after: eleven
There was a bleached, blinking neon sign shaped like a hot-dog in the bowling alley. Its saturated light brought out the smudged, cloudy finger-prints that marred the glass of the claw machine in front of me. Violently, I jerked around its joystick, back and forth, finding some small relief in the harsh click that came each time. The claw glinted a mean, cold sliver that slashed and swung. It shuddered downward toward cheap plushies thrown together in a clump, its four metal fingers stretched out, threatening to grasp a fluffed leg or folded ear.
It lifted itself upward, wobbling, without anything in its grip. Still, I pulled quarters from my pocket and shoved them into the slot. The joystick clicked and clicked. The plushies watched me with glassy eyes, unaware of that claw dangling above them, preparing itself to catch hold of them like the Commission had tried to catch us. Through the cotton candy which stuffed my skull, I heard the hard crack of falling pins, the squeaking bowling alley shoes against the waxed floors, the echoed recordings from other machines (you lose! way to go! awesome! too bad! try again! game over!).
For all that noise and colour, I felt detached. It seemed strange that in that moment I felt more intangible than I ever had within my astral form.
The claw weakly grabbed at a stuffed lion. Its fingers clasped its mane and jolted upward. The lion ascended, then fell dully. I kicked at the machine, immediately stuffing my hand into my pocket, patting around for spare change. I found some coins, slipping them into the slot. The joystick rattled like the wheels of a red wagon I had once known. Like everything else, it was gone, left in a pile of smouldering rubble somewhere. The claw brushed that stuffed lion.
The claw rose toward its metal ceiling, but the lion remained on its metal floor. I grumbled to myself, fishing for another quarter. I forced it into the slot and fiddled with the joystick. The claw rocked back and forth. I found another coin. Over and over.
Behind me, a little kid tapped madly at the buttons on a different machine, its colours splashing against me. Pixelated characters battled on screen. Jagged letters, spiked with flames, flashed at the top of the machine. I snorted at its name: APOCALYPSE.
Soon, though, I heard that same old tinny line yelled out into the bowling alley: Game over!
The apocalypse, I mused. I had lost myself, before, in that place. It had hurt less than this. It had been a gradual slope along which I had forgotten memories, smudging details, mistaking names, confusing one place for another. It had been more frightening for Five than it had been for me, because there had been no me; nothing more than a pale shape in his peripheral, rattling behind him like the little red wagon on its shaky wheels.
Now I had two pale shapes of my own, floating behind me: my mother and Pogo.
Grief tackled me like Luther often had in training sessions, throwing me with a solid knock, bringing out a hard stutter in my heart against the impact, crumpling to the ground in a heap. Only it seemed so much harder to swallow the pain and stand on legs so unsteady after a hit from grief than a hit from Luther.
Some part of me still wondered if I could reach that astral realm and warn a past version of myself of what was coming, even if Pogo had thought that it was dangerous. He felt that there were reasons alternate forms of myself had not already done the same thing, and maybe he was right. But another part of me wanted to slip back into a past self not to tell her about the future, but rather to spend more time with my mother and Pogo. To enjoy what was now out of reach, like the stuffed lion seemed to exist out of reach for the claw.
The pocket-watch seemed heavier, now, in my pocket. Its ticking bled through fabric and chimed against my thigh.
All that time, I thought distantly, trudging through the bleached wastelands of an apocalyptic world in which Five ate cockroaches and choked on dust to survive; all that time, too, lugging briefcases through cheap motels and taking hundreds of assignments for the Commission until we had broken our contracts and left; all that time spent blindly searching for the source of the apocalypse until it stood in front of us between smouldering piles of rubble. All that time. You lose!
The contracts from the Commission had been difficult, at first. It had taken switching something off within us, telling ourselves that it was for the sake of humanity itself that we slaughtered. This was not another contract. It was Vanya, which made it different and much too personal.
In the aftermath of wandering through that rubble, it had seemed straightforward to kill her I wanted her to suffer for what she had done, but death was so finite. I stuck my hand into my pocket, shifting the pocket-watch aside. I had run out of quarters. I smacked at the machine and then leaned my forehead against its glass.
I was drowning beneath hatred for her. I bubbled to the surface and choked on that overwhelming love for her, too. I struggled to understand the bitter onslaught of hatred that crashed against the love that I held for her, because that love was still there. It had never left and I wished that it would, so I could do this without any doubt. So I could kill Vanya and not think twice about it. But it was there, and it rooted itself firmly within me.
The claw dangled. The plushies watched. I thought of Delores. I thought of a little red wagon. Here I was, rattling on rusted wheels of my own. Because the choice was simple: it was Vanya or it was the world. Too bad!
"Hi there!"
Glancing sideways, I spotted an employee of the bowling-alley hovering close-by. She cleared her throat and brought her hands together in a clap.
"Is there an adult with you?"
"Yeah." It was not me who answered, but Five. He stepped into place beside me. "We're with the Yeti standing over there by the gumball machine."
