(For disclaimer and author/story/series notes, see the Prologue.)
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Day 4: The Setup
Sheena had no idea what she was doing here, waiting in a Meltokio park for the Zelos from the mirror universe to return. She had no idea what he was doing here. Ever since he'd returned to Mizuho the previous morning after vanishing to 'take care of business' here, he'd been acting strangely, almost distracted—and not just because she'd tried to kiss him, because he didn't seem at all uncomfortable around her. He still hadn't explained what he'd been doing here, although she expected it was connected to why they were here now. Seeing as she'd heard him muttering something about Minister Giannovio and someone named Matthew Fenimore earlier, it likely had to do with them. Amidst doing some more work in Mizuho, tending to crops, and taking care of a few smaller projects, he'd been asking her questions about the two, and while she'd never even heard of Matthew Fenimore before, she had answered a few of his questions about Minister Giannovio—not that she'd known much since, before two days ago, she hadn't returned to Meltokio in years.
Strangely, he'd also been asking a surprising number of questions about the Sylvaranti people, wondering if they'd been hit by any illnesses recently. She'd only been vaguely aware of any such reports, based on conversations with Lloyd and Colette; a number of people had fallen unexpectedly sick and had required Tethe'allan medication and treatment to address it. At the time, everyone had assumed it was because the two worlds had been separated for so long that different diseases had evolved in each, ones the other world had never developed any immunity against. Sheena had told him what she could, but Zelos hadn't said much about it beyond that, and honestly, after that attempted kiss, she hadn't felt comfortable pushing him for anything. She still felt guilty about that, after all, and it was taking time for her to act more naturally around him again, especially with her emotions still reacting to him in a roller-coaster myriad of confusing ways.
This morning, though, she'd been surprised when he'd casually suggested she come with him to Meltokio to look into something—or maybe he'd just asked her to keep him company...that whole conversation had been kind of confusing, really. He hadn't explained more than that, other than to say he'd tell her more afterwards. It still amazed her that she'd agreed, especially after running into the other him here that last time, but she couldn't deny how nice it was to get out of Mizuho and take a walk with him. Upon reaching the town, though, for some reason he'd taken her to this park and had asked her to wait here, saying he'd be back soon. She was still there now, waiting and wondering why she'd agreed to this. She hadn't figured it out yet, but he had asked her so sweetly that she hadn't had the heart to deny him.
And so there she was, sitting on a park bench, wondering what he was scheming. At least it was a lovely morning, warm but not too hot and with a cloudless sky overhead. Closing her eyes, she leaned back on the bench, absorbing the sun's heat, the only sound being the wind rustling the leaves of nearby trees.
...Or at least the only sound had been the wind rustling the leaves until, without warning, another sound broke the silence: approaching footsteps. She kept her eyes closed but her mind went on the alert, listening as the person hovered off to her side for a bit before finally stepping closer. Sheena cracked her eyes open...and immediately regretted it. From the corner of her eye, before the interloper could so much as open his mouth, she could tell who it was—because who else created the distinct color combination of red, white, black, and pink? Instinctively, she tensed, her body recoiling at the intrusion—and from him, of all people. Damn it, she should've known this would happen if she came here again. Her previously decent, relaxed mood quickly vanished, anger and grumpiness replacing it.
And then, naturally, the loudmouth had to make matters worse by talking. "Well, well! Fancy running into you here," he drawled. Sheena frowned and turned her head away, already dreading this. Wonderful. When was the other Zelos coming back? "Great weather today, eh?"
"Go away," Sheena grumbled.
But Zelos, true to form, just kept plowing on as if he hadn't heard her. "Couldn't ask for a nicer day than this."
Sheena kept her head turned away, still refusing to look at him, her body tense, her lips pursed, her entire body on the defensive. Grr...how had he found her here in such a remote location? Her anger was already beginning to blaze—naturally he would dismiss her demand that he leave as being 'not worth his time or effort'—but her voice when she spoke was icy. "No, really, Zelos, go away."
...But still he refused to listen. "So, Sheena, how are you doing?"
She growled and shook her head. He really wasn't going to leave, was he? Figured. Well, fine, then. She would just have to answer his question as curtly as she could and hope he got the hint that she really didn't want to talk to him and that he should just leave already. "Fine."
From the corner of her eye, she could see him look at her. "What, that's all I get? It's been years since we last talked."
"There's a reason for that."
He sighed, and she saw him motion at her. "C'mon, I can see you're still mad at me, but you have to admit, you've missed me, haven't you?"
Agh, why couldn't the man just leave her alone? Did he really think after all this time that she suddenly wanted to talk to him again? He really was a deluded, arrogant buffoon. She looked sharply at him. "Missed smacking you and yelling at you and being frustrated and furious at you and your arrogance and idiocy all the time? No, Zelos, I really haven't. Not even a little."
