10. Tragedy

There should be a word for that time between sleeping and waking where all the world is just so much pink candyfloss and all your cares seem ridiculous and far away.

The voice she can hear is Clay's, but it has a tone in it she's never heard before; a sort of half curt, half anxious urgency. Slowly Kimiko cracks open her eyes to see him, and she realises in the same heartbeat that she's lying in a real bed and the pressure on her hand is him crushing it between both of his.

"Clay?" Her words slur a little. Her head is throbbing. What the hell happened?

She can remember the fight with the Jackinator, and getting so angry and desperate to protect Jack and the others she generated a firestorm that drained every scrap of her strength. After that … nothing.

Nothing hurts now, but she does feel kind of funny – tingly, like she's full of pins and needles. That either means she's been unconscious for a very long time, or else there are healing Shen Gong Wu in this world she never knew about –

"Kimiko?"

All at once the tingly feeling leaves. Pain blossoms from every nerve ending, and there's a heavy sensation in her gut that snaps her upright to call for a sick bucket.

After she's done she wipes at her mouth and gratefully accepts the glass of water Master Fung pushes into her hand.

"Do you feel better?" he asks.

"Sure, if better means a pounding head and a severe need for a toothbrush. Yak." She looks at him. Isn't he meant to be off in the mountains? "What happened? Where's Jack?"

"Jack Spicer returned to his home."

"Oh." She can't keep the disappointment from her voice. "I thought –"

"We know what you done thought," Clay says shortly. Kimiko looks at him, puzzled. "But we don't know what you was thinkin'. Doggone it, Kimiko, what kind of harebrained stunt did you think you was pullin' back there? You nearly barbequed everyone an' practically killed yourself usin' that much energy all at once. We hadda use that durn Treasure of the Blinded Swordsman thing to zap your levels back into the safety zone."

"I didn't -"

"You stopped breathin'!" He's not wearing his hat and has pushed his hair from his eyes, so she finds herself meeting his distraught, furious gaze. It outs her in mind of bauxite crystals.

It also makes her uncomfortable, not because of his intensity, but because she's suddenly suffused with guilt. She never even thought of the other Dragons. She was so caught up in trying to reconcile this Jack with theirs she went a little mad, and then … just let go. Hours of meditation and training to keep her elemental powers under control, and then in one impetuous instant she just unclenched the fist of self-control and went wild. She can't quite believe she did it. She could've levelled the entire temple. She could've killed –

"Your heart stopped beatin'!" Clay still hasn't let go of her hand.

That shocks her. "It … did?"

Master Fung raises his palms. "While I understand your anger, Clay, I must insist you restrain yourself for the time being. There are other things to discuss; but first, Kimiko, you need to be thoroughly examined."

Kimiko nods, but a thought strikes her. "Mister Won and Mister Ton! How are they?"

"We're perfectly fine, child." Mister Won appears as if from nowhere bearing a tray of small blue vials. He looks sprightly and none the worse for wear after his spell as the Jackinator's hostage. "Though a little embarrassed at being taken unawares -"

"By those confounded jackbot contraptions." Mister Ton pops up from behind a table. "Heathenish creatures."

"And so ugly, too."

"But yes, we're absolutely smashing, dear girl -"

"Thanks to the valiant efforts of yourself -"

"And the other young Dragons."

"They've been in and out of here non-stop since the fight, by the way."

"Yes, we had to -"

"Chase them out -"

"With a broom!"

"Quite touching, really."

"Yes, quite. But none more so than this young gentleman."

"Oh yes, he's shown -"

"Real devotion."

"Never left your side, m'dear."

"Not for a minute."

"Not for a second!"

"Not even when we needed to -"

"Dress his wounds."

Their habit of finishing each other's sentences makes Kimiko's head whirl, but she gets the gist of what they're saying. "How long have I been in here?"

"Oh, about twenty hours, give or take."

"Almost a full day, really."

"And he never moved from that chair."

"Not once."

"Came in holding your hand and -"

"Refused to let go."

"Practically had to prise his fingers open -"

"So we could work on the pair of you."

"And you don't want to know about -"

"Bathroom arrangements."

Clay lowers his eyes. He's still angry, Kimiko can see, but he's also embarrassed. She curls her captured fingers around his, forcing him to look at her. "I'm sorry."

The anger in his eyes cools a little, but not completely. "I know."

