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The world had been a blur since the reset of the universe. You still recalled plenty from Space Camp. You knew how to steer a ship, what to do in the event of an emergency, how to disengage from a meteor storm, and how to align the ship so as to not crash into planets during transit. However, no protocol was instilled for the ending of the multiverse and, no matter how hard you tried, you still kept coming up short. The vast expanse of space was littered with the corpses of your failures. Sometimes death had been merciful but other times it left you trembling with un-surety.
Maybe this is why you picked the Romance story offered to you. After a thousand lifetimes in Hell, something with a happy ending was just what you needed.
“Oh alright, probably for the best.” Jested the blond father figure before you. He seemed oddly familiar but you couldn’t put your finger on it; which was less of a phrase and more of an honest truth. He quite literally glitched away subtly at your attempts to reach him.
Lightning struck and both you and the father figure jumped at the flash of lightning. “We haven’t had sky water for a spell.” Commented the blonde. “Oh, and speaking of which. It’s been at least an hour since you’ve last hydrated. So be sure to drink up champ!” You weren’t going to question how he managed to pull out a full, uncovered, glass of water from his fanny pack right now. No, instead you took the glass into your eager hands. You couldn’t remember the last time you hydrated…or slept, but you distinctly remembered eating tuna fish sandwiches for an entire lifetime.
The blond continued to spout on and you sipped at the water while he drabbled. The father was in pain, sure, but your sympathy was growing thin. By the time he finally got himself together enough to begin the story it was too late. You felt your stomach churn and the world came inside out with a variety of distinct lags and bugs. Usually restarting something improved its performance but this was much much worse.
Just as the universe swallowed you it also spat you out and you stumbled upright into a dim room. It was an apartment and one you vaguely recognized as being your own many universes ago.
It had finally been something familiar and you relished the room for its cozy familiarity alone. Sadly, you had a ship to save. So, with the clench of your gloved fists, you suppressed a growl and trudged forward. What you’d do for some lasting comfort but. Alas, the knock erupting from the door in front of you compelled you to answer. You’d open it willingly.
“Bonjour, I got you something, roses. So good to see you again.” A wave of nostalgia struck you as Mark, dressed to the nines in grey, outstretched the bouquet of flowers towards you. You had seen Mark dressed like this before and yet you also hadn’t. The sense of being here was some form of Deja Vu so you promptly blinked it into the back of your mind. He did look good though, the white and grey seemed fitted to him which was a pleasant change from the space overalls you were so familiar with now. The red tie seemed almost intentional in how it complemented the roses so well.
“I can’t wait for our second date.” Mark continued. The voice was loving enough to pull color to your cheeks. “I know the last one got a little away from us but this one will be so much better. We can see a movie!” He chirped, “Or ride roller coasters-or pretty much whatever you want-”
You were growing attached to this version of Mark when the glitch came to swoop him away. In his place was a pizza delivery man. The odd choice played by the universe made you frown in resentment. The way he held himself just screamed bad news.
“Did someone order a LARGE pizza? Extra…pepperoni…” Oh. Oh Hell no. The innuendo was bad enough but then he let go of the pizza box and you realized it was balancing on something much more private. His dick to be frank.
Just as the box began slipping off the universe granted you mercy. You were given the same adorable Mark as before.
“I’ve got tonight all planned out!” Mark grinned childishly at you and, for his sake, you offered an awkward smile in return. “We can go to the carnival, and share cotton candy, and-” He squeezed a large stuffed bear to his chest. You assumed this would be for you eventually but it looked cuter pressed to his chest. “-maybe even hold hands-”
Switch. In place of the suited, teddy bear welding Mark, you were stood against a plumber with a wrench. You began noticing a pattern from this.
“I hear your plumbings clogged. Mind if I-” He paused, clicking his tongue as his eyes roamed over you. “Inspect your pipes.” It was another innuendo. You shouldn’t have been surprised.
Switch.
“I rescued this adorable puppy from a burning tree just this morning, and now we’re best friends.”
For the first time you managed to speak out and, funny enough, it sprouted from confusion. “How did the dog get stuck in a burning tree-”
Switch.
“I’m writing you a prescription that your gonna need to take several times a day.” The role play doctor laughed out. Ha! It’s my-” You grit your teeth at this point, already gripping and shutting the door out of pure frustration. This had been getting you nowhere.
You were mid-swing when the all too familiar tug of reality jutted you back. The door backtracked like a record player on its own accord. Switch.
“-Little monster…” A low graveled voice, one that played off of the sentence before it with a smooth transition, tore you from your rage. Only one person ever did call you their Little Monster after all.
A dark figure stood against the door frame, arm propping up the cold grey glory of what used to be your best friend and close associate. Damian had changed since you’d last seen him. In another time, maybe in a different universe, you remembered him being short but filled with joy. His skin had been colored by the sun and his eyes had been bright once. Everything now was simply so much darker. Life had reduced him to the hollowed shell of a man.
“Damian?”
The entity, a broken body of the man you once loved, pushed open the door and it creaked under his hand. You were somewhat wary of his approach but that magnetic recognition pulled the two together nonetheless.
“I don’t go by that name anymore-not important I suppose.” As he stepped out of the brightly lit hallway and into the dark of your apartment a blue and red aura followed suit. Literally in this sense as the light hugged close to his white fitted suit. “I didn’t expect to find you again. Not here. Not now.” He didn’t step far into the apartment. “You look like Hell.”
