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When I first see him, I feel as if I can’t breathe.
His face is one of familiarity, despite us being strangers. My eyes know his - an intoxicating concoction of hot cocoa and spring forests illustrated in one of the dusty books from the Old days. Beneath the long sleeves of his thick, black coat, his arms would be a canvas of criss crossed scars almost fading, but never quite. And I know that if he were to draw me close to him, I would fit right into the nook of his chest as if the place was carved out solely for my being, and that he would smell like fresh snowfall and the warmth of a fireplace in a log cabin.
I know that if I were to shout out his name, he would turn to me with the corners of his lips curled up. His eyes would be soft and warm and they would like home.
Dr. Zayne.
He doesn’t catch a glimpse of me as I stare too long, hidden from his view behind the shelf of a convenience store. Zayne looks like Zayne, but at the same time, not at all. His eyes are hardened and cold, unlike the Zayne I see in my dreams. He is silent, just like all my other Zaynes, but his posture and the furrow permanently etched between his brows screams at every passerby to stay away.
He is a vision to behold. My hand goes up to cover my mouth as if to stifle a gasp that never comes. Zayne is here, and he is real .
There is a pounding in my ears that grows louder every second he stands, so near and yet so unreachable. His steps resound like a metronome to my heartbeat, echoing in the empty cavity of my chest. Breaths force themselves out - a shaky inhale, exhale, inhale - and out into a sigh that shudders out of my throat. My eyes are burning, and if I do not breathe, I will run to him and his life would be for nothing again.
The bell over the door rings, announcing his departure. My body shakes from the exertion of existing so close.
I should feel relieved, I remind myself. That he will not know of me, that he will never lay his eyes on me, and he will live . That’s all he has to do. He will live, and he will be better off without me in his life.
I stare at the closed glass doors where he stood barely seconds ago, my chest tightening and twisting. He has scarcely left, just meters away from the door. There is a longing scorching through my fingertips, every nerve in my body screaming to take the steps that will lead me to the man I have held in every life, except this one.
One step forward. Another.
I make my way to the candy aisle, movement slow and hesitant, as if doing something I shouldn’t be caught doing. My fingers graze over the nondescript chocolate his hands brushed by earlier, lingering over the purple paper wrapper. To touch what he had touched was just proof that he was actually real. I wasn’t insane.
I can almost hear his laugh, low and rumbly, almost a whisper amidst the clinking sounds of baristas shouting out the order for a customer’s cappuccino. I bring my fingers to my lips, and I can almost taste the sweetness of a blue macaron that is not there. I feel his hands on mine. Warm, and calloused from years of giving and giving without a thought.
“Quite a sweet tooth you’ve got there,” the cashier rings up my purchases. I remember once again, that I am in an old, run down store, and not in a Linkon City that I have never seen.
‘Yes,” I barely croak out, tongue darting out to wet my dry lips. It feels like something is stuck in my throat. I clear it. “I mean, I -”
“Just like that man over there, whew,” the cashier interrupts, continuing over me without a care, “All he gets are sweets. It’s a wonder his dentist doesn’t warn him about cavities.”
“Doctors exaggerate all the time, anyway,” I say under my breath, hearing a low voice from another life echo through mine, “so it’s okay.”
The cashier gives me an odd look that I ignore as I head back in the direction of home. I grip the plastic bag holding my chocolates so tightly that I feel my fingernails dig into my skin.
It’s always been like this, ever since I could remember - and I couldn’t remember much. I couldn’t remember my childhood, or how I came to be here in this wasteland of a place. But, I would live my life, and there would always be a nagging feeling tugging at my chest, an emptiness inside that I couldn’t understand.
This is how I die, I had thought, when my heart ached for something I didn’t know of. The heaviness, the relentless grip of an unseen anchor dragged me down and down and down into the dirt, past the layers of the planet, crushing my ribs. I would open my mouth to suck in a desperate breath, and the soil would fill into my throat, nostrils burning from the effort of living.
This was it. My illness was acting up, eating me from the inside. I was going to walk the streets one day, and my heart was going to stop, and these were the first warning signs of the end.
But then I started seeing him.
I would sleep, and in my dreams, a doctor would stand in a tall building overlooking the old Linkon City, ice shards freezing his arms as he tried to hide his pain. I would turn to my side in bed, and suddenly see him dressed down in sweatpants and a jumper, tossing and turning in a fitful, uncomfortable sleep.