The employee followed the careless wave of his hand toward the gumball machine, her face puckered in confusion, until she spotted Luther pushing a coin into the slot. No gumball fell out into his waiting palm and he smacked at it, which prompted a stream of gumballs to spill out across the carpet. Luther blanched, stooping to scoop what he could, apologising to passing strangers.
The employee stared, her shoulders sinking. She sloped off, preparing herself to speak with Luther.
"I ran out of quarters," I told Five. "I almost had it."
Resting his shoulder against the claw-machine, Five glanced at the lion and then angled himself toward me. He kept his hands in his pockets, one shoe slouched across the other. Heat was trapped in the bowling-alley between all the bodies and the lights, such stifling lights, sizzling in neon shades all around, so that he was bathed in an acid-blue colour.
His eyes flit about my face. He rummaged around his pocket and pulled out some quarters. I thanked him, immediately pushing the shiniest quarter into the slot. The joystick cracked. The claw trembled. The stuffed lion saw that silver hand stretching toward it again.
"What did I miss?"
His leg bounced. "Nothing much. Luther thinks we should kill Vanya. Allison thinks we should save Vanya," he said breezily. "Klaus says that it was Ben who saved Diego when the house was collapsing, not him. Spiritual possession, apparently. He's also trying to see how many gumballs he can fit in his mouth as we speak."
Glancing right, I spotted Klaus with three gumballs wedged between his lips, awkwardly forcing a fourth in for good measure. He had taken them from Luther, who was lumbering around looking for somewhere to put the rest that he cupped in his arms. Diego sat alongside Klaus, though he was sinking lower in his seat, hiding himself behind a newspaper.
It was an odd, out-of-place sight in the midst of what had been a miserable night. For that reason, it was endearing if only because it encapsulated everything that I loved about Klaus; his weirdness, his need to distract himself and fidget and find humour even in the grimmest moments.
"What else?" Five mused. "Well, we figured out where we can find Vanya. She has a concert tonight. Am I missing anything? Oh, yeah. Luther got laid."
The claw shuddered to a halt. "What?"
"I know." Five stared at another machine, its buttons flashing in a repeating pattern. "If Klaus was telling the truth, it would mean Ben's been stuck following him around all this time. Like dying wasn't bad enough."
The claw unfurled in silvery wink. His head turned. His eyes met mine. We smiled.
The claw rose without the stuffed lion. It bothered me a little less than it had before. I fed the machine another quarter.
Five remained slumped, arms crossed, chin dipped toward his chest as he watched the bowling alley. I found a strange comfort in his presence alongside me, even if he said nothing more, merely glancing around, offering quarters each time that I needed them, never asking what it was about that stuffed lion that gnawed at me, never mentioning that I could cheat and drag the lion out with astral energy, never pushing me to talk about what had happened in the house.
He held out quarters. He waited. Soon enough, it came.
"Vanya had a toy lion like that." I heard myself speaking, though it seemed to flow from another source, somewhere far from me. The metal talons of the claw scraped against the glossy stomach of the stuffed lion. Try again! "Stole it from the museum in Montgomery. I thought we had fun that day. Thought we bonded. Or something stupid like that, I suppose. You remember that chapter in her book, right?"
"Yeah," he said. "I remember it."
"In the house, she was standing right in front of me. She had killed Pogo. She wanted to kill me. I could tell. I saw it in her eyes. She told me that I had lied to her, that I had told I would be right back. Only I didn't come back. She wanted to kill me, Five. If there had been something wrong with my gifts, she would have. But there was nothing wrong with my gifts, and if there was nothing wrong with them, then there had to be something wrong with me."
His eyebrows furrowed, darkening the shadows around his eyes against that neon-blue light, shadows likely blooming from his lack of sleep, too.
"What do you mean?"
"Pogo always told me I'm powerful. Reginald had a whole notebook of theories about what I could do. He thought that I could do anything, that I was limitless. If that's true, why didn't I do anything when Vanya was in front of me?"
Pushing off the claw machine, Five faced me fully. "I can tell you why, Astrid," he said. "Because despite what Luther told you, you're not cold and you're not heartless. You're kind and you're compassionate. But you're sure as Hell not limitless. That's ridiculous."
The claw swung thrice before it stilled. I kept my eyes focused on that stuffed lion. "Really?"
"Really. You're not limitless, Astrid," he said, his voice soft and strangely pleading. "We know that from your astral form."
I was being stubborn for no reason at all. Prickling for a fight, an argument, a release. "I went into my astral form to see Vanya. I felt fine."
"Sure you did. You felt fine the first time around, too. But how long do you think you could last in your astral form now, before you fade? Another forty years? Forty hours? Forty minutes? I'm not willing to take that bet. Are you?"
You lose!
"No," I muttered. "I'm not."
"Right. And if Vanya succeeds in causing the apocalypse, she'll total the world with the equivalent of a nuclear blast," he added, his gaze locking mine in place. "You might have survived the house falling on you, but you are not going to survive a blast like that. Something tells me you wouldn't want to survive it, even if you could. Not if it means being alone, right? I spent three months alone in that world, without you; the worst three months of my life. So, I know that you only feel anger right now and that anger is making you think that you can do anything you want, but you're not limitless. The theories Reginald wrote in that notebook are just that: theories."