“Your one to talk.”
Apparently, that wasn’t the right thing to say because then the aura around him snapped and popped. His jaw tightened at the snide comment but he didn’t respond to it. Instead, the handsome devil smirked, eyes glinting red as he questioned you. “How’s that lost puppy of yours.” The subject took a sharp shift.
“Lost puppy?”
“Mark.” He corrected but just the name made him tense.
“Mark’s all over the place right now.” That wasn’t a lie. Mark was being thrown around the multiverse just like you were. “I can’t say for sure where or when he is.”
Damian’s presence brought a ringing to the apartment and that sound in return brought back memories you wished to forget. Things were coming back slowly. From beyond your Space Camp training, you remembered your office and the smell of old books in 1920. You recalled scaling the wall of a Dallas Texas museum in pursuit of- well something. Then you recalled, oddly enough, a date with Markiplier.
“Chocolate ice cream?” Came a familiar voice from the door. Behind Damian was another, more sinister, version of himself. The black-suited entity leaned up against the door frame with two bowls of chocolate ice cream balanced in his hands. Unlike the first Damian, the second version twitched, breath ragged before the other two.
You weren’t the only one unsettled.
“Excuse me?” The Damian in white came to your defense whether he realized it or not by creating a body barrier between you and the open doorway. This barrier would only last but a few seconds.
Switch.
You gasped, coming out of your blue flash directly into the choking grip of the entity in black. The two Damian’s had switched places. “-It’s okay.” He was replying to your garbled pleas with insensitivity. The blue and red hues behind his eyes seemed to vibrate on a bridge of insanity and power and this was all you could focus on as you gripped your gloved hands back against his wrists. “Now we can be together…Forever.”
The grip on you would loosen and you’d fall to a heap on the floor. The Damian in white had torn his counterpart off of you and thrown them up against the door.
Switch.
“Hey, Captain I-” The Damian in black reverted back to Mark just as Damian let him go careening through the door. “Ah-” The loud girlish yelp of Mark was unmistakable as he broke the wood and logged across the hallway. You couldn’t help but wince at the sight of it.
Switch.
Your stomach churned, reality pulling you in and spitting you out one final time into your apartment. This time you waited. You had to make sure your feet were still under you before you could think to open the door. Traveling around time and space was disorienting.
It came as a soft knock at the door; three precise knocks that drifted into silence. With an exhausted sigh, you dragged yourself to the door. There you’d pause because, in all honesty, you knew you didn’t have to open the door. Yet you did and, on the other side, stood the grey handsome entity that was Damian. Even with his hair now tousled, the power of confidence no longer present, he was still something to marvel at.
“Damian?” You found yourself asking again. Maybe it was a loop that needed to play out or maybe, just maybe, it was a genuine concern for an old friend. Yet the grey-scaled entity winced this time at the word.
“Please. Call me Dark.” He corrected. It was an odd choice in name but it fit him accordingly. He reached out and took your gloved hand then squeezed the hand softly with his own. In the rifts before, Mark had things to offer. He had brought roses, stuffed animals, and even a puppy. Dark had only himself. “You look tired. Perhaps you should go back to sleep.” The inner walls of his shell collapsed and his aura formed, for just a moment, a second head. This one growled out with eyes baring into your own. It was a glitch out of anguish but not one caused by the warp core. This duplication resided quickly but now his dark eyes really were searching your own. “It’s exhausting being the bad guy, isn’t it? Don’t you ever get tired of it all? The blame. The betrayal…The lies.” His head careened to the side in a red mass to meet his freely opened hand. It was another spike in his aura that disappeared just as it existed. Just like you, Dark seemed tired. “I always thought you were trapped in his games. Always plunging down the rabbit holes of his stories.” He sighed. “Now I see I was right.”
The crystal in your hand began to glow and Dark, oddly unphased, turned your hand to brush the pad of his thumb over the stone. It sparked with electricity but Dark didn’t mind. It was a strange comfort to be holding someone’s hand like this. To have your hand cradled with genuine and unmistakable care.
Damia-Dark didn’t let you go. Not yet. “I can’t help you here. This isn’t even my world after all.” You easily could’ve pulled away but you didn’t. You watched as he turned your gloved hand back over and slowly brought the back of your hand up to his lips. “However. If I’ve learned anything since my transformation, it’s that you need to believe in yourself.” The kiss on your hand-stirred something warm from you. “No matter what happens. You need to believe that you’re doing the right thing.”
He glitched away, returning to the door frame a foot or two away from you. In his hand, he held a glass of wine. It was hard to say whether it was summoned by Dark himself or whether the universe was tolling on him for keeping you stalled here. Either way he raised the glass to you and that feeling of nostalgia washed over you. “Do you believe…Captain?”
It was different hearing that title from someone who had so much power over you. You blushed, the tone in his voice giving you a stomach full of butterflies that swirled unwarranted. He was right though and you were the Captain after all. At least, you were here, and you had a mission to accomplish. So you nodded, feeling the tug of reality as you began reeling backward into the blue portal you had grown familiar with.
“Good. I’ll see you again. In a later time…we’ll catch up.” and with those final words from the handsomely grey entity you were gone, arms outstretched as you tumbled through the portal and directly into a pile of trash. You couldn’t let them down. Not yet. In the end, it would be his words that dragged you back to your feet. Failure wasn’t an option.