The Knock Of Dust
Our hands are clasped, and we run; run as if we believe they'll never catch us.
"We can take a train out of here," Brennan pants, "make our way to the border and live out our lives with salt-rimmed margaritas at sundown."
"And during the day?"
He drags me behind a crumbling pillar, and his voice is whisper-soft. "We'll be Paco and Maria - Paco makes shoes for the village children, and Maria bakes them cookies and homemade bread."
It makes me want to smile, this life he has planned for us. I know that if I do, my lips will quiver, because they haven't been able to hold a smile in years without trembling, and I won't do that to Brennan. Not now.
Instead, I ask, "Do you know how to make shoes?"
His lips curve, and he shrugs, nonchalant. "No, but I bet Paco does."
"And Maria-" My voice breaks and it's a struggle to quiet my breathing; Paco and Maria don't exist, their lives are whispers to an unforgiving wind, and part of me could almost hate Brennan, wildly, for providing the hope this world tears from us.
His arm slides around my shoulders and his lips are hot against my ear. "It'll be okay, Em. I won't let them take you back. I promise you that - they'll never get their hands on you again."
His voice is fierce with conviction, and I know he believes every word. I'd give up my life, my body, if I thought it'd save him, but there can be no bargaining; how can there be, when you have nothing they want, nothing they can't gain by force if not consent.
Any answer I give would be a lie, and that would be worse than what they've taken from us, because it would be freely given; my choice of web-crafted poison to this man, this man I love.
I choose the easiest path, the truest. "I love you, Brennan."
Feet pound a rhythm that matches the staccato of my heartbeat, and Brennan's hands, calloused, familiar, cup my face. His thumbs caress the line of my jaw, and his eyes are beautiful in the half-light of hope. "I love you, Em," he says, as though we have all the time this life has to offer. "Never forget that."
And he kisses me as though he can imprint his love on my mouth, breathe his passion into my body and give it new life. My lips, cracked, punished, protest and he pulls away, apology ready in his eyes.
There's no need, I want to tell him. Our futures are marked as the numbers on our skin; you can't escape your destiny.
But he kisses my eyes closed, and there's a brief flash of light, pain, that dims to the dark.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this, you know."
The voice is female, sweetly bitter, and conversational. Who are you? I want to ask, but my mouth is too dry to form words; when my eyes open, the ache throbs through my skull like a half-remembered nightmare.
"You're awake," she observes, sounding surprised, and helps me to sit up. Nausea roils uneasily, and I can't quite manage to swallow it down. I scramble away on my hands and knees to be sick, and when I'm done, she hands me a handkerchief and after a search through her pockets, a breath mint.
Sucking on the mint moistens my mouth, and my first question is about Brennan, indirectly. "What happened?"
"Your boyfriend... Mulwray, is it? Gave himself up so they wouldn't find you. I guess he's a self-sacrificing kind of guy."
"Gave himself up? I don't understand." Ignorance is an unregistered New Mutant's first line of defence, and I have to save him as he would've done me. As he has. "Brennan." His name ghosts the air, too soft for her to have heard, but she shoots me a knowing glance and says,
"You know exactly what I mean... Emma."
Recognition sparks, and, "You're one of Ashlocke's people."
Nothing more need be said. Her laughter is frost, and I shiver before catching myself. "Oh, yes. I belong to Gabriel now."
"Why are you here?"
"To help you, of course."
Disbelief strikes my bones, numbs my flesh, and it's a moment before I can speak. "Why would you want to help me?"
Her hand runs through short, perfectly kept dark hair, and my fingers brush over my own straggly mane, dyed red to keep identification at bay.
"You think I want to live like this? Gabriel's pet with a collar around her neck. I never wanted to be his - if you think he treats you badly... You can't even imagine how he treats those who are made to work for him. Defiance isn't an option."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I can help you change things, Emma. Put things back to the way they should be."
"You said that before. Are you talking about getting into the holding cells, the camps? Releasing people?"
"Not that kind of help. Do you remember me at all, Emma?"
Putting names to faces isn't ordinarily my specialty, but this girl... I've spoken to her before. I knew her... before.
"Diana?"
"None other." Her smile is brief, mocking.
Diana Moller isn't entirely sane, from what I can recall, but Brennan's life slips by as each meaningless word falls away; time, among others, is a luxury I don't have. "You were institutionalized. What can you do for me?"
