Arc V

Chapter XLVI

The Laws of Ferocity

"But I fear I have nothing to give; I have so much to lose."

Sarah McLachlan – Fear

It all became a supernova when it exploded.

At first, it was white – the immaculate color that encompasses everything and nothing at the same time. Then it became warmer, hotter, scorching even; painting his world yellow and orange until the charred ashes of his past evolved into a bloody red. Then it faded, slowly decreasing its iridescent intensity; quickening nothing, enlightening nothing, moving fast and dangerously close to a darker shade.

Then it was black.

Not as in the perfect sky during a calm night, for he knew their sky had never been perfect. Far from it, its total darkness had been polluted by the smoke and the fire brought by memories he could not repel. The stars in their sky had faded millennia ago; their incandescent glimmer was nothing but an elaborate tale, a vacuous illusion fooling his eyes, making him see their glorious shapes even when they were there no more.

But white, again, as if fighting the dark whirlpool of endless chaos was now crucial to his senses, came to his aid. Its pristine wings wrapped him up with surreptitious candor for the pieces and shards of the broken supernova to finally rest. His bones gave up as his muscles struggled with each spasm but, in the end, it overcame him. Fast and heavy he closed his eyes, his numb mind too far gone from this land, and there he stayed, on a bed that felt strangely comfortable and in a room that wasn't his; in a town that had never fully belonged to him but still seemed determined to keep him around.

White returned, albeit briefly, when he opened his eyes again. A weaker shade of coffee welcomed him into a world that now looked a little bit paler than before, a little bit colder. Now he could see it with his own tired eyes; now he could define it and redefine it with words: meaningless and futile, the sadistic nature of the realm had coated his skin in a dull grey he could never wash away. This brand-new universe in the middle of all blacks and all whites was meant to become his new colorless vision – it would forever stay that way; his coffee-colored eyes could see no color at all. That was the real mark that this cruel world had branded on his skin; the lackluster dissonance in which he would spend the rest of his existence.

He rubbed his eyes carelessly before adjusting his vision to the mundanity of that room but no matter how hard he tried to regain his missing colors, it all remained grey. All of it. Every corner, every detail, every single piece of furniture breathing life into that small and private world they were momentarily living in. He moved on the bed and looked out the window: the canopy of furious clouds rolling their way over town was breathtaking. He exhaled, consumed by the sight, yet he couldn't help but grace his face with a bittersweet smirk: even the sky had turned grey; grey as the shadows closing in on him and anticipating the night. He looked down, abashed and disheartened yet his broken smile remained the same.

For he knew their sky had never been perfect.

As the mercenary got out of bed, his body already feeling the repercussions of his visit to Wickett cruising relentlessly across his skin, he looked over his shoulder and acknowledged the messy room: the symptoms of his fury were now displayed all over the place. The broken glasses and bottles, the sweaty sheets and the bloody towels discarded carelessly on the floor. They were in for a quick checkout, or so it seemed. His unexpected reaction during the tour, the wounded guard and the missing journal back in Houston were now in perfect concordance with the chaotic room. He sat on the floor, arching his back and allowing his chin to touch his bare chest – the headache was still there, as certain as the pressure on his battered neck, as if subtly telling him that the weight of the world was on his shoulders now yet the message was unclear and unprecedentedly uncanny: the world was not asking him to be a hero; it was not asking him to be anything, anything at all.

He covered his face with his hands and rubbed his cheeks vigorously. The texture of his skin had become rough to his own touch. His cold fingertips could not summon his own humanity. He could see her legs through his fingers, moving aimlessly around the room – those long, pale towers still exposing the signs of a frightening past she had had to endure all on her own.

He removed his hands from his face. It was hard not to stare.

She was moving around the room with nothing but her underwear on. One swift movement after the other, it was simply impossible not to stare.

The doctor walked back to the bathroom and discarded the wet towel that was covering her hair, but his eyes wandered back to the messy room, leaving the woman alone again. As soon as she closed the door, the monotonous sounds coming from the hairdryer kept him company for about twenty minutes then she exited the bathroom again, her pace calmer than before; her body now covered by the same garment that she had worn ever since leaving Outworld: the same old black shirt that, according to his sense of fashion, was simply too long to be a t-shirt and too short to be a dress.

