The False Chronicles
Chapter Six – The Possibility
By Nabiki GMYW
Summary: Elisa has a strange experience, Brooklyn finally gets to talk to the demigod and matters are accelerated by the Powers That Be. Things are explained, gods are confronted and Lester gets ready to meet his fate head-on. Chapter 6 (of 8) – The Possibility
Disclaimer: One more time, with feeling! Gargoyles and co. belong to Disney; everybody else belongs to me. Please, please, please don't sue me. Email me at [email protected]. Chapter Six in a series. Kudos if you've made it so far! Whee!
Lester Kramer was reasonably upset that afternoon. But at least he got the perverse pleasure of seeing high and mighty David Xanatos and ice king Owen Burnett beg for mercy.
The diabolic duo looked like they'd been put through the wringer. Probably deserving it, too. After all, they did put the apocalypse into motion, so…
"You know how to stop it, don't you?" Xanatos told him, as he gripped the bars that trapped Lester inside the dungeon cell, "Don't be a jackass, Lester! If you know how to stop Seres, then tell us!"
"How?" Lester spat icily, "You just woke him up completely! By giving Anderson the truth, you also gave him complete and utter control of Seres and the scythe! If you don't want to be destroyed, the best you can do is scrape at Anderson's feet and beg his forgiveness! And I must say you have a nasty tendency to tick off creatures that are more powerful than you are. It's a wonder you made forty!" He turned to Owen, "And you! Don't make me even get started on you! What the hell possessed you to give him the truth!?"
"I thought he deserved to know," Burnett muttered quietly.
"Dude, there's some things humans just don't wanna know. Like if they're dead people brought to life, for starters! Jeez!" Lester exclaimed as he began to pace in his cell.
"At least he's with Elisa," Xanatos sighed, "I'm sure she can talk sense into him. Explain to him what's going on."
"If it means anything to you…" Lester continued, "It's very likely Anderson is out like a light bulb as we speak and won't wake up until nightfall. That's enough time to practice your speeches about how very sorry you are."
"But tell us about Anderson…" Owen pressed on. "The trial is about whether this parallel universe is worth it or not. If it's not, he can destroy us… so tell me: is Mr. Anderson likely to rule against us? Does he… like us? This timeline?"
Lester sighed melodramatically. "How the hell should I know? You were the ones who spent most of the time with him. I guess it's a matter about how suicidal he feels. Believe me, Burnett. He's in the same boat as we are. He's revived from death and given another chance… the question is whether this life is worth living or if he'd rather stay dead."
PART ONE
Elisa Maza got a little worried when they arrived to her apartment and he didn't wake up.
Mr. Anderson was very still and had his eyes closed, slumped in the passenger seat of her old Chevy. For a moment, she thought he wasn't breathing. He was ok, as far as she could make out, though every once in a while she took his pulse.
Another cause of worry was the oversized magical scythe he had tossed in the back seat. It was heavier than a sleeping gargoyle and shone a dull blue light.
When they arrived and she parked the car in the underground garage, she tried to wake him up properly. She couldn't let him sleep in the car, and she wasn't strong enough to grab him upstairs. So it was quite a pickle.
"Come on, Mr. Anderson… snap out of it…" She slapped him softly for a few minutes. When she finally started freaking out, he grunted something. "What? What did you say?"
"…my powers…" he croaked as he slowly opened his eyes, "…all worn out. Really hungry too."
"Come on, I have an extra bed. You'll be more comfortable there."
He grunted in reply, but he made a valiant effort not to faint as they made their way to the elevators and the apartment. He wanted to bring the scythe, but it had gotten too heavy for him. Elisa couldn't even lift it in the first place, so they left it on the car's backseat where he tossed it. She scattered a heap of dirty clothes she had meant to take to the cleaners on it to hide its eerie glow, leaving it kind of buried. Sighing, she crossed her fingers and hoped nobody peeked through the side windows.
When he entered the apartment and saw the couch, he collapsed on it and no force on this earth would move him. Elisa left him there and wondered what to do with him once he woke up. She had enough time to think. He wasn't going anywhere for a few hours.
He muttered something about being hungry, so she assumed food would be welcomed. It was a little pass one in the afternoon. Sunset was still half a day away. She considered phoning Xanatos and telling him Mr. Anderson was with her, but decided against it. She didn't want to talk to him and it was very likely that he already knew.
Besides, Anderson was running away for a reason. He would explain it later, although she had a very good idea about it.
The question now was what she wanted to do next.
Honestly, she had no idea.
She still felt quite sorry for him. Not easy knowing you're the epicenter of everybody's lives, huh? I bet you freaked out.
Elisa bit her lip. She had a deity of fate right there in her living room. How could she use that to her advantage? Should she use him at all? What was the extent of his powers, what could she wish for, would he give it to her?
Just a few hours ago, she was grunting loudly that she would never take any substitutes. And maybe she had found a way to have the real thing. All or nothing, she said. If she couldn't have everything, she would choose nothing.
Truth to tell, it was all talk at that moment. She had no clear idea of what she was saying or what she really wanted to do. But she would know soon enough.
Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson slept a healthy amount of hours. She got worried again, since he didn't seem to toss in his sleep or anything. In fact, he was very still, too still, and she found herself checking his pulse every half hour or so. She started to think of him like a doll that somebody had turned off. Problem was that she couldn't flick the switch back on. By the fifth hour, she was seriously considering getting Dr. Sato on the phone when he came around on his own.
Sunset was a few minutes away when he blinked and snapped awake in less than a second. It was very sudden, as if he had snapped awake from a bad dream or startled up by a loud, unexpected sound. He didn't look groggy at all, but alert and surprised, pretty much like a scared cat.
He looked around, a little desperate because of the unknown surroundings, until he noticed her staring. He then moved to the farthest side of the couch away from her as if she had just grown horns and a tail. "You're… you're that cop!"
A little worried, Elisa backed off and tried her best comforting attitude. She didn't want to chase after him if he tried to escape the apartment. "It's ok, Mr. Anderson. I know you're scared, but I was the one who drove you away from Eerie Building… don't you remember?"
He stared at her blankly, trying to recover the memories. "Yes…" he whispered to himself more than to her, "Oh, God… this is a nightmare…"
He sat back down properly, and temporarily ignoring her, he started rubbing his temples while staring off to space. Then he looked around warily. The world as he knew it was a darker and vaguer than he had ever imagined and he felt very, very alone.
"Everything looks strange…" he muttered aloud.
Elisa blinked. She looked around too, but noticed nothing extraordinarily different. If anything, she noticed what a big mess she had. She felt an impulse to start picking up for the guest, but changed her mind and decided not to move until he got his bearings.
He focused on a little cat adorning Elisa's night table. He poked it and its head bobbed up and down. "It's so… tangible," he muttered a little bewildered. "Half of me already knows this. Half of me is utterly surprised."
He seemed terribly curious with everything in her apartment, like a child who had been brought to an unfamiliar place and was still deciding whether he liked it or not. She could understand him a little better now: he was seeing things with new eyes, although it begged the question as to whose eyes those were.
He soon lost interest and slouched in the couch. He sighed softly and whispered, "I just want to go home…"
Judging from what she picked up from before, Mr. Anderson knew what had happened to him. He knew. And he was taking it particularly well, all things considered. Odd detachment was better than hysteria, she told herself.
Well, what else could he do but try and assimilate the situation? Elisa sighed and couldn't help but feel sorry for him. She sat next to him and said in her best soothing tone. "It's ok… I'm sure everything's going to work out."
He looked at her, suspicious again. "You know, don't you? Everybody knew but me. I'm that stupid judge, aren't I? That sorcerer guy was after me because…" he trailed off for a moment. "I control that little part that determines when time's up."
"What do you mean by that?"
He blinked several times, as if noticing Elisa there for the first time ever. "I don't believe we've met… Miss Mazda?"
She gave him a little startled, somewhat offended smile. "That's Maza. Elisa Maza, detective second class, NYPD." It was her standard, semi-automatic response to that question. "You must be Mr. Anderson." She sat next to him. "Are you… ok?"
"Well… yes. All things considered." He said, although Elisa got the feeling he regarded that as a trick question. He rubbed his left shoulder. "How long was I out?"
"Quite some time."
He didn't respond right away. "Quite some time…" he repeated absentmindedly.
His eyes shifted to the coffee table in front of him. He tilted his head to the right and the table floated a couple of centimeters off the floor. Elisa gasped and he put it down. "So…" he sighed, "I'm the judge after all. My life is officially ruined for good."
She stared at him with utter and complete amazement. "Who are you? Mr. Anderson or Seres?"
He seemed a bit taken aback by the question. He stared down at his shoes and crossed his arms tightly around himself. "I… don't know. I don't know anything anymore…It's too weak to be a real… consciousness, I guess you could say. It's like a…coat. Like clothes. It barely thinks and it needs me to…be. I don't know how to explain it. It's confusing."
Elisa was beginning to think she knew more about the whole Seres thing than Seres (or Mr. Anderson) himself (or themselves). But she returned to business. "But you are still our judge?"
He sighed with dejection. "I guess…" he muttered unenthusiastically. "Mr. Puck made me realize it. He practically handled Seres to me on a silver platter. It's confusing. I'm giving myself a headache just thinking about it. There's so much I don't know…but I'm slowly waking up."
"What do you know so far?"
"I'm not Seres. Well, I am but I'm not. It's…weird. It's a force, and it's very curious about this plane. Hard to explain…" he found himself staring at the bobbing cat again. "He makes me see everything as if for the first time. I guess because it's never experienced this before, being ethereal and all. His task is to determine the time."
"The time for what?"
"To cut the strings of life. Apparently, Seres hold the scissors and cut the strings, others take care of the rest. Clotho spins life, Lachesis decides length, but Atropos cuts the strings. Atropos is just another name, he has many names. Seres clears the way for Azrael. He takes care of the rest."
Azrael? Who—?
Holy Shit.
He was talking about the mythological Angel of Death.
Elisa found herself slowly edging away from him, standing up and taking a few steps backwards. He was too involved in his woes to notice or care. He sighed gravely and muttered, "Atropos shouldn't even be here. This is highly irregular."
