10 – I Wasn’t Alone

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This was like after the accident.

She couldn’t open her eyes.

She wasn’t sure she had eyes.

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Peter said – says – said – said it had been the same for him. Sometimes he got so deep in dreaming that he wasn’t sure what way was up, and for a boy who could fly, that wasn’t a great position to be in.

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Am I dreaming?

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I was doing something.

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I was somewhere. I was doing something.

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Memories came in chunks, or not at all. Sometimes she was. Sometimes she wasn’t. Sometimes her name was there, but it was writing from a dream, refusing to resolve itself into letters her brain could make sense of.

She knew who she was, of course she knew who she was, she just couldn’t…express the answer right now.

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Fractured and refracted, reflected and mirrored and thoughts doubled in on themselves.

She wanted to open her eyes, and have Peter tell her who she was. Wanted-

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She’d been doing something. And it hadn’t been lying in a hospital bed across from a boy who had flown away a long time ago. Smiled, then headed for the second star to the right, leaving her behind. Leaving her alone. Because she was always-

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It would be better if she knew she was breathing. Better if she could open her eyes. But things were never ideal. Things never went her way.

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Stef.

The answer came without fanfare or revelation, but it was finally a point to hang the rest of the distorted memories around.

Stef. She’d always been Stef, even when she’d only known her name was Stephanie. Even when she’d been too young to start to hide parts of herself under a different name, there’d been some…Stef-ness hiding beneath the surface.

And it was her anchor, to the world and to herself, something she had forged for herself, something she knew she had created, even when she’d been alone, because she was always-

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A record skipping, a file not found, a pixelated image refusing to become clear.

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Darkness. A red ball. Blue, someone keeping her safe. A face. A voice calling her “recruit”, calling her family. 

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She hadn’t been alone.

Ryan?

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See you next time, Recruit.