Snow would fall and cover the surface of the earth, and all I would smell was the decaying scent of wilted jasmines. The windows on my apartment would frost over in the harshness of the winter, and before me, thick shards of black ice would be protruding from the body of a foreseer, of Zayne’s , and his screams of pain would haunt my ears for the next few weeks. My chest would clutch painfully around itself, and suddenly, he would be pushing a glowing crystalline shard into a girl’s chest (was it mine? My past self? Who was I?) and his voice low, steady, unwavering amidst the chaos -
“I wish to end it on my own terms… may I?”
Then, I would be alone in the forest; alone in a field near the mountains, always surrounded by the blooming buds of jasmines, and always alone without Zayne by my side.
And I yearned for him. I could remember flashes of his hand in mine, of battles fought and won together, of quick kisses stolen under the unseeing gaze of an unknown god that did not permit it.
As the seasons passed, however, it was set in stone for me. In all our lives that I got a glimpse of, I loved him like a garden blooming to life. His hands were the gardener’s, tending and nurturing to every growth of my seedling. His smile, the warmth that my leaves stretched their arms towards.
But, Zayne always loved me with the burning of a fire that could not be extinguished; where the flames only grew higher and fiercer when water came into its wake. His love would spit and hiss at what came to destroy it, only to let it consume at his very being, until there was nothing left.
Until he was nothing left, and was forgotten once again. Forgotten by the world, and forgotten by me.
I knew that if we were to meet, our fates would intertwine. I would find my home, and he would find his solace. Our hands would grip one another and they would inevitably be ripped apart violently, again and again, like all the past lives before me. We would struggle blindly in the mist that pulled us away from one another, tearing apart at our skin until our bones grinded down to dust. And only one would be left, wounds gaping and exposed to the cruel, metallic air, all alone in the wake of our entangled ruins.
I would never ever approach him, if he was real, I had decided. It was a difficult price to pay, and it was one I would choose every time.
I would never meet him. But I knew that I couldn’t stay away, if I ever did.
If he didn’t know of me, if he didn’t see me… it would be fine. Zayne would go about his life of solitude, and I would be satisfied in watching and keeping him safe from afar. In another life, under the warmth of his arms and the plush covers of their quilt, I’d whispered a promise to protect him. To never leave him.
Whichever version of me that said it, and then failed and failed and failed - that wasn’t me. This one thing was something I’d never fail.
I watched as he battled the abominations that wrecked the city; I stayed far enough to be undetected, always on his six. My heart ached for him as he killed a woman before she lost her mind to the monster inside her, and my body felt like it could combust with joy when Zayne brought a young boy into the dessert shop where the robots wished the boy a very happy birthday. I sang along a little longer, for Zayne and for all the birthdays we will never celebrate together.
And in the evening light, when the last of the autumn leaves fall towards the ground, he stands in front of two tombstones, one big and the other small. I watch as he places a glass jar of chocolate wrapped carefully in colorful foil with a gentleness that evades his eyes.
I could not have wanted anything more at that moment to brush my hand on his back, to give him anything, everything, I had for him to feel any sort of semblance of comfort. To show that he wasn't alone. In this life, where the odds always stacked against him, and in all the others.
A twig snaps, and a low growl permeates the silence.
Wanderer.
Zayne is already up, shooting shards of ice directly at the abomination in front of him. The wanderer roars, furious at the merciless precision of his evol, but Zayne persists. He expertly dodges the blasts that head his way, and cuts the head clean off one in a fell swoop. His clothes sway in the wind, barely affected by the swift combat.
It is a symphony of blood-red clashing with icy blue. I’ve seen him fight many times, and everytime, it always became the newest, most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed. He stands firm against the monsters that take so much from him, and I stand hidden, always lesser without him.
More wanderers appear, descending from the skies unto what seemed like his blind spot. With a quick blast, Zayne knocks most of them out, but a straggler opens its mouth in a silent screech, its talons stretched out towards the back of his neck. If he doesn’t notice it; if he doesn’t see it… No.
“Zayne!”
A voice rings out, reverberating past the foliage of a nearly frosty forest, past the loud wails of the wanderer. His eyes snap to mine, narrowing with shock when our gazes meet.
And the first time Zayne sees me, he feels as if he cannot breathe.
