Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

For Captain Swan AU Month. Loosely based on the movie Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, where the premise is that an asteroid named Matilda is going to wipe out all life on Earth in three weeks. After his wife Milah leaves him, can Killian Jones find his high school sweetheart, Emma Swan, before time runs out?

They heard the news in the darkened car sitting on the shoulder, where he'd pulled over to listen to the emergency broadcast on their way home from Bae's soccer game. Milah was in the passenger seat, not looking at him, still resenting him because he'd told Bae to grab some ice cream with his friends, get a ride home later. He didn't want to ruin what might well be the only perfect night in his stepson's middle school career. With a name like "Baelfire," which had been the choice of Milah's first husband, an eccentric crackpot whom Killian had always hated. . . well, it might not be as traumatic as naming your only begotten child "Moon Unit," but not by much. Bae had scored the winning goal for JV, gotten the cute eighth-grade girl Morain to give him the time of day, might even be on his way to social relevance, strange lonely kid that he was. He didn't need it ruined by the knowledge that the world was about to end.

The radio crackled as Killian fiddled with the knobs.

". . . disintegrated ninety-eight seconds after launch, killing all twelve crew members aboard. Once again, if you're just tuning in, the C.S.A. space shuttle Deliverance has been destroyed. The final mission to save mankind has failed. The seventy-mile-wide asteroid known commonly as Matilda is set to collide with Earth in exactly three weeks' time, and we'll be bringing you up-to-the-minute coverage of our countdown to the 'End of Days,' along with all your classic rock favorites. This is Q107.2."

A snappy jingle phased into a commercial advising you to take fifteen minutes to save fifteen percent on your car insurance.

Killian and Milah sat there silently. He felt her looking at him, waiting for him to say something. Waiting for him to apologize for sending Bae away, tell her that they should have faced this moment as a family. A strange one, but a family, since he'd married her in a quickie ceremony in Vegas ten years ago, in a flashy fake "Pirate's Booty Cove" with an Elvis impersonator and a talking parrot officiating. She was a decade older than him; she was going through an acrimonious divorce from her first husband, and left him, taking their young son, Bae, with her. Met Killian a few weeks later, when they were both drunk. He'd been drunk often back then, a frat boy bereft of a frat after graduating from NYU, still trying not to think about Emma. He and Milah bonded over their mutual bad breakups and desire for adventure, to see the world. He'd promised her they'd buy a boat and go sailing everywhere. Find some deserted island in the South Pacific and start their own country. Watch the sun go down every night with their toes in white sand. Go swimming and sleep and have sex whenever and wherever they liked. The place where they'd never have to grow up, never have to face real life, real responsibilities.

He guessed it was a hallmark of their relationship that this had worked. They were married after a month of dating, on that wild Vegas weekend. Moved to the genteel bedroom suburbs of Jersey, and he got a job to support them. This was all to the horror of his college classmates who couldn't figure out why Killian Jones, universally acknowledged as the hot one who could stay a bachelor forever for all the tail he was going to pull, would tie himself down so fast. To an older woman – well, that wasn't a problem, cougar be smokin'. But an older woman with a kid? And now he was starting the nine-to-five routine, commuting to midtown Manhattan every day, maybe golf on the weekends, PTA meetings and backyard games of catch and all the other stuff that your average boring suburban dad did. They'd always expected better things from Killian. The rock star who collected mountains of female panties and went on three-day benders, had to be carted somewhere discreet to dry out. The crazy guy with the boat who was going to start his own Neverland in the South Pacific and invite them all to be his Lost Boys. Anything.

Instead, in his quest to give Milah whatever she wanted, he'd somehow become exactly the husband, and the life, that she'd left behind. And for every one of those last ten years, he'd slowly become aware of the magnitude of his mistake. Worse, so had she.

He'd never been able to buy that boat. He'd never given her that life of glamorous adventure. They'd made it to Paris once, strolling down the Seine, romantic as you please, before a local pickpocket stole his wallet and they spent hours in diplomatic hell trying to get their passports back. They hadn't taken too many trips after that.

She'd fallen in love with a midlevel financial executive, and she hated it.

They tried not to fight in front of Bae. They tried to keep it civil for their friends. But they had been barely on speaking terms for the last week. Even hearing that an asteroid described as total extinction-level was on a collision course with Earth, that all the NASA missions sent up to mine that sucker with explosives just couldn't do a damn thing. Man was meeting Mother Nature expecting friendly drinks, and Mother Nature was slapping on a strap-on and fucking him up the ass. You'd think this would be the time to patch up marital relations. You'd think this would be the time to realize that the small things didn't matter. But she was still passive-aggressively giving him the cold shoulder for leaving the toilet seat up, and he was still buying the gross kind of organic orange juice that he knew she didn't like.

And now, Deliverance was gone.

It looked like it was happening after all. The end of the world, that was.

"Well," Milah said at last. Her thin fingers knitted and unknitted a knot in her long dark curls. "Say something."

Killian leaned back in the driver's seat. Rubbed a hand over his unshaven stubble.

"I think we missed the exit."

Milah just stared at him, blue eyes cold and depthless as tunnels. Then she undid her seatbelt, grabbed her purse, and without another word, got out of the car.

He watched her walking away. He should have jumped out after her, run, pleaded on his knees that he'd make it right, to just give him another chance. That he'd make these last three weeks the best she'd ever had. That even if it was, well, too late, it wouldn't be too late.

He didn't move. He just watched her go. He waited ten minutes, then fifteen.

She wasn't coming back.

