Chapter Text
There is a woman in a church, somewhere in Chicago, and she is alone.
(Except she’s also not.
The man she loves is right by her side, yet hundreds and thousands of miles away at the same time.
The man she hates is right outside the door.)
There’s a woman in a church, alone, and in pain.
It’s not an unexpected pain, quite the opposite really.
She’s been aware this was coming for weeks and months and now the time has come.
(There’s so much she’s feeling right now.
Excitement, to finally get to see them all and the lives that they have built for themselves.
Fear, for what and who is coming for her, coming for them.
Regret, for the role the woman herself has played in it all.
And, finally, hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, they can figure out something to stop this, to end this.
She’s feeling more things than she has in a while.)
There’s a woman in a church, alone, in pain, and dying.
She has been dying for a while, really, depending on how you look at it.
The woman is dying and in horrible pain, and yet she is also the happiest she has been in an age and a half.
Because while this is an end for her, it is also very much a beginning.
There is a man in Mexico City, dressed in a costume of machismo, walking on a set and taking out a pistol dripping with fake blood out of the holster at his hip when suddenly he sees someone in front of him.
There is a woman in London, smoking something or other in a park in the dark hours of the early morning and thinking about all those she’s lost, but then someone new appears at the edge of her eye.
There is another woman, this one on a rooftop, this one in Seoul, exercising in the way that is so familiar to every fiber of her being, when a sudden arrival disturbs her peace.
A man in a club in Berlin, still dancing among strangers, even though now the sun is rising outside, when the crowd seems to part for the only person in the room who isn’t dancing.
In Chicago, another man is in a car with his best friend, and he’s stopping and getting out because of what he is seeing right in front of him, while the friend frowns in something disturbingly close to recognition.
And in Mumbai a woman – a scientist – is walking with a colleague toward a meeting she’s needed for, when she sees someone standing out to her in the group of people below.
A man is sitting in his bus in Nairobi, preparing for yet another day and determined to make it as good as it can be, when someone In front of him makes eye contact.
And one more woman, this one in San Francisco, who is taking her hormones as she always does, until she suddenly sees someone else in the mirror.
They are all beautiful people, the woman in the church thinks, as they all arrive in the very same. (Again, in her case and her case alone.)
For a second and a second only, they all stand in a circle around her – her wonderful children.
“I’m so sorry,” she says to them, unseen and unheard by both the man she loves and the one she hates.
Her children vanish before she has a chance to specify.
(And just moments after, so does she.)
Will Gorski wakes up from a nightmare, pistol in hand before he knows what’s happening.
And then he does realize.
He puts the gun away.
It’s not the first time that this has happened. Far from it, actually.
He takes a moment to breathe.
Not really a wonder that he had one now, not after the shift he has just had.
His room is dark, because he made the investment for some good blinds and curtains at some point after starting night shifts, and he is thankful for it, as he can feel a killer headache approaching.
… the loud music he can hear from one of his neighbor’s apartments is anything but helpful for that.
He washes his face and puts on a shirt, hoping that whoever moved into number 402 realizes how loud they’re being on their own and stops.
That’s not what happens. Hell, if anything, it gets louder.
Will opens his door and wonders why Mrs. Cheng from number 404 isn’t already there and complaining. She must be out in the city, doing something or other. He vaguely recalls her mentioning something about visiting family when they had crossed paths in the stairway last week.
The music from 402 – or is it? He’s moved but the volume of the music hasn’t changed despite the fact there should be at least one door less between him and the origin – it still doesn’t quieten, so he knocks, first as a neighbor, then as an officer.
(He’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to do that, and he regrets it the instant he is done, but he does it and he doesn’t deny that he did it either.)
Will opens the door – and that’s something else he probably shouldn’t do – and discovers that 402 is still completely empty.
What the fuck is going on with him now?
First the woman on the street that wasn’t there – which Diego had been absurdly calm about all things considered – and then this?
Something is going on, that much is sure.
If only he could think about it clearly without this fucking headache.
Despite the migraine threatening to murder her, Riley’s show in London is going well. It is going very well, in fact.
