Hi, so this was originally supposed to be for the jlaire mini event on tumblr, but college is hard and this fanfic decided to be the longest thing I have ever written. The events of this fic are platonic, but Jim and Claire probably end up falling in love afterward.
I don't own the Tales of Arcadia franchise. I also don't own the song "Everglow" by Starset, which is where this fic gets its title from.
"You ready for tomorrow?" Toby asked as he leaned down from the bunk above Jim's. They were on the last day of quarantine before the mission. Despite the darkness, Jim could see a giddy smile on his best friend's face.
"Mostly," Jim said. He was nervous in a way that his anxiety medication couldn't quite handle. They were going to another dimension, and they'd be the first ones doing so. It'd be just them with nothing more than tethers and space suits. It was probably to save money; the rest of NASA was trying to integrate Akiridion and various other technology into its projects. Jim was an orbital mechanics specialist, not an electrical engineer, so he couldn't be quite sure if it was due to the alliance that the king-and-queen-in-waiting of Akiridion-5 had made or the fact that certain military bases were actually sharing their research now.
"Mostly? What's wrong?"
"Nothing, well, nothing real, just the usual anxiety I've had all my life about something going wrong. But seriously, Tobes, I'll be fine. We'll be fine."
The next day started inconsequentially, with an alternative rock song about space blaring from Toby's phone. Jim made breakfast and tried not to feel like anything bad would happen. It wasn't a long mission, but since there was no ship the two of the would always have to keep their helmets on. Due to this, they would only be in another dimension for a couple hours. They would be fine.
"Mister Jim, are you alright?" Blinky asked as he helped him suit up. His husband, Arthur, was helping Toby don his own astronaut suit a few feet away.
"Yeah, just, well, nervous." It was a more courageous word than afraid, but the acting technician seemed to figure out Jim's words anyways.
"Goodness gracious, why wouldn't you be? You and Tobias are the first ones going into uncharted territory, and it doesn't help that the media has been calling this dimension the Shadow Realm. But remember, fear is but the precursor to valor. Don't think, Mister Jim. Become."
"Um…" Jim trailed off. While he and Blinky had what could be almost considered a father-son relationship, he was technically Jim's superior. Due to both, he didn't want to be even vaguely disrespectful before the mission, not when there was a margin of error for not coming back.
"What's wrong now?"
"We work for NASA; aren't I supposed to think?"
"Well, today's mission isn't exactly rocket science, is it"" After a moment, they both started chuckling.
Jim's nerves were calmer as the airlock doors hissed closed. It was just him, Toby, and the Bridge. Or, well, they had taken to calling it a bridge. If anything, it was closer to being a wormhole, but its shape looked like a bridge, hence the name. Toby had mentioned that they were passing under the bridge, not over it, and thus it didn't make all that much sense, but the name had stuck.
"Ten," came Eli's voice from the countdown. He was among the youngest of the engineers for the mission, but that came with the territory of being a graduate from MIT with a 4.0 GPA.
"Nine."
Toby smiled. "You ready for the adventure of our lives?"
"Eight."
"Of course," Jim said. "I've got you by my side."
"Seven."
Wait.
"Six."
Had Jim called his mom this morning? Or at least tried to?
"Five."
Had he at least texted her?
"Four."
There was a chance that Jim wouldn't be coming back.
"Three."
Had Jim told her that he loved her?
"Two."
"Relax, Jimbo. If you hyperventilate now, you'll use up all your oxygen."
"One."
Jim took a deep breath. It was only a couple hours, max. He would be back to talk to his mom.
The light at the top of the Bridge flashed bright blue, and bright blue light trailed down the edges. The light was closer to a sky-blue, or even a blue-violet, than the cyan that was common among Akiridion technology. When the light hit the base of the Bridge, that same blue light filled it inside, forming an opaque surface.
The Bridge was open.
"Remember, young Umbranauts," Dr. Strickler said over the microphone. Toby groaned at the shadow-related pun that the media had created. So did Dr. Vendel, the director of the department. "Don't try to go further than your tether permits and use your best judgement."
Jim and Toby walked through the Bridge and were immediately met with the feeling of weightlessness. It was a good thing that they had had the standard astronaut training despite not being in outer space. Jim chuckled.
"What's so funny, Jimbo?"
"Remember when they said we shouldn't need to do zero-g training because of Akiridion gravity generators?"
"I guess Steve can go eat his Vespa helmet now."
"You know we can hear you, right?" Eli asked over the radio comms. The signal was weak and full of static.
"Um, barely?" Toby said. "There's a ton of interference."
"Be careful, then."
It was silent for a moment, until Toby pointed into the distance of what apparently wasn't an empty void. "Hey, is that an asteroid?"
It wasn't just one asteroid.
It was an entire cluster of moving asteroids, or at least that's what the two of them could see. The only light was the flashlights built into their suits and the distant glow of the Bridge.
"Well, there's definitely matter here," Toby said. "I want to get a sample, that way we can figure out what type it is."
"Knew your geology minor would end up being useful," Jim said, propelling himself towards the asteroids.
"Hey, that one looks like it might be shaped like a house!" Toby pointed to a particularly large asteroid in the distance.
"That's kind of freaky."
"Maybe a bit, since most of these asteroids are vaguely spherical, but maybe it used to be large and broke recently?"
"Still freaky, but I'll go with your explanation, Tobes."
Jim tried to ignore the feeling that he was being watched from the house-shaped asteroid. It was just his anxiety. It had to be just his anxiety.
The two men landed on the asteroid. Toby got out his hard-light knife. It wasn't nearly as powerful as an Akiridion serrator, but it was less weight than the drills that had been used in previous years. "Huh, that's odd."
"Oh?"
"The handle's glowing gold."
Jim turned his head to look behind him. "I don't think it's the knife that's glowing, Tobes." Rather, a large cluster of asteroids floated behind them; all of them were surrounded by golden light.
"I wonder what's causing them to glow like that."
Jim's head darted to his left.