His meaningless thoughts evaporated from his mind the second she got closer to him, kneeling a few inches away from his body. She extended one of her arms, reaching out to him, yet his eyes could not look away, not now that he was finally noticing the change: she had dyed her hair. His coffee-colored eyes clashed against the ancient auburn of his past.

"You're up… finally," she said softly, even when she could see the storm gathering inside his stupefied eyes. "I'm sorry I left you alone this morning but you were sleeping like a log so I thought you wouldn't even notice."

Only then he finally moved, allowing one of his hands to reach out and touch that bonfire challenging his thoughts. But as his fingers ran through her hair, his expression only darkened. The woman stood up and quickly busied herself folding her jeans and placing them on the bed. Black craned his neck, his eyes unable to leave her.

"There's a very nice hair salon just around the corner. You don't have to worry; it wasn't that expensive," she said as she motioned towards the petite coffee table placed under the window where Black's box was resting. The doctor opened the box but instead of going for the precious journal, she busied herself with the rest of the money, counting every bill to make sure the mercenary would still have plenty of money during his journey back to Delaware. Satisfied, she smiled quietly to herself before turning around to meet his gaze once more – still on the ground, his eyes were having a hard time trying to look away.

"Guess you're finally acting like a real wife," Black breathed through parted lips, "your man's broken down here and you're busy spendin' his money on your hair…"

She knew better than to fall for such simple, empty accusations.

With a motherly smile on her lips, the doctor crossed her arms over her chest and furrowed her brow: Black's reaction regarding her looks was the last thing on her mind. The real repercussions of their time in Wickett were still lingering between them; the true extent of the facts they had uncovered was reason enough for the woman to worry about that man.

But that wasn't all.

Their journey through America was taking longer than expected, and even when she knew it was a problem he was supposed to deal with on his own, she couldn't help but wonder what would happen to the mercenary in the near future: what was he going to say to his superior as an attempt to justify his unexpected absence? Were they just going to let him go back to work or was he now an unemployed man? What good could ever come from such a thing? A mercenary without a boss, a gunman as skilled as Back, even if going through hell, still needed a solid structure in order to function, especially in a social environment that wasn't even his.

Would he be able to keep the storm inside?

The countless lies he was surely going to come up with in order to keep his job were placed way beyond the limits of mere speculation. They were going to become as fragile or as solid as his capability to hide from their eyes everything he had discovered during his stay in Wickett. He could not say a single thing about his daughter; he could not exteriorize his compromised feelings regarding Amanda. Granted, he had never been one to socialize; letting others in and opening up to people had never been his forte. She knew that. She had learned that the hard way but still, she couldn't help but worry. Her concern, transfixed on her face and crystal clear inside her eyes, was reason enough for the troubled gunslinger to get on his feet and walk up to her. With a minimum caress, he allowed his index finger to travel the contour of her face before his hand could land on her shoulder. Cold fingers spiraled through her hair, his eyes never leaving hers.

"Don't worry about me," Black whispered, "after everything you've done to me, I honestly find that insulting."

In his eyes, she was the reason why he was feeling so broken inside. And the fact that their goodbye was imminent was only making things worse.

"For the last time, Erron, I didn't know."

He pulled her hair slightly before releasing her.

"I don't care. Not anymore."

Something in the way he said those words was making her feel as if the man who had finally opened up to her was now gone for good. She scratched her chin as she sat down on the bed: there were only a few things she could say to him if she truly wanted to make amends.

"I'm sorry."

She had said those words a million times already, yet his anger and his troubled state of mind had always prevented the man from accepting her heartfelt apologies. It was true that she wasn't the one to blame for the debts of his past but now all those debts had migrated to his present and, according to him, she was the only one to be held responsible for such sad turn of events. Just as she had expected, the mercenary simply shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on her; then he motioned towards the window and explored the stormy outside with eyes that had seen more than enough.

"Why are we still here?" Chills ran down her spine as Black's lifeless voice reached her ears.

