Everyone who knew him said Luke Loud was a hothead...and they weren't wrong. He had a reputation for acting before he thought, which routinely landed him in detention and, once, in the back of a cop car. It wasn't a reputation that was entirely deserved, though. He was perfectly capable to thinking before doing something, sometimes he just chose not to. On a bright and blustery January day, he did just that...and it was the hardest fucking thing he'd ever done in his life.
It happened in the cafeteria at lunch. He was sitting with Sam when a girl named Karen sat across from them and starting flirting with him - Sam, not Luke. That was bad enough, but Sam flirted back, and that was like a punch to the stomach...a fucking Mike Tyson wearing brass knuckles level blow that ruined his gut, his spleen, his kidneys, and possibly even his liver. She twirled her finger in her reddish blonde hair, smiled slinkily, and gave him the most forward pair of fuck-me eyes Luke had ever seen, and Sam ate it up.
Luke put up with it, though, his anger rising until hot tears filled his eyes and his hands shook. If he was really as impulsive as they said he was, he would have plowed the bitch in her face and maybe Sam too, but he didn't. He took it...even though it killed him, even though he was seeing right in front of his eyes the very thing that he hoped he never would, like a nightmare come true.
He wasn't a fag...but he liked Sam. Like...liked him the way he liked girls, only more. He was a ladies man, always had a girl when he wanted, because other guys get all nervous and shit around them, but not him. He liked them and all, but they didn't make him feel the way Sam did, didn't make him self-conscious and fluttery, Put him in a room full of the hottest girls at school and he was fine, when he was around Sam, though, he started blushing and shaking.
He wasn't a dumbass, he knew Sam wasn't into dudes, and knowing he'd never get to hold his hand and kiss him the way he wanted to ripped Luke's heart to fucking shreds. If he was smart, he'd stop hanging with him, but he wasn't - he was really into him and if he could only be his bro, then...fine.
That did not mean he wanted to watch some fucking ho get what he desired most. The way Sam looked at her...hungry and tender, like he wanted to pound her to smithereens then hold her in his arms, made Luke jealous. Sam never looked at him that way; he looked at him with relative indifference...he didn't linger on the strong curve of Luke's jaw the way he did his, never dwelled on his rock hard abs, never stared at his ass and bit his bottom lip. Nope. But he was looking at this tramp that way, and he just fucking met her.
Part of him wanted to get up and storm off, but he forced himself to stay where he was; he might like Sam, but he wasn't a fucking fag or a pussy. A tough guy like him didn't swish off in tiff because the dude he liked was talking to some slut, he sucked it up and dealt, so that's what he did. When the bell rang, he went to class like nothing and passed the rest of the day like he always did: Cutting up, cracking jokes, and picking on geeks. He was just going through the motions, though - he didn't wanna be doing this crap, he wanted to be with Sam, alone, running his hands over his cut, sweaty chest.
He wanted to tell him how he felt.
But he wouldn't.
Are you kidding me? If Sam got mad at Luke being into him, he might tell everyone...and then stop being friends with him. He didn't want people thinking he was a fag, but he didn't want to lose Sam even more, so he was pretty much stuck.
All that to say: He bottled all of that shit up, instead of unleashing it like the big bad hothead he supposedly was, and took it home with him. He was in a sour mood when he walked through the door, and any little thing could set him off.
That thing wound up being Linka.
She was sitting on the sofa and hugging a pillow to her chest when he got home, her legs drawn up under her and her eyes brimming with worry. Something was clearly wrong with her...and had been for close to a month. Normally, she was happy and upbeat, like a lamp shining in the dark. Since just before Christmas, however, she'd been really down, and a couple times he caught the soft sound of weeping coming from her room. On Christmas morning, when he first noticed her condition, she sat there on the couch with her head hung. Christmas was her favorite holiday - she'd wear a little Santa hat and pass out presents and sing and all that other gay shit, and even though it was dorky as hell, he loved it.
This year, she didn't do it.
She just sat there.
And you know what? That really fucking bothered him.
Like any good brother, he asked her if she was okay. She said that she was. Again and again and again, only she wasn't - she wouldn't look so fucking sad if she was okay. He stopped pressing after she snapped on him and yelled at him to leave her alone - call him what you want, but he didn't like it when Linka was mad at him anymore than he liked it when his Mom was mad at him, though he made Mom mad a lot more than he did Linka. She had this maternal thing about her, but she was also his little sister, and he was protective of her, okay?
He hated seeing her like this, and he wanted to know what was wrong so he could at least try to make it better. She wouldn't talk, though, and that was that.
Only it wasn't.
He didn't know if it was new or not, but since he started really paying attention to her, he noticed that she spent a lot of time with Levi. She'd go into his room and not come out for hours, and more than once he caught them sitting together on the couch and talking in hushed, urgent tones. He decided a long time ago that whatever was wrong with Linka, Levi had something to do with it. He held off on confronting his brother, but today, already pissed off, seeing Linka so glum was just too fucking much.
Taking off his jacket, he hung it on the rack and went straight up the stairs, determined to find out what was wrong with her even if he had to kick Levi's little ass to do it. At the top of the steps, he bumped into Loki, bent over his phone like always. The older boy looked up, his eyes narrowed, and started to say something, but stopped when he caught sight of Luke's hard face. "What's wrong with you?' he asked and arched his brow.
