(A/N): We're back with Evie, Vi, Hettie, and Pip.

January 16th, 1966

Evie

Quitting my job was one of the hardest things I'd ever done- not just because I typically tried to avoid confrontation as much as possible, or because I'd had that job long enough that my first pay had gone to dad's medical bills, but because I could no longer fool myself into thinking I hadn't already made my choice. I was living on borrowed time- which I'm sure Khal had known, when he'd given the three day schedule. It seemed a pitifully short amount of time, at least in my eyes, but I suppose it was just long enough to get the bulk of my affairs in order... as long as I played my cards right.

"So, where are we going?" It didn't surprise me in the slightest when Vi, Hettie, and Pip followed me into the back garden- Hettie and Pip eagerly, Vi rather hesitantly- but it did make my job a little harder, if only because now I knew I would have to find a way to explain every single thing I wanted to do.

"I'm going to the shed- what you lot do is up to you." They shared a look, I could tell even without seeing it, but none of them faltered for so much as a second.

Vi eyed me strangely, probably because, while I was the more likely of the two of us to venture into our garden shed, she knew I hated it just as much as she did- which is why we usually sent Hettie and Lou, since they were the only people who weren't as afraid of spiders as the rest of us. Pip was almost as competent as Hettie was when it came to handy sort of situations, but given his near debilitating fear of the creepy crawlies, he avoided the almost time capsule that used to be my father's shed at pretty much every opportunity. "The shed? What- Why are you... What do you want from the shed? What are you expecting to find?" Would it be too much to ask to find proof that everything would be okay, in a back shed?

"The ladder, among other things." She blinked, then her brow furrowed rapidly. Hettie, however, shrugged easily.

"Well, it's in there. What else? I'm sure I can help you find anything you're looking for, on the off chance it isn't where your dad used to keep it." I wish it didn't still chafe a little that Hettie had practically taken over most of my father's spaces- like the shed and garage- in the years since his passing, even if I knew it was both what he would've wanted, and for the best. He'd always liked her- treated her as his own, as much as possible, like he'd done for each of them- and the effort he'd put in to give her an outlet was something she still benefited from to this day. Which is, more than anything else, a legacy he would be proud of. She had her reasons for moving things around- good ones, given that she didn't have the same physical restrictions he'd had- but out of respect, she left most of them in the same place.

I made sure to flash her a proper smile, not wanting to accidentally leave her with the impression that I was mad at her or bitter about the bond she'd had with my father, when the opposite was true. Whenever I saw Hettie using his tools, or opened the back door to see someone in the shed, for a second, I was transported to a time where he was still alive- it was a painful, hopeful thing, because deep down, I knew it wasn't real. "There's a few things I want to do- things I want to fix. I've been putting things off, and it's time to stop." Vi looked more than a little worried by this. The wooden door to the shed scraped against the smooth concrete path leading up to the structure as I opened it, and Hettie did me the favor of reaching in to turn the light on. She didn't have to reach up, since, like everything else, it had to be accessible from a seated position, but I wouldn't be surprised if she'd had to stick her hand through a cobweb to get to it, which- No. Absolutely not. "Thanks," I said, and she nodded.

"What are we fixing?" Pip asked, rubbing his hands together as if eager to get started- and not as though he was clearly barely holding back a shudder at the thought of the shed's other, more permanent, occupants.

"You're going next door to fix Ruthie's hall light," I told him firmly, doing my best to ignore his not quite pout. "I suppose Hettie will be helping me rehang that shutter, and clear the bird nest from under the roof of the garage. Vi... if you want to go back inside and keep an eye out to make sure nothing happens to Lou while she's sleeping, I completely understand, and support you."

She narrowed her eyes at me, evidently rather displeased by my attempts to send her away. It's not like I wanted to be away from her, given that I knew I only had three days left with them at the most, but I also knew that if anyone was going to question me, it was Vi- and I really didn't need questioning, right now. I was also a little worried about leaving Lou alone in the house, asleep and defenseless, since I knew Tarea Hugar had already been inside once. I wouldn't expect a Hunter to want to hurt a human like Lou, but I wasn't willing to be proven wrong. To risk Lou, or any of my other friends. "Or," She began pointedly- sharply, too. "We can all stick together, and get things done a little more slowly, but more safely."

I knew she didn't mean that I might fall off a ladder, but instead that I might get kidnapped or something. "Vi. It's fine. No one's going to do anything nefarious to me in our back garden, you can relax a bit." She shook her head immediately, instinctively, and I saw Pip hover at the edge of my vision as though he wasn't sure who he should listen to- Vi, telling him to stay, or me, telling him to go.

"And the worst thing that can happen if we don't split up is that it takes longer, so I see no real reason to do so. Besides, the whole point of us going out last night was to have fun together, and with the way everything went, we didn't really have the chance to do anywhere near as much of that as we should have. And what we did have was overshadowed by the fear of the latter half of the night- not to try to guilt you or anything, I just... You've been so busy with work, and I've been busy with... well, work, among other things, and I feel like we've barely seen each other, even though we both share a bathroom. I've missed you, and if I have to shoo away some birds or muck out the gutters in order to get to spend time with you, then... I'm all too willing to do so." I couldn't help but soften at that, even though I knew Vi was, at least on some level, trying to manipulate me into letting her stay.

