Arc V

Chapter XLIII

The Rulers of Limbo

"I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding."

Charles Dickens ― A Tale of Two Cities

"Yes. I don't think so, no. Tomorrow, at 10:30 AM, is that alright? Perfect then, because we're in Delaware now, you know? I don't think we'll make it in time for the last tour today. But tomorrow, at 10 AM… Yes, two seats. How much is it? Fine, fine. Yes, two. Mr. and Mrs. Black. Thank you so much, we'll see you there, then." Alexandra hung up the phone, completely oblivious of his presence. The mercenary was standing by the corridor, his cold hands caressing the doorframe connecting the lobby to the corridor. Yet there was something about her; the certain light of a smile adorning her otherwise worried expression. The woman turned around and grinned softly at him, rosy cheeks abandoning all signs of paleness. Then she walked towards him, greeting him with the simplest of kisses.

"What was that all about?" Black asked with the car keys already in his hand. His old bones were eager to leave that awful place once and for all.

"I'll tell you everything about it over breakfast," the woman said as she grabbed his hand and ushered the man towards the cafeteria. "Come on, only thirty minutes left now and my, do I need coffee!"

If there was a word that could have described her attitude, it would have been lively. Replenished, even.

Had she forgotten what was going on? Had she forgotten why he was there with her, and where he was going to take her?

"Were you talking to your family? You found them?" He mumbled poorly as she basically dragged him along with her towards the resting area at the back of the inn. "Your boyfriend, maybe?" He had heard her say Mr. and Mrs. Black, he was sure she would never say those words to her own boyfriend but still, he needed to be absolutely sure that she wasn't simply trying to play him in order to convince him into taking her back to Outworld.

But she shook her head.

The cafeteria was nearly deserted. The apathetic receptionist was sitting all by herself at the other side of the counter while a middle-aged man, dressed in a blue suit, was drinking his coffee. A song she had never heard before was filling the otherwise silent room; the lyrics were vague and meaningless, in perfect concordance with the unnecessary loud beats coming from the radio.

"Then what was that all about?" Black insisted right away, watching the doctor as she signaled the receptionist to come over their table.

"Coffee, please," the beverage she had missed the most during her stay in Outworld was still her number one priority. As soon as the receptionist left their table Alexandra leaned in, a toothy smile taking over her face: "I made reservations for tomorrow."

The man tilted his head back and furrowed his brow, but her persistent grin made it crystal clear for the old mercenary that he hadn't misheard the words she had just said.

"This is not a honeymoon," Black retorted quickly. "We won't get to bask in the sun while goin' for rides; we won't go sightseeing." He was serious, toying with the keys and showing them to the woman.

"Just bright up a little, would ya?" She seemed so carefree, so determined. "Where are you from, Black? Come on, humor me."

Her unexpected cheerfulness was starting to make him feel uneasy.

"Texas."

The word, loud as a drum, hit her with the certainty she was looking for and only then, the woman took the car keys between her fingers and balanced the light weight on the palm of her hand – she raised an eyebrow, contemplating his stubborn expression.

"GPS included, I hope."

By the way he looked at her, she should have known…

"It's a small device, like a tiny screen that helps you…"

"That fuckin' voice…" He cut her off, visibly offended. "I threw it away, was driving me insane. I rented the car only five blocks away from this place, do you know how long it took me to get back here, trying to follow the directions that stupid machine kept on tellin' me?"

The woman shook her head; eyes wide, holding back the laughter.

"Forty fuckin' minutes," the cowboy informed her as he slammed an aggravated fist against the table. "I threw it out the window, Alex…"

The woman looked at him with eyes full of disbelief; her pinkish cheeks were completely unable to hold back the impending guffaw any longer.

"But Black, that's expens…"

His index finger signaled the doctor to stay quiet and listen.

"I won't drive that car all the way back from California, you'll have to find a way to return it. I think I'll take the train, you know? When the time comes, and you're there with your family, I'll just take the train." He folded his arms across his chest, serious as can be. "The train is always better. It's safer, faster, cheaper…"

The woman tilted her head back slightly, suppressing the echoes of her laughter yet seemingly invested in the things he had just told her.

