Chapter Twenty-Four: Freefall
3419 Words
It started with a list.
She wrote it on a Tuesday morning — sitting at the kitchen table with coffee she was actually drinking now, which felt like progress, with the stuffed wolf visible through the bedroom door and the ring on her finger and the bond silent and the torn jacket on the chair she kept meaning to throw away and hadn't.
A list.
Not of things she needed to do or things she owed people or things the war required of her. Those lists existed and were being managed. This was a different kind.
Things she had never done.
Things she'd told herself she'd do eventually and then not done because eventually had kept becoming later and later had become a concept she stopped examining too closely.
She wrote it without overthinking.
One word.
Skydiving.
She looked at the word.
Put the pen down.
Picked it up again.
Underlined it.
She told Aaron on Wednesday.
He was at the table — his usual seat, the one he'd claimed so gradually she hadn't noticed it happening until it was simply Aaron's seat the way things became people's seats — and she slid the list across to him.
He read it.
"Skydiving," he said.
"Yes."
"You want to jump out of a plane."
"I want to jump out of a plane," she said.
He looked at the list.
At the single underlined word.
"This is a very short list," he said.
"I'm starting with one," she said.
He looked at her.
At the ring. At her face. At the specific quality she'd been carrying recently — something new in it, something pointed. Oriented.
Forward.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"You're three centuries old and a vampire," he said. "If anyone's going to survive jumping out of a plane it's you."
"Thank you for that," she said.
"I'll drive you," he said.
She looked at him.
"You don't have to—"
"I'll drive you," he said again. Final. The Aaron version of this isn't a discussion.
She picked up her coffee.
"Saturday," she said.
"Saturday," he said.
She told Shawn on Thursday.
He was at the counter — his counter now, the space he'd claimed with the same gradual inevitability as Aaron's chair — and he looked at her with the storm grey eyes doing their reading thing.
"Skydiving," he said.
"Yes."
"Out of a plane."
"That is generally how it works," she said.
"Elara—"
"Don't," she said. "Don't tell me it's dangerous or inadvisable or—"
"I was going to say I want to come," he said.
She looked at him.
"You want to—"
"Someone should make sure you land," he said. With the almost-smile.
She looked at the two of them — Aaron at the table, Shawn at the counter, both of them having independently decided to be present for her jumping out of a plane without her asking either of them.
She turned the ring.
"Saturday," she said.
Saturday arrived the way Saturdays arrived when you'd been waiting for them.
Faster than the days before and immediately present.
She woke up early.
Lay for a moment with her hand on the silence in her chest.
The silence that had been there since April. Since a forest and rain and I'm never coming back and the specific terrible quality of a bond stretched past the point of feeling.
She pressed her hand against it.
Then got up.
Got dressed.
Looked at herself in the mirror — blue-black pixie cut, dark eyes, the ring on her finger and something in her face that was different from the mirror six months ago. Not better or worse.
Different.
The specific difference of someone who has been through something and come out the other side still standing and has started to understand what standing on the other side actually looks like.
She picked up her jacket.
The torn one.
She put it on anyway.
The airfield was an hour outside the city.
Aaron drove.
She sat in the passenger seat with her hand on the console and the window cracked and the countryside moving past in the specific way countryside moved when you weren't really watching it — present and irrelevant simultaneously.
Shawn followed in his own car.
Because that was apparently what Shawn did — maintained his own trajectory while arriving at the same destination.
She watched the road.
Turned the ring.
Thought about moving on.
Not away from him — she had accepted months ago that away from him wasn't something she was capable of and had stopped pretending otherwise. The ring was on her finger and the bond was in her chest and both of those things were permanent facts she carried in every cell.
But forward.
The specific decision to keep moving even when moving felt like the wrong direction.
She pressed her hand to the silence.
I'm still here, she told it.
I'm still here.
The briefing was thorough.
