Part Five

A Story

I woke up in a dark jail cell. Spike was lying on the lower bunk of a bed placed in our cell. He was sleeping.

I was sprawled out on the floor of the cell. I wanted to wake him up, but waking someone up to that situation would be too mean, I figured.

I looked around outside the cage. There was only one light; a blue one, that just barely lit up our cell and the empty one next to ours.

I put my back against the concrete wall separating our cage and the empty one.

A few guards walked in, with a beautiful woman in chains following behind them.

Electra looked at me as she walked by. We didn't say anything.

The guards put Electra into the other cell, and removed her chains. They left, quietly and efficiently.

"We've gotta stop meeting like this." I remarked.

I heard Electra put her back against the wall. But nothing else.

Eventually, she said: "Tell me a story, Jack."

"A story?"

"Yeah." she replied. "Just... something to take my mind off of this place."

"Electra, I don't have a story to tell you."

"I find that hard to believe."

I thought about it. I really couldn't think of anything.

"Make one up." Electra said.

I wanted to say no, but I didn't feel like it. She wanted a story, she'd get one.

"Story-time it is.

"Well, there was once this guy. And he was a really average guy. I mean, he was average-looking, and average-sounding, and average everything. The only thing he was good at was playing music, but he still wasn't very good at that.

"One day, this guy heard about a bunch of people off fighting in a distant land. The guy thought, hey, I might not be so average if I go and help out. People might like me then. So he went. But just as the guy was about to go, a bunch of powerful people said that they wanted to see this guy.

"So, they saw the guy. And these people didn't care that he was just an average guy, with maybe an average crush here or there. They decided to try and make him more than average. But they did it the wrong way. See, someone can only stop being average when they've made the world a better place; no amount of messing with the person will make them anything more than average.

"After the powerful people finished with the average guy, he was still average, but he couldn't remember the things that really mattered to him. His average life, his average dreams, his average crushes. Even his really good friends. The powerful people made him forget all of that; they made the average guy only want to hurt other people.

"And he did. The average guy hurt a lot of people. But one day, something very strange happened. The average guy found a girl. And this wasn't an average girl; no, this was an amazing girl. This girl was beautiful, and smart, and skilled. Not average in any way. But the average guy was this amazing girl's boss. He didn't get why he, being such an average person, had power over an amazing person.

"The guy got to know the girl, to try and understand. But somewhere along the line, he fell in love with the amazing girl. And the guy and the girl were in love for a long time, and whenever he was around the girl, the guy felt like he was amazing, too. But one day, it all stopped.

"The guy went back home, and never saw that girl he loved again. He only had one thing left from the fighting: the ability to hurt people. And he hurt a lot of people, even after the fighting ended.

"He kept hurting people, until he found another amazing girl. And the guy stopped hurting people. He fell in love with that girl, maybe even more than the first girl. And ever since, he's lived happily."

When the story was over, I heard Electra sniffling a little. Was she crying?

"Jack." Electra said.

"Yeah?"

"W-what ever happened to the first girl?" she asked.

I thought about it. "The guy still loved her." I replied. "He still loved her a lot. But she had stopped loving him, and because of that a lot of bad things happened to the guy."

Electra cried.

"What if... what if the girl still loved him?"

"Then the guy would have her know that he loved her, too."

"But... what about the second girl?"

I thought about it. I couldn't answer the question.

"The guy wouldn't be able to decide which girl he loved more. Both girls are very important to him. He wouldn't be able to love only one. It would be like suicide."

"So... the first girl could never be with him again?"

"The first girl could always be with him." I replied. "But she'd have to understand that he loved someone else, too."

Electra's crying quieted down a little.

"I... I think she'd be fine with that. Just to be with the guy again."

"That would make the guy happy." I said.

I put my hand through the bars of my cell. Electra reached out, and held onto it.

"I love you, Electra." I said.

"Jack, I'm sorry." she said. "I'm sorry that I blamed you for putting Vincent through the tests. I know you were only protecting me."

"Shh." I said. "We'll talk in the morning. Right now, we should sleep."

"Alright." Electra replied. "I... I love you, too, Jack."

We stayed like that, hands connected, all night long.

A/N:

Yes, that was intended to be sappy. "Romance" is in the description, deal with it. I was going to write a memo to myself for editing, but I won't delete it, so you folks can see the kind of notes I leave myself while writing:

Make the story more sappy. I want tears from these people.