“I know what you’re doing,” she said out loud. She had, after all, had this dream hundreds of times.
And that sound. Click. A tiny bone fracturing as her booted foot connected with the young man’s head. The way she felt that click shudder up her leg into her hip, her mind trying to ignore it even as her body screamed out what she’d done.
She knew who the body would be, but she walked up to it anyway, rolling it over with her foot. The same face, the fleshy, sneering mug of the man who had caused her parents’ death. This was a memory, she knew, of the night she’d finally found him. Years putting herself back together again like Humpty Dumpty, all for one moment of vengeance, and the thing she remembers most, the part she turns over and over in her mind when she sleeps, is how dissatisfying revenge turned out to be.
She learned about the man after, about his life, about the things that led him to crime, about mistakes made and opportunities never offered. But that night, in her makeshift costume, the memory of her dead parents still hanging around her shoulders like a noose, Kate thought she knew what she wanted. She thought revenge would make her feel better, would fill up the empty hole in her heart where her parents once were, but revenge only made that hole deeper and wider and darker. All the revenge, all the heroics, all the death-defying decisions she’d make in the time that followed added up to nothing, just sand in the wind.
Click. Bone breaking. A thin line of blood running from the man’s ear. The stillness of his body.
Of course, here among dreams, this would be the scene she’d find. She dreamed about it more than anything else, the memory of that night. I believed I was brave, she thought, staring at the body in the street. He didn’t look real. The memory wasn’t sharp enough, so he blurred at the edges, a caricature of a man with a wide mouth and dark eyebrows beneath short blond hair, one crooked incisor punctuating a ghastly grin.
That was the night Doc found her. Did he know what she’d done? Kate often wondered. She supposed he did. He knew everything back then, or at least acted as though he did. Did he hide the man’s body? Magic it away? Was there some spell he cast when Kate wasn’t looking, mending the man’s broken bones? Did anyone know what happened that night? In a lot of ways, Kate herself wasn’t sure. She never checked for a pulse. She never confirmed if he’d lived or died. She didn’t want to know. It wasn’t an answer she was prepared to face.
Whatever happened, happened. She thought. I can only spend the rest of my life trying to be better than that.
She walked away from the corpse, stopping in her tracks as she heard a scratching sound behind her. She turned to look back. The dead man had crawled to his feet and was now shuffling slowly toward her, one arm hanging limply at his side, head lolling to the right. She walked a little faster, but the zombie kept pace with her, shoes scraping on the pavement. Finally, she turned completely around to face him and waited until he was close enough to smell, close enough to hear the wheezing groan of his lungs struggling to draw in air.
She kicked the zombie in the chest, knocking him to the ground easily. His arms and legs struggled and strained, but he seemed incapable of righting himself. Kate shook her head and walked away.
The streets changed, gradually, moving more quickly than they should from urban sprawl to suburban ordinariness. She’d walked several blocks before she realized exactly where she was.
“No,” she said, seeing her childhood home a few doors down.
It was an old, well cared-for Victorian, a wraparound porch lining the front and right side of the building. A turret dominated the left side of the building. She almost smiled, remembering pretending to be a princess there as a child, before everything went wrong. A tall dormer, bay windows, all the classic marks of the style of home, things she took for granted before becoming who and what she was now. She thought all homes were like this, when she was little.
She pushed open the gate and walked up the front steps. This dream put her here for a reason, she thought. Might as well see it all the way to the end.
The interior was warm, and lit with soft golden light. Hardwood floors, polished, dark wood banisters, a runner Kate used to dance on so her feet wouldn’t make so much noise as her parents worked.
She heard voices in the kitchen.
None of this is real, she thought to herself as she walked down the hall, past the living room with its crackling fireplace. It’s all in my head. This place is using my memories against me.
But still, knowing that, her breath caught in her throat when she saw her mother sitting at the bar-style countertop in the kitchen, sipping coffee from a white porcelain mug. Hair up to reveal her long neck, tiny diamond studs in her ears, Kate recognized every detail immediately.
“Hi, kitten,” a man said, and Kate felt her heart harden to stone.
Her father was there in the kitchen as well, leaning in conspiratorially to her mother, the way he did when he flirted with her. They’d always flirted, she remembered, and she’d thought it so strange that an old married couple would flirt, not realizing that it was a sign they still very much enjoyed being around each other.
She could have looked at them, she could have watched them, but she was not prepared for her father to speak to her, not here. He smiled at her radiantly. He was a handsome if not pretty man, his nose clearly broken more than once, a raggedness around his eyes that belayed a roughness he otherwise did not carry. Her parents were wealthy, she knew, and enjoyed that wealth, but she knew her father paid for college with cash he won as a boxer. He told her he’d wanted to be a surgeon. But he’d taken too many blows to the head, and his hands were too scarred up from the ring, but he still found work in medicine, and never talked about how he got there in the company of his peers. He’d met her mother in school, and he always said she was a better doctor than he’d ever be, but in the end, when all was said and done, they’d both wanted to be artists and neither had the chance. Her father was a singer. Her mother played violin. The house was filled with music, always.