"You needed to rest," the woman offered, as she tried her best to break the clinical barrier of her answer. She tried to speak to him as a friend, as someone who's genuinely concerned. She tried to speak as the woman who was now supposed to be with him, the one supposed to have his back even when she was having a hard time trying to find herself in the colorless redoubts of his heart. The depths of his pain had seemingly erased her from his emotions; it was hard to remember that less than a week ago that very same man was holding her dearly in his arms.

As she pressed her legs against her stomach and enveloped her knees with her arms, she watched him in silence as the man picked up his belongings one by one.

"Let's get goin'. I don't wanna stay in this town."

She closed her eyes and exhaled loudly before answering, as if anticipating his reaction.

"I won't drive until the storm is over," she said.

He cursed through clenched teeth as he walked to the bathroom and back to the bed, where he found her jeans. Then he stood right in front of her and threw the garment her way. She could see the determination inside his cold eyes; the sight was frightening but still, she didn't even flinch when his shadow towered over her, his arms now crossed over his chest, his left foot tapping incessantly against the floor.

"Fine by me. I'll drive."

She needed to get through to him, needed to make him see that the darkness surrounding them now was not the ending that she had in mind for them.

"I said I'm sorry, Black," she insisted as she finally stood up, "and I told you: you don't have to stay with me, you can go on my own."

His cynical laughter was the last thing she was expecting to hear. She knew the sound too well – it was bittersweet and menacing, rich yet vacant, as if deprived of all actual joy. As the sound ricocheted through the room, summoning her fears one by one, the woman took a deep breath and walked up to him. They moved in tandem until his back met the door, his obscure eyes were finding their delight in her fragility: no matter how determined she seemed to be, deep down he knew that with just one roar of his baritone voice, he could bring her to her knees.

But he didn't roar.

As she shadows moved past him, his face bare and exposed now, he had no choice but to see the one standing right in front of him for who she truly was: the woman he remembered, from over a decade ago. The same one who had resurrected the ones he had loved; the same one he had tried so hard to protect from the dangers of an alien world about to devour her completely.

She was back. She, the one he had been dying to see for so long now. But now, exactly like back then, she was scandalously late.

When he saw himself cornered by the real Alexandra, he closed his eyes and shied away from her image. But the only things that became visible then were the shadowy figures from his dream, wrapping her up in their embrace and taking her away from him for good.

Turn the car around, Alex. Let's go home.

He couldn't forgive her, as much as he wanted to. She had broken each one of the seals keeping his past locked. She had unleashed the beast, had walked hand in hand with the only woman he had ever loved and had successfully turned his love into hate. But when he opened his eyes, trying to escape the shadows revolving all around them, she was still there, stoic and whole; right and wrong at the same time. Inherently his, yet infinitely foreign.

He had to break her, destroy her if necessary. That was the only way to finally let go without the impending fear of clinging forever to everything that might have been. That was the only way for him to say goodbye to that woman and never look back.

His fingers went back to her hair as his cold stare examined her face – every subtle change in her demeanor, every alteration to her otherwise unpreoccupied expression. Her gestures were convincing; she was finally able to preconceive the words he had yet to say. As if preventing the incoming attack, the woman chose honesty.

"It was the least I could do for my family."

The message was clear but still, it had bathed him in surprise.

"The woman I am now is so different from the one they remember… The lies I'm gonna have to tell them, the things I'll have to keep from them… The least I could do for them was to try and give them the woman from their memories, even if only in a shallow and superficial way."

The fighter was no more. She had finally accepted her fate and was actively acting on it.

Black looked down as he silently agreed with her: Outworld had reshaped the Alexandra they had once known; this woman returning now was a complete stranger and, in time, they were surely going to notice. Still, her gesture was pure and profoundly linked to the very essence of her nature – she had always been the one who worries and cares, the one that looks after those she holds dear, patiently watching over them.

He himself had been there more times than he could count, sheltered by her protection, safe inside her arms even when he had hurt her, and she had hurt him back in return. Such small acts of revenge had never been enough to positively tear them apart.

Until now.

Touched by her sincere words, he decided to join her. At first, the words were clumsy and inconclusive, almost as if refusing to leave his mouth. Then his thoughts became crystal clear, making the old gunman feel at ease inside the limits of his own honesty.