"Linka," Luke said, "she's sitting on the couch looking like someone killed her whole fucking world."
Loki was the only one Luke talked to about his suspicions. He mentioned noticing Linka being sad to Lane...then the dweeb turned around and told her a bunch of stupid fucking jokes trying to make her feel better.
"Yeah," Loki sighed, "she does look literally dejected."
"And I'm gonna find out why," Luke said and brushed past his brother. Loki hesitated, then shoved his phone into his pocket and followed.
At Levi's door, Luke banged like a cop with a warrant, already so worked up he'd tear the little freak's head off if he so much as said boo. "What?" the genius called sharply.
"I gotta talk to you," Luke said.
Levi didn't immediately reply. "Come in," he said with a huff.
Luke opened the door and went in. Levi was sitting at his computer with his back to him and his fingers flying across the keyboard. Since they were brothers, Luke gave him a full two seconds to turn before snapping. "Hey. Turn your ass around."
Levi tensed, then spun the chair around, his eyes slitted behind his big, dumb glasses. "What?" he asked with a hint of annoyance.
"What's the deal with Linka?" Loki asked before Luke could speak.
The little boy regarded them with a blank expression that Luke couldn't help but feel was fake, then shrugged one shoulder. "What do you mean?"
"She's been acting really depressed lately," Luke said, "and she's always with you. What did you do to her?"
A contemptuous sneer touched Levi's face. "I didn't do anything," he said, "Linka has been assisting me with a project of late and, I imagine, is simply tired from working as fastidiously as she does."
Luke knew he wasn't the sharpest knife in the...uh...place where they keep the knives, but he knew bullshit when he smelled it, and Levi's breath fucking reeked of it. He knew what was wrong with Linka and he was trying to cover it up because it was probably his fault.
Flashing, Luke stalked over and snatched Levi up by the lapels of his jacket, then dragged him out of the chair and lifted him up. Loki started, and Levi's face fell in horror. "What'd you do to her, you little creep?" Luke snarled. He shook Levi back and forth, delighting in the way his brother's head whipped; it felt good to get some of the anger out, and if he wasn't careful, he'd unleash it all.
"Nothing!" Levi cried. "I didn't do anything to her! I swear!"
Uh-uh. Wrong answer. Luke cocked his right fist, and Levi's eyes widened. "Y-You wouldn't strike a man in spectacles, would you?"
Grinning savagely, Luke plucked Levi's glasses from his face and tossed them away.
"I-I'm only four," Levi said, desperate.
"Then I'll hit real slow," Luke said. He pulled back his fist, and Levi screamed.
"Alright! Alright! I'll tell you!"
Now that's what he wanted to hear. He let go of Levi's coat, and he dropped to his chair, his chest heaving and his face the color of milk. Luke loomed over him, and Loki joined them, his arms crossing over his scrawny chest. "What's wrong with her?" the latter demanded.
Levi swallowed and looked up at them, his eyes darting nervously from one to the other. "Early last year," he started windedly, "I-I set out to disprove the multiverse theory and proved it instead."
"Multiverse?" Luke asked, his lips puckering. He knew what multi meant and he knew what verse meant (like, universe, right?) but he had not fuking clue what multiverse was. "What's that?"
"Alternate dimensions," Levi said.
Luke nodded. Okay, he knew what those were, kind of.
Wait a minute. "Those are real?"
"Yes," Levi said. "There is a seemingly infinite number of universes coexisting side-by-side. Some are quite different from our own, and others are very similar." He looked down at his lap. "There is one, for example, where everything is identical to ours save for genders. They've been reversed."
Luke furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"
"In that universe, everyone who is male here is a female there and vice versa." He told them how he found Lisa and gave them a slightly modified version of how Linka and Lincoln became involved - she accompanied him on a test visit to Lisa's world, he said, and fell in love with Lincoln. He did not tell them that he and Lisa hooked them up for the express purpose of recreational intercourse.
At some point, Lexx drifted in and stood between the two older boys, his brow pinching as he listened to Levi's story.
Next, he told them about the recent complications. "That's why Linka is upset," he finished.
The three regarded him indecisively for a moment, then Luke's face darkened. "You're full of shit," he spat.
"I'm telling you the truth," he said. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out his phone, and went to his pictures. "If you don't believe me," he said and held it out, "look at this."
Luke fixed him with a wary look, then snatched the phone away. He held it up, Lexx and Loki both crowding around, and what he saw took him aback. Thirteen people clustered in front of a house very much like his own, each one a near mirror image of him and his family...except they were all girls, save for the white haired boy.
Who looked almost exactly like Linka.
Suddenly he felt very dizzy.
"Whaaaaat?" Loki drew disbelievingly. He took the phone away and stared intently at the photo, a bemused smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Nooooo." He laughed. He squinted and brought the phone closer. "Girl me looks like kind of a bitch."
"Just like boy you," Lexx said. He grabbed the phone and stared at the screen in open mouth wonder. "Wow, girl me is gorgeous. Umf."
Luke snatched the phone away before Lexx could pop his first boner and looked at the screen again as if to confirm to himself that he saw what he thought he did.
The picture remained unchanged.
He'd never been to The Twilight Zone, but he sure fucking felt like he was there now. "As you can see," Levi said, "I was being forthright. That is the Loud family of 1216 Franklin Avenue, Royal Woods, Michigan, 48067."
