Arc V

Chapter XLV

The Real Folk Blues

"I'm not going there to die; I'm going to see if I really am alive."

Cowboy Bebop – Session 26

Standing still, all alone and completely alien to the quiet voices narrating the very same bewildering events she had just seen with her own eyes, the doctor placed her arms across her chest and exhaled loudly. She wanted to be furious by Black's unexpected outburst; she wanted to feel the storm of anger and hate coming her way and washing her up in the darkest shades of irreverent despondency but the only thing left for her body to feel was the insufferable emptiness all around her, as it gradually began to consume her every thought.

She had felt the doubt grow stronger deep within her as the night progressed: perhaps she should have dug a little deeper before exposing the cowboy to a truth he wasn't even looking for. His absence had made it crystal clear for her: she had broken all boundaries with her carelessness. Not only she should have gathered more information about the eternal bride of Wickett; not only she should have listened when he said he didn't want to go back to his home town even when he hadn't listened when she told him she didn't want to go back to California in the first place.

She should have made sure that whatever was coming his way, it wasn't aimed directly at his heart.

It pained her in ways she could have never imagined. His plans and her plans were definitely not the same. The infamous law of nearly mystical balance, eye for an eye, could not be used as a valid excuse to save her from the gallows: he was only trying to help her find her way back into the family she had loved and lost but his family was long gone, there was no-one left for Erron to find, only the dusty memories of old graves and eternal ghosts he had never been able to bury in the cemetery of his soul.

How could she do this to him?

The cruelty of her actions, now vivid and unmistakably poisonous before her own stupefied blue eyes, seemed evident now. Erron had changed; the man who had tried to murder her in her sleep, the one who had left her all alone by the mountainside was gone and still, her carelessness hadn't hurt that man. She had hurt a softer version of him. A version of him that had rescued her from her own destiny, a warmer version of the coldhearted mercenary who had awoken feelings she had never dared to imagine she would ever be able to feel again.

Holding back the tears about to cascade down her cheeks, the doctor felt those hands landing on her shoulders. The touch was gentle; the pressure on her bones, subtle and welcoming. She turned around and fought her every instinct not to crumble down inside the guide's arms, so she quickly composed herself, overcoming the emotion.

Her expression stoic; she stepped away from Matthew as the guide asked if she was alright. She couldn't exactly say if the man was worried, or simply cautious.

"I'm not sure I understand what's going on… did you two fight or somethin'?"

His hands tried to reach out for her instinctively, yet his fingers froze in place before the woman. An awkward movement followed a clumsy motion for his hands to swing back and fall gracefully at the sides of his own body. A bittersweet half-smile adorned his face as the woman shook her head in silence.

"Your husband is…" Matthew paused briefly, careful not to hurt her. "He's quite…. Volatile."

Alex nodded, still choosing silence over the sound of her own voice.

"If you want, I could walk you to your hotel."

A puzzled look enraptured her cold face in the night. Whether the man was trying to be nice to her out of sympathy of gossipy curiosity was simply beyond her. Perhaps, she even dared to consider, he was already plotting a brand new Wickett myth for generations to come.

"It's not far from here, but since it's your first time in town and your husband's gone, perhaps you could use the company."

Tilting her head to the side, the woman examined her chances: she had no clue where the hotel was, and since she had never been to Wickett before, asking for directions and walking alone at night was not the best option. Matthew seemed harmless; perhaps his curiosity would bother her along the way, she considered, but questions couldn't kill.

"Fine," she finally breathed out, burying her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. According to Matthew, the hotel was only three blocks away from the square where they were still standing. "I feel like I should apologize for his behavior," she said. "He's not a bad man, trust me, he's just… worn out from our trip and I think being back here is affecting him in ways I never thought possible. Perhaps I should have listened when he said he didn't want to come instead of being so pushy."

The guide shook his head in silence as his quiet whistle began to summon an old Texan tune. For a brief instant, the gentle melody made her feel as if words were truly beyond them until the sounds stopped, and Matthew took her hand in his as they walked.

