:Present Time:

Darcy didn't know how long she had been crying, but the gentle touch of a small hand on her shoulders reminded her that she wasn't alone. That outside of her own personal hell, she had became a mother…to two kids that knew all of her secrets. She wanted to be pissed at them. To yell at them, that they didn't have a right to pry into her life just because they could.

'They're mine.' Darcy reminded herself. Beneath the anger was shame and embarrassment. She didn't know how to face them, or if she even wanted to. In a perfect world she would just keep her head down and wait for time to rewind to when she was pregnant. She wouldn't fall asleep, she would raise them, and tell them kid approved stories. 'My life isn't mine anymore' Darcy thought hiccuping. What Darius and Ambee…what they took away from me. How can I get it back?' Darcy dug her fingers into her hair, clenching her scalp as she felt a panic attack grip her. 'I need to get it back'

"Please." Darcy whispered aloud, rocking back and forth. She didn't know if she wanted to ask her children to go away or if she wanted to ask whoever was listening to give her, her life back. It was taking so much self-control to not lash out at her own kids, for something that they couldn't control. For things she couldn't teach them. "Please." Darcy repeated. She was scared, scared for her kids, and herself. It felt like her identity had been ripped away from her. Everything that was comforting and familiar was gone. She didn't know who she was any more. What if she couldn't mother. Her own mother hadn't…no she wouldn't think about that. Her mother was good to her until that Halloween.

The little hands on her shoulders vanished to be replaced by a bigger one. "Breathe. May you breathe and calm yourself my queen." Ambee said, rubbing a slow circle on Darcy's back.

"I want to go back." Darcy cried. "I want this to have all been a dream." Darcy instantly regretted her words when she felt an overwhelming sense of lost and sadness permeate her immediate space that didn't belong to her or Ambee. She had broken her children's hearts. After building them up she had broken them. Darcy looked up, and turned to stare behind Ambee, and watched as her Daughter hugged her brother and cried into his shirt. Her son did not hug his sister back, his hands clenched at his sides as his shoulders shook and he stared at the ground.

"Do not fault our queen, your mother. I warned you of the fragility of a mother's heart upon waking from a long slumber. Having missed so much of her most cherished persons lives." Ambee said somberly.

Darcy could feel her anger rising, the more Ambee tried to justify how Darcy felt to her own kids.

"T-that does n-not make it hurt any less." Darcy's daughter answered between sobs. "We have disappointed her."

Darcy's son remained silent, but she could feel what he refused to voice.

"We have disappointed her brother." Darcy's daughter said.

"Stop!" Darcy yelled, wobbling to her feet as her flames expanded to fill the entire dome. Her blue eyes shone with her tears. Noticing Ambee's hand still on her back she flinched away from her as if she had been burned, while giving the red headed woman a look of disgust. She couldn't take any of this. Her children's pain felt like knives in her chest.

"You fucking bitch, don't pretend to know how I feel. This is your fault!" Darcy grabbed a handful of Ambee's hair and pulled until the red head was meeting her eyes with a pained grimace. "When you showed them my memories did you show them how you and Darius forced me to leave my home, by dangling Natasha's life over my head? Did you let them see what I saw in her mind, what Darius did to her? Answer me!" Darcy yelled, pulling harder.

"No, my queen." Ambee gasped, as Darcy's grip tightened.

Darcy laughed a mirthless laugh. "You really are an evil, heartless, bitch." Darcy materialized her sword in her free hand, not losing sight of the fear on Ambee's face through her tear blurred vision.

"Why should I hurt this much, and you feel fucking a-ok? Why should my kids hurt this much and you and Darius feel nothing?" Darcy glanced at her children to see both of them watching the scene before them. Her daughter briefly glanced to Ambee with a look of wide-eyed fear for the woman's life on her face. Darcy's son stared at both of them stoically, as if whatever she chose to do would be justified, but she could feel that he cared and the jealousy that bloomed in her chest destroyed her ability to reason.

"I told you to leave, but you had to come back!" Darcy yelled, pulling Ambee by her hair to kneel on her knees. 'Who does this bitch think she is, to fuck with me?' Darcy wondered enraged.

The blue and white of Darcy's eyes became flames, her skin peeled away leaving blue and orange flames in the shape of a woman. Her hair darkened to blue, and the flames of her eyes cooled to black marble. Darcy pulled the flames filling the sphere into her form, as her black eyes searched Ambee's face, looking for something, anything to let her know the woman felt guilt, that she knew what she did was wrong. When she could find nothing but a mask of stoicism, she feasted on her emotions, and was with nothing but more calm.