"Is something wrong?" Toby asked, looking at his friend.
"I thought I saw a flash of purple coming from the house-shaped one."
Without warning, the golden asteroids began racing towards the two of them. They scrambled to get out of the way, tethers looping between the asteroids that weren't glowing.
"Houston? Eli? Anyone? We've got a problem!" Toby called out. Jim would have called for help as well, but all he could think of was trying to dodge. The glowing ones seemed to move without pattern, without any discernible forces acting upon them. The glowing asteroids changed shape to become sharper.
"What's going on?" Strickler asked. His voice was heavily altered by static. In the background, Eli was stammering something incomprehensible.
"The asteroids want to kill us!" Toby cried.
"They're sharp," Jim said, his voice a detached, almost dissociated calm that scared him. A calm that certainly didn't match the rapid oscillation of his heartbeat. "They turned sharp."
"Get out of there," Vendel said. The order was almost unnecessary because Jim and Toby were already trying to do so. "And be quick about it; we can't let a hostile force into this side of the bridge."
They couldn't. The only person there with any combat experience was Arthur Galadrigal, but the trauma from his experience in the marines was so bad that despite being a brilliant engineer he had a hard time forming words.
The shard-like asteroids paused for a moment before directing themselves behind Toby and Jim, while a medium-sized asteroid rose up to join them. Jim felt a tug from behind him. His tether.
"Tobes! Tobes!" he called, realizing the danger. The shards began slamming down onto the tether. Jim wasn't sure what the asteroids were made of, but whatever it was they were strong enough that the outer shell of his tether was being shredded, leaving the vulnerable craft-store yarn core exposed to the asteroids. The idea of something so easily cut by scissors being the only thing keeping astronauts from flying into the uncaring void of space had made Jim nervous once, but acrylic yarn was cheap and light, and the fibers used as an outer casing were strong enough to resist space junk.
Once again, he feared the fact that the only thing keeping him tethered to the Earth could be cut by the scissors he had in his kitchen at home. Some disconnected part of Jim wondered if he'd be fine if they added in hard light to the blend instead of just using materials that were originally developed when he was fourteen or younger.
In space, no one can hear you scream because sound doesn't carry in a vacuum. In this alternate dimension with killer asteroids, Jim couldn't hear the telltale ripping, but that might have also been the roar of blood and static in his ears.
Toby turned around in time to see the moment when Jim became freely floating in dimension D-13. He turned around just in time to see the fear that overtook his best friend's face as he began free falling in the Shadow Realm.
"Hold on, I'll get you!" On cue, another asteroid began to rise, and once again there was a flash of purple light.
Jim thought he heard someone saying to reel them back in, but he couldn't be sure because it blended together with the static, with his heartbeat, with all the anxious thoughts that had come true.
"Tobes, tell my mom I love her!"
"Tell her yourself and look out!"
Jim looked behind himself at the asteroid flying towards him from below and behind. He began looking around for something, anything, to use as a handhold. He saw a blur of purple light that almost looked like a person rush up from below and in front of him. It looked like it was going to push him up and away.
When the light passed through him, Jim felt a rush of shock, and then a second one because the first one hadn't felt like it was his own. Then he just felt pain. Blunt pain as the asteroid crashed into his back and shattered his helmet. Biting pain as one of the shards of his helmet flew up and cut his cheek because at least some forces were working the way they were supposed to. Burning pain as he tried to keep in the oxygen he had left.
Jim kept his eyes on Toby for as long as he could. He crossed through the Bridge and when it closed Jim couldn't tell if that was the reason why his vision was going black or the fact that he was suffocating.
"You do realize that you can breathe here, right?" said a voice Jim had never heard before. Still, he found himself exhaling. "There's enough oxygen in this place that I can start fires."
He breathed in and out a couple times before turning to the voice despite the screaming of his back. The person-shaped blur of light was now actually a person. Well, a transparent purple one that had a multitude of hairclips in her hair. She looked like she was in the later years of high school at the youngest and barely old enough to start college at the oldest. She was also holding onto a broken-off piece of Jim's tether.
"I guess I can't touch you," she said, and her voice shook a bit. She squeezed her eyes before opening them and pushing her shoulders down and back. The next time she spoke it was firmer, more confident. "Knowing her she'll try to separate us so hold onto this. I'm going to get us to somewhere safe."
Jim looked down at the cable. "Are you sure? Those asteroids already ripped through my tether, what's stopping them from shredding this piece as well?"
"She already used up a lot of energy trying to kill you and that other guy – I think you called him Tobes? She's probably gone back to wherever she normally lurks and plots how she plans to try and kill my soul and hijack my body next. That means that I won't get caught off-guard and I can reinforce it with my powers before it can get shredded."
Jim decided to pretend that he understood what the purple girl was saying about body-hijacking and powers. His day was already much crazier than he had intended. She didn't seem hostile, and she knew the lay of the land better than he did.
Jim grabbed onto the tether and let himself be led away.
Toby crashed onto the Earth side of the Bridge. "I could have gotten to him!" he shouted. "I could have saved him if you didn't start reeling me back!"
"Don't know that," Arthur said, breaking quarantine to hug Toby. "Don't want lose you, too."
It was probably true. That asteroid had come up too fast for Toby to get to his best friend, but he could have at least brought back his best friend's body.
The purple girl was silent as she led him through the asteroid field. They were still moving, but they had relaxed their fast, erratic movements. She kept looking back at Jim, as if to make sure he was still there. Eventually she landed on a particularly large asteroid.
Toby hadn't pointed out a house-shaped asteroid, even though it had looked like one. He had pointed out an asteroid that had an entire house on top of it.
"Well, we're here."
"Right," Jim said.
She let go of the tether and walked to the front door, pushing it open. "Come on, she won't be able to get to us inside."
Jim followed behind the purple girl. "Who is 'she'?"