I smiled weakly. "Do you like always being right?"
"Not if it means Vanya has to kill you to prove it." His tone was unflinching and brutal. "We're doing this together, Astrid. Like we always planned; before, during and after that damned apocalypse. Together. Got it?"
Lights bubbled and popped all around him. He morphed from cornflower yellow into shimmering forest green, spots of strobing lilac and pink splashing his cheeks like freckles. It frightened me, for a disorientating second, because it had been like that in the apocalypse whenever I had faded a little too fast and the colours of the world had changed, signalling that I was disappearing on him. But I was still here.
Alive. Here. I whispered the words in my own mind like a mantra. Alive. Here.
He leaned toward me, grasping my hand. I was gripping the joystick. He loosened that hold and brought my hands together, cupped in his own. The claw was momentarily forgotten.
"Right, Astrid?" he prompted.
"Right," I said. "Together."
Spoiling that moment of solidary came the sharp pop of a pneumatic tube. He looked around, his shoulders tensed as if the Handler had squeezed herself through the tube itself and would soon unfold herself before us. The tube had popped out through the dark black pit that spat out fresh bowling balls. Five ripped off the lid of the tube and pulled out a note that had the details of a location on it.
He hastily scrunched and shoved into his pocket. "How the Hell did she find me?"
"Do you ever notice how she always appears whenever we agree to do something together?" I asked drily.
"Yeah. She has good timing, I'll give her that." Five patted himself down, his face dawning with realisation as he pulled out a small, hard-boiled sweet. "Oh, she's good. I took this from her office when we were at the Commission. Some kind of tracking device. She's good."
The hard-boiled sweet, which was really a tracking device, clicked against the ground as he dropped it. He crushed it beneath his shoe. I noticed, for the first time, that he was wearing the shoes the bowling alley had issued, while the rest of us had ignored the appropriate shoes in favour of hunkering down at some shiny plastic seats, their undersides pockmarked in chewed-up, dried-out gum, stuck there by the small sticky hands of the kids that had been here for birthday parties over the years. I eyed the shoes, something that made him glance down at them.
"What?" he asked. "The sign says to wear the right ones."
"Like you have ever followed rules anywhere."
"Focus here, Astrid. Can we talk about the Handler? What do we do?"
I chewed at my lip. "Do you think she wants to offer another deal?"
"After I threw a hand-grenade at her?"
"Well, what else can we do? Ignore it?"
"No," he mumbled, more to himself. "No, she would retaliate. Send in reinforcements."
Soon enough, his leg was bouncing in that rhythmic way of his. He was so full of bundled-up energy that he could not remain still, bouncing back and forth, pacing now, his bowling-alley shoes squeaking against the polished wooden floor beneath him. Behind him, pins fell, splattered by rolling balls. There was the mechanic whirr of steel claws lowering to straighten up the pins for another round. I caught the faintest whiff of cotton-candy. I glanced at Klaus, wondering if Ben truly stood somewhere nearby. If that was true, I hoped that Ben remembered that pier and the little teacups.
"I could teleport myself there and back," Five said.
I frowned. "Are you sure splitting up is the smartest plan here, Five? She could ambush you."
"What if you're right and she wants to offer us a way out?"
I sensed something. It revealed itself to me slowly, plopping against me like droplets slipping from an awning overhead, on a street where I had once seen a matchbox bobbing toward an overflowing sewer, blocked by a book: the sense that he found a thrill in the threat of an apocalypse, a thrill that would not match a quiet life in an apartment somewhere, making up for lost time. I had recognised it before. I had mulled it over, tried to ignore it. But it was right there in his eyes.
I even suspected that he liked that the Handler had added herself to this whole mess. It seemed that he was on the cusp of a blue portal of his own creation already, teetering between here and there, where the Handler was waiting, spinning her web. But he had a point. It could have been the only option that offered enough time to change what had happened with Vanya. It could have been a singular chance at bringing Pogo and my mother back, too, righting all the wrongs that we had done.
"If you sense even a little bit of trouble, Five, you get out of there," I warned him.
"I know. I can handle it." His pacing finally ceased. "Look, the concert starts in an hour. If everything goes well, I can make it back before then."
"If everything goes well?"
"It doesn't matter. Don't you see, Astrid? Vanya has to be stopped. The Handler might offer a deal. Or maybe she wants to ambush me like you said. Either way, we need to think about the future of humanity. It might take a miracle to save Vanya."
I scoffed. "Not like she deserves one."
"Stay safe, all right?"
Before he could harden that mask of grumpiness, I leaned forward and kissed him, delighting in the momentary flash of surprise across his features, along with the uncharacteristic stumble of his shoes when I pulled back and he followed as if he had forgotten where he was, quickly collecting himself. He narrowed his eyes at me as if I had tricked him somehow, which only made me grin all the more. It was rare to catch him off guard. It had been all that plotting in his mind, already racing to figure out what he might do with the Handler.
