And the final angst. Sorry.

Ten months and a school renovation later, April is standing in front of an alien king, her heart beating once for her and once for him, with a metal chair leg pointed at her chest.

"You leave," she says to him through gritted teeth, "Or I make you leave."

She isn't just afraid. She is utterly terrified. But if she wasn't, how could she be brave? Fear is a superpower , Clara's voice says in her head, giving her the strength to keep her grip on the piece of metal.

They are saved by a bizarre man and his weird screwdriver, in the end, and afterwards April doesn't know if knowing that she probably would have been able and willing to sacrifice herself for the others is empowering or just plain distressing.

She tells her mother that prom was uneventful. It's the biggest lie she's ever told in her life and it comes out with ease.

But now she knows for sure. She is kind. And she is strong. And if it comes to it, she will fight until her last breath for her new friends - or the ones she hopes will be her new friends - and for her planet.

Just like Clara would have. Just like Clara would have wanted.

More happens in the next two and a half months than can be fully processed. First the prom and sharing her heart with an alien and Rachel's death and Ram's leg, not to mention the revelation that Charlie and Miss Quill are aliens. Then that awful interdimensional dragon and the Lankin.

There's Ram. Sweet, beautiful Ram who she cares for so much it terrifies her. Ram who makes her feel safe.

She becomes king of the Shadowkin, for a brief, glorious moment. It's enough to save her world from carnivorous petals. It's enough to have that sweet, sweet, moment of triumph. To in her victory call Corakinus a maggot like he had done to her.

She tells her father goodbye. Things with him will always be complicated, and maybe one day she will have space for him in her life, but she doubts it. Sometimes you have to keep toxic people out.

Detention tears her friends apart and she is left with only her mother and Charlie. Which is more than she had before, but now she knows what she's missing.

And then it all starts falling apart. Ram's dad, Tanya's mum, Corakinus in her house threatening her mother and Charlie and Matteusz.

Ram asks her to run away with him. She wants to, more than anything. But she can't. And as she leaves him a message outside of Coal Hill, telling him she loves him, she gets a heavy feeling in her gut as she stares at the entrance to the school.

She knows how this will end. She thinks that maybe she's always known, since the words make you leave fell from her lips. She knows that this will be the last time she walks through the school doors.

Finding the others should be her highest priority. There isn't time for detours, but she can't just walk past the wall of remembrance, not knowing what she's about to do.

April stops and approaches it. She reaches out for the name Oswald, C. and lets her fingertips graze over the letters.

Let me be brave, she thinks, like you taught me. Let me make you proud.

She thinks that Charlie knows the moment she hugs him. She guesses that maybe, like her, he has always known that this is where things would stand, only he has fought even harder to avoid it.

"Let me know that I was brave," she says to Charlie.

I am brave, just like her, she thinks as Charlie points the gun at her. And I'm not being snuffed out - I'm a king and a girl and a storm and I am choosing to give up my light to chase away this dark.

She wonders what the last thing Clara saw was. The last thing April sees is her friend, shooting her. I would hesitate, from killing a friend, he said once.

This time he doesn't.

I am terrified. I am brave.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought!