I feel like I am watching everything from space
And in a minute I hear my name and I wake
I think the finish line's a good place we could start
Take a deep breath, take in all that you could want

Snow Patrol, “The Finish Line”

After the drowning

The sand was warm under Paris' back as he laid on the beach, staring up at the clear evening sky. Slowly, heartbeat by heartbeat, the sky was losing its warm hues turning into a dark indigo. Stars were strewn over the skies like a twinkling assortment of diamonds, far-off and tiny. He was the only person here. The only sound around him was the gentle breaking of the waves on the beach and the distant cry of a gull.

It was a quiet night, Paris decided. Calm. From the quiet beauty of tonight, you wouldn't say that the world had ended half a year ago.

Had it already been six months? It seemed like yesterday that the seas had been boiling and the clouds had been weeping ashes. It seemed like he was still there, with Vivien on his small boat in the port of Steravia, waiting for a passenger that would never show up. Instead, there had been Sienna who'd told him that Stephanie had died, and that she was going to find her own place to die. She had. Everybody had, the day Steravia had drowned under the waves.

The tidal wave that had claimed the Isles had nearly killed Vivien and himself as well; they had survived on luck only. Their boat had collapsed and Vivien had come within an inch of drowning. Later, she had laughed about it; she had been a Water Bearer, wasn't it only fitting that her punishment for her part in the fall of Steravia would be death by drowning?

Paris had not thought it was funny, at the time. Even so much later his stomach clenched again in memory of the gut-wrenching terror and desperation as he had dived under the crazy currents, hoping he would see something, feel something, grab something – only to come up for air gasping, shouting her name with a broken voice. He had found her. She'd been unconscious from where she'd been hit by the collapsing boat, drifting face down in the water. Somehow, he'd gotten her back in the boat. He could not even remember how he'd gotten his boat upright again. He must have done that too, although in hindsight it seemed an impossible feat. He'd performed CPR on her despite the rain, despite the storm. Despite the mad bucking waves underneath his boat and she'd come to coughing as if her lungs were ripped to pieces. He'd let her rest, wet and shivering under his coat, while he sailed and sailed and hoped he was going in the right direction.

It had been five days until they'd found their way to the shallows before the beach of Stibotan. By that time, Vivien had lost consciousness and was nearly drowning on dry land. Her lungs had been ravaged with pneumonia. He'd stumbled through the surf onto the shore, crying, praying, more than half-mad with desperation and grief. And he'd drawn upon his Element for the last time in his life, he'd sworn. He had used it to Heal her, to give her Life. It had been hard, though. He couldn't give her all that she needed because he had nothing left to give her, and his element itself seemed elusive. It wasn't so strange. As upset as the Balance of the Elements was, it was a miracle he could even access Life without going mad in the process. Life on this world was suffering enough as it was anyway and he did not dare to think about the consequences of his actions. But this had been Vivien, dammit. She should not have died. He couldn't have borne to lose her, not after Stephanie, not after all his friends, not after Steravia.

She had lived. She still was, but she never was the same. While he had recovered physically, she bore both mental and physical scars. The inside of her lungs was one big mess and Paris feared that if they would ever leave the gentle climate of this island, Vivien's lungs would just give out and she would die coughing. So they stayed.

They spent their days lying low, not bothering the locals and mostly fending for themselves. They made a point of bearing bandana's in their hair so nobody would see their ka'tara and coloured hairlocks. If the locals knew, they did not make a point out of who they were. It was a delicate balance that nobody wanted to break. The news must have travelled; some people talked about the Tipping of the Balance when they referred to the drowning of Steravia and the western coast of Cranna. They also spoke of surviving Patternbearers being hunted like animals, blamed for the destruction. Paris and Vivien hid who they are and never accessed their element, and the status quo remained. Nobody had ratted them out so far and both Vivien and Paris were relaxing a little bit.

Only a little bit.

During the days, they went about daily chores in the beach house they had occupied. Fishing, tending to the little crop field that Vivien was tending to, taking life day by day, never looking ahead. It was the nights that were the hardest. Vivien woke crying from many a nightmare, and Paris himself had found himself sobbing in Vivien's arms one night, mumbling that he had to find his own place to die and please, he didn't want to die at sea, the sea was cold and dark.

Vivien's support and friendship were his anchor to sanity. If not for her, he would have never gotten this far. If not for her, he would not have lived. It was for her that he had tried to hold on. First he had to save her life and later he felt he'd have to support her. Funnily enough Viv had confessed one gloomy morning that she felt the same about him. She was there for him, because she felt that he needed her. “I wonder why we just don't end it together,” she had said with that frighteningly empty look in her lightblue eyes that she would get sometimes.