"What's… irregular?" Elisa managed to say, and it sounded like a croak.
He looked at her as if that was a very stupid question. "Seres should not be here," he said, sternly. "They are forces of nature and it is unnatural for them to descend. I don't know who started this, or why IT allowed it to happen, but this is very irregular." Then his tone went down a few decibels and acquired a strange morbid echo. "Did you know I'm supposed to be dead, Detective Maza?" he said, very quietly, as cold anger flared in his eyes. "I was very happy where I was and Seres isn't a too thrilled to be here either. It's not fair. Someone surely paid dearly for this…chaos."
She didn't know what to say. She wanted to ask whether he knew Titania was dead or not, but it struck her inappropriate at that moment. So she changed the subject. "There are others like you…? Besides Azrael?"
But the strange glimmer was still there, and it was very cold and detached, though not necessarily evil. "We're all connected," he explained, and for a moment, he seemed to be saying these things from another place. "Azrael is our kin, our boss, Death. All of us are creation's shadows, kin with Death. The old ones called us Fates and held us to be …death gods of sorts. I don't expect you to understand."
"The Fates?" she repeated incredulous as understanding dawned on her. She tried to recall everything she knew about Greek mythology. "They called you the Moirai."
"They called us many things. But yes, some ancients came close and gave us pretty names. We have thousands of pretty names. But for my convenience, I use Atropos. They said she was greatest of the Fates. Do you think they were talking about me? But call me Seres, call me Atropos, or whatever suits your fancy. We are ideas and we're not bound to words. Mr. Anderson is a person, Atropos is not. The fairy queen called us both of us Seres. I think it's a nice name."
She noticed he looked a little more different than before, but she couldn't tell what or where or how that was. It was as if something he always had became accentuated somehow. It was the only way anyone could tell who was talking at the moment, but it was hard to point it out and say 'there it is'.
What did Owen say in the Cloisters? He said he felt something was all over the place… like radiation…
Elisa's heart was beating faster than usual and she had forgotten how to breathe. Taking a deep breath as to not pass out on the floor, she thought, Three Fates… and one of them is sitting in my sofa…and it just had to be Atropos, the one that cuts the strings. I don't know if there are strings in the physical sense, but it's a damn unnerving metaphor.
"Cut the strings…" she said aloud, "You mean end this… timeline or whatever the hell this is." Then she muttered angrily, "Great move, Titania…to send Death's little brother right to our doorsteps…"
The other, not caring much about her sarcasm, limited himself to pointing out that, "The mortal hasn't made up his mind. He needs more time."
Elisa stared at him and registered his words. She wasn't sure how many revelations she could take in one sitting and she had no idea how it worked between Mr. Anderson and…that thing… so she chose to end this. Trying to get a grip on the situation, she said with new determination, "Ok, well, I think this is enough for now. Please bring Mr. Anderson back. I need to talk to him."
"We are talking."
"But you are Atropos."
"But I'm also Anderson. Just call me Dennis. Everybody else does." he said, perplexed at the look of fear Elisa had on her face. "Miss Maza?"
He grunted, sensing her surprise and giving up trying to reason with her. It was when the unnatural air that had filled her apartment dissipated that Elisa felt how much of it had piled up. It was like gas leaking from a stove. She hadn't noticed it until it got away.
It wasn't entirely uncomfortable, just strange. It was… surprisingly easy to get used to, actually. Like a very faint perfume or maybe a lovely ballad playing in the back of her mind; something vague that resisted being defined. It was just there. And she found herself even missing it a little.
The deity Lester claimed to bane of them all slouched in the couch, a little depressed and none-too-happy about what was happening to him. He sat disconnected and remote in the couch, staring down at his brown shoes.
Elisa understood how his situation might take some getting used to.
* * *
He was not going to call Maza. He was not.
Owen gave him an exasperated look, but he made no move to call her himself. "I suppose that if Mr. Anderson sees us like the enemy, we better stay away."
Xanatos immediately agreed with that. Their little mission to find out what Dennis was went spectacularly bad. At least he ran to Elisa's arms, someone he could —somewhat— trust.
It was late in the afternoon, sunset was coming soon, and he hadn't shut an eye for almost…he wasn't sure. He spent last night with Lester and company, the early morning with Owen, and most of the day annoying Dennis and causing his nervous breakdown. And the day before this one, he… holy shit, he couldn't remember. That little workout trying to dodge stray bolts of lightning last night was finally taking its toll.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons Owen didn't berate him further on Elisa. Besides, he wasn't one to pick useless fights. After all, he was with Xanatos and Xanatos was the Prince of Darkness. He ended up crossing his fingers and hoping she wouldn't do anything foolish.
Xanatos did wonder why Elisa drove him away and what she was doing on her way to the castle to begin with. And he was very curious as to what sort of things she could be telling him about the life and times of David Xanatos. But the truth was that he was too tired, too cranky to even bother with answers.
Chances are she's just cementing my bad reputation. But she knows what's at stake… the sensible thing to do is keep him under control and wait for us to come up with… something.
There were two problems with that plan. First, that he had no idea what to do next. Second, that he trusted Elisa as far as he could throw her.
"We have to assume I broke the taboo in his mind and now Titania's trial has begun. Now what?" Owen asked.
"Mr. Anderson doesn't look like the suicidal sort. The battle is practically ours." Xanatos retorted.
"Willing to stake your future on it, sir?"
"Well, then, you call Elisa!"
"She hates me too, Mr. Xanatos. Perhaps we should let Brooklyn take it from here. He can talk some sense into Mr. Anderson."
"—Granted he doesn't have a panic attack when he sees a gargoyle for the first time."
"Sir… you're tired. Perhaps it would be better if you rested."
"Nonsense. There will be enough time to sleep when I'm dead."
It was a matter of waiting for sunset. By then, Dennis would've calmed down and they'd have some sort of plan going on. Well, Owen would have made something up; Xanatos had just gone into a walking zombie mode and he wasn't paying much attention.
But something else snapped Xanatos' mind from numbness when Bruno from the Squad called and said, "Mr. Xanatos, I think you better come see this…"
The duo returned to the dungeons and found a disturbing and somewhat absurd sight inside Lester's cell. "What's the—?" Xanatos began.
They found their unwelcome houseguest sitting, cross-legged, in the floor. Lester had his arms placed on his knees in the yoga lotus position, and he seemed to be chanting something. He had a dazed little smile on his face and was rocking back and forth.
"Owen, what is he doing?" Xanatos said, exasperated.
Owen adjusted his glasses and said, "I believe he's performing a Buddhist meditation technique. I think he's saying a mantra. Or perhaps its some sort of Yoga trance, I'm not sure. I'm not big on meditation."
Xanatos groaned loudly and Bruno asked, "Should I… stop him, sir?"
"Ugh, no, leave him alone," the millionaire replied, "The less time he's awake, the more moments of peace we can get. But be sure to call us if his head starts spinning or he starts coughing up pea soup."
Owen arched an eyebrow and said, perfectly deadpan. "Not big on yoga, Mr. Xanatos? I think you could use some."
Xanatos shot him a look and said, "Just get on the stupid elevator, Owen. We have a universe to save, remember?"
They returned upstairs and made a detour to the medical bay, where the gargoyles had spent the day. Angela petrified still on the bed because of the injury to her arm, and they made the staff clear away most of the equipment so that it wouldn't be destroyed.
As for the rest of the clan, they were too heavy to be moved. They told everybody to give the gargoyles some space and had the janitor on stand-by. The concrete chips were going to be hellish to clean up.
The sun fell on Manhattan and one by one, the gargoyles woke up. The last to wake up was Angela, who jumped out of bed and almost lost her balance. "Jalapeño… Why do I feel like I drank a whole tequila bottle?"
After the obligatory section of hugs and kisses and after explaining to Angela she had spent last night tripping on morphine, Xanatos took it upon himself to explain the situation.
"You pissed him off!" Broadway exclaimed.
"We didn't do it on purpose," Owen replied, "He took the truth about his existence rather badly, that's all."
"If I found out a meddling fairy queen brought me back to life so I could destroy the world, I'd be pretty pissed too." Lexington allowed.
Brooklyn rubbed his temples and groaned softly. "Dammit, Xanatos, I thought your bedside manner was better than that."
"Goddamit, I can't believe we're having this conversation!" Xanatos snapped back, "Sorry if I broke a few hearts, but creation is at stake. Quit sermonizing me; get out there and save the universe!"
Brooklyn stared at him insulted and crossed his arms in defiance. Before he could let out a high-strung Excuse me?, Owen intervened: "Please, Brooklyn, check up on Mr. Anderson and Elisa. They're back in her apartment."
"How do you know?" Brooklyn asked. Owen promptly pulled a small tracking device out of his breast pocket and showed it to Brooklyn. "Of course…" the gargoyle grunted.
"It goes without saying," Owen went on, "That our continued existence depends on Mr. Anderson. I doubt that Mr. Anderson wishes to die —performing the final spell also destroys him— but…"
"Panic-stricken people do stupid things. I know." Brooklyn finished.
"That in mind, I think its best if you don't crowd him." Owen added and sighed softly. "He's not like Mr. Xanatos or Detective Maza, Brooklyn. He understands little of this… not the gargoyles, nor the fey, much less the role Titania assigned him. We see the big picture. He does not."
"So maybe tis' not a good idea to have six gargoyles show up on his windowsill, eh?" Hudson interrupted.
Brooklyn nodded in agreement and said, "Lex, Broadway, you're with me. We'll call for backup if things go wrong to stop him or it or whatever he is."
"If things do go wrong, I'd like to see you try," Xanatos muttered under his breath.
Brooklyn shot him a look and said, "Look, I understand how dangerous he could be, but Lester also said this was trial. In a trial, you get to put up arguments. Perhaps there's still a diplomatic solution out of this. We're our own lawyers now."
"Do you know the success rate of those who represent themselves in court?" Xanatos muttered with a wry little smile.
The gargoyle looked ready to debate the point, but must've changed his mind. "I'd like to have a talk with Lester. Like it or not, he's our only source of knowledge."
"Don't bother, Brooklyn. He's in a yoga trance." Owen commented.