To her surprise, his plastic, over-the-top smile faltered a bit. He actually seemed deflated by that. But Sheena refused to consider that too deeply—because it was Zelos Wilder she was talking about, after all, and nothing phased that man, ever. Instead, she quickly looked away from him again. "Well, then I've missed you," he said, his voice unusually quiet. That changed, though, as he cleared his throat and went on, more normally for him, "Your voluptuous beauty, too."
Sheena rolled her eyes, her lips pursing again. His voice might be softer than usual, but she was still getting fed up with this because, damn it, she didn't want to talk to him. "What are you doing here, Zelos?"
He shot her a look as if he thought she might be crazy. "This is Meltokio. I live here. What are you doing here?"
"I'm waiting for someone."
He motioned at the empty spot on the bench beside her, and even she, through her anger and frustration and need to get away from him, could hear the hopefulness in his voice as he asked, "Then...mind if I have a seat? At least until your mysterious friend reappears?"
Of course he'd want to sit down beside her. Probably wanted to grope her and tease her and ridicule her and question all of her life choices again, too. She rose to her feet and waved at the bench. "Go ahead. I was just thinking it was time for me to leave anyway."
She began walking around him—she'd wait for the alternate Zelos somewhere, anywhere, else—but before she could get past him, he stepped closer and gently grabbed her arm to stop her. "Sheena, wait."
"Don't. Touch. Me," she spat at him, yanking her arm out of his grasp, then continued walking around him.
Zelos released a low sigh. "I'm sorry to hear about Orochi."
...She froze. What had he just said? Two days ago he hadn't had a clue what had happened to Orochi, even going so far as to accuse the other Zelos of being him, and now...now he suddenly knew the truth? She turned sharply back toward him, her eyes narrowed and her voice low, soft, and dangerous. "How did you know that?"
He shrugged, his expression impassive. "Does it matter?"
She took a step closer to him, the itch to strangle him quickly returning. "How did you know that?"
"What, can't a guy hear news about an old friend?" he asked, feigned ignorance on his face.
"Not when it's you we're talking about." She stopped when she was standing directly in front of him, trying to see if his eyes gave anything away. And then a horrible thought struck her. "Did...did he tell you?" Zelos didn't immediately reply, but his eyes briefly dropped before returning to hers, adding weight to her growing suspicion. And then an even more horrible thought suddenly struck her. The short-haired Zelos had vanished for quite awhile the previous morning...it couldn't be, could it? Her eyes widened, fury quickly overtaking all sense of reason. "Did he set you up to this?!"
But Zelos just blinked at her innocently. "He who?"
Sheena jabbed a finger into his chest. "Don't play dumb with me, Zelos Wilder, you know damn well who I'm talking about!"
And again his eyes darted away from her as he gave her a faint, awkward smile. "Oh...you mean the other me, right?"
...That was exactly what she'd thought. She couldn't believe it. She felt sick, and betrayed, and very, very angry. "I am going to kill that man! That's what he was really doing here yesterday morning, wasn't he? Talking to you?"
Zelos tilted his head a little. "Maybe...for a little while..."
"He is dead!" she shouted, turning away from him and throwing her hands up in the air. Once she got her hands on that idiot, she would tear him apart, piece by piece.
"Heh," Zelos chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Well, at least it's not me you're after for a change..."
Sheena spun sharply around and pointed at him. "Just wait. Once I've gotten my hands on him, you're next."
His face fell a little. "...Right."
And suddenly she needed to know this, desperately, because if the alternate Zelos had talked to this one about Orochi, about her, then she...she had no idea what else he might have said. Jizou knew how much ammunition she had given him against her these past few days. "What did he tell you?"
Zelos looked back at her blankly. "I don't—"
Uh uh. There was no way she would let him play that ignorance card any longer. "What did that bastard tell you?!"
He tilted his head a little, conceding. "...Enough."
She felt shaky from her growing rage, embarrassment, and panic. "He is so dead."
Zelos rubbed the back of his neck again. "He, ah, kinda seemed to think we should talk. Y'know, catch up and discuss a few things."
Sheena couldn't believe she'd ever begun to trust that man...she couldn't believe she'd ever begun to have feelings for a man who would betray her and her confidence this horribly. "Oh, he did, did he? Like I would ever want to talk to you again, and he knows that!"
"I guess I'd hoped things might have changed, especially with him being here like this."
"Well, they haven't," she countered, folding her arms to her chest. "I didn't want to talk to you six years ago, and I still don't want to talk to you now."
A single red eyebrow rose. "And his being here didn't change any of that? Not even a little?"
If she was being honest with herself, that thought actually had crossed her mind once a few days ago, when Tiga had asked her why she hated Zelos so much when the alternate Zelos was such a good, kind, helpful man. But all of that had changed now that she knew that version of Zelos had gone behind her back and talked to the one man she had never wanted to see again. And, worse, he'd set it up so she'd have to see him again! "After what he just did, that man is now dead to me. He obviously doesn't know a damn thing about me!"
