She gasped for breath and almost couldn't believe they'd made it away from Juri alive. Somebody else at the very end of the car was staring at them like they were both insane, and maybe they were. The man turned his wide eyes away from her when she looked at him, pretending to suddenly be very absorbed in his phone. She sighed but didn't offer any explanation. If he wanted to call the cops, so be it. It wouldn't be the worst thing that happened that night. She fell heavily into a seat, every muscle sore and aching, toes cold and numb, her head exploding with pain every time she moved her eyes. Still, she forced herself to open them and glance over at Vega. If the real him came back, she'd be dead. She wasn't in any condition for another fight with a tough opponent, but she had to be prepared all the same.
He was bent over in his seat, head between his knees, arms wrapped tightly around himself. "Are you alright?" she asked, though the answer was pretty plain. Neither of them were, but at least she knew how to defend herself and to better absorb the impact of a kick. He may as well have been a punching bag, for as much as he moved around when Juri attacked him.
"I think I'm bleeding internally. I've never had to say that before, you know?" He sat back up and sank in his seat. "This hurts a lot."
"Where?" She watched as he took a hold of his ribs on his left side. "You probably broke one of them."
"I probably broke one of them?" he cried. "That crazy, murderous psychopath probably broke one of them!"
Chun-Li pressed her lips together at his tone, but nodded. "Fair enough." She took another survey of the train. Couldn't be too careful. But no, still empty, aside from the guy who was trying his best to ignore them. "We'll get to a hospital, then the police."
"Yes, more hospitals, love it," he muttered, eyes roving over some of the ads in the train. How trivial the flu seemed now after just escaping certain death in a manner befitting a grape at a wine distillery.
"Do you have a better suggestion?" she asked, not really in the mood for sarcasm.
"I'm sorry my tone is not so great, but this night took a very terrifying and screwed up turn, so-" He stopped and shook his head.
"And I'm trying to be understanding that you aren't quite used to this," she said.
"It's completely insane that you are quite used to this."
"There's the pot calling the kettle black." She knew she should've had a bit more patience, but the events of the night were catching up with her. The frustration of dealing with him and how he was making her feel were bad enough. Then Juri had to come along and amplify everything by nearly killing them and humiliating her for being in the same bed as him. Why had she done that? And why did she have to do it the same night Juri decided to drop in, making sure that someone out there would know about her embarrassing slip up forever?
"What is that supposed to mean!" he snapped suddenly and she'd be lying to herself if she said it hadn't startled her. He looked almost like his old self for a moment, and she had to watch him closely to make sure he wasn't. "I'm not insane. Don't you ever call me insane," he demanded suddenly, finger in her face. He sighed angrily, then winced and sat back.
Maybe it was a better idea to diffuse the situation than to make it worse. She'd obviously pushed some buttons there. So she nodded slowly, even though it sent sharp pains racing along her skull. "That was uncalled for. I don't know you so I shouldn't say things like that."
He seemed to be looking everywhere but at her. He laughed a little, and immediately regretted it. His fingers went to his lips briefly. When he looked at them, the tips were stained red and he rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you want to call me crazy. Mira-your life doesn't exactly seem all that normal if it involves people like that." He nodded back at the mangled door resulting from Juri's footwork.
She didn't choose to associate with people like Juri. Or did she? Again she was struck with a thought about whether or not her own dreams-or even her own safety-were less important than her self-imposed duty as a cop. Were the two mutually exclusive? She had chosen, in a way, to associate with the absurd and the deranged, because she persisted in her quest to serve justice to them. Was that all she wanted out of life? Were her own personal ambitions somehow less worthy of realization because they weren't as noble? She looked over at him, still studying his fingers, and didn't really know how to respond.
He let his hand fall to his lap and he sighed again. "That wasn't fair to say to you. I was angry. But-" His eyes fell to the place between his feet. "You're right anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"That I'm crazy. Maybe I am. I don't want to think that. But I might be, you know." He cocked his head a little, but he wouldn't look at her.
So maybe that wayward thought about his sanity wasn't so far-fetched or paranoid after all. She had to wonder for a second what it meant about Vega, unable to be normal even in an alternate universe. But that was just a detective looking for patterns. There were no answers for her there, no clues, just absurdity. "Tell me." She had no good reason to think he would. No good reason to even want to know, other than curiosity.