"Did you ever wonder why I was in that institution? It wasn't to hide from Gabriel - or that wasn't the whole of it. I kept... seeing things. Possible realities, layered onto each other. And every major decision you make, alters reality, creates a split. Another universe in my mind where things are... different. But they're usually lighter, somehow. Not as substantial. But this one? It's thick, dense; it doesn't float like the others. It's... I think it's what this world was meant to be. What it would have been, if you'd made a different choice."
"Are you saying it's my fault the world is like this?"
"Not exactly. It's ripples in a pond: your decisions affect other people, affect what they do, and their decisions ripple into someone else's world, changing it forever. It's not your fault, but that doesn't mean you don't have the power to change it."
Her shoulders are hunched forward, her eyes bright: She believes every syllable that springs from her lips, believes it desperately enough to come to the aid of someone Ashlocke would have her killed for associating with.
"Do you believe me?" Her question is frank, eager, and I want to answer that I don't; don't believe her, don't trust her, only... I've seen, done, too much to discount her tale offhand.
"I don't know."
Her sigh is loud, resigned, but when she speaks, her words tumble out as though she fears I'll leave if she doesn't get it said quickly enough. "In the world that should've been? Your Mulwray is safe, free. Happy."
"And now, here? How is he right now?"
Her gaze drops and there's something in her face, a look of such pity that I know what she's going to say before she opens her mouth. No. No. No, if anything had happened to him, I would have felt it; my heart, my very essence would have splintered, shooting shards, remnants into the nothing that remained.
"We have to go to him - We have to-"
"No, Emma, it's too late for that. We'd never get to him before they- Before."
She takes a deep breath and looks at me as though everything that makes Emma deLauro live and breathe hasn't just been ripped away. "If we're going to do this, it has to be now."
I have to be reasonable, logical, but all I can think is Brennan and Oh, God, no and I can't do this without you. I ask what he would do if he were here, and hope that the fragment of him inside me is enough. "How do I know it's not a trap?"
"You don't. But could anything I might have planned be worse than this?"
Worse than this? I want to laugh, to force my shrieks of hysteria and misery into her very soul, to make her feel what she has done to me. But there's a chance, the briefest wisp of a chance that she could save Brennan, and so I choke out, "What do I have to do?"
"Come with me, to the past, and change everything."
She raises her arm, and a pulse of light shimmers the air, solidifies it to a glimmering pool somehow suspended in mid-air. "Come with me, Emma," she says, and it's almost a plea.
I take her outstretched hand, a child asking to be led, and as she pulls me through the light, I think, Brennan.
My insides jerk upwards, a fish on a hook to be tugged every which way, and only Diana's hand on mine prevents my body from entering the fabric of time itself, and when we at last step through the other side, I gasp, because.
"We're in Sanctuary," I accuse. "You delivered me straight to him, you-"
She stops me before I can say anything more. "Emma. Can't you see the difference? This isn't Gabriel's base - not yet."
And she's right. Gone are the reds and plush carpets Shalimar prefers; all the vibrant colours, the dark hidey-holes have been replaced by stone and cool, tranquil blues. This is Adam's Sanctuary, and those voices...
I'm torn between running to Brennan to reaffirm that he's alive, he's here, and we're together, and demanding answers from Diana. Only my own voice echoing from the other room prevents me from going in.
"Where are we?" I ask, my voice a terse whisper, and Diana's smile is smug.
"You mean, 'when' are we."
She mouths out a date, and I work back two years to when... "Brennan and I joined Mutant X the day before. So why are we here today? Nothing happened, except-"
"You, Brennan, Jesse and Shalimar went out dancing. This is when everything changes, and you can't let that happen, Emma. Not again."
"You mean-"
"Your relationship with Brennan. You have to change his feelings for you, and yours for him, today, before it all spins out of control and he ends up paying the price."
This is what she brought me here for? To destroy Brennan's love for me? To take away the one thing I have left that's worth anything? "No," I say, backing away from her. "I can't do that. Even if I could, you'd be crazy to think I would do it."
She takes a step towards me, pauses when I hold up a hand in warning; my gifts may not work thanks to the Inhibitor, but I can still snap her neck in two before she could get out a scream.