Again, Brooklyn opened his mouth as if to speak but decided spare himself the pain. "Right… Let's hope we can have a peaceful ending to this, ok?"
The clan and Owen had some further things to talk about, but Xanatos didn't listen. He sat on a nearby chair next to the hospital bed Angela had spent the night in and fought valiantly to stay awake. He wasn't missing much; Lexington was asking about whatever Owen meant by Lester being in a 'yoga trance'.
Xanatos didn't know whether the tiredness had turned him into a pessimist or if it was his common sense talking, but he had a nasty feeling things weren't going to have a peaceful ending at all.
Nevertheless, he closed his eyes and drifted off. If a demigod went on a killing spree, not even a clan of gargoyles could stop him. He would've thought Oberon taught them that a long time ago.
* * *
And had Xanatos been a mind reader, he would've known Brooklyn was thinking the exact same thing.
In the company of Broadway and Lexington, he glided back to Elisa's apartment. Honestly, he wasn't too sure what good he could be and he had the sickening feeling things were about get even more complicated. He did feel mildly sorry about Mr. Anderson. He sounded like a nice guy.
"What are we going to do? Give him a pep talk?" Broadway suggested with an ironic smile.
"I guess it's a start." Lexington replied.
Brooklyn was about to argue, but Broadway's playful suggestion sunk in. And he remembered Lester's words the night before. "Well… yes. A pep talk. The door swings two ways."
"That's one dangerous door…" Broadway muttered. "Makes you wonder what the hell Titania had been thinking when she started this mess."
Not that Broadway understood very well the subtle dynamics of collapsing a universe. He only knew that Titania had sent them a loose cannon and that something very, very bad would happen if he went psycho. And maybe that was all that he needed to know.
Lester had explained it to Brooklyn last night, and he in turn to the clan, although he understood their bewilderment. After all, how could such abstract concepts ever wreck life as they knew it? Time travel, paradoxes… so unreal.
In any case, Lester said that any meddling with this time-track was certain doom. It wasn't 'fixing time' or picking up the train and settling it down where you wanted it. It was ramming the train into a side of a hill.
"The life that Titania wants already exists in some other unreachable plane", Lester explained in the few hours before sunrise the night before, "A parallel world, occupying the same place and time as us in a bizarre way. And even if she managed to time travel and change time… ah, it is the old grandfather paradox. Save your daughter from Oberon's stupidities, sure, but if your daughter is saved, what the hell are you still doing here? Kill your grandfather? Ok. Then how can you exist? You can't. You're wiped out. Dead. Kaput. The laws of physics look down on time-travel."
"And then there's this other problem…the mere fact that the gods have allowed Seres to happen means that they are willing to shut us down. Seres' mere presence indicates that the gods don't like us very much. If they did, this would've never happened."
Amazingly enough, Brooklyn thought that wasn't necessarily true. What God would want the destruction of their creation because of one depressed queen? The gods know Titania would go down with her ship and that she wouldn't enjoy life with Fox because the timeline would collapse.
Sure, they allowed it to happen.
But they also gave them the instrument to stop it, didn't they?
Brooklyn thought long and hard over everything that had happened and everything Lester told him. He thought about paradoxes and time travel and quantum physics. He remembered Goliath and the others and how much he loved them. He understood the love Titania had for her family. And he cut through the essence of Lester's words and thought he was beginning to see the forest from the trees.
And just like that, he understood the Hand That Writes It All a bit better. And he saw no reason to panic yet.
PART TWO
He felt odd. Maybe the most remarkable thing he felt was that he had always felt odd but only now he had acknowledged it.
Dennis didn't feel particularly different. It just felt like he had begun to appreciate something that for a long time he had taken from granted. Like… a painting. A painting in a wall you see everyday until one day you stop and actually look at it. He felt like this in a Chinese restaurant some time ago. All his life he thought he saw a chef's hat in the logo when it was actually a cauldron and two sticks. It was so silly. He just hadn't really looked at it before.
He should've known. Everybody else knew. How come he hadn't noticed then? He knew that being an insomniac was unnatural, but even insomniacs eventually get tired and fall asleep. He recalled going almost three weeks without sleeping. Three weeks. What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn't even felt tired or sick or grouchy. He had just assumed that it was natural (in that unnatural sort of way) for an insomniac to go that long without sleeping. There was always a little worry, yes, that he wasn't being a normal insomniac, but really… how could he have known?
There were other things. Other little things he had taken from granted and assumed to fit perfectly, only they didn't. On the surface, they looked normal, but compared to other persons', they were totally bizarre.
How did a medical researcher end up as Xanatos' secretary? What were the odds of that?
He thought back to that first meeting, with the lawyer and Tiffany. "You didn't even let me read all the files!" Tiff had yelled to the lawyer. "I grabbed the first one from the pile, just like you told me to!"
First one from the pile. In alphabetical order. Anderson, Dennis. "No…" he whispered to himself. "The odds…"
Then the memories, or complete lack thereof, after Mary's death. "Because I died too," he muttered bitterly, "There's nothing to remember."
Although that wasn't entirely correct either. He did recall something that indeed happened between the accident and his awakening. There was something still there. But he couldn't recall it, other than it had been… very pleasant.
Maybe because those memories weren't entirely of his own. Being there didn't automatically make him owner of such knowledge. He knew that much. He knew.
He was also aware he shared duties with something else.
Although that wasn't entirely correct either.
Because there really wasn't much difference between them, if 'them' was the right pronoun.
(What he didn't know, that Puck and Xanatos and the gargoyles and everybody else for that matter didn't know either, with the exception of Lester, who had a vague idea, was how much 'they' (if 'they' was the correct pronoun) overlapped. So when he explained things to Elisa, he (Dennis) was perfectly aware of what he was saying and those odd relapses and mixing up of pronouns seemed perfectly normal the same way not sleeping for three weeks had seemed normal. And if Elisa Maza ever pointed them out some day (a day far away from today, as she was too panic stricken to think right this particular day), he still wouldn't think much of it besides Freudian slips of the metaphysical sort. He would need to sit down and seriously think about it to realize that those words hadn't exactly come from himself. But right now, the line between 'them' was like a line in a beach. They couldn't help but overlap. He was perfectly aware of what he said. He was just unaware of how creepy it sounded when he said it.)
And he still didn't know what to do next. A strange image came to him: on one hand, he saw a dazzling pattern made of multicolored strings, on the other… Nothingness.
He did not understand.
He thought about these things while resisting the urge to poke the toy cat and make its head bob up and down. Looking at it was delightful for some reason, although he was sure he'd seen one of those before. Everything looked so strange and new today. It seemed a little darker, as if someone had adjusted a computer monitor, and highlighted a few things and dimmed some others. He wasn't sure he liked it, but it was interestingly enough to demand more investigation.
Elisa Maza was very interesting and he read the possibilities of something great in her future. But he had the notion something was wrong in her. There was a shadow in her eyes that was almost tangible and it covered her face like a thin black veil. He knew that things hadn't always been like that with her.
But his mind was not yet able to grasp the significance of such a vision.
He knew, however, that she was trying to tell him something.
After their first talk, she offered him dinner, and while he was very hungry, he didn't feel like eating. She was staring at him intently, and it didn't take a mild psychic to interpret she wanted something from him. She attempted by the means of civil conversation.
"So… you're one of the Fates…" she said the same way you could say, 'Oh, so you're a Cubs fan'.
It took him awhile to come up with a reply. It was harder than he thought. There was something interfering with his mind, and while not entirely unpleasant, he didn't wish to experience it at the moment. But it was so difficult. Like driving through fog. Fog could be very pretty, but it was just in his way at the moment. It felt like… a warning.
He was making a conscious attempt to focus on what she was saying. She was saying something about his scythe. He kept trying, focusing his attention on the right here and the right now, and he managed to turn the diversion around him into white noise, like a man who lived near the beach eventually got used to the sound of the waves.
He still didn't understand how or what he had just done, but the colors of the room turned back to normal and the cat with the bobbing head was once more a trite toy.
Then he really looked at her. She was rather pretty. First time they met, she was angry and ready to choke Xanatos to death. Today, she was still wearing the red jacket, but her face was one of concern. "Are you ok?"
"Yes, yes, I'm ok." Actually, he was beginning to realize how un-ok he was. The fog was lifting. And he was beginning to remember. He thought back to what he had done in the castle. Wow, he passed through walls and turned a $50,000 desk into splinters. He thought of Mr. Xanatos and Mr. Puck and muttered, a bit worried, "I hope they don't make me pay for it…"
"Pay for what?" Elisa asked.
"Mr. Xanatos' big black desk… I sort of… wrecked it."
Elisa chuckled, delighted. Then she turned a bit serious. "You really had no idea, right? I read your files, I…" she sighed. "I don't get along very well with Xanatos. I think that's… blatantly obvious. But sometimes, since our…well, 'turf' you could call it… overlaps, I'm forced to cooperate. But I would really like to be your friend and help you do… whatever it is you have to do."
He considered his options. Actually, he didn't understand his options very well. "You could start by telling me what I'm supposed to do. I mean, I know I'm the 'judge', but I'm very muddled on what I'm supposed to do."
Elisa scratched her head. "Well, as far as we could make out, Titania had this whole plan… she wanted to, I dunno, change time. I don't know if you've met Titania—"
"The green lady."
The cop blinked in the startle. "Ye-yes, that's her. The daughter… her name was Fox." Her thoughts started drifting for a moment, "And there was a gargoyle…"
"Goliath. The big one."
Her silence lasted a little longer this time. "Yes," she said, her eyes glinting an odd way. "Goliath."
But he didn't catch it. "She wants to use me to bring them back."
She leaned a little closer and said, "Is that possible?" with a strange sense of urgency. "To bring the dead back to life?"
Then the truth of his existence finally sunk in.
"How long ago was it?" he said very suddenly.
"Was what?"
"Since I died… because I died, didn't I?"
Now he could remember it a little better, although he suddenly wished he hadn't exorcised the fog.
