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i.
The thing about dying, in your opinion, is that it’s not quite as immediate as one might wish. Perhaps that has more to do with being swallowed whole by a gaping maw than anything else, though.
(To be fair, you don't remember much.)
Still, the fires of the Hellmouth burn. Still, the town grieves a loss it doesn’t even know it’s had. Still, Paula Reddick is dead, somewhere in the ruins of the town.
It’s Meadows that finds your body in the end, poor Velasquez. Helps you out of the cavern, directs you to the Moabbey.
(There’s no time to cry.)
ii.
The worst part of being a ghost, you think, is the silence. The muteness, dampening over ear drums. You’ve never been quiet, but now it feels like you must yell to even be heard as a whisper.
You find Sandoval’s journals a week or so after your death. Books upon books filled with desperate memories. Your frustration is palpable, permeable and present, as you force yourself to be corporeal enough to pick up the pen.
SANDOVAL CROSSING DONT YOU DARE IGNORE ME, you scrawl.
I KNOW YOU'RE THERE, in bright black ink.
LISTEN TO ME DAMN IT!
(It doesn’t matter.)
iii.
You miss your truck, mostly.
Miss the way the sun would shine through on those early morning starts, miss the hum of the road beneath your feet. So many years of hard work poured into that steering wheel and that windshield, years of regrets and long nights and so much love. You miss the road and your partners that came with it and the cry of wind rattling the side mirrors, the cab you made a home, once upon a time.
When you manage to pour everything into those lights that first time and they flicker on, you could cry.
iv.
You are not a person of many regrets. How things ended with Forrest is one.
It wasn’t a big fight, or anything like that. Just a little too long between calls, visits less often than you should, until suddenly it had been two years since you had last talked. You love your son, you truly do. Even that first year in the Moabbey, when your memory is rewriting itself back together, that is still an ember in your mind, a flame you can’t let go out.
It just so happens that a flame it’ll have to remain, in the end.
v.
For someone who could never stop moving, settling into the Moabbey is a challenge. As much as you pride yourself on adaptability, being tied to a single place again for the first time in years is harder than you ever thought possible. Batting practice holds no interest for you; instead you spend lots of time in the hills surrounding it, learning how to grow roots again. Placing your mark in the work you do, burrow deep and hard to carve out space. Spend quiet cold nights with yourself and not much else.
Learn how to breathe again, through empty lungs.
vi.
You get to see him play, once, close to the beginning. You stay hidden in the stands, of course, not able to leave the hellmouth–and not technically allowed in the stadium either–but being a ghost does have certain advantages. He loses horribly (and you know from the whispers you’ve heard that the Beams aren’t exactly the best team) but it doesn’t matter. He’s there and he’s brilliant despite all that, and you get to see your son.
It’s the last time you do. You don’t mean for it to be, and how could you know, really? Doesn’t change the fact that it is.
vii.
Jayden is like a second chance, almost. Heartfelt and headstrong and the drive of a million fires behind her eyes, you can’t help but immediately find yourself protective of her. She’s a bit too much like a meteor, threatening to burn up before she reaches the ground. But you love her, see yourself in her, even, despite it all.
When the election results come through, you find her packing her bags.
“I’m going to forget you, right?” She says, turning to you.
“Only for a little bit, love.” There’s tears in her eyes this time. “You’ll be fine.”
viii.
For all that you used to run, you find change much, much harder these days. It’s tough, not having Jayden there everyday. For someone who's already dead, you find time slipping through your hands far too much, like you blinked and all the sand in your hourglass is almost gone.
You ask Bickle what it’s like for her, coming to the shadows. She talks about the cold, and the dark, the muted layers that sound all too familiar. All this time, you thought it was death, the silence. Soon enough, you’ll know what it’s like to see colours once more.
ix.
Fresh, real air hits you square in the chest for the first time in well over twenty years, and translucent tears run down your face. You’ve missed so much; the rebuilding of the town, the blossoming of a community, and half a dozen funerals, your son (and your own) included.
Sandy finds you out by the high school, one of those early days.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “That we didn’t figure it out.”
“Did any of you say anything to him, did he even know? That I was gone?”
Her silence is answer enough, in the end.
x.
Jayden has grown, in a way that frightens you. You can see the changes bright as day, but it doesn’t change the way she collapses in your arms the second she sees you.
“I’m scared, Paula.” Her voice cracks, piece by piece. “It’s like I’m Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill that will inevitably fall down.”
You don’t have the right words for her, anymore than you used to. Still, you sit with her on those darkest nights, a light where you can be. But the meteor’s about to hit the atmosphere, and there’s only so much you can do.
xi.
And you play.
Travelling again feels like your bones settling back into your body, something familiar and warm. It’s different now, though, most of your partners passed on and gone, and no one to write back to anymore. You stand there as the sky grows brighter with each new sun, as Jayden grows sharper, gaunter; as the team gets ripped apart and rebuilds once again, and you play. You find peanuts to send to the hall when you can, for Forrest and Vela and Rhys, and eventually for Iggy too.
But you know a tower, and you know it’s inevitable collapse.
xii.
The sun burns itself up, and Jayden nearly with it. She doesn’t, though, and even as you find yourself hurtling on your way to kill a god, you can see the flames in her eyes ignite again.
When it’s all said and done, though, when the Coin is dead and gone and there’s static in your eyes, you know it’s time to go home. The Pies are already gone when you get your chance, reaching for Lars’s hands as he reaches for yours.
You’ve already lost one kid to a world ending. You’re not about to lose the rest.