"Okay, okay," she breathes, and closes her eyes for a moment. "My powers are over time, so you won't be able to see everything, but. I can show you a little of what things should be like, if you'll let me."
A laser of colour shifts from her mind to mine, and I see:
Brennan, smiling, strolling through Sanctuary-that-was without a care; myself, pulling a face at one of Jesse's terrible puns; the five of us sitting down to dinner - whole, a family. And the largest difference isn't the freedom, or the smiling faces. It's that when Brennan's fingers brush Shalimar's, there's a look, a look of appreciation, desire, that I recognize; it's a look he's never directed towards Shalimar before, and I realize that in this other life, Brennan and I are un-Inhibited and happy... and apart.
"We aren't together," my voice rasps out, and Diana presses a shaky hand to her forehead.
"No," she says, tiredly. "You aren't. But Emma..."
"I know. He's alive and..."
I can't go on, can barely manage to slip to the floor without screaming out the grief that locks my throat, but Diana seems to understand, and she asks, carefully sitting down next to me, "Will you do it?"
"I can't," my voice grates venomously over her skin, and she shudders, and I am gratified. Seeing that, knowing that all we shared had been wiped away as though we'd never kissed, never made love, never fought for survival because we had each other to fight for... I don't think I could live through it, not knowing what I know, not feeling the way I do, and Diana needs to understand just how much this hurts.
"The Inhibitor doesn't work here. Future technology, or something; I don't know, but you can do it. You can make things right, Emma-"
"Stop that. Stop saying my name as though you know me. You don't know me, and we're not friends. And if I do this... It's for him, for those people in that room. Not you. Not ever for you. Do you understand me?"
She nods, slowly, starts to say something. I stop her with a question: "Jesse. Shalimar. What happens to them?"
"Jesse lives. So does Shalimar."
"But Shal... she doesn't..."
"She turns Ashlocke down. She defeats him."
It's on the tip of my tongue to ask if she and Brennan ever... But I don't think that's a question I really want an answer to, and so I nod my head in agreement. I'll do it. And everything will change.
New memories jostle, side-by-side with those from what-was, and I know that the moment I step through Diana's gateway, I'll lose everything Brennan and I shared.
"I'm going to stay," I tell Diana, and she grabs my shoulders, gives me a small shake.
"You can't. If you stay here, you'll die. This world can't support two Emma's," she says, and I stare down at her hands until she lets them drop back to her sides.
"What'll happen to the other me?"
"I don't know. She's supposed to be you - kind of - so," she shrugs. "I don't know if she'll survive the split."
"But there's a chance?"
"There's always a chance, but-"
"That's good enough for me."
I can't imagine not having Brennan as my partner, my lover, and I can't risk the possibility that these memories will remain stored within my consciousness, awaiting the perfect moment to be released and mourned for once more.
She holds up her hands, a sign of surrender, and smiles slightly. "I'll stay with you, then. It's not like I have anything to go back to."
"You-"
Surprised, I stare at her until she offers, "At least Gabriel will never be able to undo this."
She's right about that, and I close my eyes and watch new memories unfold.
Brennan's kisses are hot against my mouth; his tongue traces over mine, writing words of love in intricate swirls and dips, as
Shalimar dances, outfit tight, behaviour flirtatious, and Brennan smirks and takes another drink. And watches her. His
body is warm next to mine as we pretend to watch an old movie; his voice is low as he says, thickly, "I love you, Emma. Even if you do make me watch this crap."
And I whisper back, seductively, "Actions speak louder than words..."
Laughter rings out as he swings me up in his arms, and
Shoots a bolt of electricity at me. I fly through the air, and Lorna recovers the virus. He leaves me lying on the floor, and
Shalimar snarls at us over Jesse's body, "You never needed me. Gabriel does. He loves me."
I plead with her: "Shal, please. Don't do this. You know we love you. Please-"
Brennan steps in front of me, shielding me with his body as Shalimar's eyes gleam golden, and she
Shoots up in bed, startled, frightened. I tell her no-one's there, but she insists Ashlocke was in her room, was with her. I don't know how to
get away from them this time. Our hands are clasped, and we run; run
Through NaxCom, hoping to escape before the building explodes and takes us all with it. We run
as if we believe they'll never
Get here in time to save us. My hands are slipping, and Adam yells for me to hold on. I can't
catch us.
The world crumbles
and we become dust