A portal fizzled to life beside him. He stepped through it. It hovered in place, teasing me to follow.
But I stayed right where I was, in this bowling-alley, surrounded by the echoing crash of falling pins.
x
There was a little girl standing in front of the claw machine. She shifted the joystick around. I saw her disappointment when the claw rocked and lowered and lifted without grasping the toy that she wanted: the stuffed lion. A limp ribbon had been braided into her mousy hair. She glanced sideways at the group of kids celebrating a birthday, then fiddled around with the joystick, but it was clear she had no quarters left.
She trudged away, dragging her shoes against the carpet. I walked to the claw machine and did what I had always been able to do. I made a little rope of astral energy to reach inside and wrap around the lion, tugging it out, its plush body dropping out with a hollow thud.
I brought it to the little girl and held it out. She stared at it, then grasped it with both hands, holding tight. She let out a breathless thank you and rushed off to show another kid.
And there was nothing left to distract me anymore.
Klaus brought me a little tub of mint-chocolate ice-cream. He had smothered it in sprinkles and stuck a red, translucent spoon into it. We shared it, taking slow bites. Nothing was said. For once, Klaus was quiet. He let me lean my head against his shoulder. I had a suspicion that he understood all too well what it was like to be left alone with endless, painful thoughts knocking around. I figured that was what had made him add so many sprinkles; one for every unwanted thought and feeling between us.
It was a wonderfully calm moment interrupted by a sudden spurt of gunfire that startled Klaus and made him drop the ice-cream. It soaked into the carpet, upturned, the spoon forgotten.
He scrambled for cover, gripping my hand, tugging me with him. There was a trail of sprinkles following us. Klaus still had mint around his mouth. He bumped blindly into Diego, who dropped to the ground beside him and stood only to throw a knife, slicing one gunman across his throat. Luther lobbed a bowling ball which smacked against another gunman, sending him sprawling to the ground.
More and more gunmen replaced them, spreading across the bowling-alley.
Dust fell from the ceiling, coating Diego in a powdery mist. It was like it had been in the house. Dust and more dust, choking us and confusing us in dense rolling clouds. I peeped out from behind our cover, behind a bar quickly being shred to pieces against the hail of bullets. I spotted round, red-eyed masks floating toward us between sheets of smoke.
The Handler had probably sent them. It had not been an ambush for Five, I realised. It had been an ambush for us. Through the wild spatter of bullets shot at us, I heard Luther.
"Astrid!" Through the clouds, I saw him. He was pointing at the end of the laneways, where there was a small gap for us all to slip through and escape. "We need shields, now!"
There was a funny shift that followed, like Luther had stepped right back into his old uniform, zipped it up, fastened his mask and become Number One again. Diego hurried behind him, hauling Klaus with him. Allison was positioned to sprint out. I only needed to make the shields that would cover us.
I rolled out from behind the bar and did what Luther had asked, layering astral shields in front of us that cut off the smoke and cleared the path. I watched the bullets smack against the shields and glanced back, ensuring that Luther was leading the others toward the gaps. He should have slid through the last gap himself, squeezing his bulk through the narrow space.
Instead, he turned. He was waiting for me.
He shouted, "Astrid, come on!"
"Go ahead," I yelled back. "I'll follow!"
The shields dropped. I stood, immediately reaching out one hand with my palm flat. I grabbed at a gunman, smacking him into the ceiling. Panels fell, coating his body. Another two aimed for me, but I lifted them and tossed them aside, too. I could sense all that astral energy swirling within me, building up like it had done at the diner only days beforehand. The energy surged as if it would explode otherwise. I cracked skulls and broke bones and flung gunmen aside, one after another, until one charged at me and I held him aloft, floating in a bubble of astral energy. His arms were spread, his head angled back against the force.
It was the pose that Pogo had had, before Vanya had killed him.
The bubble popped; the gunman fell against the ground, winded. I had finished off the rest of them, all but this last gunman. I could not bring myself to step backward onto the slick wooden laneways. I felt my eyes prickle with tears, tears which spilled over, because I was not in my astral form and that meant I could cry. It blurred my vision, made me grip the cuff of Klaus' old jumper that I wore around me and wipe at the tears.
Then, something large stepped in front of me and I heard the crack of a bullet – another crack and another.
After that, there was only silence.
"Are you hurt?"
I blinked through burning eyes, realising that Luther was right in front of me. He was staring at me, his face fraught with worry and anger, blending together. I looked down at myself and at the ground around me. The gunman lay limp with his gun thrown away from him. He had tried to fire at me and Luther had clearly stepped between us, letting the bullet hit him instead. He had kicked that gunman, likely turning his skull to pulp now sloshing around within that helmet.
"No," I said. "I'm not hurt."
"What the Hell were you doing, Astrid?"
"What I should have done at the house," I said miserably. "Protected everyone."
Luther crouched, an awkward feat for a man of his stature. He reached out and hugged me close against him. "That wasn't your fault," he said. "I put Vanya in that cell. I had a part in this too. It's not all on you."