"So how did it feel?" The curious doctor asked. "Thought I heard you say you didn't want to drive a car, and here you are, already driving one."

"Somebody had to, woman," he shrugged nonchalantly. "You were sleeping."

"If I had to be honest, I would have never imagined you could drive," the doctor said as she leaned in closer; her voice was lower now, as if she was trying to share a secret with him. "Ride a horse, totally. But cars…"

Seemingly insulted by her assumptions, Black cleared his throat and shook his head disapprovingly.

"It's the old-fashioned cowboy stereotype, isn't it? We are just supposed to ride our horses; real cowboys don't drive fancy cars."

Alexandra blushed slightly at his words – it was true that the old-fashioned cowboy stereotype was hard to forget whenever Black was around, but the man was full of surprises, and she knew that.

"I officially moved to Outworld back in 1981, so there came a point, while I was still living here in Earthrealm when I had to learn to drive," he clarified. "Time forces you to adapt; things like driving a car become mundane."

"I thought you had been living in Outworld for…"

"No," he interrupted her with a soft whisper. "I moved permanently to Outworld back in 81 but prior to that moment, and ever since becoming a man that can't age, I spent several years traveling between both Earthrealm and Outworld, working for different employers and basically following the money. At first glance, I didn't feel attracted to Outworld – who would, right? But sooner than later I learned that the best jobs were in Outworld," he confessed. "I mean, the best jobs would usually begin in Earthrealm and finish in Outworld, so that sort of gave me the advantage to ask for more. I was one of a kind, after all; I was always the right man for the job."

"So that's the reason why you chose Outworld over Earthrealm in the end? The money?"

The man shook his head, his coffee-colored eyes already traveling far beyond the limits of the cafeteria.

"There was an incident in Chile, back in 81," he began; the look in his eyes was contemplative as if the man could picture all the scenes inside the theater of his mind. "I was hired to terminate a small group of Earthrealmers that was supposedly trying to cross over to Outworld. Boss was a complete nobody, but the money was good. They said it would be easy; only three men, all of them unarmed." He paused briefly, his lips were now a bittersweet, straight line. "But it was all a setup; it was an ambush. Two different groups were fighting over control of the portal and I got caught right in the middle of their fight." Black tapped his fingers on the table as the hurricane of unwanted memories engulfed him completely. "I managed to kill most members of each group and those who were not dead yet were surely gonna die right in the middle of that killer zone… but I was injured. So I jumped through the portal and hoped for the best."

The mercenary, wrapped in silence, could still remember his body aching like never before. Pools of his own blood painting his world red and Dexitis' hand, reaching out for him.

"What happened after that?" Alexandra asked, completely invested in the cowboy's story.

"Aalem's father rescued me, a blacksmith named Dexitis."

That part of the story she knew too well – Rosario had told her.

"And his wife, Aalem's mother," she remembered the darkest aspect of the time Black had spent with the family: he had fallen for the wrong woman; the doubts regarding the true identity of the little boy's father eating away at him with the vehemence of an enraged deity.

The gunslinger nodded in silence, guilt still charging at him.

"I also met Zarrabayeusse, my late wife, when I moved in with the family," Black cocked his head disdainfully as he leaned back on the chair. "But I guess Rosario's not that fond of that part of the story."

Alexandra raised both hands in a defensive stance, apologetically.

"And you stayed with them because you felt Dexitis' family could become the roots you had lost in Earthrealm?"

His eyes were fixed on the table; he didn't look as though the thought had never crossed his mind before.

"You want to know if I felt that connection? No, I did not," he sighed, his tone becoming more amicable now. "I didn't feel like I belonged with them; I didn't feel the need to stay with them because they could provide me with the sense of familiarity I clearly lacked back then and still lack today."

"But Aalem…" Alexandra whispered softly as she recalled Black's uncontrollable tears the night he buried the boy.

"The kid changed things," Black said. "The kid was a completely different matter."

