Hard Choices

by Rossi

["Knowing that you are changing, knowing what you are becoming, knowing what you will become if we fail… do you want me to end this for you now? Knowing this will only get worse, do you want to end your life now, while you're still yourself? While you still have the ability to choose?"](1)

The words left her mouth heavy with the weight of ritual. Laurel couldn't remember how many times she'd had to ask this question, over how many journeys. Practice did not make perfect, in this case - if life was perfect she wouldn't have needed to say them at all, wouldn't be sitting here across from the woman she'd been guiding through her quest to regain her soul. In a perfect world, that soul would never have been stolen by the Walkers in the first place.

"I… don't know what to say." Tabitha James - TJ to her Army buddies -had never looked so lost as she did now, not even when Laurel had first come to her when she'd crossed over. Not a big woman, she nonetheless radiated a strength, a solidity, which was reflected in the quiet, no-nonsense way she'd adapted to her new life Between. The road had left its mark on her - in the roughly cropped strawberry blond hair, the shadows beneath her blue-green eyes, the way the skin was stretched across her cheekbones - but she'd retained her quiet discipline, her unflagging determination, her faith in herself. TJ was not a woman to show fear… until tonight.

Laurel's eye throbbed dully, already swelling shut. Pretty soon she'd try to find some ice, see to the cuts and scrapes she'd collected in her struggle to contain her charge. Caught in the grip of the dream -no, not a dream, a promise, a glimpse of what was to come - TJ had gone berserk, lunging at Laurel without warning. It had taken a pretty heavy pounding to bring her back to herself; she'd been so caught up in her other existence, in being one of the Walkers, Laurel had momentarily thought that perhaps she'd made a mistake in estimating the time TJ had, that time had run out for her. TJ had just about throttled the life out of her: the other woman sported a nasty cut above her left ear from the rock Laurel had bashed her with.

"You don't have to decide now. I'll leave you to think about it, come back for your decision in the morning." Laurel stood, hearing the far-off sound of an approaching van. Rules were rules, and the Walkers were coming to allow their Master his turn with TJ. As if this were some kind of game, with TJ's soul as the kewpie doll. "You'll be getting some… visitors soon. They won't hurt you, they just need to show your something."

"It's Them?" TJ's eyes snapped back to alertness, losing some of that lost look. "But, why? What could they possibly want to show me?"

"I can't tell you that. But they have to do this; I don't make the rules, I just follow them."

"A good soldier obeying her orders, eh?" For a moment the dry humour that Laurel had grown to like in TJ resurfaced. "I get it, another one of those damn secrets you're not allowed to tell me. Fine, Chief. I'll sit nice and quiet and not smash their ugly little heads in. See you when I see you." Her tone was jaunty, but the veneer was brittle. The least impact would make it crack. Silently, Laurel nodded, walking away from the small pool of firelight, into the mild midsummer evening. A harvest moon hung low and yellow on the horizon, fields of wheat rustled softly in the slight eddies of wind. All in all, a nice night to be out. Laurel winced briefly, and walked on.

***

Dawn was streaking the east with pale light as Laurel returned, her footsteps ringing out in the hushed main street of a small rural town. Here, Between, in the place where the forgotten and rejected and broken ended up, it was always quiet. Traffic noise meant danger -only the Walkers had vehicles.

TJ was still huddled where Laurel had left her, the fire nothing more than cold black ashes. The soft dust of the roadside bore the tracks of the van, the dragging foot marks of the Walkers, obliterated here and there by the sweep of a cloak. A square imprint where an old-fashioned radio had stood. For a moment Laurel thought the other woman asleep, but then she blinked slowly, fresh tears spilling down her face to join the tracks of many others.

"TJ?" Laurel lay her hand softly on the blond's shoulder, feeling the jut of the shoulder bone beneath the worn flannel shirt. "Did you…?"

"See him? Yeah, I saw him. Heard him too." TJ's voice was harsh in the dawn hush. "Heard him say my life, everything I've ever believed in, is a lie." She looked up at Laurel, her face swollen red and puffy with lack of sleep and weeping. "What do _you_ say? Was he telling the truth?"

"I can't tell you that, TJ. That's for you to decide." TJ's mouth twisted slightly and she looked away, across the wheat fields slowly turning gold under the strengthening light.

"More rules. It figures. There's rules for everything, even Hell." She fell silent, staring out across the fields, seeing nothing. A blackbird twittered, then began singing, joined by another perched on the telephone wires down the road.