He told her to watch out for that stuff. He told her. They weren't supposed to be there so late at night. Everybody had gone home. Yes, the deadline for the paper was coming, yes, her parents would be arriving next week and then she'd have no time, but she hadn't slept very well all week…
And then Lester came in, he was nagging him about the last details of the bachelor party, and asking about whether he wanted a redhead or a brunette for a stripper, and he was really tired and in no mood for his stupid jokes…
And then he heard her shriek and he turned around and they sat her, the lab coat had caught fire, it must've been an acid, they couldn't put it out with water, and she was dancing around, screaming, on fire, and she crashed into a computer terminal and then…
And then it all went downhill, didn't it? And then something snapped and hit him, right in the base of his skull, didn't it? A very quick burst of pain—
Dennis slumped back in the couch and rubbed the back on his head. The detective was still looking, unsure whether she needed to say something.
But he knew what she wanted before she knew it herself.
He sighed wearily. "Don't look at me like that, Miss Maza. I can't bring him back."
* * *
That was it, wasn't it? That was what she wanted to ask him.
Elisa perked up and looked at him. He had summarized in five seconds all her desires, the force that had made her drive to Eerie Building in the right moment. No, she didn't get him out of there out of pity of her pure heart. Dammit, that pompous bastard got Owen back, then why couldn't she get Goliath!?
The idea wasn't even an idea in the sense of the word when he said it. No, it had only been a wish, an unconscious desire, something that she desperately wanted to put into words so that she could read them and understand her own heart.
The idea had gnawed in her mind when Lester brought back the demented copy of Goliath. Matt had dragged her out of the Cloisters and to the parking lot, with Broadway and Angela, and the latter was badly hurt.
She had felt so strange that night. And then it hit her: she was actually glad to see Goliath back, even if it wasn't really him. She had been so Absolutely and Utterly Happy.
She had been Absolutely and Utterly Happy when he attacked her and she had been Even More Absolutely and Joyously Happy when she saw Xanatos dragging his lackey, who judging from the look on that face, must've been beaten with three iron pipes.
And if somebody accused her of being content over the unhappiness of other people, she would say you're damn fucking right I am, especially if those people were the ones that got Goliath killed in the first place.
And she returned to the present to face a creature she wouldn't mind to see tossed off the third floor of her building. And with a hatred that must've been fueled from the fiery pits of Hades personally tended by Satan himself, she said, with an unnatural politeness, "You. Have. To."
"I can't." he quietly replied. "You don't understand, do you? I know what you're thinking. You are sitting there, wondering why someone you don't even know is holding the one thing that can make or break a world. The answer is that I'm not supposed to be here. I don't know how Titania did this, or why it was allowed. I put my faith in that IT knows what its doing."
"IT allows this to happen," she countered, but the words came from another place and she was transforming them to suit her will, "because she loves us. You cannot interfere, Dennis. You were brought here for the only purpose of bringing them back."
"I was dragged out of rest by a petulant queen consumed by grief!" he snapped back, "Where's my justice? You can't expect anyone who ever had a second chance to just give it up! Give it up for a mistake someone else made. And who are you to talk!? You don't even know me!"
She stood up and the sensation returned to his mind and he saw something was dangerously wrong with her.
"How dare you?" she spat accusingly, "You are nothing, you are no one to stand in my way! I refuse to think I'm the one that's going to be left out in the cold! If I don't have him, he won't have him! If I'm going to spend the rest of my life miserable, I'm going to have some company!"
And he felt a song start in the back of his mind, something he heard once and found very pleasant, that recalled the deep blue sea back when ships hadn't been invented, like sea waves, or maybe a waterfall, in the distance…
And she heard drums, pounding madly and out of synch, and cries of war that were going straight against a pretty song that was about springs and bluebirds, until the drums and the dissonance obliterated it and she couldn't hear even the hint of it anymore.
* * *
Back in his jail cell, Lester Kramer snapped awake.
"What the hell—?"
Alarmed, he jumped to his feet and gripped the cell bars, searching with his eyes something that wasn't there. His eyes drifted to the floor and he yelled to anyone who happened to be listening, "Somebody get me Xanatos! Now!"
PART THREE
As he approached the apartment, Brooklyn got the nagging feeling he had forgotten something. Rather obnoxious feeling, like a cut in a finger, like looking at a picture and sensing that something in the colors was off. They swooped down and landed on the rooftop of the other building right across Elisa's.
"Me first," he told Lexington and Broadway with a sigh, "I'll scream if I need anything."
No use endangering them all. Somebody has to stay behind to rescue me if something goes wrong, Brooklyn thought silently. Because the air here feels so…thick.
"Like a swamp…" the beaked gargoyle muttered without meaning to.
Like a swamp or a thick, uncomfortable tropical forest, like the ones he saw on the Travel Channel, where these places look hot and terribly uncomfortable.
Unwittingly, Brooklyn took several deep breaths as his subconscious caught up with him. "Hey, doesn't it feel hot in here?"
Lexington gave him a curious look. Blinking in surprise, he replied, "Not really. Feeling kind of drafty if you ask me."
Broadway wanted to say something too when they all felt it. A jolt, or maybe somebody calling their names although there was no one there. They saw a flare of light from Elisa's apartment, like a really potent flash from a powerful camera.
"Not this again!" Broadway groaned loudly. "Should we charge?!"
"No, wait...!" Brooklyn began, but Broadway had leapt off the edge, with Lexington close behind him.
Brooklyn ran and peered down the edge, but did not leap. He didn't know whether charging was the best idea. Frankly, he had no clue as to what the hell he was doing.
But just when he was ready to join his companions, he heard it, although hearing wasn't quite the word.
He sensed it. But he didn't really sense it. He perceived something from a great distance, that had this been inside a room, he would have to put his ear to the door to really try to make sense of it.
He saw himself peering down the edge and towards the street below, but he could not see any cars. Instead, he saw a great black chasm, very dangerous but terribly exciting, like a cave waiting to be explored when one was feeling particularly courageous. It was exotic and invigorating, even intoxicating. It didn't feel wrong, but it invited a sense of wariness, because too much of it all at once would've been ill to his health.
But it welcomed him like a polite host and said, with the kind smile of a very old thing that almost never received visitors, "Welcome. We've been expecting you."
* * *
It was exotic. The three gargoyles could sense it in the walls, could smell it in the air, could feel it all around themselves and they were just in the balcony. Lex and Broadway hadn't entered, later they confessed it had struck them as a ludicrously bad idea, that this was insane, that they should flee as fast as they could, that they weren't invited to this place.
Brooklyn saw their eyes, but he didn't feel particularly afraid. Later he would confess that he felt a great sense of adventure when he touched the handle and opened the glass door. He knew he didn't have to tell the others to stay back; they already knew that.
Brooklyn knew that the person sitting in the sofa was not quite of this world. He sat, with the same pose of a college professor in his teatime, wise and kind, but with little tolerance for nonsense. And he knew that it welcomed him and that he had been expecting him for some time.
He also knew that Elisa Maza was currently testing his patience.
"Can you feel it?" she hissed quietly and shot Brooklyn a murderous look. "You can, can't you? It's all around. In every speck of this apartment…" she pointed an accusing finger at the one in the sofa and spat, "His name is Seres and he's standing in our way. We could have it all, Brooklyn! We could have the whole world!"
She didn't look normal. She was a hawk, and she was pacing back and forth without taking her eyes off Seres, ready to strike.
For a moment, Brooklyn thought he saw a black veil over her eyes, masking something dark and terrible that had no business in being in Elisa Maza.
Brooklyn turned to Seres, who gave him a knowing look, sharing a secret the gargoyle was vaguely aware of, like a magician about to teach him a card trick with a deck of specialized cards.
Sit down and pay attention.
Seres unlocked eyes with him and stood up. And Brooklyn realized he hadn't taken a breath yet. He inhaled and forced his eyes to focus.
He felt his mind drift and his face acquired the dazed look of someone who was on the telephone merely nodding to a boring conversation. And he let himself go, because he got the feeling this was like one of those paintings where you had to relax your eyes to see the pattern.
Stand very still. Stare without looking. A kid who's not paying attention. From the corner of his eye, he sees something moving. Don't move. You won't see it if you look at it.
He was vaguely aware Seres had stood up and was holding the scythe with his right hand. "Do you see what I see?"
"Yes…" Brooklyn whispered.
"It's all his fault!" Elisa continued with darkness in her eyes, "He goaded Goliath into helping him with those sad puppy eyes! Can't anyone see the injustice done to me!? Seres isn't our deliverer, Brooklyn! He is of no use to us! He won't obey his orders! He is supposed to bring them back! Goliath's supposed to be alive, he's supposed to be here, with me!"
"Do you believe her?"
"I don't know…"
"What's there to believe!?" she continued, "What's there to question!? You know I'm right, Brooklyn, we're not supposed to be here! This is not fair! This is not fair!"
She grabbed a porcelain figurine close to her and hurled it to the floor. It released a satisfying crash that scattered bits of porcelain all over the living room. And then she grabbed another one and then another one, and then she went to the kitchen, opened all cabinets and destroyed all the china, and she threw them all like discus, aiming them at Seres, the whole focus of her abhorrence.
Brooklyn took a step back—
Don't move. Stand still. There's another here. There. You can't see it. It sees you. Close. It's trying to sneak up on you. Don't move. It'll try to touch you if you don't pay attention. Moving by the curtains. Slithering through the floor. Somewhere behind the sofa. You've felt it in your steps. When you come home. In a thug's shadow. Behind a Dumpster. Two steps in front of you. One step behind. Have courage. Have heart.
She started knocking over precious things that had once meant a lot to her, little trinkets that adorned her tables, paintings that decorated her walls. "I hate you!" she was yelling at the top of her lungs, "I hate you! I wish I'd never met you, I wish none of this had ever happened! I hate all of you! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"
Seres merely looked at her with increasing dissatisfaction. The things she threw at Seres ricocheted away by an unseen force around him, flying away in all sorts of unexpected directions. He turned to Brooklyn and said, very softly, but very firm, "I have a trial to conduct, but she is in my way. I'm afraid I shall have to remove her. I have to do what I have to do. Do you understand me?"
"Yes. But please… don't hurt her."
Elisa's eyes widened with betrayal. "You…! I always knew I couldn't trust you! You never understood me, you never wanted to understand! You're weak, Brooklyn! You— what are you doing!?"
