Shadows of Yesterday
Disclaimer: Don't own Class of the Titans. I do own a pair of really pretty shoes, though… Please review!
Long strands of fire reached out behind her as she ran, trying to escape the nightmare that had become her life. Her feet pounded heavily against the uneven ground, and she tripped. Scrambling to her feet, she continued on, breathing heavily. Screaming echoed throughout the alleyway as another was being mugged at knifepoint. The woman scuttled away, disappearing into the darkness, which swallowed her up. She was invisible, and this was how she wanted to stay.
It never used to be like this. Once upon a time, she was a hero. She fought, was victorious, was in love, and lived a life many dream of having. She had been the hero of the world, needed, respected, adored. And now she was reduced to nothing, merely a shadow on a wall in an alley.
Screams turned to moans of despair, and then it was over. Silence. Theresa winced inwardly and emerged from her hallowed place, the gloom. To her right, the body of a young girl laid, dead, blood streaming through her hair. Her eyes were glazed over, and her mouth open in a perpetual scream of terror. She looked away, and hurried out of the alley to the main street. A nearby phone booth invited her to do the right thing, but she went right past it. This was the way she lived; when one place got too dangerous, she moved on.
"This is a long way from being a rich girl with everything," she said to herself, glancing back. The image of the terrified woman popped into her mind, playing before her eyes, taunting her about the hero she had been, and had failed to be. She shook her head. "I'm not that hero anymore," she whimpered.
Street lights cast dim glows across the deserted main street. Homeless people such as herself huddled on street corners, avoiding eye contact with anyone else. On the streets, it was survival of the fittest, something Theresa had learned the hard way. Scars crisscrossed her arms, and the lanky woman now carried a knife, although she had only once needed to use it.
"Why didn't you help her?" a small voice asked, and she whipped about to face a small girl of about ten years old. Her large green eyes stared up at her accusingly, and long red hair was tied back in two braids. She had a sharp nose, and her eyes penetrated Theresa's with a look of sadness.
"I… was afraid," she admitted, opening up to the quiet demeanour of the child. "Is that allowed?"
The child's eyes narrowed, and then she was growing taller, until Theresa faced an athletic youth of thirteen, long red hair back in a ponytail. "Not when someone's life is on the line!" the girl snarled, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder in scorn. "You were supposed to be a hero!"
"In another life!" Theresa countered. "I'm not that girl anymore."
"No, you're a filthy rat. You could have helped so many people, but you let your own tragedies rule over your life. Some hero."
"Stop calling me that!" she screamed. The girl smirked and grew a few inches. Her face became a little more gaunt, her eyes brighter. Her long hair grew even longer, and streaks of gold glinted in the light from the street lamp. Theresa was looking at herself from years ago, the hero she used to be, her shadow of yesterdays.
Anger glittered in the girl's eyes. "You shame my name. You take me and turn me into you. I used to be amazing. I could laugh, smile, and grin. I had friends. I was in love, loved, and helped to save innocent lives. I used to be so… alive." The accusations were short and pointed. They cut at Theresa's heart, digging into her soul like knives. Tears leapt to her eyes, and she tried to swipe them away.
"You don't understand how hard it is to loose everything you love," she said mournfully.
"Oh yes I do. I'm you, remember? And I did loose something I cherished. Myself. I would have helped that girl. I would have saved her life. I would have beaten the heck out of the loser who did that to her. But you make me feel as though I don't even know myself anymore."
"Oh get away!" Theresa choked out. "You're not even real!"
"I once was real, Theresa. I was you. You were me. Now you're a monster."
As the apparition disintegrated into nothing, it was replaced by another one. This time it was of a young man, tall, with a strong chin and steady, chocolate eyes. Tawny bangs framed a sure, confident face, and he smiled at her. Her heart began to beat rapidly, and her fingers sprang out to grasp his hand, but they went right through him. Hopes were dashed against the rock of her heart, and she felt herself going cold. He wasn't real, just like all the other dreams she had ever had about being set free from herself.
"Oh, Theresa, look at you," he groaned. "You've changed so much."
"What are you doing here? I must be hallucinating," she hissed. "Go away and leave me alone!"
"I'm as real as the world around you. You just have to believe."
