Chapter 35: Day of Judgement

Summer evenings I could spend entirely on a trampoline. Our trampoline the patio where our mom and dad would sit with their cold drinks, warning us from rough play ever so often. Cece and I could spend hours with backs on the fabric mat. We squinted up to the baby blue skies with cotton candy clouds, picking which cloud we loved the most. Wondering what it would be like to fly among them like the birds. One time, our dad even let us camp out on it. Of course, it got so cold we couldn't last the night. We always had the assurance of a warm bed. A respite from the cold. Always taking it for granted like the warmth was here to stay. Never considering one day the razors of frigid water could crawl up our spine and steal it away.

I always found myself sensitive to the cold. Could never sleep in my own bed well enough to stay warm, I'd sneak into Celeste's. I couldn't stand out in winter chill for more than a few minutes without wailing. If I stayed in the bath too long, my parents didn't fret. I'd be out of there as soon as it started getting lukewarm. I was a creature of warmth, surrounding myself in it with a blue elephant stuffy and family. Regaling the warmer seasons in sun-kissed skin. A winter baby that always had her birthdays inside with the furnace and hot food.

Twenty years later, I'd find myself in a tug of war with Edward over the blankets in our sleep. I'd always win, of course, yet he didn't mind. His body radiating next to me like it was a furnace, itself. He provided so much warmth physically, it was shocking to imagine he could be so cold in the core. Under his foundation a layer of thick, unyielding ice, containing so many tortures that his pain froze into a glacier. Only for his rage to thaw it and create a tsunami. Throwing me into waves and breaking me.

All I can do is imagine the warmth now. I cling to it to survive. Just as I clung to him. Imagine your back in bed with him, Max. Imagine you're warm, or you will sink.

Max clung to the ladder, the metal getting more cold to the touch as water levels rose higher. It crawled up her shoulders, taking sea water in her mouth. She could not climb fast enough. Not in the piercing cold. Not in the terror. Gotham's collective wails started to die down, but it was not a relief. Silence was death. Her breath kept, making her alone. The mass destruction of the flooding had taken the people by surprise. No warning, no time kind enough. In her gruelling pain she blamed only herself. A deep seated hatred in the only comfort she could take to keep going. The same comfort the cause of it all.

Max kept for the summit of the building. Honing that if she made it to the top, she could be safe. No safety in November's chill after being submerged in subzero water. Yet, she carried on in stubborn fight, the drive to live warm enough. Then the mechanism of the ladder finally ran out of time. It had been throttled too viciously in the thrust of the first waves, her weight out of water was the last nail in the coffin. The metal clanged and cried, falling off into the water with her still clung. As it fell, she didn't scream. She had one last gasp of air and prepared to be swallowed by nothing but unforgiving cold.

And unforgiving it was, Max submerged in a burning chill so brutal it felt white hot. Her body swiped like a plaything in the rapids pushing her down the alley. Her whole body had gone numb, and with no push for the surface, she was clinging to that gasp for air. As she flushed away, objects would swipe and thump her up. Her head peeked for just a moment to the surface, and she'd sweep air in. Then be pulled back into the water greedily. Max opened her eyes then to see the things she'd collide with were not debris, they were people. Deceased and floating in Edward's cleanse like ants hosed down a driveway. As he hailed and preached this would wash away the filth, all it washed away was the lives he pretended to protect.

Max fought through numbness to try and swim. She wasn't an adept swimmer in warm, still waters, much less this. Even an accomplished athlete couldn't master this. She was in a wild river brimming in hazards of debris, cold, and death. So much death. As she'd be swept under the current again, she'd open her eyes to so many shadows in the water. Life size like pets and animals. Raccoons and rats. People of all shapes and sizes being pulsed and thrown to and fro lifelessly by the Atlantic. The threat of being hurled into the urban architecture and impaled was there. Being crushed by a floating chunk of building. Gotham's Tricorner was like a polluted dumping ground, and like filth in the toilet, it was being flushed like waste. She being part of that same dehumanization.

