Arc V

Chapter XLVIII

Love Like Blood

"All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire- a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away."

Charles Dickens ― A Tale of Two Cities

When he got in the car again and asked her to move, to let him drive, she knew something was wrong. The pictures resting on his lap and the bitter expression written all over his face were reason enough for the woman to anticipate the words he couldn't find the strength to say. And still, she didn't ask. With a cold and pale hand, she simply took the photographs and let them rest on the back seat. Then her hand came to rest on his nearest knee, as if trying to comfort him, somehow, even when she was the one whose world had just ceased to exist.

He drove in silence for hours, until all the buildings started to look the same. His hands, anchored to the steering wheel before him, seemed to have a mind of their own. It was peculiar, he thought, that he had never been the carrier of such bad news. He had always been on the receiving end of tragedy; he had always been the one hearing the bad news but having to deliver them to somebody else was something he had never had to do. Perhaps it all boiled down to the point of accepting that life, in the inconsequential substance that shapes time, had chosen him as its preferred victim. But this was an entirely different situation. He was supposed to tell her that her parents were dead, that her boyfriend was now somebody else's husband and that now he was a father. A new father who had recently lost his own father.

The words were tumbling down inside his mouth, and one by one they died quietly in the dark depths of his throat, as if afraid of venturing a trampoline that led nowhere. He was an inexperienced man who couldn't even remember how others had chosen to speak to him in times of grief; if he had to be completely honest with himself, life had never been that kind to him: no one had ever dedicated such delicate words of comfort to a vicious man like him. Best case scenario, words would be translated into long, awkward stares or muted rivers of tears silently confirming his suspicions, like when his mother died.

But fate had a way, and luck had never stayed by his side for too long. Most times there were be no stares, no tears… most times he would find out on his own that the one he was looking for was irrevocably gone, just like he had found out about Annie.

When the engine stopped roaring and the renewed silence all around them helped him hear the thoughts inside his mind more clearly than before, he smirked bitterly at the realization that, finally, he was being forced to face something he had never experienced before. It wasn't too late, or so it seemed, for someone as timeless as he to be faced by something new, but even so, he wished he didn't have to succumb to that strange novelty; wished there was a way for them to avoid the storm coming his way.

He took her to a park.

Green hills were adorned by the impeccably strident laughter from children running and playing all over the place. Beyond them, and outside the evergreen canopy composed by the many trees surrounding them, the symphony of suburbia was ready to call it a day.

They sat on a lonely wooden bench, contemplating the receding sunrays giving way to the incandescent lights of sunset. The image of those shadows from his dream rushed its way back inside his mind but now he could finally see them all vanishing before him. Turn the car around, Alex. Let's go back home. All those whimsical shapes seemed just too contrived for his mind to understand their hidden meanings. Maybe those figures, obscure and secluded inside his own nightmares, had only intended to warn him about what he was going to find during their journey. Maybe they weren't trying to take the woman away from him, maybe they were already gone; existing only in an ethereal kind of reality: the one he himself had built up around his own unspoken fears. Now the only shadows he could see where the timid silhouettes of branches dancing in the warm wind and contrasting the peaceful green all around them; as they stretched far across the land and the distance like anonymous ghosts crawling at their feet.

"They're dead, aren't they?"

Her lifeless voice caressed his ears suddenly. Such final words, tainted by an unusual apathy, caused a tremulous shiver to run down his spine: even during such a defining, crucial moment of her life she seemed destined to help him. Reaching inside one of his pockets, the mercenary held on to his pack of cigarettes; the tiny red box felt heavier than ever between his calloused fingers as if the dense clouds of smoke were already thriving to reach the atmosphere. Slowly, he picked a cigar and trapped it between his lips, keeping it pressed inside his mouth for what felt like an eternity. Words seemed even harder than before, even when the woman had already pronounced the darker ones.

His coffee-colored eyes, mesmerized by the auburn horizon molded and shaped according to humanity and urbanism, were careful enough not to look in her direction. The automaton sitting right next to him was a million miles away from the woman he knew.

