Noon arrives with the inevitability of execution.
I stand across from Alan's office building, pressed into the shadow of an adjacent structure, watching professionals stream out for lunch. The sun blazes overhead—a reminder that daylight belongs to the living now, not me. I've wrapped myself in layers despite the heat: long sleeves, gloves, a wide-brimmed hat that makes me look like I'm hiding from paparazzi rather than combustion.
Alan emerges at 12:07, and my dead heart somehow still manages to clench.
He's thinner than I remember. Haunted. The bruises have faded but something else has taken their place—a weariness that lives deeper than skin. When he sees me, he stops. For a terrible moment, I think he'll turn around and walk back inside.
"Alan," I call out, and my voice cracks. "Please."
He stands there, warring with himself. Then slowly, reluctantly, he crosses the street.
"There's a park," he says, not looking at me. "Around the corner."
We walk in silence. He maintains careful distance, like I might be contagious. Or dangerous. Both are probably true.
The park is small—a corporate afterthought with benches and dying grass. We sit, and the space between us feels vast.
"You texted," he says finally. "So talk."
The words I've rehearsed for days dissolve. What's left is just truth, raw and unvarnished.
"I'm so sorry." My hands clench in my lap. "Not for saving you—I'd do that again. But for taking away your choice. For making you carry the weight of my murders. For being so convinced I knew better that I didn't stop to ask what you wanted."
He's quiet. Listening in a way he didn't before.
"James made sure you're safe. All the evidence is buried. The investigation won't touch you. You're not going to prison for what I did." The words taste like inadequacy. "I know that doesn't fix anything, but I needed you to know."
"How?" His voice is rough. "How did he make it disappear?"
"Money. Connections. Two hundred years of knowing how systems work and how to manipulate them." I risk looking at him. "He's been doing this longer than either of us have been alive."
Alan processes this, jaw working. "You're really... you're really dead. Not human anymore."
"Yes."
"Do you..." He struggles with the question. "Do you miss it? Being human?"
The question catches me off guard. I expect anger, accusations, demands. Not curiosity.
"Sometimes," I admit. "I miss sunlight. Miss coffee actually tasting like something. Miss not having to monitor every movement so I don't accidentally break things." I pause. "But I don't miss being powerless. Don't miss the exhaustion. Don't miss making myself small so other people feel comfortable."
"You killed people, Tess."
"I know."
"And you're not... you're not falling apart about it. You're not destroyed." There's something like accusation in his voice, but also confusion. Like he needs me to be more broken than I am.
"I feel guilty," I say quietly. "Especially about you. About making you afraid you'd be arrested. About stealing your agency." I meet his green eyes. "But I don't regret saving your life. Even if you hate me forever—I don't regret it."
He looks away, and I watch him struggle with something huge and complicated. When he speaks again, his voice shakes.
"I'm trying to process it." He wipes at his face roughly. "You did it for me. So am I responsible? Or are you? Where does the guilt live?"
"With me," I say immediately. "It lives with me, Alan. You didn't ask for any of this."
"But I benefited from it." The words come out anguished. "I'm alive because you murdered people. How do I live with that?"
"I don't know." Honesty feels like the only gift I can give him. "I don't have an answer that makes it better."
We sit in silence. Around us, the world continues—people eating lunch, birds hopping between patches of grass, the distant sound of traffic. Normal life, indifferent to our crisis.
"I want to forgive you," Alan says finally, and the admission costs him. I see it in the way his shoulders hunch, how his hands shake. "I see you sitting here, my sister, and I want to just... let it go. Move on."
Hope flares painful and bright.
"But I can't." His voice breaks. "I try, Tess. I really do. I lie in bed and practice what I'd say if I forgave you. But then I remember those men had families. Had lives. And you ended them because it was efficient."
The hope gutters but doesn't quite die.
"I might die of old age," he continues, meeting my eyes, "and still not forgive you. I need you to understand that. I might never get there."
The words should devastate me. Should crack whatever fragile thing I've been holding together. Instead, I feel something like peace settle into my bones.
"Okay," I say simply.
He blinks. "Okay?"
"That's your right. To never forgive me. And I'll respect it." I straighten, and the acceptance feels like power rather than defeat. "I love you, Alan. I'll wait as long as you need—decades, centuries, forever. And if you die still hating me, then at least I'll know I gave you the space to make that choice."
Something shifts in his expression. Like my acceptance of his terms has disarmed him somehow.
We sit quietly for a moment. Then he clears his throat.
"Mom and Dad are losing the house." The subject change is abrupt, awkward. I wait, sensing there's more.
"I'm not saying you have to," he continues quickly. "Not making it a condition or anything. But if... if someone helped them keep it. Helped them not lose everything." He looks at me. "Maybe that would help. All of us. To heal."
The olive branch is so tentative I'm afraid to touch it. But I understand what he's offering—not forgiveness, but a path toward it. A way to turn blood money into something that preserves rather than destroys.
"I'll handle it," I say. "James and I. We'll make sure they keep the house."
Alan nods. Stands. "I need to get back to work."
"Of course."
He starts to walk away, then stops. Turns back. And for the first time since I confessed what I am, he really looks at me. Sees me.
"I'm trying, Tess. I really am."
The words lodge under my ribs like prayer.
"That's enough," I whisper. "That's more than enough."
I watch him walk away, and the hope that's been struggling to survive finally blooms into something sustainable. Not certainty. Not resolution. But hope.
And for someone with forever, hope is everything.