"I can't blame him, dear. For most people, Amanda Black's story is a hard pill to swallow," the man shrugged his shoulders. "Even if most visitors only get a simpler, friendlier version of her story, it always seems to affect them all the same."

Alexandra sighed helplessly as she understood what the guide was trying to say: Matthew had only come clean about Amanda's mysterious child because Erron had coaxed him into telling him the whole story or, at least, the darker parts of a fractured story that Matthew had managed to put together throughout the years. Most people would never hear about the child, the doctor concluded bitterly. It was best to leave them all thinking about an impossible romance; about the nearly mystical nature of the tale hiding from their eyes the fact that they had lost more than just their hearts seeking a feeling they could never wholly possess.

"The story changed over the years," Matthew began to explain, "my great grandmother would always tell her daughter, my grandmother, about this young girl, also called Amanda; the broken bride. She wore a dirty wedding dress and her face was nearly disfigured. It was more of a legend, back then, meant to make sure girls would behave."

"They used her figure to scare young girls?" The doctor asked, bewildered.

Matthew shrugged once more as if trying to lessen the effects of those archaic ways being suddenly resurrected and brought back to the present by his indiscretion.

"They were trying to teach them a lesson about respect and faithfulness, especially in times of arranged marriages…" he clarified. "Apparently, this girl was married to a man she didn't love, thus the wedding dress. I have always assumed she wasn't a virgin by the time they tried to consummate their union; that would explain the beating," the guide paused briefly, as if lost in thought. "I think… I think for some people, their biggest mistake is not falling for the wrong person but being born in the wrong century."

His words felt like lashes going through her skin. Black belonged there, in his own time of saloons and Amandas, yet there was nothing he could do about that now and, furthermore, there she was, desperately clinging to his ancient body as if holding on for dear life. The crux of time was whimsical and fortuitous, she thought, it could force a modern woman just like her to try her best to keep him for herself, even when she knew he was not hers for the taking.

"Take my daughter, for example," the guide brought her back to reality as they both came to a halt before crossing the street. "None of that would have happened today; it's simply impossible. Can you conceive a story like that happening today?"

Alex shook her head in silent contemplation. Perhaps Amanda had been born in the wrong century after all, yet she couldn't stop thinking about that initial story she had just heard.

"So, she was in love with a man, but got married to another?" She finally managed to voice her thoughts feeling a little bit disappointed by Amanda's receding lights. Perhaps Erron had created a perfect woman inside his mind, nourished by the endless tourbillion of golden-colored memories of her; but maybe the real Amanda had been weaker than what the doctor had imagined. Maybe Amanda had been vulnerable, even child-like.

Child-like.

She was a child.

"Then this woman, also called Amanda, shows up one day and she sits on a bench and starts talking about her missing soldier. Then she dies, and her name appears in the pages of an old journal back in Houston, revealing that she had had a child with that missing lover," the guide said.

Just like Matthew had said only minutes ago, every story exiting his lips had been born in the cold facts of truth. Time had molded each tale, adorning them with plausible details and, sometimes, even bright, pinkish hues but the truth was still the solid foundation for each and every one of those stories to remain plausible enough to believe in them. In Amanda's case, the time had only been sustained as the necessary element for the concatenation of chapters to take place; shaping her entire history and making it whole from the torn pages of the several smaller tales that had placed her as the main protagonist all throughout her miserable existence.

"Now, if you were desperately in love with a man, pregnant with his child, but you find out that your family is never gonna accept him and, what's even worse, your family is already pushing you towards an arranged marriage… you know there's no place for your love child to be born under those circumstances, right?"

Alexandra nodded in silence, trying to bring her mind to imagine what it must have felt like for Amanda back then.

"What would you do?" Matthew asked, staring straight into her big, blue eyes.

"I'd leave."