The girl shrugged, closing the door behind him. "She has many names. Heck, those were some of her exact words. 'I have many names.' Some of her names include Morgana, the Pale Lady, and as I've called her sometimes, the gold-plated trashcan who needs to go burn in some other hell. I'm Claire, by the way, what's yours, NASA-guy?"
"What?"
Claire pointed at the circular patch that rested over his heart. "Unless that's a stolen spacesuit or the US had to lone one to another country, I'm pretty sure you work for NASA."
"Yeah, I do, I'm Jim, but how do you know about NASA? We haven't contacted this dimension at all before today. No one has."
"Eh, debatable. I mean, I'm as human as you are. Or at least I used to be."
Jim was silent as he looked around the room. It looked like an average American living room, which would make sense if Claire was from Earth, but that didn't make sense. He knew Area 49-B wasn't a fan of sharing extraterrestrial technology, but after General Morando had tried to invade Earth and the king-and-queen-in-waiting had fought him and his army off, all their information had been made public. They hadn't sent a random girl into an alternate dimension.
"How long have you been here?"
"I think it was May first? Yeah, it probably was, it was a Monday and the day of the AP Chemistry exam and I had gone to the bathroom because I wasn't feeling well, and," she shuddered. "And then Morgana tried to possess me, and I'm here now. I haven't been able to count the days since, well, there's no sun and I don't need to eat or sleep since I don't have a physical body right now. Not to mention, there was that time where I nearly got turned into nothingness and had to pull myself back together. So, like, at most a year and a half?"
"Are you sure? Because May second is my mom's birthday, and it was on a Friday last year."
Claire's face crumpled slightly. "What day is it?"
Jim had memorized the date of the launch, not knowing it would be his last day on Earth. "November seventh, twenty-twenty-six."
Claire seemed to cave in on herself. "I've been here for over a decade." Her voice was a heartbroken whisper. "I think I'm dead by now."
Barbara had just started her lunch break when her cell phone rang. The caller ID said it was Toby Domzalski. He had been Jim's best friend since the two of them were five and had remained close all their lives. Today they had even went on a mission together.
"Hi, Toby," she said. "You're back already?"
"I'm sorry," Toby said from the other end of the line. "I'm sorry, Dr. L, I'm so sorry, I tried to save him but–"
Barbara didn't hear what he said next because she had dropped the phone. Toby and Jim had been best friends for nearly all their lives, but her son was gone now.
Claire had walked away from Jim after claiming to be dead, and Jim had decided to let her have at least a few moments of alone time. He had just met her, and he didn't know what to say to her to make her feel better. Instead, he had looked for a first aid kit and had begun cleaning his cut. He winced at the sting of alcohol and had placed bandages along the larger areas of the cut, hoping that he wasn't taking too much of her supply. Afterwards, he put the kit away and climbed the stairs of her house, looking around. As he pushed open the door to a room with a crib, he heard a sob from behind him.
Jim looked into the room and saw Claire wrapped in a blanket. No tears fell from her eyes, but she was shaking enough that she may as well have been crying.
Jim didn't know her, but he was probably one of the biggest reasons why she was in this state, and there didn't seem to be anyone else who could comfort her.
"Do you want to talk?" he asked in a soft voice.
She sniffled, and for a moment looked surprised that she could. "Can't say I'm good at it, since I've been alone for… you know."
Jim sat a foot and a half away from her. She mimed the action of taking a couple deep breaths, but he didn't hear her breathe. She was probably trying to act like she was still alive and still had a body, and he couldn't fault her for that.
"I've tried to get back to my body multiple times," she said. "I guess I always thought it was on life support after all this time. But I don't think my parents would have kept my body around for that long, and since she's not in it it's basically a vegetable. And they have my little brother to worry about, anyways."
"Your brother, what was he like?" Jim asked. "At least, what was he like before you came to the Shadow Realm?"
"The what?"
Internally, Jim wanted to smack himself. "Sorry, that's what the media's been calling this place, we've been calling it D-13."
"I mean, I've been calling it stuff 'my own personal empty hellscape' or 'prison', so the Shadow Realm sounds so cool in comparison."
"Yeah, I think that's why so few people called it D-13, even those of us who were on the project."
"Why'd you guys even call it that?"
"Well, it turns out that some parts of string theory were right even though Einstein's theories of relativity were proven to be true, and there were eleven spatial dimensions and time. So when Dr. Kanjigar discovered it, he just named it numerically."
"Huh, I thought it would have at least been named after him or something. Also, well, Enrique was barely seven months old when I, you know," Claire said. Her entire body seemed to glow just a tiny bit brighter when she talked about her brother.
"Guess that explains the crib in the other room."
"Yeah, I didn't mean to make it? Since he's not here, I didn't need it, but when I made the copy of my house it just looked the same way my house had looked last time I saw it."
"How did you make it?"
Claire uncurled herself from the blanket. "You remember me saying that I have powers?"
Jim nodded.
"So, I don't think I'd be able to do this if I was back on Earth, but I can will things into existence, and I can also control the asteroids. I can also sense when things aren't normal around here, which usually means Morgana's trying to do something. It took me what felt like a long time to figure out how to use them, though, and it's not like I can use them to escape." Her form dimmed. "Believe me, I've tried."
A tired pair of parents sat in a house that looked a decade more modern than the one in the Shadow Realm, but other than that the same.
"It's been over ten years," Ophelia said. Javier rubbed her back and looked at a picture they had of their children.
"I bet she'd be doing something great if she had ever woken up," he said.
"But she didn't. Do you think we should…" she trailed off, a guilty look on her face.
"Hey mom? Could you help me with my math homework?" their son called from his homework at their kitchen table.
"So, what's the coolest thing you've ever done for NASA?" Claire asked.
"Other than get attacked by, as you put it, a gold-plated trashcan while being one of the first people to cross into another dimension? Probably that time I worked on Durian gravity generators."
"Wait, we have those now? I thought you would've had to get zero-gravity training!"
