Moment of Awesome - Marie-Ange Colbert/Tarot: Trapped in New Orleans, hunted by Candra, and with Garrison Kane dead, Marie-Ange faces some terrible truths.
Amanda shuddered and looked to the hole she'd dug, the fresh dirt dark against the grass. Tante had known. Of course she had known. She gave Marie-Ange, still standing on the porch of the shack, an agonised look. "We have... we have to bury him."
"You made her dig a grave?" Marie-Ange's eye couldn't leave the shovel, the silt caking Amanda's hands, Tante's calm expression. "You knew this entire time and did... " She struggled to keep her hands still, to not pull at her hair or pluck a card from a hidden pocket. "More of the never change the future, don't use your precognition, you... you've been telling me this shit for decades and now Garrison is dead, and we could have known. I saw it and you did and you made Amanda dig a grave for her friend, what right do you have to talk about honoring a man you've never met? To ask us to bury him here, as far from his home as possible, after he died trying to save us? No." She looked at Amanda, at Jean, at Tante. "We take him home, we tell his father, he's already grieved once, and now I have to tell him again that his son is dead and I cannot even give him a funeral? I cannot."
Tante's expression didn't so much as twitch while Marie-Ange tossed her words back at her, crashing against and washing away like a wave on a rocky shore. "De future isn't built on actions and events. It is built on choices. Changing it means taking dose choices away from someone else. Even for de best of reasons. Because den it stops being de future and starts being de future dat you and you alone want. Is dat de power jah want, Marie-Ange? Where de only person dat really ever chooses is you?"
Finally, she sighed, the first crack in her seemingly impenetrable serenity. "Dat man is dead and de three of you are marked by Candra's men. Jah chances of escaping are significantly less wit' carrying dat body along. Do jah want to risk wasting his sacrifice or will de three people dat love him give him dat final honour?" Her eyes moved from each of the three. "Dat's a choice only jah can make."
Jean hadn't spoken much after the dust had settled, or in this case, the blood had started to dry. She heard the arguments back and forth, staring down at Garrison's body in her lap. He had already started to go cold.
She brushed a few stray hairs away from his forehead, closing her eyes for a moment before letting out a breath. "She's right. There's too much heat right now. We can come back for him. Once we've gotten reinforcements," she said.
Amanda exhaled and climbed slowly to her feet, absently brushing the chunks of broken safety glass off her knees, ignoring the small cuts some left behind. Then she turned to her girlfriend, looking at her beseechingly. "Angie?"
"It's not right." Marie-Ange shook her head. "It's not right, we made choices, and they were all wrong. We can't leave him." She sat down abruptly on the edge of the porch, and crumpled her face into her hands. "He's been all wrong since Olivier, and everywhere we turn, we get nothing." Her shoulders shook - but her voice was steady, firm and furious. "Even if we leave, even without Garrison, Candra's men bring this nightmare back to the mansion."
"Then we don't go back to the mansion. But Tante's right. We can't take him with us. And we can't leave him to the system, just another John Doe." Amanda's voice was steady, but her expression was torn with grief. "I hate it too. But what other choice do we have?"
Marie-Ange looked up, rage and grief ravaging her face for a moment, and then went frozen, absolutely still. "None, all our choices have been neatly stolen from us. Garrison's choices were stolen from him, and now we are cemented here." She stood. "If we do this, we do it correctly. A proper burial, as much as we can." She glanced up at the sky, still heavy with clouds as though a storm could break any moment. "No Valhalla. He lifted that hammer once, I am fearful he will get caught up in some eternal warrior feast. How do we stop that?"
"Dis is my bayou. Any Gods or monsters come through Tante first before dey get to de dead. If dey have any sense." Tante said, and for a moment, the force of her personality rolled over them; the certainty of her words as absolute truth. She nodded at the shovels with her chin. "It time to get to work."
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