Epilogues

[dznz]

After the war, the 42nd Regiment of Foot were dispatched to China to assist with the rebuild there. For a while, Stuart Mackenzie appeared to be a restored and revitalised member of the Watch.

Within a year, though, it became apparent that all was not well. His comrades would hear him, turning in the night, crying out, gripped by nightmares. He would freeze up at critical moments, particularly near combat, locked in helpless panic. Although he was still liked well enough, his fellow soldiers learned not to rely on him, not to entrust to him solely any important tasks.

The shame of his cowardice and failures ate at him. He became moody and unreliable. He would be taken by sudden rages, or fall into sullen silences.

He started drinking again.

Eventually, the Watch had no choice but to court-martial him and have him discharged. Mackenzie returned to Scotland. Without pension or veteran benefits, he was forced to take work in a factory in Glascow. That held, for a couple of years, but eventually the drinking took its toll and he disappeared. He became one more lost veteran of that long war, drunk on cheap liquor, stumbling through the streets, sleeping in Glascow’s poorhouses and under its grimy bridges.

His death passed anonymously and unremarked, one more casualty in the tide.

Stuart Mackenzie survived many things. He survived a 35-year war. He survived tours with the Black Watch through India, Africa, France and more. He survived Hell, and five bitter years on the Isle of Skye. He did not survive the peace.

There is a moment that remains: the night the war was won. Friends and allies are gathered in Flint’s Taverna, drinking the last of the Talisker whiskey, singing songs, telling stories and laughing. The desperate struggles of the years behind have yielded like clouds after the storm, and every person present knows themselves to be bold and brave and good, and to be among friends. For the first time in years there is the promise of a future. In that moment, Stuart Mackenzie is home.

[anon19187111]

After recovering from his numerous wounds and playing an ongoing game of seeing how much booze he could sneak when Moss wasn’t watching, Ford departed Hanover and returned to the forest, never to be seen or heard from again. Both Moss and Dray claimed to have talked to him sometimes though during visits into the forest, and every so often packets of herbs would appear in the new infirmary or barrels of extremely potent cider found on the doorstep of Flint’s Taverna.
Some say he died not long after leaving Hanover, falling blind drunk from a tree. Others say he is still out there, waiting for when he is needed once more, because it is inevitable that one day people will be big eejits again and need his help sorting out the mess.

[sophmelc]

Vera looks down the slight hill towards a small cluster of low buildings. Even from here the slight jingle of coin scarves can be heard, where they hang near the main gate. It’s summer, and a warm one at that. Turning her back on her home she looks North and slightly to the West, towards Skye. Most people think of it as the place where everything ended. But for Vera, it was where it all began.

She thinks back on the last 10 years. Of the time, after the Cleansing, when she came home. To the place she’d known as a child, and started to turn it into the home she’d have as an adult. Of going to China, to India and throughout Europe, helping to rebuild. Training a new generation of Blackwatch medics, helping to build schools and hospitals. Of the friends lost along the way. Stewart’s disappearance still sat heavily with her. She always would wish that there was more that she could have done.

She returned to Skye from time to time, sometimes on her own and other times with the Watch. It filled her with joy to watch that little refugee camp turn into a village.

Over the course of the 10 years Ivy’s Distillery grew. The first batches were considered to be a fine drop, considering their young age. Today though, today was the day she had been waiting for. It had taken 10 years, but the first of the Special Reserve was to be broached today. Vera turned back to the buildings and smiled. A familiar figure in bright Indian silks and long black hair was walking through the gate.

Vera runs towards her calling out and waving, “Kali! Welcome back!” The other woman stops and turns, waving back. She’s slightly out of breath by the time she gets there, though whether it’s from exertion or excitement she couldn’t say.

“You made it just in time. They’re opening the cask soon. I wanted you to be here, to try it with me.” Not giving Kali time to respond Vera grabs her hand and starts leading her towards the main distillery.

They chat on the short walk, about Kali’s travels and what she’s been doing since they last saw each other. Vera fills her in on the changes at the distillery and the lectures she’s been giving back in Glasgow. They exchange news about mutual friends.

Vera leads her into the dark room where the casks are stored. They walk passed rows of newer barrels and the smell of wood and whiskey surrounds them. There is a murmur of voices up ahead, where the head distiller is waiting. He nods at them both with a soft, “Ma’am” as they join him.

“Well Fergus. Will you broach the cask?” Vera says.

“Aye ma’am, that I will.” He takes up the mallet and knocks sharply on each side of the cork bung. Prying it loose the small group is greeted with a rich smell. He takes a long dipper and draws up a large measure. With care he empties it into two small glasses and hands one to each of the women.

Vera takes hers and has a long sniff. She smells peat and spice. She takes a sip. The initial smells evolve into a tang of iron and a slight sharpness of ivy, before mellowing into a satisfying warmth.

She turns to Kali, smiles, and clinks her glass. “The Saskia Special Reserve. Here is to where it all began.”

[Hannah]

As the Vrill attacked Hanover camp, Mrs Martha McCraigh carried the blind Lady Athena Kane to her airship at a run. They arrived at the airship tower as fire ripped through the adjoining vessels, and were hurried on board so the airship could take off. Martha could hear the sound of battle, and wondered how these crazy humans could think could win against teleporting Vrill whose power seemed undiminished from the previous evening. There was nothing at Hanover for her anymore. So she left with the homunculi.