"I can't accept your apologies, Alex," his tone was low, nearly weakened by his state. "I don't blame you for the events of my past, I can't do that; I know you were not the one who abandoned Amanda and you didn't know about the baby girl, I honestly believe you didn't know. But when you say I couldn't leave this world without knowing… that's the part I'm not so sure of. And that's what I can't forgive."

He squeezed her shoulders gently and made room for his tired feet to walk around the woman.

"News like that… that's supposed to change a man's life. But my life ain't gonna change, Al. There's nothin' I can do about it: there's nothin' to do, nowhere to go, no-one to ask," he made a brief pause as he looked down, the lump in his throat making it hard for the man to continue. "She's long gone, Alex. My girl's long gone. I can't do shit about it, all I can do is wonder what could have been and regret every decision I ever made – you gave me somethin' I didn't need to have; made me see somethin' I didn't want to see… you had no right. If I could, I would erase it from my mind."

"How can you say something like that?"

He had fought his treasured memories for so long that now the hurricane caused by the unknown side of his past was finally defeating him.

"They say that ignorance is bliss, Al…" He said as he stepped away from her. "I believe they're right."

She stared at him with eyes full of disbelief. Even when she could understand the meaning of his words, it was hard for the woman to fully embrace what he had just said. The love he had felt for that woman, the nearly fundamental news he had just heard…

"Everything was my fault back then," he acknowledged as he lowered his head once more. "I chose to leave town when I should have stayed right by her side. I should have done more than just watch her go and marry someone else."

As she watched him struggling with his pain again, she couldn't help but wonder why he had decided to carry the weight of the world all on his own. Perhaps it was easier that way, she pondered, maybe it was better to preserve the image of that ideal, immaculate woman from his past – the one he had crafted inside his imagination, the one who had kept him company all over the years in the ethereal shape of a perfect yet hurtful memory for the eternal cowboy not to feel so all alone. Yet it wasn't enough. She couldn't just watch him succumb to such ancestral pain knowing that the responsibility should have been shared. Ideally perfect or not, the real Amanda had made mistakes too.

The woman bit her lower lip before speaking. She knew that what she had to say was the last thing he wanted to hear – Black had been in denial for so long that the mere thought of shattering that idyllic illusion of the lovely girl back home was more than just cruel but, still, it had to be done.

"You were not the only one who made mistakes, Erron, and you know it."

Perhaps now she could finally understand why he was constantly comparing her to Amanda: as flattering as it was for the woman to admit that Black was comparing her to the greatest love of his life, maybe he wasn't exactly trying to portray her as the image of sheer perfection but as this weakened being, seemingly forced to have her path intertwined with his, prisoner of her own shortcomings and destined to watch him make the same mistakes over and over again.

A minuscule gesture of disdain took over him and obscured his face minutely – as if anticipating the true tenor of the words he was about to hear, the gunman raised both hands, trying his best to keep the woman quiet but she simply held his hands in hers and directed them back to the sides of his own body.

"She was in love with you, but she married someone else. She chose to marry someone else and then…"

"It wasn't that easy back then," he cut her off, almost infuriated by her simple assumptions. "It wasn't a matter of choosin' – she did what she had to, she did what she was supposed to do."

"What I'm trying to say is that you are not the only one to blame, Erron," she tried to calm him down before his fury could blind him again yet his austere gestures seemed innocuous now, as if the man had finally been detached from all common sense and was now moving dangerously towards a state of mind so empty it could only drag him further down the black tourbillon taking control of his emotions. "You both made your choices, right or wrong, you both did… and you both got hell to pay for each and every single one of them."

It was hard seeing him like that, and it was even harder to remember the man who had held her in his arms less than a week ago. An invisible barrier was now keeping them apart but still, as the man glued his back to the door and covered his face with his hands, her fingers moved near him, landing on his forehead and slowly sliding their way down his shoulders. She squeezed gently, mimicking his previous gesture, but the effect was not the same. Feeling cornered by her concern and her kindness, the cowboy shied away from her once more, rejecting her and her fragile collection of good intentions.

"What do you expect from someone like me?" He breathed. "Someone so corrupted, so polluted, so powerless."

She moved away from him and went back to bed. As she woman searched deep within her for the right words to say to him, she realized there was nothing more to say: he was surprisingly comfortable inside that pain, it was as if he had been waiting for it, certain it would come his way sooner or later.

