VAGARY (A Flinx Story)

Episode 22

There are patterns, there are only patterns. Patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. History does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. Free will is just another hallucination.

She felt still and empty, they way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding chaos. With no control.

But all the most powerful emotions come from chaos – fear, anger, love. Love is chaos itself. Love makes no sense. It shakes you up and spins you around. And then, you find yourself in the middle of a too familiar environment, with a too familiar pair of deep eyes staring back at what is left of you.

The ceiling stood tall and red above her. Equally intense walls made her feel trapped and consumed. With the shaking of her head, she concentrated. She had one mission to accomplish, one goal to reach. And it all was only a glass panel away.

"Need a little luck?"

She lost control; she lost perspective. She lost the ability to protect herself and to fight back. A sudden lack of clarity blurred her mind for a second that felt like years. That felt just as she had returned to the past.

"It's only a myth", she heard herself blurting out. She wanted to cover her mouth with her shaky hands and run away. Run away as fast as she could, as far away as her legs would take her. But she didn't.

"Jinx"

The way her name fell from his lips made her heart compress and burn. And so she burned with it.

Because he was the only stable thing in this swirling chaos.

"Look deeper through your fear, Jinx", he said, and she thought she was dreaming. "And don't be afraid when you see the light".

She knew she couldn't shape the world without being reshaped in the process. She knew that, in order to change, she needed to let the chaos loose.

Only that she couldn't.

And he knew she couldn't. It tore his heart apart, it made his head ache. His whole body felt swollen at the thought of such a warrior left to pieces. So weak. And so human.

He twirled the pointy object between his fingers, fearing that his last option would become her sole salvation. He hesitated.

Her universe had always been the perfect cycle of calm and chaos. A metaphor. But, as her glowing eyes landed on the syringe between his long, globed hands, she knew only chaos was bound to remain.

Yet she didn't find the strength to fight it back.

She silently watched him get closer as she fell to her knees in silence, in solitude. She let her demons push her down one last time. She heard him mutter something under his breath, she felt his lips brushing hers as he spoke, calming her down. And she breathed.

When she felt the universe come to an end, Jinx only hoped that the rest of the world would stand still as she got herself together again.

And she knew they had ran. She somehow knew a portal had been opened, and a fellow friend had gathered the strength she had left to push her own father to the other side. She knew they had won when the weight of the world was lifted off her soul.

But she had lost something.

She couldn't feel a familiar tingling at the tip of her fingertips, ready to launch. Once ready to attack; now ready to protect. She wasn't herself.

Or maybe she really was.

"Jinx", a hesitant voice hovered over her head. It was the sound of home. "Are you alright?"

Its smoothness almost made her fall back asleep. But she coughed in response. Slowly and cautiously, she opened her glued eyes. There he was, standing above her, with his stupid signature smile that she had learned to admire and his messy red hair that he never seemed to style: Wally West. 

"Am I dead?", she almost choked on her words. Her throat felt harsh, as if she hadn't spoken in a thousand years.

The boy in front of her chuckled slightly, just like she remembered he always used to do.
"No, baby", he answered. "Although you're quite the angel".

She felt the urge to slap him, but she couldn't exactly do too much to help herself. She pulled a face instead. "Funny", she muttered. And then, he kissed her.

It wasn't like that kiss they had once shared in the intimacy of his apartment. It was something she had never experienced before. A small, steady, wave hitting the shore after a long time lost at sea. When he pulled away, she longed him. But somehow she knew she'd have him again.

Her earth was shaking, no balance remained. And she fell, she fell deeply into the pit that was his heart. Yet she fell happily, confident, giving. There it was; the beauty in chaos that she had read about countless times. Because his eyes were a tornado, but so were hers.

And she learned she wasn't the small, scared sorceress she had once been. The one she could never accept but was too scared to leave behind. And she learned that the world wasn't black and white. It demanded color. And pink wasn't the only one it desired.

"Welcome back", Cyborg said, handing her a small silver mirror.

She didn't feel afraid. She wasn't scared of her own reflection anymore. Because nothing she could ever stare back at now would give her more nightmares than what she had been staring back at for all those years. All those dark years, dark times; magically all forgotten.

She sat, wide-eyed, as her graze scanned her dark hair and dark eyes, round nose and full lips all surrounded by flawless olive skin she had never quite seen in anymore before.

And she didn't feel like a stranger. No. She felt all those things she had always tried to find in her old self but couldn't. Because that wasn't Jinx; Jinx could never give her happiness, calm, peace. But maybe Linda Park could.

Maybe Jinx was better off caged inside her heart.

As she looked at the tall, freckled man beside her and the equally vivid teenage girl at the back of the room who couldn't stop smiling, she knew she was already happier and fuller than she ever had. More than she ever imagined.

And she smiled back at her just as she
squeezed his hand, and the only thing she could do was to cherish her own vagary.

____

The end.