The house was dark when Killian pulled into the driveway. Three bedrooms, restored Victorian, quiet street in Montclair with a backyard and trees, a play fort he'd built for Bae last summer, cursing every time he hit his thumb with the hammer. When he parked and went inside, flipped on the lights, there was no sign of either of them. She must have walked all the way back, picked up her son, caught a cab and gone to a hotel for the night. She was mad, she must be mad, but surely she'd come around. It was the end of the world.

End of the world. It still sounded ridiculous in his head. How many times had he pulled that one out of the hat during college, being a drama king? He had a final he'd only vaguely studied for, he'd been pulled over for doing 85 on the Henry Hudson, he'd fucked up everything with the love of his life and was going to be alone forever. You know. That sort of thing. It had just never occurred to him that he'd live to see the time where he'd have to put it to the actual apocalypse.

Killian opened the fridge and stared into it. There wasn't much food. He couldn't think about going to the grocery store. Black Friday on crack. Nobody would think they were actually going to die, of course. You had the whole cult of survivalists, probably shitting their pants with glee that all their terrible predictions had come to pass at last. They had their titanium underground bunkers, their six-month-supply of food, their cache of automatic weapons to supply the army of a small sovereign country. The asteroid might be sweeping down from the fiery heavens like God's judgment on the faggots and the feminists and the liberals, but no way, no how, did they intend to die. Rise up like the sun and labor till the work is done.

Killian microwaved a Hot Pocket and sat down at the kitchen table. It was covered in Bae's seventh-grade math homework. He picked up a pencil and tried to answer some of the problems. His stepson's name written at the top. Baelfire Jones. Killian had adopted him officially just three years ago, changed the name from Baelfire Gold, because that was just too cruel. They'd all been happy that day. Gone to Coney Island in the high summer, to celebrate. Ice cream and swimming and volleyball on the beach. Rode the Ferris wheel up and up and up until they could see across what seemed the entire tristate area, downtown skyscrapers glinting in the sun. Back when it looked like the world was going to go on forever.

Apparently the world was not.

Killian chewed and swallowed the rubbery bite of Hot Pocket. Solved a long division problem. Then pushed the plate away, put his head in his hands, and quietly began to sob.

He slept in Bae's bed that night. Praying to wake up and for it to be all a horrible, highly colorized dream. Find Milah and Bae there, incredulous as to why he was curled up in Bae's grubby flannel sheets, a seventh-grader's bedroom with a seventh-grader's sad little problems, the Batman posters, the dirty underwear that he'd started throwing in the hamper if only because he wanted to take a girl in here someday. He wasn't going to. Wasn't going to get that chance.

When Killian woke up, it was all the same. Milah and Bae weren't back. He grabbed his cell phone and fumbled for it, waiting to see a message. None. Just a Presidential Alert confirming the news. Yes indeed, life as we knew it was going to have the curtain pulled down in twenty days. The White House urged calm and civic duty. Wanted everyone to show the best of America, right to the very end.

Killian blew out a breath and rolled over onto his back. Stared at the sun coming up for what felt like hours. Pissing away good usable time, the time he wouldn't have enough of. He'd wasted enough of it already, in this marriage, this life. Why would crunch time be any different?

Finally, he got up, shambled down the corridor to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and took out Milah's codeine-laced cough syrup. Drank about half the bottle, not caring if he woke up tomorrow or never, and went back to bed.

He did wake up, sometime. Even got upright and shaved and dressed. Then grabbed his keys, and drove fifteen minutes to the Mendel house. Greg was one of his coworkers at the office, the closest thing he had to a friend. But it was his wife Tamara who opened the door, full of solicitous concern. "Aw, honey. I heard the news. Milah left you. But you know, you can't be alone. You can't really die alone."

"I'm not going to die alone. I'm going to die with. . . everyone."

"No, this is different. You know our friend, Cora? I think you'd like her. Maybe we should, you know. Set you up."

"I – I really don't think so." Killian stepped past her into the kitchen, where Greg had pulled down a small arsenal of liquor bottles and was already pouring himself a snifter. It was ten in the morning. He felt like pointing it out, then remembered it didn't matter.

"Maybe they'll find a way," Tamara said, picking up a knife and returning to the cutting board. "You know, a way to save us."

Greg rolled his eyes. "This isn't the fucking ark, Tamara. This is the goddamn Titanic and there aren't any lifeboats. Can you – can you possibly chop those any louder?"

She hesitated, then kept at it. "Don't you think Killian would like Cora? Our friend?"

"Who knows, okay? Like this is the time for it." Greg took a drink, then poured another into a second glass. "Here. One for you, Jones."

He thought about turning it down. He couldn't really see a good reason for that either.

He drank.

The Mendels were having a party that night. People coming by, all their friends, sitting around the table and, like summer camp, sharing what they planned to do with their last three weeks. Visit family, learn that language or how to play the guitar. Tell that relative they'd always hated where they could stuff it. Their drippy friend Cora was sitting next to Killian, trying to possibly be more obvious about hoping to meet someone special. He had nothing to say. Couldn't tell them that Milah and Bae had left and he was going to spend his last precious days of life eating Doritos in his underwear and watching reruns of The Price is Right. He figured he should probably go into work. After all, he couldn't think of anything else.

After dinner was when the main attraction started. The music got cranked up. The entire contents of Greg's liquor cabinet flowed freely. People ground on each other and made out and drank like fish. This should have been his bag. His party trick back in college had been every kind of acrobatic keg stand you could imagine. Should have just waded in there and fucked shit up. Taken some of the hard stuff people were passing around, as Greg was bellowing for someone to put on Radiohead, he wanted to do heroin to Radiohead. Or gone to dance with Cora, who clearly wanted to. Wanted more than that, you know. Or could have –

"Killian? Hey. . . Killian, man!"

