannot raise her head more than a fraction of an inch, and instead settles against the wool.
"Hang on, Parker," the mass says. "Just hang on."
There are blankets all around her, steadily beeping monitors in the background, and a cast on her forearm. She still feels weighted, her limbs heavy and uncooperative, but the fog is clearing. She feels awake, alert, and grounded.
She moves her hand, brushes against wool and flannel and bare skin. Her bedside companion stirs, his head turning to the side so bleary eyes can take her in. She smoothes her hand over his hair and he blinks.
"Hi," she says, her voice hoarse. She smiles, clears her throat, tries again. "Surprise."
He sits up, her hand falling from his head, and cracks his back without knowing it. He yawns, leans away from her. "Arm's broke," he says.
She notices the change immediately. "You're angry," she says.
He ignores her. "Doc set it. You didn't lose any fingers or toes, though. Surprising, considering how cold it was and how long you were in the water."
"Nathan…"
He frowns at her, his whole posture tight with fury and a hint of something else – panic, relief? "You're an idiot, Parker." He scrubs his hand over his face. "You're stubborn and you don't listen."
"Like I knew I was going to fall over a cliff," she says before she can stop herself.
"How the hell else did you think that was going to play out?" he growls, his voice soft and loud at the same time.
She looks at him, then, really looks at him and takes in the rumpled clothes and scruffy jaw, the weariness around his eyes, and she realizes why he's so angry.
"I scared you," she says and it isn't a question.
His shoulders slump and the tension in his jaw ebbs. He leans toward her again, rests his elbows on his knees. He looks at the ground for a long period of time, but eventually he brings his eyes back up to meet hers. The affection she finds there is staggering, the implication more so.
"You scared the shit out of me, Audrey," he says. His voice is rough, thick.
She holds her hand out and he stares at it a solid minute before taking it in his own. "I'm sorry," she says, squeezing his fingers. "I'm so sorry."
"You're alive, though," he says and she nods. "You're alive and Alice is dead and I'm as confused as ever."
She smiles. "I'd like to go home," she says.
He nods. "I'll go get the doc," he says and stands. He lets go of her hand, but not before squeezing it hard just once. "Don't go anywhere."
She doesn't plan on it.
Nathan takes her home and helps her out of her coat. There's an awkward moment when he thinks he should offer to help her undress, but he decides against it. He tells her he'll be by tomorrow with the paperwork and takeout and enough groceries to get her through the next few days until she can maneuver a shopping cart on her own. She sees him to the door and on an impulse neither of them really understands, Audrey hugs him with her good arm and he kisses her forehead.
It makes the floor drop out from underneath her.
Word makes it through Haven quickly and Julia arrives shortly after Nathan leaves. She whirls into Audrey's apartment carrying a grocery bag in one hand and a stack of files in the other. The snow seems to have stopped for the moment. She puts everything down on the kitchen table, turns to Audrey, and immediately starts talking.
"What the hell? One minute, you're coming up to my mom's place for dinner and the next you're going headfirst over a cliff. You don't do anything half-assed, do you Audrey? And what about Nathan? He was worried sick. He slept at the hospital for three days while you were in and out of that hypothermic coma. You nearly died – twice. They had to work on you in the ambulance, CPR, paddles, the works. None of us knew…"
Audrey places her good hand on her friend's arm. "Take a deep breath, Julia. I'm fine." Julia rolls her eyes and Audrey smiles. "I was going to offer you some coffee, but you seem high strung enough…"
"Just shut up and put a pot on."
"Are those cupcakes?" she asks, pointing to the grocery bad.
"What do you think?" Julia says, sarcasm in her voice and a smile on her face.
Audrey puts the coffee on and they wait in silence while it brews. When the dripping stops, she brings the pot over to the table, follows it up with two mugs. Julia pours as Audrey sits.
"How did you know what happened?" she asks.
"You and Nathan never showed. I was heading down to the station when a call went out for a body washed up on the rocks at the base of Tuwiuwok. I thought…" She trails off, takes a large gulp of coffee.
"A broken arm, couple of bruised ribs, and a bad case of hypothermia," Audrey says. "No biggie."
"God, Audrey, you're an idiot."
"So I've been told." She sips her coffee. "Was it Alice White's body?"
Julia nods. "Yup, but it was hard to tell just by looking at her. She looked ancient." She pulls her scarf off, drapes it over the back of her chair. "How long was she in the water?"
"Fifteen minutes, maybe."
"No," Julia says, surprised.
Audrey nods. "We hit the water and as soon as I surfaced, I grabbed her."
"You're like a cat," Julia says, sipping her coffee.
"I should be down a couple lives just from that fall."
"Not to sound morbid," Julia says, pulling cupcakes from the grocery bag, "but you shouldn't have survived."
"No kidding." She points to the folders opposite them. The movement reminds her of just how sore she is. Her shoulders feel like they're bearing a heavy load, her muscles tight and aching. "What are these?"
"Mom's files, as promised. If Mohammed cannot go to the mountain…" Audrey smiles around the lip of her mug. "You probably already know what Alice was, considering what she looked like when she died."
"Ondine."
Julia nods. "Water spirits." She opens a folder, turns it around for Audrey to see. There are drawings and notes, most in Doc Carr's familiar scrawl. Some, though, look like Audrey's own handwriting – though she knows she didn't write them.
"They're cursed to live for eternity unless they can fall in love with a mortal man and bear a child."
Audrey turns the page, engrossed in explanations and histories. Julia continues.
"Mom suspected the women in the library of witchcraft, but not in the Puritan sense of the word. It was Margaret who eventually explained it to her." She fishes through another folder, pulls out an old photograph from the sixties. It's of Margaret, Doc Carr, and Audrey – only her hair is short and curly and very much red.
"That must be Sarah," Audrey says softly.
Julia nods. "You've got quite a history with Margaret."
Audrey frowns. "That's what she tells me."
"Well, it'll be a long time before any of us figure it out completely, I'm afraid."
"Why's that?" Audrey asks, pulling the photograph toward her.
Julia finishes her coffee. "They're gone."
Audrey looks up sharply from the picture. "Margaret?"
"All of them. Cleared out and disappeared into the night." She looks into her mug. "Or into the sea."
"And Alice?" Part of her is afraid the body's gone, that the old woman she fished out of the water is no longer dead and is instead waiting for her somewhere in the world.
Julia smiles, a little smile that seems to hold a big secret. "Taken care of," she says. She stands, reaches for her coat, and pulls a small metal tin from a pocket inside it. She sets it on the table between them.
"Ashes to ashes," Audrey says.
Julia pushes the tin with her forefinger. "And dust to bitchy dust."