Becoming Fae
Making a Decision

“Well, I admit, it took longer than I thought to see you here.”

That voice... It was familiar. So familiar, it kind of hurt. I opened my eyes and looked around, searching, hoping, but fearing that I was right.

“Hello, Pixie.”

That smile. That face. That everything.

“Nando?”

“Of course. Who else would I be?” he smiled.

“I’m... confused,” I said slowly, sitting up and staring at the familiar round face and bright smile.

“Well, you usually are, but that’s okay,” he joked, then looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “You look awful.”

“Thanks,” I said flatly. “You look pretty good for a dead guy.”

“I know!” he beamed. “I feel pretty great, too, all things aside.”

“I’m sorry, but... what is going on here?”

“Limbo,” he smiled and held his arms out to the light gray expanse around us. “You aren’t very creative, Fae. This place looks horrible.”

“Limbo? Limbo to what?” I blinked.

“You know this answer,” he looked at me with a soft, sad smile.

I frowned, then the last thing I saw came to me. A sword. My sword, coming out of my body, only the blade was red with blood. My blood. The pain, the cold, the shock.

“I’m dead?” I breathed out like a deflating New Year’s blimp.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” he sat beside me and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Mal! Where is he?” I looked around frantically.

“He’s here, just not right here. Time is different here. He’ll join us in a bit, but I wanted to see you too much to wait for both of you,” he gave me a shy smirk. “I missed you, Pix.”

I hugged him fiercely. I didn’t know I was doing it until it was happening. I really missed him.

“Okay, enough of that,” he patted my back after a moment. “Now, let me see those wings!”

I laughed and stood up as he geeked out over my wings and the markings on my body. He did exactly what I thought he would, asking a million questions and answering them in the same breath.

“So,” he breathed out when we sat back down again. “You’re dead. But you, Miss Wonderbird, have a choice to make.”

“I do?” I blinked at him, my eyes still looking for Mal.

“Yes. You see, you had a destiny when you were born,” he said and put his finger on my forehead between my eyes. I had vision of a very different life. My real parents raising me, the love I should have had as a child, the way things would have gone had I not been stolen. I had friends, and when the time came, I would have stepped into the role I had been born into. “But it was altered. Fate tried to make things right, but it’s not that simple. Every step you took off the path that was meant to be walked, changed things. You talked to people, saw them, were seen... it’s the ultimate domino effect.”

“So, what? I get to be reincarnated or something?”

“Ugh! That takes forever,” he groaned. “I’m on the waiting list for six generations from now.”

“What?” I said flatly.

“Not the point,” he held up a hand. “You have a choice, Fae. The powers that be, the great powers, have decided to step in. If you want, they’ll send you back to when you were born and ensure things go the way they should have gone.”

“Are you serious?” I frowned.

“And, if you chose not to, they’ll leave things as they are,” he finished. “One the one hand, you live a long life of happiness. The other, you’ll still be dead.”

“I’m sorry,” I held up a hand. “What?”

“The gods, Fae. They’re offering to fix the damage done,” he said with a smile.

“They can do that?” I asked, stupidly.

“They’re gods. There’s not much they can’t do,” he laughed at me. “You remember the lessons we had about the different belief systems of different species of fae? There was no 'wrong' or 'right' to them, though there were plenty that swore there was. It’s all true. The gods of the fae, the God of Earth, every religion and faith that has ever existed are all one in the same. It’s what the person believes that make it true. If you believed that Barney the hideous and annoying purple dinosaur was a god, he’d be one. Thankfully, that only applies to children because no one deserves to be subjected to that for eternity.”

“And they could have done this all along!?” I snapped.

“I mean... yeah, but even the gods have rules,” he made a face. “In order to fix the past, the body has to die and release the soul so it can be handled by a god, or in this case, gods, without all that holy juice obliterating it. There were a few times lately that I really was certain I would be seeing you, by the way. That Harmon guy is a real guardian angel.”

“He is,” I chuckled and shook my head. “Don’t tell him I said that. He’d think it was grounds to turn into a martyr again.”

“I never tell your secrets, Fae,” Nando smiled at me. “Like how I knew you loved Mal before you knew about the Bond.”

“I don’t think I was doing a good job of hiding it, honestly,” I frowned. “Hey, uh... Is Zane here?”

“Yeah, he’s here. Just not sure you’d want to see him, you know?”

“Zane!” I yelled, scrambling to my feet and looking around for the idiot. “Get out here, asshole!”

I nearly cried when he practically materialized through the gray around us. He looked like he did before all of this happened. Like he did the day I literally ran into him.

“Hey, Fae,” he said awkwardly and waved slightly.

“Stupid,” I held open my arms and gestured for him to hug me. “I missed my brother.”

“I missed you, too,” he sighed doing as I told him. “I’m sorry, Fae. I wasn’t... I didn’t...”

“I know,” I closed my eyes and squeezed him hard. “I can’t imagine not having kno- Wait.”

I frowned and backed up, scanning the destiny Nando had shown me. Zane wasn’t there. Or Blaine. Nando, either. Not even Mal. They were all missing, because they were all on Earth, where I wouldn’t have spent much time if I had been with my parents my whole life. I wouldn’t have met Naz, Rollie, Harmon... none of them. Nana, Jacob, Brutus, Glitter, Immail, Netiri... They weren’t there, because I was never meant to meet them.

“If I go back to the beginning, what happens to you?” I asked them.