Not able to swim, and not able to breathe, Max made one final attempt to live. Her life was forfeit the minute the explosion of the sea wall struck, but she remembered the words she screamed in her mind in her car. That if she would die, every waking moment in the knowledge spent clawing and fighting. Even begging. Max screamed as she would rise from the water. Her arms flailed up to grab anything. Her voice would be taken underwater to be drowned out, then continue to be drowned out when she came to the surface. The water's roar and destruction of Gotham's urban life a mighty racket. So loud it was the only ambiance.

Then hands pulled her as she passed a building. They fought her through the rushing waters snare and up to the surface to gasp for breath. Max could only cough water from her nose and mouth, no breath collected in the struggle. Her eyes squinted closed, she caught his voice.

"Hang on!"

He had ran to her aid from a window . He tried so desperately to pull her into the building with him, but slickness of her hand and the pull of the flood took her back.

"Help me!"

Max's wail vanished in a blink as her head was pulled back under frigid temperatures. Such terrible, consuming panic took her then. That she would die in this city. Leave her mother and father childless. Be taken so needlessly and a life barely lived snuffed out. She only hoped the cold would take her first, anything but drowning. The worst possible way to die. She'd rather fall to unconsciousness and drown in the void. No feeling. The crippling cold was surely making that wish come to life, as Max could barely recall her surroundings. Her own body. The cold stripping her of her identity and her drive to live. All she was was existing in a constant whirl of agony and suffocation.

Then arms pulled her up, taking her with the sprint of the current back to surface. Max snatched onto the fabric on his torso with grip – not daring the thought of slipping away again. Not making her rescuers' job more difficult than it already was. They breached and Max flurried into a chaotic panic of coughs and sputters. Foreign water spouting from her throat and nostrils generously.

"Hold on to me! You're gonna be alright!" The man yelled over the wave, a distinct rattle in his voice from the chill. Max stayed clung like a spider monkey, feeling him stroke his arms with the current. Then they both slowed and stopped. He held onto something, a building or pole, keeping them from advancing with the current. Max finally fought for her sight back. It blurred then focused to the collateral of the flood. As if Tricorner was simply devoured by sea, the horizon to the bay adjoined with the streets, towers, and roads. Max was rattling so much, she had no control. Her teeth clacked and limbs convulsed, but she wouldn't let go of his shoulders. He was young, close to her own age. A badge on his chest plate. He was a GCPD officer.

"You alright?"

Max shivered, "No." She said like it was obvious.

"Yeah, didn't think so. Sorry, stupid question." The officer heaved and panted, whipping his wet head back and forth looking for some kind of out. Then he muttered, "I'm Officer Martinez, I'm gonna get you through this, okay? I just gotta… Uhh. Shit."

She whispered weakly against his shoulder, "Max."

"Okay, Max. Can you swim at all?"

"I don't know."

"Hey. Hey! Don't go to sleep, stay awake! We gotta get through this together." Martinez delivered a sharp slap to Max's face. Not brunt, but sharp enough it woke her up. Max flinched and shot her head up in surprise, taking in all of Gotham's destruction in a terrible panic. Panic that was enough to warm her only slightly. They held on to the side of a tower, no windows close to reach. Max glanced around weakly, a deep and overwhelming chill she didn't know possible. So terrible it radiated a pain equivalent to blades. The water had settled now, levelling with the broad of the ocean.

Then that pain eased suddenly. Not from anything else but a growing dread in what she was witnessing. A sedan sinking into floodwater. It pushed like a toy down the river, colliding into building edges and street lamps. Each thud faint in the screams inside. Max could see their own suffering from a guilty party. Somehow responsible for the screams, for everything. The vehicle sank, and the screams fleeted falling under water.

Max felt the drive again. "There's people in there."

"Ah… Jesus. Just keep holding on to me."

She pushed off as soon as he said that. "Stop!" Martinez went to snatch her back, but she pushed into open water. She started to paddle her feet and scoop water with her arms – fighting through the numbing.

"What the hell are you doing?! What did I just say?!"

Max whispered in a struggle as she kept swimming, "There's… there's people in there." Her swim was becoming less jaunt and stiff the more she moved. She'd kick her feet, and each exalt of movement another stroke of warmth. "There's people… in there. You can't… let them die. Please."