The instructor — human, cheerful, with the specific energy of someone who had explained this process hundreds of times and found it genuinely exciting every single time — went through everything with practiced patience.
She listened.
Signed the forms.
Got into the gear.
Aaron stood at the edge of the airfield with his arms crossed looking at the plane with the expression of someone who had agreed to something and was now in the full process of understanding what he'd agreed to.
Shawn stood beside him.
Not touching.
Not talking.
But beside him.
She noticed.
Filed it.
Walked to the plane.
The plane was small.
Smaller than she'd expected — the kind of small that became very apparent once you were inside it and the door was closed and the airfield was dropping away below and the ground was becoming the specific abstract thing that ground became from altitude.
She sat beside the instructor.
Looked out the window.
At the ground getting further.
At the sky getting closer.
The bond was in her chest — silent, as it had been for months. The silence she pressed her hand against every night and got nothing back from.
She pressed her hand against it now.
I'm going to jump out of a plane, she told the silence.
Just so you know.
The door opened.
The air came in — cold and immediate, the specific quality of air at altitude that had no interest in being gentle about itself. It hit her face and her hands and the torn jacket and made every nerve on her skin completely aware of exactly where it was.
She stood at the edge.
Looked down.
The ground was very far away.
The sky was very close.
She took a breath.
And heard —
Don't.
She went still.
His voice.
Not through the bond — the bond was silent, had been silent for months. This was something else entirely. The specific internal voice of someone you know so completely that your own mind can produce them accurately enough to be indistinguishable from memory.
Jace.
Don't do this.
She looked to her left.
He was there.
Not there — she was three centuries old and she knew the difference between real and the specific hallucination that grief produced when it had been long enough and run deep enough. But the shape of him was there. The shadow of him, in her peripheral vision — tall and certain with silver eyes that were looking at her with that expression.
The one that was only ever for her.
Don't.
She looked at the shadow.
At the silver eyes that weren't there.
"You left," she said quietly. To the shape. To the shadow. To the silver eyes that existed only in the space where grief met the part of her that refused to fully accept his absence. "You left me. You said you weren't coming back."
The shadow said nothing.
"I get to do this," she said. "You left and I get to do this."
"Elara—" His voice. In her head. Certain and low and so completely him that it hurt. "Please—"
"You don't get to please me anymore," she said. Soft. Not angry. Just true. "You gave that up in a forest in April."
The shadow looked at her.
Those silver eyes.
"I love you," the shadow said.
"I know," she said.
"Then don't—"
"I know you love me," she said. "And I love you. And you're not here." She looked at the door. At the drop. At the sky that went on forever. "And I'm going to jump."
She looked at the shadow one more time.
At the shape of him in her peripheral vision.
At the silver eyes her grief had made so real she could almost feel the bond from them.
"Don't go," the shadow said.
She looked at it for a long moment.
"I'll come back," she said quietly. "That's the difference between us."
She looked forward.
And jumped.
The world became sound and wind and velocity.
Not falling — that was the thing nobody told you. It didn't feel like falling. It felt like the opposite of falling. Like the world was rushing up to meet you rather than you dropping toward it. Like the air was a solid thing you were moving through rather than empty space you were dropping through.
She screamed.
Not from fear.
From the specific involuntary response of every nerve in her body receiving more information simultaneously than they had been designed to process and expressing that overload the only way immediately available.
Pure sound.
Pure joy.
It was extraordinary.
The ground far below and the sky everywhere and the wind absolutely everything and her jacket doing its best and her hair doing whatever it wanted and the whole enormous world spread out beneath her like something that had been waiting to be seen from this angle —
She was free.
For the first time since April she was entirely free.
Not from him — she would never be free from him and had stopped wanting to be. Free from the weight of it. From the specific gravity of grief that had been sitting in her chest alongside the silence for months.
The wind took it.
For the length of a freefall she was just —
Her.
Elara Vale.
Three centuries old.
Falling through a Saturday sky with a grin on her face that nobody was watching and she didn't care even slightly.