Master Fung breaks in. "Once you're ready, Kimiko, if you and Clay would join us in my quarters. We have much to discuss."

"Am I in trouble?" She's been reckless. Any version of Master Fung, in this world or her own, would have something to say about that. She put herself, her teammates, and the temple monks in danger with that inferno – not to mention the temple and surrounding area. So much raw elemental power, unleashed without a conduit like a Shen Gong Wu to focus and control it … the consequences if something had gone wrong don't bear thinking about. She was just so blind with emotion that she didn't think –

"No, Kimiko," Master Fung says softly, "you're not in trouble." He sounds strangely sad, but before she can question him he's gone, and Mister Won and Mister Ton are plying her with questions and vile-tasting medicines.

The two Infirmary monks whisk so gracefully about it's difficult to believe they were so close to disaster before. Each wears a velvet cloak – one red, one purple – though Kimiko has never been able to figure out why, nor how they manage to move about their daily responsibilities without knocking things over. They seem inordinately interested in her stomach, and keep asking her to show it to them. Yet her belly, while not as rounded as it should be, is uninjured.

Soon she and Clay are also on their way to Master Fung's quarters, each filled with half a dozen tonics and reeking of poultice ointment.

They barely look at each other. This worries her; Clay is not usually given to grudges.

At the end of the corridor she stops. "You're not telling me something."

He refuses to meet her eye.

"Clay!"

"You disappeared." It's barely a whisper, and it's not the response she expected.

"What?"

"You vanished. Not entirely, but part of you. When you used up all your energy, you just kinda … faded away, like a ghost or sumthin'. That was when you stopped breathin', an' you was so pale I thought … I thought I done lost you…" His eyes glisten with tears.

Kimiko honestly doesn't know how to react to this piece of information. She's searching for something to say when a figure rounds the corner.

"Oh, uh, hey," says Raimundo. His arm is in a sling, and there's a band-aid on his forehead. His posture is one of apprehension, and he leans imperceptibly away from them. He's even more discomfited than usual when alone with them. "Uh, are you going to Master Fung's? I was just headed that way myself."

Swallowing hard, Kimiko nods. "You can walk with us, if you like."

They make their way in awkward silence, and knock the door to find more of the same. Everyone else is already present; Masters Fung and Guan, Dojo and the other Dragons are sat on the floor in a circle and apparently waiting for them. The other Kimiko sits with her arm around Omi, and is the first one to meet her eyes as she walks in. There's something in the other girl's face that makes the back of Kimiko's neck prickle, and she joins the circle with a growing sense of foreboding.

A shiver runs down her spine. It's an actual physical sensation that begins in the crown of her head and shoots straight down to her toes. People do not just fade away, not even when they've acted rashly and emptied themselves of all their magickal energy. Something is very seriously wrong.

"Why did I disappear?" she demands bluntly, before anyone else can speak.

She expects Master Fung to answer, but the reply comes from Master Monk Guan. He doesn't open his eyes or unfold his arms, and enunciates like an elocution tutor with a particularly dense pupil. "Our investigations have led us to believe that your presence in this world was not accidental. You were sent here deliberately, and the evidence, along with my own knowledge, tells us it was Grand Master Dashi who did so. I believe that when your final battle with this Shade creature began, he was aware he could not defeat it, and so did not even try. Instead he channelled all his efforts into opening a portal between your world and ours."

"What does this have to do with -"

Guan raises a hand to stop her interruption. "The power needed for such a spell is immense. The fabric of space and time is complex and strong – not easily manipulated even by a Grand Master. Once, Dashi and I constructed a Shen Gong Wu, the Sands of Time, which broke through one of those barriers. It was our crowning achievement. Yet we were never able to harness the power to safely break between dimensions. We knew the magick existed, but it is volatile and our attempts to control it were … categorically unsuccessful. From what you have told us about the previous battle at your temple, it is unlikely Grand Master Dashi had enough energy left to cast such a spell, even if it were safe to do so. And yet, here you are among us. Thus I can only speculate – though with growing certainty – that he achieved this by using the last of his power coupled with the most durable magick he had: his own life force."

The implications of this hit Kimiko. She shakes her head. "You're wrong; we came here by accident -"

"I am not wrong. Though this may seem distasteful to you, given your feelings towards Dashi -" Master Monk Guan was Dashi's friend from the beginning, but he doesn't waver when talking about how much she hates him. "Nevertheless, it is true. He sacrificed himself so that you two might live, and ensured you went to a world where you did not have to worry about the enemy that took so much from you. Presumably your Jack Spicer was intended to accompany you here, but obviously that became impossible when he died."