Her voice was faint, speaking to Martinez but really speaking to herself. Pleading with herself to try. As the sedan was submerged, she submerged herself. Letting the cold continue to burn as she swam downward. Down to the car. She could see it faintly in the blue, and kicked faster to keep going. Each rigorous movement bettering her stamina, she made it to the car door. Inside were four bodies. A mother, a father, and two sisters. The water had not filled to the brim inside, there was still a decent pocket of air, but it was filling fast. They were all still alive, the father taking notice of Max right away and banging on the window. A plea for help. Max held onto her breath, and fought with the driver's car door first. It wouldn't budge, so she moved on to trying to kick the driver-side window.

She was joined by Martinez, who went for the passenger side door. Max took that as her time to swim back up and get air. When she did, she'd swim back down to help. Martinez's luck with the windows wasn't working. The doors a helpless endeavour. Now the investment had been made, and Max and Martinez were of the same mind. Not watching this family die. Not knowingly leaving it, either. The investment kept them to the vehicle like stubborn and persistent summer bugs to the picnic. They each taking a dose of warmth from the panic. The panic a saving grace in the floodwater. One would dive down and meddle in solutions, while the other peeked up for air. They traded off like that, wasting enough time that the car was almost full of water.

The children could still be heard screaming in water outside the vehicle. The mother and father yelling for help. Begging these two not to abandon them. Fortunately, Martinez and Max wouldn't entertain the thought.

Keep trying. Fight the pain. It's trying to slow you down. Try harder, Max!

Both Martinez and Max rallied at the windshield, pounding and kicking, but no give. Max pulled at Martinez's belt, specifically the holster. Both submerged and unable to speak, Max pointed at it before swimming up for her turn of air. Martinez pulled out his gun. The possibility of it firing after being left in water for an amount of time futile. But he was willing to try. He pressed to the hood with his face gawking into the car. The family only had seconds left. The water almost to the brim, and all four desperately gasping for an inch of air on the roof.

Martinez pounded on the window as the air pockets sealed inside, gaining the mother and father's attention. He motioned for them to move from the centre. The father and mother grabbed their daughters to direction. Martinez aimed the gun in between the windshield as Max swam back down. The gun fired, sending a muffled pop through the blue. As he did, the windshield cracked. It left impact, but didn't shatter as they hoped. Even so, both Max and Martinez started to kick at the vulnerable point. It cracked further, slowly and pain-induced, but they kept on. Grunts rough and desperate heard through water. Martinez used his boot to leave a substantial crack that protruded into the car. The father inside tried to help, as did the mother, they pushed it forward, making the glass more pliable. Martinez had reached his tolerance and swam back up for air. Max wasn't wearing footwear, but she walloped a kick into the centre of the point, breaking the glass enough it could fit a body.

As she did so, it sent a strike like lightning up her left leg. The water wafted in red ribbons. She didn't have time to collect what happened, if she was bleeding out or not, all that mattered in the short and frantic time was getting the family out. The father pushed the youngest to Max. She pulled her out, the girl clutching a stuffed animal. As she reached into Max's arms the toy fell into the blue. The girl reached her arm out for it, but Max pushed up. The pain radiating from her left ankle up to her calf was excruciating. The cold a bitter slap of the wound. She passed Martinez on his way down, who was on his way for the other three.

Martinez pulled the mother and father to the surface, and their daughter being pulled by her parents. They breached air, all four taking in the hardest breath. The young girl wailed for her sister. Martinez looked back but couldn't see them popping up from the surface.

"Max?!"

Then two heads swept up, the girl and Max. Her leg had impacted her ability to swim. A deep cut left from the glass of the windshield, but she kicked it through the blistering cold of the water, regardless.

"Take her!" Max cried, feeling the pain start to reach a threshold. Martinez pushed through the current and went for the girl – bringing her to the security of her family. As the girl was taken to her harbour of safety, Max's fight let go. Suddenly all pain felt at once in magnitudes. It started from her leg, then travelled through her body. The piercing chill a paralyzing trap. Max sunk, letting the world fade to perilous black. The cold weaving her into itself. But if it was not her fight keeping her alive, it would be someone else's.