"Matter?"

The mercenary shrugged his shoulders and the woman soon found herself nodding in silence. She knew what he had meant by that, but she also knew that even after the real identity of Aalem's biological father had been discovered, Black's paternal feelings for the boy had not ceased to exist.

"It's not that I wanted to stay in Outworld… I just didn't want to return to Earthrealm," Black confessed, the honesty in his eyes suddenly towering over her. "I had been looking for excuses to leave… to leave permanently, that is. What happened in Chile became the excuse I had been looking for and Dexitis and his family became the reason I didn't even know I was lacking."

Such a complex man, torn from the pages of such simple times, and ultimately devoured by his own, convoluted nature.

"So then… if you officially moved to Outworld in 1981, that means you know what a telephone is, and a TV, even a blender," the woman smiled, trying to help him out of such obscure memories. "But I digress."

"That you do," Black grinned lightly at the woman, appreciating the gesture.

The incomparable scent of freshly made coffee suddenly filled the room and wrapped them up in a renewed sense of proximity. The receptionist walked back to their table with two smoky cups, but Black shook his head and rejected the offer – he had never been a coffee lover after all.

"So, where in Texas?" Alexandra asked him and renewed her smile as she received her coffee. "Be specific."

He shook his head helplessly; that woman had almost made him think he was off the hook.

"What for?" He sounded annoyed by her curiosity, even a bit irritated by it.

"Just tell me where you are from, Erron," Alexandra insisted as she added sugar to her black coffee.

Another sigh, colder this time.

"Wickett."

"Ha!" The impeccably strident sound of her exclamation reverberated all across the cafeteria. Her smile was insanely bright now, as if she was at the very verge of actually screaming Eureka! from the top of her lungs. She searched the back pockets of her jeans until she found a folded piece of paper. "There you go… courtesy of the printer they do have in the lobby after all," the doctor sang gleefully as she handed him the mysterious paper in question then she leaned in closer, as if anticipating his every possible reaction by thoughtfully examining each minuscule movement in his face.

Black's eyebrows arched slightly. Then he frowned; then scratched his temple. Finally, his hand became a fist, creating a ball out of the paper he had just been handed. He looked back at her; the look in his eyes was gravitating dangerously between unparalleled incredulity and plain annoyance.

"What the fuck is this shit?" The question, straightforward and salty, added to the obvious truth imprinted all over his nearly bicentennial face: no matter how happy she seemed to be about it, the man was simply not amused. Not in the slightest.

"This…" the doctor began, picking up the discarded piece of paper and stretching it out again for the cowboy to keep it, "is me, trying to help you." Her voice was softer not, even if not particularly lower than before. She had considered this possible outcome, after all; his rejection, his denial.

"I didn't ask for your help. Now finish your coffee so we can leave."

Undeterred, the woman's hands slid relentlessly across the paper until Black's marks were nearly gone, then she let it rest on the table. A minuscule, almost imperceptible sigh escaped her throat – she was clearly invested in this brand-new story she had discovered, and it seemed unlikely of her to just let it go so easily.

"Last night I was having trouble sleeping," Alex began.

"I noticed," still visibly mad at her, his words were cold and reproachful. "When I reached for you, you were gone," he added, and the woman nodded in silence. "But I thought it was anxiety; I never imagined you were busy trying to wake up the dead." Disdainful fingers held on to the controversial piece of paper resting carelessly before him. "You could have used your time to search for your family…"

"You just read the title." Mouth agape, her voice was nothing but a mere whisper now. "You have to read the whole thing."

The urban legends of rural Wickett: the happy widow, the duel and the eternal bride. An unforgettable journey through the city's secret heart.

His old and tired brain could understand many things about modernity.

Tailored by an extended lifetime and a perpetual thirst for power and wealth, the mercenary was now a beacon of ancient knowledge, mixed with the unceasing coming-and-goings of countless traditions and the everlasting evolution of the very concept of idiosyncrasy. Human behavior had always struck him as flimsy and whimsical; yet his age had allowed him to adjust his senses to every subtle change in society, to every fluctuation behind the very psychology of change.