They had reached their destination. The austere-looking building was expecting the troubled woman to walk through its door when the guide brushed her shoulder lightly and confessed: "I believe she left Wickett because she was searching for her soldier but she came back, years later, because she never managed to find him. Thinking it over, if he was a Confederate soldier…" A dark pause quieted the guide's words.

It wasn't necessary for the man to voice his thoughts. They were written all over his face.

The doctor braced herself as she readied her mind to say goodbye to the man and face the lonely hours ahead of her waiting for the mercenary to return. She sighed, nearly inaudibly, as she reached out to shake Matthew's hand – it was painfully obvious that the man was a strong believer of the theory stating that the soldier had died during the war but if only he knew that the young lover hadn't died back there, in the bloody battlefield. If only she could tell him he was still out there, broken by her and her stupid needs, chasing the ghosts of a past he could never fully recover.

As the woman smiled tenderly at him, Matthew walked with her and introduced her to the petite hotel owner, Rosalita. Unlike the woman they had met back in Delaware, Rosalita was warm and welcoming. She greeted the doctor and immediately made her feel as if she was actually happy of having guests around but besides Rosalita's impeccable predisposition towards her, Alexandra soon found herself realizing that Matthew was still there.

"Thank you for walking me to the hotel," she said. "I'll wait for my husband now."

The man moved closer, cupping her hands in his.

"I know, it's just… something… in the back of my mind," he seemed dubious, and his sudden weariness was making her nervous. "The way the story affected him; I would have never thought someone would react that way. I mean, I've seen people getting all flustered and overwhelmed by Amanda's tale but the way your husband acted…"

Alexandra bit her lip the second she saw his face being devoured by an unspoken doubt.

She could have lied to him, making him believe that Erron was a descendant. It would have been easy for her to come up with a story like that: maybe Erron was a descendant seeking truth and the truth he had found had made him snap. Nevertheless, she considered her chances: since the fate of Amanda's child was unknown, there was no way for Erron to be a descendant. Claiming a hierarchy would also mean that they knew things about the mysterious Amanda Black that no-one else knew, and that would expose him even further.

Choosing silence, the doctor crossed her arms over her chest and offered the man an innocent grin but still, she couldn't wrap her head around certain aspects of the story. It was obvious that, by the time they found the journal in Houston, the woman publicly known as Amanda Black was already dead. It was also easy to imagine that the journal had uncovered parts of her mystery, allowing them to connect the dots to finally link the old, ruined bride tale with the untold story of the stranger on the bench. But what about the baby? If Amanda left Wickett because she needed to find Erron and tell him that she was pregnant with his child, if she had loved him so much, why would she abandon their daughter; the only proof she had that the love they had shared had been real?

Sensing the storm inside her, the guide furrowed his brow.

"Just say it," he whispered.

The woman looked down instinctively. There was no way for her to speak what was on her mind; not without giving Black away. The guide smiled fondly at her and let his hands sink inside his pockets. Then he waved goodbye and turned around. Only then she finally let one of her hands reach out for him. Warm digits landing on Matthew's nearest shoulder, the doctor gazed up at him.

"What happened to the child?" She was desperate to know, yet she wouldn't let it show. "Is it true that you don't know what happened to the baby after Amanda left her?"

"Nobody knows."

The man lowered his voice as he retraced his steps, standing now only inches away from the doctor.

"The journal mentions a family, but I do believe they changed her name."

As he moved away from her, Alexandra stared at him with eyes full of surprise. If he was right, if Harriet's adoptive family had indeed changed her identity, Erron would never know a single thing about his daughter other than the fact that she had existed.

Closing the distance between them once more, Matthew explained: "This may be hard for such a young mind like yours to comprehend, but adopting a baby back then wasn't necessarily a good thing for a family to do. It wasn't considered a noble act. People would adopt babies in complete secrecy; it was shameful to be discovered… they would do anything in their power to deny the fact that their kids had been adopted, it was taboo," he took a deep breath. "That's why I'm positive of this: if that family adopted Amanda's baby, they must have changed her name."

