Second Chances

SECOND CHANCES

Dr. Xadium (drxadium@DEATHTOSPAMgate.net)
May 8th, 2005

RATED R

Wolfwood gasped for a moment, dropping to his knees, the impact absorbed by the softly packed snow beneath him. He looked up to the heavens, tears of joy and gratitude streaming from his eyes. The sound of a joyful sobbing escaped his throat-- a little at first, but finally an uncontrollable spasm of gleeful release.

Had some of his enemies been there to see it, they might have laughed their ass off. Jordan Davis, the hard as nails ex-hitman, was kneeling in the snow crying like a little bitch. Truly, it was a sight to behold. But Jordan could care less what the world thought of him. Because he'd done it-- by god he had managed to pull of his very own goddamned miracle.

For you see, Jordan Davis was not alone under the slowly increasing snowfall. Cradled in his arms, nestled under the protection of a white trenchcoat, was the slumbering clone of Hotaru 2-- or "Clone-chan" as most called her. A woman created by Professor Tomoe to be his own-- a Hotaru in whom the feelings of love had not been ruthlessly sublimated in the name of a Senshi's duty or honor-- a precious firefly whose light had been allowed to shine-- and she had chosen to shine for him.

But that freedom to act had not come without a price. Whilst the original Hotaru had continued to carry the protection of the Planetary Senshi Saturn, Clone-chan had instead, by the nature of her birth, carried the taint of Mistress 9-- a festering darkness in her soul that had, in another timeline, caused her to descend into a painful insanity, the release from which had been achieved--at her request-- by a bullet from Wolfwood's gun, fired by his own hand.

Wolfwood had been haunted by the memory of pulling that trigger-- haunted the feel of the resistance against his finger, the almost inaudible "click" as against the thunderclap "pop" from his gun, the spray of blood and brain against his face, hair and clothes, the hollow emptiness that had immediately risen to consume him. The feelings and sensations had devoured him for months, carving away his soul piece by piece-- the cruel irony being that the love which has been meant to complete him, once removed, was destroying him utterly.

More than once, he had considered ending it all, and going to be with his beloved-- or at least being free of the pain. But something-- a sliver of memory in his mind-- told him that he had missed something-- a fact, or an event, that if addressed, would have allowed him to save her.

Wolfwood smiled as he got up, grunting a little with the exertion of lifting up Clone-chan, his breath escaping into a puff of cool vapour. He had always been a practical man. "You only live once" and all that. What's done was done, and could not be undone. He had scoffed at the notion of traveling through time to fix mistakes. When a man fucked up, he believed, they should bear the burden of their failure. But she had changed that in him. He looked into her sleeping face and smiled.

Wolfwood had always thought of himself as scum on some level. It colored his attitudes, his personality, his philosophy. The black burden of what he had done as a hitman always ate at him, made him disregard those who claimed to see a higher nobility in his eyes. How could they, who had not known his soul, ever hope to imagine what he really was? To him they were well-meaning people spewing bullshit, not understanding the demons that lived within him. But... when Clone-chan had said it... when she had professed her belief in him... somehow, her words touched him. Her unconditional love for him had brought him back from the edge and fortified him. The memory of her soft touch and bright smile gave him the power he had needed that night, when he had snuck down into Professor Tomoe's lab and found the remnants of the Prof's old Time Machine, and stolen it.

Sakura Aino, the time-traveller had told him beforehand not to meddle with history, that the web of time was too fragile to allow for changes to be wrought within it-- to allow someone the world had forgotten to once again walk the Earth. But at the same time she had admitted that such things had happened before. For all her knowledge and claims of being a "Time Lord" she sure wasn't sure about much, it seemed. So he had decided, fuck it. Fuck a Web of Time that had taken such a wonderful light from his life, and from the world. Who knew what good this kind-hearted young girl could do, not just for Jordan "Wolfwood" Davis, but for the whole damn planet? If that crybaby Usagi could save the world, why not a Clone-chan?

Wolfwood snorted a bit as he carried Clone-chan into the warm haven of the barn-- the same barn where he would have shot her just minutes ago, had his future self not intervened. He knew his last bit of reasoning there had been a bit of self-justifying bullshit designed to make himself feel more comfortable with the crime against time he had just committed. But honestly, he didn't care. How could saving a life NOT be the right thing to do?

