Blackstar

[Wham Yubeesling]

Verity Stewart had never really cared for the ocean.

It always came back to that. No matter where she was, what she’d done, how different she’d become, she could always count on being able to come back to how unpleasant it was to be here. It’d been out of respect, mostly, but right now she was honestly just sick of it. The way the smell flipped from imperceptible to all-encompassing back and forth, back and forth. The way it made the floor below her shake and sway, shake and sway, which was really fantastic when finding balance was hard enough with one eye. The way that it couldn’t be avoided at all — no beach to escape the waves, no sand to get in her fingernails. She knew now that somehow she’d made it to the end, but standing up here, looking out at the ocean… God, Verity could not wait for all this to be over.

The ocean — its overt prominence — wasn’t the only recurring element. There was something about where she was, right now. At the very edge of the deck, leaning over a railing that she knew from experience was more fragile than it looked. She maybe would’ve tried to straighten herself up, but honestly… between her arm, her eye, and all the parts of her that got hit on her way down through the banquet hall floor, just being on her feet was enough of a feat. Was kind of tempting to drop dead right here, but… no. End of this game. Kind of important. Everything that had happened over these past… five? six? days came down to this. Couldn’t stop now. Couldn’t let the others down right at this final step. It was Endgame. Almost curtains. Ritzy had said so herself.

And if the theme for this moment was deja vu, then it was super fitting that Ritzy was still, like, really fucking bad at her job. Like, okay, credit where credit was due, at least she hadn’t forgotten about any of the deaths this time, but when she was looking for, like, maybe a little bit of an objective lens of what she’d done to take away the sting of the confirmation that Fisk was truly, actually gone, and all she’d gotten was shit that didn’t mean anything. Like, yes, she’d been so many different people here, and yes, she wasn’t the same person she was at Mangrove Garden, but, like, anything Verity maybe didn’t know, maybe? Anything more than some sort of inclination that she’d was the reason she was alone now (which, like, ???)

At least she’d learned one new thing. That her count was at six now. Timothy Torales, Keegan Garcia, Alyssa Tibbett, Junji Yamada. Akeno Kudo, and now, apparently, Ashanti Baker.

How many more would it be?

How far would it get her?

…

…

She took a breath. Stopped her head from drooping down towards the ocean, focused on the moonlight. The clouds. The horizon. The world that… maybe still existed. Micro and meso and macro. Whoever was there, watching, eager to see just how exactly her story ended.

…Maybe, compared to everything, she wasn’t so small, in the end.

So it was fine. All she had to do was breathe. No need to know if the voices were still in her head. No need to be scared about whether she would live or die. The show hadn’t begun yet. She could just stand here.

Exist with the sea.

Let reminiscence smother her like it’d been doing these past five days, and take in what very well could be her last moments alive.

((To be continued…))