"Believe in what, Jay? Everlasting love? That it can free me from the hellhole of a life I'm in?"
"It certainly didn't put you there."
"What did? It was sorrowing for you that made me loose my mind, wasn't it?"
"No, it was self-pity." His blunt, brutal words made her cringe like a dog with its tail between its legs. Rage coursed through her veins.
"Who made you my judge?" she yelled. "You haven't had to watch everything disappear!"
"No, I've had to watch you morph into a woman of the darkness, living off the sorrow of your heart. You use sadness as your fuel. When you see someone happy, you try to make them feel the same way you do. When you see someone in trouble, you become terrified and run, because you're too afraid that you'll turn into who you once were, and loose the known comfort of now. You're so busy trying to stay miserable so that you don't have to do anything with yourself that you're slowly and surely straying from the path to Elysian Fields." He broke off, his hurt mirrored in his eyes. "You're just like Cronus."
She gasped. If he had beat her with a stick and pulverized her with stones, she couldn't have felt worse than being compared to the god of time, especially by Jay of all people. Or ghosts. She crouched over and clutched her stomach, feeling as though she had been punched, over and over again; a rhythmical beating that would never stop.
"Oh," she moaned. "Not you, Jay, not from you…" When she looked up, he was gone, just like before. She was reliving her nightmares all over again. Why did these things always have to happen to her? Hushed weeping that wasn't her own trickled to her from nearby. Dread filled her gut as she turned to see hazel eyes glittering with tears. Fluffs of red adorned the crown of her head, and a small mouth trembled.
"Atlanta, you're…crying," she whispered in surprise. "Why?"
The small-boned, limber huntress stood up from her hunched position, standing tall once again, a parallel to how she always was when she was alive.
"Why am I crying?" she asked Theresa's question to herself. "Maybe it's because my best friend is wallowing in self-misery while innocents pay the price. Just because we're gone, doesn't mean the work is over. There is still you."
"But…"
"No buts! Oh, I can't take it talking to you anymore! You used to be so bright and cheery and strong. Now you're as weak as a newborn fawn." Then in a flash of light, she disappeared.
Now Theresa was facing a goofy-looking Neil. "She really has to work on her exits, doesn't she?" he joked. No smile tugged at the corner of Theresa's mouth, no mirth danced in her large green eyes.
She sighed. "I suppose you've come to tell me to stop wallowing in self-pity," she said sarcastically. He frowned.
"How did you know?" She rolled her eyes. "You haven't changed much, Neil."
"Nope, still as gorgeous as ever, right?" She wished she could slap him, but he was as transparent as the others before him. Then he turned more sombre.
"But you really have to get your act together, Theresa. You can't just live like this while others need your help."
"Why don't you tell me something I haven't heard before?" she snapped.
"Fine; use different conditioner. Your hair is really getting frizzy." With that, he disappeared in a huff of cologne, leaving Theresa coughing.
"What's next?" she yelled up at the sky. "Are you going to set little Odie on me?"
"You have really got to stop down-sizing me," a miffed voice snapped. She whirled to see Odie sitting on a leather couch, a laptop setting his face in a mysterious blue glow. He motioned her over to him. Suspiciously, she came slowly, looking over his shoulder. The action sent memories tickling through her brain: looking over his shoulder in annoyance as they researched a goddess she already knew about, looking over his shoulder into an image of Mount Etna. They were reflections of the days of a heroine, and something like yearning churned in her stomach.
"What are you going to show me?"
"This." He pressed down hard on a button, and then a scene from a dark alleyway played before her eyes, which widened as she watched the murder she had failed to stop unfold. Her telepathic abilities allowed her to feel every blow the girl had felt, feel the despair that nobody could help her. She could feel the anger at the red-haired woman in the shadows who ran away, turning her back on someone in desperate need.
Then the screams started. "Stop! NOOO!" It was only until she uncovered her ears that she realized they were her own, the horror of what she had witnessed sending distress signals tingling through her body. Tears seeped down her cheeks.
"You could have been a hero, Theresa," he said softly, staring her in the eyes. "And there's still time to be one."
He began to fade, while she tried to grab the chair and hold on for support, to stop her from plummeting into the pits of guilt. "Don't leave me!" she cried.
