Strange Days Ch. 83-86

Dionysus rolled his eyes. "Believe me, walking around in a meat-sack isn't my ideal solution to avoiding oblivion, so I have to give Lucas credit. Sharing my wine all around this city and inspiring revelry has made me strong enough to manifest through him now, but to bring me back, it would takeyears. But this," He tossed the tiny ball of light up into the air and it thudded back into his palm, like it had weight to it, a lot more than it should for being so small. "This eliminates the problem. With this, I can return to this world as I was before the Fading, and with the others stuck the way they are, so limited in what they can do, well, rules won't quite matter anymore."

I swallowed around a lump in my throat. Helena and the Hound were barely able to help me all this time, and even then, they could only provide aid with words. If Dionysus came back the way he said he would, there wasnothing they could do.

Dionysus took one menacing step towards me and grinned. "I'm going to enjoy fucking you for the rest of your life, Amy, and them too." He shrugged at the couch, and that was too much. "Bottoms up."

He raised his hand to his mouth, and I didn't know if what I was about to do was right or wrong, brilliant or suicidal, but I leapt at him, tackled him to the floor. The ball of light hit the floor with a loud clunk, cracking wood. Dionysus thrashed beneath me, tried to kick me away, but I held on for dear life, trying to pin him while reaching for Freyja's gift.

"No!" He roared, clawed at my arm, my wrist, trying to stop me. I got my hand around it, and while it was heavy as hell, I was able to press my fist to my chest and curl up into a ball. "No, no, no!"

He kicked me, hit me, flung me around by the ankle and smashed me through the remaining furniture, and even a wall or two, I think, and somewhere in the middle of it, I got my hand to my mouth, and I swallowed Freyja's gift.

Dionysus screamed with rage, then I did, because it felt like I was being torn apart. My body spasmed, liquid fire raced through my limbs, like acid flowing in my veins. My back arched so forcefully that I both felt and heard something crack. An indescribable pressure built inside my skull, pushing against my face, my eyes, my ears. A lance of pain was driven right through my heart, and I knew it had beat one last time. I coughed, choked on bile rising up my throat. Only it wasn't bile, because a moment later, a fountain of red burst out of my mouth.

Chapter 85

I woke up to the sound of my own screams, and I hurt, like I'd been run through an industrial laundry dryer. Every square inch of me felt battered and bruised, except for the center of my chest and the side of my face, where soft, warm hands were pressing down. Granted, it didn't feel as bad as when I'd woken up in the hospital after a good beating, but still, ouch.

"Amy, focus on my voice!"

Helena?

Slowly, the pain began to fade away. Somehow, I knew the pain was still there, but I just couldn't feel it. Eventually, all I felt was exhaustion. My eyes were open, but I saw only white nothingness.

"Sarah?" I croaked, and my throat felt horribly raw.

"She's here, honey."

I tried talking again, but I couldn't do it. Someone, maybe Helena, held a glass to my lips. I sipped cool water, and as I did, my throat felt much better. My vision gradually cleared too, colors appearing, blurry shapes coming into focus, until eventually, I saw Helena kneeling by my left side. And to my right, the Hound knelt there, and he was holding Sarah's trembling, sweat-soaked body down with both hands, and struggling.

I moaned her name weakly and cried.

"She'll be alright," Helena said, but I couldn't look away from Sarah. She looked like she was having a seizure.

"What's wrong with her?"

"She has taken your pain." That made me look at Helena. "Most of it, enough that I can talk to you."

"Dionysus..." I began, but she cut me off.

She spoke quickly and urgently. "Amy, we don't have much time. I can't leave her like this for much longer. I can explain everything later, but right now, you have a choice to make."

Oh, God. Not more choices. I was too tired and too hurt to make choices.

"My gift is rampaging freely inside you. If I do nothing, it will destroy you." She told me. I nodded, listening. She raised an eyebrow. "I can take it back and everything will go back to the way it was, no gift, just you as you were."

Without even hearing option two, I shook my head.

The corner of her mouth lifted just a little. "Or, I can help you contain what you consumed." I was already nodding, but she held her hand over my forehead, stopping me. "Amy, you need to be clear about what this means. I would have to change you. You won't be the same, not ever again. All this time, you've been protected from others knowing what you are, what you can do. Nobody could speak to another about your secret that didn't already know it. It was nothing you ever had to worry about, but you will. I can teach you how, but you'll have to protect yourself from now on, will them not to speak of it."