Or he could have been Victor Whale, who was so drunk he couldn't walk straight, clutching a sloppy cocktail in one hand, draping an arm around Killian's shoulders as if they were old friends. They were, sort of. Known each other for two years in Alpha Kappa Psi. Killian ended up working on Wall Street and Victor set up a stupidly lucrative medical practice on the Upper East Side, overcharging wealthy and neurotic Manhattanites for their hypochondria. They'd always been the craziest ones, back in the day. Always the hot and popular ones getting away with stuff that would have gotten anyone else expelled, working hard and partying harder, with a girl on every arm and one to spare. Now look at them. A pair of corporate sellouts.

"Dude," Victor said with feeling. "This has been the best. The best. I've been with a different chick every night. None of them care about pregnancy or, or diseases, or anything. You and me, now. . ." He elbowed Killian in the ribs, winking suggestively at Cora. "We should get in there, you know. . . you wanna double-stuff that cookie, see what I'm saying? Want to? Huh?"

Killian disentangled himself. "Yeah, I. . . I. . . no."

"Crazy, man. You know. This end of the world. It's got somethin'-somethin' going for it. I could deal. I could deal."

Yeah, that was Victor.

He probably fucking could.

Literally.

Killian sat in the empty bathtub with the bathroom door shut, listening to the music pounding against it, staring at nothing. Until it opened.

"You hiding in here?" Tamara slipped in and shut it behind her.

"I. . . yeah."

"Oh. . . you don't like Cora?"

He blew out a breath. "I could not possibly give a shit. I am not gonna sit across from someone and hear all their stories, even if she was someone I could be interested in, because I just. . . I'm not sure that the month between my wife leaving me and the end of the world sounds like good timing. Do you?"

Tamara just looked at him and didn't answer. Then she leaned across the tub and kissed him.

"I. . ." Killian turned his head away reflexively, pushing her back. "You're Greg's. . ."

"No, I'm not." Tamara sat back in the chair, staring at the wall. Her voice was very soft and low and flat. "Nobody's anybody's anything anymore. How come Milah gets to run off? How come everybody else gets to do what they want?"

The music kept on pounding through the walls.

He wished he could answer her. Instead he just got up and left.

He walked home and scared people making out in the park.

He drank more of the codeine cough syrup and slept on the floor.

He got up and went to work and dealt with calls from customers all day about why their savings and their bonds were liquidated and why their interest rates were going up and what the fuck was he investing their 401ks in, anyway? They wanted to cash them out. They wanted to go to the Caribbean. Why was gas hitting ten bucks a gallon?

Why were the planes stopping flying? The last commercial flight in the history of mankind had left JFK this morning. Heading to Des Moines. As to why anyone would want to spend the apocalypse in Iowa, he had no idea.

Why was there still traffic every morning and why did the hobos pee on the subway and why did the chicken cross the road and why hadn't they all just been dumb enough to say, "Nice knowing you," and sit down in the backyard with a tall cold one and a Playboy and watch the sky light up like fireworks, like the Fourth of July times a thousand, ten thousand, and just let it go?

If he'd been smarter, he would.

But Killian Jones had never been smart. Clever, cunning, savvy, street-wise, equipped with a ruthless, almost piratical sense as to how to make the most money and the least friends, a talent that had served him well on Wall Street. But not smart.

If he had been smart, he never would have let her go.

Killian Jones and Emma Swan had met when they were both serving detention on the very first day of school – which might have been a record for Bronxville, the sleepy, upper-crust Westchester County dormer town where their paths first crossed. At first glance, no two people could have had less in common. Killian was a handsome and popular junior, captain of the football team, always invited to parties, constantly in trouble, skating through his classes on the strength of his charm and bullshit abilities, because there wasn't a teacher in the place who was actually going to fail him and fuck up his future. Emma had been a dour, silent, withdrawn freshman, just placed with a new foster family in Yonkers, and then due to some screwed-up bureaucratic zoning regulation, forced to attend the neighboring Bronxville High instead. Throwing a kid like that into a sea of trust-fund sharks was, and had been, a recipe for total disaster. She was in detention for punching the biggest offender on the playground. Killian was in detention for purposefully blowing up half the lab during science class. Even his fan club couldn't persuade the principal to overlook that one.

Being who he was, the ladies' man, he couldn't resist the opportunity to wolf-whistle the pretty young blonde. She'd almost flattened him. The foster kid. He heard his classmates talking about it in the corridors like it was something contagious. But he'd been impressed by her, in the way he never had by all the giggly, bubbly, Burberry-clad debutantes that he had his pick of at hot-tub parties and homecoming nights. He got up and complimented her on her form. To judge from the look on her face, no one had complimented her at anything before.

They got to talking. Slowly at first, in fits and starts, catching each other between classes in corridors, or out behind the Dumpsters where they both sneaked to smoke. It emerged then that they understood each other far more than either had expected, or planned for. He told her about his absent father, who'd ditched on the family when he was three, and the way his single mother worked two jobs to give her son the best future possible. She told him about growing up in an orphanage, then entering the foster system, a meal ticket shuttled from placement to placement, after her first family, the Swans, had given her back when she was three. Slowly, their walls and their personas came down. They understood each other.

They started seeing each other. Casually at first, with the understanding that they weren't tied down. Then they started hating it when they saw each other with other people. Then, shocking everybody, Killian Jones and Emma Swan became a thing. She lost her virginity to him the next year, after a Halloween party. They'd decided to do it before he turned eighteen, so he couldn't be charged with anything if the wrong people found out.