He glanced up at her finally and shrugged. "I was-" He squinted a bit as he thought of the right words. Or maybe it had to do with the pain in his ribs. She couldn't really tell. "All of the things with my mom." He didn't miss the way her skin seemed to get a bit pale when he said it, but he didn't know why. "You don't know, right," he muttered under his breath, shaking his head. "She had cancer. It was very much a 'when not if' situation but I didn't want to admit that. Nobody wants to say 'there's nothing I can do', right?"
She nodded, knowing that feeling very well. "When my dad died, all I could think of were all the things I could have done to prevent it."
He nodded back. "You start to think you could have done something, you could have fixed it, and everyone all around you is saying, 'oh no, it's not your fault, not your fault' but they don't get it. First I think I was normal about it, but stressed. I went back, forth, back, forth, every day to see her, go back to school, study, back home, blah." He drew a hand over his face and a sad sort of smile tugged at her lips after hearing Vega's normally refined and meticulous voice let out such a noise. "It caught up to me. I was getting sick all the time and getting-" He waved his hand towards her. "I was real impatient with you. It wasn't fair, that I was snapping at you all the time, but you put up with it. You're too good. I still think that all the time, you're too good and I don't deserve you. But I don't know if anybody on the planet does."
She swallowed hard but didn't say anything. What could she say, anyway? Thanks? In the middle of his spiel about his dying mother and degrading psyche?
"When she died it was at first like-how can I say it? Like that wasn't what happened. She wasn't dead. It didn't feel like reality to me. I was living in a different place than everybody around me. That's the only way I can put it, I think. And then it's like I was snapped out of it. If you took out a puzzle piece but the rest was in tact, I was the missing piece, and everybody around me was still together, in real life. I-" He inhaled sharply then winced, teeth gritting for a second. "I tried to kill somebody. I don't know if I'd actually have done it but that's scary to think of. This guy, Ramirez, I broke into his house, I don't even know who he is, to be honest, but I remember it's like my feet went and I followed them and then I'm at this man's door and when I saw him, my brain exploded. 'You killed her, you did this, I saw you'. The scariest thing is how real it was. I felt like it was true. She was never sick, she was killed. I could see it in my head, like a memory, him shooting her and shooting at me, strangling me."
She didn't mean to stare, but it was a little difficult. How had he found his way to the guy who'd murdered his mother in this reality? "You're sure you didn't know him?" He looked at her, like he was surprised she was paying attention. "I mean..." She took a breath herself and decided to get right down to it and tell him about his alternate life. "Here, in this reality, that man did kill your mother."
"No," he said simply. "It's a thing I made up to feel like I could have control of an uncontrollable situation."
She shook her head slowly. "Maybe in your world. But here, your dad left your mom when you were young. Your mom ended up remarrying. And the man she married ended up killing her."
As she spoke his head came to rest in his hands. "I'm going to throw up. I spend all this time trying to convince myself all of that, it was a delusion, and you're trying to tell me it's not."
"Wait," she said, holding a hand up. "Now, I didn't say that. I can't tell you something like that. I'm just telling you what happened in this reality. That it's a bizarre coincidence that you ended up trying to do the same thing your alternate self did here, even though you never had any contact with Ramirez."
"Trying to do?" he echoed.
"Vega, the one I know. He killed Ramirez."
"What a great guy."
She shrugged. What could she really say? "I guess...it was a life or death situation. I'm sure it was your-his last resort."
"How do you know?"
"I've read the police report on it. What Vega did wasn't really premeditated. His life was in danger." She couldn't say the same for the rest of the people he ended up killing, but it wasn't exactly a great time to bring that up. She crossed her legs to try to warm her frozen toes beneath her. The train came to a brief stop, and the only other passenger besides them darted off. She watched, a bit tense that maybe Juri had found her way here. But no one got on. The doors shut and they were moving again.
"It's terrifying, hearing all of this. If it's real, I mean, and not just my mind going-" He made a spiraling gesture with his finger and shrugged.
"I've got a good head on my shoulders, and I'm pretty sure this is all real."
He laughed as he sat back. He was smiling but it wasn't a very happy one. "That's the thing, coneja. It all seems real, until someone tells you it isn't."
She shuddered at that word, coneja. She hated it, and Vega knew it. But this guy shouldn't. "Don't call me that, alright?"