They had shared a long look and never brought up the issue again. For Paris, suicide wasn't an option. He knew that Jaon had taken poison and Sienna had opted to stay on the dying island – but Paris did not feel the need to atone for Steravia's sin by death. He would atone by living. It was all he could do. Living was so much more painful than a despair-ridden last few hours before the destruction of the Isles could ever be, he thought.

And Vivien... he did not know what Vivien thought. He caught her crying sometimes and she spoke of guilt, of cowardice from her part. “Why didn't I do more?” she would cry in his arms in the darkest hour of the night. “Why didn't I take a stand?”

It was an interesting turn of phrase, Paris mused as above him the stars turned hazy. He blinked his tears away and thought of Stephanie. She had wanted so desperately to take a stand. She had given her life, her love and her sanity to make that stand. And Heavens, had the world known her stand. He remembered arguing with her, pleading with her... and in the end he had begged her. “We can still get out, Steph. We can go away, far away to Marisule or any other of the Southern Islands. We could go there and live in relative peace.”

She had refused him and his offer to flee the Island with her tomorrow when all hell would break loose. Her dark eyes had been red-rimmed with unshed tears, but they had been as cold as ice. She had hated him in that moment and given him a choice. “If you would love me, you would stay with me!”

And he had made his choice. He had made his decision; he'd chosen life and Vivien over death with Stephanie. Perhaps she had been right about him. Maybe he had been a coward. Maybe he had not loved her enough to die at her side. He cringed, for that was exactly why it all hurt so much. He had not agreed with the Weapon, he had not agreed with her ideals, he had not thought it would be worth the bloodshed. The Weapon was designed to turn the very earth against the Crannan fleet that was attacking them. It would wipe out an entire army that was coming to attack them. Bloodshed notwithstanding, there was the very large chance that the Weapon would turn against them. Kirsten's diagrams had said it all. Based on Solares' theory, they would blow up half the world if they would use the Weapon. The Balance of Elements would tip over too far, perhaps it would even break. They would severely injure the world they walked upon. It was just a theory that seemed likely, unproven but ringing so true in everybody's heart of hearts. Nobody wanted to believe it, though. Not with the Pattern flecking their brow and their Elements in their blood. Nobody wanted to believe that they were raping the world's elements on such a scale. And who could blame them? Not Paris.

He just wished... he just wished that Stephanie had gone with them.
He just wished she'd blown off the whole deal, that they'd have fled together. To the Western Continent, to Amerel or Lascana, where Patternbearers were not shunned. They would have been safe there.

The problem was, though, that Stephanie had been born on Steravia. All she'd wanted was to defend her homeland. To her it wasn't just the University on a windy, rocky island in the gulf of Cranna that was under attack... it was her home. She and that damnable Sienna had talked about pride, about defense, about retaliation. About how it was the only way. Running had never been an option for either of them. And Stephanie had called him a coward for his need to run. She had screamed “Fuck you for loving me!” and thrown before his feet that he would not stay with her.

And he had left. He and Vivien had left them to their deaths and he was not sure he could ever forgive himself.

“Paris,” a warm, gentle voice said.

He blinked his tears away and looked to his right where Vivien's profile was outlined against the stars. “Are you beating yourself up again?” she asked.

He smiled wryly. “Ah well, you know me.”

She sat down next to him and leaned back in the sand, gazing up to the skies as he had been doing a bit earlier. “Maybe it's time to let go of the guilt, Paris,” she said softly. There was a heavy emotion in her voice and her breathing was laboured as it always was when she was battling her feelings. “I was thinking tonight, too. It's been exactly two seasons tonight, isn't it? Half a year.”

He nodded.

“We chose life when we fled Steravia that day, sweetheart. Perhaps it's time to focus on life now and not cling onto death anymore. We made our choice and as much as it hurts... I can still hear Sienna asking me to live.”

“I hear Stephanie hating me for not dying with her.”

“I know. But you know, if she really loved you, she would have wanted you to live, not die with her.”

Paris regarded her silently, chewing on her words.

“It's what /I/ would want for you,” she added. She looked back at him, lightblue eyes full of starlight.

“It's what I want for you, too.”

A long silence fell between them, heavy with emotions and pain and love and things Paris could not name. He looked at her and she looked at him and they shared a world full of hurt and affection and they were bonded in ways he could not even begin to imagine. They had chosen life together. Life.

“I love you, Vivien,” he heard himself whisper... and the next moment he found himself on his back with her weight upon him and she was kissing him hard and desperately. She kissed him until he was out of breath and she was crying and laughing and for once, not coughing. Not reminding them of the journey through hell that they had survived by the skin of their teeth.

He kissed her back and lost himself within her.

The choice had been made half a year ago, but it was consummated at that moment, on a starlit night on the beach at Stibotan. At last.