Arc V

Chapter XLII

Stranger Things Have Happened

"Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent forever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down,

but I wish you to know that you inspired it."

Charles Dickens ― A Tale of Two Cities

Earthrealm,

0.8 miles outside Milton, DE.

20:45 PM

It was hard for him to tell if he had actually reached his destination. The darkness welcoming him was thick and uniform, making him question his senses and his most basal notions. Something in the air smelled like home already, he figured almost automatically, yet home was a concept that had mutated so many times inside his nomadic spirit that even then, it was hard to be sure if it still held a proper meaning anymore.

The stillness of the realm, far from the convoluted winds of Outworld, was still singing its same old songs about loss, bitterness and very distant pasts.

He felt heavier now, somehow. Seasoned. His actual age, manifesting itself inside his bones. Gravity wasn't all that different on the other side of the portal, he knew, and still, his boots felt the weight of a thousand lifetimes accumulated one after the other, pinning his legs down to the ground and forcing him to drag his feet oh so deliberatively slowly.

His hands reached out to touch the black void of emptiness stretching itself all around him but it was more than just a simple metaphor: he was actually touching the place where he had been born; the original ocean of dark waters in where he had seemingly been swimming for all eternity. That was Earthrealm for him now: an endless pool of blackness, grabbing everything he had once held dear, and burying it in yet more darkness. A vast, inconclusive emptiness. A breathtaking nothingness that had been waiting for him for so long now; the prodigal son's return, finally consummated.

The cowboy looked over his shoulder, his hands reaching out instinctively for those white lights dancing around the portal. Five fingers washed in the diaphanous paleness floating before him; the only source of light in that unknown room. The mediocre sight of inconclusive shapes and nearly surreal contours caught his eye as he moved away from the portal. As his body stumbled upon old desks and numerous empty shelves, the sounds of metal came to welcome him, its song sterile and distant.

Getting out of that godforsaken room was not easy.

There were times when his agility seemed to fail him, his senses overwhelmed by the commotion of brand-new information coming his way. His frantic hands explored every wall, every corner of that abandoned redoubt looking for a way out but to no avail. Darkness, for once, wasn't his ally.

It wasn't until he got on his knees after tripping on an empty container that his hands felt something else entirely. He recognized the material almost instantaneously: thin yet warm and impregnated by her scent. Wild fingers wrapped around her discarded black cape then, enough proof that she had successfully traveled through the portal; reason enough to believe that, once more, they both were gravitating towards each other, sharing the same world.

The warm breeze coming from the outside guided his chin upwards: the half-open window, right above the spot where he had found her cape, appeared then as his only way out. Muscles stretched and determination rushed in.

The outside wasn't as dark as the inside.

(In more ways than one.)

The crickets' tune, a sound long forgotten, brushed his ears as he moved away from the building. The insects seemed relentless in their improvised symphony, disclosing every secret that the night had to offer. The dark-blue sky above him seemed like a never-ending blanket adorned by thousands of distant stars. It was warm; it was new in its splendorous antiquity. The young moonlight was making its way through the trees and inviting countless leaves to dance as if contemplating whether to fall down from those branches or not. The first days of autumn, he pondered, clearly had everyone and everything struggling to find what to do, where to belong…

He took off his boots as he marched farther into the landscape. Still far from civilization, yet no longer near that obscure building. With his feet on the ground, the green grass wildly welcoming him back to a home he had rejected long ago, the last original cowboy came to a halt and contemplated the structure where the portal was located: concealed from humankind, discarded by a population that surely didn't even know about its existence, the door still connecting both realms was trapped inside an abandoned military facility.

It was easy to tell; the simplicity of such structures would never lie.

Hidden in plain sight, it was nothing more than a simple, box-shaped room entirely made out of concrete and steel. With walls covered in moss and wild vines, indicating that the facility had been abandoned for far too long now; the portal forgotten, the papers and weapons, gone. The symbol of a time that was long gone, giving in to the inalterable course of Mother Nature. A merciless titan fallen from the sepia-colored pages of history - perhaps subjugated by the urgency of war or maybe, just maybe, simply struggling not to succumb to modernity, and failing miserably.

The crickets had only offered him an introductory chorus. Now it was the air, the feeling of grass and earth beneath his feet, the precarious moving of the branches. A few birds still singing their songs, working overtime as night approached. He walked farther away from the abandoned facility only to find the indelible marks that mankind had imprinted on the land: traffic signs and the ever majestic paths of concrete, the architecture of civilization displayed vividly before his eyes.

And her.

