(Part III) -2016-
{Olivia}
At some point in the last two days, the clock in the hanger stopped working, flickered out its last liquid crystal chime at three o' three in the morning.
Ironically, tauntingly, it's the same time as the crisis hour, the moment all this started, on a quiet, unsuspecting morning when she'd been tucked in the cradle of his body with their daughter sprawled at her side; in the spot their toddler clambered into after midnight because Rufus, the stuffed dog Astrid gave her, preferred their bed to the lumpiness of hers.
In the way it does, fate's haunting her again, with the broken electronic, the frozen digits a memory of better time, life before chaos became order, commodities became rationed, and the blood of everything she loved wasn't trickling into the ground.
Just like the clock, she feels bare, empty, her attack on him seemingly unfixable now, hours after she'd been left in the atmosphere of her harsh words.
And as she stares at the red numbers, she sits air-dried, silent, absently picking at a candy bar's wrapper, the one he'd shoved into her hands a day ago, after they'd named this abandoned bunker as refuge. There's a double printed "I" in it's brand name, she notes, a factory mistake from a mass-produced line-up.
It must have been what he'd meant when he'd said it was special.
Here, he'd said, I know you're gonna say you're not hungry, but you gotta feed the super trooper. I even saved you the special one, and he'd pressed it into her palm with a smile before he took a bite out of his.
In his eyes, there isn't a priority that comes before her, even in this fight, there's nothing more important then that she care for herself, for their baby. He's always sure she eats, sure she rests, always wraps his arms around her waist, buries his head in her back in the moments when her chest labors from memory, when the yearning to have back their happy days hits her so hard she can't breathe.
It seems like a different lifetime, when they laughed under the covers.
Thinking about it now, compounds her remorse, shame sinking into her with such weight, that her whole body feels impossibly heavy.
Thanks to her, they're trapped now, in the breakdown of what they're not supposed to be. She'd stabbed at their sanctuary, injured it with the jagged end of unwarranted hostility.
A shadow's settled in the beautiful place two worlds collide.
And it's too damn dim here, too lonely and just to mock her, the darkness of the room only accentuates her regret, the only light source the tiny flood lamp that stands against the farthest wall; it's beam unable to illuminate more then the corner.
A red and black solider, it's trying to fill shoes too big for its feet.
Too intimately, she knows what it's like, to feel small, bantam, to inadequate to fulfill the task fate requires.
Beast of a burden it is, to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.
Why is he doing it? her daughter asked, months ago, as her little eyes skimmed over the children's book of mythology, the picture of Atlas balancing the globe on his back, why is he holding the world up, mommy? Because he has to, baby, she'd said, and Etta's eyes frowned in thought, a bright blue deliberation as she'd grasped the concept. It's his job? She'd asked then, more a statement then a question, then her eyes turned on her mother, excited now, and full of awe. It's his job to make sure the world stays up, just like yours and daddy's is! He has to save it like grandpa says you do!
Atlas was cursed for eternity, imprecated forever with herculean duty, and staring at the little light with her aching heart, she thinks that maybe so was she, and so was he. They've never truly been able to escape from their curse.
They could only ever hide from it; evade it, tip-toe around it.
If it comes down to this, he'd said, years ago, as they'd stood at his kitchen island, skimming blueprints, descriptions of him in a machine they knew hardly anything about, if for some reason, we can't find another way, a different answer, promise me you'll make sure Walter puts the lid on the blender before he uses it. And when he'd looked at her, his small smile couldn't mask the true fear in his eyes, the subtle strain of his private dread, his un-uttered trepidation in the implication of his sketched-out fate.
That's not funny, she'd told him, irritated, angry almost with what he'd insinuated, and when he'd let out a curt, breathy laugh, it was a contrasting interruption in the heavy air. I'm not losing you to that thing, she'd stated, I don't care what these drawings imply, I'm not letting you go. I can't believe this future's inevitable.
It was a genuine grin then, that stretched across his face, a lambent curve that lit his eyes to bright-blue. Look at that, my optimism's finally rubbed off on you.
I'm serious Peter, she'd said, only growing annoyed, I can't believe we can't prevent this somehow, that we can't stop it from happening. I'm not going to accept...,she'd swallowed then, the force of her next words lead to her lungs,... I'm not going to accept that the world can only survive if it takes you from me. Seconds passed, as he'd registered her words, took in her meaning, then he'd moved across the table, pulled her into him, held her so tightly, she didn't know who's pulse was under her skin. If you start to appreciate B-rated movies and boot-legged Sake, too, I might have to marry you.
