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Chapter Text

You may not look it—bobbing your head along to the One Direction song blaring from your computer, shamelessly mouthing the lyrics—but you take your job quite seriously. You spend eighty percent of your day in the FBI’s collection of recovered museum artifacts and paintings, examining the items with careful, gloved hands and a pair of specially designed spectacles hanging from a chain around your neck.

You’ve worked as an archivist for the FBI’s art crime division for a little over a year. You spend your days cataloging, organizing, and filling out reports. It’s tedious work, but if not for this job you never would have met your boyfriend, Marcus Pike, one of the twenty agents in the division. As far as you’re concerned, the perks far outweigh the flaws.

“Hey, Specs, you ready to head home?”

You look up from your computer, locking eyes with Marcus standing in the doorway. He’s dressed in his usual dark blue suit, but after a long day’s work his dark hair has been ruffled by restless fingers, striped tie hanging undone around his neck, and overall looking eager to cuddle on the couch in your apartment and watch a Netflix documentary.

“Almost, Brown Eyes. Five more minutes.”

“Alright,” he says simply, nodding his head. He grins then, a heart-melting smile that never fails to unleash butterflies in your stomach. “How about I check if there’s any strawberry cheesecake left in the cafeteria?”

“Well,” you pretend to think about it, tapping your chin playfully, “it’d be a shame for something so delicious to go to waste.”

“You read my mind, sweetheart.”

He heads off towards the cafeteria and you shake your head at his antics, a soft, lovesick smile pulling at your lips. You’ve been dating Marcus for six months, but you’d been helplessly falling for him ever since your first month on the job when he started bringing you coffee in the mornings, stopping by to chat with you–sometimes bringing items for you to archive, sometimes just because he wanted to say hello–and offering to walk you to your car when you both were working late nights. You didn’t realize all his efforts had been his attempts at flirting until the bureau’s New Year’s Eve party when he’d admitted he liked you after one too many sips of champagne loosed his tongue.

You’ve never been happier than when you’re with him. It’s sappy as fuck to admit such a thing, but it’s true. Marcus makes you laugh and knows to give you space when you’re upset. He challenges you to take risks and supports you whether things go right or wrong. Most importantly though, he makes you want to be the best version of yourself. 

You turn to shut off your computer, only to stop when your eyes land on your workbench. Two days ago Marcus and his team had determined the location of a warehouse being used to traffic stolen artifacts, including marble statues and ancient pottery. You’re still working on examining all the contents of the haul, but one item stands out as especially unique compared to the others.

It’s oddly similar to a Rubik’s Cube. Same size, shape, and interlocking pieces. Except it’s entirely made of a type of golden metal you’ve yet to identify and it has strange symbols resembling hearts engraved in its sides instead of colored plastic panels. 

You pick up the cube and it’s heavy in the palm of your hand, shining faintly beneath the overhead lights. Your eyes linger on the six different heart symbols: a broken heart; a heart with an arrow piercing it; a pair of hearts intertwined; a heart with a keyhole; a striped heart; and a heart entirely devoid of any pattern or accessory, simple and plain. You grew up loving puzzles, reading every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys book you could get your hands on, and seeing the scrambled symbols has the gears in your brain turning.

“Doesn’t seem so difficult,” you say to yourself, a thrill of excitement shooting down your spine. You grab the top layer and twist it counterclockwise until you hear a quiet click of the piece locking into place and—

The walls of your office spin dizzyingly, colors blurring as if you’d stepped onto a tilt-a-whirl. For a split second you’re certain you’re going to be sick, stomach performing nauseating cartwheels, and then everything goes still once more. You stumble sideways, panting harshly from the sheer shock of it all.

“Oh, kriff,” you wheeze.

And then immediately wonder what the fuck does that even mean? The curse slipped off your tongue easily like you’ve grown up saying it, but you know that’s not true. 

…Right? 

Your unease increases tenfold when you realize you’re not in your office anymore. Looking around, your brain struggles to make sense of all the unfamiliar details: an abundance of crates covered in netting, a storage locker attached to the wall, the weirdest toiled you’ve ever seen in your life, and a ladder with—oh kriff—someone climbing down it.

The stranger drops down onto the floor with a resounding thud as his boots hit the metal. He turns to you, revealing a broad body clad in dark silver armor and a matching helmet covering his whole head. On his hip you notice a holstered, futuristic-looking pistol. 

Blaster, a voice quietly corrects somewhere in the back of your mind, freaking you out.

“There you are, cyar’ika,” he says, and you think you detect a note of relief intertwined within his modulated voice. His head tilts, somehow managing to radiate concern without a visible expression. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

Your heart does a funny thing in your chest, but you pay it little attention because you know that baritone voice. You know it in the mornings while eating granola bars and sipping cups of coffee. You know it when it’s full of laughter after you’ve told a dumb joke and when it’s arguing over a bad decision your superiors made. You know it sweetly when it compliments you and intimately when it says your name between kisses.

Marcus, you mean to say.

But what comes out of your mouth instead is, “Din.”

Chapter Text

Pacing is a coping skill you’ve practically mastered. It’s something you could always do when the stress of a situation threatened to consume you whole. You paced in your bedroom when you got dumped by your friends an hour before prom. You paced in your dorm when you’d convinced yourself you chose the wrong degree. You paced for hours after your first argument with Marcus, terrified he was going to break up with you because you were hangry and took your emotions out on him like he was a boxing bag. 

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Fingers snap in front of your face, startling you.

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The room is opulent.

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“I’ve lost my mind,” you mutter under your breath, pacing in front of the fireplace. “I’m in a coma. I hit my head and a piece of my skull is embedded in my brain. I’ve been kidnapped and given a hallucinogen. I’m—”

“A victim of my greed,” the thief cuts in, guilt visible in every line of his expression. “Bound to the cube and its whims.”

Chapter Text

The evening is drowsy, with a few snowflakes lazily drifting through the chilly air, and the Christmas lights decorating the diner’s windows blinking red and green. The sun has set behind the horizon, no trace of it left except for a faint orange glow barely visible through the trees from where you stand behind the counter.

With the sixties aesthetic of the diner, you initially thought you’d been dropped in the past again, but the few customers still eating are dressed in modern clothes. Lucky, you think, glancing down at your pastel pink, retro uniform with a tiny apron tied around your waist. Honestly, you consider it a miracle you’re not wearing roller skates. 

You’re mollified a bit when the song on the jukebox switches tracks and the familiar drumbeat intro of “Come Together” by the Beatles pours out of its speakers, thrumming through your veins and sparking the urge to bob your head along. You’d dance along, too, if your feet weren’t aching so bad after delivering tray after tray of food for eight hours.

“Hey, princess, take a look,” your coworker—Molly, the name comes to the forefront of your mind without any prompting—pops up at your side, gesturing towards the entrance with a smirk, “your prince in wranglers has come to escort you home.”

 You turn, a smile growing on your face before you even see him, just as the bell over the door jingles. Your heart does a series of somersaults in your chest when you lock eyes with a dark-haired, mustached man wearing the denim jacket you bought him for his birthday last year. There are snowflakes built up along the brim of his Stetson, the white contrasting the black fur felt. He looks like all your cowboy fantasies as a preteen come to life in one gorgeous package.

“Howdy stranger,” you greet teasingly, leaning forward on the counter as he slides onto one of the stools. “What brings you to the Rusty Spoon this lovely winter evening.”

You immediately have to bite back a laugh and risk breaking character when Jack makes a face like he’s swallowed a whole lemon. To say he hates the diner’s name is an understatement. He loathes it.

(“It’s like promising you’ll get tetanus if you eat anything,” he complained for four hours straight after you told him you’d got the job, each insult making you laugh harder and harder with its creativity.)

It’s your turn to resist grimacing. Already your mind is adding memories where none used to exist. Your gaze dips briefly to zero in on the cube sitting on the counter next to the cash register. If it’s meant to be solved like a Rubik’s cube with all the symbols grouped individually per side, then you’re nowhere close to reaching your goal. 

“Well, darlin’, I happened to be passing by and glimpsed your beauty through the window,” he says, recapturing your attention with his honey-sweet voice. “I’d be a fool to pass by an angel and not ask her if she had anyone keeping her bed warm tonight.”

You hum in contemplation, making a show of looking him over with your fingers tapping your chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know. There was a pretty cute farmer who stopped by earlier I’m also tempted to take a chance on,” you reply, a pulse of warmth blooming in your chest at the flicker of possessiveness you glimpse in Jack’s eyes. “You got anything to sweeten the deal?”

“As a matter of fact, I just might.” His hand slips into the pocket of his jacket and retrieves a postcard.

Your fingers brush his when you grab it, eliciting another pleasurable pulse of warmth. The picture on the postcard is of the Italian Alps covered in snow with a cable car photographed midway carrying a group of skiers up the mountains. It’s beautiful. Flipping it over, you read the little note Jack had scribbled on the back.

Still not as beautiful as you.

You peer up at him through your eyelashes, a smile pulling at your lips. “Are you this charming to every waitress you meet?”

He stares back, sincerity burning brightly in his eyes. “Nobody else could ever compare to you, darlin’.”

“Oh my God,” Molly groans, causing you to jump. You turn in time to catch her rolling her eyes hard enough you think she strains something. “You two are giving me cavities, I swear. Go on, get out of here before he starts serenading you with an Elvis song.”

“Now that is a mighty fine idea,” Jack says, glancing towards the jukebox like he’s seeing it in a brand new light. “I think I might have a few spare quarters…”

Molly starts waving a dishrag at you. “Go, go, go!” 

Laughing, you grab the cube and hurry around the counter to head for the door. Jack offers Molly a two-fingered salute before he helps you shrug on your coat, doing the buttons for you while you adjust your beanie over your ears. 

Despite your layers, you still shiver when you step outside, the cold air threatening to freeze you solid. Jack takes hold of your hand, frowning when he notices your lack of gloves, but wisely keeps his mouth shut ‘cause he knows you’d only argue he’s not wearing any either.

It’s a short walk to the parking lot where Jack’s truck awaits you and the silence is peaceful, calming, just two souls finding comfort in the presence of one another. 

“How long are you staying this time?” you ask, your breath looking like white smoke in the air, and you subtly watch the side of his face for any clues in his expression.

“A week,” he answers, lips pursing in anticipation of your disappointment. 

“A week?” you echo, feet slowing to a stop. He moves to stand in front of you, carving out a private space for you and him with his broad frame, still holding your hand like a lifeline. “Jack, that’s…I’ve barely seen you this whole month.”

“I tried to get more time, I swear it, darlin’, but…” He trails off, words failing him.

