and the gods whispered
At the end of it all, Tom waits.
He has imagined death, of course. He's faced it often enough. But he hadn't counted, finally, on this cold, clear awareness of its approach—the helplessness to stop it.
"It's time, I think," Kathryn says, joining him at the window. He feels it too, St. Elmo's Fire forking beneath his skin. They couldn't have known how interwoven the Continuum was with the fabric of their own reality. Q had never explained. They couldn't have known the cost of flippancy.
Kathryn laces her fingers through his. Outside, another supernova blooms.
The stars shiver.
