Chapter Text
“It shouldn’t be me.”
Constance’s head whips around to stare at her best friend in disbelief. There’s no way she’s heard her right. Ocean was so sure she was gonna vote for herself, and now she’s just suddenly changed her mind?
“I made no attempt to get to know any of you in life, not even my best friend.” Ocean’s gaze flits around the others as she continues speaking, finally resting on Constance for a brief moment, then looking away. She looks so guilty, and it just makes her chest hurt.
Constance can’t believe what Ocean is saying. In fact, she’s so startled that she barely even registers the rest of her spiel, too shocked to take any of it in. Her friend waxes poetic about their lives and deaths, then finally turns to look at Jane.
“Her. We had a life; she didn’t.” Ocean walks to the center of the group of teens, taking a firm stance, her final words tearful but undoubtedly final. “That’s my vote.”
The air is still for a few moments, no one daring to move, breathe, anything. Then Constance makes her way over to Ocean, standing firmly beside her. They share a brief glance, and Constance smiles at her, maybe a bit more sadly than she’d intended, but still trying to be reassuring.
There are more footsteps, each echoing through the warehouse, and Constance waits for Karnak to give the final verdict. But it never comes. Several seconds ticked by, then several more, and she looks around to be sure they’ve all come to an agreement.
“It shouldn’t be me, either.”
A dissonant voice speaks out behind them, and they all turn to see Jane, her own head turning to look at all of them.
“What?” Ocean asks, the single word wavering.
Jane shakes her head, minutely, looking as though she could cry at any moment. “It shouldn’t be me. It should be one of you.”
Noel takes a step forward, one hand reaching for her. “Jane-”
“You won’t change my mind,” Jane affirms, pulling away from them a few steps. “You all know nothing about me. My own parents didn’t even come to claim my body.” She gives a small laugh, sad laugh, and continues. “I could have been a horrible person, a delinquent.”
“You do not know this,” Mischa speaks up. “I was delinquent. I would have remembered you.”
“It shouldn’t be me,” Jane repeats, shaking her head again. She looks at Constance then, one arm outstretched to point to her. “It should be her.”
“Me?” Constance asks, one hand on her chest. “No, no, not me.”
“I hate to interrupt, but time is of the essence here,” Karnak’s mechanical voice rings out.
“Just give us a minute!” Ocean yells.
“It’s now or never, children,” Karnak says. “One or none.”
Jane places a hand on Constance’s shoulder, which actually makes her jump. When she turns to look back, Jane is smiling. It’s…creepy, still, but somehow also comforting.
“You have a chance for redemption,” Jane says, nodding. “Please, just accept it.”
Constance stares at Jane, then turns to look around at everyone else, searching for something, anything. No one seems to have anything to say, as they all continue to watch, just as unsure.
“If Jane votes for Constance, then so do I,” Ocean says. The waver has left her voice, and she steps forward, taking Constance’s hand in her own and squeezing it tightly.
“Me too,” Ricky says, stepping forward.
“Same with us,” Noel says, and Mischa nods along, both of them also stepping into the small circle they’ve made.
Constance stares down at her feet as she feels the tears start to well up. It’s all just so much. This entire time, she’d been so sure this was the end, but now…now, maybe there’s more for her.
Head raised, she nods, accepting her fate.
Then, there’s a flash of light, which mellows into a low, pulsing light in Constance’s eyes. She can feel it all fading to black, the small hand in hers the only remnant of the warehouse, and finds herself wishing she had been able to say something to the others, had been able to find the words to thank them. A final goodbye, perhaps.
“If that is what you wish,” is the last thing she hears, the mechanical voice ringing through her ears.
--
“Constance!”
The loud call snaps her out of her…daze? Constance isn’t exactly sure what she’d been doing actually, but the familiar sound of Ocean’s voice is enough to pull her back into the present.
She takes a second to look around, reorienting herself. She’s at the fall faire, that’s right. The sun hangs low in the sky; it must be late afternoon. A series of distant screams makes her jump, but turning to look in the direction of said noise, it’s just a cart full of teens going down the largest hill of the cyclone.
There’s a small tug on her hand, and she follows it to see her own clasped in Ocean’s. She looks a little annoyed, and Constance isn’t sure what she’s done. She feels the urge to apologize, even if she’d not totally sure what for.