I nodded under her hand. "I can do..."

"I'm not finished," she cut me off, rather forcefully. "It will bereal, Amy."

She gave me a few seconds to let that sink in.

"You mean...Sarah and I...I could have a baby?" I asked.

She smiled in a very motherly way. "Well, you could take part inmaking one, yes, but Sarah would be doing thehaving part."

That absolutely filled me with joy. In what way was option two supposed to be bad? Helena told me, her expression somber.

"Amy, if you have children, there's a very good chance they will be like you. They would stand out, like you did to Dionysus, perhaps more so. There are parties that will be even more interested in them than they were in you. They would be faced with so many temptations, so many challenges and choices. It wouldn't be easy for them, growing up around others that are so unlike them."

I guess that was the bad part of option two.

I glanced at her. "I won't bust through a condom every time I...you know, will I?"

She chuckled and shook her head. "No. You can choose to avoid pregnancy the usual ways." She became somber again, her eyes shimmering. "I just..."

Sarah thrashed harder, her limbs thudding against the soft rug we were lying on. The Hound growled at Helena. "Healing isn't my thing. Running out of time over here."

She gave him a curt nod and looked at me. "I can't make this decision for you. I made it for someone before, and I'm still feeling the sting of it. I won't do it again. You have to choose for yourself."

I don't know why, but only then did it occur to me what she'd said moments before.My gift...

I gasped. "Oh my God. You're Freyja!"

"Yes," she smiled, caressing my cheek. "I'm nearly as old as time, but this life is the first that I've known the love of a mother. If you choose to keep my gift, if you choose to have children of your own, no matter how difficult their lives become, I know they'll be fine. You're a wonderful girl, Amy, both of you," she looked at Sarah towards the end.

There were so many questions I needed to ask. If Sarah and I had children, exactly how different would they be from everyone else? What would we need to do to protect them? How exactly was I supposed to protect myself, keep people from talking about my secret? Was Dionysus gone? Was he still a threat to me, to my friends? Were there any other changes that would happen to me that I needed to know about?

"Time's up," the Hound said quietly, and Sarah made a choking sound.

Helena caressed my cheek one more time. "I need you to choose now."

"I'll take door number two."

She put both of her hands on my chest and pushed down hard. "Brace yourself." Then she gave a single nod to the Hound.

After everything I had been through, I thought I knew what pain was.

Holy fuck, was I ever wrong.

Chapter 86

So, as it turns out, having your mortal shell being remade really hurts like a son of a bitch. It didn't last long though. An hour later and I felt fine. Tired and hungry as all hell, but fine. Sarah didn't remember feeling my pain at all, which I was grateful for. Phillip was fine. He woke up on our couch, and nothing was untoward. Apparently, a friend of Helena's - or Freyja's, I guess - worked their mojo and fixed up the apartment around Phillip while he slept, and Sarah and I got back before Tabitha arrived. Neither of them suspected a thing.

Dionysus was being punished. I didn't have the details, but the Hound told me he wouldn't be a threat to anyone for a very long time.

By the way, the Black Dog of legend and lore likes to be called Carl, it turns out. Weird, right?

Anyway, Helena and Carl - good God. Carl?Really? - were able to come to my aid because Dionysus's destroying the statue was considered a direct attack against Freyja. Apparently, he'd given me no choice but to risk my life to prevent him from causing irreparable damage to the entire world, and that was deemed an assault of a god against another god's mortal follower, which wasn't allowed. It sounded thin to me, but then how many of our laws can be read as rock-solid?

Life settled down fairly quickly after that, although Sarah got back on birth controlright away.

Todd got out of jail on time, and I was the one that drove out to pick him up, and I brought his brother with me. I had to talk Johnny into it, which was surprisingly difficult. Todd was a womanizing douchebag, but not the monster that Dionysus and Lucas had temporarily turned him into - of course, I couldn't tell Johnny that. Todd was as much a victim as I was, in a way. Besides, as it turned out, we shared one very strong addiction; women. He was actually kind of fun to hang out with in limited doses, though he never did become an integral member of our extended family.