You bite your lip, hating the rift of tension that has emerged between you and him. It’s been gradually growing in size ever since he was hired at Statesman Distillery eight months ago, traveling far and wide as their chief sales representative. You’re not selfish enough to tell him to quit, especially when you know he loves the sense of purpose it gives him. 

His stance shifts as he waits for you to say something, anything, and the dim light of the streetlamp illuminates a strange stain on the collar of his shirt beneath his jacket. You lean closer, squinting to get a better look. “There’s something right…” Your eyebrows arch with alarm. “Why is there blood on your shirt?”

You’re close enough to hear the stutter of his breathing before he tugs at his shirt, trying to see what you’re looking at. There’s no denying it’s blood, not when you’ve cut yourself washing knives and cheese graters in the diner’s sink enough times to come home at least once a week with similar crimson stains. 

“I cut myself shaving this morning,” he says dismissively. “I wanted to look nice before I came home.”

If you hadn’t seen the way his shoulders rolled beneath his jacket, like they’re adjusting to some invisible burden suddenly being placed upon them, then you might have believed him.  Except Marcus has the same tell when he’s lying through his teeth trying to trick criminals into believing their partners turned on them. 

The realization that you’re the criminal in the chair now, being force-fed a lie from your love, hurts worse than damage a knife could do to you.

You pull your hand free from his grip. “Lie to me again and I’ll smack you,” you warn, trying to sound firm despite the audible tremble in your voice. “Tell me the truth, Jack. Why is there blood on your shirt?”

In some far, distant corner of your mind you’re aware the answer only matters to you because without it, the pain of being lied to will persist as a thorn in your chest even after the cube is triggered and everything’s reset. You’re the only one who will remember any of this happening—and fuck, that hurts to acknowledge, doesn’t it? 

He slowly lifts his hands to cradle your face, broadcasting his movements at a snail’s pace to give you ample time to pull away again, and brushes his thumbs along your cheeks. You blink up at him, unable to recall him ever looking so nervous before, eyes roaming across your face, taking in every detail.

“I’m not a salesman, darlin’,” he admits at last,  quiet and defeated. “I’m a spy working for the Statesman secret intelligence agency. And sometimes bloodshed is a necessary part of completing the mission so I can get back home to you.”

Of all the answers you expected him to say, being a spy was somewhere in the upper hundreds. It’s ridiculous and ludicrous and a dozen other words ending in -ous, but in spite of them all you believe he’s telling the truth. You see his honesty in the way his eyes have locked onto yours, looking at you like this is the last time he’ll ever see you again. 

“A spy,” you repeat slowly, and you don’t even think about it before saying, “Well, that’s…pretty cool.”

He chokes on a laugh, eyebrows raising incredulously. “Pretty cool? That’s all you have to say?”

You shrug. “Better a spy for a boyfriend than a serial killer. Plus, I bet you look fucking hot in a tux, Brown Eyes.”

Jack grins, that beautiful, dimpled smile that lives rent free in a special corner of your heart. “You never cease to amaze me, darlin’.”

You thought hearing the truth would make it easier to turn the cube, but it doesn’t. If anything, it has made it harder. The urge to stay, to learn more about Jack and the Statesman, even if only for another hour, is near irresistible. 

But you think of the thief and of your vow to him, and you think it’d be an unforgivable cruelty to let him down just one universe after meeting him. You’ve got to be stronger than the countless versions of yourself who’ve been down this road already. You must succeed where they have failed.

You lick your lips, positioning your fingers over the front side of the cube. “If things were different, I think I could have been happy staying here with you.”

You don’t get the chance to hear Jack’s response—if he even says anything at all—swept away into another universe by the whims of the cube.

Chapter Text

When your reality stops spinning and settles again, you’re lying in a bed. The room is dark with the barest hint of moonlight peeking in through the floral patterned curtains, washing everything in pale silver.

For a moment, you’re almost fooled into believing you’re in your actual bedroom, that this whole whirlwind adventure has finally come to an end—but the wallpaper doesn’t match yours and there’s a suit and tie hanging on the back of the closet door that you’ve never seen Marcus wear.

Exhaustion pulls at your eyelids and you blame it for the reason your brain slowly comprehends there’s a warm, familiar arm curled around your waist, fingers clenching at your nightgown tight enough the knuckles bleed white. 

Another nightmare, you realize, and you make the mistake of shifting to roll over. In a heartbeat, the hand releases your clothes and grabs your neck instead. The gesture itself is threatening, but there’s no pressure behind it, no tightness or squeezing. Still, your entire body freezes, eyes staring up at the wooden beams stretching across the ceiling. 

“Dave,” you murmur softly, hoping to gently ease him out of the nightmare’s grip. “Honey, you need to wake up, okay? It’s me. Your wife and—”

Your brain spasms, latching onto those two words and playing them over and over on replay. Your wife, your wife, your wife.

Your. Wife.

It makes sense logically that sooner or later you’d be dropped into a reality where you and a version of Marcus are married. But a selfish part of you also had been clinging with desperate fingers to the hope you wouldn’t, if only so you’d never know another husband other than Marcus.

If he even wanted to marry you, that is.

And if you ever made it home.

If, if, if…

You sigh, forgetting your precarious situation for a split second, and the movement of your chest rising and falling triggers Dave’s subconscious, awakening the slumbering monster within.

He rolls on top of you, the weight of his heavier body pressing yours into the mattress, and his fingers close around your throat like a noose, a promise of impending doom. In the shadows of night, his handsome face appears cold and menacing, devoid of any recognition. 

You once thought you could never be scared of him, but the only feeling flooding through your veins right now is bone-chilling fear.

“Dave,” you whimper, digging your nails into his arm, your instincts screaming at you to fight or die. “Dave, stop it!”

Your pulse becomes frantic, blood roaring in your ears as dark thoughts start to grow in your mind, mercilessly taunting you. He’s going to kill you. The person you love the most in this whole world is going to be your murderer.

In a state of frenzied panic, you wildly throw a hand out towards the nightstand, grabbing onto the first item your fingers touch—the cube, a fucking miracle of all miracles—and ram it  against Dave’s skull with a hoarse cry. 

Dave lets out a loud grunt of pain, falling sideways onto his side of the bed with a hand pressed against the bleeding wound. You don’t waste a second, clambering off the mattress and flipping on the lightswitch while leaning your trembling body against the wall. 

“Oh, fuck,” Dave gasps, looking grievously horror-stricken. You watch him round the bed, feeling like a mouse caught in a trap, and your stomach churns with disgust when blood drips down the side of his face onto his white t-shirt. “I’m so sorry, pretty, I’m so so sorry,” he murmurs over and over again, eyes glued to the bruising already starting to form on your neck.

You hug the cube to your heaving chest, then grimace when you accidentally rub blood on your nightgown. Your eyes keep flicking from the carpet to Dave and then back again, unable to stand looking at him for longer than a few seconds. Not only does it hurt you to see your usually resilient, self-assured husband resembling a man who’s had his heart torn out of his chest, but what makes the pain of it all sting even worse is the sudden influx of memories trying to cram themselves into the shelves of your mind, replacing precious Marcus moments with ones starring Dave.

Their similarities are staggering—both work as government agents for the DIA and FBI; both prefer to be clean-shaven, maybe just a hint of occasional scruff; both want to have kids, settle down in the suburbs somewhere; both have recently taken up jogging in the mornings, always bringing you back a coffee from your favorite café when they return.

But for all their shared traits, there are two glaring differences you force yourself to remember, tattooing them on the side of your brain: 

It’s Dave’s ring on your finger. Not Marcus’.

And Dave is haunted by the sins of his past—of bloodshed and bombs and the loss of his partner he was too late to save.

There’s Marcus and there’s Dave, you tell yourself. Two separate men. 

MarcusDave, your mind counters stubbornly, their faces superimposing over each other, details becoming blurred. DaveMarcus. 

Your grip on the cube tightens with the urge to flee as far away as you can from here.

As if he’s privy to your thoughts, Dave says, “Don’t go.”

“Dave…” Your voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard causing you both to wince.

“Just let me hold you, pretty girl,” he says softly, barely above a whisper. “Please.”

His plea pulls on your heartstrings, crumbling your resolve into dust. You step closer, reaching out to card your fingers through his sweat-soaked hair, then gently pulling him by the back of his neck into a hug. He all but melts against you, burying his face into your neck and arms wrapping around your smaller frame.

It’s strange, finding comfort from someone who minutes ago nearly killed you. Maybe it’s the knowledge that Dave would rather jump in front of a bullet than ever hurt you—consciously, at least—that gives you peace of mind in this moment. Or maybe it’s the way he keeps pressing kisses into your hair, murmuring apologies and confessions of love in-between each one.

You pull back, swallowing thickly when you glimpse the head wound again, still sluggishly bleeding scarlet. One of your dark thoughts lingers the same way smoke does after a fire, poisoning the air with its filth. This is not your reality, but it is pretty girl’s. And when you leave, there will be no cube to save her.

“Promise me something, Brown Eyes,” you say, placing a hand on his cheek. 

“Anything.”

“Get help. If not for your own sake, then for hers. For your future family’s.”

Confusion sparks in his eyes, no doubt wondering what the hell you’re meaning, but you don’t stay to explain, turning the cube again without hesitation. 

And maybe it’s foolish to hope he remembers your words, that they come to him in the darkness in the midst of his nightmares and spare him pain. Spare them both pain. But, then again, you’ve been a fool from the very beginning thinking you can solve a cursed cube where countless others have failed. 

So fuck it. You’re going to keep on hoping for the best until the bitter end, until your heart can’t break anymore.

Chapter Text

You’re in a tent. 

That’s the first thing you notice about your new reality, taking in the dark green canvas walls surrounding you. You’re sitting on a cot, a pillow to your left and a neatly folded blanket to your right. In front of you is a desk with a pistol lying deceivingly innocently next to the Infinity Cube and a flashlight. The three items are acting as paperweights holding down a massive map. Tilting your head for a better look, you try to recall your high school geography class as you study the names of cities, rivers, and mountains, but it isn’t until you spot Bogotá circled in red that you realize you’re looking at a map of Colombia.

You’re in a tent in Colombia for reasons currently unknown. And there’s a gun within reach. Nothing weird about that at all. No potential red flags to be worried about. Nope. Maybe you’re just here camping and the pistol is to scare off bears? 

You exhale slowly, gaze lifting from the map to the cube. The sunlight slipping in through the tent’s front opening makes the golden metal appear unnaturally shiny. Of all the locations in the world, it’s strange it has brought you to almost the exact same place twice. You subconsciously rub at your chest, feeling a distant aching pang at the thought of Javier.

Before picking up the cube, you hadn’t been much of a world traveler. You were more of a homebody, content to explore the restaurants and sites of your own little neighborhood than those overseas. And the few times you did travel, it was strictly for FBI business connecting with other foreign government agencies investigating art thefts. You always followed a strict schedule outlining what was expected of you for every hour of your trip. 

