{Endgame} "All Your Diamond Tears Will Rise Up, And Adorn The Sky Beside Me When I Go."
Click to view(For the curious, the words from this title, and the words that were in Morgan's signature on the forum is from this song. It's one of my favorites.)
As anticipated, the end of Endgame makes me very sad. Somehow, by some alchemical combination of writing, words, and action, we managed to tap that primordial part of the human psyche that is forever huddling shoulder to shoulder by the fire against the unknown terrors lurking in the dark. This is hard to leave. The Fields We Know are somehow....less...for having seen the chimeric world that is Temple.
In many ways, Endgame for me was not the big fights and mods and *insert game terminology here*, it was small exchanges and vignettes.
It was getting up early in the morning and being among the first handful of people in the tavern, before she learned to walk with the dead and began staying up Very Late. Catching up on the previous night's events, and silliness with TJ (one of which earned Morgan the nickname "Strawberry" because of a well-timed radio story and the ogham tattoo on my arm, by which he almost always called her after that).
It was standing on the porch with Beignin watching the sun set over the distant mountains every evening before dinner; a ritual that came to be a touchstone in Morgan's world that enabled her to begin to heal from the trauma of losing her entire family and her sanity in one, terrible afternoon, that eventually allowed her to become who she would become.
It was lying in the field on a sunny Saturday afternoon in a pile of friends.
It was the heartbreaking sound of Peregrine's voice breaking as he whispered an apology in the darkness for bringing Morgan into mortal danger and getting her involved in things that she was so very unsuited for.
It was a blanket fort with Melody and the Lady of Haven.
It was Chalice asking Morgan to watch over Will for her, and a promise to do so as long as there was breathe in her body.
It was kneeling on the grass, screaming for help and defense, while holding the spirits of the one she had sworn to protect and the young friend who was his sanity and knowing that if the let go for an instant one or both of them would be lost, knowing she could do nothing to protect any of them, and someone coming to stand guard over them.
It was standing, muzzle to beak, in the middle of a basketball court yelling at Helen before storming off, swearing and muttering, and then sharing hair brushes in the bathroom the next morning, with a stronger bond and better understanding of one another than either had of the other before.
It was standing before the Grand Canyon Seal and being chosen, with no warning or preparation beforehand, to be one of it's Guardians.
It was 2 years of research, fear, and insomnia and finally a complete change of life's course based on that research.
It was Ian's bad puns, Ingve's fresh bread, Cat-herder's buttered steak fondue, prayers with Winterborne, "inappropriate" discussions with Karen and Rose, and explaining innuendo to Aeron...
It was seeing Will's past in memory and being helpless to stop it, no matter how hot the rage burned and ached to turn to biting ice and pain.
It was screaming wordlessly into Robbie's chest; the echo of not-Chalice's dying whimper endlessly circling in her mind, driving her so very close to the edge of sanity again.
It was Chalice's hand reaching back through the Door Beyond to take the hand of one who feared to cross over into the Final Unknown.
It was a flag torn in two, surrounded by candles and another flag at half-mast.
It was football with the blind professor.
It was making the rounds of aching muscles and stiff joints before fights, so her family could fight freely.
It was being told the story of the Lady of Haven and realizing that, despite a deep conviction that dealings with Wonder beings should be avoided at all cost, she could no more turn down her offer than she could walk away from her family, old or new.
It was being warned of the awesome and terrible responsibility that came with being a Crucible Operator, squaring her shoulders, and accepting it and everything that it meant.
It was huddling around the radio, shoulder-to-shoulder, hanging on every disembodied word that came over...the voice that we only met once, but loved so fiercely that when it looked as if we were listening to it's loss it showed that that was the loss we could not survive. That voice was our fire and our hearth and it symbolized all that we fought and bled and died to protect and defend, and it was the thing that kept our darkness at bay. That little radio sitting on the counter of a restaurant in a little town left of nowhere NH...
Temple; the story of what it means to be truly human.
I miss you all so very much, already.