Link to article: A Eulogy In Eleven Eight Time.
//GASP// It was dry air. //GASP// But she couldn't get enough of it. //GASP// The lights weren't as bright here. //GASP// And there was a head blocking out one of them. //GASP// Oh, color's filling in. //GASP// And now her lungs had their fill. Sara was on a couch, buck naked. Her mind flicked to the worst case for a moment, but then a familiar face assuaged those worries. "V?" Although... Veronica looked a little older than Sara remembered. She was also crying more. Tight. Crushing. But a hug still felt nice. "I'm so sorry." "Sorry?" "You didn't know but it was just staring me in the face for so long and I didn't like being alone and maybe you would be ok with it but I didn't know but I did it anyways and, if I fucked up I am so sorry but it was just so hard. It's been so fucking hard." Sara sat up and hugged Veronica back. "I'm happy to see you too." "I knew that I hated knowing there was a copy of my soul out there but when Jack told me he made one for you too I was so fucking mad. But then I left and I took it. I fucking took it anyways and and and—" "Sssshhh. Sssshh." Veronica wept openly into Sara's shoulder for a few minutes. Veronica was soft and warm, but Sara was still getting a grip on everything around her. She was definitely in an apartment. Carpet floor, a little TV, and a door on the far side of the room. It looked well lived in. Recycling bin full of beer bottles, a picture of House of Spades, a dusty drum set. There was a window too. And through the window weren't any buildings or streets. No, there were only fields. Miles and miles of fields. "Hey, V?" Veronica sniffled, "yeah?" "Where uh, am I?" "Kansas." "Excuse me?" "Kansas. When I left SoHo I took my shit to Kansas." Sara felt something small snap within her. At first she thought it was some sort of loss. A wire breaking that she could never retie. But after a moment she realized that it wasn't a string on her internal guitar. No, it was more like the twine for a puppet. It took her almost thirty years, but she finally made it beyond the Mississippi. "Huh." "I've uh, been out here for a few months. Thought I would be able to just tough it out alone but that... went poorly." "I see..." "So I went uh," Veronica chuckled through the tail end of her tears, "corpse shopping at the local cemetery. I dug up a body that was relatively fresh, and then we gave your soul umm... I guess you programmers would call it a 'pull request'. Heh." "You brought me back because you were lonely?" "It's not that— I mean yes but that's not all of it. Jack mentioned bringing you back sooner but the others weren't sure if you would've wanted that. It's a bit harder to tell when... you know." "Yeah, that makes sense." "We missed you. Fuck, I missed you. I just— it just took me a while to get up the courage to see... if you missed me." This triggered the tears now for Sara. Veronica had picked her up from a hundred shitty dates. Helped her through a thousand hangovers. Veronica told Sara she shined like a star, and was always willing to help feed the combustion. But Sara never thought that anyone would reassemble her embers, and reignite her fire. Veronica wasn't afraid of getting burned. Because, for Sara and the House of Spades, it wasn't about if Sara loved them or how she loved them or why she loved them. It was about loving them so much she was scared they'd grow too close and burn down with her. And then her friends' third degree scars would be all her fault, which left only one course of action. To burn herself to cinders. Except, it wouldn't have been her all fault. It never was. See, there's some truth to calling the best day of Sara Yarkoni's life the day she hung herself. Yeah, it's a bit of a cheat. She hung herself one day and was resurrected about three years later, but time doesn't really work that way when you're dead. To Sara, she died, and then woke up in Veronica's apartment in Kansas. To Sara, the day she died was the day she escaped New York City. The day when she felt she could fall down, and someone would help her up again. The day when she could start over, and make a bunch of new mistakes without the city crumbling around her. The best day of Sara Yarkoni's life was the day when she escaped the weight of the world. And you know what? Sara's mother was right. After all the cloudy winters and starless skies… the rays of sunlight through Veronica's window were the brightest she'd ever seen.