Now…there is no plan for you to follow step by step.

Sure, you’re supposed to solve the cube and return the thief’s heart but there’s no specific instructions. No guidelines telling you who to talk to or what to expect next. 

Or, most frustratingly, what the damn hearts engraved on the cube mean. They are too distinctive not to mean anything important. Six hearts. Six different designs. Six potential meanings. 

Then again, the thief hadn’t even made one reference to them. Maybe he forgot, or maybe the curse prevents him from mentioning them, or maybe…

Maybe this is one mystery you’re not destined to solve.

You’re on the verge of pulling your hair out when shouting from outside the tent hooks your attention. The voices are arguing in Spanish, each one raising their voice to be louder than their verbal sparring opponent, sounding seconds away from tearing into each other.

“Veracruz,” you whisper under your breath, concern for his well-being overruling every instinct telling you to stay put. 

Stepping outside the tent, you raise a hand to block the piercing sunlight. You’re here camping, you realize, spotting a cluster of matching dark green tents blending in amongst the surrounding jungle landscape, but definitely not the recreational kind. There are men wearing military fatigues everywhere you look, armed with no less than three weapons each. This is a militia camp, suspiciously remote and well-fortified, the kind you’ve seen in blockbuster action-thriller movies full of explosions and epic one-liners. 

You spare a quick glance at your own clothes, thinking your black t-shirt and camouflage-patterned cargo pants aren’t even a fraction as intimidating as their attire. God, you wish this were actually a movie set, if only so you could ask the wardrobe department for an upgrade. 

A group is gathered by the pavilion in the center of camp, and as they notice your approach one by one the soldiers shift and avert their gazes to the ground, moving away from you like you’ve got some contagious disease they’re scared of contracting. You find their behavior weird, to say the least.

The argument reaches its furious peak at the same time the last soldier steps aside, allowing you a clear view of two men standing so close they’re practically spitting on each other with every venomous word exchanged. Veracruz’ back is facing you, but even without the view of his face you’d know it was your lover based on his broad frame alone. 

Your arrival catches the other man’s attention, his beady, rodent-like eyes flicking towards you before his lips curl into the sleaziest smirk you’ve ever seen. 

“Aquí está,” he says, and you catch the immediate tensing of the Veracruz’ shoulders beneath his tactical vest. “Tu perra metiendo la nariz donde no pertenece.”

A bitch, a quiet and remote part of your brain translates, pulling apart the words only to be hurt by the end result. Not even just that, but a nosy bitch. 

A hush falls over the entire camp. The kind of foreboding silence promising nothing good will follow after it. You’re not the only one upset by the asshole’s cruel remark.

Either oblivious to the tension or feeling recklessly empowered by being the center of attention, he foolishly adds, “Tal vez si estuvieras dispuesto a compartir…”

A gunshot rips through the air, a resounding blast that has you instinctively covering your mouth with both hands to stifle your cry of shock. The asshole’s legs give out, blood spurting out of his mouth, and he collapses into a dead heap upon the grass with a bullet wound in the middle of his chest.

“I never share what’s mine,” Veracruz growls, possessive and blunt and with absolutely no room for argument from any of his men. 

He holsters his gun and as he turns around, brown eyes connect with yours. For a brief moment, neither of you say anything, merely watching each other—one stunned, one calculating—before he marches forward.

“I told you to stay in the tent, dulzura,” Veracruz says lowly, guiding you back there with a firm hand on your lower back. “The jungle has a strange effect on men, makes them think with their cocks rather than their brains. It’s safer for you to remain out of their sight.”

You struggle to adapt to his personality shift from coldblooded murderer to protective lover. This man is so vastly different from your Marcus: tough, severe, short-tempered. Veracruz commands his men using fear and the threat of violence, while Marcus leads his team of agents with genuine camaraderie. 

But the way he holds you when you step inside the tent, callused hands gentle and expression soft with concern—it’s surprising how you think of his closeness as comforting rather than upsetting. Your teeth sink into your bottom lip, wondering how a man with so many rough edges has the capacity to be soft around you.

“You don’t need to worry,” he says, mistaking the way you bite your lip as a sign of anxiousness. “I’m never going to let anyone else lay even one finger on you.”

“Good,” you murmur, pulled forward by some invisible string. You loop a hand around the back of his neck, toying with the soft hair along the nape. “I love it when you’re selfish, Brown Eyes.”

His gaze turns heated, but a call from outside interrupts him before he can speak.

“¡Comandante, señor, el estadounidense ha sido visto!”

Like putting on a mask, any trace of warmth and affection is wiped from Veracruz’s face. He untangles your fingers from his hair and drops your hand as if you’d burned him. You swallow thickly, a wave of nausea rolling over you.

Veracruz points a firm finger at you. “Stay.”

You watch him leave the tent, arms wrapped around your stomach. A quiet voice in the back of your mind wonders if maybe you are his bitch after all. The way he’d just spoken to you…It was like he turned off his emotions and stopped seeing you as someone he loved, let alone as someone human. 

Taking a deep breath, you roll your shoulders, shaking off the tension clinging to them. This place is only temporary, you tell yourself. A bad pit stop soon to be forgotten.

Picking up the cube, you subconsciously press your thumb against one of the broken heart symbols. 

“You’re not going to break me,” you say aloud, grabbing the bottom layer of it. “So enough with the doom and gloom. Nothing is going to stop me from going home, you hear me?”

And maybe it’s just your imagination, but the cube almost seems to glow right before you twist it. Like it has heard your challenge and stubbornly refuses to admit defeat. 

But that would be ridiculous. The cube is magical, not sentient. 

…Right?

Chapter Text

You’re lying in a bed for a second time, staring at the ceiling as the moonlight makes shapes on the ceiling like graffiti art. Sitting up, you press a hand to your face, grimacing when your fingers brush against dried tear stains forming crusty lines down your cheeks.  You must have been seriously upset to have fallen asleep while still crying. 

What little details of the bedroom you can make out in the dark are so plain and boring—just a closet, bed, and nightstand. Not even a single picture hanging on the wall—that alarm bells start ringing in your mind. You think, even for your alternate self who you know nothing about, this isn’t where you usually sleep at night. 

Slipping out into the hallway on socked feet, you’re struck in the chest with an icy shard of absolute dread. It’s the same feeling you get when watching horror movies with Marcus, when you instinctively know the killer’s gonna pop out on screen, but you don’t know how or what precise moment, so you’re left sitting there in suspense, waiting, waiting, waiting. 

There are three other doors along the hall before it connects with the living room—one open to reveal a bathroom, one closed shut, and one at the far end open just  the faintest crack. 

You choose the third door, drawn towards it despite the pit in your stomach growing larger and larger with every step. Up close, you hear the faint rustle of movement from inside followed by the distinctive zzzip of a bag’s zipper being tugged on. 

The door swings open with a quiet creak of protest under the force of your palm, and then you’re watching Frankie folding t-shirts and stuffing them in a duffle bag. 

His face is half-concealed in shadow, but the dim bulb of the lamp in the corner provides enough light for you to see the lines of grim resignation and stubborn loyalty weighing heavily on his expression beneath his unruly curls. He knows what he’s doing is stupid, but he’s going to go through with it anyways because when it comes to his friends—his brothers—he’s incapable of telling them ‘no’ to anything.

God, some days you wish he’d met you first. Worse still, some days you wish he’d never met any of them at all.

You lean against the doorframe, feeling like you’ll fall over without the support, and quietly ask, “Were you even going to say goodbye or was I going to find a note on the fridge in the morning?”

He finally looks at you, expression an open wound of hurt. “Of course I would have said goodbye.”

“You shouldn’t be saying it at all,” you hiss, crossing your arms. “This trip is fucking insane, Frankie. No amount of money is worth what Santi’s asking you to do.”

Santi’s name digs into your brain like a shovel, unearthing a chest full of memories that you wish had remained buried. They’re just fleeting glimpses, like flipping through the pages of a book, but they flood your mind all the same, one after the other without pause. 

Frankie’s cocaine suspension, the pile of overdue bills on the kitchen table, Santi sending a text message out of the fucking blue claiming he’s got a job for Frankie and the rest of the gang. A job that would pay seventeen grand if successfully done.

All Frankie had to do was travel to South America with his fellow Delta Force veterans to map out and do reconnaissance of a drug lord’s house in the middle of the jungle for the government’s narcotics unit. It’ll be just like old times, Santi had added at the end of the text and the shithead even included a smiley face. 

Frankie doesn’t say anything. You both just look at each other and the moment of silence keeps stretching on, brown eyes locked on yours. You’re not used to this—this being a giant chasm of distance between you two. Physically, Frankie’s here with you, but emotionally? He’s already left you for another continent. 

He looks back to his bag, finding it easier to speak to it rather than you as he says, “They need me, orange.”

“Fuck that,” you say through clenched teeth, ignoring the throbbing ache in your heart upon hearing your nickname on his soft lips. “You’ve got people that need you right here, Frankie, so don’t use that bullshit excuse.”

“You don’t understand—”

“Except I do,” you growl, pushing off the doorframe and closing the gap of distance in two steps. You jab a finger into his chest. “You’re going because you can’t stand the thought of disappointing them. Because you’re convinced you owe them something—”

“No, not something. Everything.” Frankie’s voice isn’t raised but there’s a weight to it, shutting you up immediately. You watch as he exhales a heavy sigh, reaching for a pair of jeans to add to the bulging duffle bag. “Fuck, there’s still so much you don’t know about me. About all those years. Whatever it is you think you understand—orange, you don’t know a damn thing at all.”

Once the words leave his mouth, they remain suspended in the air, reverberating in your ears like an echo. You don’t even know what to say, lips parted soundlessly. 

Strangely, all you can think is that orange isn’t as sweet of a nickname as you used to believe.

It’s a shortened form of mi media naranja, meaning ‘my half-orange’, the Spanish equivalent of saying ‘my better half’ in English. When split into halves, oranges have one, perfect match to make them whole again which is similar to the Greek legend humans once had two faces, four legs, and four arms until Zeus tore them apart and punished them to spend their whole lifetime looking for their other half. 

Frankie told you after a whole year of dating you were the one he’d been searching for, his soulmate, his better half-orange. And he’s called you orange ever since.

But can you really be someone’s perfect match without knowing every part of them? Is there even such a thing as a perfect match? You think maybe all this universe traveling is screwing with your brain, that maybe being in love with the same version of someone doesn’t always guarantee a happily ever after with them every time. 

“Brown Eyes,” you say, feeling suddenly drained and exhausted, leaning forward to rest your forehead against his. “Just…come home as soon as you can, okay? Preferably in one piece.”

