Epilogue

A Sign Of Things To Come

When Ruby had realised Sabrina was gone, it surprisingly felt like a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. She carefully held under Sabrina's armpits and moved her to a sitting position so the two woman sat side by side. The hilt of Sabrina's knife jutted out of her stomach but Ruby couldn't bring herself to pull it out. She supposed there wasn't a point anymore.

Sabrina's head slipped down, resting on Ruby's shoulder as if she were only sleeping. Ruby just sat there, holding onto Sabrina's cold hand and staring out at the darkening sky. She felt exhausted and beaten up, her body protesting every minor movement. Ruby could very barely feel her legs now but she could at least move everything else. The wound in her shoulder was pulsing dully. She knew that if she didn't get it treated soon, then infection would likely spread in. The bullet needed to be pulled out as well.

But all of that seemed second to Ruby. At this particular moment in time, she just wanted to sit here with Sabrina and take in the last sunset the two would have together.

"…What a mess we got into, huh?" Ruby found herself talking to Sabrina as if she could still hear her. "I would never have thought that any of this could have happened to me. I mean, I'm just a music fan… Hah…" Ruby smiled, watching the sky slowly turn orange. Then something seemed to come to her and she turned to look at Sabrina. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry that I couldn't help you more. I wasn't smart enough to realise what you were going through. I wasn't strong enough to help you when you really needed it." She gently stroked a strand of hair away from Sabrina's peaceful face. "Perhaps things would have been a whole lot different. Then again, there's not much point in thinking about what could have been. Ifs and buts and all of that.

"Still… It's nice to think about what could have been. I wonder who would have confessed first... I'd like to think it would be me. Maybe I'd take you for a walk on a night just like this, with the sun setting," Ruby's smile turned warm as she stroked Sabrina's hair. "I would have told you just what you meant to me. That you were strong and smart and everything that I wasn't. You may not have had much of a taste in music but we all have our weaknesses, don't we? We would sit on a bench and I would talk my heart out… I always did talk too much, didn't I?" Ruby's laugh was soft and echoed around the darkening ruin of the construction site.

"…I think you would have been the first to kiss me, though. I'd have been too scared and you would have done it just to stop me from talking. From there… who knows what the future would have held for us. It would have been a hard road but we would have been happy, wouldn't we?" Ruby looked to Sabrina as if she was expecting an answer. "Yes, we would have. Maybe eventually we'd both get good jobs and then invest in a house. Live together happily. Maybe get some pets… maybe even adopt. The world would have been ours for the taking." Ruby put her forehead against Sabrina's, her voice cracking as she spoke. "…No one would have been able to stop us…"

Ruby drew in a ragged breath, fresh tears welling in the corners of her eyes. "I'm… so sorry that things happened like this, Sabrina. I'm sorry that Death got you involved again. I wish I could have given you the happiness you so truly deserved. I wish… I-I…" The words disappeared into hard chokes as Ruby's throat constricted. "…I wish you were alive… so… so much. You did bad things… you did wrong things… but if you were alive I could forgive you. I do forgive you."

Ruby drew in a shaky breath and pulled away from Sabrina, smiling bitterly as the tears ran freely down her cheeks. "Look at me. Always letting my emotions get the better of me. I was always so good at crying… even when I was a kid… Oh God, there's so much I never got to tell you, Sabrina. So many stories that I never got to say." Ruby's body started shaking as the thoughts started to overwhelm her. "I never told you about that time I accidentally kissed Jeff in Year Seven… or the fixation I had with time travelling when I was a kid… or how I would love to have learned how to cook… Christ… There's so much I want to say… why now, when it's too late?"

Ruby rubbed away her tears with her arm. "And what about you, Sabrina? You were always tight-lipped on your past and I respect that. But I wonder what you were like before the Ferret Inn. How was your school life? Did you have a lot of friends? Or were you the kind to keep a couple of close friends instead of lots of minor ones? I want to know everything, Sabrina. I want to know what made you happy, what made you sad, what made you angry. What did you do when you were frustrated? What did you do when you were happy? Were you the kind to laugh out loud and jump for joy? Or were you the kind to enjoy your successes in silent victory?"

The questions remained unanswered and Ruby could only sit back against the rubble, letting herself cry until she could cry no more. When the tears finally subsided, the sky had grown completely dark.

"I hope…" Ruby started speaking again, her voice hoarse. "I hope you are happy, Sabrina, wherever you are now. I hope you can speak to your parents again. Speak to Jake again. Because I know that they will forgive you. And one day, I'll meet you again and we can continue where we left off. We'll have all the time we need to ask each other questions, won't we? Yeah… Yeah we will. But I'm sorry to say that day will be a long time coming. You wanted me to live and I will do my damndest. I won't squander what you've done for me, Sabrina. I will live my life to the fullest and I will smile." Ruby said these words with conviction. "It will be hard. It will get overwhelming. But you'll be there by my side to support me, won't you? Whatever my future holds now… wherever I go from here… You'll be there."

Ruby finally noticed that something was strange. When her voice became silent she realised that there was no other noise. She couldn't hear the wind or the twittering of the birds that would have been going to sleep. When the sky started to grow lighter again, Ruby felt something heavy in her chest.

What was going on? The sun had already set but Ruby could clearly see the clouds high above, roiling around in tumultuous waves. But why were there such thick clouds? It had been a relatively clear day.