And Kate was their dancer.
She walked into the kitchen, biting her lip as her mother turned to smile at her. If either noticed her strange outfit, or the miles and scars on Kate’s face, they said nothing. Her mother patted the seat beside her and Kate slid onto the stool. She ran her fingertips along the underside of the counter, feeling the chips and wear she’d memorized like Braille as a child.
This is all gone, she thought, listening to her parents make small talk with each other, as if nothing had changed. The house was sold, because teenaged, orphaned Kate couldn’t afford the mortgage, and she didn’t want to live in a place full of ghosts anyway.
She never told anyone, not even Titus, but she’d walk by sometimes, when she was done patrolling the city for the night. A family lived there, now, with three little boys, and she’d sit in the shadows and listen to them play and argue and tease each other for a few minutes before heading back into the City. She wondered if this countertop was still there, or if they’d changed everything. Her parents always talked about remodeling, but she knew despite living well, they were more in debt than they admitted to anyone, as doctors often are. Still, they’d made sure she was taken care of. Neither of them grew up particularly safe or secure, unlike many of their work peers, and they crafted an illusion of a far better life, like so many do. No one ever questioned it, including Kate, who was too young to know the difference, too innocent to hear the fabrications in their words.
She looked back to her father and saw a thin trickle of blood running down from his hairline. Her mind flashed to the night of the attack, when he’d crashed the car, the empty expression on his face as he bled out. She glanced down at her mother’s hands and saw flecks of blood on her diamond wedding ring. Another detail from the crash Kate never forgot. Her mother lifted that blood-flecked hand and placed it on Kate’s shoulder.
“Are you okay, Katie?” she said.
We look so much alike, Kate thought. She had her mother’s face, her bone str
ucture, but their eyes were different colors. She had her father’s eyes, both in pigment, and now, after years of fighting, in the ring and out, the same scars as well. They wanted me to be their dancer, she thought. They wanted me to have the life they didn’t get to have.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice rough. I must be such a disappointment to them, she thought. But no, they’re not real, they’re not here, she remembered. This is all a dream, a cruel trick, something to scare her, or manipulate her.
You have work to do, Kate, she thought to herself. There’s no time for memories here. This is no place to be maudlin.
But still, she thought. It’s good to see them again.
“I have to go,” she said, angry with herself at the emotion welling up her chest, the burn of tears trying to break free from her eyes.
“You just got here,” her mother said.
“You work too hard,” her father said. “It’s okay to be a kid sometimes, kitten.”
“We all work too hard,” Kate said. “But there’s always work to be done.”
“We’ll be here when you get back, then,” her mother said, and that was where the illusion broke just a little bit, a slight vacancy to her mother’s eyes. She was the wittiest person Kate had ever met, and never, not once, was there ever any vacancy in her expression.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “I’ll… I’ll be back.”
She pulled herself slowly away from her mother’s grasp, who didn’t fight her departure. Her father held up a wide hand to wave goodbye, that ridiculous finger-wiggling wave that looked so out of place with his rough frame, which he’d always done because it made Kate laugh. She did laugh then, just a little, with a hint of a sob as well.
She walked out of the house, fists clenched tight, shoulders bunched up and ready to fight. She saw Titus standing across the street. He flickered like a broken hologram between his human and werewolf forms, as if he were both at once. His body was marred with new cuts and wounds, most healed over but still raw and red.
“We need to go,” she said.
Titus nodded in that quiet, understanding way he always did, watching her with unnatural golden eyes.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Kate said. “This place is nothing but illusions.”
“I know,” he said. “I had to fight mine.”
“Well, I never dream,” Kate said. “So this place had nothing to use against me. We should find the others, though. Pull them out of whatever they’re going through.”
“Okay,” Titus said. “You know this place?”
“Just some old house,” Kate said. “Like I said. It was clutching at straws. I saw right through everything it threw at me.”
Again, Titus nodded. He seemed to commit right then to one form, his werewolf shape taking over. Kate felt an unexpected comfort in that, the hulking monster at her side instead of the caring face of the boy who loved her despite finding herself so utterly unlovable. The wolf was easier to be with sometimes.
Together, they walked into the darkness, Titus following some trail only he could see.
Kate glanced over her shoulder one last time at the house from her memories.
And then she put her mask back on and went to work.
Chapter 41: We don’t get to be happy
Jane walked alone through a cornfield brushing tall stalks out of her way as she traversed through the high growth. She knew exactly where she was. She didn’t need to see the farm to recognize the place where she grew up.
But still, when she reached the edge of the field, her heart skipped a beat. The old red farmhouse stood waiting, the barn she’d burned down the day before she met Doc Silence looking as though that incident never happened. The sky was a pale and perfect blue, marred only by graceful white clouds and a thin trail of chimney smoke.