“Are you coming or not?” Ocean asks, motioning in the direction of the others.
Constance looks past her. Noel seems to be just as annoyed as Ocean, arms crossed over his chest, foot tapping repeatedly on the pavement. The others, however, just stand and watch, unperturbed.
“Where…where are we going?” Constance asks nervously.
“To ride the cyclone, duh,” Ocean says. She shakes her head a little, as if disbelieving that Constance would ask something so dumb.
The cyclone. Fuck. Now she remembers.
“I, uh, I don’t think we should.”
“What?”
“COME ON!” Noel yells, hands cupped around his mouth. When Constance and Ocean look at him, he taps at the non-existent watch on his wrist, annoyed.
“WE’RE COMING!” Ocean yells back, just as annoyed.
She turns back to Constance, who is making a concerted effort to not physically shake at the thought of riding the rickety death trap. Ocean pulls at her hand again, and Constance follows unwittingly. They rejoin the group, and Noel makes a remark that Constance can’t quite hear, but that Ocean glares at him for anyways. Not that that’s out of the ordinary for the pair.
“Wait wait wait,” Constance says, trying to pull her hand away, but Ocean holds it in a vice-like grip. “I don’t want to go.”
“Oh, come on. You’re just being silly,” Ocean remarks offhandedly. “You love the cyclone. It’s your favorite.”
“Yeah but I uh…I just don’t want to, ok?”
Ocean doesn’t respond, just continues walking with Constance in tow. Constance pulls on her hand to get her to stop, and Ocean rounds on her, patience seemingly having already run out.
“What in the world has gotten into you?” Ocean asks.
They’ve already approached the ride line, and Constance suddenly feels like fainting as she eyes it. She yanks her hand away, causing Ocean to give her a disbelieving look.
“Constance!”
“I just don’t want to ride the cyclone right now, ok?!”
“What is your problem?”
“If she does not want to go, I say we do not force it,” Mischa says, shrugging nonchalantly.
“But-”
“You’re not gonna change her mind, Ocean,” Noel says. “Let’s just get in the line before it gets too long.”
“We can always go on a second time,” Penny pipes up from the back, and Ricky nods along beside her. “She can just go then.”
Ocean stares at Constance for a few moments, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance, before finally giving in. She throws her hands up in frustration. “Fine! But the rest of us are going on without you.”
You can’t change the past.
These words ring through her thoughts as Constance watches the rest of the choir join the queue without her. This is how it’s supposed to go, isn’t it? Only one of them is meant to survive the accident, and it’s her. She can’t save them. That’s that.
Except it’s not. As she watches them go, she can feel herself start to spiral with worry.
Constance opts to find a good vantage point to keep an eye on them. Even if she can’t do anything to derail their tragic fate, it makes her feel a smidge better. Looking around, she decides to stand atop a short stone wall surrounding a flowerbed, the thin line of stones barely keeping in the mound of dirt spotted with green.
She paces the narrow barrier, anxiety growing and pace quickening as the choir inches towards the front of the line. Minutes pass, and it all comes back to her in pieces. She remembers the warehouse, and how the cold of the concrete underfoot almost seemed to seep in through her shoes. She remembers their songs, half a dozen desperate please to be seen and heard in an unforgiving, meaningless world.
Worse of all, though, she remembers the end. Everyone had looked at her with such…well, pity isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s close. It seems about right, regardless. She’d lived a pretty pitiable life; may as well follow that streak into the afterlife.
She watches as the rest of the choir finally gets into a ride car and ascends the first lift hill. There’s one seat left empty.
Constance looks away. She can’t handle watching it happen. In fact, maybe she shouldn’t even be near the cyclone at all when it happens.
Her pacing comes to an abrupt halt as her foot slips. She had paid less and less attention to her own movements as her anxiety grew, and the sudden fall makes her heart jump.
It all happens at once. The screams from the cyclone fill her ears, and she hears a loud crack, feels a blinding pain behind one eye, and between one second and the next, it all goes black.
Then, the cold, hard concrete is back under her shoes, and the dim lighting of the warehouse makes it hard to see. Ocean sits beside her again, same as she had after their first rendition of the new birthday song.
Fuck.