Welcome to the very last chapter of Crush.

The one thing that bothered him the most was the pathetic use of his legs. They were aged and slow, a shuffle more than a walk and his back had hurt constantly for at least the last ten years. His body was still broad for a man of his age and that seemed to be his downfall, his legs being unable to keep up with the demand.

As he shuffles through the house, from the kitchen into the long hall that lead to the front door and outside, pictures ran across the surface of the cabinets. For some reason, today, of all days, he stops to admire them. They ranged from young to the old bats they were now.

Eric takes a minute to appreciate how truly beautiful Abbey was – still is – but on a different level than before. The first starts as a small one in a frame, the same one Abbey had in her bedroom of them as kids during a competition they came second in. The next, him and Abbey on their wedding day, smiling towards the camera with bright eyes. Between them was the plaque Eric had made, back against the wall and propped up on display, looking as if Abbey had recently dusted it on one of her good days.

The pictures were uncontrollable after and he only had Abbey to blame, but she loved them, the memories she grasped so tightly to.

There is one with Summer as a child, along with a bunch of children smiling with Abbey in the middle with their hands up in their air, shouting God knows what to the camera. The next picture across from it, Summer suddenly forms into a teenager holding the reigns of a horse with Abbey by her side in riding gear.

The one Eric liked the most, and he couldn't particularly remember who had taken it, was Abbey on his back as they laughed, the whole positioning and the brightness of it, a point they had peaked to in their thirties.

But there were also painful photos to look at; one's of Abbey's parents, one's of their friends. Not all of them had passed on, but most. And this is what scared Eric the most. Time was not on their side anymore.

Finally, Eric makes it to the decking outside their house, the sun still warm on his face as he tilts his head into the rays. Abbey sits out here on a bench, the same one they perched in most days when the weather was good enough, and she turns her head slowly, her grayed hair straight and still relatively long. Even through the fine lines on her face, he could still see her.

Eric had lost most of his hair years ago and that was a painfully hard thing to accept. The teasing was almost unbearable until he told her she had a saggy ass and that shut her up.

The corner of his mouth lifts on the thought.

"What were you doing in there?" she breathes tiredly. That's how she was these days, always tired. He still had the up and go, albeit a few aches and pains, but Abbey was plagued by exhaustion lately, having to be helped from bed to chair, wherever she was. There was no specific illness she had, the doctor gave her the all clear that she was healthy enough. It was just age.

"Taking a shit," he breathes in the evening air, turning to give her a crooked smirk. "You need anything, Ab's?"

"No, no. I'm good here." She always sounded distant too, much slower to respond than the quick mind he remembers.

"That's what you always say, woman." He groans as he makes his way towards the bench and she lifts the blanket covering her legs, jolting his mind again.

Cold. She was always cold. And today was stifling and she still sat wrapped in blankets.

Eric's almost made it down into the seat when he sees weeds growing up against the steps - again. "God damn it." He inches slowly to stand, getting to the steps without any particular grace and helps himself down the wooden set of three.

"Told you you'd like Amity," she softly chuckles to herself, sounding like a small child, pronouncing the 'H' more specifically in her giggle.

"Yeah, just perfect. Bugs, flies and weird shit ruining…" Eric grumbles on. He had been keeping on top of the garden, not allowing the little twerps from Amity who'd stop by and offer to help. But Abbey was right. He did like his retirement in Amity. For the most part, they got left alone. He would be lying however, to say that it didn't take him a while to adjust. "It took me four hours to do the entire patch of the front yesterday."

"I know. I watched you."

"Ugly looking things," he mumbles to himself, ripping the weeds out with wrinkled hands covered in sun marks and thick veins.

"She's not coming, Eric."

Eric hesitates only for a second and then continues plucking pieces of weed away from the decking.

"She hasn't been in weeks." He looks up after she spoke, her eyes squinted into the sun. She was referring to Summer, who had had her own children and they were also grown now. She lived the other side of Amity, busy with her life and running things in the stables along with part-time work on the Ainsworth project. When Eric would catch her out and about after one of his many strolls, she promised constantly to stop by in the evenings, which she did do for years. He couldn't be angry with her living her life, the visits becoming irregular and much further between. It's what he and Abbey always wanted – for her to live. But it made Abbey sad and… okay, he, kind of missed her, too.

But she still hadn't been in a while, not even her kids who were adults themselves.

"That's life," Eric mainly says to himself about his thoughts and as a reply to Abbey. She hated it when he didn't reply.

"Forget the weeds and come sit with me. The sun is going down, you're going to miss it." To Eric, it didn't appear any darker than it was five minutes ago. He grumbles getting his back straight, clomping back up the steps to be with her.

He sits down on the bench next to her, the blanket covering both their legs and she puts her hand in his. "That's better," she whispers.

For a while, they sit in silence until Abbey draws a long content breath into her lungs. "What a beautiful life we've had, Eric." She reminds him for the hundredth time. "Let's just live in this moment. And we have to admit to ourselves, that people just don't need us anymore."

