Reflections
by Cosmic
Disclaimer: Marvel owns the characters, but the story’s all mine. Mwahahaha! *blinks* Anyhoo, this story is the oddest one I’ve ever written. And no, I didn’t write it under the influence or anything like that. Really. Stop looking at me like that! ;)
Snugs and thanks to Thren and Lyssie for the betas and thanks to River, too! Feedback of all kind would be loved and worshipped at cosmic1982@hotmail.com.
I woke up. I woke up by a riverbank and it was so beautiful, sparkly. It was so beautiful it scared me. It was so beautiful and eerily quiet and something was amiss. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something about this place seemed, felt, unreal, fake.
And then I saw her, in the river, in the water’s reflection. She was real and the reflection was so vivid, she must have been just a few feet away from me.
And I watched as she cried, hot tears burning in her eyes. I watched as she fell to her knees and wept, heart-wrenching sobs wracking her body. I watched as her eyes changed back to steel again and she cried no more. She sighed, barely audibly, and got up, dusting herself off. “I’m so sorry, Nate. I failed,” she said, voice raspy, like she hadn’t spoken in days.
She failed? How? I was there, right there, by her side, right? I was seeing her from the river’s reflection, she was right there, by that... by that... that pale, unmoving body. My body. No, it couldn’t be. That was impossible. That was impossible, because that would make me...
Dead.
I shook my head furiously. Not real. Fake. I just had to touch her and this would all go away, I’d wake up from this nightmare I was trapped in, I was sure of it.
I reached towards her with my hand, my real one, not the TO-virus infected one, to touch her face and wipe away the tears, the tears still clinging to her face, but it was shaking so bad I had to pull it away. What was wrong with me?! I was hallucinating.
**
I felt something brush up my cheek. Something, or someone. Nate? No, he was dead. I killed him. No, I didn’t push the trigger, but I failed to protect him. Because he was too busy protecting me. He took the bullet meant for me and he died slowly, agonizingly slowly, from his wounds and loss of blood. Losing consciousness before it happened.
I felt bile rise up in my throat, when I thought of what he looked like. Torn, broken, a shell of a man. Literally. God, Nate...
**
I turned around and got up, not wanting to see Dom retching, not wanting to see her pain. I needed to get out of here. Where ever here was.
I tried my telepathy, to reach out to someone, anyone, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t use my mutant power, it was like I had never had it in the first place. Nothing worked! I couldn’t think straight without the constant hum of other people around me.
I walked, through the murky forests with shadows trailing me, tracing my every move. It was like I was being followed. Just shadows. Nothing more, just shadows with their footsteps.
I stopped dead in my tracks. That wasn’t right. Shadows didn’t *have* footsteps. I turned slowly, carefully to face the one who followed me. The person who would tell me where the flonq I was.
**
I breathed slowly, watching myself in the water’s reflection. I killed them, Nate. All of them. I avenged for you. I avenged...
I blinked, seeing Nathan instead of my own reflection. I was just hallucinating. I was grief-stricken. I turned away from the water, closing my eyes.
**
Oh, by the Bright Lady, no. This couldn’t be happening. She wasn’t real. I was seeing things. That wasn’t, couldn’t be...
Aliya.
Aliya in all her beauty and vibrancy. Standing right there, in front of me on the soft grass path, eyes closed. By the Goddess, she looked so beautiful. I felt my hand touching her face before I even noticed I had walked to her, and then my hand was brushing through her hair. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at me.
“Nathan,” she said, smiling and blowing some strands of hair from her face. Just one word, my name. I was happy to hear the nuances of her soft voice. No more caring why or what was happening, just happy it was *her*, all her and all real.
Her fingers rose to my face to wipe off my tears. “You’re crying,” she said.
“I’m just so happy to see you. I missed you.”
“Liar,” she accused scathingly. My head shot up to look at her, but her eyes were burning with a fire very different from normal.