But even when he could understand her anxiety; even when he could see right through the barriers of all her defensive maneuvers, that decrepit piece of paper still felt as if that woman had just backstabbed him.

He had shown her his softer side the previous night when he had reached out for her only to find her gone. He could have easily left the room and forced the woman to come back and get some sleep, but he had opted to give her time and space instead, so the troubled doctor could at least try to process this new reality they were facing. When he opened his eyes in the morning, she was back; but instead of waking her up, he covered her with a blanket and let her rest while he busied himself renting the car that would lead them straight to California. With the car keys in his hand, the cowboy went back to their room to wake her up and have breakfast together only to find out that the woman was already up, talking on the phone and making plans that had nothing to do with the original path he had planned for the both of them.

"I don't need to read the rest, Alexandra, we're going to California whether you like it or not," Black stated before snatching her coffee and finishing it in just one sip.

The woman stood up, the paper now sleeping between her hands.

"This is what I can do for you," she seemed moved, even hurt by his reaction. "This is probably the only thing I can do for you."

Black placed his hands on her shoulders, trying to lessen the effects of his anger. He had no reasons to doubt the good intentions behind her actions, but he had never asked for her help.

"The car's ready. I hope you're ready too," he whispered in her ear as he walked past her, grabbing her by one of her hands.

"I won't go to California."

His determined pace came to a halt the second he heard those words.

"I won't go to California unless we go to Wickett first."

He cursed her under his breath, closing his eyes to mitigate the sight he didn't want to see: her arms crossed over her chest; her rigid jawline, her imperturbable expression.

"No," he seethed as he moved away from her, headed for the door. "We don't need this now, we gotta get to California."

"There won't be California without Wickett, Black," the woman insisted as she finally joined him, "I'm sorry, but I've already made up my mind." Her hands landed on his chest, the look in her eyes seemed softer now. "You're gonna take me home and I'm okay with that, but just let me do this one thing for you in return."

Black sighed, anticipating defeat.

"What you said last night… I know it's just a stupid detail, but it got me thinking, Mr. and Mrs. Black…" The woman tried to explain but the cowboy grabbed her firmly by the wrist and took her back to their room. "You said you never found her… Amanda."

"I don't wanna hear it," his back was glued to the door; his arms crossed over his heaving chest.

"But it makes sense," she nearly begged. "It really does."

Alexandra sat on the bed – if he wasn't going to read the information she had searched for, she would read it for him herself.

The eternal bride of Wickett.

The last stop in our journey tells the story of Amanda Black, Wickett's tragic bride, forever waiting for her man to return. Once a beautiful, rich young lady, Amanda…

"Enough of that bullshit!" The mercenary implored. "What's the point? She's dead, Alex. It's useless."

"Closure. You said you wanted closure," the doctor offered as an explanation, moving closer to the man even when he showed no signs of wanting her anywhere near him.

"But this is not the way…" A calmer Black began, trying to keep her at bay.

"What are you so afraid of?" There was genuine curiosity in her question, combined with a slight hint of affection and even concern but the mercenary wasn't ready to give in so easily. It was simple, after all. The woman was clearly looking for excuses to delay their trip to California. She didn't want to go back home and face the ones she had left behind twelve years ago. He could see that; he could see the obvious ramifications of her doubts and uncertainties even if she was honestly trying to help him find the closure he had missed for so long… but there was no point in revisiting the dead ghosts of an era that was long gone.

Once a beautiful, rich young lady, Amanda Black became the protagonist of one of Wickett's most tragic love stories: separated by the Civil War, and waiting for a lover that would never return, she spent her life reminiscing a man that, even in his absence, always remained by her side.

"This could be it, Erron," Alex tried to convince him as soon as she finished reading.

"Sugar-coated romance for stay-at-home moms? This story is the cross I got to bear, and I've been baring it alone, for as long as I can remember," his tone was soft; the cold and impersonal color of his eyes seemed to be finally melting. "Do you want to know what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid of having my story turned into a carnival for tourists; I'm afraid of the possibility of discovering that the woman I loved is now a freak meant to entertain people who simply don't give a fuck about us."

