MoonKnight One Shots/Preferences

As If It Were My Last

[In a moment, millions of people come back from a 5-year phenomenon, The Blip. After coming back, finding loved ones is the only focus of those who've returned.]

[Word Count: 2077]
***
I gasped in a sudden shock, feeling myself slump against the counter of the coffee shop. But I wasn't a coffee shop and I wasn't the only one severely confused and utterly frightened.

A shocked and now screaming young employee of a doggy day care facility was pointing at me, and several others, who had just materialized out of thin air.

My hand still held the change in my hand after having ordered coffee, but I was obviously not in the same place that I was moments ago. My eyes immediately widened and my heart began to beat erratically, knowing that something was undeniably wrong.

Everyone in the store front began to panic, and the people who had arrived with me, ones that I remember from being in line with me and sitting at tables of their own, were digging into their pockets and trying to find their phones to immediately begin calling out to those they needed to reach.

"Where am I? What happened?!" I frantically asked the young girl behind the counter, feeling nothing but dreadful dead permeate my body. With a quick glance outside, I saw many destroyed, architectural changes and unrecognizable features of a city that I was only supposed to be in for a weekend. "What-what year is it...?"

There were signs on the windows and billboards outside of the storefront displaying a year that I had no recollection of. My hands began to tremble with anxiety and relentless fear.

"You're-you're in New York. You were dusted, you... You-...It's..." Telephones began to ring noisily and shouting throngs of people began to fill the streets with screaming and nonsensical phrases. "It's 2023, miss." The young girl began to weep, suddenly grabbing her own phone to start calling as well.

I hurriedly shook my head, tears beginning to sting my eyes, and my lip trembling uncontrollably. "No. No! It's 2018. I'm here for a weekend trip with my boyfriend. Oh my God! Where-" I hurriedly turned around, expecting to find Steven who was just standing behind me, just having walked away to the restroom. "Steven!" I searched around at the other terrified people who were calling out for their loved ones. "Steven!"

Tears were streaming down my face as I hurriedly ran towards the glass door, pulling it open and hearing deafening screams fill the streets of New York. Thousands of names were being screamed in terror and displaced crowds began to trample the other to reach family and friends that weren't near.

"Steven!" I was panicking, my eyes darting left and right, finding no sight of my beloved. The streets were overflowing and the sky was darkened over with an otherworldly influence. Confusion reigned supreme as both those who supposedly just returned and those who watched it happen where meeting in violent tandems, attempting to figure out what had happened.

Displaced people were trying to figure out what happened in the space in between and why they were alone, much like myself.

Steven and I had taken a weekend to enjoy New York City, as I wanted to surprise him with tickets to a broadway show in the city itself for our anniversary. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to remember what felt like seconds ago.
***
Steven's arm was draped around my waist as we waited patiently in line to order. "Are you excited, my love? I cannot wait to see the show. Thank you so much." He whispered, pressing a kiss into my cheek.

I chuckled, my eyes perusing the dimly lit coffee shop with antiques and an overall rustic ambiance. "You're very welcome, Steven. And I'm extremely excited! There's nobody else that I would want to enjoy New York with."