The eyebrow rose even further. "...Even though he apparently married you in an alternate universe?"
Oh, shit. He'd told this guy about that, too?! How could he?! She turned murderous eyes toward his and pointed at him again warningly. "Say another word about that, Wilder, crack even a single joke about that, and I'll tear you apart with my bare hands. Now where is he? If you know, you'd better tell me!"
He shook his head. "I don't know where he went. Honest. All he said was that he had to look into something with Giannovio and he'd be back in a few minutes."
"Yet another lie," she muttered under her breath, folding her arms to her chest again. "I should've expected nothing less from either of you."
Zelos lowered the hand from his neck and mimicked her stance. He looked away for a moment, then cleared his throat and looked back at her. "Yeah...about that. I really am sorry to hear about Orochi."
Her eyes snapped back to his. Here he was, the man who had told her time and again how stupid her decision to marry Orochi had been, and now he thought a simple expression of condolence, years after Orochi had died, would magically erase every cruel thing he'd said and done to her? Yeah, right. He really was an idiot if he thought that would ever work with her. "What the hell do you care? Need I remind you that you minced no words when you made it clear what you really thought about my marriage to him?"
His voice grew even softer and his eyes fell from hers in a way that she thought might be guilt but that made no sense considering Zelos Wilder was an unrepentant, calloused, cruel bastard, and so she refused to acknowledge it as such. "Of course I care. I never wanted to see you hurt like that."
She rolled her eyes. This coming from the man who had proven countless times just how much he loved to hurt her. "You'll forgive me if I don't believe that."
"I deserve that," he murmured to himself. "And I...I'm sorry about all of those things I said about you and Orochi, too."
Wait, had she just heard him right? Was he actually apologizing for that? The suddenness of the words—not to mention how somber and downcast his face was as he'd spoken them—caught her off guard...but she quickly shook that off. An apology from him now meant nothing to her. This bastard had made it clear how much he hated Orochi, and so, knowing the womanizer that he was, she could only assume he was trying to get back in her good graces now that he knew she was single again so he could resume his quest to turn her into another one of his many female conquests. She glared at him. "That's too little, too late, Wilder. Go ahead and say whatever you want, but you're as dead to me as your alternate now is."
"...I knew this would never work," he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.
"Oh, don't tell me you've already pissed her off! I thought I told you not to provoke her!"
Oh, good. The man Sheena really wanted to kill right now had finally returned. She whirled toward him and pointed at him sharply. "You!"
"It doesn't take much," the long-haired Zelos said. "And I distinctly remember pointing out how awful this whole idea was."
"What in Jizou's name were you thinking involving him in this?!" Sheena demanded, ignoring the long-haired Zelos and focusing her anger on the short-haired version. It was really, really bizarre—not to mention aggravating—to be talking to two Zelos Wilders at the same time. At least the length of their hair length made it easy to distinguish between them.
He sighed and lifted his hands in a way that clearly said, 'Calm down.' "I was only trying to help, Sheena. I mean, that is what I'm here for, isn't it?"
Her face grew warm at that reminder, but she shook it off, instead latching back onto her anger. "This isn't helping, Zelos. This is the worst kind of betrayal! How could you?! I trusted you with things I've never told anyone before, and you went and told him everything!"
Zelos's eyes snapped to his long-haired alternate accusingly. "So you sold me out, eh? That didn't take long."
The other Zelos lifted his hands. "You told me to be honest with her!"
"I knew this wouldn't end well," the short-haired version muttered with a sigh.
Sheena stepped closer to him and poked him in the chest. "What did you tell him, Zelos? All of it?"
"No, Sheena, I didn't tell him all of it," he replied, his voice still as calm and unconcerned as ever. "Anything I knew you really wouldn't want me to tell him, I didn't tell him. I promise. I just filled him in on certain details he's been missing ever since he cut you out of his life."
"Like the fact that Orochi died," she clarified.
"Like the fact that Orochi died, and that Mizuho was poisoned." He gave her a pointed look. "I did what I had to do."
Naturally he saw nothing wrong in going behind her back and dragging someone she wanted nothing to do with ever again into this. And it figured that he would side with himself over her. After seeing the anger he'd displayed toward his alternate a few days ago, though, she'd truly believed—she'd trusted—that he had wanted nothing to do with his alternate, either, and that he would therefore make a point to avoid him while he was here. "I fail to see how it was absolutely necessary to drag him into this to 'help' me."
"It was, Sheena, and I'm not gonna apologize for it," he countered. "I just don't have any other options in the extremely limited time I have left here, so I went to the one person I hoped would be able to lend a hand." Sheena continued glaring at him, still feeling utterly furious and hurt and betrayed, and he sighed and lightly touched her arm...and heaven help her, she couldn't shake his hand off as she saw the pleading look on his face. "Sheena, I'm here to help you. And one of the many things you obviously still don't know about me is how much it kills me to see you upset and hurting."
