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It is raining. The backstreets of The World That Never Was glow with the reflections from hollow, neon-lined buildings. This world has been asleep for a long time. There have been no inhabitants in these empty streets for even longer. A television screen mounted on the side of a building displays vague humanoid shapes, like it's trying to remember the lives of the humans that could have lived here.
The scene is set.
A cloaked figure stands atop one of the jagged, dark skyscrapers and shields several thick books from the downpour with an arm. A dark portal festers to life behind him, creating a void in the shimmering lights that destroys any visual information that falls within. His chest rises and falls in a silent sigh.
“Sorry it had to be like this. Not exactly the proper sendoff I wanted to give you.” He speaks only to himself and adjusts the books in his arms. “There's more I wanted to do, more I had to say. I don't know what I expected…
“I wonder if you can hear me. If some part of you is still alive in me - if you can see the world through my eyes now.” The figure chuckles softly, shaking his head. “Nah. You were never very good at that, were you? One last look at your castle. It's so... beautiful. There's no other word for it. The way you can see it glowing against the clouds in rainy weather like this. Like nothing I've ever seen in all the worlds. ... Like nothing I'll ever see again. I wish you left more behind than this memory of a world. Wish you'd left some ashes for me to scatter to the wind. Nah, nevermind. Don't think you'd want to be in pieces again.
“You and this world... nothing but memories. This place'll be gone soon, too. No keyhole to unlock and bring it back to that spot between light and dark. No hero this time.”
He steps forward, face turned up to the albedo-gray sky. The hood falls from his face. His expression is just shy of blank, a somber turn to his lips. His boot lands in a heart-shaped pool of water. Xigbar doesn't look down at it.
“It's funny. I feel old. Never had that happen before.”
A streak of lightning ignites the air with an electric purple hue more fantastic than the whole neon city put together. The explosive thunder comes milliseconds later, shaking the buildings and cracking windows.
Xigbar leaps backward at the noise and defensively holds an arm out in front of him - as if there was some new terror manifesting out of the lightning. His eye is shut tight against the blinding flash, but he soon cracks it open to look.
On the ground, forty stories below, a scorch mark remains as the only evidence of the event. Xigbar shakes his head with an incredulous smile. “Stars. That shouldn't have gotten me.”
He doesn't see anything on the street, and he turns to enter the portal he'd created earlier. He doesn't notice the glare from a rifle in the window across the street aiming at his head. He hears the thunder-crack explosion of the gunfire at the exact moment the bullet lodges itself in the cover of the book in his hand.
“Fuck!” The books fly out of Xigbar's hand like they'd burned him. His head snaps upward, searching for the source, but the telltale lens glare is already gone. The bullet in the book cover shatters into nothing, leaving a black burn on the inlaid-gold image of Radiant Garden's castle. Xigbar scowls and kicks the books into the portal.
It closes. He is alone on the rooftop.
His arrowguns do not appear in his hands. He takes a heavy breath in, lets it out through clenched teeth.
“Xeva!” He howls into the pouring rain of the night. “I'm not playing these games! Come on out!” Xigbar holds his arms wide, baring his chest like a gladiator ready to fight. His chest is heaving. He opens his mouth to speak again, but the thunder takes the words from his mouth. The bullet cracks into splinters in the metal air duct next to his leg. A purple-white trail follows it before fading.
He whips his head back to the building across the street, this time not missing the point of light that recedes back into the windows. His arrowguns snap into this world with little flourish. They're already combined as one rifle. He looks down the scope into the windows. Searching. Waiting. It's a futile effort.
“Can't hide from me…” Each room he looks into is empty and dark, each window reflecting the neon lights back into his sight. The next will hold her, surely.
His breathing is uneven. His hands are shaking. He wasn't expecting this tonight.
A flash of light blinds him - his rifle tumbles from his hands. He stumbles down onto a knee, wiping the rain from his face with a gasp. A disturbance in the gravitational field follows his hand as he swats at the air hoping to hit something. There's no sensory input besides the stars dancing behind his eyelids and, less than a breath later, the crackle and heat of a photon bullet.
He blinks rapidly, watching the shadows of this world come back into being.
A woman is standing ten feet away on the same rooftop. She's dressed in a jumpsuit - the ones all the Lesser Nobodies wear. Her hair is flat and long and wet from the rain and it tangles across her shoulders and past her arms. She leans on a custom rifle like a cane. Her face is obscured by the rain.
The lightning returns like a backlight, turning her form into nothing but a silhouette for a flash.
“Xigbar.” She speaks like she hasn't said a word in years. Xigbar comes back to his feet and stares her down.
