I was silent for a long moment, looking down. "I don't think I know how." I suspect I sounded as lost as I felt.
    "Everybody knows how. You just have to let it happen. It's something just to acknowledge the fact that there are issues to work on."
    "Got plenty of those," I chuckled mirthlessly.
    "Phoenix Talon, for instance, has issues with his mother," he added lightly.
    "So I hear."
    "Lucky has issues with her father. You have issues with your parents. I don't know about Scott."
    I didn't really hear the end of his statement. "I'm going to kill him for that, by the way." I'd never said that out loud before, either. But I figured, as long as I'm doing this, may as well do it all.
    "Who?"
    "Zed. They dragged those two actors in."
    "To play your mom and dad?"
    I nodded, staring into the darkness. "I never knew I could hate like this," I said in an almost normal tone. I want to see him die. I want to see his face when it happens, and I want him to be afraid.
    At least I'm not sitting up nights any more, thinking up creative ways to prolong the experience for him. I guess that's progress. Sometimes I wish my powers were a little less open to that kind of temptation.
    There was another long silence.
    "Sorry," I said, apropos of nothing.
    "Everybody feels in that way. I mean, you have extreme circumstances, but we all have it in us. We just don't like looking at it."
    "I've spent a little too much time looking at it."
    "Been abyss-staring lately?" he inquired perceptively.
    "For a couple of months, actually. I'm surprised anybody put up with me after that," I added. "It's just easier... not to think. I don't know." Thinking hadn't seem to be getting me anywhere for months now. Or maybe I hadn't really been thinking? "Oh, well.... I've gotten over the urge to dismember him slowly, anyway."
    "Whoever's ultimately in charge of all this?"
    "Yeah." I nodded. "I don't know what I'll do... if the time comes." Some of things I've thought of doing over the past couple months continue to sicken me.
    "If it comes, then you'll know what to do," he predicted.
    "I hope so."
    "It might not be something that you'll agree with later, but it will be done."
    "Right." I took a deep breath.
    "I think you need to have a funeral," he told me. "For everything that you were."
    "See, that's the part that catches me up, though," I sort of contradicted. "'Cause... I'm still me." It was half a question, because I'm really never sure about using that word any more.
    "You are. You're merely a you who... has no friends from her previous life. You might not have chosen to do this, but an unnatural disaster has swept away from you everything that you know. Don't spend your time thinking was it real, was it not real, did I do it, did I not do it," he said firmly. "Believe me, I have a lot of experience with this. You remember it."
    I looked down again for a few seconds of silence. "All right." I could barely hear myself.
    "If you remember it, it happened. This isn't a case of some attention-grabbing young woman who's making up things that didn't happen and convincing themselves that they're true, I can spot those a mile away. Your memories are real. They're sketchy in spots, but there are people who have sketchy memories sometimes. Xorn can't find his keys from one day to another."
    I laughed shakily.
    "I'm not making light of this, I'm just pointing out, you have memories of a life. That life happened. The fact that no one else sees it but you—this is a weird world. You could show up and tell people you came from an alternate dimension and they would be hard-pressed to argue with you. They'd wonder why you weren't a Nazi or an evil clown, or something, but...."
    I shook my head. "I don't know." Pause. "Got to start somewhere, I guess."
    "Where are you planning on starting?"
    Pause. "I still really don't know. I have to learn to live with this." The alternative is not an option.
    "Do you have a faith?" he asked suddenly.
    I gave him a blank look, somewhat taken aback by the question. "Not really."
    "You might want to consider it."
    My expression was highly skeptical.
    "Organized religions give you a lot of framework for learning to deal with loss. If you were Christian I'd tell you to go talk to your priest about it, if you were Jewish I'd tell you to find someone to sit shiva with. You have to accept the fact that your parents are gone, your grandmother is gone, and everyone in their lives has to deal with that."
    She had been dead a long time. I had dealt with that. What I couldn't deal with was the fact that her death, and that dealing, were now devoid of meaning. Or at least, that was how I felt about it.
    "You have to say good-bye to that," he went on.
    "All right," I said doubtfully after another pause. Have to try something, and he is the expert. I don't think a church is the right way for me, but I'd have to think about it. If I believed in God, I think I'd hate Him.
    "What happened with the boyfriend?"
    Another unexpected topic, leading me to wonder how long he had been expecting us to have this talk. "Travis? He figured some of what was going on out on his own. We had a chat, I told him some of it, I thought it wasn't really fair to drag him into this without him knowing what was going on and what kind of danger he might be in just for showing up where he did. I'm curious to know what sort of part he was meant to play."
    "As to why he suddenly turned up in Boston?"
    "I'd bet both my arms that was not an accident," I averred, shaking my head.
    "I doubt it, too, but which side did it, and why?"
    "I can't imagine it was the Three Amigos," as I have privately dubbed those shadowy figures. X, Zed, and the Three Amigos. And me. "Just because if I had run into him anywhere, that would have been first of all an incredibly confusing situation for both of us, and would have been a way to get things rolling, so I think it was probably the other side. Undoubtedly through so many layers of agency that they're completely hidden," I added wearily, since I'm going to have to try to trace that connection regardless.
    "What's your relationship with him right now?"
    I gave him another perplexed look. "There isn't one."
    "I would recommend keeping it that way."

| Top |