Agh, she hated when he resorted to being all sweet and sincere and caring like that because apparently she had a weakness for it. Still, though, she summoned every last ounce of rage she had within her to point angrily at his long-haired alternate. "But him?!"
"Yes, him. Me. Like it or not, he's already involved in this simply because I am. Fixing broken mirrors, which is basically what this is, is a messy, tricky, complicated business, and if you leave out giant, integral pieces of it, you'll never be able to put it back into a form even remotely resembling what it's supposed to look like."
...Was he implying what she thought he was implying?! Her face grew bright red as a wave of embarrassment swept through her. "I never said I wanted the mirror fixed! Maybe I just want a new mirror altogether!"
"And I'm not dismissing that possibility. I just thought it would be helpful if you two would sit down and talk about what happened."
...This man was just as stubborn and impossible as her world's Zelos was, wasn't he? "Only nothing has changed, Zelos! He's still the exact same jerk and bastard he was all those years ago, the one I never want to have anything to do with ever again!"
The short-haired Zelos sighed again, his face still soft. "Sheena, I talked to him, okay? Before I told him anything about you or what you've been through the past few years, I heard his side of the story so I knew what kind of guy he really was. And you know what I found? I understand why he did what he did. In fact, I'd be lying if I didn't say, in the same situation, I would've done the exact same things he did."
...What had he just said? Sheena gaped at him, stunned and horrified. No, she couldn't have heard him correctly. If she had heard him correctly, then that meant...that meant...she couldn't even think about that. "You...you would've?" she whispered.
To her dismay, though, he nodded curtly. "Yeah, I would've."
"You would've acted like the world's biggest ass to me?"
"Yep."
"You would've skipped my wedding?"
"Yep."
Oh, Jizou. Her stomach was twisting in knots; she didn't want to be hearing any of this about a man she'd been growing so attached to the past few days. "You would've skipped my wedding so you could go fool around with one of your tramps?"
Thankfully, that time he shook his head. Oh, good; Sheena didn't want to think she'd been that wrong about him. "No. I would've done what this guy actually did."
...Huh? Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
His eyes snapped to the other Zelos and he arched an eyebrow expectantly. "How 'bout you be the one to tell her? I mean, you're the one who actually did it to her because, thank Jizou, I never had to."
Sheena blinked at him a few times, then turned to the long-haired Zelos, her curiosity rising, especially as she noted his cheeks were tinted pink. "What is he talking about? Do what?" 'Her' Zelos looked at her a moment, but instead of answering, he frowned and turned away from them, folding his arms to his chest. "Do what?" she repeated.
"Tell her," the short-haired Zelos insisted.
He was silent another moment, but finally he sighed and turned back to her. "All right, fine. I didn't forget about your wedding that day, Sheena. Like I could possibly forget about that. And I did go to Mizuho for it."
"You...did?" she asked, her face wrinkling in confusion.
He nodded. "Yeah, I did. But when I saw you there, all dressed up in that beautiful, fancy wedding kimono, looking absolutely radiant, I...I couldn't go through with it. So I left. I went back to Meltokio. None of you knew I'd been there."
Sheena blinked at him, her anger temporarily subsiding in lieu of her curiosity over this unexpected revelation. This went against everything she'd believed for years. But then she remembered how absolutely furious she'd been at him after she'd talked to him the next day, and at his uncaring, downright nasty attitude toward her, and her anger quickly returned. "What, and on your way home you found one of your hunnies to drag back to your mansion with you?"
Zelos didn't immediately respond, just looked away from her again, and his alternate frowned and motioned at her again. "Tell her!"
He growled but thankfully did as instructed. "No, then I went back to my mansion, grabbed a few bottles of the strongest stuff I had, and got completely wasted. I never saw a single hunny that day."
"...What?" Sheena said, her voice falling to a whisper and her lips parting in shock, her anger escaping her again. Not only had he actually come to Mizuho that day, but he hadn't even seen his hunnies? He'd just gotten himself drunk? "You did?"
"Yeah, I did."
"And that is exactly what I would've done in his position," the short-haired Zelos said.
The problem was, Sheena was now even more confused than she had been before. "I don't understand. Why would you do that?"
Again 'her' Zelos hesitated, and again his alternate motioned at him. "Don't make me be the one to tell her. She needs to hear this from you."
Zelos considered that another moment, but finally he sighed and looked back at her, none of the typical smirk on his lips and his blue eyes wary, sunken...guarded, she thought. "Because I couldn't stand to see you marry a man you didn't love. If I knew for fact that you loved Orochi, I could've dealt with it and been happy for you. But I saw your face that day, Sheena. You weren't excited about the wedding. In fact, you looked nauseous, like you were dreading it. I could see it in your eyes every time you said his name: you liked Orochi but didn't love him. I don't know why no one else noticed and pointed that out to you, if they thought you were just nervous or something, but I sure did, and I couldn't stay there and watch you do that to yourself."