“We live,” Nando shrugged. “But it’s not us that you need to think about. What do you want to do, Fae?”

“What happens to Mal?” I frowned. “He’s my Bonded. My everything.”

“You’ll meet, but it won’t matter,” Nando sighed.

“He’ll have married, as his family wished him to. You would, too. The elf prince is a dick, by the way,” Zane crossed his arms.

“I know,” I said flatly. “Please tell me I don’t marry him.”

“You court seriously between ages sixteen and twenty before you both agree it that while you were fond of one another, it wasn’t a relationship meant for marriage,” Nando said, and Zane huffed at him. “What? She won’t remember this anyhow. I can even tell her that if she goes back, she’ll have two children and one of them, sadly doesn’t live past the age of three. An accident that no one could have prevented involving an icy pathway, a child excited to see the snow, and stairs.”

“Jesus, Nando,” I stared at him with wide eyes. “No need for details.”

“You’ll have a rich life, Fae,” he said, looking at me seriously. “Full of love and happiness.”

“But.. Mal is my soulmate,” I shook my head.

“Hardly anyone meets their soulmate, Fae,” Zane smiled sadly. “Even the ones that do, rarely see the connection for what it is. The timing has to be right, the circumstances need to be just so. It’s complicated.”

“It’s flawed,” I said, annoyed. “What about everyone else?”

“You’ll never meet them. You’ll never have wings or the seriously cool marks,” Zane said with an appreciative look at my markings. “But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Life is not one thing or the other. It’s both and more, mixed up into the convoluted disaster we all have to suffer through. It never makes any sense.”

“You’ll live?” I looked at Nando and he nodded. “And you?”

“I’ll Haze, but I’ll come out of it,” Zane answered.

“But... Blaine’s Fury.”

“It was triggered by me. It won’t happen because I’ll come out of my Haze and never go off the deep end like that,” he said.

“I don’t... I don’t know,” I frowned harder. “I don’t... None of you will get hurt or die?”

“But?” Nando prompted with a smirk.

“I can’t not have Mal,” I shook my head and put my hand on my chest where the ache was oddly missing. “I need him.”

“You needed him. That’s what the Call is. You needing something. But you’ll never make a Call, so you won’t truly need any of us,” Nando took my hands in his. “You’ll have everything you need from the very beginning, so you won’t need any of us to make you laugh, to make you feel safe.”

“I do need you, though,” I squeezed his hands. “I need the memory of you both to help me move forward. How will I know that the best study snack is a spoonful of peanut butter, but at a safe distance from the books without you? And what about the best hot dogs in town coming from old man Henry’s squeaky wheeled, rust riddled cart?”

“None of it will matter to you in that life,” Nando shook his head.

“But it does matter!” I shouted, dropping his hands and turning to start pacing. “It matters, because it’s special. My brothers showed my that stuff. It matters!”

“So does the life you should have had, Fae,” Zane said softly. “You’ll never feel like you’re doing something you aren’t suited to. You’ll never have to make the choices that you’ve had to. You’ll have all of the happiness and love we’ve always wanted you to have.”

“I don’t want that!” I shouted and then gasped.

I really didn’t want that life. It was being handed to me on a divine platter. The life I should have had was so different to the one I ended up with, but faced with the chance to change it, there wasn’t a thing about it that I would give up.

“I have love,” I said softly. “I have my parents love; I have the love a family that isn’t bound by blood relation. It was a hard life, but the end of it is happy, too. It’s full, too. It’s just... different.”

“Less complicated and not as messy,” Nando laughed.

“It’s my mess, Nando!” I shouted. “The pain and grief, too! It’s mine! Mal is mine, Blaine and Ben and everyone else are all mine! I would change everything bad, but only if I still had my family. I’m sorry, I want you to live like you should have without me messing things up, but I ca- I can’t not have your memory with me or knowledge that I’ll never fall again with these people around me.”

“You’ll never see them again. Except for Mal. He’s your Bonded soulmate and he’ll be joining you in eternity, but no one else. Not until they die and even then, it’s not guaranteed,” Zane warned me.

“I’d rather have that than nothing,” I sniffed, feeling oddly light weight and free for the first time in my whole life. “I’d rather have the messed up life that was never meant to happen where I meet the best people I could ever know than have everything happen easily.”

“You’re sure? Once you make this choice, we’ll move on from here and... I don’t think we’ll meet again,” Nando asked, frowning.

“I love you. Both of you. I’m sorry you died because of me. But, because of you, I also lived and I wish I could give it back to you, but I can’t. I can’t give it up. Them. I can’t give them up,” I said, taking each of their hands and holding them tightly. “Where is Mal? I’m ready for the rest of forever with him.”

“He’s a good one, Fae,” Zane smiled. “Better than I ever could be.”

“You were a catch, Zane. Just not mine. I’m sorry you’ll never know who you were meant for,” I said sadly and let him go so he could fade into the gray again. “Nando.”

“No,” he held up a hand. “I did what I did on my own. Don’t apologize. I have so much family but, I’m glad my leaving them gave you time with yours. I’d do it again. In six generations.”

He smiled and let my hand go, fading away and taking the gray with him.

I looked around, seeing the perfect scene. Beautiful wilderness, a crystal blue lake, bright blue skies, a cute little cottage made from wood logs. It was quaint and homey and exactly what I wanted. Only better, because Mal was right beside me when I looked around.

“Fae!” he jerked, grabbing me and hugging me fiercely.

“I love you so much,” I cried softly.