"Yeah, sorry." But then it seemed to hit him. "How do you know what it means?" He must've been able to figure out she knew it was something that, maybe, he meant as affectionate. Vega meant it as a threat. Helpless as a bunny, at the mercy of a predator's tearing claws.
"He's called me that before," she said quickly. "It's like a rabbit, right?"
He nodded. "Why would I-or, I mean, he-"
"Because he knows it bothers me."
"Well the worst thing you can do is let any iteration of me know what annoys you, because I'm going to use it to my advantage, you know?"
She wrinkled her nose at him and shook her head. "That's rude."
"Okay. I know. But at least, when I say it, I know it only bothers you a little and a part of you appreciates it. I mean, my version of you."
"Yeah, well, I definitely don't, not after he threatened to skin me like one."
He covered his face with his hands but wailed something in Spanish. It was sometimes hard to remember he didn't know about the finer details of his alternate self's violent and disturbing habits. She wasn't sure if it did either of them any good to talk about it, so she shook her head. "Forget I said any of this."
"Why has someone not-not-" He waved his hand, unable to finish the sentence. "I mean...I sound horrible. I sound like a monster."
Her eyes met his and she could almost picture this last little thread of hope he had for himself snapping when she said, "Well...you are."
He went back to refusing to look at her. His fingers drummed on the cold seat beside him. Neither of them said anything for a moment, the cab filled with the rumbling sound of the train on its tracks. She pressed her lips together and sighed, glancing at the car around them. How had she ended up here? On an empty train in the middle of the night, beaten and bruised, with one of her most hated enemies sitting across from her. She pulled herself to her feet and sat beside Vega-or Andres, she decided. It wasn't fair to keep calling him by a name he clearly wasn't responsible for. "Look," she said in a lower voice, and he nodded to show he was listening even if his eyes were flicking back and forth across the window. "You aren't him. You don't have to be anything like him. Maybe I don't know how all of this...parallel world stuff works but what I do know is that we all make our own choices, and we're responsible for them. His choices aren't yours, and yours aren't his."
"It's an easy thing to say from your perspective," he said. "You've never had to question your own mind, have you? And I don't mean in the sense of-'what is my motivation here' or 'I'm doubting my decision'. I mean reality itself. The world your brain is presenting to you, you get to trust that it's real, that your responses to it are rational, reasonable, informed." He shook his head. "I can never be one-hundred percent certain that what I experience is reality. So what if I turn out the same as him? What if he was like me, and everything in his perspective warrants the sort of...screwed up way he's behaving?" He made her feel hopeless. She couldn't help him. His problems were all too big for her, so why had she gotten involved? Because it was her responsibility to help people. Even people like him. Because that's what she wanted to do. Wasn't it?
The heavy mood must've gotten to him, too, because then he laughed a little and showed her his bloodied fingertips. "I guess I'm pretty sure that's real." He winced. "Feels real."
"Yeah, she really did a number on you." A bruise was blooming under the skin at the corner of his jaw, blood was drying at the corner of his mouth, and given how many times Juri had kicked him in the torso, that was probably pretty colorful by now, too. And that was just the outside of him. She didn't want to imagine what she looked like right now, either. "We'll get to a hospital, get the police involved from there. You need more help than I can offer on my own."
"I don't think all the cops in the world can push me back to where I belong," he said.
She pressed her lips together at the note of melancholy in his voice. She didn't like to see someone upset, and it seemed like every time he spoke he distanced himself from the Vega she knew. That made it harder for her to ignore him. So in need of some way to distract him from his own suffering, as well as her own anxiety over the situation, she asked, "What's that like?"
"What?"
"Where you belong. Your, um, reality." It still felt surreal to say something like that, and she expected him to mock her for it any minute, but he never did.
"I told you a lot already."
"Well, tell me some more, then."
He blew out his breath through his lips and immediately regretted it. He never realized how much the simple act of breathing involved the expansion of the rib cage until today. "Ahhh, hmm..." He tried to think for her, to tell her something she hadn't heard yet, something that might make her happy. "Well, next weekend, your friends Eliza and Ken are getting married."
"Oh, cute, he still ends up with her," she said. "They're already married, and have a baby here. His name is Mel."
"I'll remember to use that for a cool party trick if they announce that they're expecting."
