Hello! This thing really is drawing to a close. Only two main chapters left. And then a whole lot of editing! Yay!

This chapter is dedicated to @writing_worlds whose Court of Alchemy is an excellent faerie epic fantasy with some excellent character development and pirates! Yep. Pirates! Give it a look!

"I have for the first time found what I can truly love-I have found you. You are my sympathy-my better self-my good angel-I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you-and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one."

― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

I crawled on to the shore. It was night now, and cool and the snow kept falling.

I was dripping wet, next to nude and freezing and I managed somehow to edge on all fours up the beach. I collapsed, the back of my head hitting the sand hard and fast.

I breathed deep gusts of cold air in and out. In and out of my system.

I had a lot of work to do now.

I wondered then what the real reason was that I decided to kill myself. I wondered when it began. Perhaps when I tried to fill in the vacuum that the monster made when she left (here she looms above eye). I looked up at the two of them fighting, my elbows behind me, supporting my spine.

They were locked in combat now, my mother's form with all her arms holding tight to the mechanical beast in front of her, trying to hit him with her probe. The machine was firing bursts at her and viscera and blasted metal splashed like hail on the surface of the water. Little miniature explosions. Blood.

I could hear the crunch of soft sand under soft feet behind me. I kept looking ahead.

Death crouched next to me.

"What were you like, when you were growing up?" she asked.

"I don't know." I told her. "I liked books and music."

"Were you on the swimming team?"

I nodded.

"Just like your mother." she replied. "That girl loved water more than anything else. Ever since I could remember. God, maybe even when she was two. She'd just swim and float and sail and do everything she could. It didn't matter where. Swimming pools, ponds, rivers. Even the ocean."

"You're not-

"I remember the first time she swam. It was in this little pond somewhere in Manchester. We went there for a holiday. She almost drowned, but she told me not to help her. She learned in a day or two, maybe."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I wanted to get to know you. It would've been better for all of us, maybe, if that thing didn't happen. In the past. I don't remember. But we've all had to pay our bloody debts for it. And it looks like you'll suffer the most of all."

"Why would I?"

"Because the rest of us really never had the chance to fall in love. You were maybe far too removed from the rest of us to be affected by the legacy. You were sane. Almost normal. And for you, love wasn't just a contrivance. It wasn't something you did for convenience's sake."

"I was fourteen."

"Why would that matter? Love isn't what you think. It isn't about sex or submission or giving your life away. It's about having a friend when you're lonely."

"And he's my friend?"

"He was your friend."

I looked up at the little screen behind the head of the mech. He sat there. Old but not lecherous. Because he loved me. And he spent an aeon in here waiting for me to kill him.

"Why was?"

"Just think he's already dead. That might make it easier."

My mother (monster) held him in a death grip.

"So what about her?"

"That's your call as well. This whole thing, the Yakuza and everything. It was just to buy you some time to figure it out on your own."

"You knew?"

"Only I knew."

"So, I forgive her?" I asked.

(she is prone on the ground her face between her elbows her eyes eye can't see she is like a slender beautiful demon and she is livid and she screams at eye and eye am covered in welts and bruises and eye don't know where to escape to and eye am sorry eye am so sorry for doing what eye did to her eye made her this way eye shouldn't have asked about it she says she wants to kill eye she wants to kill eye to save eye and she is prone on the ground trying not to lash out and there is blood eye bleed in the kitchen)

"No. You come to terms with what she's done. You take her to task."

(she takes eye to the hospital to the emergency room and there she is telling them that eye was playing with the knives in the kitchen and that's why eye keep screaming)

"What has she done?"

She hurt me. When I didn't even do anything. She just hurt me.

But she swam like me. And she swam with me and she was so pretty I just had to be like her, in the water, swimming up and down as fast and graceful as her.

I had to be just like her.

Bitch.

Just like that, she fell. But before that, her probe struck the glass screen of the mech and pulled him out. He flew (he wanted to be a bird) before landing on the beach.

I walked.

Death (ammachi) was gone again.

I knelt next to him and pulled his hair back.

He was back where I left him.

I didn't even know how old he was.

He kissed my hand.

He closed his eyes.

I took the rotting thing and brought it close to his mouth.

"Not there." he coughed.

He pointed to the wound near his midriff. "In there."

I put it in there.

I fell.

I'm so excited to show you the conclusion to this story! It's been floating around in my head for the past few months and I'm very excited to get it written down. I really hope you'll enjoy it.

Do leave me some feedback to let me know if you liked this chapter.

Cheers!