He would never let go of his past.

He didn't want to.

The closure she had tried to offer to him had been compromised from the very beginning. She had been trying to free a man that didn't want to be free.

She covered her face with her hands as she exhaled loudly; as obstinate and stubborn as he was, he was finally dragging her down along with him and the depths of his own personal hell were powerful enough to shatter her into thousands of pieces.

"Maybe it's just a story," the doctor considered as she shook her head, the crescendo in her voice matching her desperate need to make him see that even if he couldn't change the past, that didn't necessarily mean he was now supposed to live a life of regret. "You heard the rest of the stories: they were vague, the details were wrong…"

"Just a story," he began, despondently, as the shadows returned to his face, exposing the roots of his anger. "It's my story!" He finally exploded as he punched his own chest, unable to dominate the beast dwelling inside of him and she stayed right where she was, knowing all too well that his choleric outburst could harm her beyond repair. Still, she watched him one last time, as he put on his jacket and picked up his belongings, determined to leave. He looked over his shoulder as soon as he was ready and signaled the woman to get on her feet.

"You and I are not so different after all, I guess you were right," the doctor whispered as she put on her jeans and her shoes, "first the marks on our bodies, now this. We both lost two kids…"

"It's not the same," he said as he grabbed her by the arm, digits buried into her skin and eyes about to devour her. "I did have a daughter. You chose not to."

He knew his words were vicious enough to break her. He knew that he didn't have the right to imply such a thing and yet, in his mind, he understood that in order to say goodbye to that woman he was bound to go to such extraordinary lengths. It would be easier that way; there was not a single doubt inside his mind: he was still trapped inside a past he could not recover, he couldn't afford to create yet another mystical creature for his memory to punish him. Now that he was about to take her home, it was better to go on their separate ways with nothing but resentment. It was the only way - going down the hard way and entertaining their minds with furious thoughts instead of facing a life filled with uncertainties where the other is no more.

Still disturbed by his words, the woman took a step backward and released her arm from his tight grip. She could see through his intentions; she could sense what he was trying to do. She was supposed to play the part of an indolent doll for him to exteriorize all those feelings he had been bottling up for ages, even if that meant surviving the brutal lashes of his unprecedentedly cruel honesty.

Eyes fixed on the vicious man staring back at her now, the doctor endured the brimstone inside his imperturbable gaze with a defiant look: that wasn't the way she had pictured their last hours together would be like, and in the back of her mind she couldn't help but regret her most recent decisions. She had successfully delayed their goodbye, but at what cost? Her hand tried to reach out for him as the gunman turned around; his hand already on the doorknob. Fingers holding on to his neck and moving fast across his back were all he needed to forget about the door and take a look over his shoulder: he knew that candor in her eyes, he had seen it before, like some sort of a twisted second-nature gradually taking hold of her.

"Don't," Black sentenced coldly. "It's over."

He didn't remove her hand – didn't have to.

"Whatever we had in the past; it's over now."

The man crossed his arms over his chest, balancing the car keys in his finger. She had given him exactly what he wanted: a spark that could keep the fire burning, the heat rising; for the flames of his anger to damage their bond permanently.

It was painful.

To consider their last hours together as a combination of madness and fury all in order to entertain the mind and the heart and answer to the laconic predicament of a life without each other.

"I see you, you touch me, and all I can think about… all I can picture in my head is you… with others," his slow diction and the disdain he had imprinted in each one of his words he had chosen were enough to make her see that it was truly over; that whatever it was they had shared, no matter how brief, now belonged in the past.

He knew what to say and when to say it.

He knew that those words still cut deep.

He knew that what she had had to endure in order to survive a decade on her own was still a conflict she could not escape from, especially now that the return of the relegated boyfriend was an imminent reality.

There was a part of him that wanted to hurt her just to push her away for good, securing a lonely future where he was not meant to miss her and vice versa. But there was also another part of him that wanted to hurt her out of pure jealousy: Amanda and his daughter were distant ghosts he could never recover but her loved ones were just around the corner, waiting for her to return.

"What are you gonna tell him when you see him?"

He knew Nathan could never accept a whore. Knew he himself could never accept a whore.

"Are you gonna tell him? Or are you gonna tell him what you really did all these years?"