“Why are you here?” Each word is laced with poison.
“I know what you did to me. I know who you are.”
“What?” Xigbar feigns ignorance, but his blood freezes in his veins. Xeva's voice is flat and monotone. Minutely, her fingers tighten around the top of her rifle.
“A just man will admit his mistakes. A coward will resurrect them.”
He has no response for this. The rain slows to a trickle, enough that he can make out her face. She's wearing messy eyeblack - it's like she smeared it on three days ago without a mirror. Most notable, though, is the massive stain of dried blood in the center of her chest.
Stars. She's so much older now. She looks like she's had ten years between now and the last time he saw her. He follows the gray streak in her hair back down to her chest, to the diamond-shaped stain of blood. What happened?
Absently, he touches the center of his chest. Xeva must have recompleted after the original fall, and then…
He jolts when he realizes his hand is over the scar from when he became a Nobody. Oh, shit.
“You're still a Nobody.”
“I'm a Nobody, again .” She corrects him with an eye roll. Xigbar is horrified, now realizing the Nobody sigil on her thigh still blazes as bright as the day she awoke in Vexen's lab. “I woke up somewhere else. Scala ad Caelum. You know it?”
Xigbar turns his face away, deliberately refusing to answer the question.
“Don't answer, if that's what you want. You were in my head - in my heart. I remember everything that happened. You, possessing me. Killing my body and escaping when I was no longer useful to you. But I saw your heart, too.
“It was so easy for you, wasn't it? Such a practiced action, it was like you'd done it a hundred times before.”
“Why are you back here, Xeva?”
“That body wasn't mine anymore. Couldn't stand the feeling of being in someone else's skin.” Xeva cocks her head to the side. An emotionless smile crawls across her face. “You should be pretty familiar with that, huh?”
“I had my reasons. Wasn't personal.” Xigbar shrugs, trying to ignore the dread creeping up his spine. His shoulders are tensed, and he's ready to summon his rifle back into his hands at any moment.
“No, I know it wasn't.” Xeva is still as the dead. “ This is personal.”
Xeva is off her feet in an instant. She lunges forward, rifle cradled in her arms, and smashes the side of it into Xigbar's cheekbone. He recoils with one hand flying up to defend and the other summoning his arrowguns. By the time he gets his finger on the trigger, Xeva has disappeared from sight.
She has teleported back to the building across the street, some form of apartment complex. An imprint of her is left in the rain for a few moments - the ghosting photons that artifact from her teleportation. Carefully, she watches Xigbar pull his own rifle to his face and lay his cheek on the cold steel. As expected, his scope finds her nearly instantly.
His bullet fires, kicking his shoulder back with the recoil. She traces the path of it mentally, preparing for it by dashing to the side inches before it hits. Unfortunately, Xigbar knows her too well. The bullet bounces off an invisible wall of Xigbar's creation and glances off her bicep.
-
“Tch.” Xeva touches the wound with her fingertips. Happy to find her glove stained with only a few small drops of blood. Just a surface wound. She can practically feel Xigbar's smirk from here. To throw him, she teleports several floors down and hangs her rifle out the window. The scope of her rifle focuses on Xigbar's chin, just barely visible from this angle. With a deep breath, she pulls the bolt back and loads the next bullet into the chamber. The tip of her rifle glows in a sparkling cylinder - her suppressor.
The shot flies straight and true, and Xigbar's head quickly cants backward as the force catches him off balance. She grins. She does not care that it is the same smile Xigbar wears.
-
Xigbar tastes blood in his mouth. He flips forward onto his stomach, letting gravity pull the scope of his rifle down to Xeva's level. The air smells like electricity, like the acrid smell of burning plastic. He inhales as much as he can through his nose and revels in the way it burns the inside of his throat.
All he sees is the light sparkling off the tip of Xeva's rifle. She's aiming right at him. A battle of speed and accuracy. A true sniper duel.
He forces his hand to still. He doesn't fire, not yet. Xeva evades head-on shots like child's play, no, he must outthink her. He moves his shoulder back like he's absorbing the recoil, a deliberate trick. Xeva falls for it and phases to the right. He minutely adjusts his rifle and squeezes the trigger.
-
“Fuck!”
The bullet hits her in the shoulder, sending her reeling backward onto the floor of the apartment. Xigbar's bullets are larger, don't dissipate immediately, so she grabs the tail end of the light bullet and yanks it out of her shoulder with a cry. It burns through the fabric of her glove - she throws it against the wall and it shatters like glass. The pain has her gritting her teeth against the sting.