Kimiko isn't easily shocked into silence. She normally deals with the terrible and the unexpected by getting angry with it, but now all colour drains from her face. Her hands feel cold and clammy. The inside of her head seems to have been replaced with gauze dipped in jam, which isn't conducting electrical impulses very efficiently across her nerve endings. She would feel as upset and disorientated if the Earth changed direction and the sun rose in the west instead of the east.

"It's not true."

Clay's voice is firm, but he's squeezing her hand so tight her knucklebones scrub together under her skin. "I think … maybe it is. It'd sure explain a few things -"

"No, it's not true! Dashi is -"

"Evil?" Master Monk Guan finally opens his eyes and looks at her, and his stare is so unrelenting Kimiko wilts under it. "Is that what you truly believe?"

"You were his friend, you have to defend him."

"We are not querying my loyalty to Dashi. We are talking about your feelings for him."

"I have no feelings for him!"

"Really?"

"Dashi is… Dashi is…" Kimiko wavers. "He made Omi…"

"Did he make Omi do anything?"

She recalls how Omi ran forward, not pushed, not compelled, but acting under his own power. She scowls. It's another case of her supposed to be showing respect, but instead feeling only antipathy. How dare Guan make these kinds of judgements when he wasn't even there? If there's one thing she's learned since she came here, it's that their two worlds are different, and nothing can be taken for grated as truth in either of them. "He took Rai away! He pushed his soul right out of his body because he wanted another chance at life."

"If that is the case, then why didn't he do that to his successor Dragon of the Wind 1500 years ago?"

Kimiko can't answer that, so she snaps defensively, "He could've saved Rai from the Shade, but he didn't!" Why isn't anyone speaking up? She feels like a boxer in a ring, just she and guan circling each other while everyone else looks on.

"Could he? How many other people survived when the Shade took out their souls?"

Katnappé crumpled on the floor. Wuya's shriek as she was swallowed. The red-tinted swirl seeping from Jack's mouth and into the Shade's. Omi's tiny body, rising off the floor. Pandabubba slumped across his desk. Chase Young plummeting, empty of life, to smash against the rocks below his citadel. Raimundo running back to try and save their world's Master Monk Guan in the canyon…

Kimiko's cheeks are wet. Something ruptures inside her. "Nobody." A minuscule pinprick of light lances through her prejudice. "Nobody ever survived." She shakes her head again, too wedded to her feelings to let them go. "Dashi … he …"

"He what?" Master Monk Guan persists. He's being so brutal, so cruel, but a tiny voice Kimiko thought she silenced a long time ago murmurs that she needs to be pushed, because she'd never admit to any of this on her own. "What did he do?"

A long moment passes. Kimiko bites her lower lip so hard she tastes blood.

"He saved our lives," Clay says, puckering the quiet like a zipper.

And suddenly the dam breaks. The scales fall from her eyes, and she sees clearly for the first time since she can't remember when. Kimiko leans forward, bracing her hands on the floor. She releases Clay's hand to do so, and wipes furiously at her face, smearing the tears that refuse to stop falling.

Dashi wasn't responsible for Rai's death. He didn't drive Omi into the Shade's waiting jaws, or abandon Jack to it. He didn't let Master Fung die, or kick Dojo out of their encampment at night. It's possible – more than possible – she wanted to believe he was to blame, and to not forgive him for it, because she wanted to keep punishing herself for not being able to do more. It was an insidious self-defence mechanism against the enormity of her grief. Focussing on the injustice means she didn't have to grieve properly, nor accept that events were truly, completely irreversible. She didn't have to accept the guilt that she found happiness in Clay's arms at the expense of other's lives – the lives of those she loves like family.

Her Raimundo died. Her Omi was lost in battle. Her Jack should have lived to come with them to this world. The Shade ended all their lives too soon –

- and Dashi was not responsible for any of it.

Neither is she.

