It's Something Unpredictable, But In The End It's Right | Tanya and Friends
Date: Late April 2024
Featuring: @lady-snow-flower, @madmagicmim, @zerohallows, @kingofdemxns, Sonam
Warnings: Death, grief
Tanya returns to Leeds to finish her last bit of business before it is time to go.
TANYA
It didn’t really hit Tanya until the sun started to set over the city as they approached Leeds.
Of course, the mood had been solemn this afternoon when everyone had met up to pile into the car. But you couldn’t stay solemn for four hours. The ride had turned into an oddly normal hangout, blasting music and making jokes and talking over one another. It was everything Tanya wanted out of the day. But only now, as night began to fall, did Tanya remember why she was really here.
She was nervous, of course. But she was also very, very sure about this. More sure than she’d ever really felt about anything. And, in a way, Tanya knew that the part of her that was nervous was the most important part of her. Because this meant she didn’t have to hide from the things that scared her anymore.
“You’re going to take this next left,” Tanya instructed. She’d forgotten a lot of her afterlife, but not her life. And she knew the way to the cemetery well. “And there should be plenty of parking. Sonam’s going to meet us in the lot.”
KING
King did not want this. He probably should, to let Tanya move on and move forward. To be at peace.
But this was his friend and the ache was not soon forgotten. Even as they enjoyed their time together in the car and King was squished in the back he hadn't minded at all.
But suddenly the car felt all too small, all too final and he couldn't help but wish he had more time.
There was also part of him that felt too small. Too unprepared for this. Even though he tried to make out words all he could do was look at others for their lead.
MIM
Mim had been determined to make this a good day. She knew that next week would be horrible and lonely. There would be a dozen texts she would start typing to Tanya before remembering and deleting them. Words she would save up with nowhere to go. Events where she would turn to her side to say something to a person that wouldn’t be there to hear them.
But that was the price of loving someone. She’d deal with that on her own the only way she could. To balance against that, she wanted one last good day to hold in her memory.
She spent the car ride telling dumb jokes to try and make people laugh. Starting silly car games and seeing how long they could keep that up. Pulling up a playlist of Tanya’s favorite music so they could sing along, and tell stories that different songs reminded them of.
The longer they drove, the harder she gripped the steering wheel until she could feel her hands begin to ache. Then she would start another story.
Tanya’s words brought an end to that golden drive and she nodded, making the turns smoothly until they were able to pull to a stop in a nearly empty car park. It was late enough that most people had already gone home. The car turning off brought the silence rushing in.
ZERO
Silence was hardly unfamiliar to him, if it weren't for the people he held close he likely would have existed in that nearly soundless state; little use in speaking just to hear your own voice. But he had been speaking during that trip, among a few people he didn't know and a few who were more important to him than most; because silence wasn't comfortable for everyone the way it was for him, and goodbyes weren't meant to be heavy things.
The heavy parts should come after, Zero reasoned, when memories remained instead; silence was no way to spend those hours.
He knew that, unfortunately, from experience.
So he'd smiled, talked, rolled his eyes at Mim's jokes and made comments on the little conversations, trying to be a counterpart to her efforts as he set aside the silence for Tanya, for a few more memories.
Matching stories with his own, set to making Tanya laugh over things she hadn't known, adventures in clubs and ridiculous things he'd done; it kept the dull ache under his skin at bay and buried in his voice too deep to betray him; everything was finite.
Sometimes it wasn't a comfort, even to him.
His gaze flickered towards the window as the car stopped, some part of him felt the tug of quiet spots and time dissolving all things away, the soft touch of it, as he always did in resting place, final places. Peaceful places.
He offered Tanya an encouraging smile, setting aside the heaviness for later; time was moving terribly fast that day.
SNOW
This was always going to be the end of this story, and the beginning of another. That was the shape of life– a river that flowed forward into a vast and indescribable ocean where things could settle, before the tide brought it back to a new shore, to start again.