His theory was surprisingly convincing. More than just plausible. It was coherent and absolutely realistic. Brokenhearted, the doctor looked down as the guide started to march away. Yet she stopped him again. There was one last thing that she needed to know; one last thing Black deserved to know.

"After she died, what happened to Amanda's body?" She whispered, nearly broken. "Where is she buried?"

"Wickett cemetery. Common burial."

The bride of Wickett, the greatest love of his life and the mother of his only child had been turned into yet another nameless anima for the mercenary to hold on to. Spiritless and anonymous, like an unwanted ghost reaching out in the night and doomed to spend eternity in the company of strangers.

As she watched the man leave, the doctor cursed herself through clenched teeth; the secrets she had uncovered had broken him and it had been her fault. Seconds later, just before entering the hotel, she heard the guide's hurried steps moving towards her again as the man ran as clumsily as can be to reach her. She turned around and accepted what he had to offer: an off-white business card with his personal information, yet she only took it out of plain courtesy.

"I was wondering… since your husband knows so much about the history of this place," Matthew began, rubbing his hands together as if trying to distract the woman from his sudden shyness, "maybe he can give me a call when he comes back?"

"We won't be staying long," Alexandra cut him off with a lifeless tone.

The guide nodded his head once and looked down.

"I thought he could sit with me and tell me a couple of things about the city, you know? Help me improve my stories…"

Even when she truly wanted to help him, Alexandra understood that there was no way in hell for Black to ever agree on doing such a thing. If anything, every detail and every hidden corner of that godforsaken town were bound to remind in the dark depths of his memory for intruders, just like her, to come to pry on them every once in a while and remind him of everything he had lost along the way.

"I'll make sure to give him your card, Matthew," she lied.

The guide tipped his hat at her as a broad smile eclipsed his nervousness.

"Are you sure you'll be alright, ma'am?" He insisted one last time. "I can stay and keep you company till your husband returns."

She simply shook her head, nearly apologetically.

"Well then, it was nice meetin' ya, Mrs. Black."

The name resounded inside her head with such a venomous echo. The figure of the woman implied by that name was a mirage in a desert she wasn't sure she could walk away from.

"Likewise."

The journal, pressed hard against his chest, was not enough for the doctor to avert her eyes from the tremulous sight of blood contaminating his body. The crimson trails traveling down the sides of his face and impregnating his hands were powerful magnets, keeping her in place as the lone cowboy finally entered the room. His back against the door, the man's body slid down to the ground and there he stayed, his eyes too far gone to be reached by her concern. Carefully, he opened the box and placed the journal inside the container. The ancient book he had retrieved from the Houston archives would surely come to join the rest of the relics from his past – his Pandora box of memories, still waiting for him to return.

It was only obvious, she pondered. That book belonged to him. That book was a part of him, unexplored yet inaccessible and still, infinitely private.

Like a frightened animal, the woman kneeled before him and placed both her hands on his bloody temples. The cowboy moved his head just like a cornered, wounded beast. With a brave finger, she tried to summon his eyes by lifting his chin, but the man refused to get lost in that treacherous sight of hers. Eyes wide shut, he cast her away with nothing but silence.

She had imagined his body walking right through the door during the endless hours of his absence. She had pictured him broken, maybe even angry at her yet the polluted image of this seemingly empty man was slowly eating away at her. How could he look so fragile, when everybody knew he was to be feared? How could he look so small, when entire eras had managed to summon his vehement longevity? How could he look so lonely, when he had just discovered that Amanda had given birth to his child?

As Alexandra let the doctor overcome the woman, her fingers got busy trying to tend to his wounds but the sudden realization hit her with the strength of an unleashed hurricane: that blood tainting their worlds red was not his blood; the sad expedition to his motherland had surreptitiously taken them both back to the rightful places they had occupied back when they first met - the mercenary and the doctor were the only ones in the room. The cowboy and the whore were no more. Black and Alexandra were no more. As her eyebrows bridged together to conjoin a single gesture of irrefutable disapproval, the doctor allowed her hands to land on his thighs; eyes determined to brand him with renewed discord.