"I mean, Toby and I did, but about a month after you came here the king-and-queen in waiting of the planet Akiridion-5 went into hiding on Earth. Like, they even went to my school, Arcadia Oaks High –"
"Wait, you went to the mole school?" Claire interjected. "I went to Arcadia Oaks Academy!"
Jim gave her a flat look. "Yeah, well, my school hosted interplanetary royalty so I guess that settles the rivalry. Anyways, they stayed on Earth for a couple months before the guy who had taken over their planet invaded, and they fought him off. Afterwards, they forged an alliance with various countries on Earth, and our technology has really taken off since."
"That's really cool… wish I had stayed around a little longer, then I could've seen aliens."
"Um, don't call them 'aliens'; most extraterrestrial species get offended by that. Refer to them as their species name, or life beings, or if you have to, extraterrestrials, but that one is still a bit touch and go."
"Cool, will do… if I ever get out of here, of course."
The words "not that I will" hung unspoken in the air.
"I mean, you getting in here seems pretty impossible, so maybe you can find a way to make it out?"
"Yeah, maybe, probably over my own dead body. I really wish I had picked Truth that night." Seeing Jim's confused look, she sighed. "I know this probably sounds crazy, but I've had a long time to think it over. Besides, my version of normal involves evil golden space witches and magic powers. A bit over a week before I got sent here, I was at a slumber party with my two best friends, Mary and Darci. You might've known them, they went to your school and we're all about the same age.
"Anyways, we were playing truth or dare, and I knew they were trying to figure out if I had a boyfriend and if it was one of the band guys at my school or the college student who would help me with my calculus homework when I went to the tutoring center in the library after school, and I didn't want to tell them because they'd tease me over it. So naturally I chose Dare, and Mary had found this weird occult ritual on the internet that was honestly a lot like Bloody Mary, except it was to summon someone called the Eldritch Queen. I'll give you three guesses who that title refers to."
"Morgana?"
"Knew you had to be smart to get into NASA. Anyways, I did the ritual, and I didn't expect it to work or anything. Except then I started getting sick. I thought it was due to stress, but, well, the ritual was actually the real deal, or something. And I don't blame Mary and Darci for it, because they're not the type try and banish someone to another dimension, but here I am now." She sighed. "And probably for all of eternity."
Ophelia and Javier had talked about their decision extensively. It wasn't an easy decision, but it was time. That was why they had driven to the hospital after taking their son to school. Arcadia Oaks was a relatively small town, which meant that the care facility for the dying was another wing of the hospital. It was a wing they were quite familiar with.
Enrique had lived nearly his entire life spending weekends and times after school watching after an older sister who had never woken up. He had spent nearly his entire life with an older sister whose closed eyes would twitch for the first time in months only for her brain activity to show no signs of waking up.
It had been far too long to continue hoping.
"Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Nuñez, we were just about to call you!" one of the nurses at the receptionist's desk said. Ophelia and Javier looked at each other in confusion.
"Did something happen?" Javier asked. They had wanted to be able to at least say goodbye to what was left of their daughter before they took her off life support.
Seeing their faces, the nurse gave them an awkward smile. "Nothing bad, though I think it's best if you saw." They followed the nurse to Claire's room.
There was a television on in her room. It was always on because hearing was one of the last senses to go and being able to hear things was supposedly good for comatose patients. Right now, it was showing a memorial taking place at JPL. It was for the young man who had died in the mission to dimension D-13 two days ago. In the background, the song "Amazing Grace" was playing.
And vaguely to the tune of "Amazing Grace", Claire was tapping the fingers of her right hand.
She hadn't moved her fingers in over ten years.
"I don't know how or why," the nurse said, "but I think she might wake up."
"What're you doing?" Claire asked. Jim managed to avoid dropping the equipment he was working on. He didn't manage to avoid screaming and flailing his arm in such a way that it passed through her multiple times. Claire jumped back; the action of Jim passing through her made them both uncomfortable. He tried to avoid doing anything that would cause him to "touch" her. However, after a decade of not interacting with anyone other than an entity that wanted to possess her body and kill her soul, Claire had forgotten social cues like making noise when she walked to alert people of her presence, or not standing directly behind someone and asking questions out of nowhere.
"Trying to fix my radio. It's a crapshoot on getting any signal with this, but I might be able to contact JPL or someone else with it. Of course, it might've only worked when the Bridge was open."
"Oh, that's cool," Claire said, and while she sounded hopeful her form grew dimmer with disappointment. "I hope they can rescue you."
Of course, if he was rescued she'd be alone again.
"I can't say for sure, since I don't work with that type of technology, but we might be able to transfer you into a machine of some sort once I get back to Earth."
Claire's form brightened.
"Can you shine some light near the radio? Thanks," Jim said. "Akiridions have these robots called Blanks, and while they start out with no personality whatsoever, they're able to achieve singularity."
"Isn't that what happens with black holes and stuff?"
"Er, technically, yeah, but with robots it means they pretty much develop a soul and you can't really tell them apart from sapient life-beings. If we were to take a brand new Blank and place your soul into it, you might be able to live on Earth again. Well, not live-live but I think you know what I'd mean."
"I'd like that," Claire said. If she could form tears there would probably be some collecting in the corners of her eyes. "Want me to see if there's a way I can try and amplify the signal?"
It had been a bit over a week since Jim had died, and Eli was putting in overtime. It was either that or rewatching old Buzzfeed: Unsolved episodes while eating way too many chips that his mom would have never let him eat as a kid due to the amount of preservatives and trans fats they had. He glared at the code he was trying to write. If this was a case of a for loop that hadn't been closed properly, he'd be so mad. The fact that his headphones had started to become staticky wasn't helping.
Eli took off his headphones, and the static didn't stop. He then noticed that the radio that they had used for the mission into the Shadow Realm was on.
"Hello?" came a voice from the radio. Eli fumbled with his phone to turn on the voice recorder to make a backup copy just in case.
"Hello, is anyone there?" said the same voice. There was heavy static and distortion overlaying it. "This is Jim Lake Jr, I recently got stranded in the dimension known as D-13. Can anybody hear me?"