For a moment Sheena could only gape at him, trying to figure that out, but it still didn't make sense. She felt like she was missing a gigantic piece of the puzzle that explained everything. "But why? Why the hell did you even care whether or not I loved him? If I chose to marry him, that was my choice to make, not yours, and the least you could've done was respected and supported my decision! Everyone else did; why couldn't you?!"
And suddenly, an unusual fire flared in his eyes as he stepped closer to her, one she'd only seen from him once or twice before. "Because I did care, Sheena! I have this thing against condoning weddings where one or both parties don't love the person they're marrying!"
Sheena shook her head. Damn it, he still wasn't making any sense. "Like I've told you a hundred times, my reasons for marrying Orochi were my own reasons. Even discounting that, though, I know how Meltokio works, Zelos. People here are doing that all the time for any number of reasons—money, power, position, family obligation, whatever. I somehow doubt you refuse to attend their weddings and instead ran off to get plastered! How was this any different?"
"Because it was! It was extremely different, Sheena!"
"Well, I'm sorry, but I'm still not seeing how!"
"Because I was never in love with the bride at any of those weddings!"
Instantly, they both froze, both sets of eyes wide as they realized what he'd just said. But the silence was quickly broken by the alternate Zelos, who pumped his fist in the air in victory. "Yes! Finally! It was about damn time you just came out and said it!"
"Shut up!" both Sheena and Zelos said to him in sync.
Sheena quickly turned back to Zelos, her heart pounding furiously, her mind struggling to comprehend what he'd just said, her voice a mere whisper. "Say that again."
Zelos folded his arms to his chest and turned away from her. "No. I think you heard me fine the first time."
Agh, why did this man always have to be so damned difficult?! "Zelos..."
He growled lowly but did turn back toward her. "Fine, I wasn't in love with any of them!"
And once again Sheena found herself speechless. She knew what her ears told her he'd just said, but...was he serious? Was it possible? It couldn't be...or could it? She had to know. "...Like you were with me?" she ventured.
His eyebrows rose, but his face was redder than it had been a minute ago. "That's what you want to hear, right?"
"Only if it's true." Her eyes narrowed as she looked him over closely. "...Is it true?"
For a long moment he was silent, his eyes squeezed shut as if he was fighting an internal battle with himself. After a moment, though, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and nodded, so faintly that she barely caught it. "Yes, it's true," he said, his voice soft.
Sheena had no idea what she was supposed to say. She had no idea what she was supposed to think. This bombshell had completely blown her mind. "That's...that's impossible," she whispered. "He told you to say that to me, didn't he?"
Zelos tilted his head. "Well, yes...no...he said I needed to tell you, but that doesn't mean it isn't true."
The short-haired Zelos shrugged as her eyes darted at him. "Hey, like I've said before, even if you didn't catch all the implications at the time, I was madly in love with you long before we started dating in my world, even if I didn't recognize it for what it was until that night at the king's party. That means this guy was in love with you back then, too. So yeah, I can vouch for him. And there isn't a chance in hell I could've watched the woman I loved walk off and marry a man I knew she would be miserable with for the rest of her life without self-destructing and resorting to alcohol to try to get through it...just like he did."
"I wanted you to be happy, Sheena," 'her' Zelos said. "I didn't care with who, whether it was me or someone else completely; I just wanted to make sure whoever you married did give you the happiness you deserved. But Orochi didn't. I could tell. That's why I acted like I did...and for that, for all the stupid things I said back then to try to get you to change your mind, I'm truly sorry. I know you can't forgive me, and that's fine because I certainly don't forgive myself, nor do I deserve it, but you do need to know that, that every day since then I've regretted how horribly I treated you."
To Sheena's utter amazement, this, finally, was the missing piece she'd needed to be able to make sense of everything that had happened with him: why he'd reacted as irrationally and out-of-character as he had, starting from the moment he'd learned she was engaged to Orochi. This was...it was too much to comprehend right now. Everything she'd thought she knew now needed to be reconsidered in light of this new information. She needed to take a step back and think about this...but she couldn't do it right then, not with two different Zelos Wilders standing in front of her, making everything far more complicated and confusing than it already was.
And to that end, all she could mumble in response was a low, "I...I had no idea..."
"Sheena, remember what you said when I first showed up here?" the alternate Zelos said, his voice gentle. "You admitted that you didn't know me or anything about me, right? Well, the same holds true for this guy. You don't know this man. And if you need proof of how little you really do know about him, then look at me, at who I am. Ultimately we're far more alike than we are different. Our lives just took very different paths after the worlds were reunited. Mine had you as a major part of it. His did not. What you've seen in us both is the difference you have made in our lives."