"What did you do?" She implored, but the man freed himself from her hands, rejecting her. His eyes went back to the box; his fingers tapping on the hard surface relentlessly, just as if his improvised percussion could animate the dusty lives of those beings that had perished long ago. As the unceasing beating caressed her ears, a single and solitary tear rolled off his face. He looked down; his gaze was now fixed on that box resting dearly beside him. The woman cupped his drumming hand with hers, trying to absorb the tension but he flinched under her unwanted touch, removing his hand immediately.

Only then his eyes met hers. The sight paralyzed her: he was broken; she had broken him.

Unable to dominate her own impulses for much longer, the doctor mustered her courage and opened the box. Her timid fingers tried to hold on to the journal yet Black quickly snatched it away from her grasp and pushed her apart, causing her body to land ungracefully on the floor, just a few feet away from him. Unprecedentedly ceremoniously, Black put the fragile book back inside the box – the woman could see the scattered dollar bills still resting inside the container and the gun, the same weapon he had given to her to be safe from all threats in case she should find herself trapped in a situation so perilous the solemn call of lead would be the only thing left to hear the doctor's cries for help. The metallic tip, coated in blood, was indicating that the device had been fired at close range, but her deduction was short-lived and quickly clouded by terror as the woman watched his body towering over hers, the weapon resting in his hand.

As a tremulous feeling of déjà vu crept over her, the woman propped herself up with her elbows and crawled backward, fruitlessly trying to escape the cold scrutiny of his stare.

It was the second time that the man was forcing her to take a look inside the barrel of a gun.

"How could you do this to me?" His lifeless voice ricocheted through the room. His eyes, bloodshot and terrifying, were devouring her diminishing shape.

"I didn't know," she repeated the words over and over again, but the man seemed unable to react. All he could see was the unmarred image of the one who had stolen the mysticism of his story; the one who had promised him answers but instead, had mercilessly locked him up in a maze of eternal questions. He kneeled before her; the constant threat embodied by the weapon between his fingers was still corrupting her sanity. A tedious smirk darkened his features as he let one of his hands touch the floor, just inches away from her shoulder.

"Never mind the blood, dear. Mr. And Mrs. Black do not exist after all," he said as he painted her cheeks red with the crimson streams still running across his fingers. One knee touched the ground and the motion helped impulse the other knee forward.

The woman could feel the sudden pressure as he pushed his knee farther and harder between her legs. Her eyes were begging him to stop, yet the man only pushed harder than before, causing a foreign pain to take her up almost completely. She could feel his blazing anger aiming for her sex until he pushed her down, her back meeting the cold floorboards underneath her smaller figure. He used his free hand to keep her in place as his knee dug deeper – his unusual punishment was bringing back old memories she had thought lost to time: the painful days when irascible clients would suffocate her body with their frustration; their gruesome ways and their misplaced emotions, tarnishing her shape. She tried to shake herself out of the feeling, but his determination to hurt her was making it impossible for the woman to do so. She focused her attention on the sound of her own breathing and closed her eyes; her heaving chest seemed to find solace in the soothing music of her respiration, until the pressure became unbearable and she opened her eyes again, only to find his distinctive cold stare fixated on her weakened face.

Back to square one, or so it seemed. Back to the time when he was a ruthless killer and she was his hopeless prey.

Making an ulterior effort not to cry, the doctor finally managed to find her voice.

"The guide told me Amanda's buried in the Wickett cemetery; common burial," she said. "As for the child, he believes they changed her name when they adopted her. I'm so sorry, Black."

His lips became a tight line for the man to express his anger towards that woman, yet it wasn't enough for the doctor to silence the words leaving her mouth.

"Maybe Amanda thought that it was better for the girl to stay with her adoptive family."