Snow knew this. She knew it from the learnings as a wood witch and she knew it from her learnings as a necromancer. She had assisted many ghosts into the next world.
But none of those conversations, those fleeting, fading friendships, had struck her as much as her friendship with Tanya. Tanya was not another ghost; she was a sister to her. Dear in all the ways that family was dear. And the closer to the end they approached, the more raw the pain throbbed inside of Snow. The more frightening it felt. She wanted to turn and run away, as though she were the little sister who could not face life’s realities.
Snow fought against that fear, that panic, that premature grief. She smiled pleasantly and listened to the younger adults as they played around, made jokes, sang along to songs on the radio. She felt like a chaperone more than like she was part of it. But to chaperone was still an essential role– especially for a necromancer and her ghost. Snow reminded herself of that over and over.
She was doing this for Tanya. Tanya deserved a happy ending.
She climbed out of the car and she greeted Sonam who was waiting for them already. She shook the woman’s hand, recognizing a flash of her own fear in the woman. But Sonam was not crying (yet, at least). And she had already turned to her little sister to smile along with everyone else.
“Well, it certainly is a lovely day,” commented Snow, to help soothe any awkwardness. “Leeds was so overcast when we came last time, wasn’t it, Tanya? But that sunset is beautiful.”
SONAM
Sonam’s heart thudded as she saw the car pull into the lot, recognizing it from the description her sister had sent her. This was it. The goodbye that she hadn’t gotten when she’d lost Tanya the first time, all those years ago.
Part of her felt selfish for keeping this from everyone else. Her parents, Tanya’s friends, extended family. But Tanya had been adamant. She didn’t want anyone else to know, because she was afraid they wouldn’t understand. After she had moved on, Tanya told her, Sonam could tell them the truth if she wanted to. She had always been a lot better at explaining things. But for now, as so often was the case for her as the eldest of the family, Sonam was the keeper of this secret.
She shook Snow’s hand, relieved that someone else she had met before was here. “It’s nice to see you again, Snow,” she replied, then turned her gaze toward the others spilling out of the car.
Tanya’s friends in Swynlake— she’d mentioned that they would be here, too. Mim, King, and Zero. Unusual names, yes, but that checked out for Tanya.
And then there she was. Her sister.
TANYA
“Hey,” Tanya said, stepping forward to hug her. This wasn’t the desperate, dramatic hug of their last meeting, but something gentler. Still, she held on just a little longer than she needed to.
She took a step back. “So, you know Snow, and this is Mim, King, and Zero,” Tanya said, gesturing to her friends. “They’re gonna come with us.” Sonam gave a little wave. Something in Tanya’s heart squeezed at the sight of all of them together, these people who had meant so much to her at different points of her afterlife. She hoped it wouldn’t be the last time they gathered, even without her.
“So… follow me, I remember the way. Sonam, we’re good on security, right?”
“Yeah, they won’t bother us,” Sonam assured her. She didn’t use her magic often these days, but a distraction spell did come in handy now and then when you needed a little privacy.
MIM
Tanya had mentioned that her older sister would be there, but seeing her was still a jolt. Because she was old.
Okay, not old old. But it was clear she was much older than Martin, and there were already people who questioned the ten year gap the Ambrosius siblings had. Seeing her and Tanya together, Sonam looked more like she could be Tanya’s mother than her sister. Or maybe it was a glimpse of who Tanya might have been if she’d gotten to grow up like that.
It was one of those little moments that brought home what had happened. What it had been like. The way time had moved on, but Tanya hadn’t. Until now.
Waving when she was introduced, Mim fell into step close to Tanya as they began to walk.
ZERO
Zero had always thought that Tanya's mentioning life had seemed like in the distance sense, and seeing Sonam was another itch; he was uncomfortably aware of the presence of time passing in all things but with people it was almost like counting the days in terms of events rather than hands on the clock or grains tumbling through an hourglass.
Sonam was older, Sonam had lived and lived, and Tanya had lived without her. Something struck him as heavy in that, but sometimes life was heavy. He offered a smile in return for the introduction (seemed like he was pulling up a lot of smiles that day but for Tanya, of course, yes) and stepped away from the car.
