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Pixlriffs never realized how much it hurt to fall in love with a Void Walker.
Well, to start off most people think they’re just the stuff of legends. People capable of transcending time and space by harnessing the power of the Void? They were just as real as the time travelers his fellow archeology majors seemed obsessed with. Even the astronomy majors at his school seemed split on the idea, constantly debating each other on their existence. Some records hinted at them being real but nobody seemed to know for sure; there was always an air of skepticism surrounding them. Pixl was always fascinated with the concept personally, and devoted what free time he could afford from more practical endeavors to study ancient myths about them or to indulge in a book that someone had dreamed up about them. There was always just something about them that seemed to draw him into the concept, regardless of how many people dismissed the concept entirely. He just always believed, even if he’d never find out the truth. So to be heading home and find a person on their knees struggling to contain a purple black liquid inside of what looked like the suit from Doom in the back alley he used as a short cut was definitely a shock.
The first words out of the stranger’s mouth when they noticed Pixl looking on in curiosity were simple, “How long have you been there?”
“Uh, a minute or so? Did you need help?”
“Oh goodness me. I’m sorry; I didn’t realize how off I was with the time. I’ve been waiting too long. You shouldn’t have to see me like this, Pix. Geez this is so embarrassing.” The liquid was beginning to pool, growing bigger by the second. It kind of looked like it had a mind of its own as it wrapped around the person’s limbs, pulling them into its murky depths. If his curiosity wasn’t intrigued before, it most certainly was now.
He started with the most burning of the questions swirling through his head. “How do you know my name?”
“Because we’ve …” The stranger finally looked towards him, and despite the helmet Pixl could feel their eyes lock. He wished he could see what the stranger was thinking or feeling. All he saw was his own confused expression reflecting back at him. “This is the first time you’ve seen me, isn’t it?”
Pixl nodded. “And I’m assuming you’ve met me before?”
“I have. Time just gets … murky … in the Void.” Pixl felt his breath catch when he heard that word; he knew what this person was now. But he let them continue. “You’ll see me again, don’t worry. I’ve spent a little too long waiting and the Void is getting impatient. I’ll see you again. Promise.”
The Void was fast, stretching its way up the person’s torso as their legs begin to sink into the puddle it created. “Can you at least give me your name? If I’m going to see you again I should at least know what to call you.”
“X is fine.” Pixl watched as the Void now swallowed the rest of him, bringing them down into its dark depths. He stood silently and simply watched as the puddle of Void slowly shrank into itself until he was stuck staring at concrete where something had once been. He didn’t know a lot of things in that moment, but he did know that his life had just become entangled with that of a Void Walker. And he didn’t quite know how to feel about that in the moment. It be a long time before he truly knew how he felt.
Pixl wouldn’t see X for another 3 years. It would be just after he had moved to a small flat with two of his classmates—Sloy and Lyarrah—to save some money and get their own place after finally graduating. There was so much happening in that time that he had pushed X into the back corner of his mind. Until, that is, the man showed up in an alley across from his apartment building. The same alley Pixl always used as a shortcut back when he was still living at his parents’.
“You know, when someone promises you that they’ll be back, most of the time it’s a bit quicker than 3 years.” Pixl joked as he approached X. All those questions from years ago flooded his mind once more as he tried to look into his eyes. But once again, all he saw was himself in the surface of X’s helmet. “I have a lot of questions you have to answer.”
“Let me just figure out where we are in the timeline.” X pulled out a pocket notebook from a compartment on his leg and began to flip through the pages. From what Pixl could see, it looked to be scribbles of notes on pages ripped out and stitched back together. Considering the person in front of him was a Void Walker he shouldn’t have been as shocked as he was. But it was still weird to see his own handwriting in the book with words and memories he hadn’t even begun to think of yet. “Let’s see … I usually don’t leave that big of a gap so it should be easy to find …”
“Should I start keeping a log like that? How confusing is this going to get?” X looked up from the book, locking eyes with Pixl like he did all those years ago. He could feel X’s gaze reading him despite not being able to see their eyes.
“How many times have we met before? In your timeframe?” They finally asked.
“Once.”
“That makes sense.” X nodded before cupping Pixl’s cheek briefly. “Your eyes are so young and full of confusion.”
“Considering the only other time I saw you you were being sucked into a puddle of black Void liquid and knew who I was then disappeared for 3 years with a promise of return, I think confusion is a very appropriate response.”
