Leave Francesca

You've decided. If you stayed by her side, you would just keep hurting her. She didn't deserve to suffer like that.

When Fran became more stable, you carried her in your arms and went to your car. Nathan was still sitting beside Valerie, sobbing. After putting Fran in the back seat, you went back to the foyer.

"Dr. Jones... How are you doing?" You gently patted him on the shoulder.

"She asked me to have dinner with her. That was supposed to be our first proper date in 18 years. Was that your idea? Thank you, James. It means a lot." Nathan wiped his tears and got up before he turned to you. Even after knowing that the dinner they had promised each other would never come to pass, he gave you a bitter smile.

"What are you going to do now?" You asked. Looking at the bloody mess around you, you didn't know what to do.

"What happened here must not be known. I will burn this place down and bury all the secrets. People will be curious, some of them will ask questions, but none of them will remember for long." He looked at Valerie's corpse and sighed.

"I'll help you."

You and Nathan set the whole mansion on fire, with all the dead inside.

"So, I have a feeling that you're not going to stay, right? You're going to leave her?" Nathan sighed helplessly.

"Fran deserves a better life, a better person. And I don't want to hurt her." You gave him a faint smile.

"I'm not going to judge you. Here. It's all that I have. They were enough to hold your infection at bay for about... half a year." Nathan handed you his bag, which was full of syringes of monkshood solution, "Good luck, Mr. Wilson."

"Thanks. Goodbye, Dr. Jones." You grabbed the bag and shook hands with him before you left.

You went back to town and returned to the hotel room. You carried Fran into the bathroom, gently cleaned her up, bandaged her wounds, changed her into a clean set of clothes, and finally placed her carefully onto the bed. By the time it was all done, you were utterly spent.

You held her hand gently one last time before you began to write a letter. You tried to explain everything in it, but even as you wrote those words, you could feel the urge to devour her growing stronger, so you had to keep it brief. When you were done, you folded the letter into an envelope, wrote her name across it, and laid it gently on the bedside table.

You quietly gathered your stuff and left the hotel when it was still dark. You drove to the bus stop outside the town's east gate, parked the car, and sat down quietly on the bench. You still remembered the first time you had come to this place. You had thought it was just an ordinary case. Back then, you would never have believed that you would get involved in something this terrible.

It was 5:00 in the morning. The first long-distance bus didn't leave until seven, so you still had plenty of time. But with all this time, you didn't know what to do. So you just sat there and stared at the ground quietly.

"You're leaving." A familiar female voice came from your left.

You looked to your left curiously. It was May. She was sitting next to you, wearing her black dress and fleece scarf as usual, and you hadn't even noticed when she had been there. Funny, you didn't seem to be afraid of her after what you had been through.

"I thought you had left the town." You returned your gaze to the ground and said casually, like you were talking to a friend.

"I heard from Barry that the police station had been destroyed, so I came back to check out what was going on." She wasn't looking at you either, but at the mountains in the distance.

You wanted to ask her, if she cared about the town or the people that much, why didn't she just stay here and join the fight? She could've made a difference. But you didn't, because it was pointless at this moment.

"So, are you going to come back and live in the town, now that the werewolves are all gone?" You raised your head, took a deep breath, and looked at the sky.

"No." She gave you a simple answer, and nothing more.

"You're not here to kill me, are you?" You actually laughed. You remembered her talking about wanting to kill you because you were incurable.

"No, as long as you stay away from George and Grace."

"So why are you here, exactly?" You asked.

"To talk to someone who is alone and lonely, it seems. Sunrise was still about an hour away. We have time." She said calmly after she checked the clock, "You know what, Mr. Wilson? When I don't want to kill you, I envy you."

"For what?" You frowned and looked at her.

"For you having all those choices." She looked into your eyes with a faint smile, "You can decide how you live your life. You can decide to stay with who you love, or leave who you don't want to hurt. I envy your freedom."

"Seriously?" You said in disbelief, "You're stronger than any of us. You could compel humans just by staring into their eyes. You are literally free to do everything you like."

"Freedom comes easily to you, Mr. Wilson. But to me, it is rare and precious." She said quietly, "I didn't choose to become a vampire. And after my master turned me, he had me under his control, done terrible things, for decades until he was killed. Back then, I didn't have choices like you do. Even after he's gone, I'm not free."

"What do you mean?"

"If I have a wedding with George in the church, I will explode. If I read books with George in the sun, I will turn into a pile of ashes. If I go with George and visit his friends in their homes without an invitation, I will feel the desire to fuck them. If I don't feed on George every now and then, I will go crazy." She sighed, "It's weird that you call that ‘free'."

"Okay... I don't know the part where you need invitations, but I kind of understand what you're talking about. You must love George so deeply that you're willing to overcome those just to be with him." You sighed, "And I love Fran so deeply that I have to stay away from her, to keep her from harm."

"Yeah. Sometimes we just do that."

The two of you went silent after that and just looked at the beautiful sky together. When the first glow of dawn appeared, May just stood up, and you followed. She reached out her hand, and you just shook hands with her properly, like friends, this time.

"Goodbye, James. Should we ever meet again, I hope that by then you are still human." She turned around and headed south toward the woods.

"Goodbye, May." You gave no answer to what she had hoped for. You merely bade her a soft farewell and watched her vanish into the woods.