Martinez pulled her back up, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as she laid her cheek to her freezing skin. Yet it was not the cold taking the brunt of pain, it was her leg. Every pain afterwards only striking further agony through the entirety of her body. A weakness she could not quell, no matter how much it was fought. The family made their swim to safety in a neighbouring building, as Martinez and Max swam to another.

Max was brought inside a flooded building. The first floor completely engulfed in water. The stairwell and second floor collapsed, but a fragment of the second floor still left dry. No tools of warmth left on this island, just the small remnants soon to fall into water with its surroundings. Martinez pulled her up to this dry floor, it was angled down into water, but enough room for them by the corner of the wall. Martinez and Max gathered their breath for a moment, the respite from the water not a shield of warmth as they hoped. Now the bitter November air to tangle with. It bit just as unforgiving as the floodwater, it didn't help they were soaked.

Martinez laid her to her back, seeing clearly Max was struggling. Her breath was scarce and wheezing, trying to bite through pain that would steal that breath more and more. After a while, the pain started to fleet away. Replaced by a chasm of nothing.

"Hey, you okay?"

"My leg…"

"Your leg?" Martinez inspected each leg, seeing clearly the blood from her left. He pulled up the soppy pant leg of her pyjama pants and saw a cut from her ankle to the side of her knee. A crucial blood vessel compromised. The cut was deep and precise, like the gnash of a bear claw. He pulled at it a little to see how deep it really went, and Max cried and tried to fight it. He stopped then, but wilted at the exposure of tendon and bone under the blood washing away. "Shit…"

"… The windshield. I kicked it too hard it took my leg."

"You'll be fine." He stubbornly assured, ripping off his officer belt for his actual belt holding his trousers up. He tied it along Max's leg tightly and unkindly, making her yelp and cry. "I'm sorry! We have to stop the bleeding."

"I just wanted to help…" wept Max. Gaining a partial amount of Martinez's attention as he tended to the wound. "Make up for…"

"You were brave, Max. A good man in a storm. Moments like this, we survive on that common good. Not even I would have swam down there. Those people are alive and it's because of you. You should know that."

Max sighed a long, shaking breath. Hot tears starting to crawl down her cheeks. Her last testament of warmth. "I saved another family to destroy my own. Again. I can't die. My mom… my dad… they've already lost my sister. They can't lose me too, it's not fair."

"Who said they gonna lose you? Nah, you're making it out of this."

"No," she whispered. "I don't really feel anything anymore. I don't think that's a good sign, right?"

Martinez panicked, feeling for her pulse in her neck. She was still alert, but he wanted to check her heart rate. Shallow and unequal, he contemplated his options. Max was still shaking against the cold, every bone in her body clenched and vibrating. Martinez laid over her then, like a mother hen keeping an egg warm. He didn't have anything dry, but he had himself. Max could barely feel his weight on her. The nothingness somehow bringing a bout of peace. Acceptance.

"Keep talking, Max."

She fought her eyes open, and saw the corrosion of the building above. What a terrible reminder of her circumstance. Behind her eyelids gave some meaning. Bringing faces back to life she loved. She cried, "I keep fighting… keep lying to myself… yet I can't get him out of my head. When does it go away? What else needs to happen before I'm set free?"

He hadn't an inkling of what she meant, but he kept perspective. Hope in the most trying of times being the last cling to breath. "It's good to feel pain." Martinez said, "So, you'll really appreciate what it feels like to be healed."

"I can't heal in the dark. In the cold."

"Then think of warmth. Think of light."

Max wilted in fear at first - denial. She bargained with higher powers. She weeped for her life, feeling her own destiny fall through the cracks. All that was left was the acceptance. The protection of Eiko. The comfort of Sobo and Jiji. The strength of her father. The warmth of her mother. Then lastly, the light of Celeste.

Light.

Max smiled, falling into sniffling weeps as she clutched onto Martinez. A man she didn't know, but he had earned her vulnerability. In order for the next steps to hurt less, she needed to accept this man as her last comfort. "It's okay, Max. You're going to be okay. You're not dying."

