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“Are you Johnny Rockfort?” Cristal asks. “You look exactly as I’d imagined.”
And strangely enough, it’s true. She’s never seen him up close, she’s sure of it. The only security camera pictures she’s seen had been too blurry and pixelated to really make out any of his features.
She would never intend to eavesdrop, obviously, but she’s heard producers talking about the photographs, leaving the offices of TéléCapitale after a meeting. They were speculating on whether that CCTV footage of him was real. It could be anyone, they said, a doppelganger, computer generated stuff even, you never knew, these days. At any rate, the time wasn’t quite right yet to release the pictures to the public; let them conjure up their own image of Johnny Rockfort.
Well, Cristal has done precisely that. She was curious, of course, and used her badge to sneak into the control room and log onto the monitors during a break, to find nothing but a dark silhouette with his face obscured by a mask. That is all she has seen of Johnny Rockfort until now.
So why does she feel like they’ve already met?
***
Déjà-vu gets her again. Later, when they’re finally alone in the surprisingly luxurious car that Johnny brought her to, after that girl—Sadia —had come to yell at him about recklessness and not thinking ahead. He’s in the driver’s seat now, speeding through the city and Cristal gathers the courage to put her hand over his on the gear lever. The contact sends a tingle across her arm, and the sensation is familiar, not at all disagreeable. It makes her deliciously dizzy.
"You okay?", he asks, and she notices a faint blush on his cheeks. It makes him look young.
She nods, and she can’t help the smile that spreads across her face. They keep driving in that easy silence for a while, until Johnny parks the car somewhere empty in the tunnels. Cristal says nothing about it, but she remembers the story from a few weeks ago about a young couple getting brutally jumped and killed by the Etoiles Noires on their drive back to the towers. The news broadcast had harped on for days about the incident.
Cristal is sitting in a stolen car next to the West’s most wanted criminal, all alone in the depths of the underground and yet she’s never felt so safe.
She studies his face again. His eyes well with a silent question—though she’s not sure what he’s asking—and she lets her gaze drop to his lips.
It occurs to her that she knows exactly what it would feel like to kiss him. But she remembers the first classes of Journalism School and the repetition of “always check your sources," and she decides to put her theory to the test right away.
Somehow, it’s even better than she expected.
Her hand lingers on his cheek when they pull apart, foreheads still touching. They’re both smiling.
Cristal thinks she detects a tremor in Johnny’s voice when he speaks, his breath warm on her lips:
"Can you do it again? Please?"
At this moment, there is nothing she wants more.
He’s smiling so sincerely, yet Cristal can’t help but think he looks inexplicably sad.
She kisses him again.
***
She doesn’t understand why he tries so hard to dissuade her, when she comes up with her grand plan to make a bang. His vehement protests make something hot and painful coil and rise inside her that she refuses to smother. She left everything to join him and claimed it publicly. To the eyes of the world, she might as well be married to his cause, and it infuriates her that he can be so blind.
“You think I can’t do it? Christ, Johnny, I don’t need to be protected!” she says, turning her back to him. “You sound just like them.”
She hates how much she sounds like a spoiled teenager rebelling against her parents but she hates even more how everyone insists on treating her like one.
“It’s not just you, Cristal,” he tries. “The same would go for anyone. Even if we managed to get under that building—”
She cuts him off, walking over to him. “But we’re not anyone, right?” She lowers her voice. It usually doesn’t take so much effort to convince him—he never puts up much of a fight about anything, really—but she knows exactly how to push his buttons. “There’s a reason they’re all scared of you. You’re Johnny Rockfort, for fuck’s sake. Own it.”
He won’t look at her. His eyes are fixed on an invisible point somewhere far behind her. She draws closer still until she can grab the front of his jumpsuit and tug him forward.
“Come on, Johnny. We’ve got nothing to lose. We can’t just run away now.”
She can see his mind working behind his eyes, a thousand tiny changes flitting across his face before he finally lets out a shaky sigh and nods placidly. He looks more tired than she’s even seen him, and it dulls a little of her frustration. She shoots him a bright smile just to see his face light up in response. She promises herself she’ll make it up to him, when this is all over, after they’ve changed the world.
