"Show me how Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes, Morpheus."
There is no way I will be able to concentrate on the report about a loony alien who wants to conquer the world after hearing that Mystic is going to tell me about her background. This is something I have been trying to find out about for years. At this point, I don't care if she is going to tell me about a lot of spiritual nonsense or not. I need to hear about this.
When she told me about always telling me the truth, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to will away the knot on my throat. I have had people lie to me and betray me all my life. I can count on one hand the number of people that are truthful to me, and I would still have some fingers left. I had to learn the hard way that people always want something from me, and I can't trust them. Now Mystic is telling me that she has never lied to me, and I wholehearted believe it. I know for a fact that she always tells me the truth no matter how hard it may be for me to hear it, or how much I may not like it. If I ask her something she doesn't want to answer, she lets me know in that witty way of hers.
I wonder if she knows how much it means to me that she doesn't lie to me. I use to wonder why she doesn't give me a direct answer to a lot of personal questions. She mostly avoids answering anything that has to do with her personal life. The occasions when she tells me about herself are rare and for this same reason precious to me. By now, I know as much about her preferences, as I know about my own. In fact, I know more little details about her than I know about Pepper. I know she loves Sakura blossoms because they remind her of her childhood, and her favorite color is red because it reminds her of a someone dear she lost a long time ago. She loved him and misses him every day. He was loyal, stubborn, strong, very protective, courageous, cursed like a sailor, and was dauntless in a fight. He died in front of her. He had always protected her. She said.
When I asked her how he died, and why was he was always protecting her, she told me that it was because that was who he was. "I have the worst luck in the universe when it comes to getting into trouble. Most people tend to want something from me, and a lot of them don't care about the way they go about trying to get it as long as they can get what they want. Greed is the most terrible thing. The fact that in the end they always fail doesn't mean they stop trying. I would tell you the reason why but I want to protect you from that kind of people. If it were to become known of my friendship with you, it would put you in danger. Knowing too much about me could be dangerous to you, and you are precious to me." It felt like I was getting punched in the stomach when I realized that it means people try to hurt her frequently. I also felt a tug on my chest when she said that I'm precious to her.
I grew up without much affection. My parents did not use to show me any type of affection, and most of my childhood I felt like I was ignored by them. For me, to hear that kind of words so openly is something invaluable, and she says then like it's the easiest thing. I gave her a deflective response, "You say that so I don't ask you more personal questions," I told her managing to avoid telling her a sarcastic or witty remark which would be my normal go to response when I'm feeling vulnerable and exposed.
She smiled at me like she always does and said, "One day in the future when your destiny comes, and I'm no longer able to keep my distance, our roles will reverse, and I'm going to be the one trying to hide my feelings. Not because I don't want you to know them, but because I will still want to shield you. When that moment comes, I promise you that you will know any personal information you want to know about me."
Her answer felt like an omen. "Please. Don't tell me that you can see the future because I don't believe in that kind of thing." She didn't answer. Just looked at me with an all-knowing gaze and a smirk.
"Ok. Fine. Keep your secrets if you want." I continued after a moment.
Since that day, I had never insisted that she tells me about details of her personal life when I ask her a question, and she avoids answering it.
"The answers you seek will have you questioning everything you know about me. It goes beyond the mind's comprehension. You are not going to like to hear the truth. I told you that not everything can be explained by science. If you want to learn about the Tesseract and my origins, you need to have an open mind. This is something that is beyond rational thought. This is one of the reasons why I have avoided telling you about my origin. I knew you would try to rationalize it and then discard it once you found no concrete proof. The reason why I'm going to tell you about it now is that you have the proof in front of you right now. That is your proof." She said pointing at the screen with the Tesseract.
"Once you know the true power of the Tesseract and what it can do you will have no way of to deny what I'm going to tell you." She continued saying.
I sighed. "At this point, I'm willing to consider all options. I just want the truth. However unbelievable the truth may be, it's better than this constant state of uncertainty. Up until tonight, I wasn't even sure that you are a flesh and blood, tangible person. The only thing that I was sure of is that you are not a hallucination. I wasn't sure about anything else except for that. I still don't know exactly what you are. Anything is better than that." I told her.
"Ok, but I have to tell that this is going to change your perspective on everything you think you know about yourself and about me. This truth will change your reality. Once you know the whole truth, is going to feel like you are Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole." She said as a foreshadowing.
"I think I'm going to need that drink," I said and got up from the couch to get that drink I was planning on having when she told she is going to tell me about her origins.
"Get the whole bottle, and sit down."
"That kind of crazy, huh," I said.
She smiled and said, "All I'm offering is the truth." And now I understood the references to Alice and the rabbit hole.
I picked a bottle of Bourbon and a glass with ice. Then, I sat again on the couch, opened the bottle, filled about a third of the glass, got comfortable on the couch, and made another reference to the same movie. "Show me how deep the rabbit hole goes, Morpheus." Mentally preparing myself for my world to turn upside down.
Author's Notes:
Now we are starting to get clues about what is going on with some of Inuyasha's characters. Yeah. The character mentioned in this chapter is dead. As you may already have guessed, this chapter's title and the some of the lines at the end of the conversation between Mystic and Tony are direct references to the Matrix movie.
The words are used in the movie scene where Morpheus offers to tell the truth about the Matrix to Neo by offering him a choice between the blue and the red pills. They are also indirect references to the Inuyasha's series and one character in particular. In here, Mystic is using the references as a form of warning to Tony that learning the truth about the Tesseract and her is going to change his life and the perception of his reality as he currently knows it in an irreversible way.
I now that the Girl has kind of disappeared from the story, but I decided to add a part with explanations and to introduce some characters before she comes back. After this chapter, there are still going to be 8 more chapters with the Girl absent. She is going to awaken very shortly after she appears into the story. After the explanations part with Tony is over, the events in the story are going to pick up the pace very fast. I apologize to everyone that is expecting the Girl to make an appearance again soon.
By the way, in here Mystic told Tony that she never lies to Tony. She says this because she knows that while she is keeping a lot of things about her identity from him, what little she tells him about herself is always the truth. Omitting information is still considered a form of lying. He knows that she does have very good reasons for not telling him about herself. However, we are going to see Tony's reaction later on when he realizes how much she has omitted to tell him especially about her connection to him, the true nature of it, and the reason why the connection exists in the first place. He isn't going to find out about their connection until later on in the story when the two of them meet in person. They are going to have a conversation about it when they both have time to discuss it in private. Tony isn't going to be pleased about it, and he isn't going to waste time voicing how aggravated he is that she kept all of that from him. Especially, considering that now we know how much he values people being honest with him and why it is so important to him.