Tears filled his eyes again and his determination seemed to be finally leaving him. He arched his back slightly as he removed his knee from in between her legs and sat on the floor before her. The wall of muscles and fury was finally giving way to the broken shadow of a man that he was now, the one enveloping her now in his own ancestral sadness.

She reached out for him instinctively as a warm hand cupped his shaken face. He looked down, as if ashamed, then buried his face in his own bloody hands and Alexandra caressed his head as she leaned in closer.

"We can go visit her grave in the cemetery. If you want to, of course," she whispered.

He couldn't discern her tone from the hundreds of voices coalescing inside his mind. Sounds of yesterday, in the agora of a bonfire that had been extinguished long ago, and still, chasing after him with the virulence of an unspoken truth. The realization hit him painfully then: he had been there before, during the seventies – his last time visiting Wickett. Back then, he had put roses on his mother's grave then he had walked amongst the many tombstones, looking for Amanda's. He had walked by her anonymous grave countless times, always ignoring her, even when he wasn't trying to. He had been too naïve to think that she had been carefully kept amongst her beloved ones; the ones she had surely found through the years, the ones keeping her company for all eternity. The truth had been placed way too far from his fantasies. The truth was hostile and uncaring; just like the man he had become.

"Amanda ran away twice, boy…"

Nathaniel's voice, the embodiment of his resentment, was slowly washing over him and making him see the world a shade darker than before. Even the pained doctor, staring back at him with caring eyes and genuine concern, was not enough to suffocate that unwelcomed voice resonating all around him. Now he understood why she had left her father and her husband twice – now he knew, but it was much too late.

Unable to walk amongst the many ghosts of his turbulent past in the chaotic parade of broken souls going on all around him, Black sentenced his ire with a poisonous hand, lingering in the space between their bodies. The doctor eyed him suspiciously, already moving apart, trying to avoid the incoming attack. Yet the mercenary couldn't bring himself to harm her – his hand stopped mid-air as if he was completely unable to touch her, as if he was beyond all touch, as if he was beyond all humanity.

She caught his unmoving hand in hers and squeezed gently until his knuckles turned white. Then she went back to the exact same spot she had occupied before his sudden outburst and let her forehead rest against his agitated chest.

"During the carnival, I asked you what was keeping you alive," she whispered, "I think this is it, Erron." Blue met a strange and darkened shade of brown as the woman finally found the strength to walk upon the broken bridge between them. "You couldn't leave this world without knowing this… after all these years, Black, how could you leave this world without knowing that you had a child with her? You created life."

What she failed to say was that the remainder of his existence had now been reduced to a fragile parenthesis of nothingness for the troubled cowboy to purge his rotten soul from his own sins and the sins that others had inflicted upon him. What she failed to mention was that the rest of his days had now been secluded in the sad hourglass of a father that could never meet his daughter.

Harriet was gone, just like everyone he had ever loved and God, he loved that child. That unknown, unreachable, completely anonymous little baby girl. Beyond all pain, all anger, all fury – there was only love. God, he loved her. He loved his daughter. He loved her with an intensity that he had never felt before; he loved her with an urgency he had never experienced before.

But still, what she failed to tell him was that from now on, his tired mind would get lost in the endless puzzles of seemingly familiar faces. He could be a grandfather, a great grandfather, his name could be an entire family but, simultaneously, he would always be completely alone. He would search amongst strangers for that peculiar nose or those unforgettable eyes; the task exhausting and pointless. He pressed her head against his chest and let the storm take over as he cried like a helpless child. The woman could feel his teardrops getting lost in her black hair as her hands cradled him tenderly, rocking him like a baby.

"She lived 95 years…" He sobbed, helpless and inconsolable. "She waited for so long… it's like time was trying to punish her as well." The doctor held on him tighter than before, she could see the pieces of his broken heart bleeding out before her. "She lived such a shitty life, poor thing... And she had to endure for so long when we could have been together, if only she had told me, we could have been…"

"Happy."