“I’ll come back,” he answers, voice hoarse with sincerity. “And then we’ll talk, I promise.” He presses a kiss to your forehead, lingering there for several heartbeats, and then he’s grabbing his bag and walking out of the bedroom. 

Through watery eyes, you catch the way he hesitates outside the closed door, placing a hand on the wood. The gesture has your heart feeling like it’s about to burst although you don’t fully understand why. 

You wipe away the new stream of tears dripping down your face and when you look back up, Frankie’s gone.

It takes an embarrassingly long five minutes before you can summon up the strength to move. You miss him already, which you realize is pathetic since Frankie isn’t even yours to miss. 

Once again, you think this whole thing isn’t fair. 

Shaking your head, you decide it’s time to go before you drown in a pit of self-deprecation. You look down at your hands, blinking dumbly at their emptiness. 

The cube. You don’t have it. 

“Oh no,” you murmur, trying not to panic, but your stomach is starting to churn, heart lodging itself in your throat. “No, no no no…”

Where is it? Did you have it when you arrived? It’s always been close by, within reach…

Your eyes sweep frantically around the room, searching for the barest glimpse of anything gold or shiny. But there’s nothing. Just sheets on the bed and clothes on the floor and a baby monitor on the bedside table and pillows stacked on the chest at the foot of the bed and—

Your train of thought comes to a screeching halt.

You turn your head stiffly, taking a second look at the small electronic device. 

“Oh my God,” you breathe, because if that’s a baby monitor—and it sure fucking looks like one—then that means there’s a—

The speaker of the monitor crackles to life, emitting an upset cry.

Your feet are already moving before you realize it, pulled forward by an invisible string. Twisting the knob of the closed door, you step inside what might be the most precious-looking nursery you’ve ever seen.

The walls are a soft shade of blue and the rug beneath your feet is shaped to look like a giant cloud, little toy airplanes hanging from a mobile over the crib. Of course Frankie’s love of flying would influence the nursery theme. 

Another wail draws you closer to the crib, step by step until you’re peering over the railing at a little baby girl dressed in a purple, polka-dotted onesie. She coos at you when she sees you, momentarily forgetting her distress, and good lord she has your eyes. 

Your eyes and nose and ears.

But those curls? Those are 100% Frankie’s genes.

And then you see it. There at the top of her crib next to a stuffed panda is the cube.

How did it get there? You start to reach for it, only for your daughter—oh, fuck, it hits you like a cement wall. She’s your daughter, half you and half Frankie—to intercept by latching onto your fingers with her tiny arms, squealing like she’s caught the world’s best prize.

You struggle to drag your eyes away from her, reluctantly glancing towards the cube. The thief said the complete merging of personalities happened when the cube couldn’t be found. And right now it’s just…sitting there. You tell yourself as long as you know its location, then it isn’t lost.

So, really, picking up your baby is a harmless action. If anything, it’s a necessary one because she’s hungry and now that Frankie’s gone you’re the only caretaker she has. 

“Come on, my little love,” you say, settling her securely on your hip. “Let’s find you something to eat.”

Turning towards the door, you don’t see the way the symbols of intertwined hearts on the cube light up, shining white for a few precious seconds before fading back to gold.

No, all you see is the dimpled smile on your daughter’s face, beautiful and adorable and so dearly Frankie. 

Chapter Text

The first night when you return your daughter to her crib after feeding her, you intend to grab the cube and leave, to move on to the next universe—but she’s still a little fussy and needs you to rock her another hour or two before she settles down. And by then you’re too tired to think of anything more than returning to your bed to snuggle with one of Frankie’s flannels.

The next morning you look at the cube when you pick up your baby and when you set her down for a nap in the afternoon and another, long lingering glance when you put her down for the night. But you don’t pick it up. The fire that had burned in your core, insisting you keep moving, to go go go, isn’t the blazing inferno it once was. It resembles a candle now, easy to ignore as it gets smaller and smaller.

By the third day you have trouble shaking the nagging sensation you’re forgetting something awfully important. You remember how Frankie liked to say if you can’t remember what you forgot, then it most likely wasn’t important to begin with. He’s probably right, you think, and find it’s suddenly easier to push aside all your worries to instead focus on preparing your daughter a snack of pureed fruit.

~~

A week and a half passes before Frankie calls you from a payphone. A week and a half in which your daughter crawls for the first time across the carpet in the living room, giggling when she latches onto your leg and looks up at your stunned expression, mouth hanging open like you’re imitating a goldfish.

You’ve been trying not to think about the danger Frankie could be in, but when you instinctively turn to look for him, to share a smile and marvel together over your baby’s milestone, only to be crushed by his absence, you can’t help but think about him potentially getting shot at or captured by the drug lord’s henchmen. 

Or worse…

You really don’t want to follow that train of thought.

You don’t want to follow it, because already you and Frankie have gone through so much together—a drug addiction, couples counseling, an unplanned pregnancy, more couples counseling—that the thought of losing him without even the chance to say goodbye is an unbearable one. Frankie is your person. Your half-orange, as he would claim. And you can’t imagine a life without him by your side. You won’t imagine one.

So when your cell phone rings with an unknown number flashing on the screen, you don’t hesitate to answer it, knowing even before he shakily breathes out your name on the other end that it’s him. That he’s coming back to you.

You hold the phone briefly against your chest, letting out a shuttered breath as relief makes your body feel boneless, and then quietly answer. “I’m here, Frankie. I’m here.”

“Orange,” he says, voice strangled-sounding, too many emotions trying to choke him at once. “I’m so sorry. I-I never should have left you. This whole thing has been fucking nightmare from the minute we arrived.”

“Are you okay?” you ask, only to immediately cringe because it’s heartbreakingly obvious he’s not. You rest your head against the headboard of your bed, watching a couple of squirrels out the window searching your backyard for food. “Is anyone hurt?”

“Will’s recovering. He’ll be fine, the bullet went through and through.” There’s a crackle of static as he exhales a heavy sigh, and you imagine him rubbing a hand over his face, nails scratching against the brown and gray hairs along his jawline. “Tom…”

The silence that follows speaks volumes and your heart twists in your chest, understanding what he isn’t saying. Tom’s not coming back. 

And you know without having to ask that the only reason a man as stubborn as Tom ‘Redfly’ Davis wouldn’t be coming back is because he’s dead. 

“Oh, God. Frankie, sweetheart, I’m…” you shake your head, words failing you. I’m sorry doesn’t feel big enough. It can’t wrap Frankie in a hug or bring back his fallen leader, his lost brother. With how much your mind is reeling from the news, you can’t even begin to imagine how Frankie must be feeling.

This time Frankie hears you, understands you, and he says, “We shouldn’t have ever come here. It wasn’t worth the money, not even a damn dime.”

When you speak, your voice cracks and you squeeze your eyes shut. “Please tell me you’re coming home.”

“Soon, orange,” Frankie responds, voice going soft the way it always does whenever he makes a promise to you. Your pounding heartbeat calms almost immediately, resuming its regular rhythm once more. “Two days max and I’m never leaving again. Couldn’t even if I wanted to. I missed you and our pequeño amor too much.”

There’s a split second you think about telling him about your daughter crawling for the first time. But then you think about the joy you had seen on his smiling face when she’d been delivered and the doctor handed her over to him, wrapped in a little blanket, and Frankie had sworn to love her and be there for her every day of his life. 

He made a mistake by leaving, but he’s already been punished by losing a friend. Hearing he missed a milestone would only hurt him, and you can’t bear being the one to cause him further pain.

“We missed you too, Brown Eyes,” you say finally, mouth turning up even though he can’t see it. “You know you’re her favorite bedtime storyteller in the whole world, so get your ass back here ASAP, okay?”

When Frankie reads to your daughter each night, you swear she’s hypnotized by the sound of his voice, looking up at him from the crook of his elbow with an almost-eerie amount of intensity for a seven-month-old as he impersonates each character with different accents and facial expressions. If his heart didn’t soar up in the sky with the birds and clouds, you could imagine him performing beneath a spotlight, easily captivating an entire theatre full of people. No matter the story, he finds a way to bring the words on the pages to life, a talent you were as envious of as you were fascinated by.

“Okay,” he echoes, and it’s quiet for a moment before he hesitantly speaks. “We’re…going to be okay, right, orange?”

“Of course.” Because you would be, eventually. It would take time and a lot more talking, but you’re confident there will come a day where Frankie doesn’t carry the weight of his past sins and guilt on his shoulders and you’d stop expecting the worst to happen whenever he was around his friends, that they wouldn’t take him somewhere—emotionally or physically—that he couldn’t return to you from.

“I’ve only got a minute left on this thing,” Frankie says, sounding a little irritated by the payphone’s timer which brings another smile to your face as you imagine him frowning grumpily at the machine. “But know that I love you, orange. You and our little girl are the best part of my life.”

“We love you too.”

He starts talking quicker, words blending together so fast you almost have trouble understanding him. “There’s a book in the nursery—top shelf, right next to that stuffed Pikachu Benny gave us at your baby shower. It’s a little thing, not even twenty pages, and it’s called When You Love Someone. I don’t remember the author, but it doesn’t matter. Read that tonight at bedtime, would you? It’s her favorite and—”

“Frankie,” you interrupt. “If it’s her favorite then you should read it when you get back. She’ll enjoy it more.”

“No, I want you to read it because it’s how I feel about you—”

And then his voice is cut off by the incessant beeping of the dial tone, annoying and shrill in your eardrum, and you curse, throwing your phone across the bed. 

How I feel about you.

You know Frankie loves you—he’d even just said those three precious words not even five minutes ago. So what else could be in this children’s book that’s so important he’d use his last remaining seconds to tell you about it? 

Guess you’ll find out at bedtime.

~~

The book is exactly where Frankie said it would be: on the top shelf of the bookcase leaning against a Pikachu holding a baby bottle. It’s square-shaped with a pair of smiling anthropomorphic foxes holding hands on the cover, one white and the other ginger, with the title When You Love Someone written in cursive at the top.

“Alright, little love,” you begin, grabbing the book and getting comfortable in the rocking chair. Your daughter, fed and content, sits in your lap, leaning back against you and watching as you open up the book to the first page. “Are you ready for a story?”

You make sure she can see the cute scene drawn on the page of the ginger fox holding a bundle of daisies, offering them to the white fox who is blushing and looking adorably smitten by the gesture. 

“When you love someone, you’ll love them in more ways than one,” you read aloud, resisting the urge to coo when your daughter cuddles closer against you, resting her head against your chest. “You’ll love them like the ocean loves the shore, like the moon does the sun.”

It’s a rhyming book, you realize, which makes the idea of Frankie reading it impossibly sweeter. 

