Fabricated Chapter Forty

[companionwolf]

 When he wakes up, world spinning and self aching aching aching, he is lying on his stomach. Someone is half seated on his back, has removed his clothes, is sewing the back exit hole of the gun wound that never did get sewn.

He tries to ask where he is, but only manages a rather pitiful groaning sound. The person sewing gently pats him. "Oh, c'mon, it can't be that bad."

"Tulip?" he says between heavy breaths, despite the chest wound being closed. "Alex? Davey? Espeon? Alice? Spartan?"

In turn, they answer, and the tenseness in him eases. He lifts himself up slightly to see Alex and Davey both sitting nearby, the Spartan in the doorway, only to get squashed as Espeon launches herself at him, despite Alice's warning from her place in Alex's lap.

"Bitch I thought you fucking got got by the Elders! How dare you!" she almost shouts; he grimaces at the noise.

"Please," he says, "a little quieter..."

Espeon blinks. "Oh sorry," she says, and lowers her voice. "I thought you died, asshole! Goddamn!"

"But I didn't," he says, and winces as Tulip makes the last stitch and secures her work with a knot; he feels at his abdomen, the wound is sewn as well. It stings still, though. "What happened?"

"Only you and your Ethereal know that," says Alice. "The psigate closed after Espeon and the others returned."

She blinks; he sees she is holding her paws together, and that they tremble. "When you did not follow after them back here, I was almost certain you were lost." Her voice is very small.

"Hey," he says, "hey, I'm right here. Mission accomplished."

"Damn right baby," says Espeon, and does her best approximation of a feline dab. Davey rolls his eyes at her.

Tulip stands up and backs away from PC. "You're all set," she says, helping him to his feet and passing him a bundle of new clothes. He sets to work putting them on, wincing as his astral limbs return with their phantom wounds and stinging and blood. He rubs his arms, tries to ease it.

"So is that it?" asks Alex. "Is it over? We won?"

"We won," PC says. "After you all left, the entire fortress collapsed, and I felt the final Avatar die, alongside the destruction of the sarcophagi..." He feels his jaw drop just a little as he relays this, as it connects in his own mind, feels a smile slowly play at the corners of his mouth and widen, widen, widen. "So yeah… I guess we did win."

A cheer among the humans, broken only when Davey mumbles, "Damn, I don't want to go back to bartending" as he stands up, leaning on a makeshift crutch. Alex stands as well, passing Alice to PC. Espeon clambers up his leg all the way up onto his shoulder.

The Spartan shuffles foot to foot in the doorway. "We are departing," they say. "But I wanted to thank you again. For allowing me to escape, both times. It will be repaid."

"We'll come see you off," he says, and follows the Spartan out of the room- he hears his friends behind him.

When he steps out into the field the psigate building is in, he is not expecting a sunrise, but there it is, in glorious oranges and pinks, stacked streaks like an oil painting. On the ground a couple hundred paces ahead a small circular ship, about the size and shape of a standard round swimming pool.

The Spartan stops, turns to PC. "We will find a way to communicate with your planet," they say. "It must be searching for life? We will answer. And we will meet again."

They make their way to the ship; Alex and Tulip come to either side of PC, with Davey next to Tulip.

As the ship rises, a hot fire blast from beneath it, he sees the few members of the Psionic community still here gather and watch from the porch of the Welcome Center.

The ship rises and rises until it is a dot in the sky, and then nothing. PC stares up at where it used to be.

Tulip breaks the quiet: "What now?"

"I think," says PC, "it's time to go home."

(And so they do.)