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i.
you wake up soaked in sweat– it's yet another searing hot morning in miami.
(you've always had a second sense for moments like these; for feeling the wind shift, for seeing the writing on the wall. so before you even open your eyes, you know your entire world has shifted.)
you don't check your phone.
(to see the headline is to make what you know already real. you don't know if you're ready for that. you don't think you have a choice. you never have, really.)
it's okay to take a moment, you tell yourself. you'll need it.
ii.
you jog down to the beach.
it's a mistake, you know already, your knee aching enough that you'll reach for your cane as soon as you get home. but it was that or light a goddamn fire, and well– this seemed like the better option.
your phone rings, it's ruthless: “so?”
“i–” deep breaths. “you've got a question?”
“come over.”
“rue–”
“if i’m freaking out, you're freaking out. just come over, okay?”
“i can't–” you wipe the sweat from your brow in an attempt to straighten your mind. “yeah, okay.”
“see you in thirty.”
you're left with static and the waves.
iii.
you don't end up in boston.
that night, you find yourself on the roof of the firehouse, leaning back against baby’s chest, a beer in one hand, and declan’s hand in the other. it’s beyond crowded, a couple dozen firefighters, old and new. there's smoke in the air– change this big means fires brewing –but for now that's all it is, atmospheric ash to paint the darkening sky pink. the three of you stay silent as you watch the first sunset in almost a century.
“so,” dec says finally, “what now?”
a pause. and then: “anything,” rue says, “anything we want.
iv.
when zack and rue ask you to move in, it’s as much of a surprise as it isn’t.
you don't say yes immediately, ask to think on it and go on a walk to clear your head. your wandering feet bring you down well tread paths until you find yourself in the memorial bat forest.
you kneel down; knee aching, heart too.
“I don't know what I'm doing, doc. not that i ever have,” they can't respond. you don't need them to. “am I doing the right thing?”
a breeze nearly bowls you over. you'll take it as a yes.
v.
it's not simple– but then, you suppose, it's not supposed to be.
the three of you find a stately old queen anne with just the right amount of fixing up needed. the exterior is stunning; deep blue and rich green trim. the inside needs fixing, but well, you all need to keep busy these days.
zack and rue take the master, and you take the second biggest room across the hall. you're still not sure what exactly moving in is supposed to mean, but it felt right at the time. still does.
baby steps in the right direction, or something.
vi.
that's the thing, right? you have the time to take things slow now. no more damocles sword overhead, just regular old mortality for once.
none of you have celebrated a proper birthday in years– it was hard to keep track of them, after a while. but it's your birthday, and for the first time in nearly a century, it's showing on your face. that's cause for celebration in itself, you think.
(you think, some days, of how you and stu outlasted every other soul in your hebrew class by far too long. you've lost so much, but you're in good company.)
vii.
you host a combo birthday-housewarming party just as september turns to fall, nearly twenty-five of you crammed into a crowded dining room; friends new and old. mostly old.
you spend far too long in the kitchen in the run up, turning zack and baby into sous chefs as you turn it upside down. it's worth it in the end; the food is nearly as delicious as the company.
a toast to all you've lost seems like an insult when here you are, living while none of them will get the chance to, but ignoring it is worse. you toast.
viii.
the fall happens softly and slowly, until your own room has been untouched for the past two weeks and your jackets are spilling into both sides of their closet.
there'll still be a craterous chasm where morrow once was, you think, a mythologized ideal that was barely real even a century ago. you have always been haunted by the possibilities just outside your reach.
you have to let go. if you can't move forward now, then when?
if morrow was your binary star—(assured destruction)—then zack and rue are a stellar nursery– a soft place to land.
you land.
ix.
you're restless, now that things have settled. then again, you've never been that great at staying still.
five years on and you finally have grays peeking through, weathered hands to match your weathered life. people you love, deeply and fully and truly, people you get to love with every single inch of your soul.
sometimes, you still want to strike a match and watch it burn. most days, you're content enough to just breathe. doesn’t mean it's not a constant battle, though, but you try. and you mourn, for the people and years you lost, in so many goddamn ways.
x.
years pass. wrinkles multiply, skin thins, you smile almost as much as you cry.
hank and bea get married on a beach in the keys and you do both. declan and gabe open a restaurant on the bay and you haven’t seen her smile this much in years. justice settles in. stu learns to breathe.
the three of you– well, it’s complicated and it isn’t. it’s home, a warm blanket on a freezing night, a candle in the window for you to come back to. it’s mourning, and spending the rest of your mornings with your two best friends.
xi.
it’s chanukkah, and you want to go to chicago.
the city’s changed–(it never stops changing, like a phoenix into embers, it burns and burns and burns)–and it’s not yours anymore. it hasn’t been in decades.
you stop by the cemeteries, placing rocks on far too many graves, then spend a night at your grandniece’s. finally, it’s time for you to head to your destination, the one place you’ve sworn a dozen times over to never return to.
floor three, room 815 of the firehouse has sat untouched since you left it, nearly a century.
you open the door.
xii.
you find what you’re looking for.
(a box of matches can mean many things. at times, it felt like the weight of the world in your pocket. here, now… it’s just a matchbox, and the barest whisper of a life you barely lived.)
you slip back out of the building like a ghost, and this time you don’t turn back at all. the light back to boston is quick, and no one notices you.
zack and rue are arguing over frying latkes, and you make them both yelp with freezing hands against their cheeks.
“everything good?” zack murmurs.
“everything’s just right.”