About a year later, Trevor finally cooled off enough to speak to me again. I don't think he had much of a choice in letting go of his anger. Violet and Holly had kept things fairly casual, as in fuck-buddy casual, but Holly eventually found someone, back home in Texas, and she moved not long after. It hit Violet alot harder than any of us expected. None of us knew she had cared about Holly so much, and if she did, we couldn't understand why she was letting her go. But when she needed support the most, Trevor was the one she took it from, probably the only real guy-friend that she had ever had.

Sarah quit modeling almost entirely, shifting all of her employment efforts into database administration, and eventually - and I'll totally get this wrong - mainframe architecture. I stayed with Armia, though I started a photography blog, which eventually connected me to other well-established photographers in the city. I learned a lot from them, grasping at every mentoring opportunity that came my way.

It was a busy year when all of our twenty-first birthdays came around. God, that was a lot of drinking. Phillip proposed to Tabitha on her birthday. Johnny and Paula moved into a really nice apartment uptown around the same time. I still kept in touch with Holly, and she told me that she and her fiancé were moving to Massachusetts and getting married.

Trevor got the last of his credits at NYU, and he and Violet tore up the town together on her big twenty-one. He and I were getting along just fine by then, almost like the old days. It took a while for him to be ready for 'the talk'. I'd met him at a coffee shop down the street from his and Violet's small apartment. It was ten in the morning, and the place was pretty much deserted.

"So," he began, looking off at nothing, then turning his gorgeous eyes on me. "You have a...uhm..." he flicked his hand, blushing.

I nodded, and he nodded back.

"I'm happy for you, you know," he told me quietly, smiling. "Sarah's a lucky girl."

"So am I," I smiled back, struggling not to crack, to cry. "I never meant to hurt you."

"I know that."

"I just didn't know how to tell you that I had...that I was a...futa." I whispered the last word.

Trevor burst out laughing, and I hadn't expected it at all.

I frowned. "What's so funny?"

He laughed uncontrollably, eyes shimmering and face flushed. He waved his hand defensively, because he couldn't talk yet. When he was finally able to talk, he said, "Don't you remember what I said about that? Granted, it was almost two years ago, but..."

"No, I remember," I told him. "You said it was hot."

He nodded, still smiling, but a little sadly. "Yeah, it really is. And believe me, if my feelings weren't involved..." he trailed off. "Christ, Amy, I don't think I'd survive."

Trevor shook his head, and when he looked at me again, that intensity was there, that heat, that look he could give me that still shook me to my core to this day. Nobody could do that to me like Trevor could, not even Sarah. Sure, I sensed her desire for me when she would look at me, but with Trevor, I was overwhelmed byhis desire. I still wanted him, even craved him.

Sometimes it was a little scary, how strongly my body responded to him, because it reminded me of how helpless I'd felt against Dionysus.

Ignoring what my body was telling me it wanted, namely the man seated across from me, I went for humor. "Well, I could talk to Sarah about it, if you'd like." It wasn't entirely a joke, but I wasn't going to just outright say it.

He gave me a smile and shook his head. It wasn't a bitter rejection, nor regretful. There was something there, something that was holding him back, despite how much he wanted to say yes. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that he was taking a pass for a very good reason, and that he was fine with it, even comfortable.

"Amy, I..." He stopped, looked down at his white chocolate mocha, then back up. "Can we be friends again?"

I cried. I couldn't help it. I'd missed him so much, and I wanted him back much more than he knew. I knew that I could be friends with him, because I was so very sure of my feelings for Sarah. There would be no confusion on my part. I could still love him and not lose sight of Sarah at all. I just couldn't bewith him, and I wasn't sure if he could go without being with me.

Softly, I replied, "I can handle that. Can you?"

There was no hesitation. He smiled and gave me a single nod, and I believed him. I had my friend back, and just in time too.

Forhis twenty-first birthday, we threw a big party, every last detail planned out by Violet. We laughed when he grumbled because we ended it so early, then laughed even harder at his look of panic when he realized only the men had left. It took all of us girls, but we cornered him, pinned him, tied him up - Violet let us use her kinky bed straps left over from her days with Holly - and gave him a full spa-level makeover. We mud-masked him, plucked his eyebrows, and even painted his hand- and toenails. And we did all of it while wearing the sexiest lingerie we could find.