And again she found herself unable to respond, unable to figure out what she was thinking or how she should feel about this, lost as she was in shock. She turned her eyes to the long-haired Zelos, who was fidgeting but was unable to look directly at her, his face still red and somber. He was, wasn't he? He was actually blushing. He truly was uncomfortable with this. She thought she might even be seeing guilt and embarrassment in his eyes, too. He had been in love with her back then. Oh, Jizou. If that was really true, then it explained so much. It didn't excuse him, not by a long shot, but it explained it. And suddenly she wanted him to talk to her, to explain even more of the things that she still didn't understand, so she could find out what else about him she'd always had wrong.
"So it really wasn't true, that excuse you gave me about why you skipped my wedding," she stated softly.
He shook his head. "No, it wasn't."
Her eyes narrowed. "And yet you let Lloyd and me and everyone else believe you had hopped into bed with one of your hunnies at the time?"
"Yeah."
Agh, the man was so, so...frustrating! "Why?!"
He looked up at her, clearly roused from his somberness by the incredulous anger she couldn't conceal anymore. "Well, it wasn't like that was the first time I'd ever let you guys believe something about me that wasn't true! And to be honest, having you hate me and never want to speak to me again was a hell of a lot easier to handle than the alternative!"
Sheena swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly very dry. She wasn't sure what to say to that; she wasn't sure how to handle this entire situation. Was that an admission that he'd been emotionally tormented at the time because she'd been marrying another man? What else was she missing? "What else have you let us believe about you that 'wasn't true'?"
Zelos looked at her briefly but couldn't hold her gaze long, and instead his eyes fell downward again. Clearly he was still unwilling—or maybe just unable?—to answer that. And just like that, the truth hit her. All this time, she had been wrong about him, about his motivations, about his actions...about all of it.
"So he's right after all," she whispered, blinking at him, stunned. "I really don't know anything about you, do I?"
Zelos didn't respond to that—he just glanced at her again through guarded eyes—and finally his alternate stepped forward, draping one arm around his long-haired counterpart's neck and the other around Sheena's. "Look, I know you both way too well. Sheena, you need time to wrap your head around this, and this guy here needs time to figure out where he wants to go from here and plan his next move. So why don't we call it a day, let you both think this over for awhile, and then tomorrow night you could, I dunno, maybe go out to dinner and talk all of this over?"
Sheena blinked a few times, then looked at him blankly. "Are you saying you want us to go out on a date?"
He shrugged. "If that's what you want to call it, go for it. Or maybe you'd rather call it an opportunity for two old friends who haven't seen each other in years to catch up and get reacquainted. Whatever terminology you're most comfortable with. The important thing is that you give yourselves time to think all of this over and then sit down and talk about it."
She fell silent again, considering that. She definitely wasn't comfortable with the thought of going out on a date with Zelos, and a gigantic part of her still wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. She could feel it: there was still an incredible amount of anger welling within her over everything that had happened, and his confession just now didn't change the fact that he'd been the world's biggest jackass to her and had hurt her, badly. On the other hand, though, if he truly had loved her back then, a thought that she would've once vehemently denied but that now she realized she couldn't deny thanks to his alternate and the fact that he had married her in his world, then so many things made more sense. It reemphasized the fact that she really didn't know anything about him...and it told her how much she wanted to know more about him. There was truth within him waiting to be found, and she was suddenly itching to dig at him, to poke at his walls, get beneath the surface, and see what else she could find there that she'd never known about him before. As she'd had to reluctantly admit the past few days, she had obviously found something she liked—no, more than that, loved—about Zelos Wilder in that alternate timeline if she'd married him, and now that she finally knew he wasn't the complete jerk he'd always acted like to her, was it possible she could find whatever it was again here, with this Zelos?
The long-haired Zelos looked away from them both, still no smile or eagerness on his face. "I'm not sure this is a good idea..."
"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't," the other Zelos said. "I'm fully aware of the fact that if you two agree to this, it could turn out to be a complete disaster. But you'll never know unless you try it and see what happens, right? And can you really tell me you don't want to spend some time with her again?"
"...No," Zelos slowly conceded.
Sheena couldn't believe she was actually entertaining this thought, something that until just now had seemed impossible...something she would've dismissed in an instant if he'd suggested it a few hours ago. But damn it, if 'her' Zelos really was more like his short-haired alternate than she'd thought him to be, then she was. "Just once?" she clarified.
The alternate Zelos nodded. "Just once."
She was seriously considering this, going out with Zelos Wilder. She had to have lost her mind. But, she quickly reminded herself, it wasn't really a date; they were going out to talk, so she could find out more about who he was, the man he'd hidden from her for years, to see if he was anything like the Zelos she had married in that alternate universe...a man she was, against all odds, actually happy with.