Eric keeps his eyes locked on the sun setting in front of them, over the rolling field he requested their retirement home to be overlooking, along with a sapling of an oak tree planted by Abbey herself; still in the early stages of growth.

"I love you, you know that?" she murmurs.

"You better."

When she doesn't say anything for a while he looks over to see her eyes closed, a smile gracing her face as the sun slowly disappears and washing her in an orange glow. He gives her another five minutes then shakes her hand. "Ab's, you're going to miss the sunset." She annoys him, probably dozing again like she always did. And she had the liberty of telling him he was going to miss it.

"Ab's?" He shakes her again, this time her hand becoming relaxed in his. He sits up as straight as he can, turning completely towards her and grips her shoulders. "Ab's?" He touches her face, then hovers a hand in front of her mouth, not feeling any breath. He checks her pulse quickly.

It's like a stab in the chest, a flush of cold white despair gripping his whole body, so much so that it's crippling and makes him loll back against the bench, his head floppy, his own breathing becoming rapid and painful – perhaps he fainted, or is fainting, he doesn't know. "Ab's?" His voice breaks, tears that hadn't fallen for years threatening the corners of his eyes while regripping her hand but tighter this time.

Eric is an old man, his own limited time dangling in front of his eyes, and now is the time she decides to leave him.

He peers up at the sky, his chest racking but not a sound left him. He drifts between the ache in his chest and the pain in his head, a serenity, a surreal cottoned mind. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't go and get help, he didn't think he'd make it ten feet off from the porch in his current blurring state.

But at least now she could dance again. She could run across the fields of Amity, not trapped in an incapable body. He could almost remember the sweet smell of her hair, flashes of her smile, her hands…

"Eric, you're not daydreaming again, are you?"

Through the haze, a voice echoes to him. Slowly lifting his dizzy head, out in the field he could see Abbey. He rubs his eyes, peering to his left to the old shell of his wife, but further into the field still stood the twenty-one-year-old Abbey he tracked down and married over fifty years ago. "Eric, c'mon!" Her laugh is breezy, light, and sounds like pure heaven. She moves almost in slow motion, twirls in a circle in a strappy dress he hasn't seen her wear in years.

Eric stands on frail legs, gripping the twisting pain in his heart as he stumbled to the steps and down, almost collapsing at the bottom of them. "Abbey, wait!" She leads him out into the field, close enough he still had hope to catch her, far enough that she had now reached the small oak tree. "Abbey!" he calls breathlessly.

Summer smells the flowers in her hand knowing Abbey would love them. She takes the old familiar dirt track, retracing the walk she has done plenty of times in her life. She smiles to herself as the buildings around her begin to disperse, showing the small house in the distance glowing in an orange fading light.

A frown begins forming on her face, her smile disappearing when she sees Eric out in the field, a hand gripping the front of his shirt, the other reaching out in front of him as he takes a few steps. She wonders what he's doing, where he's going; there is nothing beyond the field of their house.

Suddenly Eric drops to his knees.

Summer sprints across the track as fast as she could, throwing the flowers to one side as she ran to him. "Eric!" she screams frantically, grabbing the attention of some neighbors. Finally getting to his side, she rolls him over, taking in his blanched face, the tears surrounding his eyes. His breathing is faint. "Dad?" she whimpers at the sight of him. "Dad, please. Please, stay with me." She turns back to the people in the distance. "Help! Somebody, send help!"

She strokes back the limp pieces of hair on the side of his head. "You're okay. Help is coming." But his eyes are glazed over. "Where's – where's Mom?" But he doesn't reply.

Slowly his hand reaches up to her face. "Abbey?" he questions and she shakes her head, biting her lip to try and stop her own tears…

Eric is taken back by the youthful look on his hand and the sudden flashing images between Summer, who he thinks is in front of him, and Abbey peering just over her shoulder.

"Tell her we're fine," Abbey asks of him in that floating voice he never wanted to hear the end of. "Tell her she's beautiful."

"You're so beautiful," he manages to stutter to Summer, and she nods her head, wiping back her tears.

"Tell her to keep the project running. We'll watch over her. We love her."

"Summer…" he gasps from the pain in his heart. "The project… keep it… We'll… watching. We - we love you."

"Don't speak. You're okay. Hold my hand, Daddy, please," Summer begs. As he reaches out, he grasps the hand in front of him, but it's not Summer's. He's pulled up, the pain and hurt left behind in an instant.

His last coherent words to Summer are spoken in a state of euphoria, a strange long and breathless whisper he watches leaving the old, crippled man's mouth on the floor as if it was his last literal thought. "It's all about her. It's all about the girl, Abbey... Abbey Coulter."

They really did have eternity together. And he had no plans on wasting a single second of it regardless of whatever the hell this was happening to him in this moment.

Eric inspects his body, that familiar strength back into his limbs, smiling down at himself and the Dauntless gear he was wearing that felt like home. He glances at Abbey stood in the unearthly bright light in the field so angelically.

"What took you so long?"

It's taken over a year but I managed to finally finish this story.

I would like to thank you all for reading, and to all the people that helped throughout.

Chow for now. x