For the time being, she can only kiss him, fierce and hungry until he melts into her.
***
On election night, Cristal is hit with another wave of deja-vu, but it’s different this time. None of the butterflies or dizzy giddiness she sometimes gets around Johnny.
No, this is another beast entirely, something uncomfortable sitting in the pit of her stomach.
She takes his hand and pushes the door that will lead them to the tunnel system beneath the tower. The cold air hits her bare legs and she can’t suppress a shiver.
“You ready?” he asks.
“Yes,” she answers, not quite so confident as she would have liked.
Johnny just takes a slow breath and nods his head. He’s been lost in thought for days and no matter what she does, Cristal can’t seem to snap him out of it.
“We can still turn around, you know,” he offers matter-of-factly, and Cristal is annoyed that he’d even think about it.
“No way. We’re doing this.”
“Home stretch, then,” he says in a tight voice, gently squeezing Cristal’s hand.
They walk in, letting the dark swallow them.
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“Are you Johnny Rockfort?” Cristal asks, startled, when their eyes meet. “You look exactly as I’d imagined.”
Saying he looks familiar would be an understatement. There’s something about his handsome face, the eager eyes searching hers, that tugs at something inside her she can’t quite untangle. She decides it must be her brain playing a trick on her, nothing more. After all, she’s thought of little else since she received that call, three days ago. Maybe she’s imagined meeting him so many times that she’s somehow convinced herself it actually happened.
Then he compliments her, and her face turns red, like no one’s ever flirted with her before, until—
"Hi, I’m Sadia," the blue-haired woman next to him says, stepping right between Cristal and Johnny, close enough that her arm brushes Cristal’s hand. Sadia makes no effort to hide how annoyed she is. "We have to be quick."
A sudden sharp pain hits Cristal right in the ribcage. So intense her vision blurs and she has to bite her lip to keep from crying out as her hands fly to her side. Then, an instant later, it’s gone. Cristal looks up and Johnny’s staring at her, frowning slightly. Thankfully, it looks like Sadia hasn’t noticed, and she walks past Cristal, barking orders at her crew.
Things are still hazy, though. Cristal has to focus on keeping her breathing even, and she can only just hear Johnny telling Sadia off.
Sadia walks past her again, shoving her shoulder with too much force for it to be accidental, and in a low voice, she sneers: "Something wrong, princess?"
Cristal doesn’t have time to answer before the cameras start rolling.
She can already tell that she and Sadia are not going to be friends.
***
Being with Johnny is so easy, Cristal thinks, coming out of the makeshift shower they have in the hangar. It isn’t much more than a repurposed garden hose over a basin, and Cristal has never had such a hard time washing her hair, or slept in such a cold place, but it doesn’t matter, because it feels like somehow she’s meant to be here, like she’s meant to be with him.
She finds Johnny ready for bed, flipping through the pages of a comic book he’s probably read hundreds of times before. He looks truly at ease, for once, free of that strange brooding look he gets from time to time, which always surprises her because, based on their conversations, he doesn’t strike her as the sort to get lost in deep philosophical reflections. She sits by his side on the edge of the mattress, attempting to pat her hair dry with the cleanest rag she could find in the hideout.
"I don’t think Sadia likes me very much," Cristal announces.
That makes him close his book and turn to her, frowning, like the thought never even occurred to him.
"I don’t think she likes anyone very much, to be fair."
Yeah, well, I don’t see her harassing anyone else here, Cristal wants to say, but she thinks better of it. Instead, she makes her tone playful and tries to ignore the bitter taste in her mouth as she replies with a forced smirk:
"She seems to like you, though."
The sheets rustle under Johnny as he squirms awkwardly, looking almost guilty. Which does make her feel a bit better.
"It’s not the same," he answers, and then sits up a little, his back to the wall at the head of the bed. "Why? Has she said anything to you?"