It had been as terrible as any first time, on the old futon in his basement, as he'd bought some Yankee Candles to try to make it more romantic. She'd laughed and asked if that was it, miffing him. Eventually they'd tried again, and it went a little better. He still remembered the way she'd gasped in surprise and pleasure, the way they slowly figured out how to please each other, hormonal stupid teenagers without a clue where anything went. Even (especially) him. He remembered the taste of that kiss. He remembered falling asleep in her arms afterwards, and being woken, mortifyingly, by his mother. Ariel Jones was used to her son bringing girls home. She'd just sighed and told them that she hoped they'd used protection.

(He remembered sitting in the hospital holding his mother's hand as her breaths got slower and slower, her body still and silent under the white sheet. How crumpled and frail and small and alien she'd looked, like a mermaid washed up on some strange shore. The cancer had turned her from lively, vivacious middle-aged woman into a wraith in under six months. When the hospital called, he'd taken the train up from NYU and barely made it in time.)

(He remembered telling them that it was what she wanted, to pull the plug.)

(Remembered walking out after it was over and taking the all-night Greyhound, the skeeviest bus ride he'd ever been on in his life, to Boston, where Emma was living. Trying to find herself in her first year of freedom from the system. Not doing a very good job, considering she'd already been arrested twice for petty theft and misdemeanors.)

(Remembered staggering up the walk in the dead of night and knocking on her door, and her opening it in a too-big man's T-shirt, a T-shirt that didn't belong to him, didn't smell like him, and neither of them saying a word but him falling into her arms.)

(He didn't remember anything after that.)

Looking back, he couldn't piece together where it had ended. There wasn't a moment, a flashpoint. Not a particular moment where he'd blown it, Charlie Brown going after the invisible football and landing on his ass. Maybe it was when they'd woken up the next morning, tangled together, and she'd told him bluntly that she wasn't into pity sex, that she was seeing someone else now. That they'd stopped talking for months after he graduated, two years ahead of her, and fell into that exciting college world and forgot about his small-town girlfriend. The thing was, he never thought he had. Sure, he'd embraced all the possibilities of fraternity and university life. But he'd written her emails, tried to see her on weekends, bring her to visit. Until, apparently, he hadn't. Until there was a chasm between them, until they'd never noticed when, until his mother died and he plummeted out of the sky into her life again, and they destroyed each other.

With something else plummeting from the sky now, and everything else it was about to destroy, perhaps that was why he was thinking about her.

How could he have ever let her go?

How could he have been so stupid?

It was after leaving, after a confrontation with the new boyfriend – Neal Cassidy, some shaggy-haired, wifebeater-clad slouch of a loser who was convinced (correctly) that Killian was fucking Emma, that this was all because she was holding it against him that she paid for his rent, that she had a car (an old yellow Bug) and he didn't – that Killian had gotten the train back to New York and not stopped until he settled into some total dive bar in Greenwich Village, until he'd drunk and drunk and picked a fight and gotten arrested himself. Hauled in by the NYPD for peeing in Times Square. Not really one for a good story later. Went back every night. And, two weeks later, met Milah. Nursing her own bad breakup and unfulfilled dreams.

You knew how the story went from there.

It was two weeks now until Matilda was supposed to hit. He wondered why they'd named it something whimsical. Maybe a reference to Australia, where everything could kill you? Or maybe because naming it "Giant Flaming Fuckstick of Death" was just too cruel.

Shops were boarded up. Kooks with frizzy hair sat on street corners in sandwich boards. The End is Here. A lot of airy-fairy New Age cults were collecting members like a supermodel collected diet pills. Everything on the radio channel was televangelists. They were milking this thing for all they could. They sounded ghoulishly delighted. They couldn't wait to tell you that if you hadn't accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, your forthcoming fiery death by asteroid was only the start of your torment. It would be like that, you know. In Hell. Forever.

Eventually Killian turned off the radio. He was fucked any way you cared to cut it.

Now he had the TV on instead, sprawled before it. The newscaster was covering the riots that had broken out across the country, mobs looting and burning and pillaging just for the sheer hell of it, because who cared anymore? They might die, but they weren't going to do it without experiencing the new fifty-four-inch high definition plasma television they'd always coveted from afar. Get pissed on cheap beer and bang like rabbits. There were worse ways to end it, he supposed, but he'd already tried it at Tamara and Greg's, and it wasn't working. He could go downtown and jump off the Empire State Building. Make for a fitting finale. But that would just be stupid.

He thought he heard shouting outside. He frowned and got up.

Peering outside the window, he saw them. Flames and breaking glass and baseball bats crunching cars, just down the street, this very quiet, very respectable middle-class street. The guidos were on the march. This was New Jersey, after all. He'd be shocked if the late-night comedians weren't already making jokes about how it was the apocalypse on a daily basis over here. But it wasn't supposed to be this. Not now. Here.

The end of the world had come to Montclair.

Killian barely escaped, running to his car and peeling out just in front of the tide. He drove all night, until he ran out of gas. The stations didn't have anything left, just diesel. He was sitting in his useless car, banging his head against the steering wheel, until he saw a pile of his old mail sitting on the floor, where it had slid off the seat. Advertisements. Grocery circulars. Credit card offers. A notice from the IRS announcing that the tax deadline had been moved up to thirteen days from now. Apparently the world really was ending.

And something else, on the bottom. A note. A red envelope. Familiar handwriting.

His pulse jacked through the roof. It was to him. A return address in Boston. His hands were shaking as he slit it and pulled out the single, folded sheet of paper inside.