(She feels like she’s always been great at this whole ‘ignoring her own problems and channeling grief into music’ thing, although in all honesty it’s not like she hasn’t had the chance to practice.)
The people are dancing and cheering and generally seem to be having a great time from the little bits she sees of them.
Riley wishes desperately that the same was true for her.
(But enough thinking about that. Enough.)
Once her set is over, she goes outside to find Jacks and his friends, one of them turns out to be Nyx, a dealer her friends had been hyping up for a while now.
She’s not sure what she thinks of the man quite yet.
Although granted…
Given the way that this migraine keeps progressively getting worse, she’s not currently sure she can form as much as a single coherent thought on anything.
(Music — DJing — is the exception to that.
Perhaps because that is much more about just doing rather than thinking about it.)
Before she’s quite certain what’s going on — her head is in so much pain that she’s wondering if her body is just planning on growing a second brain at this point, though not in as much words — the conversation turns to her freakout in the park and Nyx claims she’s seen a vision or something.
Yeah. Right.
Like that’s something that would happen to her.
Like that’s something she’d want to happen to her.
The only thing her curse has ever brought her is the death of people she loves.
Hard pass on going through that pain twice.
That is almost exactly the opposite of what she needs in her life.
(Can you go through pain twice, if it’s the kind of emotional pain that never quite stops?)
They’re reshooting the scene he had ruined yesterday, and he messes it up again.
He’s never messed up scenes so frequently in the past.
This time, it’s at least because he was trying to catch his character’s voice better by going off script, and not because he’s seeing a suicidal angel who isn’t there.
(Or maybe it is worse? Is it better to hallucinate or to have no control over one’s life and career?
Especially because the latter applies in more ways than one.)
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that Luis enjoys it any more than the visions.
El Caído must do as El Caído does. No room for change or variation.
No room for growth.
(And doesn’t that feel depressingly familiar?)
He excuses himself — the headache does make it increasingly harder to think and remember lines — and he retreats to his own space while the crew shoots another scene instead. One without him.
(It’s the first time he does that, too, and that feels all kinds of terrifying.)
Instead of lying down and trying to sleep off his migraine as Hernando would probably tell him to, he moves in front of the mirror.
Lito looks at himself, still in costume for El Caído.
(Is his reflection really himself, Lito wonders. Or is it just who he pretends to be?)
He needs to figure out what is going on so that he can fix this mess and stop mistakes like those earlier from happening again.
He’s still not sure where, exactly, his improvised line had come from.
It doesn’t quite feel like it came from Lito himself — apart from the fact that it obviously did — and it certainly did not come from his inner Hernando.
So what other option is there, really?
(Whatever it is, it feels familiar, like he’s known it from the moment he was born.
Whatever it is, it feels brand new. He does also know that he likes it.)
Kala’s confusion doesn’t leave when her father points out the lack of rain.
Her headache seems to be finally easing up after around a day and a half of constant pain and she couldn’t be happier about it.
(Well, she could be. If she actually loved Rajan as much as she was pretending to. As much as he seems to love her.)
The world seems different now, as weird as it sounds. She feels much more connected to everything around her and all around the world.
It is weird, but also weirdly comforting. Kala feels part of something much bigger, even if that something is something she can’t quite pinpoint.
(And that is the main new thing about it. Between being part of her family, her faith, and her — fiance's — firm, she’s always been part of something bigger than herself. She just usually knows what it is.)
This new sense of the world feels like a breath of fresh air even if nothing has really changed. The only unusual things — outside of the wedding — is her headache and that one woman who she had been drawn to.
(The woman she had instinctively realized did not fit into Kala’s workspace where she had appeared.
The woman she no one else had seemed to realize was there and Kala didn’t mention to anyone.)
Maybe it was all somehow connected to the wedding. She would, after all, become part of a new family and start what so many around her called a new life.
And perhaps the headaches had been caused by the stress of planning it all, on top of her normal work and trying to get herself to feel like what she feels like she should.
It doesn’t sound that out of this world.
(It still does not explain that woman, though.)
There is definitely something that is changing inside of Kala, that much she is sure of. It might as well be connected to what is changing outside of her.
It would only make sense, right?