She could tell him about the slights, about the whispers Cristal can hear clear as day behind her when she walks across the hangar, about the dirty looks and the savage glint in Sadia’s eyes which always make Cristal feel like she’s just said something embarrassing. But Cristal is no snitch, and she knows exactly how complaining about it would make her look. She has to show them, to show him that she can defend herself.
And anyway, part of her doubts Johnny is strong enough to actually stand up to Sadia. He cares about her, that much is clear, and anyway she’d probably be able to twist the story around to her advantage.
"Nothing, just the usual," Cristal answers simply, setting down her towel on the back of a chair and sliding into bed next to him. He naturally shuffles closer, draping his arm around her middle, and lets out a loud contented sigh.
This is one of the rare times she’s seen him genuinely relaxed. Telling him about that incomprehensible gut feeling she gets around Sadia, like her lungs are on fire and a dark veil has settled over her vision, would only make him worry and her look weak.
She puts her hand on his and brings it over her stomach. It’s just a feeling. Nothing to worry about.
***
She isn’t scared when she makes him choose.
Sadia leaves, of course. Finally, Cristal can breathe normally.
Johnny still looks worried, though.
***
"Cristal, if we do this… you know there’s no going back, right?"
She bites back the urge to retort. Does he think she’s stupid? This is all she’s been thinking about for weeks. She understands the implications. No other option makes sense.
"I said I’m with you to the death. Against the whole world."
Of course, in the end, he gives in.
***
Cristal has been here before, she’s sure of it. The stale smell of the air, the distant humming of the elevators above them, the ticking of the bomb. The sudden pain in her side. The flash of blue. Johnny’s scream.
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"Are you Johnny Rockfort?" Cristal asks, and he turns to face her.
Their eyes meet, and she feels like she’s been shot with a laser gun. It all comes back to her.
She smiles. "You look exactly as I’d imagined."
***
When Johnny explains it to her, he’s softly crying into her shoulder so she struggles to make out some of his words. His story is disjointed, with incoherent passages leading nowhere and missing parts. Cristal squeezes his hand through it to remind him that for all the times he’s lost her, she’s here now,
"I tried telling you," he wails, his voice breaking on the last word." Sometimes you’d believe me, but it didn’t change anything."
The room is silent save for his stifled sobs. Cristal fights the knot forming in her own throat as she runs a hand through his hair. This is a lot to take in.
"So no one else knows?"
He shakes his head, staring at his feet.
"How many times has it happened?"
“I don’t know. Couldn’t keep"—he sniffles—"couldn’t keep count."
"And we die every time?"
Johnny nods. "I don’t know how, but they always know we’re there, or you get shot out of nowhere and—” He stops to wipe his tears with the back of his sleeve.
He briefly told Cristal about the various ways in which he’s seen her die. The way he says it, it sounds like some sort of karmic punishment, something as absurdly cruel and unexplainable as this whole cycle they’re in.
But Cristal remembers getting shot, and it felt very, very real. And she remembers the flash of blue and of silver sequins.
***
Cristal has been losing sleep over it, turning the problem around in her head, trying to work out a solution, and she’s decided she wants to go through with the bomb attack again. She knows exactly how Johnny will react. They’ve had this conversation before, after all. That doesn’t make it any easier to hear the desperate edge in his voice.
“This is where it ends, every time!” he stammers loudly.
She bites the inside of her cheek and drops his hand, stepping away from the car so she won’t have to look at his pained, pleading face. She knows how cruel it is, what she’s doing to him, but she doesn’t see what else she can do. The attack has to succeed; there must be something they’re doing wrong.
She hasn’t told him about her memory of Sadia, or about how her presence was enough to make her sick. Cristal saw exactly how Sadia looked at her as she left, spitting out her usual threat to Johnny. It’s good that he has no idea, though. If he knew, Cristal suspects he’d just try harder to push against her plan.
“No, this is where we fail,” she answers, sounding harsher than she means to. “If she—If I don’t get killed, maybe this stops. But we have to at least try, Johnny. This can’t have been for nothing. Then we can leave.”
