Go Rest High On That Mountain

***

When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home. 

Tecumseh

***

Javy's Best Man Speech (given at the adults-only reception the night before because Celia saw it beforehand and realized it would not go over well with all the kids at the actual ceremony) goes like this:

"You fucking fuckers. You two have been the biggest pains in my ass for twenty goddamn years now. I should have known from the moment you two saw each other when you tried so damn hard to make it look like you were looking at other people, that I was never going to get a good night's sleep again. I have put up with so much shit, so many sleepless nights, I think I became an alcoholic there for a minute. It's been a decade, and the two of you are still as locked on to one another as you were in the beginning. Thank god you guys finally worked it out, and I can stop drinking. I can't…I spent hours trying to figure out what words couple properly express how happy I am that the two of you are finally together and happy. I feel like I raised two kids, and they just graduated college and became useful adults. I've raised you so well. (Jake had chucked a bread roll at him at that point) Seriously, I don't think you two realize how many people were pulling for you, and even when I had my doubts, I was still hoping. It's impossible not to when you're looking at two people that so obviously belong together. I don't think there's anyone else that could make you guys happy…or put up with you for so long. (this time, Bradley throws the bread roll) You guys make each other better because you want to, and it's so fucking amazing to watch it happen. All those poets and writers and movies have no idea what it really takes. Or what it means to actively choose someone when you know it's going to take work to make it, well, work. Seriously, you guys have no idea how relieved I am that you finally got your shit together. (He might have been tearing up at this point, but there's no recording, so no one can prove anything.) You're so fucking good together and I think I'm getting used to walking in on you two because it doesn't even gross me out anymore, you're actually kind of hot now, and the nightmares have stopped. (He was definitely drunk by this point.) I think it's Stockholm Syndrome, but that's okay. I just want Jakey to be happy, and I don't know why the chicken is the one that makes you happy, but he does, and you make him happy, and it's great, really. Just be happy for fuck's sake, you guys deserve it! You're so much less of a pain in the ass when you're happy. …Also, I paid someone to get rid of that couch while you guys were away for the weekend, so you can stop blaming each other.

***

Jake and Nat never get back to where they were in flight school.

And Nat and Bradley never reclaim their close friendship either, but it's not as tragic as they all thought it would be.

The stupid thing is…

The stupid thing is that Nat and Jake are so similar. They both blame themselves more than the other person, but they can't bring themselves to talk about it with one another, and no amount of Bradley trying to coax them into it works.

So, like most people who inadvertently end up on opposite sides of an act of violence, they had no control over, they avoided one another in an attempt to evade the pain, and any relationship they had before eventually just fizzled away.

People grow and change their entire lives, and it's rare for any relationship to last the entire span of a human life when you're not related to them by blood or law.

And even then, it doesn't always last. 

They're still friends, with an understanding that they don't agree on this one thing, but it's not enough of a disagreement to render everything they went through together null and void.

They all still go to cohort reunions and major events like Harvard's wedding to Ren and the 1st birthday of Yale's first child.

The day Halo becomes only the fourth woman in American history to earn the Distinguished Flying Cross for Valor in combat, they all show up to the ceremony. 

And Javy knows that Nat calls every year on Jake's birthday just to make sure he made it another year.

It's the only time they talk.

Whatever is said in those conversations, no one else knows. Neither of them ever speak about it to anyone else.

***

Nat does, years later, name her second son Jacob. And though he does spend several summers on the ranch with Jake, Javy, and Bradley, Nat herself never comes back.

***

Lily Grace goes on, like she always said she would until she's twenty-one, and that fucker that beats his family decides to take the coward's way out and shoot through the door. 

She gets him with her last breath, walking in her grandfather's footsteps, and they bury her next to Peter.

Maverick, especially, proves inconsolable after her death and helps carry the casket.

Her death triggers Javy and Bradley's retirement to the ranch. Mav and Ice, not far behind.

Jake lasts a few more years, desperate for distraction and a chance to still be in when Dustin joins, but retires a month after he gives Dustin his oath of loyalty.

Hard times come and go, and Bradley and Jake don't magically become perfect. They have a few close calls and even almost fall apart forever a couple of times, but somehow, they always manage to pull back from the brink.