Well, except for Tabitha, who wore unflattering pajamas, because that's her brother, so yuck.

There's one day in particular that I remember more clearly than any other though, even to this day. It was July 24th, 2011. Sarah and I had some of our friends over for dinner, namely Phillip, Tabitha, Violet, Paula, Johnny and Trevor. I had been keeping a close eye on all of the major newsfeeds that night while trying not to attract too much attention to myself. I was pacing in front of our bed, supposedly to kick off my shoes, when I saw the headline on my phone. I stopped breathing, then reminded myself that was bad.

"Sarah, could I borrow you?" I called out.

She called back, saying she was on her way. My heart was beating a mile a minute, and I was pacing again, but I stopped when she came through the door and bounced up onto her toes.

"What's up?"

God, she was so happy, smiling brightly, and the way she was standing there in short-shorts and a tight little tee shirt with her hands clasped behind her back, she was also beautiful. I couldn't help but smile, despite how terribly nervous I was.

When I didn't say anything, when I just kind of stood there, smiling like an idiot, she looked around the room and back at me. "Did you need something?"

I nodded. "Just you."

"Awww," she said cutely, closing the distance to put her hands on my hips and lean in, giving me a soft kiss. "That's so sweet."

"I love you, Sarah," I breathed against her mouth.

She smiled, her lips so unbelievably soft against mine, and she laced her arms around my neck. "I love you too, baby."

I shivered. I couldn't help it. I was utterly fucking terrified. What I was about to do, what I was about to say...if there was anything that would drive Sarah away, anything that would cause me to lose her, this was it. I set my hands on her hips and gathered my courage. I had to, because it didn't matter what had been said before, whether during times of stress or comfort. This was real, here, right now, and we are fickle creatures, flighty, each and every one of us, individually. Slap two people together and that potential chaos and unfathomable number of possible outcomes to any given situation doesn't merely double, nor triple. It multiplies exponentially.

Looking back on that day, it almost seems silly, how afraid I was. I'm still young, still have so much to learn, but if there's anything I have learned, it's that one thing never changes; love. When it's real, it's lasting. Real, honest-to-God lovenever changes. I've had my heart broken before, and I still loved. I love Trevor to this day. I always will. My love for Sarah was equally eternal, just different, and entirely on another level. Had I never met Sarah, I would have been happy with Trevor. My love for him would have lasted, and I believe his love for me would have lasted to. But Ihad met Sarah. Ihad fallen in love with her. My love for Trevor simply wasn't enough, not now that I'd experience it with her.

Of course, I didn't know much of that at the time. All I knew then was that I wanted her, needed her, forever. I'd had it all planned out too, cleverly detailed, funny yet sweet, and I'd even had help from Phillip because a magic trick had been involved. But seconds before I'd called out her name, I'd bailed on it all. My convoluted yet memorable plan had been dashed to a single gesture, a single question, and I was so very terrified.

Sarah must have sensed something, because she cupped my face and looked at me, her big brown eyes so expressive.

"Baby, what's wrong?" she asked worriedly.

She stroked her thumb across my cheek, and it was wet. I was crying. I exhaled sharply, gave her an almost hysterically giddy smile, then took her hand and lowered myself to one knee.

Sarah slapped a hand over her mouth and squealed, and I knew she was smiling because I could see it all the way up to the corners of her shimmering eyes.

I took a deep breath and asked, "Sarah Burke, will you marry me?"

She whimpered behind her mouth and nodded rapidly. The ring was nothing fancy, the best I could do at the time. It was a quarter-carat, flawed, and a little yellow, but it meant so much more than mere statistics. I slid the ring onto her finger and looked up at her. She was still covering her mouth. Tears were threatening to spill down her cheeks while she stared at the ring. She looked at me, then she hauled me up to my feet and gave me a crushing passionate kiss.

"Yes," she breathed.

I kissed her back and we held each other so tight that I don't think either of us could breathe. We laughed, we kissed, and we hugged, repeatedly, and not in that order.

Oh, and we cried. A lot.

We're girls. Get over it.

By now, I'm guessing you've figured out what I had talked to Sarah's father about in private over Christmas.