Sitting by a lonely tree, contemplating life at the other side of that deserted route. Her black hair dancing in the pale moonlight, head tilted back slightly.

He moved near her, suppressing the need to wrap his arms around her. This was not a rescue mission nor was he contemplating the actual chance of rekindling a flame he knew was not meant to be his. The mercenary simply sat down next to her as he balanced his heart and his mind. His eyes wandered the same landscape that had captivated her; the lights in the distance, coming from the many houses facing the Delaware Bay, the tranquility of such a small community. There was something remarkably peculiar about this realm, he found himself pondering rather quickly. Earthrealm was so weak, so worthless in the eyes of countless strangers – and yet they all had struggled to conquer it, to spread their madness and their ambition all over the realm and finally contaminate the place with every single one of their sins.

The image of that woman, sitting right next to him, seemed to encompass the very same fragility rooted inside the realm's most intimate core but still, he could not allow that fragility to tower over him and make him reconsider why he had chosen to return after such a long time. He had made up his mind decades ago. That place had never been his home, and it would never be. There was no home for men like him, he had accepted that notion long ago, had lived by its number one rule: not to get involved with anyone or anything if it wasn't strictly, professionally necessary.

And still, she had resuscitated the dead. She had forced him to join her in a walk down memory lane and now it was much too late for him to simply run away.

In order to fix his present, he was bound to fix his past.

Amanda was not retrievable, there was no way for him to simply go back in time and undo the things he had done back then. But Alex was a whole new story, a mistake he had yet to make – and it was his responsibility to make sure such a mistake would never see the light of day.

"What are you doing here?" The mercenary finally asked without looking at the seemingly imperturbable woman. "It's been more than two hours since you crossed, I figured you'd be on your way by now."

The doctor sighed but it was a sound Black couldn't quite place: was it the reverberation of her frustration? Was she tired, maybe? Or was it something else entirely? His only question had made it crystal clear for her: he hadn't changed his mind; he hadn't crossed through that portal to take her back to Outworld – if anything, he was there to make sure she would return home.

"Quiet, Black," she barely whispered as she flexed her knees and pressed them against her chest. Her naked ankles revealed her bare feet caressing the grass, just like his. Her black leather boots, carelessly discarded just inches away from the tree, quickly became a sour companion for his boots.

"Can't you hear it?" Alexandra demanded; her voice low, timid.

The mercenary tilted his head back and looked around, feeling suddenly startled.

"What…?" He mumbled.

"Everything. I can hear everything."

Only then, she looked into his eyes. The same eyes she had both despised and cherished, the same color she had found inside Nathan's eyes; the same color, forever distancing the mercenary from the man she had once called her own.

"But what…?"

There were tears in her eyes, a sight he had sadly grown used to by now.

"The water flowing in the river, the birds singing and the crickets too; the wind in the grass… even the concrete complaining after a long day," she said, "I had forgotten about all those things. Such little details, I would have never thought I'd miss them so much."

This was her world, he understood. And that particular place, that part of her world, was now their private limbo.

"I couldn't just go," Alexandra explained. "Every detail caught my eye; I feel like a newborn, Black." She placed her head in the soft spot between his neck and his shoulder and exhaled. "And it's a long way to California."

"Yes, yes, it is," Black let out softly. "It's just that… I thought you'd be on your way already."

The doctor grinned tenderly as she shifted against him, her body leaning now against his chest.

"I…" she paused, "I was actually considering the chance of going back through the portal. Back to your world." The way she said the word, the emphasis she exhibited in those four letters rendered him speechless. "No matter how much I missed all these things, I don't belong here anymore. And you know it."

His fingers winding her hair, his arms struggling not to let her go. That particular place, that part of her world was, indeed, their private limbo.

"Why are you here?" The doctor asked.

"I'm here to take you home."

The woman moved away from him, the look in her eyes was intense, as if about to ignite.

"You doubted me?"

The cowboy shook himself as he stood up and offered her his hand for the woman to stand up as well. It was going to be a long night, he was sure.

"I doubted myself," he said. She took his hand in hers and wrapped her arms around his neck. His own arms enveloped the woman, then, but she quickly let go from him, looking down.

"I really don't know how I should feel about you coming here," she confessed. "I don't know if I should be happy that at least I got another chance to see you; or if I should be devastated by the fact that you came here only to make sure I'll return home."

He closed his eyes minutely, his lips hovered over hers, yet he did not kiss her. Silence wrapped them up in all its glorious awkwardness. Both Black and the doctor put on their boots and started to walk, headed for the city located at the start of the Broadkill River. Milton, in the distance, with its Victorian buildings and its beautiful riverside, would be the first destination for the broken couple to visit.

