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Sasha opens her eyes, at least she thinks she does. She feels good. Maybe for the first time in her life she feels true relief throughout her body. Not even the weight of gravity can touch her now.
Surrounded by trees and brush she finds herself in a very well kept garden. Beautiful flowers that she doesn’t recognize. They only help to ease her. The need to hide has gone, she feels unseen and it's comforting.
She feels a pull, it's not physical or malicious but she feels the need to follow it. Like whatever question it's asking is on the end of the line.
Following it she finds a dust path that follows the flow of the garden. Stepping out of the trees into the breeze of an open area. The pull follows the path. She follows the pull.
She begins to hear soft footsteps. Ones she recognizes. Ones she hasn’t heard for a very long time.
Zolf, Hamid, Azu, Wilde, and a few others Sasha doesn’t recognize walk in front of her. The sudden ache of desperation invades her senses. She misses them. She really misses them.
During her time in Rome she hadn’t realized how much she had appreciated their company. The first friends she had made by choice. Even Grizzop was taken from her.
Twenty long years but she still had nightmares about that day, about all of them. Living her life everyday looking after her children set a good distraction from all that she had been through.
If she could be strong for them then that would be enough.
Her attention drifts back to her friends. The sense of finality of the situation made her walk up to the group. No one is speaking. But they all seem to be happy in a bitter sense.
Happy in the way she felt when she held her children for the last time.
She walked up to them forgetting about sneaking or trying to be unseen. She just wants to feel them again. She swears she’ll put up with anything just to hold them again.
Her heart sinks to the deepest pit in her gut when even they don’t respond to her voice. Even without further testing she knew. They could not see her.
Her paranoia seemed to bleed into her finally. She had lost her family once in Rome and now she was going to lose them again.
She almost broke down crying when she saw Grizzop appear on Azu’s shoulder. Forever out of reach.
They walk for what feels like hours in silence. Sasha follows, occasionally calling out to the group. Eventually they stop and Sasha can feel herself slipping away back to the dream-like afterlife.
She gives one last call to the group, she feels her whole body warms when Wilde turns to look at her and smiles, making eye contact with her.
In an instant she knows they are fine, she will pass on and leave them in a good place. Not always safe and not always happy but good, because they’ve got each other.
It is in this content thought that the memory of Sasha fades into the inky pool of the afterlife. Finally satisfied in her life on earth she moves on to a much bigger adventure to await the arrival of her friends once again.
The Darkness is coming and she wants to rest. Now, finally, she can sleep.
Closure at last.