"Jim! Is that you? It's Eli, I'm listening!"
The transmission cut out.
Claire's face scrunched up in pain and her hands seized into fists.
The heart monitor beeped more rapidly.
She took a breath. As she exhaled, she released the tension and spirit that had started to build up in her body. Just like she had been for most of a decade, Claire's body was still and at seeming peace.
"Hello, is anyone there?" Jim asked into the radio that Claire was holding. Her eyes were closed, and her hair floated around her. "This is Jim Lake Jr, I recently got stranded in the dimension known as D-13."
There was a loud screeching noise, like a microphone giving feedback, and Claire dropped the radio like it had burned her. Jim was able to catch it before it could hit the ground, but by glancing at it he could tell that parts of it had melted.
Claire was convulsing; her eyes had rolled back into her head and sparks were coming out of her hands. Jim looked around, trying to think of something, anything, that could help her. Claire inhaled, sharply, and for an infinite millisecond she just hung in midair, still and seemingly at peace.
He grabbed a cushion from the couch and used it to catch her when she dropped.
"I'm sorry, I can try to fix it later," Claire said. She looked and sounded more exhausted than she ever had since Jim had met her. She tried to get up from the cushion but fell back onto it "I just need some time to recharge."
"Claire, are you okay? It's like the radio made you have a seizure. If it's hurting you, we shouldn't keep doing this."
"I'm dead, Jim." She gave him a weak smile. "I'll be some form of okay no matter what."
It wasn't the lie she'd give so long ago. She hadn't said she was okay right now.
"You sent me a thousand texts, Eli! A thousand texts!" Toby had tracked down Eli as soon as he could once he arrived at JPL. "What's your data plan like that you can send me a thousand texts?"
"It's unlimited talk and text, but it wouldn't let me send you the thing I wanted to."
"What were you trying to send me?"
"Something that's going to rock your world, Tobes."
Toby glared as Eli began to walk away, gesturing to follow him. "Only one person got to call me Tobes, and that's not changing."
"Rock. Your. World."
They were in a rather empty wing of the building when Eli stopped walking and pulled his phone out. He opened his voice recording app, and pressed play.
Toby started crying when he heard his best friend's voice. Then he wiped his eyes and took a breath. "What do we do now?"
"I mean, it's probably illegal and will make us lose our jobs and –"
"Eli."
"We'd have to reopen the Bridge to get to Jim."
"Well, it's a good thing he's more well-liked now than he was in high school."
"If you hadn't gotten stuck here, what do you think you would've done with your life?" Jim asked.
"I'm not sure. I mean, I was dead set on becoming an actress because I liked acting in school plays and musicals, but then I started getting into black holes. Well, not literally, unless we're inside a black hole right now."
Blinky and Arthur looked at each other, and then at Toby and Eli.
"Of course we'll help you, Tobias," Blinky said. "We can't just leave Mister Jim stranded." Arthur nodded.
"Thanks Blink," Toby said.
"However, we shouldn't tell his mother," Blinky continued.
"Why?" Eli asked.
"Dr. L's taking Jim's, well, not-death pretty bad," Toby said.
"Hurt worse," Arthur said.
"Precisely," Blinky said. "It would be cruel to get her hopes up and then immediately dash them if something were to happen to Mister Jim should we fail."
Claire's arms were outstretched in front of the kitchen counter. Her eyes were squeezed tightly, and her teeth were slightly gritted. There was a flash of purple light, and several avocados appeared on the counter.
"I thought you didn't eat," Jim commented.
"I don't, but you do and I'm pretty sure at least some of those canned foods are way past their expiration dates."
"Okay, one, I've been avoiding the cans that look like they could be even remotely spoiled. Two, you literally made them using your weird space ghost magic. If the food in them isn't good, then no offense but I'd be less worried about food poisoning from mundane causes than from the fact that it isn't from Earth. And if the cans are contaminated by the fact that this dimension is somewhat under control of an evil space witch you summoned at a slumber party, then I can't see how avocados will be much better."
Claire ignored his comment in favor of slicing open the avocados. "I used to be good at making guacamole, so I hope this tastes good."
"You want any help?"
"Are you sure about him, Eli?" Toby asked.
"Look, I know he wasn't that great in the past, but he's not a bad dude! Though he might be a bit more motivated you guys' rivalry."
"Exactly! He's going to want to rub it in everyone's face that he helped save Jim! I swear, his head's already so big that I'm not sure how he can fit it in his Vespa helmet."
"Well, do you have any better ideas for finding someone we can trust both not to rat us out and also to help us save Jim?"
"Yeah. Draal."
"Isn't Draal in DC right now?"
"Fuck, fine. Let's go talk to Steve."
Claire didn't try to fix the radio, at least, not at first. Instead, she was watching as Jim painstakingly took the radio apart piece by piece, and she tried to replicate the pieces he declared "probably okay." She didn't want to work on the radio itself after what had happened last time. Besides, that was Jim's only way out of here. It might be her only way out of here as well.
"You okay?" he asked, looking up from his work. She realized that she was frowning slightly. "Seriously, take a break if you need to."
"Yeah, no, I'm fine." And unlike the well-worn excuse she would give when she was alive, she actually meant it.
"So, what you're saying is that that buttsnack needs saving, and you want me for the job? Of course I'm in!"
Toby suppressed a groan with a half-hearted smile. "Just remember, Steve, no telling anyone."
"Can I tell Shannon? She'd want to help, and she can probably help divert power."
"I'll talk to her," Eli said.
"By the way," Toby asked. "How are you in a low-gravity environment?"
Jim pushed away the radio, blinking. "Okay, I'll need fresh eyes for this," he said, before realizing that there wasn't a telltale purple glow in the room.
"Thanks for letting me talk to myself for an hour," he said to the empty air. He walked through the house, mainly to stretch his legs but also to see where Claire had gone. He looked through one of the windows of the living room and saw her outside. She held a two-pronged staff made of purple light and fought an invisible opponent. Jim looked at her, grimaced, and then grabbed a broom before going outside. He didn't want to go out into the asteroid field if he didn't have to, but he wasn't leaving her alone to fight.
