TW: character death. I know some people may not like this, but it is the ultimate end of the story, and this chapter is very dear to my own heart, and I hope you'll give it a chance.
Thirty years later…
They'd scheduled it, the same way they might have scheduled a routine physical or an eye exam. 9:00 am tomorrow, how's that sound? That's what the doctor said. It sounded pretty fucking bad to her, but then it wasn't like there was ever a good time. Not for this.
They'd scheduled her mother's death.
It was a stroke, they'd told her a week before when Mom first went into the hospital. A stroke had zapped most of her brain function and her heart wasn't beating on its own and the doctors had put her on life support, and McKenna got the feeling they'd done it as much for her as for her mother, maybe more so. Mom had always been adamant about not wanting intervention and she wouldn't be too happy about it now, but McKenna needed the time. She needed a little time, to gather her siblings to her, to make her own goodbyes. The time was coming to an end, though. The doctors had scheduled it; they'd be shutting off the machines at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow.
It was still today, though - barely - the clock was ticking closer to midnight and McKenna and Sophie and Noah had decided to spend the night with their mother. To spend one last night with their mother. The big kids, as Mom and Dad had always called them - though Dad's five older children were hardly kids now, Maureen was in her fifties - had come by throughout the week, held Mom's hand while McKenna and Sophie and Noah went to the hospital cafeteria to get a bite to eat, offered what comfort they could. Eli had taken Dad's dog home with him so the poor thing wouldn't be alone. Mom wasn't their mom but they loved her, too, and they'd been a godsend, all of them, but now it was dark, and quiet, and late, and the five of them were gone, and it was just Mom's three children now, united at the end of all things.
We should have seen this coming, that's what McKenna kept thinking. It was less than two months since Dad died - of a heart attack, in his sleep - and she'd known the day he was buried that Mom wouldn't stick around long. She was in good health, and probably should've had at least a few more years ahead of her, maybe a whole decade in which to watch her grandchildren grow, to pick up new hobbies or rediscover old ones, but McKenna had known the truth, seen it written on Mom's face. Mom didn't want to stick around a few more years, a decade even, without Dad. He'd gone, and she would be determined to follow; that had always been their way. They had always done everything together, and death would be no different. It wasn't like Mom made herself have a stroke, or anything, but McKenna would spend the rest of her own life swearing that Mom had died of missing him.
There were rules on the ward, but everyone, all the doctors and nurses, seemed to know what was coming for the Stablers, and they bent the rules for McKenna's family. The rules said only two people were allowed in the room at a time, and over the last week they'd sometimes had as many as seven. Everyone had come - everyone who mattered. All eight of Mom and Dad's kids, the grandkids. Uncle Fin, Aunt Amanda, Uncle Sonny. Uncle Rafa, Aunt Alex. It was hard, seeing them all again so soon after Dad's funeral, watching them touch Mom's hair, whisper their goodbyes. It was nice, too, though. Nice to have family.
The rules said only two people were allowed in the room at once, but there were three of them now, gathered around Mom's bedside. Sophie was sitting in the chair beside her, holding Mom's hand, and Noah was perched on the end of the bed by her feet, his eyes trained on her face. Her eyelids kept twitching, and every time they did Noah jumped. McKenna knew how he felt; her heart skipped a beat every time, too, but the doctors had told them not to hope for much. It's just a reflex, they'd said. It was just her body responding to some stimuli, not a sign that she'd come back to them. The machines were the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth, and even that connection was tenuous; the scans all said the same thing. That she couldn't hear, couldn't think. That her mind was gone, that though her body remained there was no piece of her left inside it.
Sophie and Noah were sitting, but McKenna was pacing by the door, watching over them. She felt responsible for them, somehow. She was the oldest, after all. She was their big sister and she was supposed to watch out for them, keep them safe, comfort them, and that responsibility had never weighed as heavily on her as it did now. Now that Mom and Dad were both gone.
McKenna was pacing by the door, and so it was McKenna who saw the visitors first.
The door swung slowly open and she looked up, expecting to see a nurse - though there was no reason to expect anyone, they weren't checking Mom's vital signs every few hours anymore - but it was not a nurse who walked through that open door.
It was three men instead, all of them somber-faced and moving slow. Two of them she recognized - Uncle Marcus and Uncle Antony - but the third was a stranger. She didn't bother with him, and instead flew straight into Uncle Antony's arms.
"Hello, habibi," he murmured as he held her close, using the same endearment for her that he'd always reserved for her mother.
I'm so glad you're here, she thought, but the words stuck in her throat; just seeing them brought her to the verge of tears, because she knew why they had come. Marcus and Antony, they were like her, like Mom. They were nephilim, half man, half angel, keepers of secrets. She'd known the truth about herself, about Mom, since she was very small, and Marcus and Antony had reached out to her often, helped to initiate her into their world, helped her to make peace with herself. And they had come now to bring peace to Mom, to their own little sister.
Antony released her gently so that she could hug Marcus, so that he could greet her siblings, who rose and came to hug him as well. Sophie and Noah knew the truth, too, though they had no wings of their own, though their lives would chart a different course than McKenna's.
"I'm sorry we have to meet under these circumstances," the stranger told her while they watched the family reunion playing out in the hospital room. "I was always fond of your mother, and I am sorry for your loss."
"Thank you," McKenna told him sincerely. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know your name."
"Of course you don't," the stranger told her, smiling. "No need to be sorry. Gabriel." He introduced himself, and held his hand out for a shake.