Then the clouds started spinning as if a cyclone had come down on London. But there was no wind to accompany the intense spinning of the clouds. Ruby found it hard to comprehend this whirlpool of clouds as a hole started opening within the confines of the sky.

The hole grew larger and larger until it was the size of multiple football pitches. Then a shape seemed to stitch itself together within that hole. It took Ruby a moment to realize that the image created was that of a skeleton with a large crack through the skull. This sent a chill right through Ruby's spine. This wasn't possible… what was happening? Was she having some kind of nightmare?

"Eugene…" Harold's voice took Eugene by surprise. The big man hardly ever called him by his first name. It was always 'Hawk' and had always been 'Hawk' throughout their whole partnership.

Eugene had been sitting in the back of the van while Harold took a break to relieve himself. He was still riding off the euphoria in hearing Sabrina's words of confirmation. At Harold's words, he called out from inside the van, "What's up?"

"…Come out here." Harold's voice was strange. Eugene narrowed his eyes and reached into his jacket to pull out his pistol. It was unlikely but perhaps the DSI had finally caught up to them and were holding Harold hostage?

"Are your knuckles aching?" Eugene called out carefully. This was the question they had decided to use in case either of them suspected the other as compromised. No one other than themselves would know how to answer.

"They're good as new," Harold replied in that strange tone of his. "But get out here, Eugene."

Keeping his pistol aloft, Eugene opened the back of the van and hopped out into the surprisingly light air. The two of them were outside their safe house, having stripped it of any evidence that the two of them had been there.

Harold was standing in the middle of the road, looking up to the sky. His face was pale and…

"Are you crying!?" Eugene asked, unable to believe what he was seeing. Harold was the toughest son of a bitch Eugene had ever met. Eugene followed Harold's gaze up into the sky and froze.

Something was wrong with the clouds as they slowly spun around a large hole in the sky. But it wasn't this that Eugene found shocking. It was the image within the hole. It was her legs, her eyes, her face… there was no doubting it. His wife's image, Abigail's image, rested up in the sky like a god watching over them.

"What…" Eugene blinked. "What's…"

"Do you see what I see?" Harold asked, his thick voice hoarse.

"…I see Abigail. As she was before…" Eugene gulped. "Before the inn."

"…I see Brisco." Brisco. Eugene had only heard Harold mention that name once before. Lewis Brisco was a famous boxer during the time that Harold was on the scene. It was the man that Harold had accidently killed during the match. Harold had related the story once and only once, telling Eugene never to bring it up again.

"How can we be seeing different things?"

Harold just shook his head. "I don't know. But… Do you think this is what Valentine was working on?"

Eugene looked to Harold sharply. "There were ten years before that happened."

"How else do you explain this? How else to you explain what we're seeing?"

"I…" For once, Eugene was lost for words. The two partners could only stand in the middle of the road, staring up at the image of their regrets high in the sky.

"What!? The Doomsday Clock has…" Lisa Valentine listened to the report on her transmission in shock. She was standing outside a secure door where her best doctors were operating on Jason Ryan's leg. Lisa's face had gone pale as whoever was on the other side of the phone continued to speak. "Outside?" Lisa seemed to find it hard to walk but she managed to make her way out of a door into an alleyway. As soon as the door closed behind her, Lisa heard strange low murmurings. She headed towards the main road and saw that traffic had seemed to come to a complete stop.

People had gotten out of their cars and were pointing up into the sky. Every single person had their head turned towards the sky. Lisa slowly looked up and her eyes widened.

Sitting inside a large hole in the unnaturally light clouds was the image of her two children, their limbs torn asunder. The sight was a fright to behold and Lisa found herself enraptured. At least, until the voice in her ear interrupted her thoughts. Lisa shook her head and focused on the words. "It suddenly sped up? Why? Christ…"

Lisa took a deep breath and found her balance again. She took one quick look at the image in the sky before heading back into the backdoor in the alley. "I'll be there as soon as possible. Don't do anything without my say-so!" Lisa took her finger off of her communicator and clenched her fists. This wasn't supposed to happen now. She was meant to have another ten years before the Doomsday Clock reached zero. If it was speeding up… Things just weren't ready yet.

Lisa Valentine would not be able to deal with the Apocalypse if this was truly the sign for the opening of the Gates.

A/N:- And that, I am very glad to say, is that. Oh boy, what a journey this has been for me. To be able to FINALLY finish a project... to finally be able to wrap things up the way I want them wrapped up, to be finally able to say what I want to say and see where these characters of mine end up. It's amazing. I had forgotten how good it is to finish a story - truly, finish it.

But hey and ho, there is no rest for the wicked. Encore has been great to me. I've loved Sabrina and Ruby's relationship and everything else but time and I must move forward. So, comin' Thursday, the prologue of Final Destination: The Elimination Game will be published, and we will continue to tell the tales that lead up to the Apocalypse. But we got quite the ways and ways to go in the World's End Chronicles.

Thanks to those of you who read this, to those of you who will read this, I hope you will all tune in to see how these tales will unfold. Ruby and Jason (...and a certain disgruntled musician who I have not for one second forgotten about, trust me...) will continue to thrive and learn and developed. And more characters will enter the fray. From Lisa Valentine, the DSI, Eugene and Harold... I've got so much to say and so much to do and I am actually quivering in excitement. One story of World's End down, five more to go... and I'm raring for it!