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would you have changed anything?
Pearl pauses from where she lies, victor paralyzed over the place she found her victory. She looks around. She doesn’t think she sees anyone; she’s the only one here.
i don’t mean to be rude, but—now that you’re alone at the end, would you have changed anything?
“I won,” Pearl says.
i know. but was it worth it?
“Scott thought so,” Pearl says. “Or, well. I forgave him. Hahaha. After everything, too! He blew himself up!”
he was supposed to be your soulmate.
“I know, right? He figured that out in the end, I guess, but still. He was supposed to be my soulmate.”
no, i mean—he loved cleo, but you, without hesitation—do you regret anything?
“If I was stupid enough to regret things,” Pearl says, and then stops. “I mean. I guess I regret a few things. But really, why are you acting like this is… like… Tilly’s down there on her last life. I won for Tilly! Yaaay!”
you don’t have to act like that. i won’t tell anyone.
“I—it doesn’t have to be that deep, you know. I really am exactly this impulsive.” She hums, sighs. “No. I don’t think I would have done it differently.”
even if it could have gotten you scott earlier? he was supposed to be your soulmate.
Pearl looks at the horrible bloodstains and burnt scorched on the ground a while. They don’t really resemble a body at all. It’s not really pleasant, but it’s one of the last things left, so she feels she ought to.
“Why dwell on that?” Pearl says, finally. “I’m not good at dwelling. That requires thinking, and I haven’t done much of that. I don’t think—he was supposed to be my soulmate, and he wasn’t, and we have to live with the choices we made, right? I have to—I have to live with the choices he made.”
…and the ones you made.
“And the ones I made.”
that’s what it comes down to?
“Yeah.”
just… you made your choices, he made his, and you live with them?
“I mean, duh. We even forgave each other. That’s a choice we made too.”
but isn’t that exhausting?
Pearl is quiet. She sighs and wonders when it will end. She ought to be dead by now, she thinks. She wonders why she’s busy talking to herself instead.
but isn’t it—isn’t it sad? you don’t seem that sad. isn’t this sad?
Pearl doesn’t answer that either.
why aren’t you sad?
“He was supposed to be my soulmate,” Pearl says. “And we weren’t supposed to win. But here we are.”
oh.
“I mean. You’re right about some things, I guess. I don’t know. It’s over now, isn’t it? Nothing left for you to watch. Nothing left for me to choose. Just…”
yeah. i don’t know. i’m sorry. i’m—i’m sad too.
“You’ll have to live with that.”
so i will.
It does not take too much longer after Pearl closes her eyes for her to see blackness again. She still smells blood, but she also smells the distinct smell of wet dog, and a bit of rot, and somewhere, poking through it all, spruce leaves after the rain. Alright. Alright.