But he was gone, leaving her kneeling on the pavement sobbing. Shoulders heaved up and down in a pattern of absolute remorse and grief.
"So, Theresa, life's been rough on you?" The rhetorical question could only have come from one person. She felt a little bit of her formal pride well up in her, and a tinge of spirit snaked through her soul.
"Hello, Archie," she said acidly. "How are you in Elysian Fields?"
He smiled evenly, eyes glittering with criticism. "Oh you know; it's a beautiful place. It's full of love and butterflies and peace. Too bad you'll never get there. You're too busy living a life of hiding in the shadows and doing nothing. You don't get to Elysian Fields for doing nothing, Theresa. You get there for changing the world for the better. I thought you knew that; you always did claim to be smarter than me."
"I still am."
He smirked. "Then what in Hades are you still doing here, instead of out there making the world a better place?" His words stung like the pricking of needles, but she couldn't find an answer for them.
"I…"
"You don't know. Isn't that refreshing."
She stiffened. "I'll find the answer to it, just you watch."
He leaned towards her. "I don't want you to find the answer, Theresa. I want you to find a solution."
"Since when do you speak in riddles?"
"Since when do you see someone in need and do nothing?"
The question that everyone had been asking. Theresa knew the answer. She had changed, pure and simple.
"I've changed," she said. He nodded.
"I knew that. But the question is how do you change back?"
"What if I can't change back?" she asked, alarm running through her tone. "What if I'm too far gone?"
He looked at her, pity glimmering in his eyes. "You retrace your steps; find a time in your life when you were happiest. Become that Theresa again. There's hope for the future in your past, my friend. Good luck."
She blinked, and he was gone, dissipating into the cool morning air. Mist curled around her legs, and thunder rumbled ominously overhead. There was only one more person she expected to see that day from her past. To her right, the mist curled and mingled, forming an image of a human far more muscular than anyone else on the planet. "Hello, Theresa!" boomed a familiar voice, one that made her think of all the happy things she had come across in life: friends, hot cocoa, love, summer, and family.
"Oh Herry, I'm actually glad to see you. After everyone else shooting me down, I hope you have something nice to say." She was pleading with him to give her something of herself still to love.
"All I can say is that maybe they were shooting you down so you can find the strength to pick yourself back up."
She bit her lip in thought. Voices came into her head from past conversations. I was in love, loved, and helped to save innocent lives. My best friend is wallowing in self-misery while innocents pay the price. Just because we're gone, doesn't mean the work is over. There is still you. You can't just live like this while others need your help. You could have been a hero, Theresa, and there's still time to become one. You don't get to Elysian Fields for doing nothing, Theresa. You get there for changing the world for the better.
She felt wronged. Not by her friends, but by herself. She could have been somebody, and she had thrown her life away. She looked up at Herry, realization dawning on her face. "I've made a real mess of things, haven't I?" she asked softly.
He nodded calmly. "But don't forget, you still have the time to change." He gestured towards the phone booth, which Theresa had passed earlier. "Starting with a call to the police."
She inhaled deeply. "Now's the time to be the hero, Terri," she said to herself. "Find yourself in your past, just like Archie said." Anger at the man who had killed the girl surged through her veins. She was going to put him in prison if it was the last thing she ever did.
"Herry, I…" she looked up, but he had vanished, and the fog had evaporated. A little bit of nervousness made her choke back tears as she approached the booth. There was still time to return to her shell of shadows, content to live off the broken dreams of the streets.
You retrace your steps; find a time in your life when you were happiest. Become that Theresa again. There's hope for the future in your past, my friend.
"I was happiest as a hero," she reminded herself as a gush of rain began to fall from the heavens. She stood up straight and bucked up, walking straight into the booth and locking herself in. Rummaging through her pockets for a meagre quarter, she found one and popped it into the machine. "Time to be a hero again," she told herself calmly, but her body was shaking in fear. What if the world was destroyed anyway?
"Then I can die knowing I tried," she answered herself, and for the first time in years a determined sheen shone in her large green eyes. "Oh, yes, operator? Get me the New Olympia police station, please. And hurry! There's been a murder…"