"I don't want to kill her." I breathed the words into his collarbone, like a secret that only he would hear. "I know that we have to do it but I don't want to do it. I just want her to know what she did. I want her to regret it."
"I know."
"I'm sorry."
"So am I." He sighed. I felt his heaviness, his regret. He said again, "So am I."
There was a faraway rumble of sirens. The doors clicked out front, threatening another round of gunmen. Neither of us wanted to wait around to find out if the Handler had sent more, so we pulled apart and rushed for the laneways, pushing ourselves through the gap. Behind the laneways was a tight hallway. Luther took up most of its space, looming above me, one hand on my shoulder to guide me forward like he worried I would turn around and battle gunmen alone again. Luther had handled me crying a lot better than he ever had before.
x
We burst into an alleyway. Diego waved from the other end, motioning for us to catch up with them. Before we could, I grabbed Luther and forced him to stand still.
"You did that for me before, you know," I said.
"Did what?"
"Stood between me and a gunman," I said. "Took a bullet."
"I did?" Luther pursed his lips. "Oh, yeah. I did."
"Thanks, Luther."
He dared ruffle my hair. "Don't mention it. But never do something that stupid again."
"What? Cry on your shoulder?"
He ignored the bait meant to lighten the mood. "Take on a fight by yourself," he said. "When we go up against Vanya, we're doing it as a team."
"I got it, Number One."
"Good. Because we only have one shot at this. Now come on, the concert starts in less than thirty minutes."
x
The theatre was a smouldering beacon of white at the end of a busy street. Crowds passed us, splitting off toward the theatre while others roamed toward restaurants. It was an ordinary, damp night. In a few hours, the buildings that ran along this street might be smoking rubble and we would be obliterated.
Yet it was hard to imagine it, with distant shouts of drunk laughter and plain chatter. Luther led us and Diego walked beside him. I kept close to Allison and Klaus, thinking inwardly about Five and the Handler. He had not reappeared. I struggled against the onslaught of what-ifs: what if she captured him? what if she killed him? what if he was injured somewhere, right now, wheezing and calling out to us? what if he ended up like pogo and mom? what if –…
"I know we have to do this," Klaus piped up suddenly. "But it really sucks."
Diego glanced back at him. "Yeah," he said. "It does."
"It's Vanya," Klaus said. "Are we sure we can't just –…"
"Klaus, we've been over this a hundred times," Luther interrupted. "If we had other options, we'd use them. But we either take down Vanya or Vanya takes down the world."
"We could wait for Five," Klaus suggested, keeping his tone light. "Maybe he found a way to help us. You know how Five is, always popping up, telling us about his wacky adventures. If we just wait – …"
"He told me that we need to keep doing no matter what," I said. "After what happened at the house – we know what we have to do. Even if we don't want to do it."
Luther touched my shoulder. It was a careful squeeze. The theatre was only a few feet away. He looked up at it, cast in its blinding light.
"Now or never," he said.
x
The gentle lull of a violin rolled through the halls like the clouds of smoke in the bowling-alley, shimmering toward us. It was soft and melodic. Allison cut in front of Luther, holding up her notepad, asking that she enter first, alone. Like Klaus, I suspected Allison thought that Vanya could be saved.
She chipped away at Luther until he crumbled and allowed it. Diego glared at him, his gaze soon turning to follow Allison, who rushed forward into the theatre. Once Allison had disappeared, Diego rounded on Luther.
"You're using her as a distraction, aren't you?"
"Our best chance to incapacitate Vanya. She'll thank us later," Luther replied. "Astrid, you slip around the side. Flank Allison. If Vanya tries anything, you can act as back-up for her. Diego, you and I will take the wings."
"What about me?"
All three of us turned to Klaus. Automatically, Diego and I looked up at Luther, craning our necks. It had been out of habit that we had fallen into our old roles, listening to Luther and following his orders. Guilt bloomed in me, though, once Klaus shifted from foot to foot, seemingly hopeful that Luther would offer him a part of the action. I could tell, just from a glance, that Luther had not even considered where he would send Klaus until then.
"You wait out front," he said eventually.
Klaus deflated. "What?"
"You're the lookout."
I was rooted to the glossy floor of the lobby. I glanced helplessly between Luther and Klaus, knowing that our training sessions had taught us that disobeying orders wasted precious seconds in a mission, but suffering guilt for how disappointed Klaus looked.
I started, "Klaus –…"
He tried a weak smile. "Oh, no. You go ahead. I'll…look…out, I guess."
Luther nudged my shoulder. "Allison needs you to watch her back," he said. "Go."
There was a lilt in the flow of the violin, a peak in the melody that brought us all to our senses and reminded us of the mission. I shot Klaus a guilt-ridden, reluctant smile and rushed off into the theatre, slipping into the shadowy sides at the end of the rows to my left. I could slink toward the stage, crouched, out of sight from where Vanya stood upon the stage with a violin propped in her arms.