She had only wanted to give him closure. The kind of closure he needed. The kind of closure their story deserved. She had only wanted him to be able to finally break free from the chains of his past. Now there he was, breaking down inside her arms, his pain exposing him bare and completely helpless.

His sudden, disquieting movements caught her attention.

As he stood up and walked back to the door where he picked up the box again, her incredulous blue eyes observed as the man opened the container and grabbed the journal. Far from sharing the ancient words written on its yellowish pages with her, he simply absorbed each line with unprecedented devotion. Then he placed the book back inside the box and closed the container. Black walked back to her and kneeled before her, extending both his hands for the woman to finally take possession of the precious box. His hands balled up to create tight fists the second the container abandoned him yet his eyes, already waving goodbye, unmatched the fury contained within his hands.

She didn't have time to open the box.

Didn't have time to reach for that journal.

The man lowered his head as darkness took hold of his face. His mind went back to the cemetery, to the image of that sea of nameless people where his beloved Amanda was swimming in now. How could he bring his old and tired bones to visit her grave now? How, when he had already walked past her grave, ignoring her every time? Figments of his imagination were already talking about a multiplicity of bones, all tangled up together in the same hostile bonfire. Her bones, amongst the rest, were nothing but just another reason for the mercenary to regret his past decisions. He should have never left Wickett, he should have never left her. He should have done everything in his power to make sure the greatest love of his life would not end up becoming dust far from the warm embrace of his own bones.

In the reflection of his nightmare, he saw himself becoming fragments of the man he should have been. Each portion of him, challenged by a fragment of the man he had become – he realized he was nothing but incompletion; a recondite question no-one could answer. But the thing that frightened him the most was the cruel realization that not all his fragments were the same. There were sadder fragments and more violent ones. There were bittersweet fragments mixed up with more sensual ones. But there was one fragment, one particular portion of his shattered self that was powerful enough to stop the beating of his heart.

In one of the fragments, he was a completely different man. In one of the fragments, he hated Amanda.

"Amanda ran away twice, boy..."

Black tried to wipe away the tears streaming down his face, but the task quickly became pointless and repetitive. The fragment was still pulsating right through him, it would chase him through the darkness, and it would extinguish all light. But as hard as he tried to push the thought aside, that small portion of him remained persistent in its efforts: a part of him, after the revelations of that night, had grown resentful of the woman he had loved.

A part of him now hated Amanda.

A part of him could never forgive her for having abandoned their daughter, even when he could understand the reasons that had motivated her decision.

"Amanda ran away twice, boy. The first time she escaped it had only been a few months after their marriage. I don't know what she was expecting to do, a brat with no money, good luck with that. I thought she had found you, but then she came back. Don't blame me for your own shortcomings, kid. If you hurt her and she chose to return to the place where she belonged that's on you."

"She never found me!" Black screamed, bringing back Nathaniel's voice inside his head yet answering to no-one at all.

"When she returned, she had changed. It pained me to see that look on her eyes, of complete frustration. So I stood up for her. I quieted their voices by telling people that she had gone seeking a cure for her husband. I did my best as a parent, boy: she needed time, I gave it to her. Can you imagine the things they said about her? That she was a cold-hearted bitch, capable of abandoning her dying husband. That she was a whore, your whore. I knew she would come back; I always knew you weren't man enough for her. I knew she couldn't stay with you: you were a soldier, you had nothing left to lose, you wanted to die but she… she had everything to lose. And she's always been a coward. The second she smelled the danger, she was back. Then she ran away a second time; the barber was dying, and the accident had crippled me – suddenly she had become a slave for us. Can't really blame her for running away that second time though, her mother had filled her head with tales of princesses and eternal, tragic love. She woke up one morning and we had turned her into a nurse."