I see his steady hands start to shake with an almost unnoticeable tremor. His head tilts to the side, confused, unfocused. He stills, hands still stretched out towards the decimated wanderer in front of him. His chest still heaves heavily with the weariness of battle. A breeze washes past. It smells like blood, and freshly blooming jasmines.
The wanderer behind him descends, claws ready to meet its target. Zayne moves, but it’s not to throw the monster off his back. He takes a stumbling step forwards, towards me.
His mouth moves. I barely see it forming my name, when my legs sprint to action.
“Move!” I cry out, whipping my guns out of their holsters.
In a move of desperation, I push Zayne off to the ground with the entire weight of my body. His hands move, as if to pull me to him from my waist, but misses, and falls to the ground. My finger pulls the trigger.
The world explodes in a flash of white and blue.
There is a final beastly shriek, and a scream I have never heard before. The ground shakes as it rings out from somewhere above me. It is raw, and rough, and absentmindedly, as I lay upon the fields of the forest, my heart feels full being able to hear it. For how long have I imagined how his voice would sound when I finally got to meet him face to face?
The world looks blurry, and the first snow of the season has started to rain down gently upon us. There are jasmine petals on my chest. They tickle. I move my hand to brush them away, and when I pull it away, my gloves come off stained red.
My limbs feel like lead, as someone sweeps their arms underneath me. It smells like crisp winter, and a crackling warmth. Zayne. My head lolls against his shoulder, too heavy for me to keep upright.
“You’re alright,” Zayne says, voice firm. His eyes are glossy, and his hands cold as he presses his coat to my chest. I try to groan out my refusal. It hurts, and I don’t want to get his coat dirty. “You’ll be fine,” he repeats, voice hitching.
“I’ll be fine,” I echo weakly through a smile. A cough bursts from my lungs, and my chin feels warm with blood. He wipes it away. “Dr Zayne is with me afterall.”
Zayne exhales sharply, a quick gust of breath out of his nostrils. He pulls me closer to him, his knuckles white from his tight grip. His unyielding grasp should hurt, I realize, but I can’t quite feel anything.
“I’m not your doctor,” his voice is low, barely audible. His hands move to cup my face, hesitant and slow. I lean into his warm caress.
“But you’re still my Zayne,” I shiver, and in the distance, I see Hua patiently waiting for me under the sacred tree. I blink, and in his place, a small snow fox waits to lead me home.
“It is not time yet for you to leave,” Zayne jolts me out with another ragged breath he tries to suppress. His whole body quivers. “Not when the you before me finally isn’t a dream.”
The melody of the forest sings its lullaby as the wind whistles through the leaves of the forest, brushing past the trees in a quick embrace. White petals fall gently onto the thin layer of the soft snow blanketing the ground. I reach out to touch a delicate petal. It is a struggle to reach anywhere near it.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“The jasmines?”
Zayne’s face contorts in anguish, his shoulders drooping down, as if the sky had finally fallen and taken him down in its descent. His eyes grow red-rimmed, gaining a glossy sheen.
“There aren’t any jasmines,” he replies, and for a beat, the forest stills. His hands envelop mine, and with a soft, yet firm squeeze, he releases them, “but here is a gift for you.”
In my palms, a blue mist circles itself into an orb that blossoms into a fresh bud. They unfold their intricate, fragile faces unto the sun with a beaming smile. Their petals sway in the wind, dancing with all the memories I’ve lost and gained. Somewhere, far away, in a tower’s library, we waltz along to the symphony of the jasmines.
“Please,” his lip quivers in the tiniest of movements, “I don’t want to lose you again.” A blue frost starts to trail up the veins on his arms, not unlike the midnight lines spreading out from my chest like a poison.
The corners of my eyes crinkle as my lips tremble into a smile. There is a wetness on my cheeks as I strain for another breath. Zayne dries it off with a tender swipe of his thumb. I whisper my last request.
“Can I end it on my own terms?”
In another city, another world, we share a steaming piece of bai tang gao near a stall of braided bracelets. He makes a comforting cup of red date tea, and waits patiently as I drink it within his embrace. Under the glimmer of the night, we eat barbecue skewers, laughter in the air as we win another plushie. In the evening sun, soaking in the rays that gently greets us from behind the flowy curtains, he lies down beside me, eyes bleary with sleep, lips lifting up into his special smile reserved for me. Our hands are gripped together tightly.
His lips brush against mine, in the softest of touches. Not our last, never our last.
“When you wake up,” he says, the softest of whispers, “I hope we will meet again.”