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“Just. Stop. Please.”
Kamala frowns, looking Gwen over, her bowed head and defeated slouch. Gwen wonders what she’s thinking.
Liar. Insane. Batshit. Crazy.
Gwen knew them by heart. She would, at her most honest moments, admit they weren’t wrong. Gwen was crazy. She was manic, had very little care for life in general, blood didn’t bother her. Her efforts to be a good person were present, but shallow. Dropped the moment she was in real danger.
But.
But, but, but.
She wasn’t lying. Wasn’t wrong. She was living in a comic, and she knew that from the start.
She had wanted to convince people. Anyone.
But now she couldn’t. Her past had been rewritten, stitched and glued together from a hack-job story Kamala had probably been working out for a while.
She raised her head, staring at Kamala. When Kamala’s frown deepened, when she bowed her head, Gwen felt like she was kicking a puppy.
So she lied.
“You win Kamala.” She says, and as she continues, going through a whole bit, Gwen Poole finally giving up and joining reality like all the rest of the cogs, she can see Kamala doesn’t really believe her.
She realizes she hasn’t changed her expression in over a minute, still stuck in a dead stare. Gwen smiles, and Kamala frowns harder.
“You don’t have to lie to me Gwen.” Kamala smiles at the way Gwen flinches, soothing her like a rabid dog.
It takes her a moment. Feeling in a way she hadn’t felt since she arrived, never quite comfortable with her surroundings. Gwen feels her lip start to quiver, eyes crinkling and burning soothingly at their edges.
“If it isn’t some crisis, then what’s going on?”
Gwen’s a crier, can’t hold her tears back, and doesn’t even try. She slumps to the sand, and lays backwards, head tilting out towards the panel she knows is there.
It opens for her, and she knows Kamala can’t see the way the pages dip, fading out at the end and stopping entirely. It’s not long. Maybe six pages?
Tears drip into the sand below as Kamala sits down beside her, and Gwen realizes she doesn’t want to explain this all in one go. So she makes something up.
“Do you remember when I told you a little bit about my powers?” She asks, feeling how Kamala’s sleeve flits across her back, feeling how reality sews in her fake moment, now made real by the meta nature of her abilities.
“Something.. something time, space and alternate realities?” Kamala confirmed, not even acknowledging, not even realizing, how moments ago, she only had theories about Gwen’s power. The knowledge of her manipulation settles like a pit in her stomach, and Gwen gulps knowing it will be a long time before that leaves.
“My future.” She starts, reaching into the gutter, and pulling out a page, “I can see it. Like pages in a book.”
The sand shifts beside her as Kamala leans over, grabbing the page. Gwen lets her, it’s part of the past anyways.
“I thought it would be a comic book,”
“It usually is. We’re just not in one right now.” She lets Kamala keep the page, looking out over her remaining time as Kamala studies the paper, “Not many pages left. Is all.”
There’s a fwump as Kamala’s hand drives into the sand beneath them, “Gwen-!” She starts, clearly thinking of another rant about how Gwen needs to face reality or something.
Gwen stares at her, feeling a strange pity for the girl in front of her, “I’m dying Kamala.”
Kamala jerks back, words catching in her mouth as she frantically searches Gwen over, confusion mixing with the fear in her eyes.
Gwen smiles at her concern, watching the way her contrary emotions abate Kamala’s fear with cattish amusement, “It’s not cancer or something. Nothing I can heal.” If it was, she’d have done it already. Imagined the moment where she’d stolen a priceless healing artifact years ago and just reached into gutter-space to grab it.
Kamala reached down, hand resting on Gwen’s head, eyes staring down at her prone form filled with concern for a problem Gwen knew she couldn’t solve, “Then..?”
Gwen looked away, unable to hold her gaze, “Do you remember Red Dagger?”
“Who’s that?”
“Vigilante. You two used to team up alot.”
“I - uh. Don’t remember them, no.”
“No.” Gwen says, playing with the hand beneath her, grabbing it and letting it slip away, “You don’t. Should be a bit fuzzy once you get to that solo bust you did on the Khushkhati.”
Finally Kamala breaks her silence, buried anger simmering beneath her voice, “What’s going on.”
Gwen doesn’t flinch, she’s already gonna die. Maybe Kamala kills her on accident or something? “Nothing. That’s just what happens. People disappear. And people forget.” She taps the side of her head, “I don’t.”
“Gwen, take this seriously! Why can’t I remember?” Kamala points her down, but still, not with an inch of violence, “I should remember. I should. Why did I go there?”
“Red Dagger called you. He was being held there.”
“And you think this is happening to you? Gwen, people don’t just disappear!” Kamala insists, like laws would change for a beggar. She standing now, looming over Gwen, and nearly as mad as she’s ever seen her. Nearly. Champions Gwen did some weird shit.
“They do.” Gwen rises to her feet, feeling so done with everything. So done with the doubts, so done with insanity, so done with Kamala acting like she knows Gwen whole story, “They do. And in a page, you’ll forget me.” She up in Kamala face now, finger poking into her friend’s chest with every point, “In a page, you’ll go home, not wondering where Gwen Poole went off to, and question why you were even on the beach at all. And you won’t figure it out.” She finishes, emphasizing every word like a blow.
“I will!”
It’s so sudden, Gwen falls backwards with the force of Kamala’s voice. She’s been hit by sledgehammers less scary.
Kamala is standing above her, hands clenched and eyes steeled as she watches Gwen below.
“I will.” Kamala says, much quieter this time, “I won’t forget you. I don’t know how I forgot about all these others you’re talking about, but I won’t forget you, Gwen.”
“Promise..?”
There it was. So that’s what this is about. Gwen’s afraid of being forgotten..? Just wanted to get everyone's attention. Kamala could understand that, “I promise.” She gives her best, A+ smile, reaching out to grab Gwen’s hand comfortingly, holding it between them.
But Gwen doesn’t look any better.
“I wish I could believe that.”
And suddenly, the weight in her hand is just gone.