As the doctor watched him fall apart, too far gone to be reached by her concern and moving dangerously closer to his own convoluted past, the woman put the box on the ground and wrapped her arms around his trembling frame. This time, he didn't even have the energy to push her away. He allowed his forehead to rest on her nearest shoulder; his lifeless arms were hanging aimlessly at the sides of his own body.

"How could you do this to me?"

He lifted her chin for the woman to stare into his eyes.

"How could you?"

Something in his eyes had changed. She had only intended to help him, but she had broken him. Black pressed her body against his own, only for the woman to feel what he was actually trying to do: the tip of the gun was caressing his torso, aiming for his own heart. His trembling hand had wrapped itself around hers, directing her fingers to the cold scrutiny of the trigger.

He wanted her to end him.

"If you were trying to punish me for all the things I've done to you…" His voice was soft and weak, but the serenity he had found inside those words was unsettling for the doctor. Remembering what had happened the last time their hands had found communion in the black spirits of a weapon, she tried her best to break free from his embrace, but the man only pushed her closer. His finger was challenging hers, pressing more and more until she finally broke down and cried on his shoulder.

"No…" she whispered, brokenhearted.

"Why not? You've already killed me."

Fighting her way out of his grip, the woman shook her head vehemently and threw the gun away with her free hand and Black watched the cold metal as it landed on the floor. The woman launched her body towards his and contained him completely in her warm embrace, burying his face in her stomach and wrapping her arms around his back and shoulders.

"We don't do this anymore, Erron," she said, "we are not those people anymore… we don't treat each other like this." The lump in her throat became an unbearable burden for the woman to carry. The crux of his pain was becoming more and more unstable and she was the only anchor left for that relic of a man to stay afloat.

"We don't treat each other like this…" he found himself repeating her last words. "We've always treated each other like this."

"There were times when you were nice and sweet," she said, remembering their conversation the night of the carnival. "And each time you tried to reach for me I acted like a bitch. Just like it was in the beginning when every time I'd try to reach out to you, you would tell me off and behave like a total dick." She stared at the gun in the distance then directed her reddened eyes back at him. "Why can't we be good for each other at the same time, Black?"

Her heartfelt words triggered something inside of him; a second fracture slowly beginning to toy with his already wounded pride. The pain he was in was blinding him, but their goodbye was still imminent. Earthrealm had succeeded. Earthrealm, once again, had taken everything away from him.

"There's no more time for us to be anything," he sentenced coldly as he stood up and took off his jacket. "I'm taking you to California tomorrow, first thing in the morning."

She heard the water running in the shower and motioned towards the bathroom. Leaning her body on the doorframe, she took a deep breath before whispering: "You don't have to do this. If you hate me so much, if what you say is true, if I have killed you, then you can go, Black. Leave me here, I won't follow you. Go back to Outworld and I'll make my own way back to California."

He turned around for the woman to appreciate the rivulets of blood traveling down his shoulders but still in place, as if unable to touch her, the mercenary closed his eyes minutely as he sat on the cold bathroom floor.

"I didn't kill him," he confessed, "the guard in Houston." His eyes found hers but he quickly looked away. "I just knocked him unconscious, I couldn't kill him. Even though Mr. and Mrs. Black don't exist, I couldn't do that to you. There were plenty of witnesses who could testify against you; the couples that were with us during the tour, even Matthew. I can cross the portal and be gone, granted, the problem is not gonna chase after me… But it could lead them straight back to you, and I couldn't let that happen."

The woman moved closer to him and sat down beside him, yet the man moved away from her. He stood up again, one hand brushing her shoulder.

"I need to take you to California myself. Now more than ever… I really need to see you go."

As the woman cupped her face with her hands, the cowboy took off the rest of his clothes and stepped into the shower as if she wasn't there at all.

"You should have left me to rot in the brothel," he heard her say as he closed his eyes. "I still don't understand why you always had so much faith in me – ever since you found me, I've always let you down."

She waited for an answer that never came. Only his silence answered her in the night. The sound of his sadness. The sound of the end.