"Need any help?" he asked from the porch. Claire looked at him and blushed slightly.
She didn't have blood; how could she blush?
"Uh, no, just training," she said, not quite looking at him. "Never can be sure if Morgana will attack."
"Has she ever attacked the house?"
"No, but sometimes I'd get bored and try to explore here. It's boring, by the way, no use trying to look into it."
"That's literally my job, you know. I got sent to this dimension to try and learn about it."
"Yeah, well, I'm half sure Morgana created all the asteroids, so studying it might be a little hard when her magic is involved. Anyways, she hates me for not turning into her host, and thus she tends to randomly attack me when I go into the asteroid field. I've gotten kind of good at sensing her and any other anomalies here, but sometimes things still catch me off guard."
"Okay, that makes sense. I was just worried you were getting attacked by some sort of invisible monster or something." Jim looked down to the broom he was holding. "Do you want a sparring partner? I won't be able to help with kicks and stuff, since we'd pass through each other, but I took fencing lessons in college."
"Is everyone ready?" Toby asked. He stood in the same suit he had stood in nearly two weeks ago. It was so much longer than he would have wanted. Instead of having Jim by his side, Steve stood in a stolen space suit – more stolen than the one Toby was wearing, anyways – and held several meters worth of cables that had all been braided together to make something stronger. Something that would hopefully stand up against the barrage of sharpened asteroids.
"Dispatching power on your cue," Shannon said. In other circumstances, the glee in her eyes at the prospect of hacking the government – specifically, the section of the government that they all worked for and generally trusted to be humane – would have been a little concerning.
"Guard doors," Arthur said.
"No one appears to be in the area aside from us," Blinky confirmed.
"Shannon, Eli," Toby said as he stepped forward. "It's time."
"Ten," Eli started.
"A countdown is superfluous," Blinky said.
"Right," Eli said before opening the Bridge.
Claire didn't sleep, but Jim did. He had taken the bed in her parents' room, while Claire tried to quietly practice her guitar. They were almost done fixing the radio. She still wasn't sure why it had acted up like that, why she had felt such pain course through her. She hadn't felt actual pain in so long.
Oh, she had felt emotional pain in her decade of being here. The loneliness had hollowed her. Learning that she had been here for a decade was like she had been smashed between two of the asteroids. It was all metaphorical; it all hurt. It was everywhere Claire could feel; it was nowhere she could claim to be a reflection of what had been her body.
This had been different. The pain had started in her hands and it had grown stronger, washing through her and she hadn't been able to contain it all.
Nothing had hurt like that since Claire's soul had been first ripped from her body.
Claire twisted the tuning peg, and then stopped as she noticed that something had changed. She stood up and ran to her parents' room. The door was already open, or else she would have slammed it. She tried to shake Jim awake before being reminded of the fact that they passed through each other.
"Jim. Jim. Jim, wake up. Please don't make me poke you with a stick, Jim. Wake up, it's important."
"Can it wait for five more minutes?"
"No, it can't."
Jim rolled over and opened his eyes. "What is it?"
"So, you know how I can sense when changes happen here? And how I was able to tell when your Bridge opened?" Jim nodded. "It's open."
Jim blinked away the tiredness that had clung to him. "They got our message."
"Yeah, but I'm not sure where they're expecting to find you, so we need to go before Morgana attacks them."
Jim leapt out of the bed, and then stopped. "We didn't arrange to get you a new body," he said.
Claire was already walking out of the room. "I know." She grimaced. "But I have time. We don't know how much time you have."
"Do you know how to fix the rest of the radio? I promise I'll contact you after I cross through the bridge."
"I think I'll be able to figure it out." She smiled. "Let's go. You're going home."
Steve floated near the edge of the Shadow Realm. He unspooled the braided cables and watched as Toby floated towards the asteroid field, calling out Jim's name.
Steve hated low-gravity environments so much. This was why he was usually on Akiridion freighter ships and not old Earth-based ones.
Jim had better be grateful that he was doing this.
Jim had been trained for low-gravity situations, but compared to Claire's effortless flight he was clumsy. She was ethereal, a beacon of light in this dimension of shadows.
He was going to miss her so much. They had only known each other for a short amount of time, but they had become close. Or at least, he thought it was only a short amount of time. Jim couldn't know just how much time had passed back on Earth. After all, Claire had been trapped for over a decade and had thought she had only been here for a couple months.
"Jimbo? Jim, where are you?"
Jim turned towards the sound of his best friend's voice and was pleased to see that Toby didn't look much older than when Jim had gotten trapped. Tired, yes, but grief will do that to you. Grief and stress and just the everyday life of a person who worked in STEM.
"Over here!" Jim shouted before coughing.
Claire looked at him in concern. "You okay?"
"Yeah, just space dust," Jim said, already bounding over to Toby. Jim wasn't able to see the concern change targets. He was able to see the way Toby lit up when he saw him alive. Jim was able to see the nervousness that came from the fact that Jim wasn't wearing a helmet – it was easier to just break it all off than to fix it and worry about it breaking again and the glass cutting him. Jim was also able to see the moment Toby saw Claire.
"Jim I'm so glad you're alive and someone's behind you!"
"This is Claire, she's been helping me," Jim said before hugging him. She smiled from behind before turning her attention to the asteroid field.
"You're going to have to be quick," Claire said. "She'll notice you sooner or later and try to, I don't know kill you? Or maybe possess your bodies to go to Earth? Heck, if she can she might try going through the Bridge?"
"She?" Toby asked, moving away from the hug to tie a length of cable around Jim's wrist.
"Evil golden-ghost witch who trapped me here." Claire turned away from them as if she was trying to hide tears, but she couldn't physically cry. "She made the, well, she attacked you with the sharpened asteroids."