Jane made her way up the front stairs but hesitated before entering. She lifted her hand to knock, but as if on cue, a voice called out to her from inside.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Doris Hawkins said. “Lunch is ready. Come on in.”
Jane pulled the screen door opened and entered. The house hadn’t changed at all since the last time she’d seen it, or really much in general for as long as she could remember. She ran her fingers along the darkly stained wood of the bannister in the front hallway leading upstairs, then turned right into the kitchen. Her adoptive mother, Doris, puttered with something on the stove. She looked over her shoulder to see Jane watching her and beckoned with an impatient wave of her hand.
“Well, come on now,” Doris said. “I know you’ve always been shy, but this is your home.”
“Home,” Jane said. I’m dreaming, Jane thought. For some reason, I’m dreaming of home.
“Stop loitering,” Doris said. “There’s someone here to see you.
Doris disappeared around the corner. Jane heard the clattering of plates and went to join her. When she entered the kitchen, her guts twisted up inside. Sitting at the kitchen table, shockingly formal in her black, gold, and white uniform, was Jane’s future self, the one she’d met in the alternate timeline where everything went wrong.
“Hi,” Future Jane said before taking a bite of a sandwich.
“So this is what it’s like to be awake during an anxiety dream,” Jane said, sitting down across from her doppelganger.
“Like this is anything new to either one of us,” her future self said.
They both looked around the kitchen, taking in the details, remembering the tiny specifics that made it home.
“You could just stay here,” the doppelganger said.
“No, I can’t,” Jane said.
“See that’s our problem,” her future self said. “We never say no. We never stop. We put everything else first.”
“Are you telling me I grow up to be resentful?” Jane said. “I’ve met you before. The real you. You weren’t angry.”
“No,” the older Jane said. “No, I’m not angry.”
She paused to take a long sip of iced tea.
“Maybe I should be though,” she said. “Everything we do to keep this world safe and it keeps walking right back into traffic.”
“That’s our job,” Jane said. “We’re the… immune system, right? We’re white blood cells for the planet.”
“I feel like I shouldn’t tell you this,” the older Jane said. “But when else am I going to have a chance to warn you? Jane, we are never, ever going to be happy.”
“You say that like I’m going to be surprised by it,” Jane said.
“What?”
“I know I’m never going to be happy,” Jane said. “I’ve never been happy. I was born unhappy. It’s like the parts for happy were left out of me when I was put together at the factory, so to speak.
“God, we need so much therapy,” the older Jane said.
“You think I need therapy?”
“Can’t hurt,” her older self said. “You could just keep saving the world every day as a way to avoid ever addressing your mental health issues, but that’s a lot of work.”
“I guess,” Jane said.
“And can I let you in on a little secret, younger me?” the other Jane said.
“Is it a secret if I’m you and you’re me?”
The older Jane cocked her head.
“It’s still a secret to you,” the older Jane said. “Just make sure you’re careful who you share it with.”
“I’ll try to limit it to future versions of myself, to pay it forward,” Jane said.
“That works,” the older woman said.
“Well?” Jane asked.
“We can’t save everyone,” the doppelganger said. “And you’ll try and try to save everyone and eventually you realize you’re not capable of facing any number as acceptable losses. Everyone says Kate is the perfectionist, but you’re the one who won’t let go. The only difference is Kate already knows she’s mad as a hatter. You’ll drive yourself insane trying to deny it.”
; “You’re a lot more pessimistic than the last time I saw you.”
“Well,” the older Jane said. “I died.”
“Saving the world.”
“Is that really what you want? Are you really so lonely and unhappy that you keep saving the world because you have nothing better to do?”
“It’s what I’m here to do. It’s my job,” Jane said.
“And I’m telling you, no matter what you do, no matter who you save, someday, somehow, that job will kill you.”
Jane stood up and strode over to the kitchen window to look out at the cornfield, her back to her future self.
“I really never become happy?” she asked.
“I tried my whole life, kid,” the doppelganger said. She tapped her own chest, above the heart, then her head. “Something doesn’t work right in here. Or up here. We don’t get to be happy.”
“Then it’s a good thing I have a job to do,” Jane said.
“There you go, letting being a hero define you. Don’t do that. You’re only hurting yourself when you do that.”
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” Jane said. “Can I let you in on a secret?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve never been happy. Not a single day of my whole life,” Jane said. “And I know you’re a nightmare just trying to distract me because if you really were me, you’d know that.”
Her older self shrugged.
“I think you knew that the moment you saw me,” she said.
Jane glanced all around the kitchen again. The ugly yellow refrigerator. The old, hand-carved table. Doris’ prized super-powered mixer for the bread she loved baking but never quite got right. It felt like home, Jane thought, even though it was just a poor facsimile.
“You might be a figment of my imagination, but you’re not wrong,” Jane said. “I do this because I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t know how to be anything else. And I don’t know why that is. Nobody taught me to be this way. Nobody guided me to it. I’m just like this.”
The Indestructibles (Book 5): The Crimson Child Page 19