Luke rubbed his temples, an uncanny tingle racing up and down his spine.
"Okay, so...she fell in love with her...her boy version?" Loki faltered.
"Yes," Levi said pointedly. "And I with my female self." He blushed and looked down at his lap as if in shame.
The older boy opened his mouth to speak but wound up closing it again, rendered completely speechless for the first time in his life.
"It's not as odd as it might seem on its face," Levi said. "After all, we humans are often attracted to people who share values and beliefs similar to our own. This…"
Loki cut him off. "This is really fucking strange. And kind of gross."
"No it isn't," Levi said bitingly. "When I'm with Lisa, I feel the most overwhelming sense of completion I have ever known. It goes far beyond our shared intellectual inclinations. She makes me feel...whole...as though I was only half a person before, and..." he trailed off when tears threatened to fill his eyes. "I don't expect you to understand or to care, but what I feel for Lisa, and what Linka feels for Lincoln, transcends love. It's something I can't articulate, it's something that can only be felt. In Roman mythology, human beings initially had two heads, four arms, and four legs. Zeus cut them in half because he feared their power, and from there on, they, we, were damned to spend eternity searching for their other half. Legend, of course, or so I thought...until I found my other half."
Luke and Loki exchanged a glance while Lexx looked as though he were making an honest effort to process what his little brother was saying. Luke stared down at the phone, picking his female version from the crowd and studying her with a critical appraisal of which he was capable but rarely employed. Looking into her face, startlingly like his own, he felt something, a soft stirring in the pit of his stomach that was not as strong as what he felt for Sam, but stronger than what he felt for most woman. Her eyes, slyly half-lidded, and her knowing smirk were both...beautiful? Appealing?
He tried to actually imagine himself kissing her...and realized that he could; he could see himself kissing girl Luke and enjoying it. Loki took the phone away and stared at his female form. The thought of falling in love with a girl (or, in Linka's case, boy) who looked just like you struck him as not just kind of gross, but deeply disturbing. He was an attractive guy, but not such a narcissist that he wanted to French himself or anything. Even so, as he considered the blonde girl before him, he felt his heartbeat quicken...just a little.
"Alright, fine, she's in love with boy Linka," Luke said, "c-can't you fix your teleporter thing?"
Levi sighed. "It's not the teleporter, it's t-the fabric of spacetime itself. I can boost the teleporter's horsepower no problem and get through like that, but the spacetime between here and there is unstable. One more rip and we could all be dead. As much as I love Lisa, I can't risk that."
Luke nodded. Yeah, he could see where that might be an issue. "What do we do for Linka then?" he asked. "I really don't like seeing her this way."
"What can you do?" Levi asked. "Lisa and I have been working out how to circumvent the issue. We considered teleporting indirectly by way of a third world, but that won't work. The veil is damaged on both ends, and any travel in or out could spell certain doom." He sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "As far as we can tell...there is no way."
Across the universe, a similar string of events lead Lori Loud to call her sisters together in her bedroom for an emergency meeting. Lori, seventeen, loved her siblings, including her brother, but over the previous six months, she'd taken to completely ignoring them. It was not a choice so much as it was a necessity: She was graduating high school in the spring, and though she put on a stoic front for her family, she was scared shitless. She was standing at the precipice of adulthood, her toes danging over a dark and mysterious never-ending chasm, and each passing day was earth crumbling under her feet. When she walked across the stage and accepted her diploma, it would cave and spill her into uncertainty.
The first step, obviously, was finding a good college. She set out on her search last summer, then, in the beginning of the school year, she dedicated herself to improving her grades to help her chances of acceptance. She read, took practice tests, and studied, studied, studied until her brain ached and her stomach hurt.
Always hitting the books left her with precious little time to spend with her siblings, and even less time to involve herself in their affairs. For six months, they became little more than shadows in her periphery. This did not bother her; she was months away from literally becoming an adult, and she needed to prepare. She was close with her family, but come on, you can't be stuck up someone's butt 24/7.
Around Christmas, however, she noticed something.
Lincoln.
He was...sad.
Puberty is a strange and confusing time filled with raging hormones and swinging emotions, she knew that all too well. At first she assumed what he was going through was natural and that in a week or so he'd be back to his old self.
That didn't happen.
On Christmas, his favorite holiday, he just sat in the armchair and watched everyone opening their presents and laughing with the most hangdog expression Lori had ever seen. He seldom laughed anymore and all the life and vibrancy that once characterized his personality seemed to have drained away, leaving him cold, empty, and dead.
When she got home from school that January day, she found him sitting in the armchair with his arms crossed and a blank look on his face. He glanced absently at her as she passed, and his eyes were pink and puffy, as though he'd been crying. Her heart dropped into her stomach and she went to him. He told her, as he had countless times over the past month, that he was fine. He obviously wasn't, but Lori left him alone because the last thing he needed was her breathing down his neck.
She was at a loss, though.
Kind of.
Recently, he'd been spending a lot of time with Lisa - hanging out in her lab behind closed doors, sitting next to her at dinner, following her around, urgently whispering to her as they sat on the couch. Whatever had him down, Lisa knew what it was, and as she climbed the stairs, she decided that she was going to find out.
Ten minutes later, all of her sisters, including Lisa, were clustered together in her room, some sitting on her bed, others on Leni's - Leni herself sat at her vanity facing the congregation, Lola perched on a stool in front of her and glowing. Leni was doing her hair when Lori called the meeting, and presently it was messy and half done up in curlers, reminding Lori of a fat, frumpy trailer park dwelling grandmother.