"Black…"

"No, no, no… just let me finish," he moved away from the door and gently pushed the woman towards the bed, forcing her to sit down and listen. "I lost everything while chasing this woman. I lost her, I lost Annie, I even lost a child. I spent decades searching for this woman and now it turns out you found her? In just a couple of hours, just like that?" He got on his knees, his hands resting on her legs. "You found this collection of circus freaks and now you want me to go over there and clap my hands like a mindless asshole looking for cheap, old gossip?"

The doctor cupped his hands in hers; she had anticipated the moment in her head while trying to guess what his reaction would be like. She knew he wouldn't be pleased by her discovery but something deep inside was compelling her to insist – something placed way beyond her own desire about not going back to California.

"I think you fear an ending so sad that'll have you wondering whether it was best to leave the whole thing behind," she fought back, warm fingers intertwined with his. "But this is your story; and if you ask me, I think you have the right to know what happened."

"I'm not asking you, and I didn't ask you, that's the point," his eyes wide open, the flames of his fury engulfing his consuming gaze. "And of course, it's best to just leave this whole damn thing behind. It's pointless, Alex, it's ridiculously pointless. I don't know what you think you've just found, I don't know who you think you've found but I can assure you that the woman I left back in Wickett has nothing to do with this urban legend they talk about. The woman I searched for during decades has nothing to do with this fairytale."

"Maybe you didn't search for the right person," the doctor interrupted him. "Maybe you were looking for the wrong woman – people change, Black."

The mercenary collected the small box still hiding under his jacket as the woman observed him. Then he walked past her without even looking in her direction, his determination fully focused and unable to abandon the short path he had decided to follow. He sat on the bed, his body well distanced from hers, opened up the box and quickly busied himself counting the money they still had in their possession now that they had already paid for the room and the rental car. When he felt the woman's warm hands brush lightly against his knee, the gunslinger flinched and took a deep breath: those explorative eyes of hers were still waiting for an answer.

"You think I didn't search for her?" He inquired somberly as he finally closed the box. "I grabbed that damn town by the ankles, turned it upside down and shook it till the last soul had dropped down to the ground. But she wasn't there," his voice trailed off before he could go on. Even if he was offended by her excessive enthusiasm, the man could not bring himself to fully blame the woman: little did she know about the tenebrous love story that had united him with Amanda Taggart. But if only she had known better; if only she had sensed the darkness surrounding their tragic love affair, she would have let it rest where it belonged: inside his sepia-colored dreams, somewhere in between his washed-up memories and his deepest regrets.

"I appreciate what you're trying to do," Black assured her, sounding conciliatory. "But this story you found is just a myth."

"And still, if you think about it… it makes sense, Black," the doctor seemed lost in deep introspection; her eyes narrowed and her lips barely moving. "Was she a popular woman back then?"

The question was weird, yet he nodded silently, nonetheless.

"She was Nathaniel Taggart's daughter, and the man was the town's banker, after all. You could say they were the emblems of Wickett's aristocracy back then," Black let out calmly, unable to hide the half-smile taking over his face: that woman sitting right next to him, the doctor lost in thought, was clearly joining all sorts of invisible dots before her relentless blue eyes.

"And your town; it's always been a small town, right?"

He nodded again.

"A rural town… and this aristocrat woman falls for you, the local bartender."

Black chuckled at the thought.

"Yeah, let's go with that," he said.

"So, it really makes sense, after all." There she was again, at the verge of discovering the very mystery of life itself. "If she was part of a small-town aristocracy, then she could have changed her name to make sure no one would know about her real identity."

He looked at her, silently admiring her tenacity.

"They told me she escaped twice from her home," he remembered. "They said she abandoned her dying husband because she and some unknown soldier had eloped; but then her father told me the first time she ran away she was actually trying to find me."

"She was married?" Mouth agape, hands flying all over the place.