A memory has lived in her head since the day she left her world. It has been ringed in barbed wire and guarded by asbestos pits, and she has shut it away because she doesn't want to remember it's there. Yet now it lunges through its restraints and barrels to the forefront of her mind: Dashi in Rai's body the last time she saw him, gesturing frantically, weaving silvery-green patterns in the air and muttering, "No, I'm not ready! It's too soon; I'm not ready for it yet!" His frenetic cursing in ancient Chinese as Jack died. Then as she and Clay fell through the portal she looked right into Dashi-Rai's face. She saw the blood seeping from his ears and nose and eyes, and saw him mouth the words, "Make it count!" before rushing darkness whipped them away.

Someone is hugging her. It's her Clay, holding her tight and soothing her as emotions pour out of her like dirty water. She wants to kiss him and hit him at the same time.

Then she doubles over, gripped by a sudden cramp in her middle, or in her chest, or somewhere she can't locate. All of her is at once totally occupied by a spasm of pain that seems to pull her apart, arms off in different directions, legs gone swimming away, head only vaguely attached. The entire world goes grey and hazy. She gasps, opens her mouth to scream, but is unable to make a sound. The grey turns to black and the tingly sensation from before returns to engulf her entire body …

"Kimiko!"

She tumbles back into her own head to find Clay kissing her; not just a peck but a full-scale belter of a kiss, hands and arms all over the place. He's crying. She can feel it running into the corners of their mouths.

She pats him on the shoulder and he releases her. Her entire body feels peculiar, but she can at least speak again. "What the hell just happened?"

"That would be the, ah, other part of what we wished to discuss." She's never heard Master Fung sound so prim and proper.

All at once she wants to laugh. People can start laughing for all sorts of reasons, but sometimes they laugh because, against all expectations, they're still alive and have a mouth left to laugh with. She's been through so much already, less than half of which she actually understands, that she feel positively washed out. And yet here's more for her to deal with. Finddle-dee-dee, ain't life grand?

"Grand Master Dashi made a huge sacrifice in sending you here, but as Master Monk Guan said, the magick required was not exactly … stable."

"Not stable?" Cold dread floods Kimiko. "What's that mean?"

"It means the safeguards Dashi placed on you by using his life-force are weakening. Your presence in our dimension, while not detrimental to the fabric of the Space-Time Continuum, is nonetheless being rejected."

"What?"

"It's like a body rejecting a donor organ," Dojo puts in obligingly-but-not-really.

Kimiko's heart lurches so hard she thinks it must've swapped sides. "But what does that mean?" She finds herself looking at Master Monk Guan, even though he's the one least likely to soften the blow.

He doesn't disappoint. "You have no place reserved for you in this dimension, and reality is trying to heal over the gashes created by your sudden entrance. You cannot remain, and yet you cannot return to your own world. To be brief, you are both ceasing to exist. Just now you, Kimiko, experienced an attack in which you were momentarily erased from reality. Only the swift actions of your companion drew you back into our world. These attacks will grow stronger and more frequent until …" He leaves the sentence hanging. Then, surprisingly, he adds, "I am sorry."

"There's nothing you can do?" Her words are angry and filled with pain, as though they've been extracted under torture.

Both men and Dojo shake their heads.

"But we can keep trying," Dojo declares. "There's always hope. We won't give up."

Kimiko feels like she's been stabbed. Her heart aches.

It's not fair. It's not fair. IT'S NOT FAIR!

She leaps to her feet, and before she realises what she's doing she's banging the door shut behind her. Someone calls her name, several someone in fact, but she just keeps on running.

She doesn't know where she's going, nor does she care; she just needs to get away from that familiar, comforting room, now despoiled by what she learned in it. No sooner have they escaped the Shade, found a world where they can be happy; no sooner has she endured the revelation of Dashi and her own feelings, and started on the road to forgiving herself, then everything is cruelly snatched away again. Apparently she's not meant to be happy. Apparently her destiny is just to suffer and die – or not even die. Just cease to exist. Poof – and no more Kimiko.

Someone's following her. She can hear their footsteps. She reacts on sheer instinct, bounding to the wall and using her own momentum to run up it a few steps. Pushing off, she nails her pursuer with a flying kick to the head, but grunts when she's intercepted and repelled. Her legs catch her with a shock-absorber landing and she bounces back to her feet, fists raised.

There's a brief silence, and then she laughs, but not in a 'funny ha ha' kind of way'. It's more of a 'Damien from Omen III wins again' kind of laugh that gurgles up from deep inside her.

The other Kimiko reaches out a hand, but she doesn't take it. She just stands there, letting her fists drop to her sides, and laughs until she's weeping on the floor and doesn't give a damn what happens to her anymore.