Brooklyn had done nothing; she shot that question at Seres when her legs buckled. She fell to her knees and could not stand.
She was frozen there, kneeling, and she saw with increasing hatred how Seres approached her. Stopping just a few steps in front of her, he raised his scythe high and got ready to swing it down where Elisa's neck happened to be in the way.
"Go ahead!" Elisa spat with venom, "Go ahead, I dare you! I loved him, Seres, and your lot took him away! I know how Love works, Seres! I can recreate him if I want to! You know I can! Because if Titania did it, I can do it too! That's the secret of the gods! Love is the key to make the world in my image!"
"Love was also the key that helped make hell. I thought you understood. Love is destructive under a crescent moon. Then it stops being love and becomes what you hold now in power. Let it go."
"Make me!"
"Very well. If you don't give it up willingly, I have no qualms about taking it by force." Seres turned to Brooklyn for a moment. "Are you afraid?"
The gargoyle felt something in his throat and tears were beginning to cloud his vision. From a strength he didn't know he still had tucked away in his heart, he choked a sob and croaked, "Yes!"
"Won't you stop me?"
"No!" Brooklyn managed to say between sobs, and he tried to catch his breath and he tried to get a hold of himself and he was failing miserably, and he simply let go completely and utterly, and he said, "We do what we have to do! I get it! I do, I really do! I know IT just wants the best! But you have to understand that we're afraid! We're so afraid, all of us! We don't always understand! Sometimes you do things that are more than we can bear!"
"We do our best. We do what we have to do."
"I know…" Brooklyn said, as he closed his eyes and held onto the couch for support, as he let a moment of emotional vacuum take over, the feeling of resignation. "…we do what we have to do… and just hope for the best…" He inhaled and exhaled, and opening his eyes a bit he saw Elisa's dark eyes focus on Seres in the fashion of a demon from hell. "I believe in the best… I believe everything will be ok…I believe we all fight for the best."
Brooklyn closed his eyes again and gripped couch so hard he could feel his talon's ripping the fabric. He took a deep breath. And exhaled.
He could practically see the scythe's swish downwards and feel it slice the air.
* * *
And Brooklyn opened his eyes and found himself in a park. It was an autumn midday and the air was refreshingly chilly. The golden leaves of the trees and on the path tinted everything in orange. He stared up and saw a flock of birds fly above him—
Don't move. Stay very, very still, because it won't happen again. Good. Breathe. In and out, slowly. Don't be afraid. Be wary, but not afraid. Just a little more before the matter is settled. Just a little more.
He saw three humans in the distance, one he knew well, another he knew by reputation, and a woman, a pretty blonde, talking to each other, saying things Brooklyn's ears couldn't quite pick up.
"…meeting is thick with birds…" the woman was saying.
* * *
Lexington opened his eyes. He was lying on the balcony, in a position that allowed him to see the dust particles in the floor. It occurred to him that he had never seen Elisa's apartment from this perspective, and that it would be interesting to try it out in the Clock Tower.
Broadway woke up next and muttered something about not having second servings again. He said so with the same disgust of an alcoholic who woke up with a hangover and swore to never touch a bottle again. When he gets better, though, he'll crack open a beer. Broadway's equivalent would be making himself a sandwich.
They stood and stared inside Elisa's apartment. When they saw the destruction, they hurried inside in alarm. There had been an intruder, right? They dimly remembered that that was the whole point of their visit—
They saw them. Right across each other, Elisa sitting on the floor, eyes downcast, rubbing her temples; Brooklyn crouched in front of her, staring firmly.
She looked up at the gargoyle and they stared at each other for time eternal. He stood up. And stretched out a hand.
Elisa looked at the hand, then at the owner. No man or otherwise could tell what was in her mind, maybe because there was nothing there at all. But she seemed to sit there for a long time, maybe thinking about her life up until that moment or maybe just sitting there and not thinking at all.
After a long moment, she said, "I saw a park."
Brooklyn nodded in reply. He still held out his hand.
She took it and he helped her up.
"Maza, you fool!" a voice interrupted, "I could've killed you!"
Turning around slowly, Brooklyn exchanged stares with a strange young man on his knees, gasping for breath loudly, a death grip on his scythe, shooting Elisa a scathing look.
Brooklyn slowly and methodically sized up the divinity before them— he was on his knees, clutching his chest and looking as if he just ran a marathon. Upset, tired and angry, it wasn't what Brooklyn was expecting. He couldn't be over thirty five.
He seemed normal enough, at first, anyway. But Lester was right, it was a farce, and the more he looked at the man, the odder he seemed. It wasn't very obvious. It was, like it often happened, just there. Somewhere between normal and not-so-normal.
"So you are Seres…" Brooklyn said with awe.
The man merely panted and gave him that 'too-tired-to-deal-with-this' look. He was more worried about himself, about the tug-of-war inside of him that Brooklyn couldn't possibly understand.
"Oh," he whispered, more to himself than the others, "I feel so strange now…"
"Because you're awake now, aren't you?" Brooklyn said quickly, earning looks from Elisa and the other two gargoyles. "Are you going to start it now!?"
The man, too, gave him a curious look. "Not until I get some answers!" he said, reproaching. He couldn't think straight, not yet. He gathered enough of his strength to ask, "Titania's behind all of this, isn't she? The woman with the stupid hair?"
"Ye—yeah, the hair—" Brooklyn began to stutter, "But Seres—"
"Do you know where she is!?"
"No… no, no one knows." The gargoyle replied.
"In other words, she's still hiding," the man spat, "Fine. But I'm not lifting a finger until she shows up to face me! I'll smoke her out; I'll move heaven and earth until I find her!"
He got to his feet, using the scythe for leverage while Brooklyn debated over what that meant. He didn't have much time to think about it; the man looked just about ready to leave. "Wait! Where are you going!? Seres, there's so much we have to talk about!"
The deity looked at him and seemed to really notice him this time around. And his expression softened just a bit. "Later, gargoyle. I promise I'll get this straightened out after I'm done with the fairy queen…"
"Seres, wait—!"
Brooklyn's complaints didn't make dent. By the time the last syllable was spoken, the god was already gone.
"Titania…" Brooklyn whispered softly, "…oh, no…"
PART FOUR
Lester wasn't sure about what had happened. The only sure thing was that it was over.
Trust the idiots around him to make things even worse. Can't even chant a stupid mantra with some disturbance or another snapping him out of it. He didn't know which was scarier: that while he was meditating he could feel the thing lurking about in the city, or that something that had been entirely unrelated had suddenly snapped. Well, relatively unrelated, to be more precise in a business where everything is nauseatingly vague.
Well, whatever that had been, it was gone, and now the good old presence was alone again. Back to step one, Lester guessed.
He was also very aware that the thing was looking for someone. Knowing his luck, it was probably him. He asked the guard about what was taking Xanatos so long. "I feel the impulse to remind you that creation is at stake…"
"Yeah, yeah…" the guard sighed, annoyed.
Xanatos dignified him with his presence some good fifteen minutes after the scary thing Lester had sensed was all but over. Owen tagged along, maybe for the hell of it. Very well, Lester could have some use of him too. "How nice of you to show up when everything is over…"
The millionaire grunted annoyed. He had a sleepy look on his face; he had probably been taking a nap. "Lester, what do you want?" he sighed as he crossed his arms.
He ignored him and turned to Owen instead. "I've been monitoring our little friend, Burnett. Figured I had to do it while you people stand around sucking your thumbs. The thing is that I encountered something… Seres just butted heads with something, I'm not sure what… but while you were standing in the elevator trying to figure out which button is down, it blew over. Still, I'm a little worried…"
"I sense a disturbance in the Force…" Xanatos said with a mocking grave tone.
Lester shot him a murderous look but ignored the comment. Apparently, he was the only one who was doing the heavy lifting when it came to thinking logically. "Try to follow my reasoning, you pair of geniuses. If Seres has just caused some ruckus, and he happened to be in Maza's apartment with the gargoyles, then whatever happened to Maza and the gargoyles?"
Xanatos opened his mouth. And closed it again. "Oh, dear…"
"Ding-ding! You've just won a lovely refrigerator!"
After the two idiots finally caught up with the program, they quietly exited to actually do something about it. Lester, for all the valuable help he had just given them, was rewarded by being left there to rot in the jail cell for a couple of more hours. So much for gratitude.
He felt frustrated. He felt immensely, bitterly, over-the-wall frustrated. He had long feared he was the only intelligent creature in Manhattan, but the events of these last few hours confirmed it. It seemed that he was the only one in the castle, nay, the whole island, with brains. The world was full of fools. Like the cliché goes, in the land of the blind, the one eyed is king. In this case, in the New York of the obtuse, only Lester Kramer, Halfling god, had some idea of what was actually going on.
Heaven help us all, a cynical voice muttered in the back of Lester's mind, Because there are some things even I can't understand beyond a very abstract level.
Case in point: the magical backlash he had just felt. He knew Seres had something to do with it, but coming to that conclusion was merely a process of elimination, as he was the only one in Manhattan powerful enough to pull a stunt like that. But what had ticked Seres off, well, that was beyond Lester's semi-divine knowledge.
Worse, Seres had dropped out of radar after that. That was beginning to disturb him. Maybe he had gone back to sleep?
He sighed and sat down in an improvised bed the Goon Squad had been kind enough to provide for the cell. He knew that he was probably doomed. Not only did he know he was going to die, soon, very soon, by being shot in the head, but that if by some fluke he escaped that fate (because he was actually quite accurate about those things, and it was the only thing he regretted about being a demi-god) there was still a chance Seres could blow up the world. So it made him wonder why he was even bothering. Things looked pretty bleak at that moment.
But dammit, he couldn't give up.
Common sense demanded that he should spend the last moments of existence reading a book, donating to charity or planting a tree, (well, the tree wouldn't survive and neither the charity, but you get the point), but, damn his stubbornness, he wasn't about to hang up the gloves just yet.
Yes, he was outnumbered. Yes, he was trapped in a cell. Yes, he was going to get shot in a couple of hours. Call Lester Kramer what you want, but above all insulting epithets, he was a fighter. If he was going down, he was going in a blaze of glory and dragging down everybody else with him.
