justasaleswoman | (no subject)

Well, this is unexpected.

Verity is reasonably certain she's dead. Really dead, dead-for-a-demon dead, not just dead-for-a-human dead, which she's been for centuries. And while she can't say she's ever given much thought to where you wound up when you were dead-for-a-demon dead, if someone had asked, she probably would have guessed, well, nowhere.

Not the bar at the end of the universe.

Then again, this may not be Milliways. It may just look like it. End of the universe, last stop on the way from somewhere to no where, final frantic blip of a dying consciousness, a place and a time that are in fact neither a place nor a time, who can say? That stuff gets determined way above her paygrade.

Well, above what was her paygrade. She does seem to have been recently terminated.

The place, whatever and however it is, is silent and deserted -- there's not so much as a waitrat to be seen. Even without looking, she knows there's no one else here. Just like she doesn't need a mirror to know that she's wearing her own face for the first time in . . . well, the years are hard to compute. Let's just leave it at ages.

On the other side of the observation window, the universe goes on ending, and with nothing else to do, Verity wanders over to watch it do so.

And then nothing changes but everything does. There's not even a whisper of sound, not so much as flicker to change the light, no telltale disturbance of the air. But she's no longer the only one here, and she knows it. Knows who she'll see if she turns around, too.

"I probably should have guessed you'd be here, darling."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I believe Twain had a line about that.

"Unless it was Shaw. Or Paschal. Or Voltaire. Or Rousseau . . . the attribution is all over the place on that one."

"So it is for the deepest truths."

Here she snorts.

Again.

"And those most lightly-held."

"Two categories that are hardly mutually exclusive."

"Mmm."

Michael purses her lips.

"You would know better than I."

Verity, after all, was once human.

That was a different lifetime.

But then, what wasn't, at this point?

"If you say so."

"Not me."

That's delivered mildly, so far as these things go.

"Not here."

"Someone else, somewhere else, then."

Twain or Voltaire or Shaw.

Or none of the above.

Verity rests her elbow on her chin in her hand.

"So tell me, Michael, will you miss this at all?"

"This?"

Michael arches an eyebrow, looking out over the empty bar.

"Or our conversations? Or you?"

They are all three different questions.

Verity laughs.

"Our conversations.

"I'm not quite brave enough to ask if you'll miss me."

"Mmmm."

One corner of Michael's mouth tightens. Fractionally.

"You have made an interesting point or two, on occasion."

"You still say the nicest things."

Or something like that.

"Well, for all you could, on occasion, be annoyingly sanctimonious. . . I'll miss talking to you.

"Assuming I'm in any condition to miss anything, once I step through that door."

Michael half-shrugs, slouching back in her seat.

"You won't find out sitting around here."

"And is that your way of saying Verity, it's time for you to be going?"

"You know what they say about assumptions."

As far as answers go, it's not a particularly good one.

"Yes, except that I cannot think there was ever a point in my existance I could have made an ass out of you."

Verity finishes the water in her glass and sets it on the table next to her.

She closes her eyes briefly, there's no transformation when she opens them again; they're still a color somewhere between blue and grey.

And then she stands.

"It's time for me to be going."

"So it is."

Michael stands, as well.

There is no hint of coltish grace about it.

"I would wish you well, but -- "

The flick of her fingers seems to encompass the room, the door, what brought them here --

Everything.

"But if you can -- be not afraid."

"Don't worry. Scared's not really my style."

And there are worse things than endings, after all.

She looks over at the Observation Window, and then back at Michael.

"Well, whatever all this was, I'm glad it happened.

"Goodbye, Michael."

"Goodbye, Verity," Michael says.

And with the barest fraction of a smile --

"Fare thee well."

Edited 2010-07-24 02:06 (UTC)

The thing about journeys is that while, yes, they begin with a single step, they end that way, too.

No one ever seems to mention that part.

Verity pauses at the threshold with her hand on the doorknob, looks back over her shoulder at Michael and smiles.

And then she opens the door and steps out of the bar.

The door closes behind her.