She keeps remembering how the ratings skyrocketed when she interviewed Zéro Janvier for Starmania. It’s still fresh in her memory, like it happened just weeks ago, but now she knows it’s been much longer. She thought at the time that getting Johnny Rockfort, leader of the Etoiles Noires, on air would make up for it, but the damage had already been done. She can’t be remembered this way.
“We have another shot at setting things right,” she adds in a calmer voice. “This is our way out.”
There’s no answer for a minute, and it’s obvious he’s struggling to hold back tears. Cristal has to resist the urge to turn around and apologize. She hasn’t won the argument, she realizes. He’s just given up on trying to convince her. She chews on her bottom lip, keeping her jaw clenched as she waits for his answer.
She hears him jump down from the hood of the car, walk up to her, kicking a pebble with the side of his foot, then he’s standing behind her, surrounding her with his arms, and whispers “Okay.” in her neck, voice wet and shaky, and she almost changes her mind. Almost.
***
Cristal’s heart pounds in her chest as she hands Johnny the package, like they’ve agreed. It’s too dark to really see anything. The only light, an old neon tube. Its flickering makes the moment feel like a dream. Except it isn’t; the floor is firm beneath her heels, and though she mustn’t turn around yet, she knows Sadia is lurking in the shadows behind her, getting ready to shoot.
She could fire at any moment now. Johnny knows the moment is close too, and Cristal can tell it’s taking everything in him not to turn around to make sure she’s okay.
It’s not like it’s their only chance, she tells herself, like Johnny kept repeating, probably more to himself than to her, as they were getting ready. If they fail, they’ll just have to do it again. But now they know. Now they have each other. Cristal is scared anyway. She does not want to die again.
Her stomach drops. She knows what that means. Cristal flings herself to the side, out of instinct more than as a result of a conscious decision, really. She hits the concrete, scraping her knees in the process, a fraction of a second before she can hear the crack of the gun.
She needs a moment to make sure she hasn’t been hit; she knows pain doesn’t register instantly.
When she looks up, Johnny is pointing his gun, aiming somewhere high up behind her. She turns around and sure enough, there’s Sadia, on a metal catwalk, smoke coming out of the barrel of her gun that’s now pointed right between Johnny’s eyes.
She doesn’t look like herself at all, the expression on her face so peculiar Cristal almost doesn’t recognize her.
Cristal takes in Sadia’s incredulous stare. And suddenly, it dawns on her, why Sadia should be so bewildered. This is not the face of someone who simply missed a shot. This is someone who is used to her target and hitting it every single time.
Sadia knows. Has known all along, most likely. Remembers every time she got Cristal killed by Zéro’s men, or by Zéro himself, or by the explosion. And judging by how she’s looking at them now, remembers every time she did the deed herself.
Cristal could slap herself. How did she not figure it out sooner? That's how Sadia knew exactly what their plan was, every time. Three steps ahead, every fucking time.
By the looks of it, Johnny hasn’t reached that conclusion yet, too set on keeping Sadia at gunpoint.
"Drop the gun, Sadia," he says in a harsh voice Cristal has never heard him use before, but which shouldn’t surprise her. She’s never seen it directly, but she knows the things he used to do and that got him on the news every other day.
Sadia laughs loudly, sincerely, like this is all child’s play to her, "Or what? You’re gonna shoot me, is that it?"
The only sound in the room is their erratic, panting breathing.
"Please," Sadia adds dismissively. "You wouldn’t."
As she says this, the certainty makes its way in Cristal’s brain that she’s right. Johnny won’t. He’s never been strong enough to oppose Sadia, never even suspected her, for all those do-overs, second, third, hundredth chances. He remembered every last fucking one, from the beginning. He never will be, never could be strong enough to save Cristal, because he’s too caring and naive and hopeful.
It should make Cristal mad, she thinks distantly, but she looks at him, and the sweet dizzying thing inside her is there again, beneath all the layers of fear and anger. It isn’t deja-vu, it’s something else, warmer and terrifyingly reassuring that pushes her to speak.
"You want to go through this again?" Cristal blurts out before she can stop herself, drawing Sadia’s attention back to her.
But it works, because she can see how her words confirm it in Sadia’s mind.