As long as I breathe, I hope. But if I lose hope and I'm still breathing, I'm going to berate Xanatos and company for their stupidity until Kingdom Come. Which is probably in the next seventy-two hours.
* * *
He told himself he wasn't going to call her. But look at him now, dialing the phone number with a sense of fatality and worry. David Xanatos was seriously worried, but he had yet to pinpoint the focus of his worry. Generally speaking, he was worried about the complete destruction of all he held dear, but when he thought about it, that was just a satellite worry, like the moon circling the Earth.
In this particular moment, he was worried that Elisa Maza wasn't picking up the phone. That provided a number of scenarios that didn't suit well David Xanatos' conscience. It could mean that Elisa's apartment was no more and she and the gargoyles —Brooklyn, Broadway and Lexington— had departed his mortal realm.
That did not suit him well at all.
It seemed, however, disturbingly likely if Lester was telling the truth. While Lester couldn't be trusted wholeheartedly, he wanted to stop Seres too, and that pretty much kept him in line and forced him to cooperate with the clan.
"She's not picking up, is she!?" Hudson said, looking over Xanatos' shoulder, doing nothing to help the situation. "That's it! We're leaving!"
The remaining gargoyles, Angela, Bronx and Hudson, put on their war faces and started charging out of Xanatos' office. If she didn't pick up, it must've meant that she was in trouble, and Brooklyn and the other guys too.
"And what exactly do you want to achieve?" Owen interrupted, "If Seres is loose, there's not much you gargoyles can do about it. He's powerful, he's—"
"Well, what exactly do you want us to do!?" Hudson snapped back.
That was the crux of their problems in a nutshell. They had no idea, no clue as to what to do next. They had been told to either to talk the judge out of destroying the world or kill him before he did, and neither choice was easily implemented. Especially if they didn't know how he would react, hell, he didn't even know the human who controlled it.
"Let us think this logically—" Owen began, trying to make up a plan on the go, because he honestly didn't have a clue either.
"Yeeees…" the old gargoyle interrupted, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Let us entertain the possibility Brooklyn's diplomacy failed and the worse has happened."
At this, Xanatos perked up. He didn't like the turn of that conversation. "And do what, exactly?" he said, with a self-righteousness he didn't know he had in him, him of all people, "Kill Dennis? He deserves better than that— he's a nice guy. It's not even his fault he got caught up in this mess. Trust me, he wouldn't hurt a fly."
"Yes, but maybe that Seres thing is not as well-behaved," Angela said, speaking up for the first time, "I think its time to consider that if diplomacy didn't work, more drastic measures are needed." Her look turned a little softer. "I mean, he's not even human."
Xanatos exchanged looks with Owen. He suddenly found himself in a moral position he never in his wildest dreams thought he could take. He, David Xanatos, the terror of Wall Street, the Golden Boy Gone Bad, the Prince of Darkness was actually pleading for the life of a nice guy against the gargoyles, the Pillars of Morality Made Flesh and Stone.
What the hell was going on here?
Maybe it was because he felt that this was all Titania's fault to begin with, sprinkled with the fact that he personally knew Dennis. But he felt in a very uncomfortable situation and he wasn't sure what to say. Someone of his pedigree saying those things was an invitation to hypocrisy.
"That's not the point," Owen said, apparently because he inwardly agreed with Xanatos, "He's just another victim. We should try to speak to him."
"Right. In any case, this is Titania's fault." Xanatos quickly added.
But then Owen shot him a look, "How is this Titania's fault?"
Maybe he didn't agree wholeheartedly with Xanatos. Xanatos felt tempted to go into full ranting mode on how this was the Third Race's entire fault, but that would add nothing important to the discussion. "Anyway," he said, quickly changing the subject, "We should try to figure out why Elisa isn't picking up the phone."
For all I know, she can have a caller id and just refuses to take this number to spite me, Xanatos thought quietly. Or maybe she's just dead.
The callousness of that thought chilled his soul. He had fantasized about getting Elisa off his back countless time, but this was the only time he actually felt bad about it.
Man, this was a bewildering night.
Must be the lack of sleep.
Unknown to them, Brooklyn was just making his way back to the castle, with Lexington right behind him and Broadway carrying Elisa. And that Xanatos' night was going to get both simpler and more confusing at the same time.
* * *
Elisa Maza sighed and plopped down in what was the nearest thing you could call a living room in the castle. Said 'living room' was actually the throne room, and it was the size of a football field. There was a lone computer terminal in the end and the east wall was the famous window that overlooked Manhattan.
Perhaps a more accurate name would be a waiting room at the doctor's office. A really, really big waiting room. With tenth century tapestries that Bronx had once scratched a long, long time ago.
Anyway, there she was.
Brooklyn was explaining what happened in the apartment back in Xanatos' office with the others. Elisa had been there, and while she didn't necessarily understand it, she didn't want to understand. It was complicated, really. She claimed she wanted to be alone for awhile and removed to the Great Hall, hoping to escape the funny looks they would have when Brooklyn said his piece.
It was late, around midnight, which considering their lifestyles, it wasn't late at all. She was rather hungry, but she couldn't bring herself to ask for anything. Too much pride stood in the way of food. So she decided to wait it out.
Eventually, one solitary figure did emerge from the conference room. Unfortunately, it was the owner of the castle.
When they arrived, they had been grilled with a barrage of questions that Elisa hadn't known to answer. They were tired, even Lexington and Broadway. And something had happened that she couldn't explain.
Xanatos in particular looked especially confused when they arrived. He said some nonsense about calling and thinking the worst and asked what had happened and what happened to Anderson. She left at that moment, claiming tiredness, and skipped the rest of the debate.
Now he emerged, the look of confusion all but lifted, and he stood before her with his customary arrogance. "Your presence is required, Detective. The guys are wondering what you're going to do now."
He didn't really have to come all the way over here to tell her that. He could've sent Owen. But she wisely deduced his real reason for catching her alone, away from the gargoyles like this. His eyes said it all: we could've made some progress with Seres but your little hissy fit got in the way. We could've had him, but Brooklyn had to let him go. So this is your fault and all is well in my world.
"Well," she said, regaining the tread of the conversation, "What are you guys going to do?"
"Lester thinks Seres is asleep. If I'm thinking what Lester's thinking, that means Dennis is back in charge. We can talk him into not killing us all and he'll be more receptive."
Very quietly, she said, "He's some sort of death god, you know."
Xanatos perked up interested.
She went on. "He explained it to me, but…I don't know how to explain it…Seres was too much in charge and Dennis was barely perceptible. I don't know how much I can trust his explanation. Anyway, 'they' said that this wasn't supposed to happen. Apparently, summoning one of the Fates is not a common occurrence." She was staring at the floor, not at him, as she spoke this. "If it means anything to you, you can tell when Seres is speaking because your head feels funny."
"Funny?"
"Weird," she elaborated, "The whole room gets filled with a… presence. He's not evil. He's… very serious…but not evil. It happens when their personalities…" she trailed off for a moment, "…eclipse."
He nodded respectfully, but the respect lasted for a second. He couldn't help but say, a little mocking at last, "Heard you also got into a fight with him. Somehow, I don't think hurling china at him is going to stop him."
She looked up at Xanatos in a moment that burned between the strings of time and space.
And she started crying. It wasn't loud or demonstrative, but very quiet and almost to herself.
In the corner of her mind that she didn't know much about, she felt something akin to a release vault, a balloon that was slowly leaking air, until a weight in her shoulders became lighter and ultimately insignificant. Suddenly, she could breathe a little better, as if she had left the smokers area of a crowded restaurant. She realized she'd carried the burdens for a long time, as if they were a pair of sunglasses she forgot to remove when she entered a building.
The veil was lifted and Elisa Maza thought the carpet beneath her feet looked a bit more colorful than before.
Meanwhile, something shorted out in Xanatos' mental computer. It crashed spectacularly and the Windows Blue Screen of Death flashed before his eyes. It was because never, even in his most private fantasies, had he entertained the notion that Elisa would cry in his presence. Elisa rated quite high in his list of respect, right up there with Demona and Fox, because she was a warrior at heart and never took anybody's bullshit, and he had a soft spot for women that could break his jaw or send him to jail or actually be capable of putting up a fight against him. He liked women who could kick his ass. It was a sign of strength and he admired strength.
It was probably at that moment that he let go of his pride, of the web of half-truths he was starting to believe himself, and admitted, with a simplicity that was touching, how much he really admired Elisa Maza. He dimly understood that he had pushed her off the edge, that he had given her no small amount of bullshit since they met, and that she was probably among the strongest women he had ever known for lasting so long against the obstacles he put in her way.
Plus, you really had to admire a woman who actually made David Xanatos visibly uncomfortable.
She noticed him staring stupidly at the floor, like he really didn't wish to be there, but knew that he had to say something, because it was an unwritten rule that he had to say something comforting, and he racked his brain for an appropriate catch-phrase, so that he didn't look like a complete prick, but without letting her know she was forgiven, because she wasn't, how dare she turn on the water-works when he was so much better at bickering, you know, you are exasperating, Elisa Maza!
Somehow he ended up saying, "That's not fair…"
Elisa controlled herself enough to say, "Oh, stuff it…"
"That's not fair," he said, taking for granted she knew what he was talking about, and although she did, it was a tactical mistake from his part to assume it, it was still game time, the game they'd been playing since That Night. "That's not going to work. I can't talk to you if you're hysterical."
The sadness that overtook her was gone and she gasped insulted, "I am not hysterical. You caught me in bad moment. As much as I'd love to continue our verbal sparing, just let me wallow in my own pain, alright?"
Greatly relieved that she wasn't hysterical after all, he relaxed considerably. He couldn't handle hysterical. He needed to face equal opponents, not ones who manipulate emotions, because that was just way out of his league. He sat down in a nearby sofa and said, "Well, what the hell is wrong with you?"
She shot him a look. But she understood where he was coming from. They were mortal enemies and this was really awkward. You just don't show weakness to enemies. Xanatos would rather shoot himself in the foot than cry in front of her, in any case.
In fact, she was already lamenting actually shedding a tear in his presence. It certainly did nothing to her reputation. But a little voice in the back of her mind said, Get off your moral high horse and look around.