Lisa stood against the door, her arms crossed and an expression uncannily similar to Lola's on her face. She was working on her computer when Lori stuck her head into the room. I'm busy, Lori, the little girl spat, please leave me alone. This is very important.
Since noticing that Lisa and Lincoln were spending an unusual amount of time together, Lori had been paying close attention to the genius, as well, and discovered that she, too, was acting strangely. She wouldn't say sad...it was more anxious than anything, as though something weighed heavily and perpetually on her mind. It was evident this very moment: Her face was drawn and wan, her haunted and sleep deprived eyes brimmed with dark disquiet, and her foot tapped a restless tempo against the floor. She put Lori in mind of a fish out of water for some reason, yearning to be somewhere else.
Lori stood in the middle of the room and regarded her little sister with a concerned frown, then sighed and looked at everyone else. "I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but something's wrong with Lincoln."
Everyone looked at each other, their faces fifty different shades of worry. "Yeah, he does seem kind of down," Luna said. She grinned playfully. "Does he like butter tarts?"
"This isn't a joke, Luna," Lori snapped. "He looks really sad."
"He doesn't wanna play in the snow anymore," Lana said with a somber inflection.
"And he doesn't laugh at my jokes," Luan said.
Yeah, Lori thought but didn't say, that's why.
She looked at Lisa, who gazed off to one side, her foot slapping the floor. Lori took a deep breath and steeled herself for a confrontation. Lisa felt her eyes on her and met them. "What's wrong with him?" Lori asked pointedly.
Maybe she was imagining things, but it looked like Lisa flinched ever so slightly. "How should I know?" There was a defensive edge in her voice - Lori was not imagining that.
"I don't know," Lori said, "but you do."
"I tell you, I don't.'
Everyone looked from her to Lisa like an audience watching a tennis match.
Lori crossed her arms and cocked her hip, looking so much like her mother it was creepy - she wasn't conscious of doing it, it just came natural when she was disciplining one of her siblings. "I say you do," she said firmly, "and I wanna know what's wrong with my little brother."
Lisa opened her mouth to speak, but the fight ran out of her and she slouched heavily against the door. "Nothing," she said. Her voice was flat and unconvincing.
Well...she didn't want to do this, but Lisa left her no choice. "Mom and Dad specifically forbid you from having a nuclear reactor in your room...yet you have not one but two. It would be a shame if someone…"mentioned" it to them."
The color drained from Lisa's face and her brows shot up in alarm. "You wouldn't," she breathed.
Lori took her phone out, brought up her contacts, and held it out so that Lisa could see the screen. MOM in big white letters. Lisa hung her head and drew a deep breath. "Alright, fine, if you must know, I'll tell you."
Exiting out of her phone, Lori shoved it into her pocket and crossed her arms. "Go ahead."
Lisa hesitated a moment, then raked her fingers through her tangled brown hair. "Approximately eight months ago, I set out to prove the existence of multiple universes in addition to our own. I trust you're familiar, at least vaguely, with the concept."
She was...though she couldn't say exactly how. The idea of alternate realities is one of those cultural things that one seems to absorb by osmosis, like A Christmas Carol. Lori had never read the book or even seen the movie, but every cartoon in the world did a parody of it at one point or another, so she knew it just as well as if she had read it. What that had to to with Lincoln, she didn't know...but the more she meditated on her sister's words, the more her stomach turned. "Yes," she said.
"Though it is an unconventional belief, I was intrigued and, after much study, I became sure of its existence….and I was right."
She told them about happening across Levi like a ship in the night, and about introducing Lincoln to Linka - she omitted the sexual aspect of their relationship and insinuated that they fell in love when she and Lincoln visited Levi's timeline. Her sisters all leaned forward, their faces wide in wonder. She ended with the recent...complications. "That is why Lincoln and I have both been upset as of late."
For a long time after she finished, Lori processed her story, her brow knitting in consternation. "That sounds like bull," she finally said.
Lisa sighed, reached into her pocket, and pulled out her phone. "It is a difficult thing to accept," she said. "I realize that. I would most likely be in your place if I hadn't seen it myself, but the fact of the matter is that the multiverse does, indeed, exist." She held the phone out, and for some inexplicable reason, Lori felt a rush of dread, as though it were a slimy creature with fangs instead of an ordinary Apple 12. She took the phone regardless and looked at the screen, her sisters clustering around her.
"Oh, dude, look at that," Luna breathed.
Ten people sat on a couch, all boys save for the white haired girl in the center, her knees pressed together and her hands resting on her lap, a big, glowing smile on her face. The boys on either side of her were nearly identical to Lori and her sisters.
Lori's jaw fell slack and the strangest sense of the uncanny swept through her like a cold, numbing wind. "Ooooh," Lola said, "my male version is hot." Lori's eyes went to the little boy who looked just like Lola, then to the boy who looked just like her; even his self-assured smile was like hers.
To say she was stunned would be an understatement. The word dumbfounded would be more apt, but even that didn't fully convey the caustic mixture of shock, stupefaction, and superstitious dread swirling in her chest.