Stepped into that goodbye, he supposed, with his tired bones knitted together with resolve over a promise he felt grateful to be able to keep.
That hourglass tipped again and they were walking, together, the most ordinary thing in the world to do; as if there was anything ordinary at all that day.
SNOW
They walked quietly, this party stitched together from different periods of life. Tanya’s past and her present. As they walked, all time merely blended together, as if it didn’t exist at all. Like this walk could go on forever, just as the drive could go on forever, just as one last conversation with Tanya could go on forever.
Yet time made itself known when they reached the grave. They all came to a stop, and it was a jarring reminder of the tick-tick-tick of the clock.
Here was where Tanya’s story had stopped once before.
Here it might stop again.
No, thought Snow to herself– reminding herself again. It is not a stop. It is the start of something else. For too long had Tanya been stuck. This was her chance to be free.
And since Snow was the necromancer, she took it upon herself to smile at Tanya. “Would you like to dig or shall I?” she asked. “I suppose we could all pitch in a little. That might be nice.”
TANYA
The last time Tanya came here, her energy had lurched violently, confronted with the very real fact of her death that she had been avoiding for so long. But it was different, now, approaching her grave. Maybe it was that she felt much more at peace about the whole thing, that she’d accepted that she was dead and that she was going to move on.
Or maybe it had to do with all the people surrounding her, people who meant so much to her, from all these different points of her afterlife. At the center of it was Snow, who had come with her last time, who had guided her here from the beginning.
“Yeah, I think that would be nice too,” Tanya said, snapping out of her wandering thoughts. She set her backpack down and took out the urn, hugging it close to her chest before setting it down on the ground and picking up the shovel. She tossed some dirt aside and then offered it to King, who was standing next to her. “You want to do some?”
KING
King had hung back as everyone walked, his hands itching out to hold onto someone, anyone. He glanced at everyone in their little ragtag group before taking a few quick steps forward so he could take Snow’s hand. A shrug of a smile as if that was the only thing he could do to explain why he had taken her hand.
Until she offered to dig and he took a step back as some got to work. The dirt piled up and the grief built with it, creeping on slowly, unavoidable. Counting down the moments until the end.
Unlacing his fingers King accepted the shovel from Tanya with a nod, he would have done this with his bare hands just to help if it was needed. Digging a bit he offered it to the next person, his hands still itching, opening and closing again and again.
MIM
Mim took the shovel when it was her turn. She was trying not to think about the urn currently in Tanya’s arms. What it meant. The weirdness that came with what she knew had to rest inside. If she thought too much about it, she had a feeling she would start crying and she refused to fall apart. She had her pride.
The handle of the shovel bit into her hands as it dug into the dirt. For a moment, she considered using a flash of magic to toughen up her hands, strengthen her muscles, something like that. But she didn’t. This wasn’t something she wanted made easier through magic.
Once she’d dug her part, she looked over at Zero and handed the shovel off to him.
It was only then she stepped over towards Tanya to pull her into a short hard hug. Despite her best intentions, she could feel tears pricking at her eyes anyway. “Te deseo lo mejor de lo mejor, mi mejor amiga,” she said softly enough that only Tanya could hear.
Letting go, she went back to stand by Zero, taking in a deep breath and slowly releasing it.
Zero
It felt strange to admit, even if it was only to himself, that graves felt like an odd sort of thing. He'd never fully wrapped his head around boxes in the ground rather than returning fully to the earth, but he respected it for what it was as a different custom.
He'd never had any hand in digging one though, that thought lingered as he was handed the shovel.
When he took it his eyes caught, only very briefly, at the new splash of color along his forearm, still healing, still fresh; but once it had it would remain inked into his skin as a reminder for days and years ahead. Days he would feel the absence, not as much with the ache of that day but the gratitude of the ones before it.