And absurdly enough, Elisa indeed looked around. And she saw, with surprising clarity, how really impressive this castle was, although it needed a bit more color, a nicer carpeting for once, and maybe ditching those fluorescent white lights that looked so impersonal, when in the long ago and the far away this had been the beating heart of a community lost to the centuries.
She looked at Xanatos and noticed he was quite tired, even if he tried his best to deny it. And letting go of his past deeds, she saw him as the person he was right now: a charming, magnetic man who had that elusive quality, that ability to draw people around him like a sun. For all his obnoxiousness, the countless assassination attempts, the mutates, Derek— here was a man with his own gravitational center, owner of a castle that used to be more than a glorified office, and both things that were capable of being so much more than what they were right now.
(And for a second, in an event that neither Brooklyn or Angela or a fey could understand, something that only Dennis had the potential to grasp if he truly put his mind to it, she saw in a flash of light the things that were to be, and the thing that surprised her most was how different it was, how everybody had gotten it wrong. She forgot it almost at once, but the ghostly memory remained in her subconscious forever, enough to make her say sometime in the days to come "I dreamed this" with the wonderment of a victim of deja-vu.)
"Well, are you coming or not?"
Elisa snapped out of it and realized she hadn't answered his previous question. He had decided to let go because he hadn't been looking forward into turning sappy in the first place. She decided to spare them both of the pain. "Just tell the guys I'm coming," she said with a great air of finality.
Sensing that the time for being subtle was over; he quietly sighed in relief and stood up. "Well, you know your way."
He was gone, and after a length of time, she found herself sighing in relief too. She stood up and made as if to go to the office. But she halted and turned for a moment towards the windowed wall that overlooked the city. She focused on the stars, in the distance.
She had seen a park, hadn't she? And a flock of white doves. And three strangers. One she knew well, one she knew by reputation and a woman she saw in a photo, already dead.
PART FIVE
Life and death met in a mundane apartment.
There were a lot of things Dennis didn't understand beyond a very basic level. But sometimes, basic level is just enough to get you around in life with minimal dents.
That was how he returned to his apartment, by toying around with the rules (as he understood them) to wish himself back in his home. It wasn't terribly difficult, but it was what certain educators called 'conscious incompetence'.
In other words, he was aware of how little he knew about his own powers.
(Which was a tragedy, because had he been in a better mood, or Lester Kramer were around to point it out for him, he would be capable of doing things that would make time-travel look like a parlor trick. What Kramer knew, Puck long suspected, and Titania was counting on, was that the sheer strength of power in his hands could rewrite history by just thinking about it.)
But what no one knew, not Xanatos, not Brooklyn, certainly not Titania, was just how frightening unlimited power was to Dr. Anderson.
He tried and tried, but he just couldn't bring himself to relax about it. It wasn't anything to be pleased about. It was a curse, and he wasn't sure what he'd done to deserve it.
And just what happened back there with Elisa Maza?
The scariest thing is neither the gargoyles, nor the queen, nor the gods. The terrifying thing is when that thing takes over, only that it doesn't work like that. It was always there. It just becomes obvious. Not like something alien, but more like climbing in a car and getting home. So routine that the car drives itself. I was doing things in automatic. I could've killed them… I could do anything inside that type of trance…
He wanted it to stop, but he had the horrible feeling it was more complicated like that.
Because, as he would realize sometime later, for all practical purposes, he was Seres, warts and all, because that's how that thing worked. And Kramer, he was a version of Seres too for a time, even if it didn't work out. It was a dream, this thing, and if you let the fantasy go too far, it's bound to backfire eventually.
If this thing was made of the same stuff the subconscious was made of, how, then, should he tie it down and stop the fantasy from growing out of proportion? The answer probably had something to do with self-discipline and time, and he had a shortage of the latter and not a lot of the first.
Or maybe you're simply asking the wrong question… a cynical little voice muttered in the back of his head. Everybody says you're Seres, but what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?
He felt a headache coming on…
What is Seres supposed to be, anyway? Or do? Is it an 'it'? A 'he', a 'she'? Or maybe an 'Us'?
More importantly, and ten thousand times more disturbing, was the huge gap between now and his past. It was beginning to dawn on him that there was to be no bridge between them, because… and this was the disturbing part…
…because he certainly felt that he was acting quite differently from the doctor that died a couple of months ago.
In fact, he was feeling like a brand-new person.
And that was very, very disturbing.
So much so, that a particularly macabre idea crossed his mind: like a brand- new computer, somebody had to buy him (or make a cheap copy of) an operating system to work.
The mere thought stunned far more than Puck's revelations, the trances he went into, or old and dusty memories of somebody named Mary, someone he might have (or might have not) met in another life (not necessarily his.)
And for the first time in his memory (false or otherwise), Dennis Anderson (whoever that might mean) felt true and unabashed anger. And he (whatever he was) wasn't going to sit down and do nothing about it. Not this particular Dennis, not anymore.
He heard a cynical little voice that sounded a whole lot like himself, especially in cold and lonely nights when he was feeling most contemptuous and sardonic about something, anything, it didn't matter what. It was commenting about how unacceptable this situation was, that something simply had to be done. It was coming from a very dark corner of his mind, the part inside every human that wants to get its way no matter how many dead bodies it has to step over, and it was very, very determined, drowning his common sense that demanded some sort of restraint.
Nope, the time for restraint was over; this had gone on for too long. He could accept everything and everyone else that crossed his path lately, but not this. If he was going to reclaim some sort of control over his life, he was going to have to make it happen by himself. He wasn't entire sure how the mechanism worked, but he knew what he wanted. All you need is the idea and the idea will find a way.
It was a wonderfully disorganized idea, great, epic and chaotic, going way beyond what he could normally see. Titania had a lot to explain. She was hiding somewhere else, and if he was going to question her, he was going to bring the Over There over here, where he could reach her better. Where he could talk to her face to face.
It was brilliant, direct, and doing away with the shadow dancing. A marvelous, simply marvelous idea, so wonderful he went at it straight away, without any outlines and just weaving it as he went along.
(What he was completely unaware of was that the idea was too dangerous to pull off, but he couldn't help it. Because that was how this god worked, tearing down windows and doors and crushing everything in his way. Dennis didn't know, indeed, couldn't have known, that this tendency to chaos was firmly imbedded in Seres' nature. So he couldn't have known that, in the end, it was THE WORST OF ALL IDEAS. But he couldn't know that just yet. Indeed, what he did know was how easy to came to him, and how nice it was after all, having this power. )
(He couldn't have known. He simply couldn't have known.)
So he started. He didn't know where she was, but that was quite all right, quite fine, because he knew how to search for her now. The idea was like a picture, slowly revealing itself, and he was slowly learning how to unravel it as he went along.
Because she is going to explain all this, muttered the cynical little voice. And he was going to listen with great patience, because he was going to give her lots of time to explain. And her explanation shall be a great source of amusement to him for a long, long time, because he was going to give her all the time in the world to explain herself properly, rain, snow, thunder or mercy aside.
If he was a god, then it was time to start behaving as such.
And the walls in his mind crumbled down and the world around him skipped a beat.
PART SIX
He wished somebody would come down and talk to him.
Lester knew that was a childish desire, but he was bored, locked in the dungeons and with the security guard completely ignoring him. Jeez, didn't they need his expertise in these matters? They couldn't see anything beyond their noses.
He entertained himself with ideas about getting out of that cell. Nothing sprang to mind.
He considered using his powers, but they were nearly spent. The best he managed was to levitate the heel of his shoes. Dammit, he couldn't even levitate the whole shoe.
Lester lay back in his bed instead. He checked his watch every five minutes or so, as if he was in a hurry to do something. He chuckled wryly. Obviously, he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Maybe, he considered, it was all for the best. This castle was the safest place he could be. What was the vision again…?
I was going to be shot in the room with the green carpet…
He stared down at the floor. It was stone and rock.
"No carpeting…" he mumbled quietly. That meant one of two things. That he wasn't going to die after all…or he was still going to die, only later and somewhere else. It made sense, then, to stay in this cell and wait it out. He had the feeling things were more complicated than he made them out to be, but resolved to stick to that plan for the moment.
The moment ended sooner than he expected.
He felt something, quick and swift, but it was enough to tell him something was seriously wrong. He jumped out of the bed and looked around his cell, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Yet.
Because it was awake, alive, and very angry.
Yes. Yes, that's it… It Who Cannot Be Turned was very unhappy tonight and it was trying to do something, he couldn't tell what….
Lester was healthily paranoid. He knew, he knew very well, that sensation all around him and it was terrifying. And to make matters worse, there was nothing to be done about it from this dingy little cell. The other night's stunts had wasted his powers. Without the scythe, he was no match even to a mediocre fortuneteller—
Fuck me! Fuck!, he thought helplessly, He's starting it, and he's doing something while I'm here twiddling my thumbs! You're opening the doors, aren't you, Seres? Why? Letting Titania come back in? Yeah, well, let that little bitch in. I can take you all on.
Even though I really don't want to.
There is a choice. I've always known that. Life is a cross between destiny and choice, constantly battling for supremacy.
And I choose to take you on. Lo que sera, sera, you little monster. I accept your challenge! If I'm going out, I'm going out in a blaze of glory!
If there was one redeeming virtue in Lester Kramer, it was his almost-irrational desire to live. He never gave up. Never. And even if death was at his doorstep, he was willing to meet it with his head up high. He knew at that moment that the odds were against him, but that he could choose to die now or die later, die a coward or go down giving an up-yours to the fates.
He could've chosen not to engage his destiny. It was his choice. What people don't seem to understand is that death, too, is a choice. That you could choose not to save yourself. Just ask a suicide. And you wouldn't believe the amount of people that don't choose to live, less dramatic examples than suicides, more mundane and common.
There was a big difference between a suicide and Lester Kramer. Lester actually thought he could defeat death if he really tried. Because the truth was that there was really no such thing as space and time. Even if he didn't get shot, he would be blown up to smithereens. He just couldn't win…. He couldn't win, but at the very least, he could go out in style.
