Epilogue 2
I wish I could take it all back, but you have to understand: it was over. It's impossible to explain what that meant to the Professor and my sisters. I've tried to put it into words, tried to understand the last ten years. I've tried to understand how we could be so stupid.
And no matter how I try to frame it, no matter how many rose-colored lenses I put the whole thing through, I find myself blaming the Professor the most. My sisters and I—we were blinded by being young. He was blinded by love, I think. He wanted to protect us. Wanted to think that everything was okay. After Blaze, after the ice, after the so-called Dark Three...I think after all that, it's not surprising how quickly he was willing to deny the questions that came up.
Yes, we all thought it was Buttercup. How were we to understand what it really was? What the whole nightmare had been leading to? And even if we could understand, why would we want to? For the first time in years, it looked like we could be happy.
No, I can't explain it. And no amount of regret is going to change the past.
Nothing can bring them back. The blood runs so thick between my fingers that I'm amazed it hasn't surrounded me, flowed around me into its own gravitational pull, created a red (not pink, not quite) earth as the greatest gravestone of all time.
Not that I have time to die. There are too many things I can do, things I can prevent...no, that's not the right word. There are so many threads, weaving endlessly together...
It's coming together, yes, I am the last here. Elsewhere, though? There are others.
I will find them. I will find you, my sisters. And then I will set things right. I swear on the red earth and my cold heart:
Nothing will stop me.
(Next: New beginnings—some say in fire, but ice may not be far behind! But first? An interlude, dealing with a visitor from out of town coming to see family!)
(Oh...and hi, guys. It's good to be back.)