On the next page, the two foxes are driving in a car with little music notes drifting out the open windows from the radio. The white fox’s mouth is open, singing along, while the ginger fox sits behind the steering wheel, smiling. 

“When you love someone, you love them yesterday, today and tomorrow. You love the way they smile and laugh and how they sing along to the radio.”

The scene reminds you of a road trip you’d taken with Frankie just before you’d found out you were pregnant. A Backstreet Boys song had come on the radio and you’d immediately twisted the volume knob as high as it would go, belting out the lyrics to your favorite boyband’s song.

You hesitate to turn the page, an inexplicable feeling striking you in the chest. A sensation of…wrongness. Like you’ve just told a lie. 

Your daughter wiggles in your lap, forcing your attention back to the present moment, and you make sure she’s secure before continuing the story.

“When you love someone, you love them like they’re family,” you say, looking down at the picture of the two foxes having a picnic on a hill beneath a giant, lone tree. “An unbreakable bond that runs deep like the roots of a tree.”

The tree roots form a pair of intertwined hearts. You should find it cute, but instead it makes your stomach twist into knots, heart throbbing like an invisible fist is slowly closing around it.

You turn the page so hastily you nearly tear it free from the book. The white fox is now cuddling next to the miserable-looking ginger fox with a blanket wrapped around them both. The drawing is considerably darker in tone than the past drawings as the artist gives the impression of sadness even before you read the text.

“When you love someone, you will trust them with your heart.” Your voice sounds hoarse even to your own ears, weighted down with emotions you don’t understand. “Especially when you’re hurt, confused, about to fall apart.”

Staring at the ginger fox, a memory tickles the back of your mind. A hand around your throat. Blood on a white t-shirt. A voice pleading with you just let me hold you, pretty girl. 

And that doesn’t make any sense at all. Frankie has never called you ‘pretty girl’ before, not even the handful of times years ago when you would come home and find him high, eyes glossed over and rambling nonsense. He always called you orange no matter what.

Another page, another drawing. This time the foxes are participating in the trust exercise where you fall backwards and your partner catches you. The ginger fox has safely caught the white one, preventing a collision with the ground.

“When you love someone, you know them best of all. There are no secrets, no lies, you know they’ll be there to catch you when you fall.”

The room’s temperature seems abruptly colder, goosebumps rising along your arms, and you’re reminded of snowflakes falling all around you. A hand on your face, warmer than your coat and beanie combined. I’m not a salesman, darlin’.

“What the fudge,” you mutter, uncomfortably aware of how tense your body has become. You don’t know what the weight on your chest is, how to comprehend its presence, why this book is making you feel a tsunami of emotions with its sappy rhymes and even sappier artwork. Cut it out with the weirdness, you tell your brain. It’s a fucking children’s book for crying out loud.

The next page reveals the two foxes in the middle of a crowded room full of other animals. The pair are staring at each other, little pink and red hearts surrounding them, while everyone else in the room seems oblivious to their encounter.

“When you love someone, sometimes you know it at first sight,” you read, gripping the book so tight your knuckles hurt from the strain. At this point, you’re not even sure why you’re still reading. Half of you is demanding you stop and grab another book to read instead, but the other half is strangely interested in seeing how it ends. “They bring out the best in you, make your dark days sunny and bright.”

Your breath catches when you turn the page. The ginger fox is proposing to the white fox, down on one knee and holding a diamond ring. 

“When you love someone, you might choose to marry them,” you murmur softly, forcing the words out around the lump in your throat. “To be by their side forever, wearing a ring with a fancy gem.”

Unthinkingly, you trace your thumb over the picture, and despite there not being a ring visible on your fourth finger, you can feel it there in your mind. The gentle squeeze of metal against your flesh.

Oh, God, it’s official. You’re losing your mind. Or you’ve hit your head and maybe this is all a bizarre dream. Or maybe you’re sick with a fever and you’re hallucinating or you’re—

A victim of greed. Bound to the…and its whims.

Your head snaps up, Frankie’s voice so loud and clear in your head you expect to find him in front of you, that favorite floral robe of his hanging off his broad shoulders. But there’s no one there. 

A heartbeat later, the fact sinks in painfully slow, another stone added to the pile on your chest, Frankie doesn’t own a floral robe.

You glance down at your daughter, praying she hasn’t noticed your weird behavior, and breathe out a quiet sigh of relief to see she’s fallen asleep. Pressing a quick kiss to her curls, you turn the final page and this time you don’t read the words aloud, hoarding them all to yourself.

‘When you love someone, it doesn’t matter how far and wide you roam. You’ll always find your way back to them because they are your home.’

The book falls from your hands onto the floor. You ignore it, mind buzzing.

Home.

I want to go home.

If you solve the… you might have a chance.

Solve the what? You rack your brain, trying to shake loose that final word. It’s important. The key to explaining all of this, you don’t know how you know it, but you do. 

What can be solved? Riddles. Figuring out a simple answer to a complex question. Except, no, it doesn’t feel right. Your hands twitch with the urge to hold something. 

Puzzles. Pieces slotting together to form a picture, but that doesn’t feel right either. Too many parts to hold. No, it needs to be one thing. One shiny, golden thing you can hold in the palm of your hand like a piece of treasure.

Your daughter lets out a snore, startling you out of your thoughts. You choke out an unsteady laugh and stand to deposit her in her crib for the night. Leaning over the railing, you’re not expecting the bolt of recognition that strikes your body like a million needles. 

There’s a cube in your daughter’s crib. A cube that’s golden and could easily fit in the palm of your hand. A cube with six symbols. A cube given to you by a grief-stricken man who has your lover’s face. 

A cube you promised to solve.

Feeling sick, you suck in several deep breaths, trying to calm yourself down by looking at your sleeping daughter’s innocent face instead. She dreams, oblivious to your turmoil, and she’s so beautiful with her curls framing her little chubby cheeks.

But the knot in your stomach doesn’t unravel. It can’t. Not when you’ve remembered the heartbreaking truth.

She’s not your daughter.

Oh God. You almost lost yourself. You nearly stole the life of another version of yourself. So selfish, you berate yourself, swallowing bile. So fucking selfish.

This time when you reach for the cube, you don’t let the baby distract you. Not even when she murmurs in her sleep a word that sounds suspiciously like mama. No, you grab it and you take a giant step backwards, the railing blocking your view of her.

Exhaling a shaky breath, you look down at the cube, feeling like you’re seeing the hearts engraved in the golden metal in a whole new light after reading that book. 

The intertwined hearts symbol matches the one made by the tree roots. Representing family, children, loving someone so much you’re always connected to them. And you think not just of the baby in the room, but also of Grogu, that little green, big-eared child you didn’t meet and yet you’d known you and Din loved him as fiercely as if he were your own son.

The plain heart is loving someone wholeheartedly, every little detail about them—their favorite color, what clothes they wear, how they indulge your love of One Direction. You resist the urge to laugh at yourself, wondering how Orange could ever pick another boyband over them. 

The broken heart is the most obvious one when it comes to meaning. Really, you should have understood it from the start. It represents heartbreak and unhappiness, when you’ve been hurt by the one you love most. You gently press your thumb against the symbol on top of the cube, once again hoping Pretty Girl and Dave manage to work things out.

The heart with the keyhole implies it’s locked, protecting something valuable within. It takes a large amount of trust to offer someone the key, to be so open and transparent with them, revealing all your vulnerable parts. Trust is a two-way street and for as much as Jack trusted you with his most valuable secret, you in turn trusted Javier not to judge your odd traits as you fell in love with him.

The striped heart’s meaning is undoubtedly the most ambiguous, but as you stare at the thin lines side by side, dark then light then dark again, you’re reminded that relationships can be messy with ups and downs. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, to be by someone’s side throughout universes, falling in love again and again.

The heart with the arrow piercing it is another obvious one representing Cupid and his matchmaking skills. Your forehead wrinkles as you think about the notion of love at first sight. You believe it can happen, but you’ve yet to experience it as any version of yourself, not even as your true self with Marcus. In every universe so far, your relationship with his variants has been a gradual development, a love built from the ground up. 

Strange, you think, biting your lip.

And stranger still is you picking up the book off the floor and looking at the front cover again, noticing the author’s name at the bottom: Marie Shaid.

You initially feel a pang of disappointment because it’s not a name you recognize, but the longer you stare at it, the letters start shifting out of order, forming new words, and you force yourself not to blink, not to move a single muscle. Just sit there and watch until the letters finally settle.

i aM hiS dear

You think you’re going to throw up, a wave of nausea washing over you. Only the thief had called you ‘dear’ and his love had been the very first version of you to turn the cube and start the cycle. The thief had been certain she was dead, that her soul had long been lost, but what if she wasn’t? What if her soul was just as trapped by the damn cube as the thief’s heart was?

You finally are forced to give into the urge to blink and the letters revert back to the name, but it doesn’t matter. You know what you saw. 

“You want to go home just like me,” you whisper, staring at the cube with a mixture of contempt and awe. Could there have been other warning signs? Little magical glitches you hadn’t noticed that were meant to keep you on track?

Fuck, you’ve got to start paying more attention. You barely held onto your identity this time—you don’t trust your self-control enough to risk a second occurrence. 

Setting the book down on the changing table, you keep your back to the crib despite your heart screaming for one last look at your little love. I can’t, you tell yourself, over and over, a cruel but necessary mantra. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

The thief told you there were millions of millions of millions of universes out there. And there are versions of you and him existing in every single one.

But that little girl with your eyes and Frankie’s curls? 

You could explore all the universes a dozen times over and never find anyone else like her. 

Closing your eyes, you turn the cube with the sound of her quiet snores echoing in your ears.

Chapter Text

There are few sights prettier in the world than an ocean sunrise. You sit on the shoreline, the salt water lapping at your bare toes, and stare out at the horizon line where the sky is a masterpiece of pastel blues, pinks, and oranges mixed together. It should be impossible, something so chaotic appearing so beautiful. How lucky, you think, that there’s a me who gets to call this place home.

The scent of sea salt burns your nose with its intensity, but you welcome the sensation, losing yourself in the dull roar of the waves climbing up the sand in an act of conquest, only to succumb to the pull of the tide and return home again. A cycle that goes on and on and on. 

A cycle you can relate to.

Beside you there is a pile of speckled seashells collected during your morning walk and beside them is the cube. You don’t know whether to be hopeful or not, seeing the locked heart symbol on top filling two of the three rows, almost solved. None of the other sides share the same potential results, symbols scattered in all directions.  

It makes sense that something created by the Devil and corrupted with magic would be difficult to solve. Like the waves, whenever you think you have made progress, you are pulled back by an unseen force into another struggle. 

Unlike the waves though, your strength has a human limit. You were weak in Frankie’s universe, and you’re not naïve enough to think you won’t be weak again. It’s an inevitability that turns your blood cold with terror.