"Yes. I searched for both, Amanda Taggart and Amanda Farindon; her husband's name."

She stood up and put her hands at the sides of her waist; her eyes examining a nonexistent chalkboard full of information that only she could see.

"With a war separating the two of you and a husband she didn't love, I can understand why she took the risk of leaving home in order to find you," her warm gaze met his. "But she never found you, right? It's so tragic it becomes painfully obvious, Erron: if she was on the run, and she was somewhat popular, it's only natural if she chose to use another name to preserve her real identity."

A part of him wanted to agree with the doctor: maybe Amanda had changed her last name to avoid being linked back to the father and the husband she had left in Wickett. Maybe that was the reason why he had never been able to find the greatest love of his life; she was hiding behind another name, a name so familiar it hurt like the scorching heavens of hell.

"Even if this theory of yours is true, I still don't think we should go to Wickett. I know my own story and, trust me, I don't want to be reminded," the gunslinger stated as he finally stood up again. "It's in the past, Alex. I'm never gonna know what happened to her and I honestly don't think this so-called tour will be able to tell me." He grabbed the box and held the car keys in his hand, balancing the tiny shapes with just two fingers for the doctor to understand it was time to go.

"I'm not dropping this, Black."

"You should," he said, his hand already caressing the doorknob. "I'm over it."

"You're over what, exactly?" One of her arms reached out for the door, closing it again and imprisoning the man between her body and the wall. "If you were really over it we wouldn't be here, you wouldn't be forcing me into going back to a place where I don't want to go."

Milton was their limbo, and they were the ruthless rulers of such a place. What to do, where to go – Wickett resurfacing after entire decades of his life; the place that had seen him fall, the city that had defeated him and California, smiling insurgently in the rearview mirror of her days, reminding her of everything and everyone she had loved and lost along the way.

The cowboy mercenary sighed helplessly as he removed Alex's hand from the door and placed it behind his own neck. Five warm fingers snaked around his exposed skin, pulling him close. His lips hovered over her face – beginning with her pale forehead, gently brushing away the black stray locks dancing before her; then they moved past the tip of her nose, then near her cheeks and her chin.

But not her mouth. Not anymore.

He leaned in closer, whispering the words in her ear: "Once you're done playing the historian, we're going to California, whether you like it or not."

She pulled his hair gently, earning a minuscule yelp from the man. Then she snatched the car keys from his hand and left him behind rather quickly. Still standing by the door, Black observed the doctor as she moved gracefully down the corridor and out into the street. His weary footsteps followed her down and found her standing petrified in front of the car – the materialization of their impending goodbye.

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and remained quiet by her side. He, too, was at the verge of simply taking her by the hand and lead her straight back to the portal but he understood this journey ahead of them was bigger than their fears: this trip was an opportunity for both of them to finally come to terms with the lives they had chosen to leave behind; it was their only chance to see if there still was something, anything at all, that could still be retrieved from those old days.

The engine roared just before midday; their eyes fixed on the hazy horizon stretching beyond the limits of their comprehension. As the doctor drove by, Black leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

Amanda Black.

His clouded visions of a foreign yesterday made him wonder what it really meant for him, to find his name tied to hers, even if only in a fictitious zig-zag deep within history; to acknowledge their union in the form of a name that had never even existed, even when he had proposed to her, even when she had loved him and he had loved her in return. Perhaps he should have told her about the damning curse of his name; perhaps he should have told her about the evil spell contaminating those branded by that name.

The doctor's nearest hand gently patted his knee, causing the man to open his eyes.

She was still there, driving the car that would take her back to those roots she had lost long ago. The same car and the same hands that were about to take him back to the only place where he didn't feel like himself.

Wickett.

Wickett, once again.

Author's notes: And so the road trip begins – next stop: Bellville. I'm really glad you guys are linking the idea of including a read trip in the story, even when at first I thought it was crazy to do such a thing.

Da Hybrid Queen: He is going back to Outworld. Once this road trip is over, Black is going back through the portal – He belongs in Outworld, no doubt about that.