Music - "Save the World" by Skyrocket Love
***
David's POV
I did it. I really goddamn this is real holy crap did it.
I don't know how long I looked at my hand, then looked at Emma, then looked at my hand, then looked at Emma then looked at my hand again, but it was so long that she finally stopped staring at me and sat back down.
"I did it!" I finally blurted out triumphantly. She only nodded. "But this is..."
"Shut up, I know what it is," she snapped at me.
I went to sit back down, but forgot that I'd knocked the chair over and ended up in a tangle of me and chair on her kitchen floor, a metal leg jabbing me painfully in the ribs. Emma stared at me for a second with a look that could either be annoyance or pity (probably both) and then came over and helped me up. I don't know who thinks I'm more pathetic, me or her. I'm blowing it!!
"So yes," I said bravely, trying to seem like I knew what I was doing. "I made it through."
"So I see. Look, this isn't somewhere you want to be, David."
"Are you crazy? This is exactly where I want to be!" I grinned at her like a kid on Christmas morning. My grin slid when she didn't grin back.
"I know you probably think so, but..."
"I found you, Emma. It's destiny. Fate."
"I have no fate!" she yelled in my face, then flounced into the other room so fast that whatever papers were on the kitchen table scattered on the floor. I followed her. Maybe it wasn't the brightest move, but she was the entire reason I was here in the first place.
I was quiet for a while, not knowing what to say to that, exactly. It was kind of a crazy thing to yell in somebody's face. Who doesn't have a destiny? It's like saying you have no future. Like saying you don't exist.
"Emma," I finally managed, my voice quiet, "Maybe you think that, but I believe my fate is to be with... to stay connected to you somehow. I don't even know why, but I just feel it to my bones. It's just..."
As I spoke, my gaze wandered to the shelf full of crystals and stones, and I spotted something that made the rest of my words die in my throat. I picked up the prism and held it out in my hand.
"Like this," I continued, getting it into the light so that it threw a rainbow onto the wall. "I'm glad you still have it here. Maybe each of those colors represents a world, one stacked next to the other. Do you think I'm in the red world, or the blue one, or..."
"The black one," she whispered, staring at the colors on the wall.
"Uh... Emma?" I said, squinting one eye at her. "There's no black in a..."
She took the prism from my hand, killing the rainbow. The look in her eyes was like nothing I'd ever seen before, except maybe in pictures of people who had been in wars. Haunted. Eyes that had seen way too much, too many horrors.
"But the people out there seem so happy," I said, nodding at the window. "Wars are ending, violence is down..."
"All a facade," she murmured, her face going back to the way it was before, behind a guarded mask. But her eyes... they kept changing from pity to worry to haunted to something else I couldn't read. Windows to the soul and all that. They really are.
What's behind the facade, Emma? What have you seen?
Then another thought came to me. "What about me? What was I doing this whole time? The girl who gave me your address said something happened a month ago, and you thought I was dead."
"You," she said, then touched my cheek, which made my whole body twitch a little. "We couldn't have gotten as far as we did without you. The David I knew. But..." she said, looking me over.
I can do whatever you need. I swear it. Whatever this other me did, I can do the same. I can be your knight in shining armor, just please tell me...
She gave the tiniest nod. "All right," she said quietly as if she'd heard my thoughts. "I need you too much to lose you again, whatever David you are. You're just as clever, and perhaps all you need is information. You're certainly eager enough." A shadow of a teeny smile made a little life spark in those beautiful eyes of hers, and it felt like a little twin flame sprang to life in my heart at the same moment. I must have smiled, because she smiled a little more, like maybe there was some hope in her life that hadn't been there that morning.
"Anything," I said with a nod.
"First," she said, ticking things off on her fingers, "Stay away from the lab. It's being watched, and it's bugged. They're looking for you. And after what they did to Atticus..."
"They...? Wait, what did who do to... I mean..."
"Second," she said, interrupting me with another finger, "You don't exist, I don't exist, and Sun, the girl you ran into, doesn't exist. Stay hidden."
Whoa. This really is getting serious.
"Third, no pepper. Ever."
...Dafuq?
"Fourth," she said, softer this time, but then stopped and looked at me for a few seconds before continuing. "You'll need somewhere safer to stay. I think you should stay here for a while."
My heart stopped and restarted about a dozen times. It could have been beating but it felt like it was flopping around like a dying carp. I couldn't speak. All that my brain could come up with was GUHFUDIQUEEEFUNAH! But I was the only one who heard it because it never left my brain.
Her tiny smile of amusement returned. "Yes. On. My. Sofa. God knows, you could use a shower. I'll get a runner to get your clothes and a few things from your apartment. I'm surprised they haven't..."
The smile died completely and some of the color drained out of her.
"What is it?"
"Did you say anything when you were in there?" she asked me, her voice tight with a hint of panic.
"In where?"
"In your apartment, idiot!"
"I don't th..." I started, then remembered the missing jacket. "Well...sometimes I do talk to myself..."
"Shit," she whispered under her breath, then got on her phone, going into the bathroom and closing the door so I couldn't hear.
Does she think my apartment's bugged too? I'm not that important... am I? But maybe in this world I am. I'm a wanted man that doesn't exist. I don't even know who I'm wanted by! The government? Worse? What the fuck have I walked into?
I paced around and ran my fingers through my greasy hair, kind of starting to freak out a little. It hadn't occurred to me that in other universes, I might have a giant target on my head.
My brain racing, I started fussing with things to try and keep myself occupied until she came back out to answer my fifty bajillion questions that were multiplying like bacteria. I picked up the papers from the floor and set them back on the kitchen table, then did a double-take.
On every one of them was a pattern like the ones I'd seen in my cymatics experiments. Except for one: An unfinished drawing of a sunflower, the seeds forming an intricate spiral design that repeated over and over, crisscrossing clockwise and counter-clockwise. I felt like I was getting sucked into it, my eyes unfocusing as the Golden Ratio wrapped itself around my mind, tighter and tighter like a noose.
"Emma!" I called out as I started falling.
// E/N
Oh noes! Where do you think David will end up now? This was the final chapter of Willow's three chapter arc in her world. Thanks so much to Willow for giving us a glimpse of this fascinating reality! What did you think?
Sorry for the lateness...epic migraine hit me at the conference. I have been informed by many here that I need glasses. Yay!
Next week: another reality...I believe this time written by The Karada team but my migraine might be making me confused! Haha...we'll see what happens on Friday.
<3
C
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