Home
There was something poetic in the symmetry. There was a vampire in the graveyard when she went to visit Aidan. She still cried when she hit Illinois. And her gas ran out when she hit the Verona, NJ city limits.
Those were the highlights she told her father when she got home. Home. The word meant something different now, as an ex-resident of Searchlight, Nevada. Not an ex-resident, really. She always had a home there, with Emmy... with Aidan.
Destiny sat on the porch and remembered.
Emmy and Destiny met the day before she left. Destiny tried to explain why she had to leave, but no words came. Emmy just nodded. There were tears, promises of open doors and letters and e-mails. As Emmy pulled her into an embrace, Destiny's heart broke a little. Part of her wanted to drop her bags and stay there. Destiny knew, however, if she ever wanted to come back, she always could. Home is the place where, if you go there, they have to take you in.
Emmy was home to her.
Visiting Aidan was harder, because there was a finality to it that rivaled the day they buried him. She had gripped the marble of his tombstone, whispering sweet nothings into the ground on bended knee. She hated leaving him in the dry ground, but Destiny knew that the Aidan she loved wasn't in the ground, he was in the sky, the air, her heart. He would be going with her everywhere. His spirit would always be there. They couldn't take away her memories.
Destiny pushed the porch swing with her foot and held the cross that dangled over her heart. Aidan would always be home with her.
The only thing that bothered her was that she couldn't find Rhiannon, but she knew that someday, they'd cross paths. They always found each other, and likely always would.
Rhiannon, in her own way, was home too. She was her rock, the voice in her head that would be there if she did something stupid or needed strength.
She left a lot of people. William, Aidan, Emmy... many people she loved and lost.
She left Searchlight, sadder, but wiser. Older, but in a new place mentally.
Destiny could always go back - and she probably would. As she passed the "Leaving Searchlight" sign, she took a deep breath over the lump in her throat. She was not the same and would never be the same. She had been changed, for good. It was time for her to continue to grow and keep finding the pieces of herself. And the best way was to go back to where everything began and start over.
When you're born, your soul explodes. Pieces of you fly into people, into places. You spend your entire life trying to find those pieces. And when you find them, you are complete.