"By the way," Jim said as the three of them – he was glad Claire was seeing him off – bounded towards the Bridge. "How long do you think it'll take us to get a robot body for Claire? Because she's been alone for over a decade."
Toby looked away from the weird ghost girl his best friend had befriended, mainly to hide his own guilty expression. "We can try, but I don't know how likely any giving our department funding's going to be, since most people think you're dead. Didn't want to get people's hopes up that you might still be alive if this mission went wrong."
Jim bit his lip. Had he done just that? Get Claire's hopes up of ever getting out of here?
"I've never seen so much debris here," Claire said. Her hands lit up slightly, like she was getting ready to fight or manifest something.
"Byproduct of the asteroids, maybe?" Jim asked.
"Maybe, but, well, Morgana and I don't exactly obey most laws of physics or anything."
Toby gave Jim an uneasy look, to which Jim just shrugged. He'd explain later, if later ever came.
No, there would be a later. Even though the dust was starting to glow with golden light, Jim had to believe that things would be okay for him and his friends.
"Go, I'll cover you," Claire said. She moved as if to push Jim and Toby towards the Bridge, but the tethers that were connected to Toby glowed purple instead. "Hope that's stronger than whatever asteroids she throws at you."
"Hey, buttsnacks? What did you do to the tether?" Steve asked. "It's purple."
"Jim made a friend; please tell me you're pulling us in," Toby said.
"Sorry if I can't see through the weird gold cloud; sucks to be you if I pull you into an asteroid because you don't want me to be careful." Toby felt an actual tug in the direction of the Bridge. "How did Lake make a friend here, anyways?"
"Hurry up!" Shannon called. Steve and Toby winced from the static. "They found us out!"
Steve pulled faster. Toby tried to pull from the other end, hoping he'd meet Steve in the middle and not pull the pilot further into the Shadow Realm.
The gold dust stopped its attacks on Claire. It stopped entirely, and for a second, she thought that Jim was safe. Then the dust became a column pointing to the three astronauts.
Jim saw Steve clearly enough that he could see the panicked expression and the golden reflections on his helmet. He turned his head and saw gold rushing towards the three of them. He also saw Claire, racing against the column to get to him.
I'm as human as you are.
Claire gritted her teeth as she propelled herself forward. Sparks began to crackle off her just like they had when she had amplified Jim's radio. Her skin burned with magic. There was an incredible amount of pressure on her face and hands, so much that she could almost feel them splintering. Still, she pressed on. She wasn't letting Morgana hurt anyone else, especially not her family or the guy who had floated into her life. Even if there would be nothing left of her to save due to just how much of her soul she was burning, it had been nice, interacting with another person.
She was already dead, but she didn't want to die.
Or at least, I used to be.
To say that there was a flash of light would imply that the light went away. Rather, there was a pulse, a supernova of purple light that went through the Shadow Realm, but its source didn't stop glowing. Rather, Claire was transformed. It had always been a purple light that had comprised her form, but that purple was now just an outline in the brilliant orchid flames that blazed all around her. She changed as she raced towards the Bridge. Her face grew less rounded, and she grew taller. She had been sixteen for over a decade and now she was twenty-six. This was probably what she would have looked like if she had never summoned Morgana.
Claire leapt in between Jim and the column, and the column exploded. A dome of swirling lights surrounded her and the three astronauts, blocking them.
Toby and Steve passed through the Bridge. On instinct, Jim grabbed for Claire's wrist. He thought he felt warmth, protectiveness, and something that was almost solid.
It always felt odd when they'd pass through each other, but Jim never felt so hollow as when he crashed to Earth and realized that Claire wasn't there.
Claire created a dome of swirling lights to let Jim and his friends escape, and then she felt a hand almost grab her wrist. She felt a yank, and then all she saw was darkness.
She heard beeping, and she wrinkled her nose at the smell of rubbing alcohol. It took a considerable amount of effort to open her eyes, but when she did the first thing she saw were blank white walls. She looked around, and saw a young boy look up from the book he was reading.
Two identical pairs of eyes met.
"Mom?" the boy called, jumping up from his chair and poking his head out of the door. "She actually woke up!"
She wasn't dead.
Was that kid Enrique?
Dr. Usurna rushed into the room as Jim got his bearings on Earth. Her voice washed over him and slammed into his friends. She wanted to have Toby, Eli, Shannon, Blinky, and Arthur fired. Steve only technically worked for JPL, but she wanted him fired as well.
She didn't say that she would have rather Jim not come back, but the message was clear.
"Do you know what your name is?" the nurse asked.
"Claire Maria Nuñez." Talking was hard. Moving at all was hard. Over a decade of not moving her muscles made for a large amount of muscular atrophy.
"Do you know who she is?" The nurse gestured at Claire's mom. Her dad had taken Enrique – he was so big now – into the hallway while they tried to see just how much brain damage Claire might have had.
"My mom. She at least used to be a politician."
Ophelia Nuñez was still enough of a household name that this didn't make the nurse look at Claire's mom to confirm her career.
"What's the last thing you remember from before you woke up?"
The expected answer was for Claire to talk about how it had been the day of the AP Chemistry exam, and she had gone to the bathroom because she wasn't feeling well.
"A little while ago a guy who worked for NASA got trapped in D-13, colloquially known as the Shadow Realm," Claire said instead. "The last thing I remember before waking up is shielding him and the rescue party that came for him from a hostile force."
Claire's mom and the nurse looked at each other in concern. So Jim, Toby, and the other one whose name she couldn't recall had tried to tell people, and they hadn't been allowed to. NASA was part of the government, after all. There could have been a cover-up; no matter how paranoid it sounded it was better the alternatives.
The first alternative was that Jim had given up on her. The second was that she was the only one who had made it out alive.
"This is normal," the nurse said, more towards Claire's mother than to Claire herself. "Sometimes coma patients will internalize things they've heard. Since her brain was essentially coming back online, it was normal for her to dream and to use things she might've heard on the television, such as the funeral, as information for her dreams."