He felt the age in the handle, in the soil as it turned over like a blanket. He liked to think that was what a grave was, ultimately; a blanket of earth secure, sheltering. It was too hard to think of it as anything else as he worked at that spot. The soil was old, anchoring, sheltering; although Tanya would hardly remain there, he thought.
She had already remained; it was moving to whatever came next.
As he handed off the shovel to the next person he saw the hints of the weight of the day in Mim, in King, Snow, knew it was there in himself, in everyone. But Tanya herself seemed lighter somehow, certain, and that was all Zero really needed to know.
He moved to catch hold of her hands, to speak to her quietly, to smile. "Wherever it is you're going next, I know you'll burn just as bright there; I'll never forget how you did here." His voice held steady, he gave her hands a squeeze, then he stepped back.
SNOW
Snow was the last to dig.
How many graves had she dug before at this point? No one besides Tanya knew this about her. They probably looked at Snow, in her long skirts and dresses and perfectly pinned hair and thought she’d never held a shovel before. But she had– a hundred times by now.
Yet this grave was not any grave. She gripped the shovel too tightly for a moment, as her tears rose to the surface.
With one breath, she eased her own heartbreak and the tears receded. Then she put the shovel to the earth and she dug. Just a few more shovels were needed, and then they hit the box which had once contained Tanya’s urn.
“Here we are,” said Snow. She knelt down and cleaned away more of the dirt, this time with her hand. It felt too coarse to do so with the shovel. Her eyes once again filled with tears. Here they were, at the beginning of everything. She thought of planting flowers with her mother in the garden.
They’d plant Tanya’s soul here too. And let it grow. Let it go.
Snow straightened again and she turned to Tanya. The tears shined in her eyes, but she smiled through them as she stepped forward and gave Tanya a gentle hug. When she pulled away, her hands lingered on Tanya’s shoulders. “I’m so happy I got to be your sister, Tanya. Even if just for a little while,” she murmured to her. “I’m so proud of you.”
And then with one last squeeze of Tanya’s shoulders, Snow stepped back. The next part Tanya had to do on her own.
TANYA
Sonam took the shovel back while Tanya stepped forward, holding onto the urn tightly. Everything made sense now. It was always supposed to happen this way. Unearthing the urn with Snow had been the first moment in a chain reaction that led her exactly to this point.
Which wasn’t to say the path here was predictable. The evidence that it wasn’t stood all around her, the friends who had joined her along the way, who had taught her lessons she hadn’t even known she needed to learn and showed her love, so much love, so much love and grace and kindness that Tanya just couldn’t believe that it would all end here, cold dirt in the ground and cold ash in an urn. All of that love had to go somewhere.
And maybe that was what Tanya had been afraid of from the beginning. That her life, cut so short, hadn’t meant anything. That because she’d never accomplished all of the things she planned on, it was a waste. So she clung to a half-life, slowly losing hope and hiding behind the monster she thought she had to be.
But now she could see that it had meant something. Her first life and her afterlife. It just looked a little different from what she had expected.
Tanya crouched down and set the urn down in the ground, and then she stood up and turned around again. Her eyes blurred with tears, but she was smiling as they scanned across the small group gathered around her. None of them were perfect people, but they were exactly who she’d needed. Sonam, who never gave up on her. King, who forgave her. Zero, who understood her. Mim, who saw her at her worst and loved her anyway. Snow, who became her family. It was all about this, at the end of it, wasn’t it? It was about these people, and if she meant half as much to them as they’d meant to her, well, in a way, she’d live forever.
One by one, they said their goodbyes. And Tanya didn’t necessarily need the words; she felt all of it deep in her heart. But sometimes it was important to say things, she knew. For your own sake, and for the sake of others. Warmth glowed inside her, and seeing the way her friends looked back at her, Tanya knew she was ready.
“Thank you. All of you,” Tanya said. A breeze blew in and her hair whipped across her face. For a moment, like wind feeding a flame, she seemed to burn brighter. And then, in an instant that you would miss if you blinked, there was only a faint wisp of smoke.
2 notes
·
View notes