"Of course, being opposite sexes, we are not exactly the same," Lisa explained. "You cannot throw a wig onto a male and expect him to behave as a female and vice versa. It might be politically incorrect to say this, but there are social and biological differences between the genders. This is a scientific and sociological fact. However, as you can see, we are as like them as one can possibly be. We think along the same lines to the point that Levi and myself often finish each other's sentences and, indeed, thought processes. He is more conservative and traditional in his approach. He set out, at the same time as I did, to disprove the multiverse. I suspect that this has to do with his gender. Being a woman in a male dominated field, I am already unconventional and more prone to thinking outside the box as it were. Lori's counterpart occupies the same position as she does in terms of authority, but lacking the maternal instincts of a female, his is a less nurturing, more hands off approach. He's also something of a bully, along with Luna's."
Her sisters divided their attention between her and the phone, drawn to both but unable to cogitate both at once.
Lisa opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, resembling a fish gasping for breath. "I am fully aware of how offtrail it seems to fall in love with your exact copy. I've given great thought to the matter and I still can't explain how he makes me feel." She sad, a dreamy smile spread across her lips and she looked away as if to hide the tears shimmering in her eyes. "Good," she said. "He makes me feel good and whole. Everyone, I imagine, has something missing in them, even if they don't realize it. For some it's love, for others it's money or respect, and for others still, it's peace of mind. We worry, we fret...I do, at any rate. When I'm with Levi, I feel totally at ease and…" she trailed off and took a deep breath. "I don't know. I can't articulate it. I just love him. And Lincoln feels the same way about Linka."
For a long time, no one spoke, the gravity of the situation heavy in the air. Lori studied her male version and wondered if she could ever...kiss him...and after a contemplative moment, she found that she could.
It was strange.
It boggled her mind.
It even disturbed her on some level.
But looking into Lisa's eyes, she saw that the feelings the little girl had for Levi were as intense and genuine as such things can be. She thought of Lincoln sitting on the couch, head hung and looking for all the world like a man who lost everything dear to him, and her heart twanged in sympathy. "What can we do?" she asked, vowing to herself to do whatever it took to help her brother and sister see the ones they loved again.
"Nothing," Lisa said and folded her arms anxiously. "I've been working on it nonstop for nearly a month and I don't…" her voice broke and she brushed her glasses up, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. "I can't get through," she said in whisper, then broke down crying, her shoulders shaking and her body trembling.
As one, her sisters went to her. Lori knelt and laid a hand on her shoulder, and the pitiful way she shook under her touch sent ripples of pain through Lori's soul. She opened her mouth to impart a nugget of older-sister wisdom, but she realized that she didn't know what to say - the circumstances of Lisa and Lincoln's predicament were so far beyond her limited experience that she was struck dumb, and all she could do was take Lisa in her arms and hold her tight. The others crowded around and offered their own displays of affection: Luna stroking her hair with a frown; Luan rubbing a circle between her shoulder blades; Lucy patting her shoulder as if to say there, there. Lisa's tears tapered of and she fell still, her grief spent...but only momentarily, Lori imagined.
"I can get through," Lisa said dully. "But at what cost? The utter destruction of everything? Of the boy I love?"
"Too high a cost," Lori said instantly. "But you're Lisa, you can, like, do anything you set your mind to."
"I know," she said simply, "but I don't think I can do this."
Lori didn't know what to say to that. Her mind flashed back to Lincoln on the couch; he was in just as much pain as Lisa. "Leni...go get Lincoln, please."
Leni nodded and rushed off. A few minutes later, she returned with Lincoln in tow, his melancholy tempered with curiosity. Lori motioned for him to enter, and he did, pushing the door softly shut behind him. He darted his eyes from sister to sister, noted their grave expressions, and paled a little. "W-What's wrong?"
Lisa pulled away from Lori and adjusted her glasses. "I told them about Linka and Levi," she said.
Lincoln blinked in surprise, then looked jerkily around the room as though he expected his sisters to be angry with him, or at the very least disapproving of his relationship. Instead, they surrounded him and, as one, hugged him fiercely. All of the worry and fear that had been building up in him over the past month crested, and tears flooded his eyes. He blinked them back and held on to his calm as hard as he could, not wanting to cry in front of them, like a child.
"How are you holding up?" Lori asked softly.
He didn't trust himself to speak, so he shrugged one shoulder instead. In truth, he wasn't holding up very well at all. Every day the chances of ever seeing Linka again became even more remote, drifting into the darkness like an astronaut lost in space, and every day, the signal grew just a little weaker, a little more unreliable. He told himself again and again to buck up, that it wasn't the end of the world, but panic clawed at his chest regardless, and sometimes his stomach ached with pangs of terror that made him wince. It was possible...nay, at this point likely...that he was going to lose the thing that meant the most to him in the world, the light of his life, the air in his lungs, the heart in his body. How was he holding up? He cried himself to sleep at night, and during the day, he could barely summon the energy to shift positions. It wasn't the end of the world...but it might as well have been the end of his.
The longer he was apart from Linka, the sharper his feelings became, the more he came to understand that drama queen or not, he needed her. Lisa surmised that, in a way, the people in their universe were, somehow, the other half of the people in Linka's...not metaphorically but literally. Derived from the same matter, she said, cut of the same cloth; separated akin to the division of a cell. He didn't know the how and why of it, but he thought she was right. He didn't feel empty and incomplete before meeting Linka, but now, apart from her, he felt it so acutely that he might as well have been missing a limb.