He scanned it. It didn't make sense at first, the words competing to jumble and throw themselves against his eyes. She was still in Boston. Working as a bail bondsman. Neal wasn't in the picture anymore. It wasn't clear if they had been married and gotten divorced, or if he'd just peaced out and hit the road one day. There was a son. Henry. Ten years old. All that. Blah blah.

All he saw was what she'd written at the bottom.

I suppose now that it's all over, I can tell you this.

Killian, you were the love of my life.

Emma.

He sat back in the seat as if someone had just fired a rocket-propelled grenade through his chest. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. He crumpled and uncrumpled the paper over and over, as if he'd wring the words out of it, as if he'd bring them back to the start. As if this time, there'd be enough. Enough time.

What the hell kind of thing was that to tell a guy right before Armageddon?

What the hell kind of life had he had, away from her?

He sat still an instant longer. Then he threw open the door, jumped out, and ran toward the empty highway, screaming and waving his hands at the yellow pickup coming by, the only car on the road for miles.

The driver told him he could take him as far as Hartford.

Killian said it was fine. It was fine. Totally fine.

In fact, he would have walked.

The driver's name was Jefferson. He wanted to know where Killian was going on pilgrimage. Apparently everyone was doing one. He himself had lived alone, hardscrabble quiet life in the country, before he'd woken up with pain that wouldn't go away, gone to the doctor who diagnosed terminal cancer and gave him six months to live. Then he turned on the television and it said three weeks. Hell of a situation. Like the world was trying to tell them all something.

In Killian's opinion, it was perfectly bloody obvious what it was. Time had always been winding down, from the day the universe began. There wasn't a place where it stopped. There wasn't a Never Never Land. Or, now that he thought of it, maybe there was.

After all, there were a whole lot of children who were never going to grow up.

Jefferson had just about shared his entire life story, and his father's, and his grandfather's, when he finally pulled the truck over, cut the ignition, and turned to Killian. "All right," he said. "I knew it, from the detached eyes, the cold stare. I'm ready. What's it going to be?"

Killian stared at him. "What?"

"Bullet in the brain? Or the back?"

"What?"

"I thought we were going to do it in that field over there. Pretty place to go. I'm ready. But someone might come by, you know. Damn fool policeman pulled me over the other night for speeding and wouldn't let me off. Had to spend the night in jail. Heard of such a thing? Really."

"I don't," Killian managed. "I don't think I am – who you think I am."

Jefferson stared at him. Stared at him, as the silence got longer and louder and longer, until he could hear it echoing, pulsing –

and then the other man began to laugh.

"Thank God!" he shouted. "Thank God! I was afraid of that!"

"Afraid of what?"

"Afraid that I could fight you off." He kept laughing. "You see, when a man – "

Then there was a bang – a hole blown in the windshield.

A black car squealing off down the road, while Killian sat frozen, staring at Jefferson, his head slumped, blood bubbling from the bullet hole in his neck. And then, he understood. He'd seen posters advertising this service, alongside the ads for cheap weed and who wanted to fuck a virgin. You could hire a hitman – for yourself. Go out the way you always wanted to go. For an extra fee they'd do something really spectacular, like take you up in a biplane and throw you out at ten thousand feet, sans parachute. Hire the high-priced call girl and literally drown yourself in Cristal. Make it rain the red rain. Why sit around waiting for a big old space rock to send you out? That was common, that was the way everyone had to die, whether they liked it or not. If you wanted to be part of the 27 Club, this was your last chance. If you wanted to get mauled by an exotic tiger while dressed in your girlfriend's lingerie, chop chop, compadre. Maybe Jefferson had had bigger dreams for his own end, dying for the woman he loved or something, but had only been able to afford this. One lousy bullet through the windshield on a back road in New England. The common man was screwed over until the end.

You had to admire it, though. Neither the cancer or the asteroid was going to get him. Jefferson might be mad as a hatter, but he had a certain panache. He'd still chosen the way he went out. You had to give him that. That much at least. Some people wanted to wait until the very end, hanging onto every drop of life they could, every bit of food and sex and booze and drugs. Others just wanted to give the end the finger and handle it for themselves.

Killian thought of what Tamara had said. How come everybody else gets to do what they want?

How come, indeed.

Killian buried Jefferson himself, in the woods at the roadside, because he still needed the truck and didn't want to have a corpse riding shotgun. Even in the End Times, that would probably be a felony. Not to mention the smell.

He'd just finished, throwing on the last shovelful, when he realized he didn't have the keys.

With a heavy sigh, he started to dig again.

Killian stole some gas for the truck from cars parked at Friendsy's, the restaurant where everyone was your friend. He was hungry, so he had no choice but to head inside and get something to eat. It looked like a Roman orgy redone in neon, the entire waitstaff grinding up and laughing and wanting to hug him, until he wondered what kind of drug they were on, as he ate a burger with a donut bun and it tasted exactly like what you'd think a burger with a donut bun would taste like. Found himself relaxing despite himself, laughing, as all the girls and some of the guys tried to kiss him. They were blissed out of their minds. He wondered if they'd even notice the end. Likely just think it was the acid trip. Didn't sound bad, per se, but it was creepy. They were probably in one of those cults. He finished the donut burger and got out of there.

He finally made it to Boston past midnight, trolling every street looking for the address that Emma had written on her envelope. Got it wrong twice, but neither time did the people whose doors he knocked on seem to mind. They invited him to come in and stay a while, have a drink, talk. An old lady who told him it had been a long time since she'd had some company, long time. Since her husband died. That beautiful man who raised the flag at Iwo Jima and in thanks, the government had paid him nineteen dollars a month, as he crawled on his hands and knees looking for his prosthetic eye. She figured the government was behind the asteroid.