-
Xigbar loses sight of her in the scope, again. Slippery bastard. He gets up on one knee, keenly observing the shadows of the apartment building and its neighbors. He doesn't see her so much as feel her presence. Like the faint buzz of an incandescent bulb, he feels her next to him before she even materializes. She fades into existence with feet hovering four feet above the roof.
The first thing he sees is the glow of the bullet in the chamber, then Xeva's face comes into focus. A fierce, angry expression twists her face as it presses into the body of the gun.
Xigbar tries to teleport away but finds his feet rooted to the spot. The fight or flight instinct bubbles in his stomach like a roiling boil, seizes his muscles and moves them without thought.
His rifle is raised and fired before he can stop himself. Pain and heat blooms in his chest as Xeva's own bullet cracks his sternum; the resulting pop is louder than the combined roar of their rifles' discharge. Xigbar's head is reeling, unable to place up from down as he is flown backwards. His ears are ringing, and his weapon is missing from his hand. Every breath sparks a bolt of pain through his chest. He sees nothing but the clouded sky above him.
-
Xeva is spinning. Spinning, around and around, frictionless in her own false gravitational field. She can't find her footing, can't find anything to keep her grounded. The edges of reality feel fuzzy, it's like her very being is phasing out of existence.
Nauseous and disoriented, and distinctly aware that she has no idea where she is in relation to the ground, Xeva cuts out her zero gravity field. The effect is so immediate it's startling. Her stomach flips as natural gravity pulls her out of the air. She opens her eyes to catch herself before hitting the concrete roof, but her vision is blurry with sweat and rain and probably blood, and –
-
Xigbar deliriously rolls his head to the side just in time to watch Xeva's body plummet to the rooftop. His eyes widen in shock and horror - as much as he wants this fight to be over, that's still Xeva .
But no sound comes from the collision. In fact, it's less of a collision, and more of a... slide? Her body does not recoil from the impact, like she had landed on a pile of blankets. Xigbar props himself up on his elbow with a grunt, trying to see Xeva's position. He clutches his chest with his free hand. Stars. Probably broke a rib or two.
Xeva appears to have fused with the concrete, atoms seamlessly weaving in and out of each other.
“Xeva...?” He says it more to himself than to her. Xeva groans, eyelids fluttering and breathing labored. Xigbar staggers to his feet, helped in no small part by his gravitational powers. He doesn't put all his weight on his feet, and opts instead to float most of the way over to Xeva's body. He looks down at her. Blood is trickling from her hairline, darkening the gray streaks to crimson. She's nearly motionless in the concrete. Almost as if she'd been there when it was poured. Realization washes over Xigbar in a tidal wave.
“Quantum tunneling... you finally learned it.” He barks out a laugh and instantly regrets it. Ignoring the pain, the anger, the emotional significance of Xeva being in this world with him, Xigbar shakes his head in astonishment. He stares down at where her arm disappears into the rooftop, resisting the urge to lean down and inspect it up close.
Xeva wheezes out a breath. As her chest moves up and down, Xigbar notices that she isn't stuck in the concrete at all, rather, she's just… occupying some of the same space as it.
“Go... to hell…” Her hands tighten into fists, but she doesn't move otherwise.
“Have you always been able to do that? Or is this new?”
He can't keep the shit-eating grin off his face as he says it. In his tone, a little bit of amazement and admiration leak through. She'd done what he never could - master even the small spaces between atomic nuclei and electrons. Even if this was just instinctual, just something to save herself from splattering all over the roof... it's still really impressive.
“I... I should kill... you where you stand…” Her breath comes in gasps between words.
She feels like she's dying. Like there's nothing keeping here from fading back into nothingness. The cold, dark, nothing of those moments before she woke up in Scala nips at her heels. Between the thump of her heartbeat in her ears and the thunder of the rain, she barely hears his response.
Xigbar hums. “Doesn't look like you will, though.”
Finally, she opens her eyes to fix him with a glare. Everything she sees is in shades of red and orange and white. Xigbar's face glows brightly in her vision, shining in the infrared colors that her eyes have decided to see in. It's not a shock to her. When reconstituted as a Nobody, she noticed several changes to her survival instincts. One of them was the ability to modulate the wavelengths of light she was able to see, which was helpful when tracking targets through walls. Not terribly helpful when she's flat on her back in concrete.
The throbbing headache spreading through her skull prevents her from lunging upward and wrapping her hands around his neck. Instead, she focuses on the accidental tunneling her atoms have decided to do. She minutely moves her feet, testing to see how strongly the concrete had bonded to her, if at all. It felt like the split-second haze of teleportation, but all over her body and constant.
“Ah, there you are. For a second there, I thought you forgot how to glare at me!” The glowing eyes are new, though , he doesn't say.
