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Maybe they would have been surprised, their old friends, to find out Ashes outlived them all. Well, all of them besides the Toy Soldier anyways, and it didn’t count. Maybe they’d have been surprised, but Ashes wasn’t. Ashes makes a clean break when they outgrow their playgrounds, but only then. And while stars still burn in the sky, there’s still something left to play with.
Ashes isn’t stupid of course. They know even stars live on borrowed time, they know even stars run out of fuel. They know even the Aurora will not last forever. So they start planning, millenia and more before their grand finale. Keep stashes of more gasoline, kerosene, lighter fluid, a thousand more combustible things than you can imagine on just as many burnt out worlds. Stashing their ending strategically. Ashes has learned a lot of things over their long existence, and the best was how to burn longer, larger, hotter than anything seen before.
Raphealla explained the probable ending of the universe to them, once; long, long ago. How the stars would burn themselves out and leave nothing but the coldness, and the nothing. It seemed like such a waste of an ending. And so, Ashes had a better idea, and saw it through.
They start setting the stage long before they lose any of their friends. When Nastya--when Nastya left, when Nastya went Out and never came Back, they knew that sometimes, an ending will stick. And you better damn well make yours a good one. And they want theirs to burn brighter than any other.
When only a few of them are left; Tim blows up a star; and never comes back. They smile, take the last half-empty pack of his cigarettes, and place them in their breast pocket. They promise his ashes, his core components, his stardust, that they’ll outdo him one last time. They like to think they hear him laughing, all around them in the void.
Raphella is gone, and so is the Aurora, gone with the rest of their friends. The Toy Soldier is still by their side, but it doesn’t do a whole lot of pretending these days. They don’t blame it, but they have one last game to play. Only a handful of stars left too, but it would be a shame to let such a beautiful bomb go off in anything but perfect untouched dark. So they race to watch every glorious fireball extinguish itself, one by one. If Ashes had never been a god, they’d almost call it a spiritual quest. But Ashes had been a god, and had killed gods; so they can’t find any pretty words for it at all.
Ashes knows how the universe started, too. Nothingness, and then: an explosion bigger than any can fathom.
When the last star burns out, they stand at the center of the now dead universe, all their stashed and hoarded gasoline spread evenly throughout the void. The Toy Soldier stands at attention in the last life pod in the universe, watching. Ashes would never voice it; but even they do not want to burn their last not-really-living friend. They tell themself it is because there is no point in a grand finale without a witness. Even as they say this, they know after this last dance; it will probably stop pretending forever.
There are two things left in Ashes’ pocket. A book of matches, and that pack of cigarettes they stole from a dead-forever Tim. There is one cigarette left, and one match. They take a final steadying breath, and strike the match, light the cigarette. They take a long draw, a second, a third. They know in a good story, all things come in threes. They want nothing more to be a good story, with a good ending. The best ending. They take the cigarette out of their mouth, spare a word for Tim, for Raphaella, for Jonny, for all of them, all of them, all of them, and put the cigarette out on the gasoline soaked rock next to them.
And at that, Ashes O’Reilly is the brightest thing in the universe. And at that, Ashes O’Reilly is the universe. And at that; there is nothingness, and then: Explosion. Ashes burns down their playgrounds, to honor them. Ashes knows how the universe ends, and how it begins. And at that, Ashes becomes a god, one last time, and sets the fires burning, ignites the next big bang, creates a new universe out of a void. Their last, joyous laugh echoes throughout their creation, long after their atoms burn away.