"I need to take you home," Black whispered as they made their solitary way towards the city.

She stopped abruptly the second she heard those words; that stubborn relic of a man seemed to be completely unable to see the most obvious of truths: twelve years had gone by and, with them, her hopes of ever getting back to the place where she belonged had perished, irrevocably.

"What am I supposed to tell them?"

"I'm sure you'll think of something," he stated matter-of-factly as he resumed his march.

"Black!" She grabbed him firmly by the shoulder, forcing him to stop again. She stared at him, intently, until it finally dawned on him: the other implications behind her absence, the ones way beyond the limits of time itself. Explaining where she had spent the last twelve years of her life would be hard. Tailoring believable excuses trying to justify her complete lack of communication would be even harder. But finding plausible reasons for the woman to be back now was the hardest thing to do. But that wasn't all. Everything that had happened to her during that time, the narrative of her years apart from the ones she truly loved, was physically demarcated by the scars scattered across her body. The number tattooed on her ankle, the geometrical patterns of a thousand lashes fragmenting her back, the brand on her shoulder… those were all symptoms of a truth that they could never comprehend. And he knew it.

The gunslinger resumed his march but instead of fighting the woman, he simply fell silent. Deep down, he was well aware of the fact that explaining the totality of the contents placed inside her parenthesis of time was surely going to demand so much more than just wit and intelligence – and even so, crafting the most peculiar, elaborate web of lies was one thing; but making them think there was enough verity to it for them to consider it true, was an entirely different thing. Those marks scattered across her geography were as challenging as they were cruel and they were still mirroring his own marks, the ribbons of his own history.

The riverside welcomed their steps in the night. A small group of people, possibly tourists, was about to go onboard one of the many boats resting peacefully by the bay. Black observed them in silence, then his eyes darted back to the doctor.

"You are gonna need new clothes," he reflected out loud, his hands cupping hers momentarily, indicating the woman to stop walking.

Alexandra offered him a puzzled look: "Just me?" She asked.

"What's wrong with my clothes?" Black retorted immediately, mildly offended. All things considered; his attire was much more normal than hers. The events of the day had taken him by surprise; he was not wearing kohl and, in the rush to leave his own place, he had not taken his cowboy hat with him. "I'd say you lose the cape, and we gotta do somethin' about that little dress of yours," he mused, refashioning her appearance even if only with his words.

"It's not a dress," Alexandra protested as she took off her black cape. "It's a long t-shirt."

The cowboy smirked and raised a suspicious eyebrow: feminine definitions and descriptions regarding fashion had always eluded him.

"Also, I'm not sure about those boots," the gunslinger went on.

"Come on, Black; you're wearing boots too," she bargained helplessly.

"Maybe… maybe a pair of jeans will do," the man considered, completely disregarding the doctor's observation. Black signaled the woman to stay put and wait for him then he crossed the street and entered one of the many shops facing the bay. In less than twenty minutes he was out again, carrying a medium-size bag in his hands.

"You didn't even know my size," Alexandra murmured as she grabbed the dark blue pair of jeans he had just purchased for her and tried them on. They were her size, she suddenly realized, becoming familiar with the material once again. Black offered her a half-smile as he urged her to look inside the bag once again: a pair of black ballerinas was resting at the bottom of the container and, much to her surprise, they were her size too.

She contemplated the shoes for quite a while: they seemed timeless somehow. A model so classic, so simple… Timeless, just like him.

"Is it hard for you, Black? Coming back here?" She asked him, taking his hand in hers. The look in his eyes hardened the second he was able to feel the contact of her fingers on his again, the bridge between them was surely beginning to make him feel uncomfortable in his own skin. He had strived for it, hungry and desperate during his decade behind bars – no wonder he had been able to guess her size: he had imaged her shape so many times during his confinement, every inch composing her, the outline of her every corner, the exact measurement of every single part of her. And then, brief and tormenting just like most attempts at true happiness he had ever experienced throughout the years, he had had the actual chance of confirming those ethereal fragments of her in the small hours they had spent together.

Yet the look in her eyes was trying to soften his reasons; the touch of her hands was trying to sabotage his intentions: he wasn't there to try to hold on to her. He was there to say goodbye.

"It would be hard if I still held any sort of connection towards this place," he finally sneered, the severity in his tone matching the coldness in his eyes. Was it hard for him, going back to that place? He was there to let her go. It was inherently hard.

"As I walked towards the shop, I spotted a small inn just around the corner. Maybe we could spend the night there," Black suggested as he let go from her hand and walked towards the street again.