And then —
The bond.
She almost missed it.
It was so faint. So thin. The most tentative thing she had ever felt through the connection — like a signal from something impossibly far away, reaching through distance and static and months of silence with the specific effort of something that had been trying and had found, in this exact moment at this exact altitude on this exact Saturday morning, a frequency that worked.
Warmth.
Just warmth.
Not his voice. Not words. Not even a clear emotion she could name.
Just —
There.
I'm still here.
She felt it in her chest — faint and far and real. Completely real. Real in the way the silence had never been real. Real in the way the shadow and the voice at the plane door hadn't been real.
There.
She laughed.
The wind took that too.
The ground came up to meet her.
The parachute opened.
And Elara Vale descended from a Saturday sky with tears on her face and a grin so wide it hurt and the faintest thread of warmth in her chest that had not been there yesterday.
He was still there.
Somewhere north-east.
Still there.
She landed badly.
Not dangerously — the instructor was beside her, the landing zone was clear, she was three centuries old and her body knew how to absorb impact — but inelegantly.
Both knees.
One hand.
The torn jacket adding a new tear to its existing collection.
She didn't care.
She sat on the ground of the landing zone and pressed both hands flat against the earth and felt the warmth in her chest — faint, thin, barely there — and held it.
Didn't examine it.
Didn't name it.
Just held it the way you hold something that might disappear if you look at it directly.
There, she thought.
You're there.
She pressed her hand to her sternum.
The warmth pressed back.
She smiled at the ground.
Aaron reached her first.
Fast walk that was actually barely contained running — she'd learned to read the difference in him over months of him pretending not to worry about things and worrying about them anyway.
He stopped in front of her.
Looked at her on the ground.
At the destroyed jacket. The grass on her knees. The hand pressed to her chest.
And then at her face.
He went still.
She was smiling.
Not the small almost-smile she'd been producing since the carnival — the tentative one that arrived surprised and left quickly like it wasn't sure it was allowed to stay. This was different. Wider. More real. Sitting on her face with the specific quality of something that had come from somewhere deep and had no intention of being brief about it.
"You're smiling," he said.
"I jumped out of a plane," she said. "It was extraordinary."
He looked at her for a moment.
"That's it?" he said.
"What else would it be," she said.
He looked at her face.
At the hand still pressed to her chest.
At the ring catching the afternoon light.
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
She looked at him with an expression that was warm and entirely closed and he was perceptive enough to read both things simultaneously.
"Right," he said quietly.
He held out his hand.
She took it.
He pulled her up.
Shawn was at the edge of the landing zone.
Arms crossed. Storm grey eyes moving over her — the knees, the jacket, the hand she'd moved from her chest to her side but that he'd apparently clocked in the seconds before she moved it.
He looked at her face.
At the smile.
Something shifted in his expression.
"You landed badly," he said.
"I know," she said.
"You're happy about it," he said.
"I jumped out of a plane," she said. "Of course I'm happy."
He looked at her.
The storm grey eyes doing their reading thing — slower than usual, more thorough, like the information her face was producing didn't quite fit the template he was running it through and he was taking his time about the recalibration.
"That's not a jumping-out-of-a-plane face," he said quietly.
"What face is it," she said.
He held her gaze.
She held his.
"Never mind," he said finally.
She almost smiled wider.
"Lunch," she said. "I want to eat something. Something good. Actual food."
Aaron and Shawn looked at each other.
"She wants to eat," Aaron said.
"I heard," Shawn said.
"That's—"
"I know," Shawn said.
"She hasn't eaten properly since—"
"Aaron," she said pleasantly. "I'm standing right here."
"You haven't eaten properly since April," Aaron said. To her directly. Unrepentant.
"Then it's time," she said simply.
She walked toward the car.
After a moment they followed.
She pressed her hand to her chest briefly as she walked.
The warmth.
Still there.
Still faint.
Still real.