The strength Clone-chan had given him had been a matchless gift, and Wolfwood knew he owed her for it. So, in the final analysis, he had no regrets. He had stopped himself from pulling the trigger indirectly, knocked his past self out and dealt with the evil in Clone-chan non-lethally. He had turned the course of history right when it should have gone left. For one brief instant, he had dared to play God with all of creation.

And there she was, he reflected with a soft smile, as he laid Clone-chan down in the hay. There she was, safe and sound and fragile and perfect, and breathing and so wonderfully alive again. This time, he reflected as he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead-- this time, things would be different. New. Clean.

Wolfwood leaned back on a bale of hay and let his gaze run across Clone-chan's sleeping form for a moment before looking up and out the barn doors, seeing the snow reach down from the sky and continue to blanket the ground outside. Heaven to Earth, fleetingly connected. Here now, the old world was being buried, laid to rest, and the world blanked out by a kind of symbolic "white-out". A new beginning was in the cards, as it should be.

"Jordan..." Clone-chan mumbled under her breath, shifting in the hay, slowly returning to consciousness. Her mind was awash with nightmare images, the last remnants of her possession by Mistress 9 tormenting her consciousness. The things she had seen... the things she had said and... and oh god, the things she had done! "JORDAN!" she screamed, sitting bolt upright, eyes wide as saucers, mouth quivering in fear.

Even as she screamed, Clone-chan felt the warm comfort of Wolfwood's strong arms encircle her from behind. "It's all right, sweetness," he said softly.

"Jordan," Clone-chan almost whimpered, disbelieving her senses for a moment. Similarly, Wolfwood too was in a state of shock. Hearing her speak his name again after all this time... it was surreal, the stuff dreams-- and nightmares had been made of.

In this hazy existential daze, the couple looked at each other, unsure of their own senses, or of what, exactly was going on. One man, climbing out of his nightmares, and one woman, being reborn from one. Unable to grasp the depth of their own confused emotions, they instead clung to each other, tentatively at first, then tightly, then hungrily, as they embraced, caressed, and descended into blissful reunion.

Outside, a lone figure stood, snow slightly covering the top of her head and her shoulders. Her warm leather vest and twin hearts kept the cold at bay easily. Coldly, her brown eyes observed clinically as the humans copulated, their bodies writhing in the pleasure of the moment, oblivious to the hand of death that stood not thirty meters from them.

Sakura Xadium Aino knew that this was the time to strike. To keep history on its assigned track, Clone-chan had to die this night. The web of time demanded nothing less. To allow her continued existence would be to introduce a destabilizing element into history, to knock over a domino that could spill over into a disastrous chain reaction which could smash the fabric of creation itself. Were the Time Lords-- her people-- still here, they would have doubtlessly sent an agent much like herself to come and put things to rights. But with her father and mother gone, lost in time, it was up to her.

Father and Mother, she thought, watching the two lovers in the hay. Those two loved each other just as much, if not more, than her parents did. Who knows what future their love could give rise to.

Silently, she weighed the potentialities. The future she knew on the one hand, and the new and uncertain future their love presaged on the other. Pulling a pistol from her pocket, she aimed it right at Clone-chan's head, which was arched back in ecstasy at the moment. One quick, clean killshot would do the trick, collapse the anomaly and set things to rights. She'd be gone before Wolf would even know what happened.

"I love you," Wolfwood moaned, the sound of the gutteral proclamation wafting across the air to Sakura's ears.

Sakura sighed and pocketed the gun, turning and walking away. Part of her knew she might be damning creation for this, but... sometimes the status quo needed a shakeup. And with her people all but gone, perhaps a shakeup would do everyone a world of good.

About an hour later, Wolfwood sank into his lover's arms, spent and joyful beyond reason, never realizing how close the woman he was resting against had come to death.

"The nightmare is finally over... for both of us...." Clone-chan exhaled softly into Wolfwood's ear as she watched him drift off into the first calm sleep he had had for months. Smiling, she closed her eyes and curled around him, dropping into a peaceful doze.

Even as the two lovers slept, whole once more in each other's grasp, reality blurred and tore around them in a maelstrom of quantum uncertainty and change. Their union was a pebble of change dropped into the surface of the universe, its ripples pressing forth and rebounding across the edges of creation, interference patterns meeting, colliding, passing through and between one another. After a moment, things seemed to return to normal, as if nothing had changed. But something had changed in that briefest instant. A new variable had been introduced into the equation.

A spark of something new had been born, and the universe would never be the same again.