At night, when he gave up the struggle to sleep, he took out his phone and looked at pictures of them, her bright eyes, warm smile, and soft freckled face both heartening and disheartening. He longed to touch her with such intensity that his fingertips tinged, and sometimes, he imagined himself just laying with her, their arms around one another and their noses touching - breathing her air, soothed by her smell, gazing into her sparkling eyes and brushing his fingers through her hair.
When cold reality penetrated the mist of his fantasy and he was forced once more to confront the stark possibility that he would never touch or kiss her again, or even hear her voice...that's when he started to cry.
Maybe he was melodramatic….but it hurt so fucking bad, a black, constant throbbing in the center of his chest like an open, seeping wound.
Lori brushed her hand across his face and regarded him with tight-lipped sympanty, and he flicked his eyes to his feet - if he looked at it too long, he would cry whether he wanted to or not. "I-I'm okay," he said.
That was a lie...he was not okay, and if the border between his world and Linka's closed...he never would be again.
Linka hugged the pillow to her chest and stared at the TV, her vision blurring with hot, stinging tears that were becoming harder and harder to hold back. She had not gotten a full night's sleep in nearly a month, and everything she saw somehow reminded her of Lincoln, the boy she loved but couldn't touch, could barely speak to anymore. It's only a matter of time, Levi said grimly the other day, until the signals can't get through anymore. He didn't know when, just sooner rather than later.
Once that happened, she would be entirely cut off from Lincoln.
Probably forever.
She drew a deep, watery breath and looked away from the screen, her lips starting to quiver. They say you don't know what you have until it's gone, and since finding out that she might lose Lincoln, she came to realize just how much he meant to her. When she was with him, she felt like a bird flying high in the heavens, free of worries, free of uncertainties, and just plain free. He made her feel the way sitting in her father's lap once made her feel - safe, warm, loved, and protected, as though nothing in the world could hurt her. She felt...completed. She thought about them and what he awoke in her a lot since they first met, and that was the word she kept coming back to. Completed. Levi and Lisa both thought that everyone in this world was, like, the literal other half of everyone in that world; he likened it to the way monozygotic (identical) twins start as one zygote then split into two separate embryos. She didn't know science very well, but it made sense, because she felt like Lincoln was part of her, and she a part of him; two white-haired puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together, but would never fit with another.
It wasn't such a big deal, she told herself, but it really was, and she didn't know if she could handle losing him.
Blinking against the tears, she got a grip of her emotions and stared at the TV again, thoughts of Lincoln battering her from every side. She talked to hm on the phone earlier, and his voice barely broke through the static - she could hear it, but she couldn't enjoy and revel in it the way she used to.
He was falling away from her and there was nothing she could do about it. She was at the mercy of a cruel universe who gave her the most perfect and precious thing, then snatched it away from her with a hateful laugh. At night it plagued her dreams; in them, she and Lincoln were lost in the a world of shadows, their hands clutching...then some unseen force pulled her back, breaking her hold on him. When she woke, she was always crying, and from there on, her stomach reeled with nauseous dread - it was going to happen, just like in her nightmares, and though she knew it was coming, she could not prevent it, could only sit there and watch.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't realize she was no longer alone until a hand fell on her shoulder. She turned, and Luke flashed a tight, pallid smile that looked as though it belonged to a funeral director consoling a bereaved widow. Her other brothers gathered around, shoving up next to her on the couch like sardines in a tin. Their expressions ranged from somber to concerned to seemingly indifferent (Lars, of course). Uhh...what happened? Oh my God, did someone die?
Her heart skipped a beat and she looked from one to the next, finally landing on Levi, who darted his eyes guiltily to his lap. "I told them."
Confusion came over her and she tilted her head. Told them? Told them wha -?
Then it clicked and she cringed. She looked at her brothers, half expecting them to be upset or repulsed, but she saw only sympathy. "You alright?" Luke asked.
Maybe she was extra emotional, but seeing how much they cared for her and how sad they looked that she was sad, Linka teared up. Well...even more. "No," she admitted; she wanted to say yes but the truth slipped out anyway. Ho hum. She hugged the pillow and looked away from them, pretending, as she often did, that it was Lincoln. "I'm sad."
The dam burst and she could do little more than let herself be swept away in a torrent of misery. She buried her face in the pillow and allowed the tears to come from deep in her soul. Luke frowned and rubbed a gentle circle in her back, hating seeing her so broken up and hating himself because there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
"We'll keep trying," Levi said, his voice flat and lacking conviction. "Where there's a will, there's a way."
She didn't believe that. She believed that she would never see Lincoln again, and that no matter how long or fully she lived, she would never love someone the way she loved him.
No. That wasn't right.
She would never be able to love anyone else period.
This might be your last chance.
Those words rang through Lincoln's head like a death knell as he sat on the edge of his bed, purple twilight filling the room ike the soft, cold ember glow of a dead fire. A crack of light shone under the door, and muffled noises drifted to his ears: Luna's guitar, Lola and Lana arguing, Luan cackling like an evil villain standing over a seemingly defeated hero. Normal sounds, average...but grotesque too. They were going about their lives like it was just another day, meanwhile, his world was in chaos, not over, maybe, but certainly in upheaval.