Before she could voice anything one way or the other, though, the alternate Zelos gave his long-haired counterpart a pointed look. "If you two decide to do this, though, you have to be completely honest with her. I know how hard it'll be—believe me, I know—but if you want this to go anywhere, if you want her to believe you and let you back into her life in any form, then you have to do it. Tell her the truth, about all of it. I can't stress that enough."
"I know," Zelos murmured.
The short-haired Zelos nodded and then turned to Sheena. "And you...you need to be patient with him. To this day you are still the least patient person I know, but if you're really going through with this, then you have to find the patience to bear with him. Letting down walls as tall and thick as his is damn hard, and it may take him time to figure out how to do that. Just keep in mind that if my Sheena hadn't been so patient with me that night at the king's party, no matter how hard I'd tried to push her away, I wouldn't be here right now."
Sheena felt her cheeks grow warm again, and she could see 'her' Zelos's eyes narrow slightly, clearly not following what his alternate meant. But she ignored it, once again considering what he was suggesting. Even she knew she had problems with patience and her temper; she had spent years working on it, but she wasn't sure she was as far along with correcting them as she wanted. But for this, she would try. She couldn't believe this, but she was actually going to say the words, and if she was lucky, then she would be able to find what she needed within herself to do what he was asking of her. "Fine. One date."
The alternate Zelos smiled faintly. "Thank you, Sheena." He gave his counterpart an expectant look. "And you? That okay with you?"
Zelos sighed and nodded, but his voice when he said, "Yeah, one date," was still surprisingly subdued, in a way Sheena had never heard from him before. It was the last thing she expected from him, actually. She had expected smirking and teasing that she had finally succumbed to his charms and his pleas that she go out with him; she hadn't expected him to look like he was seriously considering saying 'no' and running away from them both.
But his alternate didn't pay that hesitancy any heed. "Okay then. One date—or whatever you want to call it—it is. Tomorrow night, seven o'clock. Sheena and I will meet you at the mansion, and you two can go out somewhere nice, talk, and get reacquainted."
"And what about you?" Zelos said.
He waved that off. "Eh, I could use a night to myself in the mansion to do some research into a few other things. Or I'll have a little chat with Sebastian. Or maybe both. I'll be fine."
"Just keep in mind that if he proves you wrong about him, I will still kill you for this," Sheena said. She wasn't sure she really meant that, but this entire situation felt so crazy that she had to try to regain some semblance of control over it.
The short-haired Zelos nodded again. "I know." He looked pointedly at his alternate. "Don't mess this up, all right?"
"I'll try," Zelos mumbled.
"Okay, then. Now that that's settled, Sheena and I have plenty of stuff to do in Mizuho yet, and my little 'Giannovio' project is currently in the 'wait for more information' phase, so we'd better get going."
Sheena chanced a glance at the Zelos from her world, unsurprised to see he looked just as blindsided, distracted, and confused about this as she was. "...Right," she said.
"We'll see you tomorrow, then," the alternate Zelos told his counterpart, releasing his grip around the man's neck.
Sheena briefly met Zelos's eyes as the short-haired Zelos began ushering her out of the park, her heart and mind still racing over everything she'd just learned, but he couldn't hold her gaze long before his eyes fell and he turned away from her. He was still standing there, staring blindly at the ground, when Sheena cast one last perplexed look back at him as they rounded the corner and he vanished from sight.
"You okay?" the other Zelos suddenly asked her.
She honestly had no idea, but the instinctive, "I'm fine," popped out of her mouth before she could stop to think about it.
The look he gave her told her he didn't buy it. "Well, that's a lie and a half."
"What do you want me to say?" she countered, folding her arms to her chest. "I have no idea what I think about any of this, how I feel about it, or how I should feel about it. I have no idea how I let you talk me into going out on a date with him. All I do know is I'm still mad at you for pulling a stunt like that."
Zelos nodded. "That's fine. You can be mad at me as long as you'd like. I would be mad if someone had gone behind my back in a way I felt betrayed me, too. But like I said, I'm not going to apologize for it. I did what I had to do. You needed to know that about him, and he certainly wasn't going to volunteer any of it without my meddling—nor would you have even given him a chance to do so if I hadn't forced the issue. And if I'd told you what I wanted to do here yesterday—find out his side of the story of what happened between you two—would you really have let me do so? Be honest."
Would she? Before this, she would've done everything she could to prevent him from coming anywhere near his alternate, at least with intentions like these. That first morning was an exception because he'd believed he wouldn't run into 'himself' here...which obviously hadn't happened, but it was too late now. Regardless, that, she supposed, was her answer. She turned her head away, her lips pursed. "...No."
"That's what I thought," he replied. "And that's why I didn't tell you and why I had to 'trick' you into coming here today...although, granted, I really did have business here, too. And I promise, Sheena, I only told him what I had to; I didn't tell him all of your secrets. I would never do that to you. Things like those are your choice to share with someone, not mine."