"Feel something!" Darcy vanished her sword and punched Ambee in the center of her face, releasing the red head's hair as she staggered backwards on her knees, gripping her broken nose. Darcy vowed to beat Ambee until she felt better.

"Was I just a toy?" Darcy asked running and issuing Ambee a sound kick in her stomach, until she hunched over, throwing up a clear green liquid. "Tell me!"

Ambee wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, and clutched her bare stomach where a bruise was already starting to form. The arm she used to support her battered form gave out and Ambee collapsed to her back, to stare at the top of the sphere.

Just as Darcy was about to kick her again, she paused when Ambee raised a hand towards the ceiling. She watched as the stoic woman broke down and began crying green tears that matched the bile she continued to cough up. The green liquid pooled around her, and smeared over her naked breast.

"Despair." Darcy said aloud with wide eyes, as flashes of color filled the dome, briefly becoming a picture of a blurry face.

"I cannot stand by and watch this! Stop!" Darcy's daughter yelled, running to kneel down beside Ambee, cradling the woman's head, and grabbing her hand, bringing it to rest at her side. Darcy's daughter looked up at her with tears in her eyes. "If you wish to punish someone for our disappointing you mother, please spare our dearest Ambee."

Darcy stumbled backward, as her mouth opened and all she could say was "Oh", in shock. She didn't stop moving backward until her back hit the glass of the sphere. She couldn't look away from her daughter cradling Ambee, but she knew she needed to be anywhere but where she was.

"Mother." Darcy's son said, sensing her pain and reaching out towards her, as he closed the distance between them.

Darcy rushed away from him, looking for a door, until instinct took over and she fell through the sphere and landed in the middle of a clearing with silver grass, and bugs that resembled fireflies glowing bright blue, flying around. Looking up she saw that she couldn't see into the sphere from the outside. On the outside it was covered in moss, vines, and red dirt. It looked like an oversized unkept grave. Darcy scrambled to her feet, and looked for the other spheres she had seen, and realized that what she had seen of the outside world through the sphere had been an illusion.

Kneeling on their knees all around her were thousands of women with skin colors of every color of the rainbow. They were as naked as the day they were born. Some were bald, and others had hair so long they wrapped it around their torso making a makeshift toga. Behind the women and surrounding Darcy and the large mound were five skyscraper sized statues of women. Each statue depicted a woman with a crown of flame atop her head, and a sword in their hand. Depending on the statue, the sword was either raised high above its owners head, while their face snarled, or it was held down to the ground by a stoic faced statue.

As if they had rehearsed together, they all looked up and spoke in unison. "Mother."

Darcy was so shocked, that the despair she had been feeling that belonged to Ambee her children, and herself, went to the back of her mind. 'I didn't birth them too did I?" Darcy wondered in horror. She squeezed her thighs together in fear for the state of her vagina if she did. 'Well that feels odd.' Darcy looked down to she that her skin was gone, and she was nothing but fire.

She jumped back, and shook her arms trying to put herself out, but couldn't get the flames to go away. The women began to speak in unison again:

"Are you a queen of peace, or a queen of fire?

The time is now, while moons are waxed to test your ire.

Mother, your children's needs are dire.

We gather as far from the east, that land that never tires.

We hail from the west, where greatness we inspire.

We lead from the North that man owning empire.

We march from the south the land that feeds desire."

In the same unison that the women spoke in, they rose to their feet, and their bodies

became covered in flames matching the color of their skin. They charged at Darcy with their fist raised.

"Holy shit." Darcy swore, preparing to run, but stopping when she thinks about her son and daughter, who are still inside of the mound.

"Hey, wait!" Darcy yells holding out a hand, wondering if she could use anything that she learned as a Political science major in this situation. 'Is this a democracy, no. If it was than I wouldn't be their queen, unless I'm just a figure head and they have a Prime minister or something.' When the women refused to stop, and two of them who seem faster than the rest closed in on Darcy and tried to land punches and kicks to her face, she formed her sword in her hand to try to scare them away.

Someone hit her in her face.

"Who threw that fucking punch?" Darcy yells, as she falls against the mound containing her children.

Darcy lets her flames expand with her anger until it slowly begins to engulf the masses, causing their own flames to wither and die down and wither away.

"I'm your queen damnit! respect the crown." Darcy held up her sword.