“Aliya?” Her look didn’t change and I knew. This wasn’t her. This wasn’t the woman I had loved for most of my life. This woman was a stranger to me, as much as this place was. “Who are you?” I asked, voice laden with fury for whoever dared abuse my wife’s memory in this vile way.
“Who do you want me to be?” the person asked, glee in her(its?) voice, changing from Aliya into Domino. “I can be whoever you want.”
I closed my eyes, shaking my head fervently, rocking myself to calm my nerves. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening...
**
I watched his corpse, I watched him and then I felt panic screeching out at me full-force. Panic. From...Nathan?
That was wrong. He was dead, right?
Right?
I blinked, suddenly seeing something in the river, in the water’s reflection, gasping for breath. Nathan...
**
“What the flonq is going on?!” I screamed, clutching to my head, feeling white hot pain.
“You, my dear Nathan Christopher Charles Askani’son Dayspring Summers, are stuck.” The creature paused, smiling wickedly. “Stuck between the world of the living and the beyond. This is what some call Purgatory. You have left things unfinished in you world and have a chance to go back.”
“And...” I trailed off, not wanting to continue, not wanting to say the words it, whatever it was, knew I was thinking of.
“Aliya. She is the one you wish to be with? Your heart reeks of her.” The voice was full of poison, full of - envy?
The creature snapped its fingers and I found myself in a cave of some sorts. A cool, damp place with grayish brown walls. I squinted, trying to see better in the dark. The cave was empty, soundless, except for the tapping of water somewhere.
I peered in the other direction. Sunlight? I followed the light and I saw the opening to the cave, my chance of getting out. Then, I heard a voice. It was Aliya’s, this time as well, but now it was all hers. “Aliya!” I screamed running towards her. Her head peeked in the grotto, searching for me.
As I ran towards her, I felt a nagging sense of something, of just something that I should remember, something I *couldn’t* remember, something that meant...something. I had almost reached her, when I noticed her face. The sadness on her face. But...why?
Then it dawned on me. Next to her, next to my Aliya, was a picture, a portrait, of someone else. Of...Dom. The portrait moved, it was alive and it saw me. It watched me, it watched us, me and Aliya, as I reached her and twirled her around the room, kissing her face over and over again.
“Nathan,” she said, Aliya said, voice full of joy at seeing me. Her eyes betrayed her, with a look of sadness so great it almost brought me on my knees.
She gave me her hand, to lead me away from the cave, away from here. I smiled, albeit sadly, knowing her decision, knowing mine as well.
**
And I watched him go, leave with her, knowing full-well I’d never see him again. He was smiling, happy and free, of the burden that was his life and my heart soared. He was happy, and that was enough for me any day. He was happy with her.
He was lost to me the moment he laid his eyes on her, I realized. He loved her. He loved _her._ And sometimes loving someone means letting them go. I turned away, ready to let go the last tendrils of the link that still held him to this world, ready to let go of him, completely.
I looked at his face once more, his real face, in his real body, lying next to me, dead. Goodbye, Nathan Dayspring Summers. I balled up all my emotions, all my feelings, all my experiences with and of him, into a tight ball just like he had taught me and prepared to send it to him, thus releasing his mind from its shackles to this world.
I kissed him, sending that ball of emotions at him at the same time, but it was blocked, returned to sender. I frowned at first, fearing I had done something wrong. But I couldn’t have, Nate told me, showed me, how to do this.
Suddenly I realized he was kissing me back, pulling me into an embrace. He came back from there. He came back to me. To me.
“You’re crying,” he said, voice hoarse from not speaking, from being _dead._ And I could only smile at him as his fingers wiped away the tears I didn’t even know I had shed.
“I’m just so happy to see you.” My own voice was muffled as I squeezed Nathan closer to me.
I heard him chuckle faintly. “What? What’s so funny, mister?”
“What you said...” he trailed off and looked at me, with an odd mixture of both happiness and sadness, somber yet curious. “I said that myself to somebody, not that long ago.”
~fin