He got mentally ready to play chicken with destiny. He just needed an opportunity, a chance to get out of the cell, and then they would see. All of them would see…
He deliberately chose to taunt fate by running to meet it; he was willing to give it a good whooping, even if it was the last thing he would do. And, for some reason, he thought everything would turn out all right.
I'm no light, but I used to be one a long time ago. I wonder how much of him is left in me… or did Titania screw me up for good?
He remembered, dimly, a time when he wasn't like this. He did not mean to be evil. He was just forced to take ruthless measures; that's all. It was his adoptive mother's fault, the idiot queen that dragged him into this.
Regardless of evil or pain, a great peace befell Lester. He left, not because he had to, but because he chose to. What little was left from him, the leftover from a time when he was innocent, told him not to worry, even if the more mundane side of him was quietly panicking.
Even if this didn't work out too well, even if this life was to be erased from the memory of men, even if this universe collapsed, at least this moment was real. He chose to fight for his life, and yes, even for the ones of others. It was a noble quest, and Lester Kramer was anything but noble. It meant something important.
It had to mean something important. Had to. Because God helps those who help themselves.
* * *
So, how do you find an all-powerful queen that doesn't want to be found?
"Are you sure he said he wanted to talk to her?" Angela asked, "Why would he want to do that? For more instructions?"
"He sounded really pissed," Broadway was saying, "…That he wouldn't lift a finger until he found her. I don't think he likes her too much."
"…can't say I'm surprised…" Xanatos muttered.
"Whatever we want to do, we better do it fast. He's not going to stay in his apartment all night." Lexington said, as he stared at the handy big screen TV imbedded on Xanatos' wall.
Xanatos, in his endless supply of spy equipment, had planted several bugs on Anderson some time ago. Not one, not two, but three, all in the name of precaution. The TV before Lexington showed the diagram of the city, where the dots of light marked what was presumably the god of fate's headquarters.
Finding him was easy. The real question was what to do with him. Kill him? Talk sense? And in case they couldn't talk sense, just how could the fight him, if it came to that?
("You should've seen him back at Elisa's…" Broadway muttered. "It was so… wow." Wow. That was the best he could come up with. Brooklyn couldn't think of anything better. His mind was still wrapped in what felt like a sweet lullaby, and he still could remember the melody rather well. "It was like a shadow," he told the guys, "But nothing to do with Seres, and that makes it so much scarier…")
At least they had some idea of what was up against them, if it came to a brawl. The experience told them that they were pretty much screwed if it came to a brawl. And they learned that a brawl was to be avoided at all cost.
The other thing they learned was that he wanted to talk to Titania. The nugget of information wasn't terribly helpful either. But Seres did mention he wasn't going to do anything while Titania was AWOL in the mortal plane.
"Mr. Brooklyn, if there's one person that shines because of her absence in this whole business, its Titania herself," Owen quickly said. "She has done nothing to contact us or give us a sign that she's still alive, so how do you expect Anderson to find her?"
"Isn't he supposed to be more…well… powerful than you?" Broadway spoke up. He got one of Owen's death glares in return.
"I'm just saying what he told me!" Brooklyn defended himself. "I'm not the resident sorcerer in this castle, so don't expect me to know what he has in mind."
"I don't see what's the problem," Angela replied, "If he said he's not going to do his magic until he hears from Titania, then it's perfect that she's dropped off the face of the earth! At the very least, it's going to buy us some time to think of something!"
Xanatos, sounding tired, bored, and just a tad irritated, asked, "What the hell is Anderson doing in the first place, running off to search for her when he's got a universe to screw up?"
Elisa arched an eyebrow. "Huh, Xanatos has a point. All along, Lester has been telling us he's some sort of terror that must obey his law no matter how many little people he has to step on. Other than those scary moments when that 'thing' takes over, Anderson acts like a…normal person."
"You forget, detective," Xanatos quickly added, "that Lester's full of bullshit."
Brooklyn recalled those moments in the apartment. Being in Seres' presence had been… astounding. The gargoyle seriously doubted that something that could make you feel so awe-struck could be evil. He was almost sure Seres didn't mean any harm. But he was perfectly capable of accidental harm, and that's what worried Brooklyn more.
"But why Titania? What does he want with Titania?" Brooklyn wondered. "Is she part of the spell?"
"The whole thing was her idea," Lexington said wryly, "Wouldn't surprise me if Titania wants a front row seat to the end of the world and is taking longer than usual with her makeup…"
"But isn't this judge person supposed to act on his own?" Broadway retorted, "Technically, he shouldn't need Titania for anything to do a decision."
"Well, so far, he's been Titania's favorite puppet for a few months now," Xanatos said, "So it's very likely that Titania has been influencing his 'judgment' all this time."
"I thought it was the fate god who's in charge here," Broadway insisted, "Owen said the human was an avatar. The human is not real."
"Actually," Owen said; perking up when he heard his name, "Dennis is pretty real as far as real goes. Seres is the one that's not very real."
Broadway blinked. "That doesn't make any sense. Seres is a god, isn't he? How can he not be real?"
"The same way that a human cannot be not real."
It was Elisa who snorted at that comment. "You know, that's really funny coming from you," she said with soft sarcasm. "We're getting a lecture on human realness from a fairy with multiple personalities."
Owen gave her an insulted scoff. "All the more reason I have more authority over these matters!"
"You know, I think we gotta get a few details straight first," Brooklyn spoke up. "Here's what I want to know…" he said as he turned to Xanatos' majordomo, "Owen, is Anderson a human or a god?"
"Does it matter?" Owen said in return, "Their personalities overlap."
"It does matter," the gargoyle replied, "It makes the whole difference in the world! In case it wasn't obvious, Seres is not exactly behaving as the unmerciful god Lester painted him to be. Instead of screwing up our world, he's run off after Titania…"
"Jeez, Brooklyn, I can tell you why…" Elisa spoke up, and in a very matter-of-fact tone, said, "The trial is flawed. It's been flawed since day one."
All eyes turned to Elisa. She blinked several times. "What? Matt figured it out the other day. If this whole stupid thing is some sort of trial, then she picked a pretty lousy judge to do it. It's not Anderson's fault… if it were just that Seres thing doing the judging, I'd say the trial would've been impartial, but since Anderson got mixed up in this…"
"Elisa, what are you trying to say…?"
She looked up at Brooklyn. "Merely that Titania screwed up. People can't think straight when they get emotionally involved. Lester was the first judge, wasn't he? He got the boot because he was too vengeful against Titania for bringing him back. What makes you think that isn't exactly what's happening to Anderson. After all," she concluded, "it's not everyday you wake up in the morning and realize you're somebody's puppet… Frankly, I wouldn't want to be in Titania's shoes right. A very angry man is looking for answers and knowing Titania, she's not going to give it to him. And it's not going to be pretty."
"It's a human judge…" Brooklyn muttered, almost whispered. "And Seres is just the toy. Isn't that what Lester said? That it's a weapon, an extraordinary mind, but in the end…just a toy that needs to be ordered around. Elisa's right! It can't make decisions! So if anyone has to be a judge here, it has to be Anderson, by the process of elimination!"
"So it's like Lester said…" Xanatos muttered quietly, "It all boils down to whether he likes us or not."
"Actually, I think the die was cast a long time ago. The more I think about it, the more I think that wasn't even the issue… that was never the issue…" All heads, human and gargoyle, turned to Brooklyn as he went on. He grunted and stood up straight. With a deadly serious tone, he said, "The trial started a long time ago and it was decided before we even knew about it."
"What makes you think that…?" Angela asked warily.
Brooklyn couldn't help but smile. "The simple fact that we're not dead yet... and that maybe the universe doesn't revolve around just us, the castle, the clan."
In fact, he was beginning to think this problem was to be handled in a more intimate, personal way.
He looked at Elisa, at Xanatos, at Owen, and finally his own reflection in the office's mirror.
It occurred to him that, maybe, fate was just another type of trickster.
"The door swings both ways. Isn't that what Lester said? Is it so unusual to think that a god of death can also be one of life? Maybe this silly trial was meant to be flawed. Think about it. If the gods really wanted us to die, they would've done it already. Why the farce? What's the point? Why all the build up and the lies? It doesn't make any sense!"
"Maybe the point…" Xanatos whispered almost inaudibly, as his eyes drifted to the floor, "…is that there is no point."
Owen gave him that look, as if meaning to say something.
Brooklyn didn't ignore that look either. Is it that hopeless, David Xanatos? Why am I the only one here that thinks we can actually get through this? The door swings two ways. Can we use that to our advantage, or am I just wrapped up in wishful thinking? Funny. Death is behind my heels and yet I've never felt more alive. You're always more alive the instant you're going to die.
"Please stop despairing, Mr. Xanatos. It isn't helping." Owen muttered in return.
"Well, it's just that I have yet to find a reason to be cheerful about," he said, matter-of-factly. "In case it isn't patently obvious by now, the weight of the world is on the clueless shoulders of Anderson. And to make matters worse, it's not a cheerful world, but one of despair. Lester was right; this world has gone to hell for me. So it's kinda like a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't affair.' Philosophical discussions aside, this all boils down to whether this world of despair is worth Anderson's time. It's so simple, it's scary. Our fates hang in the balance of a very upset guy who's just realized he's Titania's zombie. The odds, Brooklyn, are not very good."
"What tragedy," Hudson muttered, "to see an' innocent person carry de' cross of despair all by himself. Is it not like that how all stories go? All to see a bunch o' inconsiderate live to see 'nother day?"
Is that the point of the trial, then?
To allow one man carry a sad, sorry world so that they didn't have to? And make the choice for those who very often wished for despair, wanted the despair, or simply couldn't get rid of it by themselves?
If instead of sneaking around, Titania had simply showed up in their doorsteps and told them what she wanted to do, would they have lifted a finger to stop her? Would Elisa? Xanatos? Himself?
"Oh!" Brooklyn gasped, feeling an uncomfortable thing in his throat that made it for a few seconds rather difficult to breathe. "Oh, damn me! Damn me!"
Because he suddenly understood why that so-called flaw was there. Because only the dead can appreciate the elixir of life. Because only when you're about to die do you feel more alive. Because you have to be dead and your body ripped apart to deliver a worthy boon to the rest of your fellow men.
TO BE CONCLUDED…