Each step through our old headquarters brought back bittersweet memories. I suppose I won’t know what happened to the others unless I leave…but leaving means seeing what’s waiting for me outside.
I don't think I'm ready for that just yet.
Still, staying locked away any longer isn’t healthy. I’ve already been frozen for 100 years; it's time I thawed out in the sunlight.
A sudden beeping noise caught my attention. Following the noise, I stopped at the door it led me to. Our bedroom. Cobwebs covered the metallic door, yet there were no signs of rust–at least not on this side.
I can’t say the same for my marriage. Sighing, I placed my hand on the panel, expecting it to open up for me like normal.
“Fuck…okay, that didn’t work. Powers still off, dummy.” I rapped my knuckles against my head–flinching once I scraped them against my horns. Horns, tail, wings…where were my wings? My hands scrambled around on my back, but I grabbed nothing.
“Wyatt, I swear to God…” My anger let loose and I punched the door down. At least I’m still strong.
What hit me first was our scent. Like a punch in the gut, his smell was all over the room.The bed was still messy like we’d just rolled out of it. Comforters and sheets strewn all over the floor. A small laugh broke free from me–we were never a tidy couple, yet it worked for us.
My fingertips scraped against the dusty dressers, his watches still lay in a pattern only he could understand. I stopped, picking up our wedding picture. We were smiling, more than a smile–the world's goofiest grin from an amazoness half-alien and a scrawny little super genius. Friends turned lovers; it was a tale as old as time, and it just made perfect sense. I caressed his face as if I could pull him from the picture. 100 years…I never even get to bury him.
“Wyatt…where did we go wrong?” No, not we. Me. Why didn’t I see what he was really like?
Beep-Beep.
It pulled me from my thoughts. The beeping was coming from behind the picture. Turning it over onto the back, I unclasped the lock and slid the back out. The picture came soon after, but the interesting part was what was underneath it.
A choker necklace, black with a small, peculiar gem on the front. Something about the gem called out to me, like it was from a far-off dream.
Or a nightmare.
I lifted it towards my nose, hoping to get a strong enough whiff to identify it. It smelled like home, earthy, but it was unlike any other gem I’d seen on earth before.
“What is this?” I picked up the black leather strap and turned it over, noticing the words written in white ink.
For my princess.
Princess, I used to love it when he called me that.
A gift for me? I licked my lips and shook my head, warring with my instincts and my heart. In the end, my heart won, and I slipped on the choker with little resistance. Caressing the gem, I jumped a little when it started glowing. A beam of bright blue light pointed towards the door, like a trail left just for me to follow.
Sounds exactly like something he would do.
“Alright, I’ll follow your breadcrumbs for now…not like I have much else to do.” Besides avoiding going outside, of course.
For the first time since I woke up, my tail finally had something to say. It tried to slip up my choker, presumably to rip it off. I slapped it away.
“Stop that.”
Just like in the simulation, it split into three and made an angry face–with extra thick eyebrows.
“Look, I know we have reason to doubt, but don’t you want some sort of closure?”
It shook its false face at me and pointed towards the exit.
“I’m not ready to go outside yet. You know that.” It whipped itself against the ground twice–the second hit harder than the first.
I snorted, crossing my arms as we walked back into sanctuary. “You know you can't scare me…besides, you’re riding my ass, not the other way around. We’ll go out as soon as we’re done here.”
It was a promise I intended to keep, but of course my tail was impatient. It had every right to be, I suppose. For all I know, the world could be waiting for me to come back, ready for me to play hero again.
But as I stepped into Sanctuary and the room lit up in bright green lights, it became apparent that playtime was over.
Two spotlights appeared; I stepped into one–the one towards the door. The light trail from my choker stopped, and my breath hitched at who appeared beneath the other spotlight.
“There you are. I was starting to think you would never find me.” His same cocky grin that drew me in for years, the same neatly trimmed black bushy hair with a streak of white in it. Same smooth ebony skin, sharp cheekbones and poindexter glasses. There he was, my Wyatt.
“I don’t know whether to laugh, shoot you or cry.” I mumbled out, covering my face with my arm.
“You don’t use guns.”
“That’s not the fucking point, Wyatt. What did you do?”
I didn’t expect a straight answer; he never gives me one.
“What do you mean?”
I motioned towards his body.
“This? Oh, I backed up my brain into that gem on your neck. This is a tactile hologram, ‘bout the best I could do under the time constraints we were under.”
I barked out a bitter laugh. “Time constraints? You couldn’t just let me go hold the Monolith off? You had to knock me out and trap me for a hundred years first? And then–what–to cheat death you decided to dump your brain out? For what? To torture me some more?”
The words just spilled out of me as I finally faced him with open eyes. I took one step forward, walking in his direction–more to test how it worked than anything else.
“Sapph–”
SMACK!
My hand almost passed through him, but I felt it–just a whisper of his skin beneath my fingers. Smacking the hell out of him felt good…but it wasn’t the real him, not really. Sure, his face moved with recoil–his glasses flew and hit the floor, but he blinked in and out briefly.
His eyes…had they always been that shade of amber? No, they were darker than before.
“Mm, did you get it out of your system? I can turn the other cheek–”
“Shut up. For godsakes, please.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, pulling what little of myself was left back together.
“When you’re ready, princess, we should go outside.”
“I’m half tempted to rip this thing off me and stomp it to pieces.”
Half his slanted mouth turned up, eyes full of pity.
“You’d be justified, but…don’t you wanna know?”
Among many things left unsaid, yes.
“Wanna know what?”
“What happened to the world after I locked you up?”
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