Johnny looks at Cristal, confused, and she wants to tell him to keep his eyes on Sadia, but both of them are clearly too distracted to think about shooting each other.
When she speaks next, Sadia’s voice is calm and detached, back to her usual cynical self.
"Oh, so you’ve figured it out? Well fucking done, it took you, what, one hundred tries?"
"What—" Johnny starts, but Sadia cuts him off, eyes fixed on him again.
"A hundred fucking tries and you could never make any different choices and now you expect me to believe you’ll have the guts to kill me?" She laughs again.
Johnny’s grip on the gun is unsteady, his quivering chin and wide eyes making it clear he understands now. He keeps frantically scanning Sadia’s face, like things are going to click into place. Cristal doesn’t dare move.
Then Sadia sighs dramatically, like one of Cristal’s old ballet instructors when she couldn’t get a move right.
"So, let’s start over, shall we? What’s one more, right?"
She releases the safety of her gun, index finger on the trigger, and adjusts her stance to aim well, directly for Johnny. He’s frozen like a deer in the headlights.
He’s not going to move, she realizes, a cold wave washing over her.
The pulsing light of the bomb behind Johnny catches her eyes and suddenly the plan doesn’t matter. Janvier can win the election and take over the world and they can call her a coward or a traitor.
All she knows, all that matters is that she can’t let Johnny get hurt.
Cristal lunges forward and grabs the gun from his hands.
Two simultaneous shots echo. Then silence.
***
It takes Cristal a while to piece together what happened. She has to help a bleeding Johnny out of the tunnels through seemingly endless secret passages and miles of cement corridors until they find a car she has to maneuver while talking continuously, spouting nonsense and questions just to keep him conscious.
There are a few hours where she’s not sure they’ll fare any better than they did before, with Johnny half out of it from the blood he’s lost and delirious with pain, and yet by the next night, they’re out of the city, hiding in an abandoned nuclear shelter in the woods near the outskirts—a dark, musty bunker dating back to the war. It looks like they’ve managed to shake off the authorities for a bit, giving her time to patch him up and to stop and think.
Somehow for the first time, they’ve made it past election night. Maybe she’s fooling herself and bringing them bad luck, but a part of her keeps whispering that the worst is past.
She’s cleaning the wound in Johnny's shoulder as carefully as she can, and he tries not to move but she can tell without seeing his face how much it still hurts. He never complains though, just grits his teeth and inhales sharply every time she makes contact.
"Where’d you hit her?" he asks, wincing in pain as he tries to turn to look at Cristal.
She needs a couple of seconds to understand what he’s talking about.
"I don’t know," she has to answer. It’s true; she didn’t bother to check. All she knows is that Sadia didn’t fire again and the bomb didn’t go off, but Cristal didn’t pay attention at the time, focused as she was on getting Johnny out of here. "In the leg, maybe? I didn’t really have time to aim very well."
"So you think she’s alive?" Johnny asks. His tone is not exactly hopeful, but it’s close enough to sting.
She’s been wondering that too, though, she guesses, for a different reason. If Sadia’s alive, it means she could come after them again. Cristal dislikes that idea.
She answers: "Maybe," and leaves it at that.
Later that night, when they fall asleep huddled together on a tarp on the dusty floor, Johnny whispers a soft "thank you" in the back of her neck. She doesn’t know exactly what he’s thanking her for, but she says nothing, just melts back against him, careful not to touch his bandages. She stays awake most of the night, listening for an intrusion that never comes.
Time passes until it’s morning. That is a small miracle in itself.
Johnny starts awake with a gasp, scrabbling at the floor for a few seconds, as he opens his eyes to a place he doesn’t know, then calms himself down with a deep breath when he meets Cristal’s eyes. He searches her face for confirmation, and she nods, bringing her hands to his cheeks.
“It’s over,” she tells him. “It’s tomorrow.”
He smiles, genuine amazement mixing with relief in his face, and suddenly Cristal knows without a doubt it was all worth it. The bomb wouldn’t have changed anything anyway.
Maybe it’s good that she made the selfish choice, in the end.