"How are we going to get to California?" He heard her voice in the distance.

"Haven't thought about that yet," he let her know, looking over his shoulder, and waiting for her to join him.

The old lady was reading the newspaper. It was hard to say whether she was actively ignoring the couple waiting for her at the other side of the counter or if maybe she genuinely hadn't seen them approaching her desk. Black hadn't lied about the inn being small. It was barely there, encysted right in the middle of the block, surrounded by giant stores. Poorly lit, the interiors looked as if someone had stopped the clocks sometime during the seventies, with wooden panels and a few pieces of décor scattered here and there, completely old-fashioned.

The fake, plastic orchids resting on the counter; the air contaminated by the countless cigars dying quietly on the ashtray.

Black and the doctor shared puzzled looks and awkward silence. It had been a very long day for them; they didn't have time for such a deplorable situation to come their way now.

"Excuse me," the doctor began, backed up by Black's poise and determination. "We'd like to know if there…"

"You want a room?" The lady interrupted her, without taking her eyes off the newspaper before her. "Here, have it," she handed them an old key with the number 5 handwritten on it. Alexandra opened her mouth to say something, anything at all at the woman's evident lack of interest yet Black put his hands on the doctor's shoulders, indicating her to stay quiet.

"How much for the night?" The mercenary asked, already searching for the small box he had given to Alex right before sending her through the portal.

"The night is 400 dollars. Breakfast is included."

"Excuse me, just how much did you say it was?" An incredulous Alexandra asked, feeling robbed already.

"400 dollars a night. Breakfast is included," the woman repeated almost mechanically.

"That's steep," the doctor retorted helplessly, already watching how the money was irreversibly leaving Black's hands. The old lady shrugged as she took the money and only then her eyes met Alexandra's.

"Breakfast is served between 8:30 and 10:30. Don't be late."

Black grabbed the doctor by the forearm, forcing her to forget about the receptionist and just go to their room. They had much to solve and think about before they would be ready to leave that eerie place; they couldn't afford to waste their energy in such frivolous matters.

As soon as they started walking, Alexandra noted that the corridor connecting the few rooms the inn had to offer was dark and narrow, with more plastic flowers than windows and more old newspapers resting on top of the two coffee tables along the way than actual books about the city. The end of the corridor led straight to a resting area with many tables and chairs, a TV, a couple of computers and a small cafeteria at the back – even if that part of the inn wasn't that big, it still looked cozy and warm enough for people to at least have breakfast in it.

Bringing her back to reality, the sound of the key opening the door to their room caressed her tired ears. The cowboy held the door open for her to walk in first, a gesture proving that, despite everything, he surely knew how to be a gentleman when he truly wanted to.

"Here," Black said as he carelessly threw a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the bed. "I got those for you. Thought you might need' em."

With a single, contemplative nod, the woman walked towards the bed, the only bed in the room. She glanced over the bed and back at the gunslinger already taking off his boots and jacket.

Knock-knock.

"What is it now?" Black mumbled as he checked the door only to find the apathetic receptionist waiting for them on the other side.

"I forgot to ask," the woman began, her expression unreadable. She showed Black the solitary piece of paper she was carrying: their registration form, with only one thing left unanswered. "I need a name. Or a last name, I don't really care… Mr. and Mrs."

"Black," he answered simply, interrupting the woman and closing the door again.

"Mr. and Mrs. Black," Alexandra mused as she sat down on the bed, "sounds a bit pretentious given our history, don't you think?"

The man shrugged as he joined her on the bed, taking off his trousers and his burgundy undershirt.

"Get some sleep, we're only gonna stay here for one night. Tomorrow morning, we'll get goin'," he commanded, his head already resting against the pillow.

"How are we gonna get there, Erron?" The woman asked, now sitting cross-legged on the bed, her hands resting on his bare stomach.

"We can rent a car."

The way in which he chose to simply toss the idea, so nonchalantly, caused the woman to raise both eyebrows in complete surprise.

"Can you drive?" She asked, stunned.

Black, with his arms at the sides of his head, flexed his elbows for his hands to come rest under his skull.

"I know how to drive a car… now do I want to drive a car? No, I don't want to."

Her mouth, a perfect circle filled with silence, managed to let the words out after a short while.

"So, you want us to rent a car and drive all across the country, but I would be the only one driving," she leaned in closer, her hands still resting on his stomach, pressing down a little harder now. "When was the last time you drove a car?"

He seemed pensive, engaged in the recovery of memories long forgotten.