"If I had gone back during the census, things would have been different," once more, her colorless voice interrupted the silence. "It would be easy for me to think I chose not to come back because of you, Black, because I wanted to see you again. But I guess I didn't cross back then because I was a coward and that cowardice is the only thing left to define the one that I am now," her contrived philosophy was dangerous: he knew the tenebrous paths of guilt and regret like the back of his own hand.

As the first cloud of smoke exited his lips, the man reached out and placed a hand on her knee, mimicking her previous gesture. But still trapped inside her own mind, the woman kept her eyes focused on the sky above them, completely unable to look back at him.

It took all of him to finally open up and tell her about Nathan. Only then her expression changed, albeit briefly, exposing an initial pain that gradually mutated into something completely different. Acceptance. She couldn't change the fact that her parents had spent their lives searching for her, but at least Nathan had found a way to move on, even if that meant leaving her behind for good. As the shadows left her face, the woman looked him in the eye; her hand finally finding his.

"It's good that he was able to find someone. I can't imagine what life must be like if you spend all your years chained to the memory of someone that's never coming back." She fought back the tears, even when it wasn't Nathan the one she was crying for. With just one sentence she had described Black's entire existence. Her careless words were hurting him once again, even when he was the only one supporting her now; even when she hadn't intended to cause him any harm.

Still, he understood the storm as he looked down instinctively, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

Earthrealm had broken them.

They stayed on that bench for many hours, contemplating life and its intricate stillness in complete silence even when the sun had already begun to disappear behind the buildings. After his tenth consecutive cigarette, the man cleared his throat and looked her in the eye: there was no point in delaying the only question that was left to ask.

"Do you still want to go to Maryland?"

The woman shook her head.

"Not even to let him know that you're alive?"

"No," she said. "If he moved on, if he found a way to move on… just let that be enough."

"Do you want me to take you to Bardsdale?"

She nodded again but as soon as Black stood up, the woman reached out for him and cupped his wrist in her hands.

"Not just yet," she whispered, her eyes still unable to look at him. "Can we just stay here?"

The children were long gone. The birds had already stopped singing their tunes. In the lighter hours of the night, the mercenary sat back down beside her, stretching one of his arms and surrounding her fragile frame with his own body.

They stayed in the park. They stayed on that bench. But they didn't talk about the future. When the first stars appeared in the sky, the doctor finally allowed herself to cry.

"How did they die?"

He didn't know.

When the night covered them with its obsidian blanket, both Black and the doctor witnessed the arrival of the lovers. Young couples, walking hand in hand and professing their love were now replacing the loud and cheerful children that only hours ago had been there. Their mellow words and the soft language of the heart were enough for the woman to finally avert her eyes as an attempt to detach herself from a feeling slowly leaving her. Her blue eyes wandered, then, from the starry sky to the branches above her head as the warm wind rocked every leaf in its safe embrace.

Then her eyes found his, stoically waiting. But this time, it was his turn to look away.

The image was too powerful. The shock had shattered her from within, leaving only an empty vessel he could not recognize no matter how hard he tried. The girl in the picture was nowhere to be found inside her darkened stare yet she extended one of her hands, all the same, reaching out for the photographs still resting on the bench in the little space between their bodies. As her fingers traced the outlines of those smiling faces, the gunslinger took a deep breath as he watched her struggling to remember the one she had been before and yet, unable to find herself in the innocence of that young girl, she looked him in the eye as if the memories summoned by those pictures belonged to someone else.

"Those people loved you; you had every reason to stay," he spoke.

"I know what I lost; I know exactly what I lost," she said, her voice colder than ever. In a way, it felt as if she was mad at him for not being able to understand how obvious things were supposed to be. "That's why it hurts so bad."

She put the pictures back on the bench then crossed her arms over her chest. The future, still blurry and distant, was beginning to get to them.

"What are you gonna do now?" Black asked. "That house belongs to you."

She laughed. Briefly, almost mechanically, yet her smile never reached her eyes.

"I can't stay with Lily," she said. "And the house… I could never claim it as my own." She didn't give him time to ask her why. "That house belongs to Lily now. That house belongs to the ones who stood by my parents when it mattered the most; it belongs to the ones who supported Nate when he was all alone. Going back to that house is going back to the past and I could never do that to Lily. I can't just kick her out, but I can't force her to join me either."

