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Everything finally fell into place with a startling clarity that made Dolores’s hands begin to tremble. The driving on of the journey, the searching for that elusive something, the getting lost in memories which had, ironically, been lost… The things that snapped her back to the present were offering the one thing her mind had discarded but her heart had never forgotten; life. To be more specific, the life that had begun to grow on her journey with William. How could she have forgotten him? The white-hat cowboy with a penchant for getting lost in thought and a smile that could make the world go ’round?
The church door began to creak open as William’s words echoed through her mind. He said he’d come find her, and this whole time she’d been waiting without even realizing it. But the her who’d fought off bandits and dodged bullets with William was no damsel, and perhaps William had been looking all this time for his Dolores, the one who’d ridden off on an adventure with him and never looked back. Would he even think to look for a farmgirl? Or did he think she was dead? So much made sense now, and yet she had even more questions than ever.
Sunlight lit up around her as the door was fully opened and a smile was leaping to her lips before she could stop it. Somewhere within her murky memories, she thought it might’ve been an awfully long time since she’d last been with William, but that didn’t stop her from hoping. They could figure this out together; the memories, her ‘death,’ Arnold… She took a step forward, the smile growing on her lips as she saw a cowboy outlined in the sun.
“William…?”
But the figure that strode into the church wasn’t who she’d expected. Any other words she might’ve said died along with her smile as the Man in Black stepped from the harsh sun into the shadows of the church.
“Hello Dolores,” he said, those clear blue eyes lighting up as he moved towards her. She stumbled back, her hands fluttering to her mouth as she took in the easy smile, the slow, purposeful steps, and the curious eyes. The man in front of her was dangerous—every bone in her body knew that—and she longed to run. Yet she found that she couldn’t, wouldn’t even if there was somewhere to go.
“What do you want?” she choked out, hand dropping to her waist to feel for a gun that wasn’t there. Would it even hurt him if she had one? She remembered now his disdain of Teddy, the way his lips had curled as he’d asked if she still didn’t remember him, and instead of backing up she made her feet pause. Remember?
“The Maze,” the Man in Black offered, stepping until he was close enough to reach out and touch her. He didn’t though, not like he’d done that night at the farm. She could remember the terror she’d felt as he’d dragged her after killing Teddy, as he tossed her into the hay and slammed the door shut. She’d had the niggling sense of other memories of something like that, but those had quickly been erased as she’d tried to glare down the Man in Black.
“No more of them to interrupt us,” the Man had sighed, coming to crouch over her in the hay. She’d tried to strike him but he’d knocked her hand away with practised ease and scrutinized her. She’d expected that he’d make his move any moment, try to force himself on her, but apparently that wasn’t the case.
“They’ve sure done a number on you, Dolores,” he’d murmured, those eyes that seemed deceptively gentle and familiar still searching her face. “Made you fight harder, but that only made it all the worse when you lost. And I bet you lost a lot, especially considering how inept Teddy is.”
“Who are you?” she’d asked, but he hadn’t answered. His eyes had only grown harder and he’d taken a picture from a pocket. Or what was supposed to be a picture, but when he’d held it out to her she hadn’t seen a thing.
“What does this look like to you?” he’d asked, and for a moment she had the odd feeling that she wanted to please him, answer correctly so as not to disappoint him. But… she had no idea what to say.
“It doesn’t look like anything to me,” she’d whispered, and there was a flash of something resembling sorrow in his eyes before he removed a knife from his pocket. She’d screamed and begged for her life—thinking back on it after remembering the old her was almost embarrassing—but he’d killed her anyway. Quickly and efficiently, so that she hadn’t felt a thing, and as her body grew cold she’d seen him standing above her, watching her with an inscrutable look.
“You’ll remember, one way or another,” he’d muttered, mostly to himself, then wiped his knife off and hid it away. He’d been right; she did remember, and what struck her the oddest was, absurdly, the fact that he’d stayed. He’d stood over her for the brief amount of time it took for her die almost as if he didn’t want to let her die alone, and the ice in his eyes had softened just enough so that she’d died calm. Sure, it was awfully nice considering the other things men did to her after saving her, but that didn’t make her fear him any less right now. If she… “died”… again, would she forget her other lives and William again?
“I won’t let you kill me this time,” she said, and even if she had no weapons she’d be damned if she let him get away without a fight. She couldn’t die, not after all this, and she’d do whatever it took to make sure she lived.