"You're right," I acquiesced, and her face instantly lit up. "I've missed you, too, Vi. I haven't spent nearly enough time with any of you, recently." And spending any time with them now would inevitably be bittersweet, knowing it would be the last for a long, long time. "I want to make sure everything's taken care of before I..." I couldn't say what I meant, so instead I continued with, "If I'm going to focus on me, I need to make sure everything I should've done is- well, done- and taken care of, so I can let everything else be... someone else's responsibility."

I hoped it would be split evenly between all of them- equally- but knew better than to genuinely assume that would be the case. Lou and Pip would likely shoulder the majority of the burden, logically and emotionally, respectively, and Hettie and Vi would shirk and shirk and shirk responsibility like they always did. For all their talk about stepping up- well, Vi's talk, anyway, Hettie hadn't done much talking on that front- a leopard never changes its spots, and while I wanted to believe that they could both change rather unlike a big cat, they'd spent so long avoiding responsibility that I simply couldn't bring myself to trust them wholeheartedly one more time. Couldn't bring myself to be disappointed, one last time.

"It's not just you," Vi said quietly. "I put everything off in order to not deal with my grief... but where you're trying to take care of one last handful of things before you let yourself have some well earned 'me time', I'm trying to learn how to pick up where you're leaving off. I'm not... It doesn't come natural to me- or at least, it doesn't anymore- so you're going to have to be a little patient with me. Not that you had that opportunity- for you, it was shape up or lose everything- but I... I'm trying my best, okay? I promise you, at any given time, I'm doing my best."

I nodded. "I know, Vi," I told her- because in the end, I did. She'd only ever done her best, even when her best involved flaking out on me, and nearly missing our father's funeral- that I had organised pretty much single-handedly- because she was nursing a hangover. "I believe you completely."

(A/N): Ooh, Evie has issues, doesn't she?

Also, I don't know how clear it is, but Vi and Evie's father was a wheelchair user- that's why everything has to be accessible from a seated position. I originally intended that fact to be subtle for some reason, but since I don't remember what that reason is, I'm just going to mention it so there's no (well, less) confusion.

Also also, it was only while editing this about six months after writing it that I realised that their dad's shed being a 'time capsule' is sort of a tribute to my grandfather, and most likely my father. My grandfather was a shoe repairer and generally spent a lot of time in his shed, and toward the end of his life it slowly emptied out since he couldn't get out there much and didn't want to leave my grandmother with much to get rid of when he finally passed. Most of the tools and stuff went to my father, who is generally a very handy guy (he technically works in maintenance, but he's also a welder, plus a whole bunch of other things... basically, if something needs doing, call my dad and he'll probably be able to do it), and while he's far from dying anytime soon (I hope), I do think if he were to pass, his shed would definitely be a sort of time capsule. You know when someone you love dies, and you enter a space that was entirely THEIRS? I was basically trying to invoke that sort of feeling. Vi and Evie's dad, like my dad and my grandfather, spent a lot of time in his shed (or in his garage, which in this case is separate, but for both of mine was the same thing), so going out there is very painful for them. Vi is more avoidant of the space because she's more avoidant in general, and because she feels guilty about letting him down (their mother died first, so she wasn't really around to be disappointed), and Evie's just... grief-stricken. She says it's about the spiders, but the spiders are only a small part of it.

Also x3, we learn more about Hettie and Pip's capabilities a bit later, though mostly Hettie's.

So, since the last time I uploaded I finished writing the chapters for 2025... and have already written 11 chapters for 2026, which means up until the start of March. There will be more special chapters that year than any previous, because I realised that chapter 666 was scheduled to go up at the end of November, and I said to myself, '...if I add just four more chapters before that point, I can make 666 came out on Halloween'- and so I did it. The special chapters, in addition to Valentine's Day, my Birthday (March 6th) the Anniversary (June 6th), and Christmas Day, will be New Year's Day, Lisbet's Birthday (June 17th), Elaine's Birthday (July 22nd), and Leo's Birthday (August 15th), along with the aforementioned Halloween chapter. In fact, I'm just about to start writing chapter 627, which is the special chapter for my birthday- what will be my 28th birthday, which is weird to think about. I had planned to take a break after finishing 2025, but I only had like, ten pages left in the book I'd been writing in, so I wrote chapter 617 and 618 in that, then hit a stride and finished the next book (which was a half used book with only 30 pages left), and now I've started another book... safe to say my break didn't happen.

Oh, also, I did the math, and we should reach 1 million words around June next year (so, in time for the Anniversary, yay!), but since the last 25 chapters I added up didn't have their Author's notes added, it will almost certainly be a bit sooner than that. We should reach 963,000 words by the end of 2024, and I'm not sure where we'll be at word count wise after all of the chapters I currently have written (since there are 40 more of them), but we'll see where it goes from there.