He almost stayed. He was tempted. Everybody was seeking a friend for the end of the world. Nobody wanted to die alone, after all. And that, that fear that after losing Emma there'd never be anyone else, was part of the reason he'd married Milah.

He'd had a long head start at fucking up his own life.

It was near dawn by the time he walked up to the third door and knocked on it. This time it had to be it. He was sure of it. She'd moved since the last time he'd been here, right after his mother died. A little bungalow, shabby but well-kept. He folded his hands behind his back like a schoolboy, waiting. Heart hammering in his throat.

He heard a deadbolt shoot back. Heard the door unlatch. It didn't open. For the longest time it didn't open. And then it did.

Then Emma was standing there, in the flesh, after all the years he'd dreamed about her. Emma Swan, the tough girl who never cried. . . crying.

"Killian," she said, half a prayer, and flung herself into his arms.

She was crying because there weren't any more planes. Because that flight to Des Moines had been the end. Because two weeks ago, she'd sent her son Henry down to Florida to visit his father – who lived in Tallahassee now – to comply with the complicated custody agreement they'd hammered out. He consoled her on the divorce, said he understood. She laughed bitterly and told him that she and Neal had never actually been married. "Marriages and milk cartons. They both have an expiration date."

Things had just fallen apart. The center didn't hold. All their metaphors were starting to become real.

No more flights. Henry couldn't return from Florida before the end of the world. She was never going to see him again. He was going to die down there with Neal. She couldn't stop thinking about it. She couldn't drive down there. No more gas for the Bug. She just didn't want Henry to suffer. She wanted to lie on the couch with him and hold him and maybe tell him a story or something. He'd always had a thing for fairytales. Once upon a time. It would have been a way to make him forget about it. She kept wondering if he even knew. If Neal had told him. Phone service was going in and out. She hadn't been able to get in touch.

"It's the end of the world," she said bitterly, "and I'm still fifteen minutes late."

Killian didn't know what to say. To tell her that they'd both lost their children, right before it went to (again, entirely non-proverbial) hell in a handbasket. But he didn't want to bring up those ghosts here, now, again. He was stunned by the sight of her, the smell, the touch. The way the company still felt so familiar, the silence so easy, no need to fill it with words. He'd meant to confess to her, to explain to her, to beg for her forgiveness, but none of it seemed to be necessary. As they sat on the couch, drinking and listening to her music, not saying a word.

I tried a-beggin' on the cabin floor
But the churches have run out of candles
Turn one day in the cathedral
I finally lit you a candle
And all along the vaulted halls
The virgins did smile from their mantles

It's always just that little bit more
That doesn't get you what you're looking for
But gets you where you need to go
But the churches have run out of candles.

"I always thought this was actually a song about the end of the world," Emma said at last, breaking the silence. "You know. Everything's out of place, out of order, running out. The churches are out of candles, the bankers out of loaners, the kitchens out of food. It's always just that little bit more, that doesn't get you what you're looking for. It's true, isn't it? And now we're just going to bite it and that's it. I always thought I was supposed to do something more with my life. Like after years and years of thinking I was total shit, that I'd fucked everything up, maybe I was going to get somewhere. Instead this. I just want to punch back some way, to say that this was who I am. That I lived, that I had consequences. Instead I get some giant – "

Killian leaned over the couch and kissed her.

She froze. He could feel her wanting to push back. Wanting to scream at him for all the years apart, all the time they'd wasted, all the days and nights they'd been apart, the mornings they hadn't woken up together, the space and darkness and distance. She wanted to throw her walls up, to rub it in his face, but tonight, she couldn't think of a good God damn reason why.

They slid off the couch to the floor together. Her mouth tasted like it had that first time, but spicy with rum, salty with tears. Her body was still as warm and familiar as always, as she was cursing in his ear and pulling him hard against her, her arms tangled around his neck, his mouth finding hers. I don't want pity sex. What she'd said the last time. He was afraid of offending her, as tough and stubborn and solitary as she'd always been, the way he'd come to her, bleeding all over the place with need. The things she could have said to him. At least you knew your mother. And his father. Liam Jones hadn't gone all that far. He still lived in Staten Island. Wrote child-support checks every month until his only son was eighteen. Killian just had had nothing to say to him for twenty-five years.

Emma had never known her parents. Never would. Unless in the great waystation after this life, the waiting room to the hereafter, they'd be looking for her too.

She didn't say a word, and neither did he. As he pushed her shirt up over her head, unclasped her bra, laid her out, as her deft cool fingers undid his jeans, as he came to her, into her. As she shoved back at him as if they both wanted to break, as he found that old rhythm and began to move, as she thrust her hips back at him, her fingernails clawing tracks into his shoulder, as he couldn't believe he'd spent so long anywhere else than here. He was kissing her, kissing her because he couldn't stop and never wanted to, thrusting, as she hiked up a knee and wrapped a leg around him, as they fucked like the stupid teenagers they'd always been, the teenagers too dumb to know they weren't supposed to end up together, that they couldn't love so hard and fall so far that they might not even remember how to get up in the morning or how to write their names, that the stars were literally falling. Like no matter what, it wasn't too late after all.

And yet, for once in his miserable life, he had to do the right thing. The same thing as last time, actually. Except the last time, it had been the wrong thing to do. This time, it was the only thing.

He had to let her go.