"TJ… I need your decision. I'm sorry, but I have to ask you this. Do you want to go on, or do you want to end this now?" Laurel moved to stand in front of the woman she'd started to think of, against her better judgement, as a friend. TJ kept her eyes on the distant horizon, her voice soft:

"When I was a kid, Dad always said one day we'd live on a farm, settle down. But we never did. He loved the Army too much. Mom wasn't happy when I joined up, but Dad said it was the proudest day of his life. He would love somewhere like this. Somewhere quiet." She looked up at Laurel, the fear plain in her face. "It's going to get worse, isn't it? The nightmares? Eventually someone's gonna get hurt, or maybe killed, and I'm gonna be the one responsible."

Laurel couldn't lie. "Yes, it will get worse. And you don't have a lot of time."

"My Dad always told me to fight, but he also told me to know when to retreat. 'Fight again another day,' he'd say, Mom would tease him about that not being strictly US Army policy, and he'd say that a live soldier was better than a dead hero. Only, there isn't 'another day', here. Either I go on, and try and win when the odds are impossible, or I finish it here." TJ's jaw tightened. "My Dad didn't raise me to be a coward, but he didn't raise me to be one of those… _things_, either. And harming innocents…" With a shuddering breath, TJ made her choice. "Finish it, Laurel. Don't let them have me."

Laurel's lips tightened, and she nodded. She wouldn't insult TJ by asking, "Are you sure?" Instead, she bent, taking TJ's wet face in her hands and raising her face. The kiss she laid on TJ's forehead was a blessing, a benediction, and the woman trembled.

"Do me a favour? Tell my parents I love them? And give my Dad my dog tags? If it's not against the rules, that is."

"I will," Laurel promised. "Now, close your eyes. This won't hurt."

TJ obeyed, her own dirty hand moving up to briefly pat Laurel's before falling by her side.

"Do it," she said, her voice steady although the tears still ran down her face. "I'm ready."

"I'm sorry, TJ," Laurel said, and with a quick, sure movement, she snapped TJ's neck.

***

Sergeant Casey James, on compassionate leave after the discovery of his missing daughter's body in a small town in the wheat belt, was sitting in his arm chair, dully watching television. It was some kind of movie, but he couldn't have told anyone what was happening or who the characters were. He stared without seeing the screen, his grief a heavy ball in his chest.

There was a soft rapping at the door.

"Myra? Someone at the door," he called out to his wife when she didn't appear to answer it. There was no reply. "Myra?" Then he remembered something about Myra telling him she was going down to the store -he'd nodded, but like everything else, it hadn't made an impression. He felt like he was living slightly out of sync from the rest of the world.

With a grunt, he pulled himself out of his chair, absently tugging his t-shirt down over his beer belly. Tab always made a joke about 'testing' the size of his gut when she came home on leave, wrapping her arms around him and telling him that if he didn't lose some weight she wouldn't be able to reach all the way around him soon. Tears briefly prickled his eyes at the memory, and he blinked them away before pulling open the door.

The woman standing on the step was young, attractive, a stranger. She didn't have anything with her, no bags or clipboards, so she wasn't selling something. No Bibles or pamphlets either, so she was trying to tell him the Good News of the Lord.

"Yes?" he asked, not bothering with the usual pleasantries. Not today, maybe not ever - he'd just become one of those embittered old men, chasing kids off his lawn and setting the dogs on the census takers. And he certainly wasn't going to pussyfoot around with a woman who wore blue lipstick.

"Mr James? My name's Laurel. I… I knew your daughter."

"She never mentioned knowing a 'Laurel', missy." Casey frowned. One of those damn psychics, the ones that had come out of the woodwork after Tab disappeared, claiming to be able to tell them where she was if they were paid large amounts of money. Myra had in her desperation paid one the $250 she'd been saving for a trip out East to see her sister, and all the shyster had done was mutter and shriek about black ghosts and the Evil One.

"I met her after she… disappeared. I have something for you, something she wanted me to give you."

"I don't think…" But before the protest was fully formed, the woman grabbed his hand, her fingers surprisingly strong and cool to the touch.

"I don't have much time. She told me to tell you she loved you, and to give you this." She laid something in his hand, closed his fingers over it, before releasing him. He looked down, opening his hand to reveal the familiar flat metal, embossed with his daughter's name, rank and serial number, the chain slipping between his fingers.

"Where…?" He looked up to demand answers, to ask this woman what his Tab had said, what had happened to her, but the front step was empty. As was the street to either side.

She had disappeared into thin air.

"Oh, Tabby…" he grated out, his knees giving way and his body slumping down in the doorway. "Oh, my little girl…"

***

The End.

(1) Quoted from Midnight Nation #7.

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