Whisper of a Moment

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

epilogue

I said all that so I could say this: I’m not coming back.

Don’t worry, you have your report, it’s in the attached data file: all the information I gathered since I was dropped here, along with my own observations and interpretation. I may have been working for other goals while I was here, but I’ve made sure to deliver on my end of the deal.

On the whole I’m okay with how things came out, but you might want to ask yourselves: did you all get maybe a little too clever? Did you — and I, working as your extension — contrive to create the threat you sent me to study? (It seems pretty likely that Ethan found out about the Skira’ad because I called him to Oxnard, and Wonder Warthog’s improbability mojo wouldn’t have become near so cataclysmic without Ethan’s contributions.) These are supposed to be basic issues, easily addressed with the right protocols … but, hey, we’re not exactly a properly sanctioned organization, are we? I was always on the operations end, so I can’t say just what thoroughness your planning section put into the prep work, but I’ve seen enough corners cut elsewhere to have my suspicions.

Doesn’t matter. I came here, I finished the assignment, I’m posting the results. Oh, and consider this my resignation.

There are different reasons for me deciding to stay. Part of it, let’s be honest, is I’m not sure there’s anything to go back to. I don’t know if you had some unexpressed agenda for this mission or if you just let endemic overcaution make you play it a little too close, but the result was that I was sent in with inadequate briefing and wound up making some scary mistakes. (Plenty of my own, too, I haven’t tried to hide that.) Events went far enough off the line to make the final consequences a little too iffy, and I’m not about to initiate the callback sequence when there’s a real chance — small, but solid — that I could step off into a big, fat Nothing at the other end.

So, sorry. If I ever get back to you it’ll be the regular way, the slow way. But don’t anybody hold their breath.

Then there’s the personal stuff. I can’t explain that very well, most of it is tied up in feelings I haven’t even started to sort through. For instance, why was I in such a screaming hurry to get to that chop shop? There were things I could have done first, wouldn’t have taken that long and might have made a big difference. Was I really operating off that first instinct, the one warning me that Ethan would rush the sacrifices once he knew my investigations were leading me toward his pet project? Or did I just panic at the realization of how bad my blunders had made things? Was I jumping at the chance to impress Harris? Or — this is a really disturbing thought — did some dark corner of me set it up so he’d leave me to die, thinking that would serve him right?

Too many questions, no real answers, and a lot of that is extraneous clatter I’ll have to sift through when I have time. Short form, I’m staying because I haven’t finished my own mission.

No, I won’t tell him. I can’t say why, I just know I never will. And I also know, with no evidence except that deep sense of destiny, that I won’t have to tell him, he’ll come to it on his own. Eventually.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot to do here. This is a crazy place, full of quests and crises and people that need saving, and Harris and his people can’t catch every apocalypse. I spent too long trying to find out who I was; it’s time, I’d say, to start deciding who I’m going to be. If along the way I do a few things that are worth doing, all the better.

We’re not finished, he and I. There are other chapters to be written, and I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Someday we’ll meet again. Someday he’ll know the truth.

Someday, I’ll make him proud.

 
– end –

[ A supplementary drabble for this story can be seen HERE. ]

Questions? Comments? Any feedback is welcome!
 

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