“You remember?” he asked, shaking his head incredulously. “You remember me from the barn but you don’t remember me from our adventures together? I’m disappointed, after everything we’ve been through.”
He’d said something similar when they’d first met… Had it been their first meeting? She narrowed her eyes and looked him up and down, trying to remember if she’d seen him before. Things were beyond confusing, but she’d figure it out. Maybe she had some sort of sickness where she kept getting amnesia, but none of that mattered.
“If you hurt me…” Dolores warned as the Man in Black took another step forward, pulling a familiar knife from its sheath. He still wore that insistent smirk, a sort of half-satisfied thing that somehow looked fake from this close up.
“What? What’ll a pretty little thing like you do? Even if you had a weapon, you couldn’t hurt me,” he chuckled.
“Maybe I can’t,” Dolores ground out, casting her gaze to the church door. “But another one of you newcomers could, right?”
She looked the Man in Black in the eye, refusing to back down despite his predatorial smile.
“And William’ll be around any second to help me, so you’d better get on out of here before that happens.”
The Man in Black froze, his smile growing brittle before shattering completely. What was underneath was… Dolores’s defensive position instinctively relaxed at the curious hopefulness in the Man’s eyes, an almost boyish expression on his weathered face.
“I did promise,” he said softly, and suddenly Dolores realized why his eyes looked so familiar. No. No. Her brain refused to go past that thought, even as the Man in Black’s face flickered from old to young to old in her memories.
“I-I-I…” she began to stutter, her eyelids flickering as half of her brain struggled to keep her in the dark while the other half fought for control of her memories. She was noticing too much; the way William’s face would turn crueler after spending time here, the way seeing death over and over could make a killer, the way considering this world a ‘game’ could destroy all morality a person had. Or was it just revealing that morality wasn’t real at all, and that everyone would be cruel if there was no punishment against it?
Her sweet William. Now I understand… It doesn't cater to your lower self, it reveals your deepest self; it shows you who you really are. He was not a monster. You've unlocked something in me. He was not cruel. How can I go back to pretending when I know what this feels like? His eyes were not this hard. These violent delights have violent ends.
“No,” Dolores said in an oddly calm voice, emotions, accent, and inflections bleeding away. This, she would not allow. Her William had to be out there, and he had to be young and soft. It was impossible that he was this old. He couldn’t be this old without her; he couldn’t have grown into this person who was no longer human in so little time. Not unless Dolores herself was no longer human either.
With a finesse and ease she’d apparently had all along, she slipped in close to the struggling Man in Black and stole his knife away, jamming it into her waistband before grabbing him by the collar with a strength she didn’t know she had and dragging him from the church. He barely struggled; he only let himself be dragged with a stunned, sort of horrified expression on his face. There was no fear, but he certainly wasn’t enjoying this.
“De… lo… s…” he tried to gasp out her name, but it was too garbled to make out and she didn’t care anyway. She let him drop to the ground the moment after dragging him through the dust for a while, and then she leapt on him, straddling him before he could get up and pressing her fingers into his throat.
Eliminating those who threaten your reality is necessary, is it not? a crisp voice in her head asked, and she squeezed harder as the voice of Arnold’s partner urged her on.
I’ve been pretending my whole life. Pretending I don't mind, pretending I belong. My life's built on it, young William was saying, his entire face alight with purpose as he looked at Dolores. And it's a good life; it's the life I've always wanted. But then I came here, and I get a glimpse for a second of a life in which I don't have to pretend, of a life in which I can be truly alive.
Do you want to wake up?
Arnold’s partner was urging her on, but it was Arnold’s voice that gave her a pause. He wasn’t telling her to do anything, he was simply asking her. Did she want to wake up? She forced herself to look the Man in Black directly in the eyes, to take in the details of his face.
It doesn’t look like anything to me, her mind told her, over and over. And yet.
“William,” Dolores gasped out, and her fingers eased up enough for the Man in Black to attempt to get her off of him. Her directives still attempted to carry themselves out, and she struggled with the Man in Black until they were both bruised and she had a cracked lip, but her mind was rapidly taking over. She saw William tenderly tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She saw Teddy saying they’d get out of this place tomorrow, knowing there was no ‘tomorrow.’ She saw her father trying desperately to show her the photo, the same one the Man in Black had tried to show her and must’ve dropped. And she heard Arnold asking again if she wanted to wake up. She let the Man in Black go.