She played beautifully, her bow arching and falling, teasing notes from her violin as if she spun silk before our eyes. There was a moment in which I wanted nothing more than to listen, struck by the power of each note plucked, ringing out through the crowd.
I could not remember the last time that I had heard Vanya play. With all my memories returned to me, I still could not remember. It had been that long.
I inched closer to her, knowing that I could only use astral energy at the last second or its glow would show her that I hid in the shadows. It felt cowardly to approach her like that, ambushing her in the same way the Handler had done to us, but I forced myself to think of Pogo, trapped and twitching on that mantel until he had moved no more. Even if I could not remember Vanya playing, I could remember the folds of ash and dust clotting my lungs at the house. I remembered how Vanya had looked at me. I remembered how there had been no sign that she ever even known me, in that look alone. I was a stranger to her as much as she was to me, then.
It was Vanya or it was the world.
Diego and Luther tried to rush her from either side. She unleashed a ring of echoing white from a simple slash of her violin, scattering members of her own orchestra, frightening the crowd. I coated myself in astral armour. Her eyes, flashing cold white, found me immediately. She did nothing more than continue her tune, forcing the orchestra to continue.
Allison stepped forward and so did I, skirting along a row until we stood side by side.
Vanya could not play with the orchestra for much longer. She sent out those powerful blasts and the rows began to shudder around us, the other members running in fear. I was sure that she would bring down this theatre like she had brought down the house.
The blasts were so loud that I had not even heard gunfire until it struck the columns in front of us.
I gripped Allison, enveloping her in energy, dragging her to the ground for cover. We were trapped again, hiding behind rows and rows of flimsy chairs, the padding blown up into the air by each bullet that whizzed past. Allison scrambled away from me, signing to Luther who was in the opposite row.
In the chaos, Five reappeared. His portal hovered mid-air behind him, a circle that wobbled and warped as he strode forward. Relief overwhelmed me and I fell back against a seat.
"What's with all the lollygagging?" Five called out.
Bullets answered him, peppering the ground around him so that he leapt for cover in another row. They sprayed the seat to my right, forcing me to drop lower. There was a sudden shout, a roar that cut off the gunfire and made us all sit up, staring across the theatre. It was Klaus who was yelling. A bizarre bluish-white light radiated from him, shaping itself into –
Five stood, his eyes wide. "Ben?"
It was Ben, older and taller, his soul manifesting itself so strongly that he could use his own powers to knock away the gunmen. It lasted only a few seconds. In the vacuum of sound that followed, more gunmen opened fire. We took cover again.
Diego clambered into place beside me, a sheen of sweat on his brow. "Well, this is going spectacularly," he breathed out. "We need a damn miracle."
The words returned to me in an instant. I said aloud, "It might take a miracle to save Vanya."
He frowned at me. "What?"
"Five said that," I told him absently. "And I said –…"
The gunfire grew closer. I grabbed Diego like I had done to Allison, shielding him with astral energy that stretched around us. It formed a shield shaped like a bubble, one that blocked out all sound apart from the faint, muted drip of bullets smacking against it.
"I said she doesn't deserve one." I swallowed, pushing back my hair. The daisy-clip had been lost, somewhere. I had not even noticed. "I said she doesn't deserve a miracle, Diego."
His eyes searched mine, his face blank. "So what?"
"Reginald said that about me. He said that miracles don't happen and if they did, I didn't deserve one anyway. I –…"
you have always said that 'reginald' was cold and heartless and you never want to be anything like him. well, guess what? you already are.
Vanya was still standing on the stage, her bow lashing against her violin. The gunfire had slowed. I dropped the bubble and slipped out into the aisle, ignoring Diego as he hissed at me to stay behind cover. She was glowing, as if she was made of astral energy just like me. We had never looked alike until then, so much so that I wanted to grab hold of her and show her that we were alike, that we had never seen it as children but that we could know it now and hold onto it and do better.
I had always tried to blame Reginald, to shirk everything that I had ever done onto him. But it was me.
He was not my father; that title had been for Pogo. But I was like Reginald, in some way. So was Luther and Diego and Vanya, too, because the coldness in her eyes as they rose to meet mine matched the same coldness that Reginald held whenever he had looked at me. He was still here, without needing Klaus as his medium. But everything else that I had done – every time that I had ignored Vanya or slipped out of the house, arms linked with Allison, giggling – every time that I had blamed her, dismissed her, laughed at her, turned away from her – that had been me.
Reginald had never told me to do that. He had never told any of us to do that. All that time, it had been me.
please listen to me. please don't be afraid of me.
That was all Vanya had asked of me. I was drawing every inch of power within me to hold this astral armour steady against the blasts that Vanya sent out, blasts that tore the chairs from each row and ripped up planks and carpet and brought down light fixtures and dust, always that dust which marked the end of everything for us and always had, from the apocalypse to the house to this theatre, it followed us and warned us of what was coming.
Each step that brought me closer to her forced me to slant forward, as if I battled against gusts of wind that tried to knock me back.
She was so intensely powerful that I felt the armour chipping.