Back then, she trusted in something divine, some kind of omnipresent deity that felt damn near close to sheer will. Simply because she wouldn't accept it, failure wasn't going to be.
And it hadn't been.
They'd cheated a time line and found their way home.
There was a time, I wouldn't have believed in Walter's crazy philosophies, he'd told her, a year ago, as they drove through another town block sometime around midnight, their daughter, lulled to sleep by the car's steady treads inside her Cinderella car-seat, but maybe he's right, maybe reality really is subjective and malleable. Look at us, he'd continued, as the streetlights played against the windshield, lit his eyes with yellow-gold, after everything we've been through, all the places our lives could have ended up, and here we are. Those gold flecked sapphires flickered over the rear view mirror as he'd peered in it, eyed the precious cargo in the backseat.
This is the life we wanted, Liv, the life we dreamed about. And then those lines, those beautiful smile lines at his eye's edge crinkled with the stretch of his cheeks before he looked at her.
This is the life we imagined, and now we have it. So maybe Walter really has been right all these years, maybe reality is only a matter of perception, maybe it can become what we make it. Then he'd pulled into their driveway, his grin too sly to not be harboring a quip.
Except when it comes to Twinkies, no matter how hard we imagine otherwise, the aftertaste will always be there.
Her smile is bittersweet now, as she remembers, as she turns a different snack over in her palms, running her thumb over the chocolate bar's debotched red-letter graphic until the cellophane smooths.
We dreamed a better life, he'd all but said to her once, and so we created one.
If they're going to get through this now, if they're going to survive this obstacle too, together, it's the kind of hope they both need to take stock in. She needs to find for them both, the opulent positivity he viewed the world with before all this; the rose colored glasses tinted by his everything-works-itself-out optimism.
There's something to believe in standing under that banner.
All these years, he's given her strength and she owes it to him now, to return it in kind.
Again, her hand finds her middle, her fingers spread wide across her abdomen, her palm pressing into the muscle that bears the slightest swell.
In more ways then one, there's something him in everything in her now.
From the inside out, he's the solider-light that illuminates her corner.
Even now, after love's fear and worry have melted his wings, she still feels his radiance permeating her cells, echoing through to her fingertips, surrounding her in this empty room.
They may be Atlas, and Icarus, titans fallen to the demand of their curse, ambitious mortals fallen to the reality of their fate, but destiny is a cruel mistress.
It expects more from them both. It always has.
This makes her suck in a breath, a long draw of an empowerment that reaches through to her bones, tingles in her back the way his words do when he tells her everything will be okay.
We'll get through this like we always do, he'll say, we'll figure it out, Liv. We're gonna be okay.
Dammit, she owes her daughter this chance, this child this chance, and god knows she owes it to him to do this, to fight for the right for them to hold on, to not give up.
Failure isn't the bargain she's willing to make, it wasn't then, and it won't be now. There won't be risk because dammit, she won't allow it.
Death can go fuck itself. They've defied it too many times already and dammit, they'll do it again.
They're so much more then this ending.
As if it knows somehow of her sudden conviction, above her the broken clock fizzles awake, no longer stoic and motionless, but blinking alive, seemingly impassioned like she's become, convinced almost of a new importance that's restructured it's worth.
For seconds she can only stare at it, the red hum of it's back-light an electro-static charge on the surface of her skin, a pull of hidden energy she feels under her fingertips.
This has only ever worked with Peter, she'd told an Alter-Nina a lifetime ago now, the cortexiphan, my abilities, all of it, it's only ever worked when I've been around him.
And her quiet laugh now is almost inaudible as she presses her hand tighter to the forming baby bump, her heart such a swell in it's cavity, it stalls her breath with it's constriction.
This has only ever worked with his child.
Overwhelmed, she blinks back wet heat, her expelled power a dull ache in the back of her skull, forgotten to the foreground of how it happened. And because it's brighter too now, burning into her side gaze with its might, she turns to the floodlight, suddenly a massive luminescence that spans into the warehouse's blackness.
It's an allegory ; a magic metaphor, the symbolic representation of what beats hot now, under her skin.
This light, the one forged by his theology, ignited by her will, pulses through her veins with new promise, with hope, and refuses to flicker out so easily.
Now she needs to make him feel it again too, to wear those lenses that can paint a color portrait world, brush over the gray deterioration of this one.
She won't accept this as their end, and she won't let him either.
Determined, resolute, she steps down from her chair of stacking crates, and her heart beats just a little faster, a little apprehensively, as she makes her way to find him.