This thread follows on from In A Mirror, Darkly... or will, when it's finished!
Dan's eyes opened, and all he saw was black.
His mind felt leaden, struggling to unwravel the knot of memories that had tangled up inside his head. He saw brief flashes, thought fragmented thoughts, but nothing made sense. He screwed his eyes tight shut, heaving against the mechanisms of his mind to try and force the cogs into turning once more. Blearily, he percieved the lack of anything solid beneath him. Paired with the silence, and the darkness, there was only one conclusion he could draw.
I died.
Though his body felt nothing, his chest still ached: some crushing sorrow had wrapped around his heart, and he fought to understand why.
Flickers of memory danced away inside his mind. He saw her - saw Stephanie - standing before him; and then he saw her gone. He felt the sorrow hit him like a wave again; a sickening feeling rising from what in life would have been his stomach. To call her death tragic was an understatement; it was like calling the sea damp, or describing space as 'a little bit on the cold side'. It was a loss of incomprehensible proportions, and he could not fathom how he would ever live without her.
I died.
The thought echoed through his mind again, a glimmer of hope washing through him. She had died, and yet so had he. Though not even slightly religious - the closest thing he'd ever had to faith was the belief in the sporting prowess of his hockey team, and The War had pretty much destroyed that little shred of optimism - he had somehow found himself in some sort of life-after-death place. And surely, if he was here -
"Hello?"
No answer. No surprise: his voice sounded weak and echoed, swallowed by the void. He tried again, a little louder. "Hello!"
A blinding light pounced at him, scorching into his eyes. Out of pure reflex he tried to recoil away; concrete slammed against his spine and shoulders, hard and cold. A grimace swept across his features as pain blossomed through the body he thought he'd lost.
"Hey!" a voice shouted, it's words gruff and harsh; not at all the dulcet, angelic tones he'd been hoping for. "What are you doing in my warehouse, eh?"
Struggling to move with numbed limbs, he tried to roll to one side; tried to blink his eyes clear; tried to make some sense of the thoughts swimming around his head. He didn't manage to come up with anything constructive before a foot nudged harshly against his skin.
"And what the hell is with that get-up? You some kind of fetish pervert?"
Finally, Dan's throat began to obey instructions. A vague groan tumbled out of his throat, followed by a mutter of half-hearted explanation. "I thought I was dead."
The old man - Dan was pretty sure he was old; he had that raspy, whispy sound to his voice that made old people sound like they were slowly leaking - let out a chuckle that didn't sound even slightly sympathetic. "Hangover, eh?" Definately not sympathetic; another light kick to the shin made that abundantly clear. "Well go feel like shit some place else, son. My warehouse ain't a bloody drunk tank, y'hear?"
With a ridiculous amount of effort, Dan clambered to his feet. If it weren't for his genome abilities quite literally taking some of the weight off his shoulders, he'd most definately have collapsed back to the floor. Luckily, the old man was helpful enough to give him an enthusiastic shove in the direction of the door. Dan half-staggered obligingly.
It wasn't until the door slammed behind him, and the sympathetic dim of night cut his eyes a little slack that he had the opportunity to review his surroundings. Part of him wished he was still light-blinded, because there was no way he could fathom what he saw. Before him in every direction stretched a city; not just the ruins of a city, but an actual, real city, complete with street lights, and skyscrapers, and windows that weren't blown out, and cars that weren't lying smashed and rusted in debris-filled streets. While it was clearly late, there were still people - people, moving freely after curfew! - roaming the streets without a care in the world. No blackouts. No bomb sirens. No acrid smell of burning. And the sky - holy shit, the sky - still inky blue and peppered with stars that he couldn't remember seeing in nearly a decade.
He saw a person in the distance. He ran; snagged their arm. "Where am I?" he asked frantically.
The man - another old man; why were there so many of them around? - looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. "Hell, son. It ain't even eleven and you're already too wasted to know where y'are. What the hell you been drinking?"
"Where am I?" Dan asked, a little more edge and insistance in his voice.
The new old man took a step backwards. "Alright, son. Calm down. You're in Los Santos, alright?"
"Los Santos?" Dan echoed, voice thick with confusion.
"Yeah," the new old man continued. "You know. Los Santos, Los Angeles. California. US of A. Earth. Did you fall off the moon?" He narrowed his eyes, suspicion thick in his voice. "Are you an alien, son?"
Dan winced, letting the expression fall off his face before he fired the old man an incredulous look. "I'm from Kansas," he fired back.
"Well, you ain't in Kansas no more, son," the new old man offered, with a smile that wasn't particularly reassuring. He glanced at his watch again, the conversation having clearly stripped the memory of what time it was from his mind. "Well, I'd better get going. Gotta get home before the wife locks the doors again."
"Yeah, thanks," Dan offered dumbly as the man wandered away, humming a song that he didn't recognise; though honestly, he wasn't entirely sure what he was thanking him for. It was something he'd have to spare some thought for later; right now his entire brain was hung up trying to make sense of what the old man had said. Los Angeles - hell, the whole west coast - had been near enough levelled during the first year of The War. Almost nothing west of the Rockies was still standing; and while maybe a small town or two might have been lurking out there in the rubble, there was no way that a city - no way that Los Angeles of all places - could still be standing.
He felt his legs buckle underneath him, and slumped down onto his knees.
"Where the hell am I, Steph?" he asked, his voice soft and quiet. "And where the hell are you?"
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