All We Can Do Is Try
By Misha
Disclaimer- Not mine. I’m just borrowing them for a little while and will return them when I am finished.
Author’s Notes- This is my entry for Day 26 of my January writing challenge: “sometimes I wish I had never met you.” I know I said I wasn’t combining these with existing requests, but I am making an exception for this fic because it’s not a traditional request. Several months ago, I got a very polite request for an Estela/MC fanfic and I filed it away hoping something would come to me, but Endless Summer does not speak to me the way other books do. However, I decided to make it Estela/MC and fulfill that old request. This is set in Book 3.
Paring- Estela/MC
Rating- G
Summary- April is feeling a little overwhelmed by everything and has a conversation with the Endless.
Words- 599
“Is there a happy ending?” April asked quietly, looking at the older version of her own face. “For this story I mean? Since the cycle has been broken?”
The Endless shrugged, “I can’t tell you that, I’m not sure anyone can yet, but for the first time there’s a chance.”
April nodded, understanding what she was being told, which was that the Endless didn’t have the answers any more than the rest of them did,
“Sometimes I still wish I’d never met you,” she confided warily. They were getting closer to ending all this once and for all and it was weighing on her, what she was, what she had the power to become, all of it. “Because if I hadn’t, I would still be in the dark, I wouldn’t know what lay ahead and all that has already happened. It wouldn’t be weighing on me so much.”
“Yes,” The Endless agreed, “and that can be appealing and I understand that I have brought a lot of pain into your life, that the idols caused you pain and that you’ve had to confront things about yourself that you’d rather not.”
That was putting it lightly.
“But, you have hope,” The Endless continued, “something that I haven’t had in many lifetimes. You have the chance to fix it all, to right the cycle. To live that happily ever after.”
“Do you think that is possible for me, for us?” April asked quietly, her eyes drifting away from the Endless to the woman standing further down the beach talking to Quinn. As if she could feel April’s eyes on her, and given that this was Estela she probably could, she turned and smiled in April’s direction.
“It depends on who the ‘us’ you’re talking about is,” The Endless answered, “my chance at happiness has passed, my goal was never happiness for myself, but simply to make things right for you, for her, for our friends. Do I think happiness is possible for you, for her? Yes, I have to believe it, it’s what’s kept me fighting through all those lifetimes.” The Endless grabbed April’s face and looked directly into her eyes. “Don’t give up, not when we’re so close.”
April stared into the older version of her face, into eyes had seen so much tragedy, and found herself nodding, almost against her will. “I’ll try,” she said quietly.
“Good, that’s all we can ever do, try.” The Endless released her and then gave her a friendly push. “Now enough over-thinking, go be with your girl, remind yourself what you are fighting for.”
April nodded and headed down the beach. She came up behind Estela and wrapped her arms around her. Her girlfriend leaned into her embrace as Quinn slipped away to give them some privacy. “I saw you talking to the Endless, is everything ok?”
“It is now,” April told her, “now that I’m with you.”
Estela twisted so that she could study April’s face and then after a moment, she nodded, obviously deciding to accept the words at face value. “Raj is almost done with dinner,” Estela said lightly, “if you want to go join the others.”
“In a moment,” April told her, “I just… I want to stay here with you for a little while longer if that’s ok?”
“Of course it is,” Estela told her, “whatever you want, we’re in this together, April. Until the end.”
“Until the end,” April agreed, silently vowing that the end was going to be the happy future they’d witnessed that day on the beach with the photo because anything else was unacceptable.
- End