For a brief instant, he felt the need to grab her shoulders and shake her until the many ghosts torturing her were all gone; shake her until she was free again. Yet his hands, betraying his every impulse, were now anchored to the picture of the young couple, the toxic color of his eyes was tainting their world in sepia tones and the similarities between those neglected lovers and the ones swimming inside his mind seemed too evident now to be ignored.

He handed her the picture. His eyes trained on her unreadable expression.

"I think I may have started to see pieces of me in others, like pieces of a broken puzzle," he mumbled.

"He really looks like you."

Even if her voice had shown no signs of surprise, the mercenary was left with no other choice than to admit that she was right. Nathan really looked like him. The similarities between their faces could not be reduced to the color of their eyes. There was more, there was way more than just a repetitive color. And still, even when the key to his genealogy was resting in his hand, the mercenary was unable to see beyond the most fragile bridge: the one connecting his past with his future, but in an entirely different way.

It was painfully obvious to him now how they had longed for those they could not have.

He had found Amanda in the shape of that woman and she had done the same, discovering pieces of Nathan in the battered form of that gunman.

They had spent way too much time trying to find the ashes of people they could never have and now it seemed much too late for them to finally acknowledge the reality of it all: she was not Amanda, and he wasn't Nathan. They simply were who they were. When they found each other in the pause that was their present, they both looked away. He had said it himself; it was over. Whatever it was that they had shared, it was now in the past. And she remembered his words. She remembered vividly.

The second picture almost made her smile, yet the timid curve disappeared before it could curl up her lips. Her fingers hovered before the image of her parents.

"I can't remember their voices, you know?" She said. "I don't know when it happened, or why it happened, but it did happen. Somewhere down the line, I lost their voices."

The words found him before he could even think about them.

"I can't hear my mother's voice in my dreams, and she was a singer," he confessed. It was the first time he was letting her inside the most secluded area of his nomadic soul, the zone he would show no one, the one reserved solely for himself. "Ever since I met you, those dreams came back. I have nightmares where I can see her, you know? Her mouth moves, the melody is there… but her voice is gone. There's only silence, like a punishment."

He looked down, ashamed.

"It is so capricious… not being able to listen to her voice when she sings to me. Perhaps that's the price I have to pay for every bad choice I ever made, but I didn't know back then. If I had known Amanda was pregnant I would have never left Wickett, and from that point on, it's all a chain reaction: if I had stayed, I would have never met Annie, we would have never lost our child, she would have never followed me, they wouldn't have killed her."

"All you had to do was stay, it seems easy now, but you didn't know."

"I was a bad son," the final confession left him breathless and completely vulnerable. "I am my father's son after all. Flesh of his flesh, and sin of his sins."

"Black…"

"He raped my mother when she was just a child. What good can come from that?"

She took a deep breath as one of her hands landed on his shoulder.

"There's no such thing..." she whispered, "as inherited evil."

"I'm not so sure," he breathed. "I fucked my aunt… repeatedly. I killed my girlfriend's father. I had a woman who risked it all because of me, and she was pregnant with my child. All I had to do was reach out and get to know her, but I chose not to. I had a wife who loved me, but I was thinking of you while I was fucking her."

She stared at him with eyes that showed no colors yet her hand, warmer than before, finally allowed his head to rest on her shoulder.

"I have always been a selfish man," he spoke. "When my mother was dying, I was having sex with Amanda. No wonder I cannot hear her voice in my dreams. I was a bad child. I was a terrible son to her."

Stunned by the revelation, the woman simply caressed his forehead.

"Or you could see it like this: while your mother's life was fading away, you were already creating another life for her to live on." Such beautiful words, he thought, even if they had been deprived of all sentiment by her colorless voice, were simply too romantic for a man like him.