She made contact with her maker, Dr Carpenter to ask for some minor adjustments to her protocols and to inquire if there were any more directives. She helped Dr Carpenter right the reputation of The Society, which had been battered with the outing of her rival Professor as a liar and thief of ideas and discoveries.

She received some new protocols about emotions and how to make friends, taking onboard the advice of her sister Jane. She returned to the Ashdown family manor to decommission the Demon Repelling Device, and to help Lord Daniel Ashdown with some technical improvements to the manor. This place she had lived so many years of her life in was the closest she had to call a home, yet the term never quite sat comfortably with her. There was no real home for her.

Martha was only content when she was busy, helping to construct things. Once Ashdown was up and running again she visited Jane in Iceland, helping with the construction efforts there. She worked more with Dr Carpenter and helped with the terra-forming machines. She seemed more human like, but never quite settled with any one person or group, wandering around where ever help was needed.

Martha also helped the Homuculi with setting up their new city, and liked to think of herself as the link between the homunculi and the automata, as they both watched the humans re-build the world. They predicted the day when the humans would turn against the non-humans again, and in the following centuries until that happened, that made preparations for such an event.

[Dagr]

#023/Q-1/265F returned to India and was acknowledged for his efforts in ending the war. His further contributions to attaining and upholding peace and safety for all residents of the Citadels spanned decades and saw him eventually appointed Lord Protector of the People, a symbolic title, by Lady Athena Kain and Queen Beatrice I. He founded an international police force and is still heading it successfully today.

Tezcatlipoca spent the next fifty years prancing around the central american rainforest as a giant jaguar. He enjoyed it immensely, and has since created extensive rainforests in Vrilspace for the same purposes.

Moloch would never be a stranger to his remaining three “cultists”, but after their initial visit to India he told them there were some things he needed to do alone before he could properly join this new world. What these things were is never really clear to the humans he knows but at least one of them (based on sightings) seems to have involved him destroying the remains of a large temple complex in the middle east, paying particular destructive attention to a bronze anthropomorphic bull statue and to sealed underground pits that when opened released a large amount of ash onto the winds.

Kali assures him that the whisky her distillery makes is supposed to taste like that, he certainly can’t disagree with the name. He’ll never really quite get used to having a great-many-times niece equivalent.
Sameera is excellent company for visiting each of the remaining data-troves and archives on earth and checking none of his kind remain trapped as their guardians. She and Astaroth started the process of setting all his people free, well, started a large part of it, it feels right that she’s also there to see through its completion.
Moss and Leo seem to have more cats every time he visits Hanover. Something about a cat medical school? Briar’s growing up strong, bit short for her age but strong of life force. The first one after many he couldn’t save. It’s not atonement, those many weren’t his fault, but it’s a good that matters particularly to him.

He visited Victoria frequently after the war ended, accompanying her home and comforting his sister as best he could after her abdication and faked death from old age. He couldn’t think of any good suggestions for a new name. He declined to stop using his own litany of them, he’d been all of those figures, after all, and it seemed like cheating to refuse to live with the deeds and words that went with them.

After a while, a lot of them get older, as humans do. Their grandchildren don’t really know him, just another black-clad figure from their grandparents’ past, a character in countless stories. That’s alright, they’re good kids so far as he can tell, and he’s not short of company when he wants it and sometimes when he doesn’t. Jane can find him nearly anywhere he goes, he suspects she’s got a scanner calibrated to his essence pattern somewhere in her head. Her poetry does improve with time but he always likes the terrible haiku the best and suspects she still writes them bad deliberately just for him.
They remind him.

There is one particular new friendship that few quite understand, with a Lazarus Unit. She was one of the last ever made at the Raasay station before it was destroyed. She has a strong affinity for atlantean technology and ends up assigned to help with Lewy’s decommissioning program for the dangerous devices. Moloch encourages her to try and salvage the history and the good while she decommissions the bad. Condemning it all as evil or a product thereof would be a tragic waste, “I had a friend once who proved that to me.” She’s worked out he’s probably talking about the human she once was (wasn’t hard, her death vision was one of his memories of that human), but he’s always treated her like a person of her own. Maybe she’ll get the full story out of him one day, she does have all the time in the world.

He particularly likes visiting museums about the war and how it ended. The tours they give schoolchildren are pretty heavily sanitised and simplified for easy digestion and regurgitation in history exams. This has the unfortunate effect of being boring as fuck, which won’t even remotely do, those people should be remembered properly. The tourguides and teachers recognise him on sight nowadays as he approaches the groups and sigh, resigning themselves to the letters from parents they’ll get tomorrow about the kids being exposed to age-inappropriate content.
“Ah, the Hanover exhibit, that brings back some memories. Oh the stories I could tell about that lot… Well, there’s a bit of sex and violence so it probably wouldn’t be appropriate for you guys… Well, if you really want to hear about it, I guess I could tell you about Agnes Fletcher, she was one of the tamer people present there toward the end of the war…”

and let’s not even get into the inaccuracies…
"…Hang on, is that meant to be me? That looks nothing like the human guise I was wearing at the time! And you’ve omitted Jane’s organic covering and tidied up her hat, the pink isn’t nearly fluorescent enough. I can get you a better reference for the diorama if you want… Seriously, though, kids, Jane Flowers has NEVER had any sense of how colours interact in attire…"