Xeva huffs out an annoyed sigh, turning her head away. She's far too weak to stand or climb out of the rooftop, but she contemplates how to regain the upper hand. At least Xigbar is giving her a little bit of respite so he can make his unfortunate comments, though she knows it won't last.
A crack of thunder flashes bright white behind her eyelids, and an idea screams its way into her mind like a freight train. A visible-light flashbang, one that wouldn't affect her infrared vision. She feels for the photons bouncing off of every surface, tries to steer the lowest energy ones. Xigbar wouldn't be able to see those until it's too late.
“Y'know, I'm not exactly proud of what happened. I mean, cat's out of the bag. Might as well deal with it. I didn't have a choice when I picked you.”
Xeva grinds her teeth at his words, getting angrier by the second. She focuses on gathering all the light waves around her. All of the heat coming off Xigbar, all the radio waves coming from forgotten broadcasts and transmitters around the city. She circles them around her head in a halo. It feels like staring into the sun, even with her eyes closed. She has to hold on, has to collect enough to affect him.
“Didn't have a choice with any of you, in fact.” He sighs. “Look, I couldn't explain all of it to you if I wanted. But something tells me that you already know most of it.”
Keep talking! Xeva thinks. She's bracing herself against the sheer heat and intensity of the ring of light above her, hoping Xigbar doesn't see the strain on her face. Praying he doesn't feel the heat being sapped from the surface of his skin.
“I can't change what happened. Neither can you. I think it would be best if–”
She throws the ring of light toward his face, yelling with the effort. It's slung with such speed that every photon's wavelength is shortened, turning all of the infrared and radio back into visible light. Xeva hears him stagger backward with a strangled cry, and she finally opens her eyes again.
Xigbar is covering his face with an arm to shield himself from the light bombarding his vision. Her anger catches up to her, fueling her limbs to thrust upward, out of the concrete. It hurts like hell, makes her dizzy, makes her feel like she's going to pass out, but she doesn't care.
Adrenaline surges through her veins as she summons her rifle back into her hands. The residual heat coming from the flashbang is cut as the cold metal settles in her palm. Quick as a whip, she leaps forward and jams the barrel under Xigbar's chin, securing herself in an invisible gravitational sling above the ground.
“Let me tell you something.” Xeva leans into his face with a snarling whisper. He opens his eye, surely still recovering his vision. “I don't care what reasons you had.”
She keeps Xigbar locked in position with a new gravitational field. He clearly feels it, because he tilts his head upward, away from the gun. His face is neutral, but she can see the heat and panic coming off him in waves. She nudges the barrel under his chin further, using her other hand to grab the front of his coat and draw him closer.
“Xeva, please. Don't do anything you'll regret.”
“Why would I regret this?” Xeva laughs, eyes wild. Another thundercrack shakes the whole world, but she stays steady. “Do you regret anything you've done?”
“I sure as hell didn't like doing it!” Xigbar's expression turns defensive.
“Is that what I asked?” Xeva holds down the trigger, making the photon bullet glow. It will burn Xigbar's skin in moments if she lets it. “If you had the choice to go back–”
“Obviously it wouldn't be you!”
“Shut up !” Xeva shrieks in his face, voice crackling with emotion. “If you went back, would you still take all those lives? Would you steal the bodies of so many and wear them like a garment? Or do you just feel guilty about me ?”
Xigbar is remarkably silent.
“I'm the only one who's come back to haunt you. The only one you can't shake. Does it hurt when you look at me? Do you see who I was before you? Or do you just see yourself reflected in my eyes?”
Xigbar looks down and away.
“I have become what you fear the most. I am you.” The statement settles in the air between them like a dead body. Xeva withdraws her finger on the trigger, and the bullet stops heating up.
“No,” He says it softly, barely more than a breath.
“Yes.” Xeva mocks his tone, his soft voice. “You took my life from me.”
Xigbar senses a squeezing force close in on his lungs. The air is slowly forced out of him—slow enough to keep him alive, fast enough to induce panic. He resists the urge to grab Xeva’s wrist, knowing any sudden movement could escalate this situation to its deadly end. There has to be some way out of this, but he’s running out of time. Xeva’s eyes are mad and reflect the dim light like a wild animal. Her breaths come just as quick and labored as Xigbar’s.
The air around them shimmers, thrumming with energy. The edges of her face blur, and Xigbar can’t tell if it’s her losing control or his lack of oxygen. He tries to summon his arrowguns, but he can’t feel a connection to them anywhere.
Xeva bares her teeth in a wicked sneer that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I wonder if I should return the favor.”