Inside your heart, someplace deep enough even the cube’s magic can’t reach it, the memories of your travels linger. You can feel them there, heavy and wrapped in an aura of nostalgia. You picture them like individual stones stacked atop each other, adding more and more weight. An eerie kind of cairn you think would shatter you from the inside out if it ever toppled over. 

You try not to think too much about the memories, because you can’t risk losing yourself again, and also because there is no going back to them. Forward is the only direction that will lead you home. Home to your job as an archivist, to your family and friends, to your Marcus. It isn’t logical to dwindle on alternate lives or the people within them, no matter how precious they were to you.

If you’re being honest, you thought you’d feel…bereft or traumatized or even possibly full of rage leaving Frankie and your daughter behind. But once the cube dropped you in this new universe, those feelings slipped through your fingers like the sand beneath you, leaving nothing to cling to. 

Your mind is exhausted. It not only has to avoid drowning in memories of the past, it also has to resist the temptation of submerging itself completely in the memories of the present universe. All your self-control, all your focus must be channeled into your future. A future which hopefully includes a solved cube and the end of this universe-hopping journey.

You sense Oberyn before you turn to see him. His presence is a familiar balm to your anxious soul, the same beautiful essence all of Marcus’ brown-eyed variants have in common. 

A beam of sunlight illuminates his face just as you look at him, and maybe you should have already expected the sight, but the memories of this universe have only slowly begun to slip through the cracks of your mind’s defenses—and so you can’t help but gasp, a sharp inhale of breath rivaling the harshness of a gunshot. 

Mangled flesh covers the right side of his face; jagged scars starting just inches beneath his damaged, bloodshot eye run down and over his bearded jawline, dissecting the dark hair there, and then carry onward down the side of his neck. The scars are dark and hideous, but more importantly, they’re fresh, still slightly puckered and pinkish at the edges.  

He pauses at the sound of your gasp, the left side of his face—handsome and unmutilated, still capable of expressing emotion without pain—crumples with despair. He thinks you’re afraid of him, that the other shoe has finally dropped and the one person who has not treated him any differently since the incident has now changed her mind. What should have been a gentle moment between two lovers is now a moment of tension, teetering on the edge of heartache.

The ocean breeze toys with Oberyn’s robe, its golden color reminding you of the cube just inches away from your hand. You could leave now, let the rightful you who belongs here remedy this moment, but the selfish part of you, the one hoarding memories, freezes you in place. You don’t want this memory where he’s looking at you like a man watching his world burn to ash. You want a happy one to take with you.

Slowly, without breaking eye contact with him, you reach out a hand, beckoning him closer. 

There is a beat of hesitation which seems to last an entire season, and then Oberyn obliges your wordless request, his footsteps silent across the sand until he’s settling himself behind you with his chest against your backside, taking your hand in his and intertwining your fingers over your stomach. 

It’s silent except for the crashing of the waves and the faint, distant shrieks of seagulls overhead, looking like little white specks. With each breath, you sense the tension slowly seep out of Oberyn’s muscles, and the corners of your lips curl into a soft smile when he presses his face into your hair, mouthing a kiss against the shell of your ear.

You wonder sometimes, especially during quiet moments like this, how you ever got so lucky. How the most ordinary of girls could be held and loved unconditionally by the Prince of Dorne. It should be impossible, and yet…

Squeezing his fingers, you murmur, “I didn’t mean to—” 

“I forget sometimes, too,” Oberyn admits quietly, barely audible over the waves. Before the incident, your Prince had been immune to the terrible affliction of insecurity. Now you hear whispers of it in his voice, see it darken his eyes when peoples’ gazes linger a heartbeat too long on the scars.

You lift your other hand up towards his head, the pads of your fingertips featherlight over the scarred flesh. You’re unable to see his expression, but you hear the quiet shudder of his breath, feel the restrained emotions rattling in his ribcage against your back.

“The Mountain might have stolen your face, Brown Eyes, but you’re still the same man who courted me with flowers from all over the world. You’re still courageous, and fierce, and incredibly sweet. You’re still and always will be my one and only love.”

Oberyn’s foot nudges yours, a smile in his voice, “You forgot charming, honeybee.”

You laugh at that, your whole heart swelling up with the happy fact you made him smile again. Without thinking, you lift your intertwined hands to your lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. 

“There was a moment during the fight, I thought I was going to die and I was…afraid,” Oberyn says a moment later, speaking much more seriously, like he’s been turning the words over in his head for some time. 

You swallow, your voice small and quiet. “Of dying?”

“No, honeybee.” He pulls you impossibly closer, as if trying to imprint his confession on your body, an invisible tattoo. “I was afraid I’d never see another sunrise with you. And that fear gave me the strength to fight. To come home to you.”

Temptation coils around your limbs again, anchoring you in the moment, in this universe with a beautiful soul who loves you dearly. You look to the horizon again, memorizing every detail you can. Oberyn’s warm breath against your neck. The steady drumming of his heartbeat, your favorite lullaby to drift off to at night. This beach is a shelter, a place of security and comfort.

"Can we stay here?" you ask, sinking further into his embrace.

"As long as you wish."

You stay there in his arms until the sun has risen past the horizon line and the sky is a solid shade of blue. And when you reach for the cube, there are no tears, no internal conflict or doubts. You feel…ready for what’s next. 

You’re still tired, the memories still heavy, but if Oberyn can beat the impossible odds stacked against him and return home, then you’ve got to keep believing you can do the same. 

Hope, belief, and true love.

The three perfect ingredients needed to create a fairytale. 

And maybe it’s childish to do so, but as you turn the cube and leave the beach behind, you can’t help but whisper a quiet prayer into the void, “Please let this end with happily ever after.”

Chapter Text

When you arrive in the next universe, you can’t see anything.

Well, that’s not entirely true. You can see, it’s just everything is a blurry mess, resembling blobs of smeared paint. Like abstract art.  Those were always Marcus’ favorite pieces to see whenever a new art exhibit was on display at the local museums. He’d stand in front of them for hours trying to decipher the artists’ hidden meanings, thoughtful lines creasing his forehead and eyes bright with wonder. In those moments, you thought he was much more captivating to stare at than any painting on display. 

You instinctively reach for the spectacles hanging around your neck, only there is nothing to grab. No glasses or silver chain. You’re confused, thinking it’s not usual for you to misplace your spectacles, especially since they weren’t a cheap purchase—but then everything abruptly swims into focus as gentle fingers slide your glasses onto your face and over your ears.

“Apologies, little bird,” a man says, his face scant inches away from yours. “The fault of our collision is all mine. This place never fails to bewitch me. I wind up looking in every direction except for right in front of me.”

You blink back at him, mouth gaping a little, utterly mesmerized by the honey sweet quality of his voice. Oh great Kevva, he’s beautiful. Sharp cheekbones, a dusting of dark facial hair the same dark coloring as his unkempt curls with a curious blond streak your fingers itch to touch, but it’s his eyes that capture your attention the most. Calling them brown feels too simple. They’re piercing, possessing the same attention-grabbing quality as tiger eye gemstones, treasures to be admired and adored. You could search every moon and planet in the Galactic Frontier and never find anything as pretty as them.

“Hi,” you reply a bit breathily, heartbeat stuttering.

His lips twitch into a smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Hi.”

You don’t swoon, but it’s a near thing.

“Hi.”

You immediately duck your head to hide your wince of embarrassment, staring down at the floor while you internally berate yourself. Idiot. Stupid, foolish, idiot girl. Your clumsy tongue always gets you into trouble around attractive people. You should have just ran away as soon as he gave you back your glasses. It would have been far less humiliating than this conversation. 

He doesn’t laugh at you outright which you appreciate, instead he braces an arm against the glass display case you’d been browsing before he bumped into you. “I hope you don’t mind my inquiry, but are you a frequent visitor of this oddity shop?”

The hand not resting on the glass gestures vaguely at your surroundings and you glance around, noticing the abundance of shelves and cases and booths displaying everything from century old vinyl records to little toy models of last cycle’s drop pods. 

Right. An oddity shop. A place where knickknacks and relics of the past are collected from all over and gather dust until a customer gives them a new lease on life. Every time you stop by there’s new trinkets to discover and novels to browse. You’re no stranger to the feeling of giddiness while being here, but for some funny inexplicable reason, all you want right now is to start organizing the items. To examine them each one by one and take notes. Like that’s your job to do so.

But unfortunately it’s not. Your job’s at the Pug updating the freighter departure times on the central split-flap display. Truly riveting work.

“Um…” You twist back around, realizing the silence has stretched on long enough to be awkward. “Yes, I love this place,” you tell him, nodding your head up and down and up and down until your glasses threaten to fall off again and oh Kevva you need to stop. “Some of the best books I’ve ever read I found here.”

“How fortuitous,” he says, and you bite your lip to refrain from whimpering at the sight of a dimple appearing when his grin widens. “I came here with hopes of finding new reading material to engage with on my travels. Perhaps the converging of our paths was not an accidental occurrence.”

“You want me to help you find a book?”

“More than that, little bird,” the stranger says, somehow feeling closer without taking a single step, eyes dark and magnetic, looking at you like you’re something beautiful and special. “What I want is an escape. An adventure to be explored and lost in when I’m seeking to forget the confines of my pod.”

“Well then, Brown Eyes,” you say, offering him a beaming smile. “Challenge accepted.”

At first you think of it as a game of sorts, searching for the right book for him like a needle in a haystack. Except you soon learn you’ve underestimated his voracious hunger for written words when he’s able to quote William Faulkner, T. E. Lawrence and F. Scott Fitzgerald directly from memory when you hold up samples of each of their works. Instead of trying to find a needle in a haystack, you think it’s more apt to describe this hunt as trying to find a needle in a stack of needles. 

By aisle seven, you start to question the necessity of your involvement. He’d have a much quicker time finding something without you babbling praise for several minutes about books he’s already familiar with. But some selfish, clingy part of you (which is stronger than you’d like to admit) refuses to leave his side. 

“Do you travel often?” you ask, glancing over your shoulder at him.

He nods affirmatively. “Prospecting requires I must.”

You’re not surprised to hear he’s a prospector. Most young men this side of the Mare Anguis find work joining crawling parties to harvest precious gems or minerals for the chance of earning a small fortune. It’s a dangerous profession, not for the faint of heart. But you bet it’s exciting though. Exhilarating. Constantly in motion from one place to the next.

Over and over and over again…

“What’s the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen?” 

“You.”

Your head snaps in his direction. “Me?” you ask dumbly, then let out an undignified snort of disbelief. “That can’t be true. We just met.”

