“I… I…” I stammered, totally off guard.
“I said… who the fuck are you? Did I stutter? Are you fucking deaf? Who the fuck do you think you are, barging in to Annie’s room like that, you fucking… fucker! She’s… she’s leaving us, and you come and… and stick your nose in… and… and…”
And then she began to sob; harsh, horrible, end-of-the-World tears of the sort I was only too familiar with.
She released me and buried her face in her hands and made noises that hurt even me.
I watched her for a moment, off guard, confused by the intense conflict I felt within me.
The almost overwhelming need to escape, to run.
And the even stronger compulsion to offer comfort…
We’re not supposed to bother the living more than we absolutely have to. People can’t deal with our true Aspects, it fucks them up to a farcical degree and the end results are, apparently, spectacular.
So of course I did the instinctive thing.
The wrong thing.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her close.
I took a breath to tell her how sorry I was…
And someone screamed in the room behind us – the unforgettable sound only ever made by a mother witnessing her child’s final breath.
I knew that Rhiannon had departed.
I should have been there for her to hold her metaphysical hand and help her take her first step.
But I also knew that it wasn’t necessary; the process would take place were I there or not. I wasn’t required for her to leave Below. I was just a nice little warm-and-fuzzy on the side.
And for the first time in my own afterlife I abandoned my self-appointed duty to the dead and spent my attention wholly on the living.
Because if I’d thought the girl in my arms was broken before…
Well.
I had only been this spectacularly wrong once before.
She folded in on herself as if something had just torn her insides out and thrown them away.
The soft, low sound of desolation she made raised chills on my back and made me – Azrael’s little helper, murder victim, hard as nails, Tough Cookie wotzit – tear up like a broken-hearted five year old who’d just been beaten for the first time.
And I held her and cradled her to me and rocked her gently and stroked her back and felt neither shame nor any desire to let her go.
Nor much of anything else, really – just horrible blankness.
I’m not admitting that I cried.
But I’m not going to try to deny it either.
She took a sobbing breath, and then another.
I watched her carefully from the other side of one of the Hospice cafe’s grey melamine tables.
Barely keeping it together, I thought wretchedly. Barely present in the now, sunk deep in the what was and what might have been.
Thankfully there were no hints of a… visitation… in her near future.
I was eternally grateful for that.
I somehow doubted that I would have been able to accept that, Ineffable plan or no.
I’d bought her tea; it had seemed appropriate. Tea Pigs even – pricey, or would have been had I not had some unfair tricks up my ethereal sleeve.
Money was easy to come by if I needed it for some reason.
So I sipped my own Arabica and guarded her from all creatures great and small.
“Who are you,” she whispered, at last. “And why didn’t you at least… knock…”
“I’m… Jen,” I said, softly. “I… help out. I was given the wrong room number; I should have double checked but I was late.”
“Fucking arseholes,” she gulped. “Can’t anyone in the fucking NHS just get stuff right.”
“What do you mean…”
Her hands tightened spasmodically into small, wretched fists.
“They missed her diagnosis is what I mean! They missed it! It was right fucking there, on the page, here I am, I’m Annie’s fucking cancer you bitches, yoohoo, over here!”
People around us stared at her. One or two of them gave me odd looks before glancing hurriedly away again.
“People make… mistakes. You’re just human, after all,” I said, quietly. I shifted, uncomfortable that I was clearly becoming more apparent here.
“They killed her,” she snarled. Then she made a sound, jammed her fist into her mouth, bit down…
I winced, hesitated, then reached out.
“Stop,” I said, gently. “Don’t. You’re hurting yourself. It doesn’t help.”
“She’s gone. And… and I’m… not.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and began to rock slowly back and forth.
But only one dry, pathetic sob escaped her.
The penny dropped at last.
This was no friend.
No.
This was something far worse.
I’m not always quick on the uptake, I don’t often do nuance well, but the signs were clearer now.
“You loved her,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
She squeezed her eyes tightly closed.
“You loved her more than life, but never told her,” I added.
People were so very good at hurting themselves, I thought sadly.
She scrubbed furiously at her eyes, tried to find words, bit her lip until it probably drew blood.
“Stop,” I gently scolded her. “It really won’t help…”
“You’re so fucking cold,” she hissed. “She’s dead and… and you… you don’t even have any fucking sympathy!”
“Yes. You’re right. She’s dead. That much of what you said is true. And it feels like you’re dying. And you want to lash out. You want to feel pain because you’re scared you’re not feeling enough. Because she’s gone, and you’re not, and how can that be right when she was the centre of your life and you loved her as much as you do?”