She laughed. "Eliza will flip out if you predict her baby's name." Then she sighed a bit. "And Ken will ask you for lotto numbers." He was smiling, still, so she asked, "What else?"
"Okay...ah...Our cat is very cute."
"That is just a given. Every cat is cute." Maybe being friends with Cammy was starting to rub off on her.
"Ah, you said the little boy in your five p.m. class wants to marry you one day, so I better hurry up and propose already before he does."
Her smile receded a bit. Of course she always thought she'd be married someday, but not any time soon. And even then, definitely not to him. He noticed the way her expression changed and started to apologize. But she stopped him and asked, "Do you think you will?"
He stared at the window for a moment. "Marriage is pretty intimidating. I know you can end it, but it feels very permanent, and I wouldn't want to put someone through something like that anyway."
"Don't ever do something you aren't ready for," she said.
"Maybe. But if you don't push yourself out of your comfort zone, there's a lot you might miss that you'll regret one day."
It was her turn to stare. He could've meant to say if for himself, or he could've meant to say it for her benefit. She couldn't tell. All she knew was that when he said it, she felt suddenly anxious. Suddenly felt how brief and short a person's life was, how easily it could be taken from them. It wasn't making her want to run out and marry the first guy she met or anything. But it made her ask herself, how much more of her own personal ambitions would she deny for this job? "Then go for it," she said.
"Will you, Chun-Li Xiang version 2.0, do me the honor-"
She blew a raspberry and gave a thumbs down, slowly shaking her head. "I'm version 1.0, by the way. The original. And word of advice: don't propose to her on a train or she'll have a hard time saying yes."
"Cold."
She smiled a little and shook her head. "All I meant was, you're right. That you can't wait around forever. That you have to find a balance between testing the waters and just diving in them."
"Poetic, mi querida."
She twisted her lips together and rolled her eyes. "Not really, unless you like cliches."
"I love cliches."
"Some artist you are," she said.
He scoffed, feigning offense. "Like a knife in my heart."
"Boo hoo."
"You're twisting it."
She sighed heavily, searching around the train again. She didn't want to admit that she liked him. It felt too close to liking Vega, even if they were very different people. But she saw how her other self could have gotten involved with someone like this.
An automated voice announced their stop. The door Juri kicked in struggled to open properly. "Come on," she said. Her feet hurt, muscles in her back complained about having to support her, and she was happy to find her world was only spinning for a brief second. The train wasn't exactly warm, but stepping out onto the platform was downright freezing.
She watched him warily as he trudged up the stairs, clutching his side tightly like that would somehow ward off the pain. Her head still ached pretty fiercely, but at least she was standing upright without any issues and not spitting up blood. "It's a few blocks from here. Are you going to make it?" she asked.
"Maybe. Will you carry me?"
She shook her head and sighed. At least he wasn't so upset anymore. And Juri wasn't here waiting for them. That did leave her to wonder where she'd gotten off to, how long it'd be before she came back for at least one of them. If she finished her work with Vega, would she target Chun-Li next for her interference? She shuddered a bit as she thought of how many times Juri had claimed to 'like' having her alive. About how 'fun' she was to play with. Why did she seem to attract the insane criminals like so many crooked little iron filaments to a magnet?
They were at street level again and she took a moment to find the right way. A muffled, but agonized cry from Vega made her turn around immediately, and she was on the defensive. Someone had taken hold of him from behind, one arm around his waist, the other hand over his mouth. "Shut his ass up!" She knew that voice. And she knew the red gauntled arms that had him in their grip. The blonde holding Vega slammed her hard gauntlet into the side of his head. He fell without another complaint, out cold on the sidewalk. He was racking up the blows to the head, that was certain. She launched herself at Decapre, knowing they weren't just going to let her walk away without a fight. May as well beat them to the punch. Her foot connected with Decapre's stomach, and it was eerie, the way she barely reacted to what had to be pretty painful. She'd always been unsettled by the Dolls, just as much as she pitied them. Decapre swung a fist, Chun-Li blocked, struck out with another kick, and God wasn't this exhausting? Her heart pounded in her chest and she knew she was outnumbered, and tired, and hurt, that all the odds were against her here, but she couldn't give up. "Got to do everything my god damn self." She whirled around just in time to meet the enormous, deadly fist of a man easily twice her size. Her world was whirling around her at top speed before everything turned black, and she hit the ground.