"The seventies?" He ventured, "or was it during the sixties, maybe? No, no, it was definitely during the seventies."

"Things have changed since then," Alexandra said softly, finally resting her body next to his. The tired mercenary shifted slightly on the bed, allowing one of his arms to capture her smaller shape in a tight, warm embrace. His face searched for her neck, instinctively, as he rested his nose just below her ear. Then he finally closed his eyes, exhausted.

"Do you want to go to Maryland first?" He mumbled. "To see your parents?"

"My parents are not in Maryland, Erron," she began to explain, fingers already busy with his hair. "We moved from Maryland to California when I was about fourteen. My father was unemployed then, and grandma was sick. So, the three of us, my mom, my dad and I, moved to Fillmore and stayed with my grandparents. Grandpa was almost ninety years old back then, he could barely take care of himself, let alone looking after his dying wife…" her voice had become a soft caress he could only place in-between light stages of sleep. Yet the meaning of her words, the roots to her own story, prevailed before the ever-tempting arms of slumber. "I stayed with my parents in Fillmore until I moved in with Nathan."

"Then we're going straight to California," Black concurred. "And it's not like you'll be the only one driving: once I leave you to your family, I'll have to drive all the way back to Milton on my own, return the car and go back to Outworld." His warm breath on her neck, shaped after the words he had just pronounced, made the woman turn inside his embrace, using her elbows to shift her position. Only then, when his nearly dormant body seemed peaceful enough to be contemplated, she rediscovered the many scars covering his skin. It wasn't the first time all those marks scattered across his arms were catching her attention, far from that; she had seen them many times before. Yet now, bathed in the stillness of such a quiet night, she was finally able to discover some other marks, the ones she had never seen before.

Like the bullet wound placed just above his clavicle. Or the whitened short lines of many, many stitches, carefully hidden underneath countless waves of black ink, giving life to the tattoo adorning his arm and shoulder.

The part of him still struggling to stay awake cupped her hands in his. Through the curtain placed before their eyes, the one composed by a myriad of conflicting feelings, he could understand why she was paying attention to the marks on his body – why now.

His decision had disrupted the very concept of time.

This now they were sharing seemed to be placed outside the limitations of man-made frontiers. This renewed intimacy they were sharing now was the opposite of that other intimacy, the one they had shared many times back in Outworld. Danger had always been a constant threat for them back in Outworld. Every moment was meant to be brief and filled with doubt and caution. He slid his fingertips across the palm of her right hand: deep down he knew she hadn't even felt that sort of freedom only hours ago when she had chosen to go to his place all alone in the middle of the night. He had been the primary source of her fears in the beginning. Then, nearly everyone surrounding them had given them reasons not to trust them. In a way, it still seemed all they had was each other, now embedded in the distant night of a place and a time they never dreamed of visiting together.

Only hours ago, with her body pressed hard against his, he could sense her feeling that someone could knock on the door. Someone could just come in, grab her by the arm and drag her back to the brothel.

But nobody could reach them here.

And, as soothing as that notion was, it was still painful for the doctor to even try to comprehend Black's true motivations.

"Why are you here, Erron?"

"I'm here to take you home," he whispered weakly. "I need to know you'll be alright."

"You can't know that," she retorted, even when her voice was low and tender, far from the bonfire that could start a war at any time.

"Closure… I need closure," the cowboy said, understanding his simple explanations could never be enough. "One thing I learned with all my years is that letting go is not enough. You need real closure."

Resting her head against his bare chest, the woman closed her eyes.

"I once let go from someone, and when I returned, she wasn't there. I never knew what happened to her; I can't go through that again, Alex. I need to know that at least you'll be reunited with your family."

Grinning bitterly against his chest, the doctor said: "You'll know about me, but I won't know about you." Without even realizing, she had described the nature of their bond: uneven, intrinsically unbalanced. "Driving all across the country… it's not gonna be a quick trip, Black. What are you gonna say to your superior? How are you going to justify your absence?"

"I'll think of something, don't worry about me," he whispered. "You'll be with your family; I'll be the last thing on your mind."

"What was her name?"

A profound sigh filled the room.

"Amanda."

Yesterday's most precious name ventured the room only to die in the quietest of silences. Surrendering to slumber, the cowboy finally gave up and closed his eyes, both his arms anchored to her figure, trapping her in a warm, tight embrace. But a couple of hours later, when the emptiness between his hands became palpable even in his dreams, the cowboy opened his eyes to find her gone.

The cigarettes and the lighter he had bought for her were also gone. He closed his eyes again and went back to sleep.