The signal is weaker now, Lisa said earlier, I don't think it'll get through much longer. She sat at her computer, staring strickenly at the screen, her shoulders hunched defensively, as if to ward off the inevitable. This might be it, Lincoln, she said and pursed her quivering lips. He simply nodded and walked away, cold and numb like a man in shock. She said she would try, and he knew she would...for as long as she lived...but deep down, he knew it was hopeless, knew with the dread certainty of a cancer patient watching their life waste away before their very eyes. They weren't meant to meet, him and Linka...Lisa and Levi. The fabric between their worlds was a line, a line that was never supposed to be crossed. Who decided that was beyond him - God? Allah? The universe itself? - but the more he thought about it, the more fatalistic he became, the more he believed it to be true. Lisa and Levi transgressed against nature, and someone, or something, was restoring order.
He was reminded of the Titanic, that ship they based the long ass Leonardo DiCaprio movie on. Yeah, it was real, the biggest, longest, most beautiful ship in the world at the time. Everyone made such a big deal over this fucking boat...and on its maiden voyage, it slammed into an iceberg and sank. That was 1912, and mankind was getting a little big for its britches. In thirty years, so many technological advances came along that the world changed. For thousands of years, you had your candlelight and liked it. Suddenly you had electricity, planes, cars, the telephone, movies, and even radio. Then the Titanic, an 882 foot long monument to man's hubris, a decadent palace of excess whose opulence was rivaled only by the dining halls in Heaven. Humankind thought it was was hot shit, that it finally conquered the world, and that God and nature were its bitch.
Just like now, someone came along and put them back in their place. Then two years later, WWI broke out, and men got to see up close and personal what all those nifty little gadgets could really do.
He looked down at the phone clutched in his right hand, gripped so tight his knuckles were a deep shade of bloodless. His stomach knotted and he took a deep breath.
This might be your last chance.
In the movie Titanic, the captain stood gallantly (or foolishly) in the bridge as the ship sank, a figure of futility and grim resignation being slowly swallowed by the icy ocean. Lincoln imagined that what he felt now was very much like what that long ago seafarer felt as the bow dipped and the band began to play.
Licking his dry lips, he swiped his thumb across the screen, went to hit contacts, and called up Linka's number. A picture of her smiling face greeted him, and he smiled even as the tears began to fall.
He pushed the CALL button and held the phone up to his ear, fighting to get a handle on his emotions; he didn't want his voice to break or hitch..for her sake.
She answered on the third ring. "Hi," she croaked wetly; even through the heavy static, he could hear the pain in her tone, and it hurt him more than anything else.
"Hey," he said and forced a smile he didn't feel, doing his damnedest to sound like this wasn't a final goodbye. "H-How's it going?"
"Awful," she said. Her voice was faint and tinny, the hiss of interstellar white noise covering it like seawater covering the deck of a foundering ocean liner. "Levi says this...this might be it."
Lincoln sighed. "Yeah," he admitted, the words coming hard, "i-it might."
"I don't want it to be," she said and started to cry. "I don't."
"Neither do I," Lincoln said, holding back his own tears but just barely. "But Lisa and Levi will think of something." He didn't believe that, but in that moment, he desperately wanted Linka to.
She sniffed deeply. "No they won't. This is the last time I'll ever get to talk to you." Her voice broke on talk.
In Lisa's room, she sat before her computer and gazed off to one side, her elbow propped on the arm of her chair and her hand fisted to her mouth. "When I first met you, Lisa" Levi said, his voice crackling. "I didn't particularly like you."
"Nor I you," she said and darted her eyes to the screen; the connection was steadily degrading, the picture wavering from side to side and pixelating. She looked away and took a deep breath. At any moment, he would go dark and she would likely never speak with him again...or see his gentle features...or stare into his dark eyes and feel that peculiar "warm and fuzzy" sensation in her breast that she had come to relish.
With Levi, her emotions had always been tumultuous - hot or cold with no middle ground. In the beginning, she disliked him. Then, somewhere along the way, a certain chemical reaction occurred in her brain, and she fell deeply and hopelessly in love with him. She understood the physical and mental processes that resulted in those strange and irrational things called feelings, and when it became apparent that hers and Levi's relationship was going to die, she believed that overcoming her emotions was as simple as mind over matter.
It was not.
Whatever love is, it is far more powerful than she ever imagined. She once thought of it as a state of mind, but today, she thought of it more as a disease, one that was beautiful until it was not, and neigh on incurable. She was in love with Levi Loud and that was all there was to it.
Voice garbled, Levi continued. "You have a certain way about you, a pomposity that I once found insufferable."
Lisa uttered a genuine laugh.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips and he scratched the back of his head. "Then we had our first video conference, and as you spoke, I kept thinking the same four words over and over again even though I really didn't wish to."
Lisa forced herself to look at the screen, smiling lopsidedly despite herself. "And what were those?"
Glancing down as if embarrassed, Levi said, "'She has beautiful eyes.'" He looked up and their gazes met, a hot blush spreading across Lisa's face and her smile getting inexorably bigger even though she wasn't happy. "By the end of that call, I was experiencing things I'd never felt before. I couldn't stop thinking about you - you consumed my every waking thought and even my dreams. It was torture." He laughed and she laughed too.
"I remember," she said, thinking of her own constitution during the aforementioned time period. She suffered the same affliction, the same gnawing need in her chest. Need to see him, to hear his voice, to be with him anyway she could, and for him to be with her. "It was torment."