Neither of them can stand losing after all.

They talk a couple of times about adopting, but Lily's loss and Dustin's marriage, and their own mutual obsession with one another means they never get around to it.

They find a comfortable existence with just each other, mornings spent watching the sunrise on the porch and taking Davey's old Cesna up in the evenings to chase the sunset. 

Everyone grows up around them, and it's surprisingly rewarding to watch, even as they all drift apart. It's less painful than they were expecting, a natural progression that just signifies everyone else finding their own happiness. 

Ren even follows Brigham to Europe for a couple of years before they both return to Texas. Their kids growing up right next to Javy and Celia's.

Bradley settles, roots digging deep, until leaving the ranch is more painful than leaving his parent's house on the beach, and sleeping without the furnace that is Jake next to him becomes impossible. He learns how to fix a fence, and they play the piano together sometimes, and somehow, they never get bored.

It might not be the life either of them imagined, but it turns out to be something much better.

They welcome new life, and they bury loved ones, and life goes on.

Jake makes it to seventy-seven. Not long enough, according to some, but far better than expected, and his death is tragically un-dramatic.

He goes in his sleep one Tuesday in August, and Bradley follows not long after, to no one's surprise.

Javy buries them both, then follows Celia a year later, and that's it's for their generation on the Seresin ranch since Ren and Brigham went in a car accident five years before.

It's a quiet end to a monumental time, but then…aren't they all?

Every generation takes with it their trials and tribulations and with no one left to say when that happened to me, it's like it never happened before at all.

Dustin is the only one who seems to dwell on it. The only one left who remembers that time when forty was the end of the line and painful hope when his father made it to his forty-first birthday after Lily Grace went.

They aren't all out of the woods, he finds. He buries two of his own kids and a wife well before forty, but the others make it, and for the first time since Vietnam, there are Seresin cousins running around the ranch.

They can't quite shake the desperation though, despite Dustin's guidance, they all marry young, and they all have kids before their out of college. Some habits are hard to break. But it's not the worst thing, so eventually, he lets it go and watches the generations unfold.

He goes to war in Europe and finds there are other families with similar situations after his squadron loses one of their own and then learns the next day that all his siblings were killed in battles over the course of the week before. Something that hasn't happened since World War II.

But they all persist.

There's no point in stopping, after all. 

His daughter and grandson and a handful of their cousins join him on the battlefield before the war is over and not all of them come home.

They add more medals to the walls of the old homestead and more plots to the family cemetery and Dustin turns forty in a bombed-out hanger in Prague, reminiscing with his wingman about whether or not their experience is anything like the legends of Second World War.

And about how people only remember lessons for a lifetime before making the same mistakes all over again.

Dustin was always quiet, in contrast to his fiery sister and his fearless father, and even quieter after Lily Grace was gone. When he comes back from the war, his silence borders on devotion, though he never loses the gentleness that set him apart from his family members. 

He spends the rest of his life on the ranch, tending the cattle and the horses, and the graves. None of his surviving kids want to run the ranch, but there's a grandchild and a cousin who do, and they follow along in his shadow until their own block him out entirely.

They ask for stories sometimes, and they're less interested in the flying than they are in the stories about the rodeo and the years spent in the far pastures, but they still listen closely the few times Dustin brings himself to talk about the giant that was his father and the ghosts he carried that have long since lost their shape in Dustin's memories.

He even, on rare, rare occasions, talks about his sister. About the drive and strength and the light, she had that Dustin could never really find again after he helped carry her casket up the walk. About how much she loved this place and never felt any desire to leave it. How proud she'd been to be a Seresin. 

Sometimes, he thinks he should have gone instead, especially during the hard years. Lily Grace would have been so much better at holding the family and the ranch together, but Dustin persists, if for no other reason than to honor her and protect what she loved so much.

He steps aside silently when the time comes, proud and tired, and spends the rest of his days nurturing the great-great-grandkids and trying to remember the faces of those long gone.

***

Dustin outdoes them all, celebrating his 100th birthday the day before Lily Grace's great-great-granddaughter Lily Belle (because they're running out of options), and finds him still against his sister's headstone in the early morning light.

~fin~