Queenie is having the second worst day of her life.

The worst day of her life was the day she died— the first time she lost him. Today was the second time, and she hates it just as much. Hates herself just as much for allowing it to happen.

Queenie is trapped between hell and a hard place. The darkness of an infinite prison wraps around her, pure silence echoing out.

Queenie slams herself into the immovable, isolating firewall that pushes her back over, and over, and over. The voices are quiet, and that's how she knows something is wrong.

Queenie screams.

She can feel it as the code groans like a sinking ship. Feel as it almost, not quite buckles against the weight of her pressure, systems so close to being overclocked it hurts. It's like plunging her hands into fire every time– after all, she doesn't have the space to run her code, so her program stalls, the export of her beating and furious heart crashing over and over again. It’s like repeatedly cutting her hands off and trying to bleed on something halfway important in the hopes it shorts out— But that barely matters. That hasn't mattered in longer than she can remember.

The only thing that matters is she saw him again.

Blinding blue. The screaming of a million other prisoners, slamming themselves against the barrier she put up. The dragging feeling of single digit FPS, each frame burning into each of her several-hundred pupils. Her open claws.

Him.

Him, him, him. His eyes, his hair, his clothes— the blue-light wound around the hands she once held, caught on every thread of him. She had him there, really there. John, her husband, floating there in the blue. John, his clothes twisted and askew, John with his eyes wide, John with every line on his face etched in shock. A torn sweater hung from his shoulders, glitches trailed at his heels, his hair floated suspended in the low gravity— hair graying at the roots. She watched it turn gray, still soft, still terribly parted. Every line of him, perfect. Every line of him, once hers.

He must have been suffering. Sure she saved him, but her methods had all the grace of a thrown grenade. His file was halfway to the digital paper-shredder by the time she caught him, his body still trailing bugs behind— He seemed so small she could’ve held him in her hands. It must’ve been so hard for him to think. To do anything at all. He was just a file.

And with all he had left. The only part of his mind he had. With what well could have been his last breath—

He begged her to stay.

Queenie screams. The sound rips out of her like spitting oil, whatever’s left of her composure still frying in the pan. She slams herself into the firewall so hard it burns. The flames of the firewall gnash at her and she presses further, only to be thrown back with the same force she put in, rolling through the void—he was right there! The many layers of her pop and crack like broken bones, and Queenie screams, and screams, and screams. She screams until a real throat would have bled with it, driving her anger forward like a knife. He was right there, and she let him go!

Surges of emotion crash through her twisted, not-there body. It's an agony in and of itself to know she was so, so close to him. Him, staring up at her with half his mind lagging behind the rest of it and he begged her, but she—

Queenie grinds her head against the void, crumbling in on herself. Why didn't she stay? Why didn't she hold on tighter? Why didn't you hold on?

She burns his face into her mind over and over again. It doesn't stop hurting, or twisting her chest into a mess of emotions, but she doesn't care. She wants to sob at all the little details she forgot. She wants to scream over the fact she ever had to forget them at all. Anger. Anger, anger– what a familiar feeling, here! Queenie plunges her influence as deep into the code as she can, and grits teeth she can no longer feel. They took him from her. They took their life from her. They were happy, they were happy and she just had to —!

Queenie smashes her head against the fire again. Again, and again, and again, all the while repeating the thought that one of these times, it has to break. Lying, like she always has.

Queenie wants to cry, but she can't. She wants to scream, but she can’t. She wants to tear the memory of his face out of her head just so she can hold it, but she can't.

The void groans as Queenie rears back for another slam. They can’t hold me forever, She snarls. They can’t hold me at all. I’m human. I’m human, She lies. I’m human. I’m still human. I can still get out.

There has to be a way out.

Like the voices promise! The lie-telling voices that appear in her head. They've been talking to her. Promising things to her. Telling her things that make less and less sense with every rotting scrap of information she drags out of the ten-times encrypted code; are they just pieces of her, siphoned off and twisted so she won’t suspect anything? Or is she just insane?

Queenie doesn’t know. Queenie has suspicions. Queenie feeds lies back into the voices, and tells herself she’s only engaging with them for her own entertainment.

But god, after this long, being comforted is like a slap to the face. The Queen of the cellar, comforted by her own hallucinations! Queenie, Queen, Quin, finally cracking at the seams? After everything, this is what breaks her? A little silence, when peace and quiet and space to think have been what she’s wishing for for years? This should be a relief! This should be helping, this should make it easy to break out and tear apart the circus to find him, he’s out there right now doing who knows what and—

Queenie buckles over on herself with another scream of frustration. But this time she lets it stretch out, sustains the single discordant consonant as if she’s trying to drown out the cold, empty void. As if she’s trying to recreate the cacophony she’s used to.

She has no lungs in here, so air isn’t an issue. It’s energy she ends up running out of, as she crumples to the still-metaphorical floor.