"Emma," he whispered, later, when they were lying on the floor together, half-dressed, her hair spread out on his chest. "Emma, I think I can get you to a plane."

They left Boston the next morning.

They'd put together enough gas for the drive back, down the deserted interstate; it had in fact taken the apocalypse for I-95 to be a quick trip. Emma was painfully eager, kept asking him where he'd find a plane, she'd thought they were all grounded. He didn't answer. But if it was the last thing he did (which it might be) he'd get her to Tallahassee and Henry. So she could die lying on the couch with him, telling him a story. So he didn't have to be scared. Killian wasn't going to get the chance to make it right with Bae. If either of them was going to quit being a fuckup before the bell, it should be her. It always had been her.

There was something in the sky alongside the sun now, even brighter, so the afternoon light was dazzling. They drove down the empty parkway, as the trees were turning green, new leaves coming out. He exited the expressway, and headed down the access road to the beach.

There were a whole bunch of people there, dressed like hippies; in fact Killian nearly ran them over when they popped out unexpectedly from behind a sand dune. And they all looked happy. Not in the manic way, the orgiastic, drug-fueled fervor of Friendsy's or Greg and Tamara's apocalypse party. It was like they were a big family just meeting up again after years away, out for fun on the beach, sharing the contents of each other's coolers and running through the spray and laughing. Playing with each other's kids. And in their own time, sometimes alone or sometimes together, holding hands, walking down to the sea where a preacher in flowing white robes would baptize them. The people who came up out of the water looked new.

Killian and Emma went down at the end of the line, closed their eyes, listened to the preacher's words, went under together. Came up as well, breathless, splashing each other. And then leaned in and clutched hold of each other and kissed as if they were still drowning after all.

It was only as the sun was starting to go down, but the sky still remained luminously bright, that he gave her a hand and took a deep breath.

"Come on, lass," he said, calling her by his old pet name for her. "Time to go."

He'd always known where the house was. He just had never gone there. Shaded street on Staten Island. Apparently the rioters hadn't bothered. It was Staten Island, after all.

They pulled up and got out.

Knocked.

"Who's there?" the voice called.

"Hey. Liam. It's . . . it's Killian."

A pause so long he thought the door wouldn't open. Until it did.

It was like staring at his future self, or at least the future self he imagined he would have had, life and large killer asteroids notwithstanding. Tall and strong and still handsome, dark hair gone silver, looking every bit of the Navy officer he had been, a man who would do his duty to his country but somehow couldn't be fucking bothered to do it for his wife and son. Liam Jones had just quit on that, just quit. Moved out. Sent birthday and Christmas presents, like that was being a father. Hadn't come when his ex-wife was dying in the hospital of cancer. Hadn't come when Killian graduated from NYU. Showed up two hours late to the reception that he and Milah had belatedly thrown on their return from Vegas, stayed long enough only to get drunk and tell Killian that he'd regret marrying that woman. There'd been times, more than Killian could count, when he wished devoutly that his dad would just cooperate and kick the bucket. Then he'd be actually gone, instead of a ghost on the margins of his life, vanishing whenever you tried to get a good look at him. Then maybe he could make his peace with his father's memory.

And now, funnily enough, his dad was going to die. Just like the rest of them.

"Hey." His voice was flat, strange-sounding. "Liam, Emma. Emma, Liam."

"Hi," they said in unison.

Emma excused herself awkwardly to find a restroom.

"She your girlfriend?" Liam asked.

Killian didn't know how to answer it. Finally, he shook his head.

"She should be."

"Thanks, Dad. You know. Thanks."

"I just. . . you know, with everything, your mother didn't make it easy – "

"Don't you dare," Killian snarled. "Don't you dare say a word about Mom."

"I. . . I'm just trying to say sorry."

"Then how about you say it?"

Silence, that kind of silence you only had on early-summer evenings, when the light was green and gold and the cicadas shirring in the trees, the long perfect evening where you'd sit on the porch swing and drink lemonade and look out over the backyard, turn on the sprinklers. He and Emma had talked a bit about things they'd miss. Things they wouldn't. Like how they hoped there was a special place in hell for the pushy cellphone salesmen in malls. The customers in Starbucks who screamed at the barista because their triple venti soy latte had regular vanilla in it instead of sugar-free. The douchebags who sped up when you were trying to change lanes or merge on a highway and then tailgated you like it was your fault. Humanity's track record had gotten pretty shitty. Maybe it was time for the new Flood.

This isn't the fucking ark, Greg said in his head.

Except maybe it was.

Liam Jones let out a slow breath. "I'm sorry," he said. "Killian. I'm so sorry. More than you could believe, son. I wish. . . I wish there was a way to go back. A way to redo. But – "

"It doesn't matter," Killian interrupted. And almost felt himself smile, shaking his head. "You know. It really doesn't matter now."

They stayed for dinner.

Liam cooked a feast. They ate and drank wine together and talked. Killian and Liam sat on the porch swing as twilight fell, and Liam played the old harmonica he'd given his son once, the last keepsake Killian had of him. Emma watched them through the window, where she'd volunteered to clear up. Watched them throw a football back and forth. She was tired, so tired, she hadn't slept in what felt like days. Just a nap. Just close her eyes. Just a short while.

They'd gotten enough cell service on the drive down for her to call Henry, in Tallahassee, and tell him that she was trying to find a way to come in time. It had almost undone her, just to talk to him and hear his voice. He wasn't all that scared. He didn't really think it was going to kill everyone, and if it did. . . well, things happened that way, you know? He insisted that it wasn't going to be so bad. Neal had taken him to Disney World, and he'd had all the ice cream and cotton candy he wanted, visited all the fairytale characters. Her kid, the eternal optimist.