X nodded before sitting down just in the opening of the alley. He gestured across from him, inviting Pixl to sit. “I guess I couldn’t have avoided this forever. The eventual QnA conversation with someone who has never met me before.” He stayed silent as he sat across from the Void Walker, letting them rant. “It never gets easier, you know? After all the people I’ve met, whose lives I get mixed in somehow. Some are easier talks than others; I think one time this convo was the last conversation I had with them.”
“How many people have you had this conversation with?”
“Less than you would expect. I don’t like saying goodbye to people.” Pixl could feel the sadness peeking through his attempt to stay as even toned as possible.
“Then why don’t you ever go back to them?”
“Two reasons. The first is the Void. If there’s a way to control where and when I go in it, I haven’t found it in the 108 years I’ve been walking.” X said, so casually that Pixl almost missed it at first. “It’s hard to keep track sometimes. I don’t think time exists the same way in the Void as it does here. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“You’ve been Void Walking for 108 years?”
“I mean …” X shrugged. “Despite how weird time and space is there, it just seems like one of the things the Void … wants you to remember.”
“It wants you to remember. Is … is the Void alive?”
“I don’t know and I’m too scared to find out. Because at any moment the Void could … let go of me. And I don’t think I’d fare well when that happens.” There was a moment of silence as the words began to sink into Pixl. The sense of mystery about the Void and the ones that walked it was deepening with every word. But there was also the human side that he never considered resonating within his heart. He could feel for them and desperately wanted to help despite being unable to do anything. How can someone with a BS in Archeology save a single person from the Void? He knew next to nothing.
“So the Void hold onto you until …?”
“I don’t … listen, you’re asking a lot of questions about the Void that is above my pay grade. Which, to be fair, is nothing. But I’m not a Voidologist; I’m just … an X. Running away across the Void through time and space.”
“Running away? From what?”
“That’s the second reason I can never go back to people I get close to. I’m running away from someone in my past.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why?”
“Because they will hurt you if you know too much.”
“Is that why you’re running away from them?”
“Wow, you were right when you said you had a lot of questions.” X chuckled. “Usually I get a lot of ‘what are you?’ and ‘what’s a Void Walker?’ type asks.”
“Sorry. I’ve just …”
“It’s fine; I enjoy this. It’s a nice change of pace to it all.” Pixl could feel the blush forming on his cheeks as he smiled at X’s words. “So what else you got for me?”
“What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”
“Woa, where did that come from?”
“It … uh, just came out?” Pixl admitted, trying hard to focus on something other than X at the moment. “I was asking a lot about the Void and deep things and I thought it was a bit rude since I only just met you. So … figured I’d mix it up a bit.”
“Mr Curious doesn’t want to hear about the evil doppelgänger I have trying to kill me?”
“I certainly do now but … maybe another day. I want to know, especially considering you have a whole notebook about me, who exactly is X. And I can get a lot of details about a person from their favorite ice cream flavor.”
X’s favorite flavor was Cherry Garcia. Their real name is Xisuma that half the people they meets mispronounce so he just sticks to X. Their favorite nickname they have ever received was Shiswammy. They stole the suit from another universe and refuses to show his skin because of all the scars the Void burned into them. They enjoy watching sunsets more because they’re not a morning person but think sunrises are prettier. They hate the night sky during the new moon because, with light pollution, it looks too much like the Void. They can’t decide if their favorite animal is a honey bee or an axolotl. And it’s over the next two years, through chance encounters starting in the alleyway across the street, that Pixl learns about X in more ways than he could never have expected. Most of the time at least. They agreed not to talk about the time they met up in the bathroom while Pixl was on vacation.
But chance meetings with a Void Walker meant that Pixl did not know what X he was getting when they met. Sometimes it be X who had met up quite a few times, who knew exactly how to finish Pixl’s thoughts before they even came to him. Other days X would be younger, eager to learn more about the man whose life he had just become entangled with. It was weird, adjusting to the X timeframe of the day.
And nothing exemplified this more than the last 2 times Pixl saw him.
The first started with the books, as it usually did. After seeing Xisuma with it, Pixl had started his own journal with removable pages to keep track of everything X told him. All the details about what Pixl knew and how many times they met and the date were all recorded in that little notebook. But as Pixl looked up, expectingly waiting for X to start to compare notes, he saw how solemn their posture was. They didn’t say much, just showed the book to Pixl as they flicked through. Each one had a check mark on it. The movie marathon night, the beach day, the vacation fiasco, even down to Pixl’s introduction to X via the Void reclaiming him. All of them he remembered.
