Why Fireflies Flash
Epilogue

Christabella Quinn-Moriarty, or Anabeth as she preferred, didn't always act the way she did. No, not at all. Growing up, she was never the broken girl she was now. No one knew why, or how for that matter, she became the hollow, empty thing she after she returned from the aftermath of a two-year op in London.

It worried her family, all nine of them, to the point of putting her into therapy. Not that it helped at all. Whenever any of the three CIA-vetted therapists got something out of her it would immediately be scratched after some variation of the eminent question of, "How does that make you feel?"

"I can't," she'd reply with a vacant voice.

"You have to feel something," they'd argue.

"I'm just numb. There's nothing left. It's gone, all of it. Everything. Gone."

At that point, her employer appointed her a new therapist. None ever got farther than what they already knew. She pulled herself out of therapy after six brutal months, retiring far too early and returning to London once again.

They all blamed the loss of love, too much heartbreak in too short of a period. There'd have to be love for that to be true.

Maybe it was her past finally catching up to her, all those mistakes and regrets and bad choices showing their ugly faces once more, and smothering her with all of their inky pain and misery. Draining her of what was left of her will.

Perhaps it was the memories that haunted her dreams of a could-of-should-of-would-of romance that really shouldn't have to begin with. The one in which she danced around the true problem she clutched onto. Youngest Child Syndrome was looking good. She was, after all the youngest of seven (eight at one point) children. After all that attention disappeared, she clutched onto the first thing that glanced her way..

Or perhaps it was the infuriating man that lived in the flat above her, that tore away her walls she'd spent decades building, brick by insignificant brick before getting frustrated and just completely shattered them into a billion little pieces of rubble.

It could have been all the secrets and lies she had to keep to herself. And yet it could have been all the deception, all the betrayal she received from those closest to her.

It could have been any of it.

Or all of it.

Or none of it.

She didn't know.

It was like Payton used to say all those years ago. Long before the fear of losing her loomed over their shoulders and there was a boy with a warm smile, deep brown eyes, messy hair, and a promise of forever to distract her. They'd lay in the itchy grass of some hidden meadow just past the last row of grapes on the vineyard on a warm summer night, staring up at the stars as lightning bugs danced in the slight breeze.

Anabeth would turn her blue-eyed gaze to meet her sister's and ask, as if the answer ever changed; "Why do fireflies flash?"

Payton would turn with a small smile, expecting the question, and respond; "Is that an abstract question?"

The younger girl would look back up at the stars, her gaze chasing after the lights that drifted and blinked. "No." Then, after a while; "Yes."

"Well, scientifically, it's a special chemical reaction they control to attract a mate. But abstractly... I think it symbolizes the birth and death of beauty in life," she'd respond.

Or something like that.

Sometimes it was happiness. Sometimes it was faith. Sometimes it was light.

And maybe Payton Georgia Tiffany Grace Quinn was onto something.

Beauty (or happiness, or faith, or light) in life was fleeting, like a heartbeat, here one moment gone the next. In need of grabbing and being loved, before it disappears altogether.

And maybe that was Anabeth's downfall. Maybe she was indifferent to it all for too long.

After all fireflies don't flash during the day.

Needless to say, this is where our story ends. A cliché for an almost cliché story in which two people meet and, with the help of some outside catalysts, find an almost unwanted companionship. A companionship that's torn by love and hate, beauty and ugliness, life and death. No one said it was going to be a happy ending.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
Elie Wiesel

That's it guys. The final chapter. I hope you enjoyed it. I have a sequel and a couple of timestamps that happen in between the two that I'm working on. Unless you guys want me to just stop... Cause I will... but that's really a shitty ending. And the true end might not be a happily ever after but at least it's better than this.