It started at my cheek, where it cracked and flaked, allowing that radiating light to seep in and hurt. I would plaster more astral energy across each line that formed, but it was a losing battle. I pushed myself onto the stage, straining forward, sure that each blast would be the one that finished me. I summoned more energy, opening my palms, allowing it all to rush out and swallow me.
I had never used so much of it until I was inches from Vanya. I saw nothing but her. White had seeped into my peripheral like it that day that Pogo had tried to push me, testing my limits, blurring the world into a tunnel, with Vanya at the other end.
Pogo had said, "I never once thought that your power stemmed from its destructive capabilities. But rather from your control over what has the potential to be destructive."
Why could it not be the same for Vanya?
Another blast scorched my arm, a chunk of astral energy momentarily ripped away from the battering ram of her gift, but I repaired that fracture as quickly as I could. The light bloomed from her chest, so that she no longer needed the violin. Tendrils moved around me, stretching past me. She had so much strength that she could battle me and handle the others, I realised, holding them in place and not even seeming to weaken from the exertion.
Five had been right to compare her to a nuclear blast, something that drew awe and horror in one breath.
Though it seemed impossible, I tried to form a bubble around me and Vanya. I thought it would cut off that sound, the source of her power, but she fought me at each step. The bubble was malformed, its dome-like walls building only to be struck down.
Like the house, each brick torn apart, crushed into nothingness.
"I came back, Vanya." Each hoarse shout that left me seemed blown away in the radiating glow of power from her, but I called out to her again. "I'm listening. I'm not afraid of you. I came back. I'm not going anywhere."
Slowly her frosted eyes moved, drawn away from Luther and the others behind me. I wondered if she had killed them already. I wondered if the world was falling apart around us and this white, blinding light obscured it from sight. Would it have been so bad if it did? I had seen the world end. I had waded through that wreckage, too.
In her eyes, I saw something flicker. It was not quite love and it was not quite hatred. It was recognition, first, which had not been there when she looked at me before destroying the house. Her hand moved. I thought, for just a second, that she reached for me, as if touch was the only thing that would tell her who I was and what I meant to her, if I meant anything at all.
And I thought if the world was ending, then it would be less frightening, holding her hand and knowing that she was right there with me, no matter what had happened between us.
Behind Vanya, Allison shimmered into view like a mirage, morphed and distorted by the energy rippling around us. She raised a gun. She fired a single shot that sizzled past, inches from Vanya, its deafening whistle cutting off her hearing in one eardrum. The bullet shot off somewhere faraway.
Vanya shuddered. A solid beam of energy shot from her chest, a ray so bright that it turned my eyes away from her.
She collapsed, falling against Allison. I heard a thump behind me. Vanya had released the others and I dreaded turning around, terrified that I would find Luther, Diego, Klaus and Five broken in piles of ash, like in the apocalypse when I had found Diego.
But I turned. I saw them and my heart swelled, because they were alive – wincing and aching but wonderfully alive.
Astral energy still burned and scorched the air around me. It fizzled and sang. Vanya had not been killing me. She had been draining me. All the energy that I wrapped around myself, she had latched onto, seeping and pulling it from me until I felt myself running out of it. It was a trap, an endless loop; the more energy that I summoned, the more she could take, building onto what was already inside of her. I had not grasped until then how much Vanya had ripped away from me, not until I had looked down at myself and found the armour was patchy and bleating, fading rather than burning in its usual brightness.
I was powerful, but Vanya was transcendent.
She had shattered layer upon layer of astral energy, cutting through me with flashes of glinting silver, scraping and scraping at me until I felt there was nothing left. If I had been weaker, like I had been after waking from a comatose state, I was not sure that I could have ever approached her like that.
I could finally peel off that armour, what little was left of it. My hands trembled and my eyes blinked blearily against the light, taking in the damage of what had happened now that I had emerged from that tunnel stretching between me and Vanya.
She had smashed the glass ceiling of the theatre. Shards coated the ground, between the burning seats. Some rafters had been yanked from the ceiling, so that moonlight broke through the fractures. I faced Allison and Vanya.
"Vanya?" My voice sounded alien, especially to me. "Vanya?"
Footsteps thudded against the stage. Luther made it first, his presence commanding and comforting all at once. Diego and Klaus dropped to their knees beside Allison and Vanya. Beside me, Five appeared. He seemed winded, but otherwise unharmed.
Luther asked, "Is she alive?"
Allison pressed her fingertips against Vanya's throat. She nodded.
"We did it," he said. His voice was laced in an amazement that matched his expression. "We saved the world."
Exhaustion meant that we could do little more than fall back onto the ground and let out great sighs of relief. Truthfully, we only wanted to watch Vanya, worried that her pulse might stutter and fade if we looked away for too long. I was already thinking of where we would take her to care for her; her apartment, perhaps, where she could rest and recover, where we could all rest and recover if she would let us.
"Guys? You see that big Moon rock coming toward us?"