Sheena eyed him again, relieved to see he truly seemed to mean that. The last thing she wanted was this guy telling 'her' Zelos about how desperate she'd been for a miraculous change in her life that she'd resorted to a wish tag to get it. "Good." He smiled faintly, and they continued walking toward Meltokio's entrance. After a moment, though, she realized she really did have to check with him about this, because right now it was the primary question plaguing her mind and it was making deciding how to think and feel about all of this that much harder. "So everything he said before...?"
"It was all true."
She swallowed hard, the knot of uncertainty—and maybe even of excitement—in her gut tightening. "He...he really was in love with me back then?"
His face softened as he looked at her. "He really was in love with you back then. He didn't handle any of it right, I won't deny that, and he never should've treated you the way he did, but what's done is done. I can't speak to his feelings for you now, but I can tell you he feels awful about everything that happened between you two."
"He should...he really was an ass," she murmured.
"Yeah, he told me, and yeah, based on everything he said, he definitely was. He knows it, too. He's human, he made some really dumb choices, and I'm not gonna try to defend or justify them. But like I said, he's only human, and humans mess things up, and take it from me, dealing with and facing his real feelings isn't something he's ever been good at. It took me a long time to get past that, and that was with a whole lot of help and patience from you while I was working it all out."
Sheena looked back at him. She supposed if anyone knew what her world's Zelos Wilder was really thinking and feeling, it would be another version of him. She nodded, accepting that. "Although I'm still not sure what I'm getting myself into with this."
Zelos shook his head. "Honestly? I don't, either. It's been nearly six years; the damage he's inflicted on himself and on his self-esteem since then may be more than even you can help him can overcome. It might also be too much for you to be able to move past, and I know he knows that." Sheena's eyes narrowed—did Zelos really feel that guilty about it?—but before she could question that, Zelos looked at her. "But I still think you two need to see if you can at least repair your friendship. That would be a major first step, for both of you."
In that, she suspected, she would just have to trust him. She nodded, still not completely convinced, but accepting his statement for what it was. "We'll see."
He eyed her again carefully before clearing his throat. "Sheena, the bottom line is that if you ever want things to change, you have to be brave and take a chance, maybe even one you've always dismissed before. It might not be what you expected or even what you think you wanted, but that's how life works. Life rarely gives you what you think you want or need, but you take what you get and make the best of it. And to that end, sometimes you just need to make a decision and stick with it and see what happens. I know how indecisive you can be, but this...whatever you decide to do, whether to give him a chance or not, make your choice and see it through. You'll never know what might come of it if you don't at least see what that option has to offer you, just like you'll never know what good things life might be trying to give you if you don't even give it a chance. That's what my wife and I did, and look where it got us. No, it's not a guarantee—there's never a guarantee—but at least it is a chance. That's more than you'd have if you didn't even try."
Sheena released a low sigh. He was right. That acknowledgement that something needed to change and that she needed to take a chance was exactly why she'd made her wish tag. It was just so hard to keep in mind when everything seemed to be pointing her right back to Zelos, someone who, until a few minutes ago, she'd never wanted to see again and had sworn she'd never give another chance. And yet here she was, doing exactly that. What had she just gotten herself into by agreeing to this, really? She had no idea, but she was curious, especially if this Zelos was right that his alternate had been telling her the truth, and that curiosity, combined with his reminder to make a choice and stick to it, refused to let her change her mind. And so she wouldn't.
"I know," she whispered.
Zelos gave her a faint smile. "Remember, you guys don't have to make this work. Really, you don't. You hold all the power in this; what happens between you now is your choice, because you can choose to see where it goes or you can choose to walk away. Neither option is wrong. And the thing is, if you become friends again one day, great, but if you don't, then you don't. It is what it is. It's entirely possible even if you both try your hardest to make it work that it won't. But you'll never know unless you try and see what comes of it. Whatever will be, will be."
Ah, right. She did remember Zelos saying that once upon a time. Apparently he still held to that belief now. And really, maybe he was right: whatever was going to happen was going to happen, regardless of what she did, so she should just let it happen and not worry about it. Maybe she should be adopting that philosophy herself, seeing what happened, and just dealing with it then instead of worrying and planning and trying to control everything. She returned his smile, truly grateful for his words. "Thanks." But he needed to know this too, and so she pointed at him and gave him a sharp look. "But don't think I'm letting you off the hook for this yet, either. I'm still mad at you."
He chuckled and placed his hand to her back, guiding her out of town—and, damn it, she let him. "I know. You're often mad at me for something or other. Sometimes it's more warranted than others, and this is one of those times. But for now, let's just get back to Mizuho. You have a lot of things you need to think about before tomorrow night."
"Okay." And that, as they say, was that.
0~*~0
(Continued in Day 5: The Disaster)