"But I," Claire said before looking away. The simplest explanation was usually the correct one. "Did the rescue mission work, at least? Since I probably got that idea on the news?" she asked instead. He wasn't her Jim, he was just some guy who worked for JPL, but he was still a person who hopefully had a loving family.
"There wasn't a rescue mission," the nurse said. "You came up with it on your own."
If the past decade of loneliness had been an actual nightmare, then that meant that there was no Eldritch Queen wanting to destroy humanity. It had still felt so real, more real than the idea of an entire decade of Claire's life being a sleeping blank.
Dr. Vendel was trying to make sure that everyone who had been involved in the rescue mission didn't get fired, and with some nudging so was Dr. Strickler. Of course, there was talk about shutting down the department and transferring them all to lower-paying positions in other departments.
The idea of getting Claire a robot body felt like an empty promise, a faraway dream that would never come true.
In the meantime, Toby, Jim, and Steve were all in quarantine to make sure that none of them had brought diseases with them from the Shadow Realm. Toby had already had to sit through this, but he had to do so again. At least this time he had company.
Toby unlocked his phone before opening the app that phones were originally invented for. He scrolled through it before tapping a number. The phone rang a few times before the person on the other end picked up.
"Hi, Dr. L! Are you sitting? You might want to be sitting because I've got news!" Toby said before handing Jim the phone.
"Tell her yourself," he mouthed.
Jim's own mouth went dry as he tried to choke out the words.
"Toby, are you okay?" his mom asked.
Jim took a breath. "Hi, Mom. I love you. I'm back on Earth."
Claire's family had left because Enrique still had school and she was too weak to go home, yet. She doubted it would feel like home to her. It would have changed so much, just like Enrique had. Besides, the Shadow Realm had been –
No, it hadn't. Her experience in the Shadow Realm had been a dream.
Still, Claire stretched out her hand. She had been craving guacamole for a while. If her dreams were to be believed, then the craving had started before she had manifested all the ingredients to make guac for Jim. She wasn't going to bother with the ingredients, she was just going to manifest it already made.
After her hand began to shake, Claire set it down and opened her eyes to the same empty white room that contained no guac whatsoever.
She probably couldn't even eat it, anyways. Her stomach was too weak. Even if she had been trapped in another dimension, her physical body still hadn't digested anything in years.
"Well, it turns out there was a rescue mission, but they kept it private," the nurse said, walking into the room. "It succeeded."
"That's good for him," Claire said, keeping the emotions out of her voice.
It had been a random astronaut.
It hadn't been a guy who went to the mole school and had wanted to save her.
"So, that purple girl. Or, I think she was a girl 'cause she looked like one? What was she?" Steve asked half a day into their quarantine.
Jim gave a wet chuckle. He had cried while talking to his mom. He wanted to cry thinking about the girl he'd left behind. "Her name's Claire. She's as human as we are, heck, she went to the high school that had been Toby and I's rival. Well, at least she used to be human before an evil golden space witch tried to possess her. Either way, she's pretty amazing." Jim was smiling by the end, but the smile fell off his face. "I was going to find a way for her to live on Earth again, so she wouldn't have to be alone anymore, but I don't know if I can do that now."
Half a week had passed. According to the doctors and nurses, Claire's muscles were regaining mass at an incredible speed. They called it a miracle, just like the fact that she had woken up at all.
The angry part of Claire that believed she had been fighting an otherworldly entity for over a decade wanted to scream that it hadn't been a miracle, it had been hard work. The miracle was that Jim had managed to pull her through. The miracle was that she and Jim had found each other.
The part of Claire that was rational and listened to doctors didn't completely buy the miracle bit but figured she wouldn't be getting an explanation any time soon.
Claire had been given a tablet to help her catch up with the world.
Akiridions weren't something that she had dreamed up.
She hadn't checked the news to see more about the astronaut that had been stranded in the Shadow Realm. She knew he wasn't the Jim who had sparred with her, but she didn't want to let go of her dream boy yet.
No matter how miraculous her recovery had been, brushing her hair was still frustrating. Between her weak arms and the curls that had annoyed her since childhood, it was an ordeal.
Claire squinted into the mirror. Were her roots coming in a ghostly white?
After the quarantine period had ended, Jim still wasn't sure if he had a job. He had gone with his mom to her work instead. It was a lot like when he was too young to stay home alone, and his mom hadn't been able to find a sitter.
Jim was walking back from the bathroom when he saw someone out of the corner of his eye. Jim stopped and looked through the glass wall. It was a woman with shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes. Five silver hairpins encircled her skull in a deliberate pattern. They kept her hair flat against her head, but towards the bottom it formed curls.
She was beautiful, but that wasn't why Jim's breath caught in his throat.
His feet moved before he could second-guess himself.
"Claire?" he asked. She looked up at him; her expression changed to one of shock and wonder.
"Jim?"
He walked to her and took a seat next to her bed. "I thought you were dead, I wasn't sure how I'd be able to get you out of there."
"I thought I was dead, too, but everyone tried to tell me it was all just a dream because I had heard about your funeral on the news. I didn't want to find out who the 'real' lost astronaut in the Shadow Realm was because I didn't want to let go of you."
Jim took her hand, and it felt odd. Not because of any energy jolting through the two of them, but because he didn't pass through her. "You won't have to." He frowned. "Okay, literally you will, but until I know I have a job I can visit you every day because my mom works here, and we can still talk when I'm working. I can bring you some soup tomorrow, and maybe some guacamole if your stomach is up to it? I'm not sure if it'll be as good as what you made for me, but I'm a pretty good chef."
"I'd like that," Claire said.
The miracle had been that they had found each other.
Fun fact: I always knew that Claire and Jim would find each other in the end when she was in the hospital. That didn't stop me from sobbing as I wrote about Ophelia and Javier thinking that Claire had died before they could say goodbye to her.
Normally I don't ask for reviews, but since this fic is over ten thousand words, could you, dear reader, consider doing so? I hope you liked this fic.