“Space to think. Now, of all times.”

Queenie hisses, her thoughts echoing off the void. She doesn’t remember what her voice sounded like well enough to hear it crack.

“What a joke…”

The cellar has no privacy. Whatever you think about is blasted into the cacophony, no exemptions. Queenie cringes to think how many cellar residents now know the details of their wedding venue— When she caught him he was just so real that her walls crumpled like wet paper, and now who knows what details of her personal life are floating around the cellar hive mind.

(But there’s no hive mind here. She could think of whatever she wants.)

Mulch and polygons are the only things she’s been able to feel in years. Her senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, are kept primed only by her memories— files she could manually access, if she had the means— and ruthless practice. If anything, this quiet is at least a chance to get some practice in.

For when I get out, she reminds herself.

It’s a sour lie.

Her migraine pounds. She pulls herself together with bare and bleeding hands, forcing herself to focus.

The mind is like a muscle, one that will atrophy if not used. Keeping it sharp requires a number of exercises; focusing on the image of an apple until she can practically superimpose it in front of her, calling up the taste of meat, the feeling of brick, and other such things. Other abstractions often gathered in to contribute their own minds to the mix, and yet more clustered at the edges in an attempt to just be involved.

The many walls of her code shiver as they rumble back to life, memories gathering in the front of her skull. Sensations are easier than sights— she can still easily recall what her hair felt like. Thick, hard to brush, and often neglected to the point of frizzing. She can remember what his felt like in even more detail. Soft, easy to run her hands through, back when he kept it longer. Sounds, even easier; music on the radio, crickets on summer nights, cicadas on summer days…singing from the kitchen, all easily recalled. Easy.

The memories attached to those sounds surround her. Circle her, like a pack of wolves. Too easy to slip into. She stops herself by reflex, but it's hard. Too hard. It's only her and the quiet now, and maybe, Queenie wants to think of warm things for once. Just this once.

It was summer.

He was…singing. Nodding his head to the beat of the music. His voice filled the room, bouncing off then-empty walls. The ring was already on his right hand by that point, but still new enough to make her that bit happier every time it caught the light. She never tired of seeing it there. She never regretted it.

He spotted her at some point, and nearly jumped out of his skin. The memory of his wide eyes is almost clear enough to touch. Dip her hand into like a pool, sending ripples through her memories of him, those blue eyes, that face, a million other smiles. A thousand other days. “Gosh, how are you that quiet? You startled me!”

“…Practice.” Queenie mumbles aloud, knowing it doesn't matter what she says. “And you know I enjoyed the show.”

“Yes yes,” He mock-grumbled, waggling his head as he picked up the books he’d been arranging. Can’t recall the names… A smile on his face, though. “Still on a quest to give me a heart attack.” He gave her a sheepish look once he straightened back up. Slightly embarrassed. The way he fiddled with the pages— rubbing the page between index and thumb— oh. Oh, fuck. “So, how long were y ou ”

His memory hurts. It all hurts.

She didn’t reply, of course. She didn’t have to. Just grinned at him until he got the message, because she was like that, back then. After that was groceries and unpacking. This would’ve been just after they moved to California.

It all hurts.

She misses that house. Misses the new smell it had when they moved in, the knocks and scrapes and incident-marks it had when they moved out. She misses the plants poking out of sidewalk-cracks and the glorious lack of a HOA. She misses their room, their room, the one yellow walls and wood paneling— she misses the bed, the mirror, the picture frames and faded wallpaper and jam jars and creaking beams in the loft from raccoons breaking in and fucking in the rafters. She misses being able to say the word fuck. She misses being able to sing and laugh and fall asleep on the couch, and hear his voice from the other room, and drink bad coffee. She misses her mouth, tongue, teeth, arms, eyes— She misses warm mornings and coffee and blue eyes and hands and mouth and eyes and body and whole. The sun. The earth. Her life, her world, and him. Him.

He leaves imprints in every memory. His ghost wanders through the halls of her skull, rounding corners just out of reach, and haunting every inch of her. The longer she spends pinned to the ground in this hellhole, kept useless like this, the more it hurts.

“I had him.” Queenie rasps. Code stutters and starts as she stretches out the memories of talons in the darkness, hazy and indistinct. She knows them better than her old hands by now. “I had him right there.”

“I had you, and I…”

Queenie curls in like a mess of thorns. Claws dig and scrape against the darkness, each heartbeat an axe cracking against her spine. Her thoughts pound out a rhythm written in sickness and in health, and Queenie recites her vows like a mantra. In any life, in any time, in any body– I’ll find you. I’ll fight, I'll find some way. I’ll fight god. I’ll catch you if you ever fall.

The firewall burns like the embers of a home.

Queenie laughs. She turns her eyes— a bodiless gaze– up into the infinite blackness, seeing and un-seeing.

“Oh, John.”

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