Our heads turned. Klaus was pointing at the shattered ceiling, through which we could see a scorching red blob rattling toward us. It was growing larger and larger, hotter and hotter in its searing red colour. Fear rushed through me. I thought of an astronaut and stumbled to my feet, gripping Five. He stood unsteadily beside me, staring at that rock, knowing that this was it.
In some misguided attempt to protect everyone, I tried summoning another shield. It flickered pathetically around us, blinking in and out from sight, full of holes that struggled to knit together.
"Guess I found it, Five," I said.
He dragged his eyes away from the rock to look at me, uncomprehending.
"Vanya is my limit," I told him. "She drains me."
"Well, for what it's worth, I don't think a shield would hold up against that," Klaus mumbled, motioning toward the ceiling. "Nice try, though."
I deadpanned. "Gee, thanks, Klaus."
"Astrid might not be able to make a shield that could save us," Five said. "But maybe I could do something."
"What?" Luther turned around. "What are you saying, Five?"
Watching Five then, he resembled his younger self, the Five who had once asked me to meet him in the greenhouse, where he had told me that he wanted to leap through time. His gaze had burned with ambition then, like it did now. He clenched his fists, turning around to face us.
"I think I have a way out of here. But you gotta trust me on this."
"No," Diego said instantly. "Not happening."
"Yeah, I'm not doing that," Klaus added.
Luther chimed in with a flat: "Nope."
"Okay."
All three of them looked down at me. Allison was still cradling Vanya, sweeping a stray strand of hair from her pale face. She nodded at me and I felt another rush of warmth toward her. She had always backed me up, even when she could not say it aloud. Five straightened, seemingly touched that I had answered immediately. He straightened up, nodding once with a haughty pride at the other three.
Klaus blew a raspberry. "Okay, not to be a jerk or anything, but Astrid was always gonna say that, so it doesn't count. We voted 'no' on trusting Five. Try again, buddy."
"There won't be another chance, Klaus, because we're gonna be vaporised in less than a minute," Five said. "So either you trust me or you accept that fate."
"What's your idea?" Diego asked.
"We use my ability to time travel. But this time, I'll take you with me."
Luther let out an incredulous laugh. "All of us?"
"Five, you've never even jumped spatially with one person," I said. "Do you really think you could handle jumping through time with more than one person?"
"I think I have to try."
Diego pursed his lips. "All right," he said finally. "I'm in."
"Yeah, whatever, I'm in," Klaus said.
"Fine." Luther cleared his throat. "I guess we don't have another option. Allison?"
She nodded.
"What about Ben?" Five asked.
Klaus looked around himself. "Yup. He's in."
"Astrid?"
Five held out his hand to me, his eyes earnest. I trusted him with all that I had in me and still I hesitated, afraid that we might become trapped in some other apocalyptic world; one that we would not survive, this time around, one that would take him first or me first and the other would be left to wander. It was an illogical bolt of fear from those years spent in the apocalypse that left me afraid to take his hand, even though there was imminent death reigning down over us. It was remembering how much we had lost before and what could happen again. It was remembering all that time.
"I'm always right behind you," Five said softly. "Remember? I'm right behind you."
"Right behind you," I repeated.
I reached out and took his hand in mine.
"Luther, you take Vanya," Five ordered. "Hold onto each other. Do not let go."
"Wait, should we be taking Vanya?" Luther asked. "She caused the apocalypse. Isn't that like carrying the bomb?"
"The apocalypse will always happen and Vanya will always be the cause, unless we take her with us and try to fix her," Five replied.
"She deserves that chance, Luther," I said. "The chance she didn't get before."
With my other hand, I held onto Diego. We stood in a circle, clutching each other against the warping portal that opened overhead. I saw it so clearly, widening like a gaping mouth. It stretched and blocked out the ceiling behind it, where fiery chunks of rock fell and burned. Rocks fell faster, crashing in larger chunks. The building was falling around us and I felt like I had in the house, detached from it, unable to feel anything but the warm clasp of Five's hand around mine. The portal glimmered in waves around us; it was beautiful and terrifying all at once.
"Hold on!" Five shouted. "It's gonna get messy!"
The portal finally solidified. His eyes found mine. I heard his words right before the portal took hold.
"I'm right behind you, Astrid."
x
a/n: hello everybody! here we are, at the end of season 1. took me long enough! lol. but i had a goal to finish this by mid september and look at that, i got there earlier. i would like to extend my deepest gratitude to everyone who followed this story, who favourited and left reviews and encouraged me, especially when i almost gave up on it. i am so grateful to you all. i wish you all health and happiness and i hope you enjoy this chapter. i have said before that i would like to do season 2 if there is interest, but i will have to plan it out. to be clear, the next chapter with a hint of season 2 if i continue is named 'after: the end' but that only means the end of after as a section in itself. it is more clear on ao3 where i can make a 'collection' lol. for now i will be taking a small break (not quite a hiatus, i don't know how long it has to be to be classified as a hiatus) but i am just trying to catch up on other stories and plan others. so, until then, i hope you enjoyed this and i would love to know if you did.
all the best,
zed.