She kept walking.
They found a place twenty minutes from the airfield.
The kind of restaurant that had been there long enough to have opinions about what it was — warm and full and good, with a menu that had too many options and a specific smell that made you hungry before you sat down.
She sat across from both of them.
Picked up the menu.
Read it properly — actually read it, considered the options, thought about what she wanted rather than treating it as an obligation to be minimally fulfilled.
She ordered more than three bites worth.
Aaron watched her order with the expression of someone witnessing something they'd been quietly waiting for and had started to suspect might not happen.
Shawn watched her with the storm grey eyes doing something quieter.
The food came.
She ate.
It was Aaron who said it first.
Midway through the meal — the conversation had been easy, easier than meals between the three of them usually were, the specific looseness of an afternoon that had gone well settling over the table — he set down his fork and looked at her.
"What happened up there," he said.
"I jumped out of a plane," she said. "We've established this."
"Elara."
She looked at him.
At the dark eyes that were done with the version of this conversation that lived on the surface.
"You came down different," he said quietly. "You went up one way and you came down different. Something happened up there."
She looked at her food.
Picked up her fork.
"I had a change of heart," she said.
"A change of heart," he repeated.
"Yes," she said. "Up there — falling — I just decided." She turned the ring on her finger. "I decided to come back."
"Come back," Shawn said. From across the table. Quiet.
"To myself," she said. "To being — me. The old me. Before all of it got so heavy." She looked between them. "I'm Elara Vale. I'm three centuries old. I have survived everything the world has ever thrown at me and I have been sitting in a house hugging a shirt for months."
"That's—" Aaron started.
"Understandable," she said. "I know it's understandable. I'm not criticising it. It needed to happen." She met his eyes. "And now it's done."
She picked up her glass.
"I'm back," she said simply.
Aaron looked at her.
At the ring.
At her face.
At the specific quality of something that had been absent for months sitting in her expression right now — not performance, not the managed okay of someone trying to convince people they were fine.
Something real.
Present.
Genuinely quietly alive.
"Okay," he said softly.
"Okay," she said.
She looked at Shawn.
He was looking at her with those storm grey eyes and the almost-smile and something behind both of those things that she chose not to examine too closely tonight.
"Welcome back," he said quietly.
She felt the warmth in her chest.
Still there.
Still hers.
Still not something she was going to tell either of them about tonight.
Maybe not for a while.
Some things needed to be held privately before they could be shared — needed to be kept close and quiet and entirely your own until they were strong enough to survive being named out loud.
This was one of those things.
"Thank you," she said.
To both of them.
To the restaurant and the food and the afternoon and the Saturday sky she'd fallen through.
She picked up her fork.
Ate.
Smiled at her plate.
Kept the warmth pressed close to her chest where nobody could see it.
That night she lay in the bed.
No shirt in her hands.
She'd folded it — carefully, deliberately, with the specific intention of someone performing an act that had meaning — and put it in the drawer. Not thrown away. Not gone. Just put away. The way you put things away when you're not done with them but you're done needing them in your hands every night to get through the dark.
The stuffed wolf was still on the nightstand.
The ring was beside it.
She pressed her hand to her chest.
The warmth.
Faint and far and there.
I felt you today, she told the bond. I don't know if you felt me. I don't know if it works both ways from this distance.
She stared at the ceiling.
But I'm going to assume it does, she said. Because that's who I've decided to be again. Someone who assumes. Someone who keeps going. Someone who jumps.
She turned her head.
Looked at the stuffed wolf.
At its wonky eyes.
At the ring beside it.
I'm coming back to myself, she told the bond. I thought you should know.
She closed her eyes.
The warmth stayed.
Faint and far and completely real.
She fell asleep with it still there and for the first time since April she didn't reach for the shirt before she let herself go under.
She didn't need it tonight.
She had something better.
She had there.
She had I'm still here.
She had faint and far and real.
She slept.
- Writer