“Did we?” he counters cryptically. There’s a strange undercurrent of emotion in his tone, a sparkle in his brown eyes you’re not entirely sure what to make of. One corner of his mouth tilts up. “Perhaps our souls are old companions desiring to become familiar with one another again.”

For reasons you don’t understand, you find yourself actually considering the possibility of two souls meeting each other in different lifetimes. What surprises you even more is that you want to believe his idea could be true.

“Do you really think that’s possible? That you and I…” you trail off shyly.

“That’s the beauty of possibilities, little bird. They possess infinite potential to be real.” Sensing your lingering skepticism, his eyes turn a shade darker and his brow wrinkles, giving you the impression he’s perusing the library he has memorized in his head until he finds the right passage to quote. “Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ‘morrow?”

Feeling a little lightheaded, you subconsciously brace your shoulder against the shelf to keep you standing. “So, uh,” your tongue feels heavy in your mouth, throat dry. “You think, maybe, our souls knew each other yesterday?”

“Mhm, maybe,” he hums, and his eyes roam over the overstocked shelves of antiques replaced by newer and shinier innovations until they eventually look directly at you once more. “To be completely candid though, I am much more interested in tomorrow’s odds of knowing you. And to keep on knowing you the day after that, and the day after that…”

Thank Kevva there’s a shelf behind you because you’re certain you would have fallen over. Your heart flutters in your chest, as if it has suddenly sprouted wings, and you feel the start of a smile pulling at the corner of your mouth. “Completely candid, huh? Well, then I guess I should admit I’m interested in those odds too. Starting with knowing your name.”

His face lights up, happy and hopeful, that dimpled grin of his making a reappearance and Kevva help you you’re already head over heels for this man. “Call me Ezra.”

The search for the perfect book resumes and if Ezra happens to walk a few inches closer than before, well, let’s just say you don’t discourage his nearness, letting your hand lightly brush against his.

A shelf full of snow globes snags your attention midway down the aisle, your steps slowing to a stop in front of them. Each one contains a different scene of famous cities and landmarks, far off places you doubt you’ll ever save up enough points to see in your lifetime. But one snow globe stands out differently than the rest. 

It’s larger, for starters. The glass sphere is nearly the size of your hand when you pick it up and hold it in front of your eyes. Secondly, there are two animal figures inside instead of a location, a dog and a fox, frozen in the middle of chasing each other in a circle. Slowly, you tilt the globe upside down and watch the white snowflakes swirl in the clear liquid before they rain down upon the creatures.

There’s a beat of silence and then Ezra’s reaching out a hand to lightly touch the sphere, fingertips sliding down the glass until they’re resting over yours.  It becomes difficult to think with him so near, but you focus on the movement of his lips as he says, “Laelaps and the Teumessian Fox.”

You tilt your head, not recognizing the names. “…Who?”

“They’re beasts of an ancient legend,” he says, moving his hand to tap at the top of the snow globe and you mourn the loss of his touch. “From what I can recall of the tale, the dog was meant to hunt down the fox to prevent it from causing havoc upon a city. Laelaps was divinely gifted to catch anything it chased, but the problem, you see, is that the fox was also a divinely gifted creature who could never be captured.”

“It’s a paradox,” you murmur, and you’re slowly able to form coherent thoughts again as your interest in the myth deepens. “What happened to them? Did one beast’s gift ultimately prevail over the other’s?”

For a moment he just stares at you, a new weight to his gaze you don’t understand. Then, his eyes lower back to the animals, an unidentifiable emotion flickering across his face. “No, they were both transformed into stone and cast amongst the stars.”

You frown. “That’s a terrible ending.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, little bird, which is precisely the reason I prefer to label it a temporary conclusion,” Ezra admits with a smirk.

Your brain fails to connect the dots, helplessly lost. Inside the globe, the last drifting snowflakes settle on the ground beneath the paws of the fox and dog. All is still once more.

Sensing your confusion, Ezra taps the globe again, elaborating, “They’re trapped right now in an in-between status. Neither alive nor dead. Some people call it limbo.”

You inhale a sharp breath, comprehension dawning with sickening clarity followed by a wave of dizziness threatening to knock you off your feet. 

Limbo.

The word echoes in your ears like thunder. Over and over and over again.

Limbo. Limbo. Limbo. 

You try to regain control of your panic-stricken lungs, to push aside the sensation of déjà vu clawing at your brain insisting you’ve heard the word before, but it’s futile.

“Hey,” Ezra says, expression strained and voice concerned, placing a hand on your arm, “are you okay?”

No. There is something wide awake and screaming inside of you. It makes the hair on the back of your neck prickle, every instinct you have on high alert. Whatever the presence is, it’s desperate, terrified and furious as fuck all at once.

Your glasses slide down the bridge of your nose and everything blurs into a muddled mess of colors and lights. Like this, when you look at Ezra, all his distinctive features are gone, except for his brown eyes somehow. Those remain breathtakingly perceptible, bright and piercing, like twin flares cutting through the storm of confusion to the truth hidden beneath it all. 

It’ll happen again as it has before, the thief had said.

The reply had evaded you before, but now it falls off your lips as easily as your own name. “Because I am your dearheart forevermore.”

The snow globe slips from your trembling hand before you can stop it. It shatters upon impact with a deafening crack, sending shards of glass scattering in every direction. Laelaps and the Teumessian Fox lie free from their imprisonment in a pool of white-speckled liquid rapidly bleeding outwards towards your shoes.

“Woah!” Ezra scrambles back a few steps to avoid the mess, eyes widening with surprise. “What—”

But you’re already gone, rushing down the aisle with a new search in mind. It’s got to be somewhere nearby, hidden amongst all these antiques and novelties. Your eyes sweep from side to side, scanning the shelves for a glimpse of gold, probably looking like an absolute maniac but you don’t care. You just want the cube.

You just want your escape.

Freedom always comes with a cost. And after visiting almost a dozen universes, you’re no stranger to heartbreaking sacrifices. You have rejected everything the cube has given you, fighting back against the overwhelming temptation to stay. To explore the infinite possibilities of each universe and all their grand potential. That is the cost you are required to pay again and again no matter how high the price.

You’re required to pay it because this—the whole fucking journey itself—is far bigger than you are. It’s magic and soulmates and a sentient cube whose only purpose for existing is to make the thief’s heart suffer.

His physical heart and his metaphorical one.

You.

(Well, a version of you, at least. God, your head can’t take much more of this.)

Let it always be remembered, the Devil is a conniving bastard. He knew the thief’s dear would go after the Infinity Cube to rescue her soulmate’s heart and then all he had to do was sit back and enjoy watching his invention inflict a second punishment. 

You’ve never wanted to punch someone in the throat more. 

All this time the thief has thought it was his own magic that had caused the cube to steal his dear’s soul. But it was the Devil’s manipulation all along. Your heart aches for the poor thief and you wish you could tell him it isn’t his fault you and his love are caught in this mess. 

“Soon,” you mutter under your breath, turning a corner. “Soon I’ll see him again.”

You spot the cube immediately, golden and pristine, nestled between a typewriter missing several keys and a jar of seashells. The items are too connected to your past experiences for the location to be a coincidence. No, the cube is taunting you again. 

Your mouth twists into a dark scowl, temper flaring. “And you’ll never bother either of us again.”

You grab hold of the cube at the same time a hand curls around your other wrist, palm warm and callused from years of harsh work, tugging you around to face a panting Ezra, expression pinched with worry.

It’s not a surprise he came after you. When you fall for someone at first sight, you never want to see them leave.

Chest heaving, he squeezes your wrist. “What happened back there? Did I say something to distress you, little bird?”

You just shake your head. He’s so similar to Marcus, to all the Brown Eyes you’ve met and loved. It doesn’t get any easier saying goodbye, not when a few heartbeats from now you’re going to be saying hello. 

Pulling your wrist free of his grasp, you fix your gaze on his face, etching every little detail into your memory. Ezra’s different from the rest, not just because of the tuft of blond in his hair. You hadn’t known love at first sight existed before meeting him. You hadn’t known how powerful a force that kind of love could be, tilting your whole world on its axis and making the stars fall like rain. Beautiful and chaotic, much like an ocean sunrise.

There won’t be a tomorrow for you and him. You’ll never learn more about his prospecting adventures or where the little silvery scar on his cheekbone came from. But deep down you have the feeling men like Ezra can never be fully known. You could have him for a thousand tomorrows and still find parts of his character remain elusive to you. He is the Teumessian Fox to your Laelaps— right there in front of you, taking up all your focus, but he’ll always be just out of your reach.

The cube is insisting differently. You can feel its persuasive influence like a weighted blanket trying to keep you pinned here, to be selfish and merge into this life. 

“I’m tired of temporary conclusions, Ezra,” you say softly, and there is a lapse in your self-restraint as you nuzzle your forehead against his. “I want a full life. And I can’t have that here.”

He’s confused, you can feel it in the way his brow scrunches and see it in the way his fingers clench into fists at his sides to keep from grabbing onto you again, but instead of arguing or demanding an explanation, he simply says, “Then I hope you find some place you can.”

When you turn the cube, you think of the next book you had prepared to show Ezra. A vividly detailed story about fly fishing, brotherhood, and learning to accept loss when it comes. But those aren’t the reasons you think of it. You think of it because of one single quote tucked within the pages.

We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.

Maybe it’s true you would have never completely known Ezra if you’d stayed. Maybe you wouldn’t have understood why he continued risking his life to harvest gemstones and leave you alone for lengthy periods of time. But it’s also true you would have loved him with every fiber of your being regardless.

And although you’ll never know with absolute certainty, there’s a look in his eyes you see right before you’re swept away that makes you believe he would have loved you in return all the days of his life.

Chapter Text

It never fails to feel jarring, one minute standing face to face with a man wearing Marcus’ face, memories of your alternate self’s life slowly downloading themselves into your brain, and within the next twist of the cube, existing in a brand-new universe, looking around a rundown gym with decades-old posters of formerly famous boxers and their championship matches pinned along the walls.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“Nice move, making a wish on the Dreamstone,” Dio says, and it might have come across as a sincere compliment if your ears didn’t detect a note of patronization. He takes a seat on the couch, tossing the cube up in the air like it’s a toy won out of an arcade game. “Absolutely zero chance of success, but still. Nice. The Infinity Cube is a multiversal power and the Dreamstone’s just a lucky rock limited to the boundaries of this reality. It’s like trying to use a butter knife to open a bank vault–a fancy, billion-dollar butter knife though, I’ll give you that. Only used for royalty or when your mother-in-law visits.”

You turn your gaze away from him when he starts laughing at his own joke, halfway convinced you hit your head harder than you thought and all this is a hallucination. Considering how fuzzy the rest of Maxwell’s office looks, colors muted and furniture blurry at the edges, it’s hard to be certain one way or the other. Your gaze sweeps over the room, brow furrowing when there’s no visible trace of Maxwell.