As the woman looked down, he could finally see the seed of his own discord growing deep inside of her. Tremulous shadows eclipsed her face yet the sadness in her eyes was a luxury she couldn't afford to show – not to that man. He lifted her chin with a cold finger and trapped her jaw in his hand the second she tried to look away.

"Are you gonna tell him how ironic it is that you could never have the only man you actually wanted to fuck?" He leaned in closer, whispering in her ear. "Are you gonna tell him that ever since I found you that day you stopped sleeping with others? Are you gonna tell him that you could never be a whore with me?"

A bittersweet smirk took over her features: no matter how poisonously true his words were, the truth was that she knew he had only accepted to work in the brothel as a desperate attempt to have her near and to make sure no other man would ever visit her bedroom.

"You are a coward," she said, freeing herself from his hand. "You are only telling me these things because the worst is yet to come: Wickett's been hell and California is not going to be any better."

She stole the car keys from his hand and pushed him aside.

"Do you honestly believe that California is gonna be worse than this?" He asked, nearly laughing. "California is where you resume your life as if nothing happened, honey."

She marched on, without looking back.

"California is where I leave you," she sentenced. "California is where I leave you all alone."

"I've always been all alone," Black retorted darkly as they made their way out of the hotel. As they both stood in the rain the woman looked back at him, trying one last time to find the warmer version of him she had uncovered back in Outworld – but that man was nowhere to be found.

They got in the car in complete silence but still he could not leave Wickett without stating the most obvious truth of his life: right before she could start the engine, the man trapped her hand in his and looked her in the eye.

"Next time you try to reach out for me like that, be more careful. Now you know what happens to those who have tried to love me."

She didn't answer.

They never exchanged glances until they reached Fillmore. Not even once. No words were spoken. He had successfully detached himself from her, and the end was near. It wouldn't hurt that much that way.

When the engine stopped, he could see something had changed within her – something was mutating inside her eyes; the place was slowly tainting her vision with the images of a past she never thought she could recover. Every house in that neighborhood, every tree, it was all a bright supernova exploding right before her blue eyes.

Her gaze was fixed on a small house right across the street. Petite windows with yellow curtains dancing around in the wind, the lonely orange tree in the front yard and those colorful flowers blooming in the pots hanging at the sides of the door.

She didn't have to tell him where they were, he learned their exact location the second he saw the tears in her eyes.

Home.

Black unfastened his seat belt and watched her as her hands became claws, holding on the steering wheel. The woman was paralyzed by the tourbillion of memories washing over her. When she closed her eyes and exhaled loudly trying to overcome the feeling, the mercenary finally let one of his hands land on her nearest knee: that was it, that was what she had longed for such a long time.

Yet she seemed gone already. Demolished inside her own memories.

"What's stoppin' you now?" He whispered softly. "What are you thinking about?"

Only then she looked at him.

"I wish Rosario was here," the woman grinned tenderly. "She reminds me of my mother – they must be about the same age."

"But your real mother is right across the street."

The woman unfastened her seat belt, yet she couldn't move; she couldn't find the strength to leave the car.

"When you were younger, didn't it cross your mind?" She wondered, even when she knew the answer already. "About your loved ones, how they were, if they still were…" The mercenary nodded pensively. "Rosario always made me feel that way. I would look at her and think about my mother and then wonder how she was, if she still was…"

"There's only one way for you to find out, Alex."

She covered her face with her hands.

"I'm not sure I can do this."

Everything he had done back in Wickett came undone the second he wrapped his arms around her. Every single barricade he had built came down as she hid her face in his chest and cried, suffocated by her own truncated past and an uncertain, blurry future. He cupped her face with his hands and planted a soft kiss on her forehead.

"We've come this far…"

"I can't do this," she said, shaking her head, unable to stop the tears.

Turn the car around, Alex. Let's go home.

"Wait here," Black whispered as he squeezed her shoulders gently.

He got out of the car and crossed the street. Determined, the ancient cowboy knocked on the door and waited patiently until a young woman came to greet him. Long and curly chocolate hair was contrasting the clear light blue of her gaze. Her surprised gaze. The woman narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side, taking in the view. Then she smiled.

"Nate?"