McKenna just stared at that hand in confusion.
I'm going crazy, she thought. I've finally cracked.
"Fear not," Gabriel told her gently. "I'm just another uncle, really."
"You're an angel," McKenna said incredulously.
"So are you. Sort of. And so is she. And I have come, with your consent, to take her home."
"McKenna," Noah said, very softly, from somewhere behind her left shoulder, and she whirled around to face him. This thing Gabriel meant to ask of her, this consent he sought, could not come from her alone; it was a choice she and her siblings would have to make together.
They had all come from different places, McKenna and Noah and Sophie; all three of them had different biological parents. But they all looked alike; dark hair, blue eyes, each of them in their own way a mix of Mom and Dad, their parents' legacy living on.
"Are you ready?" she asked them.
She wanted the answer to be yes and she wanted the answer to be no and she did not know yet what her own heart desired most. It might be nice, she thought, to spend a few more hours alone with Mom, but they'd endured a week of goodbyes already. She'd said goodbye to her mother a hundred times in the last seven days. Who would it help, prolonging the inevitable? Would it help, even, or would this be better; would it be better to wait until daylight, to watch the doctors turn off the machines, to watch her mother's body slowly grow still and lifeless, or would it be better to let Gabriel take her now, calm and quiet and surrounded by the ones who loved her?
"She's ready," Sophie said. Her posture was resolute but her eyes were damp and her lower lip was quivering, the same way Mom's used to do when she was sad. "She never wanted this. It's…it's not fair to keep her on the machines."
"Soph's right," Noah agreed heavily. "It's…it's time."
Behind them Marcus sniffled; he was crying already, and Antony reached out and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. Over the last thirty years Mom had grown old and grey, but they had not changed a bit, nor ever would, McKenna knew. They were like her, not gifted the chance of a mortal life, but fated instead to walk the earth until the very end of days, fated to protect it, as McKenna herself intended to do. On this night one nephilim was departing, but another remained to take her place, and McKenna made a silent vow to try her best, to make her mother proud.
"You're all very brave," Gabriel told them. "And so was she. You are the very best parts of her. Of both of them. You can be proud of that."
"Thank you," McKenna told him thickly, earnestly. "How do we…"
"Why don't you go and say goodbye to your mother? Take your time."
And so they did. One at a time, McKenna first, Olivia Stabler's children approached her bedside. McKenna bowed low and kissed her mother's forehead, and whispered one final I love you, before stepping back to allow Sophie her own chance at a farewell. What Sophie did, what Noah said, McKenna could not say, but as they finished they returned to her, and she wrapped her arms around them, and held onto them both as Marcus and Antony and Gabriel drew up to the other side of the bed.
"I think," Gabriel said slowly. "It might be nice if there was singing. Can any of you sing?"
No one answered him with words, but after a heartbeat's pause Antony began to sing. His voice was low and sweet, and only trembling a little, as he sang a slow song of lamentation in an ancient language McKenna did not recognize. The words held no meaning for her, but she could hear the sorrow in them, and tears began to course silently down her cheeks as Gabriel bowed his head, and placed his hand gently on the crown of Mom's head.
"You have done well, little one," he said in a soft voice while Antony sang. "You have devoted yourself to the care of others, and countless people owe their lives and their joy to you. You have loved well and with passion, extended that love to everyone who ever knew you. Be blessed, and know that you are loved. Know that we will watch over your children, and we will keep them safe. The world was brighter, while you were in it, but your time has drawn to an end. On the other side your man is waiting for you, little one. It's time to go to him. It's time to go home."
And then he leaned down and kissed her cheek, and the machines all went deathly silent, and Mom's chest fell on one final exhale, and did not rise again.
There was no great flash of light, no clap of thunder, no sudden vision of Mom's spirit departing her flesh; there was only silence as Antony's voice failed him, a silence so complete that for a moment McKenna was convinced that the world itself had stopped turning. Maybe it had; Olivia Stabler was a titan of a woman, half angel, half human, all heart, and the world ought to pause, McKenna thought, to mark her passing.
"Be at peace, children," Gabriel told them. "Your parents are united, as they so dearly longed to be, and they will wait for you. Know you are loved, now and always."
There wasn't really anything McKenna could say to that and she was crying too hard to speak anyway, but it didn't seem to matter. Gabriel smiled at them one last time, and then promptly vanished, leaving Olivia's family behind to mourn her.
In death she was peaceful, still and beautiful as she had always been beautiful, but she was gone, and McKenna could feel the absence of her. Would probably always feel the absence of her. But it was like Gabriel said; Mom and Dad were together now, and that was all they'd ever really wanted, and all McKenna wanted for them. It must have really been something, she thought, to love someone the way her parents had loved one another. To build a life, and spend that life in love. It was a gift, and one she was grateful to have witnessed.
In this moment, though, she felt only sorrow, and so she stood still, holding on to her brother and sister, and the three of them wept together, and bid farewell to the woman who had always been the very center of their lives. One life, her life, had ended in that room, but a new one had begun, a life without her in it but one which nonetheless would be defined her, by the lessons she had taught, by the love that she had shared; she would not ever be forgotten.
Elliot and Olivia Stabler left the earth within months of one another. Their spirits departed and yet pieces of them would remain, always, in the hearts of their children, in the hearts of every life they had ever touched. And though the ones left behind would never know it, Elliot and Olivia continued to watch over their children from afar, their guardian angels, always.
