Author's Note — End of Part One
Hey everyone,
As the title says, it's an Author's Note, so go away if you haven't read the previous chapters yet, I'd strongly recommend closing this tab and coming back after reading chapter 12.
First of all, thank you.
Genuinely.
To everyone who took the time to leave a comment, send kudos, give feedback, or even just read through to the "end" it means more than I know how to say properly.
This fanfiction was never supposed to exist. I've mentioned it in a few comments, but it was Marius who pushed me into publishing it. Well pushed is actually too gentle a word he basically dragged me, forced me, threatened me... Because of him, I spent hours writing and rewriting chapters, answering comments, untangling plot threads, cross-referencing canon to make sure I wasn't saying something completely wrong.
So. Thanks for that, Marius.
And Fuck you, Marius.
I know this isn't a perfect piece of work. There are moments where the characters go a little OOC, moments that probably feel off or strange in ways I didn't fully catch. But I'll remind you that this is my first fanfiction I spent years reading fanfiction without ever writing anything for anyone but myself. What started as 7 chapters ended up becoming 12, at roughly 5,500 words each.
Honestly?
I'm pretty happy with that.
Now. The ending.
I know… I don't have future sight like Cassie, but I can already guess that some of you are surprised.
Maybe even a little upset. Maybe you're frustrated that I ended it here, or maybe you're relieved. But probably a lot of you wanted more.
That's okay, let me explain where it came from.
The core idea for this fic was born during my reading of the 3rd Nightmare arc, specifically around the moment Sunny becomes [Fateless].
I was talking with Marius and I asked him :
Do you think Cassie ever interrupted Sunny and Nephis? Like what if they'd confessed to each other multiple times, but Cassie kept delaying them away from their moments every single time? What if that's been her role all along not just witnessing the future, but quietly, deliberately preventing Sunny from straying off the path she built for him?
I don't think that's an absurd reading of the canon. Sunny himself reflects on how much Cassie was doing behind his back. The idea that she watched him confess, that she watched Nephis confess back, and then simply... moved things along I think that's entirely plausible. Maybe it even happened more than once. Maybe in another fragment, it was Nephis who spoke first. Maybe in another, they fought about the Bond instead.
That's when I first started thinking about this possibility. I began wondering when and how such a situation could have happened. So I started writing or rather, imagining the scenario in my head. I wrote down a few lines so I wouldn't forget the idea.
By the way, I strongly advise you to do the same, when you have an idea, don't let it slip away. Write it down, even just a few lines. Come back to it later or not, but at least it's safe somewhere locked away like Slayer when she gets a little too ferocious for Sunny!
I hope that you have noticed that I keep using the word fragment.
That concept comes from Umineko no Naku Koro ni (which is also where Chapter 11's title came from). In Umineko, fragments are essentially stories, what-if scenarios, written and styled as mysteries to be solved. They're contained within a vast, otherworldly space where countless other fragments exist, prisms or kakera to be more exact, they are representing the crystallization of human worlds and memories.
I think it maps onto Cassie's power almost perfectly. She's a witch navigating futures that don't exist yet, and may never exist at all.
But they exist somewhere in us, in the readers, in the authors writing fanfiction late at night about characters they love.
So yes.
You've probably figured out what I'm implying, Cassie "destroyed" the previous chapters. But they keep existing in every reader willing to carry them.
A fragment that never happened in the "main timeline" is still real in fact, there's an argument that it's more real, because it was born from nothing but imagination and love!
Like every fanfiction you've ever loved.
Like A Moment of Weakness, which I'll name again because I genuinely believe a lot of you have it somewhere near your heart.
Because I do!
Long live Eirene, you will not be forgotten, we love you queen!
So yes, fragment doesn't need to have occurred to have weight. It exists because it was thought, written, witnessed.
You don't have to believe there's only one reality worth living. All fragments are true as long as someone is willing to carry them.
The cruelty wouldn't be in showing them to you the cruelty would be in hiding them!
Nietzsche talked about art as the justification of existence.
Art doesn't console us by handing us easy truths it forces us to build our own.
It holds up a mirror to our hunger for certainty. We all want a comfortable canon, an ending that satisfies the fan in us.
But I'm also here to tell you: no.
Life doesn't give you that. Authors don't either. You have to learn to float in the sea of fragments without drowning.
Like Sunny, he had to learn how to swim because water HATE that guy.
Now that I think about it philosophically, this is also close to Sartre and Camus the absurd exists, the narrative shows it to you, and your dignity lies in continuing to make meaning anyway.
The "false" fragment is the absurd made visible. Sitting with it, is how you say: even if this wasn't real, what I felt living through it was.
So why show you a fragment I then deliberately destroyed?
I'm evil.
Because it didn't happen in the main timeline that's precisely why it matters.
And it lived in me, and I wanted to share it with you.
It forces you to carry its weight.
It forces you to decide whether you want to love it anyway.
It forces you to understand that a reader's grief is part of the story too.
The lesson, if there is one?
There's no such thing as wasted time!
There are only fragments you choose to keep in your heart, and fragments you let go.
The "useless" fragments teach you to love harder, to question deeper, to become a little bit of a witch yourself.
And when the alarm goes off and reality takes over again you're not the same reader you were before. You saw it. You carried it.
I'm still a terrible author though, LMAOOO
But in the end, without love, even the truest truth stays invisible.
Without love, it cannot be seen.
And with love, even the cruelest fragment becomes a message in a bottle that brings you back to yourself!
Now, with all that said I did specify this was the end of Part One.
I have ideas for continuing.
Picking up from the moment Effie asks Cassie a question, and Cassie answers "Both" which is where Chapter 10 ends.
But I want to be very clear, one more time:
I never planned to go more than this "ending".
My original intention was only to explore the idea that Cassie was the instrument standing between Sunny and Nephis.
The reason they kept almost reaching each other and never quite getting there.
That was the whole thing.
So yes, I can imagine continuing.
I've thought about it.
I have fragments of a draft already, truly terrible, half-sentences and illegible notes, don't get excited but the door isn't closed.
If I write more, it'll exist.
If I don't, that's also okay.
If you have ideas or things you'd want to see in a potential Part Two, Three, Four... feel free to drop them in the comments or send me a message.
Same if you want to write your own continuation or take something from this fic and build something new, please do.
That's what fragments are for.
As for direction, nothing is set.
I could take the story into [Fateless] territory and reinterpret G3 canon, in my own way, or I could keep him [Fated] though that would be significantly harder to write with Asterion and the Forgotten God in play.
Canon is King.
The original work is exceptional.
But I won't be returning to [Not Too Late] anytime soon.
The door isn't locked.
But I wasn't planning to open it again.
If I do, great for you all!
If I don't? Actually please don't wait for it!
Expect nothing!
Be pleasantly surprised if something arrives.
And please, tone down the insults and angry comments! (do it anyways)
In the meantime, I'm starting two new fanfictions.
Well, one at a time.
The first one is actually slightly urgent because G3 is moving way too fast in the canon, which was absolutely not part of my plan, how are they going this quickly??
I have to do it BEFORE what's happening actually!!!
Give me one or two weeks and you should see something new from me... well if everything goes well.
Thank you again for reading!
See you soon I hope!