"You don't know that." She said, but her voice calm. "And that's okay… Death isn't all that bad. It's clinging to life that makes it bad. Makes it terrifying. Because you can't let go of the past. But I know what to expect… even if conceived from fantasy… I know what I believe."

"And… what's that? What do you believe?"

"That we become light." She sighed, letting her last few breaths bring a bout of peace. "We go somewhere new. We follow the people we love. Know everything… understand everything. A dream where I can fly… Never lonely."

"Hey…" Martinez sat off her a little as the stillness became too much for comfort. "Max?"

She would have seemed like she was sleeping, but he knew better. Martinez's panic thrusted him up to his knees. He started CPR, mouth to mouth, when it filled the stagnancy of hopelessness, he started to cry for help. All while pushing into Max's frigid chest for some response. The proof his efforts in the disaster weren't for nought. That he had helped, too. Fearing that the peace she imagined was her light at the end of the tunnel.

The fabric mat was back where it belonged. Under my palms. Cotton candy clouds gathered above me. No more concrete, water, or cold. Just green, warmth, and light. The mesh of the trampoline net a bassinet to house me. Summer air reminding me I was finally safe. I felt a soft, sticky, little hand take my own. I glanced to my side on the trampoline, and the most welcoming relief left me dazzling. Never lonely.

"You're here early, sis."

The bubble glasses shined off the salmon sunset above, a smile took the glare of light from the lens, bringing back the doe-like brown eyes. Still wearing her top of ladybugs, her favorite animal. The denim skirt and pink sneakers a whisper of sweeter times. She was still eight. I was twenty years older. We lay side by side, as if no time had gone by at all.

I could feel the tears, but they weren't sad. It was a moment she had prepared me for since I was too small to understand.

Then I asked her, "When do we fly?"

"Soon."

She gazed back up to the clouds, and I followed her. Always following the steps of my big sister. Trusting every word she said. I squeezed her little hand back and started to cry, finally letting sadness become an ally. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?"

"It was my fault. That toy… that stupid toy. If I had just left with you when you asked, you'd be…"

"But you loved Mr. Trunks."

I glanced back to her, "I loved it too much. I should never have loved anything like that. Look what it did."

Then Celeste looked back at me. A smile warming to her sun-kissed cheeks. "Don't ever be sorry for loving too hard, Max."

Her eyes were stolen to the vista above, as were mine. Our hands tightly entwined, as if the moment could end any minute. I said sullenly as my deepest despairs played in my head. Remembering my body, my fate, my death.

"What about mom and dad?"

"Can you take care of them for me?" Celeste asked as if she was asking a little favour. "I'm too busy."

I asked her, "Busy with what?"

Celeste smiled, "Taking care of you."

I grazed my thumb down her own. "I'm sure I don't make that easy."

"No, but that's okay. You love so much it shines so bright. Others see it and follow it, they want the bright. But they don't know what to do with it. That's for the best, sometimes. You just need to learn how to let go when they do."

"I don't know if I can let go."

"It's okay to still love something and let it go, too. You did it with me. You can do it again."

I felt a warm breeze push up the fabric mat, the trees in our backyard swayed to the beat of the wind. Celeste asked, "Are you ready to fly, sis?"

"I'm scared, Cece."

"That's okay," she said, letting go of my hand. "Means you're making space for loved things to grow."

The fabric mat left, but never forgotten. My body taken into clear skies as if all gravity had taken a break. My sights of cotton candy clouds, baby blue skies and salmon sun rays became reality. My heart beating so loud in my chest it could burst. Breath coming faster and stronger the more I raised into the air. The pain in my leg returned, and what a wonderful pain it was. Guaranteeing I was given a second chance. Black gloves and a black cowl standing over me. At first, I was sure I should be scared. But there was something in his eyes hitting the rising of the sun that didn't seem that way. Martinez was there, too. Making sure every step of harnessing me into the airlift I had a protector. The roar of helicopters surrounded me. So many people. The cold that surely fleeted at the touch of morning light. I was taken up in a chariot to safety. The true chariot. Saved by the common good. As the helicopter carried me, I imagined her words. That I was finally able to fly, letting the world fall behind me. A new space allowed for new things to grow.