X stopped on the second to last page, on the day the two of simply sat in silence together and watched the sunset. “The last page is the only one I haven’t checked off.”
Pixl took a breath, but could feel the tears beginning to form in his eyes. “I don’t like what that means, X.”
“It just means neither of us know what’s about to happen next.”
“Xisuma, don’t lie to me. We both know what that means.” Pixl looked at X as best he could through the visor. In all the time they had together, he had a pretty good idea where to look to get the most impact. “You don’t stick around this long with people. You run and you don’t dare let yourself look back! And today is the day I join the ranks of the people you are forced to leave behind.”
X stayed silent as they grabbed Pixl’s hand and looked away. “I’d like to think that we’re just entering the unknown: a point in time where neither of us know what to expect next.”
“Why don’t you want to look at me then when you say it?”
“Because I don’t want to see the hurt on you.” X’s voice was shaking now as they turned to look at Pixl. “Because this hurts now, more than ever, because from what I know THIS is truly the last goodbye. At least with others I get the ignorance of not knowing what the Void will do next but you gave me all the days ahead to look forward to. You gave me moments to look forward to and now it’s gone. This is the last positive certainty I will have for a long time. Because the Void doesn’t let us have nice things.”
Pixl cupped X’s face as he smiled, tears now freely flowing down his face. “I’m sorry I hurt you by giving you happiness.”
“Don’t apologize for this. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Pixlriffs.”
“And you are the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me, Xisuma.”
There were no questions the rest of the day. There were no lingering thoughts of how long this was going to last. It was simply a day where the two of them enjoyed each other doing some their favorite things they had never done before. The day lasted so long Pixl was struggling to keep his eyes open once the Void decided it was time to go home. But it was their final day of them together. No time barrier preventing them from understand each other. Just purely themselves. And that’s how Pixl chooses to remember that day. He tries his best to forget about the heartbreak he felt as the void began to seep through the cracks in X’s suit. He tried not to linger on the feeling of their hand clinging together until the Void forced them to let go. He doesn’t want to admit how long he spent staring at the spot where X once was, hoping any second he’d just pop right back into that spot. Pixl does his best to remember the last day he ever saw Xisuma as a happy one, and not the pain it brought at its conclusion.
At least, the last day Pixl thought he was ever going to see X. 6 months later, they crashed landed in his kitchen.
“Geez, uh … hello?” X said shyly as Pixl stared wordlessly at him. There they were, on his kitchen floor surrounded by the stuff they had knocked over when coming in. “Not a great introduction, now is it?”
“Introduction…” Pixl breathed, almost as if he was trying to deny the reality beginning to stand up in front of him. “This is … the first time you’re meeting me?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m X. And you are?” Those three words practically stabbed at Pixl’s heart as he couldn’t deny what was going on. This was a version of X that has no idea who he is, doesn’t have any sense of history between them, doesn’t even know his name. Pixl knew this moment would have had to happen eventually; he just didn’t realize how much it was beginning to hurt.
“Pixlriffs.” He said, trying to keep himself steady as he shook X’s hand. “Though you can call me Pixl.”
“Nice to meet you. Sorry about your kitchen. Don’t think I broke anything but you may have to throw out a bit a fruit.” Pixl could feel the smile in X’s words as they spoke.
“It’s fine. I think the bananas were starting to turn anyways.”
“Anyways, I’ll get out of your house then. Don’t worry about me. Don’t think too much about how I got here. Just move on with your life.” X started to move towards the door but Pixl grabbed his hand to stop them.
“Wait a second, please? I need to grab something for you.” X didn’t say a word, simply nodded in probable confusion. Pixl rushed to his room, grabbing his notes full of their encounters. As much as he wanted to keep this, to hold onto all their memories as tightly as he wanted to hold X, he couldn’t. The X waiting at his door needed them more.
“So if you have something for me …” X began as Pixl came back down the hall, “does that mean that we’ll meet again? In my view of things, at least.”
“Yes we will.” He says as he places the notebook in X’s hand. “And it will be worth every second, I promise. See you soon.”
X looked down at the journal before looking up at Pixl. “Yeah, see you soon.”
And with that, Pixl watched as Xisuma left his life a second time.