When the first symptoms of dawn appeared, bathing the buildings in orange and yellow, he closed his eyes minutely as he understood what his confessions had done: the last barrier of his privacy had been demolished as an attempt to show the doctor that she was not alone. For the first time in his life, he was an open book. Not even Zar had gone that far. It stunned him to recognize the things he was willing to do for that woman; how his memories had returned after entire seasons of his life only for that woman to know he was there, right by her side. For the first time in his life, he felt peace. He was finally able to delve inside the sea of days that was his life knowing she would not judge him for she was exactly what he was: an imperfect being that had made way too many mistakes.

When he opened his eyes, he saw her clearly: Amanda was finally gone. There was only Alexandra. When she finally stood up and took his hand in hers, he saw himself, on his knees; a godless man praying in the dark for light to come his way.

He could only hope that, in her eyes, Nathan was gone as well.

Cemeteries were like small cities for the dead. At least, that's what her parents had told her long ago when she was a child. But this city was different from what she had in mind; it didn't look as tenebrous as she had thought, even when the grey canopy of clouds rolling by in the sky seemed destined to darken the already lackluster atmosphere.

The cemetery was divided into two very different sections: a very ancient-looking one, composed by bricked up buildings and old, weathered tombstones with nearly unreadable names; and a newer one with clean nameplates on the green grass.

They hadn't talked since crossing the great black gates of Bardsdale Cemetery. Not a single word had escaped from their mouths. Words and their sounds seemed futile now that they were venturing the lonely paths of death. Black was walking a few feet behind her, giving her space, but every now and then the doctor would look over her shoulder to make sure he was still there, with her, supporting her. The first time she stopped walking, he nearly bumped into her. Then she stared at him, eyes narrowed as in deep thought.

"Can you give me some money? I'd like to buy them some flowers."

He nodded in silence as he reached for the box inside his jacket, then he stretched out his hand, about to hand her the money, when a second thought crossed his mind: perhaps she would appreciate a moment of complete loneliness, far from his eyes, to express her pain without having to hold anything back. He tilted his head to the side as he handed her the box instead, keeping the money in his free hand.

"I'll get some flowers for you, you go ahead. I'll meet you there."

As the first raindrops began to kiss the green grass, the doctor accepted the box in silence, nodding her head. She could see what he was trying to do and even if she couldn't find the words to make him stay, to let him know that she felt better whenever he was around, she didn't fight his intentions. If anything, she found him noble and thoughtful. She stood still for a brief moment until his body disappeared in the mist, then she turned around and started to walk again.

It didn't take long for Black to find a florist near the entrance. Avoiding all possible small talk, the mercenary chose a bouquet of violets and went back inside the cemetery, looking for her. The misty rain felt colder than before against his skin as his eyes widened in surprise when the first lighting illuminated the grey sky. Walking faster than before, his boots revisited the path that would lead him back to her. He could already anticipate his movements in his head; he would kneel down and offer her the flowers with a gentle hand on her shoulder.

But none of that happened.

He saw her standing in the middle of the path, contemplating her parents' tomb from afar. Paralyzed by the image, the figure of that woman caused his steps to become slower than before. When he finally reached her, he understood why she hadn't been able to move forward.

Before her parents' tomb, there was a man. A tall, lean man, standing in the rain in a long, black raincoat. No umbrella. His dark blonde hair was slicked back. His hands were on his pockets.

When the mercenary contemplated her face, he understood everything. There was no need for the woman to tell him who that man was: it was crystal clear now; his image was still forged inside her eyes as if it was yesterday.

When the violent thunder shook the earth beneath their feet, the timid face of a frightened little boy appeared from underneath his father's raincoat.

"Daddy, I don't like it here. I want to go back to the car with mom."

He was four, maybe five years old. He was the son she would have liked to have with him; the one she had chosen not to have, the one he had chosen to have with another woman.

And he looked just like him.

As the woman watched Nathan reaching out for his son and lifting him up in his arms, she could hear her own heart beating like a mad drum in the middle of her heaving chest. There was no air in her lungs, no blood in her veins. Her mouth, agape, was completely dry. When Black placed his hands on her shoulders he could feel her legs trembling like a leaf; the tremor moving up, reaching her spine, aiming for her head.

Then Nathan turned around, ready to leave. But as the sky roared and the wind grew colder, he too stood petrified before her. Then he saw himself, or what seemed to be a different version of himself, standing behind her. With his hands on her shoulders, and his eyes, the same shade of coffee that had discovered her so many years ago, professing the same old love for her that only he himself could profess.