Levi nodded soberly. "But I wouldn't trade it for anything."
"Nor would I."
"These past several months have -" the screen flickered and Levi's voice slurred. Lisa's heart clutched and she sat up straight, her hands coming to rest on the edge of the desk. The picture resolved, though faint, dimmer, horizontal lines of static dancing across. "...life." He sighed and looked at her, his eyes doleful and bleak. "I don't understand the nature of our emotions, and, frankly, I don't care." He hesitated for a moment, then placed his hand on the screen. "I love you, Lisa."
Clamping her lower lip hard between her teeth to keep from breaking down, she pressed her hand over his, imagining she could feel his touch across a vast chasm of spacetime. There was so much they didn't get the chance to do, so much they would never get to do now. She bitterly remembered every time they'd been in the same room, every long, stimulating conversation and every wasted second. They held hands only twice, and hugged but three times. Regret washed through her, and she wished keenly that they'd made better use of their time together, that he held her in his arms and that she kissed him full on the mouth, the way Lincoln kissed Linka, germs be damned.
The screen pixelated again and blinked; some of the picture came back, but not all of it. Dark patches here and there reminded her of a puzzle incomplete.
Just like her.
"I will do everything in my power," Levi vowed, "to find you again."
Lisa didn't trust herself to speak, so she simply nodded. She would do the same. In fact, until she found a way through, she would do nothing else. None of her other studies or projects mattered, only being with him.
The screen dimmed and static filled the line, denser, louder than before; she could barely hear his voice. "I won't stop," he said, "until we're together again."
Knowing it was the end, Lisa hung her head and let the tears come. "I love you, Levi," she trembled, "please come back to me." She broke down and wept bitterly, her eyes squeezing shut and her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs. "Please don't leave me," she begged. "I need you."
Slowly and ponderously, the storm passed, leaving her cold and alone.
When she looked up, the screen was dark.
Lincoln lay on his side, the phone pressed to his ear and his tearful eyes staring sightlessly into the dark. "Do you remember the first time you came over?" he asked, his voice hollow and monotonous.
"Yeah," Linka said.
"And when I came in the room?"
She didn't reply for a moment. Her voice was distant, made small and faint by a million miles of hissing shadows. "I almost peed myself," she said, and giggled sadly.
"I keep thinking about it," he said and blinked. The phone was starting to overheat and burn his hand, but he didn't care. He was going to stay on with her until the last possible minute, even if it meant letting the damn thing blow up on him. "It's one of those things that…" he trailed off. He didn't wanna sound cheesy, but, you know what? He didn't care anymore. "In that moment my life changed," he said. "I didn't know it at the time, but it did."
Linka was silent. "Mine too," she said. "I don't want to lose you."
"I don't want to lose you either," he said. He drew a deep, shivering sigh and shifted his weight. His neck and back were both stiff, but those were inconsequential right now. "You mean everything to me, Linka. You're...you're my light and I love you."
"I love you too," she said and started to cry again.
Lincoln's heart broke and he gripped the phone tighter, his breathing coming faster as his own grief threatened to overwhelm him. "Please don't," he begged.
"I can't help it," she hitched.
No, he figured, she couldn't. He could barely stop himself from joining her. Every kiss, every touch, and every smile flashed across his mind like a dying man's life before his eyes, and sharp loss dug steely claws deep into his chest. He remembered Halloween, and holding her in his arms, wrapped in the warm, drowsy afterglow of their lovemaking, and he sighed. If he knew that was the last time he would ever hold her, he would have squeezed just a little more tightly and clung for a little longer.
Static crashed across the line. "Are you there?" he asked.
"...still here," she said, even more distant now, her voice echoing as if down a long, yawning chasm.
He turned to face the wall. "I got you a Christmas present," he said. It sat in his drawer where it had for the past month. He anticipated giving it to her at some point, but now he realized he would never get the chance.
"Yeah. Fuzzy socks, right?" she asked flatly. It was supposed to be a joke, but it sounded more like a dirge.
He smiled fondly. "It's a -"
Hiss, crack, pop.
"Linka?"
"...barely." Her voice was even fainter now, draining steadily away. His stomach twinged and his tears over spilled his eyes. He was reminded of that dumb captain again, standing there with his hands behind his back as the end came upon him.
This, now, was Lincoln's end. Maybe not as total as the cap'n's, but no less painful.
This might be your last chance, Lisa said from the center of his head.
Allowing his emotions to lead him, he started to speak, not knowing what he was going to say until he heard it out loud. "Linka, I'm going to miss you so much. Every day I'm going to think of you, and every night I'm going to cry because you're not here with me. I won't forget you." He was crying now, his knees curling up to his chest and lending him the appearance of a dying pillbug. "I'll always love you but please don't wait. Find someone else to love and have a family. I don't care, I just want you to be happy, okay? Promise me you'll be happy. That's all I want." His voice broke and it took Herculean effort to keep himself in some semblance of control. "Be happy, please," he said, a kneading edge in his voice.
She didn't reply.
"Linka?"
Not even static.
He held the phone up and stared at the screen for a long time, the words CALL DROPPED blinking in time with his slamming heart.
Letting it fall from his hand, he rolled over, buried his face in his pillow, and wept.
Please let her be happy, God, he prayed, please...let her be happy.
But he doubted, and over the long, fruitless years that followed, that doubt only grew.
It's not over just yet.