“You won’t find him,” Dio claims, causing your head to snap back in his direction. Can he read your thoughts? “I…displaced him for the time being. This chat only concerns me and you.”

Chapter Text

After meeting Dio, you think there’s nothing that could scare you anymore. What could be scarier than the Devil, after all? 

Still, there’s something a bit unnerving about finding yourself curled in a ball inside a poorly lit janitor closet without knowing why. Worse, a look down at yourself reveals an awful amount of blood spatter on your shirt–the lack of wound your frantic hands fail to find means it’s not your blood which you don’t know whether to feel relieved about or not. And even worse still, you see the cube sitting on one of the shelves directly across from you next to a tool bag and yet your body remains paralyzed in place, refusing to move. 

Flickers of memories from this universe slip through your fragile wall of defense. Flashes of dead bodies with gaping wounds and echoes of horrified screams have your stomach recoiling, bile rising in the back of your throat. And the blood on your shirt suddenly has a new and significant terrifying meaning.

Outside the closet door, a massacre has taken place. All your coworkers–slaughtered and torn to pieces. No survivors. No one to call for help.

Your breath starts coming out in faster pants. Oh shit. You’re trapped here. Alone. And you can’t leave this nightmare until you meet the Brown Eyes of this universe. 

Your head snaps up, a small candle of hope burning away the dark thoughts.

In the past your Brown Eyes has always been there for you, always saved you when you needed him most. If anyone could rescue you from this closet, it would be him.

You cradle the precious feeling, its tiny flame fighting against the cold chill of fear. And for a minute you think you’ll be alright, you’ll be safe here despite all the odds. 

“It’s okay,” you whisper. “Everything’s going to be o–”

Then the door handle jerks, an explosion of sound in the otherwise quiet space, jostled by somebody on the other side attempting entry, and you forget how to breathe, lungs seized by panic.

“Babydoll,” a dulcet and suave voice croons from behind the door, “be a good girl, won’t you, and let me inside?”

Recognition hits you like a wave of ice water, snuffing out your hope and leaving you a trembling mess. Everything feels so very far away all of the sudden because that voice, you’d know it anywhere–and it’s, it’s supposed to be a comfort, a reassurance of love and support, not strike terror directly into your soul. Not a siren song luring you to your doom.

“Come on now, doll.” There’s a hint of irritation now, a crack in the charming facade, followed by a harsh fist banging against the door. “Let me in or I’m going to break down this door.”

Sucking in a strangled breath, you push yourself further into the corner nook between the wall and storage cabinet, curling your limbs into a tighter ball, praying the trash cans and massive yellow cart of mops and brooms hide you from view. All you can think is please, please, please in sync with your frantic heartbeat. 

The door bursts open, slamming so intensely the handle punches a hole through the wall and gets stuck there. You bite back a scream, tasting blood on your tongue. Light from the hallway pours into the closet, outlining Max in all his spine-chilling glory. 

You peer at him through a sliver of a gap between the cart and cabinet, hands clammy and chest tight like your ribcage is on the verge of collapsing. 

Max is bathed in blood. His gray waistcoat and white dress shirt look as if they’ve been dyed crimson, so soaked with blood the fabric grossly sticks to his torso and arms, a sickening parody of those wet t-shirt contests one of your boss’s secretaries always bragged about winning back in high school. Your eyes slowly trail up over the smeared streaks of scarlet on his neck to his chiseled face. He could pass for a younger Marcus so easily if not for the glint of fangs you see as his upper lip curls into an irritated snarl.

In comparison to Max, Dio resembles a baby lamb. 

You’re terrified to breathe, to even blink and risk taking your eyes off him for a second. He hasn’t seen me, you keep thinking, desperate to keep yourself calm despite every cell in your body screaming about the danger you’re in. He hasn’t seen me, he hasn’t seen me, he hasn’t–

Max’s head slowly tilts, nostrils flaring. 

You dig your nails into your palm so harshly there’s sure to be crescent shaped scars in the aftermath if you survive. 

There is a moment, an impossibly long second, where Max’s gaze drifts along the closet’s contents–toilet paper bundles and garbage bags and the abundant amount of cleaning supplies–slowly, but gradually heading in your direction. 

Oh no. No, no, no! Leave me alone, your mind pleads. The roaring of blood in your ears almost blocks out the sound of glass breaking from somewhere down the hallway. You flinch back against the wall reflexively when it registers, and when your eyes open up again, Max is gone.

You suck in a much needed breath of air, then slowly push yourself up on shaky legs, one hand braced on the wall. The cube is still there on the shelf when you look. You’re still unsure whether to believe Dio’s claim that the cube wants you to solve it or not. With the way it’s just sitting there, waiting for you to come pick it up, you think the damn thing could care less whether you survived this universe or not.

Creeping around the janitor cart as quietly as you can manage, you keep your eyes locked on the cube and your ears pricked for the slightest of sounds indicating Max’s return. 

No matter the universe, you aren’t a fan of horror movies. You’ve never liked the gore or the jump scares, worst of all the ones involving demonic possessions where the character loses all control of themselves. At least in your universe, you had Marcus to cuddle with when the nightmares plagued your sleep.

Here, Max is the nightmare you can’t wake up from.

You don’t allow yourself to wonder what will happen to this universe’s you when you leave, if she’ll end up a corpse just like everybody else. You just keep inching forward, closer and closer to the cube. 

A noise from outside–the squeak of a shoe on tile–has you freezing. 

Your brain goes haywire, a hundred thoughts rising up all at once and colliding with each other, leaving you trembling in place. And through it all, the cube still sits there. Waiting for you to make a choice.

The instinct to live kicks in, white-hot and impulsive, propelling you forward in a desperate lunge to close the last foot of distance. Your fingertips brush against the gold metal a second before something tackles you from behind, crowding you against the shelf with such brute strength you can’t stop yourself from yelping upon impact, the edges of the shelf digging painfully into your torso. 

Max growls, a low, pleased noise deep in his chest that vibrates through your backside from the proximity, and then the vampire’s large hands turn you around to face him. This close, you can see tiny flecks of gold in his dark eyes, reminding you of fireflies. It’s strange, the things people think of when they’re scared and seconds away from having their throats ripped  out.

You inhale short, shuddered breaths through your nose, fighting not to squirm as he leans even closer, nose trailing along your jawline, still growling. His hands squeeze your hips, not tight enough to bruise but enough to warn you against attempting an escape. If you really enraged him, he could shatter bone with his enhanced strength as easily as snapping a pencil. The thought sends another bolt of paralyzing fear through your limbs.

Your frantic heartbeat skyrockets when a warm, wet tongue licks at your pulse point on your neck. Recoiling backwards, you knock your skull against the shelf hard enough you see stars.

“Oh, babydoll, my sweet tasting girl,” Max rasps, humor laced in his tone like he finds this whole situation extremely entertaining. He caresses your cheek with the backs of his fingers, fangs bared in the semblance of a smile. “I promised it’d be you and me in the end. And I always keep my promises.”

“M-Max,” you whimper, throat clogged with emotion and tongue swollen from biting it.

Eyes flick down to your mouth, pupils expanding with arousal, fireflies swallowed by blackness.

“Don’t–”

Your voice is stolen by lips smashing against yours. There’s nothing loving or gentle about the kiss. It’s a mess of sharp fangs and an insistent tongue eager to taste your blood, selfish and abrasive. Pressed against the shelf by the full weight of Max’s bulk, the small part of your mind not drowning in terror takes a chance and seizes control, instructing one hand to rake through his hair, eliciting a moan as his lips disconnect from yours with a lewd, spit slick pop.

Your other hand, uncomfortably stretching behind your back during his moment of distraction, bumps into the cube and latches onto it immediately.

“You’re one in a million, babydoll. Never met anyone who tastes like you,” Max praises, speaking against the tender skin of your neck, sucking and kissing and nipping. “You survive the change, I’m never letting you out of my sight. I promise.”

It takes a moment for your oxygen-deprived brain to understand what he means. Change? What does that–? 

And then with gut-wrenching clarity, it hits you.

He wants you to become like him. A bloodsucking bastard.

Another sloppy kiss is pressed against your neck right before soft lips are replaced by pointy teeth breaking skin, a flare of pain immediately bursting from the area as blood seeps down your collarbone in rivulets.

You wail out a hoarse and agonized “No!” and then, faster than you’ve ever moved before, you wrench your arm forward and grab hold of the cube with both hands, twisting it without hesitation before he can stop you.

You arrive in the next universe with electric currents of fear still coursing through your body. You collapse onto the ground, limbs too jittery to properly hold you up, teeth clacking painfully against each other. Tears drip down your cheeks, one after another, but your hands refuse to relinquish their death-grip on the cube to wipe them away. 

There’s no wound on your neck, no blood stains on your clothes. You’re in a whole new universe and yet you can still feel his lips and hot breath on your skin.

He…He almost…

You close your eyes and shake your head, fiercely cutting off that line of thought. 

Never again, you make a vow to yourself. Never again will you allow any version of Brown Eyes to treat you like that. Never, ever again.

“There you are.” Your eyes fly open, looking up to lock with a pair peering down at you over the rims of sunglasses. This version of Marcus is a bit scruffier than you’re used to seeing him, curls an unruly mess, stains on his t-shirt and—is he wearing a bathrobe of all things? “Are you okay, angel?”

“I’m just dandy, Dieter.” Your reply is just a touch sardonic as you scrub away the lingering tears with your sleeve. Pushing yourself up onto your feet, you ask with a sniffle, “What’s up with you?”

“Well, since you asked.” He claps his hands together, looking at you straight on with an expression of pure hopefulness. “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

You raise an eyebrow, hesitant to agree to anything until you hear the actual request.

“Do you wanna have sex with me?”

Chapter Text

You try to say something back and end up letting out a choked sound instead of words, eyes blown wide with disbelief.

Chapter Text

It’s oddly serene, finding yourself sitting in an egg chair on a balcony watching the ocean waves in the distance. There’s a plush pillow propping up your back, a slight breeze keeping you cool despite the cloudless sky. All traces of blood are gone from your clothes and skin and hair. The cube sits in your lap like an obedient pet expecting praise. 

Chapter Text

You find yourself looking up at a large, solid white house draped in ivy vines with circular windows and, if you squint enough against the blinding afternoon sunlight, a rooster weathervane on top of the roof. It’s a nice place, charming in its own unique way, but whose it belongs to and why you’re standing in front of it are two questions you lack the answers to. 

Despite being in an unknown location, you’re not afraid. There’s no hint of tension in your muscles or anxious thoughts spinning circles in your head. Instead there’s only a numbing sort of calmness, a sense of certainty telling you you’re in the right spot.