It was terrible. It was beautiful. It was impossible.

It was all a dream. The image of the ones they should have been; the exact way a woman her age should have looked like, his hands on her shoulders. Together. Like one. Covering the boy's face with one of his hands, Nathan ran off as if he had just seen a ghost. Only Black dared to take a look over his shoulder. The doctor stood there, her eyes fixed forwards, in the space Nathan had occupied before. When the mercenary turned around again and got on one knee to grab the flowers that were now soaked in the ground, he saw her legs finally moving. Running. Getting lost inside that dead city.

But she wasn't following Nathan. She was simply trying to lose herself in the rain.

He chased after her until he lost her and there he stood, helpless in the rain; a man who had seen his own face in the face of another man. Now it was his heart the one performing the most violent drumming song as he wandered through the tombstones and the bricked-up buildings recognizing the irony of time, the pun of his existence; always looking, never finding.

Hours piled up upon his tired shoulders. When his legs felt heavy and his mouth had run out of breath, he made his way back to her parents' tomb.

There she was, sitting on the grass facing the nameplates with her back turned to him. His box was on the ground, a few inches away from her legs. He approached her in silence, careful not to startle her, but the second he wrapped his arms around her shoulders he knew something was wrong: the tip of the gun he had given her was pressed firmly against her forehead.

She had envisioned the end.

Please don't taste like blood, please don't taste like blood, please don't taste like blood…

She had lost it all.

The second his lips touched the back of her head, the woman flinched. Trembling, he reached out and grabbed the gun, tossing it aside immediately. Then her body collapsed, her back landing heavily against his agitated chest. He held her in his arms as she cried like a helpless child. When he opened his eyes, he understood why Nathan had chosen not to visit her parents' tomb for such a long time: placed between Robert and Rosie's nameplates, there was a smaller nameplate with no dates on it, just a name.

Alexandra Flynn.

Visiting their tombs meant letting go. It meant that no-one was looking for her anymore. It meant that she was never coming back.

The woman shifted inside his arms, her reddened eyes found his.

"I told you I don't want to be kept inside a box of memories," she said as her eyes found the gun discarded on the floor. She observed the weapon as if it was something alien, something she had never seen before. "You don't want me there, but there's nothing here. I belong nowhere."

The woman buried her face in his chest as her hands became tight, whitened fists clinging onto him and the man took a deep breath, welcoming his very last fear: there was love after Amanda.

He loved that woman.

Without her, the adventure of a decade togetherapart would have never existed. Without her, he would have never found out about Amanda's last days. He would have never known about his daughter. He would have never been able to address his deepest regret: if only he had known, he would have stayed there; he would have stayed by Amanda' side during her pregnancy, he would have been a father for that girl, he would have saved both his children - one from the suffocating heat of fire, and the other from the cold embrace of abandonment.

He would have never accepted Shang Tsung's offer…

A long time ago, while he was still in Earthrealm, he once read that the human being dies a little with each passing day. His death was a slow one, his death was an eternal agony he could not escape from, he knew.

He cupped her face with his hands before planting a soft kiss on her forehead. It took him some time to find his voice and even after he had found it, the words leaving his mouth were treacherous and convoluted.

It wasn't easy, after all, for a man like him to speak like that.

"I can live with the memories; I can live with the pain," he said, "I can even live with the uncertainty of not knowing much about anything…" The words were clumsy and inconclusive, and twisted. "But I don't think I'll be able to live without you if I know you're still somewhere out there but you're not with me."

He cursed himself under his breath. Such an old man, still finding trouble inside his own mouth.

"I learned that the hard way, during my stay in prison. I spent ten years thinking about you and where you were, if you still were…"

One last pause for the man to remember the words he should have said more than a century ago.

But she shook her head. Her hands, wrapped around his neck, silenced him before he could talk. Then her fingers moved to his face, tracing the many paths that the raindrops had imprinted all over his cheeks.

"You can't age, Black," she whispered. "You can't age."

It was terrible. It was beautiful. It was impossible.