She stared at me for a moment, then drew breath to say something she no doubt intended to be cutting.
“What would she do if she saw you hurting yourself like this?” I asked.
That stopped her cold; her face crumpled and she clutched herself again.
I sighed, sipped my Arabica again. Machine coffee – hot plastic and an aftertaste of bleach. Delicious. Lucius’s Kaffa was far better, I thought. I pushed my cup aside; I had no stomach for it any more.
“I do this a lot,” I continued. “I’m there for… for a lot of people at this time. I see a lot of Death. Nearly every day, in fact. Listen to me: I wish you’d got more time with her, I really do. Believe me when I say I know what it feels like. Your world has ended. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to grieve. But don’t cheapen her memory by… by wallowing in unnecessary pain. She’d never have wanted this…”
“She was my light,” she whispered. “She was all that I had that was good… ”
“I think she loved you too, you know,” I said. I didn’t know if it was true or not, of course, Rhiannon wasn’t around to ask. But… sometimes it’s a kindness to tell people what they need to hear. Not quite a lie, not quite the truth either.
“How would you know?” she moaned.
“Sometimes I just do. Maybe not in the sense you wanted, but it was love all the same.”
I watched her for a moment.
Her hair was as dark as the spaces between stars, her eyes…
A pang of conscience as my internal alarm clock nudged me. I had somewhere else I had to be.
I sighed.
“I have to go,” I said, suddenly hating the duty that I’d let be thrust on me. “Will you be okay?”
“Yeah. Sure,” she whispered. She sniffed, wiping her nose on her jacket sleeve, and resolutely avoided my eyes.
I pulled my shawl tighter over my shoulders and slid off the chair.
“See you sometime, maybe, Caitlyn Iona Monroe,” I said, softly and stupidly.
She jumped, spilling her tea.
“How… how do you know my name?” she gasped.
Shit.
I smiled to hide my panic, and turned, and scuttled away.
“Wait!”
I heard her kick the table as she struggled to stand.
Double shit.
This had been a bad idea. Monumentally unwise…
I increased my pace. I couldn’t shift from in here, too many people around who’d freak the actual fuck out…
Triple fucking shit…
She managed to catch me just outside the front door.
“Wait, wait, wait, oh God, please, wait,” she was panting and crying. “How… tell me how…”
“Gotta go, sweetie,” I answered. “Got someone else I’ve got to go see before I’m done.”
“Wait, please,” she cried, “Please, tell me what the fuck is going on…”
“No, honey,” I said, sadly.. “Can’t do that. I’m sorry. Good bye, now.”
She grabbed my arm again, plucked desperately at my tatty linen sleeve with her other hand.
“How will I find you!” she cried. “Please! I need to know…”
I stopped, and turned, and faced her dead on.
I felt my Aspect come upon me.
Grey gull wings, ephemeral and intangible, spread out either side of me, distorting the world around us with the lines of intent that they cut through Reality.
Oh, wasn’t that just perfect timing, came the bitter thought.
Her mouth fell open, then closed again.
“Oh Jesus,” she whispered.
“No,” I said. I leaned forward, kissed her forehead in gentle, benevolent benediction and farewell. “But I see him around from time to time. Caitlyn, it’s time for me to go now. Stop hurting yourself. Please. Rhiannon’s in a better place. Trust me. I know.”
And I concentrated and I shifted away from her plaintive wailing “Wait!”
I put my hand against a grimy brick wall.
And I bit down the sudden self-pitying tears.
A breath or two, and I squared my shoulders again.
I concentrated hard, cursing under my breath, then gave up. Wings it was for this one, then. Fucking stupid traitorous fucking things.
And I took another moment to just breathe some more in my stupid and unnecessary way.
I wiped my eyes viciously, unwilling to break. Not just yet.
Then I looked up at the run down slum ruin in this foetid stretch of the underbelly of Marseilles.
Upstairs, under some cardboard and pigeon shit, Jeanne-Marie Bardet was nearly done dying from the effects of black tar heroin cut with rat poison – an unnecessarily spiteful little coup de grace from some dickhead middleman somewhere along the way.
It had been agonizing for her, and nobody had heard her screams and, later, piteous moans.
Same old story.
But the pain was almost over, now.
She was in the midst of a dying dream of her younger sister, and would have been be smiling through her tears if her mind were still in control of anything.
She would need a kind hand and a shoulder to sob against.
The poor girl had had no chance at this life. Not really.
I would bear the burden of being both for her and see her safely away.
And then I’d go back Above and face the music.
Or, as it turned out, the symphony.