Part One
"Are you ready for your next assignment?"
"Absolutely," Isabella answers with a nod, stepping into the misty room with the archangel.
They approach the window onto the world – the one that can go forward or backward.
"This man is your assignment," the archangel says and with a sweep of his hands the past is revealed to her. They stand together and watch Edward Nygma as he was shortly after the death of his first love, Kristen Kringle.
He reverently holds a pair of glasses in his hands. Hers.
His friend lies convalescing on his bed.
". . . that's all I have left now. Memories," his friend had said to him. "And they are like daggers in my heart."
"Not forever," Edward had answered, picking up the pair of glasses and showing them to him. "These were Miss Kringle's. It's all I have left to remember her by. But when I look at these I don't feel sadness anymore. I feel gratitude. And do you know why?"
"Gratitude?" Isabella's brows knit together as she looks at the Archangel. "For what?"
"Just watch."
Edward tells his friend, "For some men, love is a source of strength, but for you and I it will always be our most crippling weakness. We are better off unencumbered."
"No," Isabella whispers in protest. "That's not true."
Edward tells his friend that his own dear mother had been his weakness. Isabella gasps in horror and puts a hand to her mouth. What a cruel thing to say to a friend who is so obviously in mourning.
"A man with nothing that he loves is a man that cannot be bargained, cannot be betrayed, a man that answers to no one but himself. And that is the man I see before me. A free man."
Isabella touches her hand to the window onto the world, cupping Edward's stone-cold face, frozen in time. "Oh, this poor man. He's in so much pain . . . He's become so cold."
"It's how he was able to rationalize his grief back then. He lives in logic. He needed to a way to justify being alone after Kristen."
"But love isn't logical."
"You'll be teaching him that."
Isabella nods. "This was a while ago. Is he still like this?"
"Not exactly," says the archangel. "He's got a bit of a stumbling block that you'll be tasked with helping him to surmount. He's stuck there."
"Show me," Isabella says.
"You'll need to help him to heal from here," the archangel says and waves his hand over the window onto the world one more time, pulling up the near future.
Edward is breathing heavily in front of a bathroom mirror as he whispers to himself. "It's just a pair of glasses."
Suddenly he sees Kristen Kringle in the mirror and startles. She taunts him. "I thought you would have been used to seeing people in mirrors."
He puts a hand up to block her. "You're just in my head."
"Like that makes a difference."
"Wait," Isabella says and turns to the archangel. "This is the one with dissociative identity disorder?"
"Yes, but he's only got one identity right now – he's integrated. And we need him to stay that way."
"Gotcha."
"Nothing too traumatic."
"I hear you. I'm here to help him heal, remember? He'll be less likely to dissociate under pressure going forward if I do my job right."
"Exactly," the archangel nods. "He can be dangerous when an alter emerges."
They turn their attention back to the window onto the world and watch as Edward tells Kristen that she and Isabella are somewhat different. Isabella nods, this will need to take place during her assignment. She'll need to figure out how to get him here.
"Well, I'm dead . . . and she's alive," Kristen says, pointing out a not so subtle difference between herself and Isabella.
Edward looks horrified.
"But how long will that last? Until you . . . " Kristen grabs at her neck and starts choking herself.
"I would never hurt Isabella," he says firmly.
"Bet you would have said the same thing about me. Face it, Ed. You're a killer. It's only a matter of time before –"
He rips open the medicine cabinet so he can no longer see the mirror and spins around to sit on the sink, weakened, horrified at the prospect of killing yet another woman that he loves. He shakes as he removes his glasses and pinches his nose.
Isabella resists the strong the urge to reach out to the window onto the world and touch him once again. Instead, she just whispers, "Poor baby."
"You see why he needs our help?"
"Yes," Isabella says firmly. No one should suffer this way. "Send me in."