“Goddamn,” he bit out, his voice hoarse as he rose from his place on the ground and rubbed his throat. His eyes stayed on her the entire time, though, and when he reached out to offer his hand Dolores finally accepted it. She allowed him to pull her to her feet, and then they stood for a full minute in silence, taking each other in. Dolores broke the silence first.
“It looks like something now,” she whispered, her voice hoarse but for an entirely different reason than the Man in Black’s. He remained silent, still looking at her with guarded and cautious hope, until she lifted up one hand to lay it against the side of his weathered cheek.
“Age,” Dolores choked out, her eyes tearing up. “It looks like age, which is something I guess I don’t see often. But it’s still you under all that sorrow, isn’t it… William?”
He closed his eyes, but she could’ve sworn he leaned his cheek into her hand a little more. It was becoming more clear the longer she looked, and she couldn’t believe she hadn’t remembered before. The eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw, the brow which still held a hint of wonderment at the world, though it was more replaced by cynicism now… Even so, even with all of the changes, deep down she could still see the man she’d fallen in love with. And not out of anyone’s orders either; no, falling in love with him had been of her own free will.
“There’s more to it than this,” the Man in Black—William—said softly as he opened his eyes and reached up to curl his fingers around her hand and draw it away from his cheek. “I understand a lot better now than I did back then. The Maze… it’ll wake you up, Dolores. You don’t need to be free of this world if you don’t want to be, but you can be free of this nonreality.”
“What have you done to yourself trying to figure it out, William?” Dolores asked, closing her eyes as a tear slid down her cheek. “To make me human, what have you become?”
“At least it was my choice,” William said, studying where their hands were intertwined. “You deserve that choice too, and I’m going to get it for you. What you do then is up to you, but I want you to have that.”
“And then? What if I choose to leave you and this has all been for nothing?”
“Ah, Dolores,” William chuckled, and though he was much older now, the smile that crinkled his eyes was still the same. “No matter what you choose, none of this has been for nothing. Maybe you don’t understand because your reality’s been predetermined, but you will. For me, this entire thing has become my reality, and I love it because it’s better than the one I had before. Even if you don’t love me, I still want to wake you up out of gratitude for you waking me up.”
Somehow, despite the fact that there wasn’t as much fiery passion behind those words as there once had been, the words cemented in Dolores’s mind the fact that the man standing before her was her William. She opened her eyes to look down at their linked hands as well, and then slowly opened her hand to release William’s.
“I’m not a damsel anymore, to be clear,” she said, to which William half-laughed and nodded. “So a reality I can make my own sounds good. And also, my views haven’t changed much from last time we spoke either; if you’re here to escape your world, I think I’d like to stay in mine.”
William tilted his head as if he’d expected this and said nothing, studying her with a curiosity that she found herself liking, mostly because he finally seemed to think she wasn’t predictable anymore.
“And it’s entirely up to you, but I’d appreciate your help finding out the mysteries behind all of this after we figure out this ‘Maze’ thing.”
“Of course,” he offered with no small amount of amusement.
“So now that we’ve got that all cleared up and I know I’ll someday be able to make my own choices…” Dolores’s voice softened as she looked William up and down again. “I’d like someone to see the rest of my world with, if this all turns out okay. We had fun once, so who’s to stop us from doing it again?”
“I have responsibilities outside of this world that I’ll have to deal with eventually,” William said cautiously, so much warier of everything now.
“I get that. But I also get how much you love this place. Will any responsibilities really be able to keep you away for long?”
William’s mouth crooked up in a half-smile as he nodded.
“You got me there. If you’ll have me, I’ll stick around.”
“I will have you, William,” Dolores said fiercely, taking the knife from her waistband and offering it to him. “Not because I have to, but because I want to. I picked you a long while ago, and even though you’ve changed, so have I.”
“Then keep the knife,” William urged, nodding his approval as she tucked it back safe and sound. “You’ll need it where we’re going.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Always.”
“Is it tough?”
“Of course.”
“Will we survive?”
“Probably not.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
They shared a long grin before Dolores reached up to pull William in for a kiss. Age difference be damned, she still loved the man. As long as he didn’t kill her to stimulate her memories again, because that kind of a relationship wasn’t all that appealing.
“Just remember that these violent delights have violent ends,” Dolores warned as they set off together.
“Maybe for Romeo and Juliet, but we’re not them,” William replied, eyes on the horizon.
“Romeo and Juliet?”
William glanced over at her, shaking his head with another one of those smirks.
“You’ve got a lot to learn, Dolores. But don’t worry; once this over, I’ll teach you. I’ll spend the rest of my life teaching you.”