[ He lets her go. It's what he's done before -- knowing the futility of trying to catch her blazing comet. Knowing she'd have run slower, burnt dimmer, if she meant him to overtake. ]
[ She vanishes in a flare of brightness -- spectral and dazzling -- and it's deja vu, but not. Exhaling, Hei leans against a wall. His throat feels clogged; his face is wet. He dabs it roughly with a sleeve before stuffing his hands into his pockets. He recalls how how his life unreeled through his mind while Heaven's Gate had vanished -- and knows it will once again when his end finally comes. However it does. He's killed enough people to know those few seconds between kill-shot and unspooling are sufficient for the unfurling of decades. Pai's face is lodged in his mind like a blade in that moment before the collapse of arteries; her every look and word from the beginning races behind his squeezed eyelids as he stands there. ]
[ The ache of her absence is going to be an amputated limb. An incompleteness that never fades. But he's glad she's gone. Not happy, but glad. It's a big world out there. And he knows that Pai is made to scorch a hole through it in one big bite. ]
THEY ARE DESTINY'S WHIPPING TOYS
[ She vanishes in a flare of brightness -- spectral and dazzling -- and it's deja vu, but not. Exhaling, Hei leans against a wall. His throat feels clogged; his face is wet. He dabs it roughly with a sleeve before stuffing his hands into his pockets. He recalls how how his life unreeled through his mind while Heaven's Gate had vanished -- and knows it will once again when his end finally comes. However it does. He's killed enough people to know those few seconds between kill-shot and unspooling are sufficient for the unfurling of decades. Pai's face is lodged in his mind like a blade in that moment before the collapse of arteries; her every look and word from the beginning races behind his squeezed eyelids as he stands there. ]
[ The ache of her absence is going to be an amputated limb. An incompleteness that never fades. But he's glad she's gone. Not happy, but glad. It's a big world out there. And he knows that Pai is made to scorch a hole through it in one big bite. ]