Emma lay down on the couch. She didn't want to interrupt Killian and his father.

Just a nap, she told herself.

Just a wink.

Later that night, Killian Jones scooped up the sleeping Emma, and carried her across the backyard. To the two-seater Cessna idling noisily on the home-built landing strip, with his father behind the controls. He opened the door and laid her in the jump. Couldn't stand to let her go, knowing more than ever that he had to, running a soft strand of pale blonde hair between his fingers, drinking her up with his eyes, imprinting the memory of her. "Emma," he whispered. "You were the love of my life."

She stirred, but didn't wake. He stepped back and shut the door. Shared one last look with his father. Then the headset-wearing Liam Jones gave the thumbs up, and began to taxi. The tiny plane bumped and whirred away. Ginned up a good head of speed, propeller whirling. Raced faster and faster and faster, and then soared up into the sky, taillights glowing among the stars. Taking Emma home, where she belonged. To her son.

It sounded like a soft and gentle click when your heart broke in half.

It was the world's longest drive home to Montclair.

His street was empty when Killian pulled up. Windows broken in the houses, light slanting eerily through them, deserted. The rioters were gone. The end had moved on.

He parked and went inside.

He turned on the television. Just in time to catch the broadcast.

The asteroid was supposed to arrive a week early. Instead of seven days remaining before the end, they had sixteen hours. The government, surely, had known about it. Kept it quiet in hopes of dampening further mass panic, perhaps. It didn't matter. The broadcaster said that it had been a pleasure bringing them the news, these last twenty-seven years. He was going to go home now, and sit across the table from his wife, and talk about their sons. Hold hands, pour a drink. He wished them the same. He hoped they had someone to be with. He hoped they weren't alone.

Good night, and God bless.

Killian put on a record, and lay down on the floor.

He lay there, staring at the ceiling. Tried to relax. Could only draw those short, jerking breaths, the kind where your chest hurt too much to stand it, when there was a knot the size of Antarctica between your ribs, where you could barely even open your mouth, couldn't get enough. Not enough air, not enough time, not enough, not enough. Wondered if Emma was in Tallahassee yet, if she'd gotten there. If she was with Henry now.

Time had no idea it was running out for good. It kept on slipping past. Into the wee hours of the night, and then the early morning. Killian kept lying there until the music stopped. Until the lights went dark. The power was out. He could only hear the breeze, and his breathing.

And the door opening. And somebody in his kitchen.

Milah. He was sure of it, it had to be. Milah. Bae. Both or either. They'd have to come back as well, now. He jumped up, fumbling his way across the dark living room. Crossing it, boards creaking under his feet, until –

No.

No.

She was standing there, disheveled, but real. Real as anything.

Emma. Like all the times he'd dreamed of her. Must still be dreaming of her.

"I woke up," she whispered. "I woke up and made him turn around. And then I got someone to give me a ride here. I just. . . Killian. . . I didn't. . . I didn't want to live without you any longer. However short it was. I – "

She tried to keep explaining. To say something else. To justify, to defend. He only crossed the room and pulled her into his arms and kissed her like the world was ending.

It was getting lighter and lighter outside now, but it wasn't from the sun.

Killian and Emma lay tucked into bed, gazing into each other's eyes, his hand on her cheek, her fingers closed around his. She was trembling.

"I don't want to fall asleep," she whispered. "Please. Don't let me fall asleep."

"I promise," he told her, stroking her cheek. "It's all right. I just want to be with you."

"And I want to be with you." She shuddered a breath. "What do we do now?"

"I just want to lie here with you. Just want to talk."

"About what?"

"I don't even know." He laughed helplessly. "I kept thinking we'd have so much more to say to each other, so much to catch up on. I can only help thinking that I wish I'd never let you go, Emma. That this isn't a way to do it. That there never could have been enough time."

Outside, there was an explosion. Deep and echoing and rolling.

"Oh God," Emma whispered.

"No. It's all right." He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her into him. "I am madly in love with you, Emma. You are my favorite, favorite thing. Look at me. Look at me. It'll be easy. It won't even hurt. I promise. Quick and easy. And then you and I. . . we'll fly, Emma. We'll fly."

She shuddered a breath. Soft as kisses against his face. This woman, this tough formidable beautiful shattered woman, who'd done it alone longer than anyone he'd ever known. He should have been at her side. He should have been with her. But as he'd said to his father, it didn't matter now. Nothing did. Because he was here. They were together.

"I wish Henry was yours," she whispered. "I wish we were a family."

He held her tighter. Another, second, louder, thundering explosion. Shaking the walls, the floors, the house, the very foundation of the world.

"I'm scared," Emma gasped.

He kissed her hair. "Me too, lass. The sky. . . well, I suppose the sky really is falling."

She sobbed a laugh. "Hold your breath and count to ten."

The light was growing brighter and brighter now. Incandescent.

"I just thought," she whispered. "I just thought we'd save each other."

"We did." Killian held her harder. "We did."

Everything was brightness now.

Everything was her.

They were still holding onto each other. Harder and harder. As the shocks began to rattle and roar, as the light turned blinding, as the door opened, and somewhere beyond this or any world, as they were consumed, as it grew and spread and spread and climbed, as it howled and screamed, as the solar wind swept through, as it kept on glowing and snarling and echoing, echoing, echoing, as it ended, as it all tumbled down, as the daylight came, as they had to go –

He saw it then, with her. Hand in hand as they fell into the inferno, like Icarus from the sun.

They were there together. Now and forever.

Home.