Hunting Party
Epilogue
"There's your goddamn moose," Jacob had told John. "Keep your mouth shut."
It had taken more than that to get John to agree to at least temporary secrecy—he was in a bit of a snit over the rotting moose head dripping congealed blood and fluids all over his dining room table, and possibly even more annoyed that Jacob had not hogtied the Deputy and brought her back to him—but at painful length, they'd hashed it out. It was easier without the Deputy there to stir the pot.
Jacob's back in the Whitetail Mountains now. It feels like he'd been down in the Valley for weeks—even though his people are perfectly capable of keeping things running while he's away, there are always, always a hundred things that require his attention specifically, so he's too busy to think about much but work for a while, and he's glad for it.
Near midnight, the second day he's back, he gets a call requesting him in the surveillance room. When he goes to investigate, Diaz, the soldier on duty, directs his attention to something: a shape, sneaking carefully around the edges of St. Francis' property. The Junior Deputy.
"Take her out?" Diaz asks, her hand hovering over the button that'll blast Dep's trigger song over the speakers.
Jacob makes a snap decision to roll the dice on this one. "Nah," he says. "Keep an eye on her. If she gets near the cages, go for it, otherwise let's see what she's up to."
She's playing a dangerous game here, but that's between her and God. If she gets caught, Jacob knows it's time to run her through the final trial. He's been putting it off, preoccupied with testing her in other ways, but that's about tapped out—he's given her fair warning. Whether it happens tonight, tomorrow, a few days from now… he figures it's about time. Then they'll see how friendly she feels towards him.
He leaves Diaz to watch the screens and goes back to work. When about an hour passes with no song, he figures she was just sniffing around and took off before she got in trouble. Either that or she got in and is lurking somewhere that isn't under surveillance. Somewhere like his office.
As soon as he reasonably can, he goes to investigate. Once there, he doesn't find a person—but she's been here, he can tell by the way the air feels and smells that someone's been creeping around. After searching for a minute, he finds something, a letter. It's right in the middle of his desk, but it's on paper with an Eden's Gate letterhead, so it takes him a moment to realize that the scrawling handwriting doesn't belong to any of his subordinates.
It says:
J,
Before I settled on my career path I studied a lot of different things—philosophy, religion, psychology, all that sort of stuff. Trying to figure out life, I guess. I've been thinking about a philosopher I remember liking a lot back then, Jakob Böhme. If you're not already familiar with his work, he argued that as a result of the Fall of Man, sin, ugliness, and evil were now necessary trials for us to endure in order for us to clearly see holiness and beauty, to achieve real closeness to God. He said something that always struck me, enough that I still remember it, word for word, and I've been thinking about it a lot since I left you.
He said:
"It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness."
Maybe we will drown each other. Maybe it's a fixed point, inevitable now. Maybe it'll be to our mutual sanctification.
It leaves off there, less of an ending and more like she ran out of words. It's unsigned.
Jacob thinks about trashing it but decides against it. No one with a healthy fear of him or God will go pilfering through his office, and it's not exactly incriminating. He goes to file the note away in a drawer, catches sight of something on the back, and flips the page over.
The last little bit of writing reads ps: you left a gnarly hickey on my neck and I've had to wear a scarf everywhere I go since then and everyone's asking me why because I'm "not a scarf person," apparently, so yeah, that's been my life lately. Thanks for trying your hardest to be discreet, jackass.
He feels his mouth twitch, he rubs at it with a knuckle before a smile can form. He should've known she wouldn't be able to resist a parting shot; she never can.
He locks the note away, then stands with his hand braced against the desk for a moment, head down, thinking. He can't seem to shake her. A growing, insistent, weak part of him doesn't want to anymore—which means it's time to push forward.
He'll talk to Joseph in the morning. It's time for the final trial.
End
A/N - and just like that the Hunting Party section of this fic is over!
more to come. the next installment will be the longest. maybe the last one in the series? not sure yet. give me time to assemble some kind of draft and I'll be back. thank you all so much for reading along, I hope to have more to share with you soon xoxo