Eclipse

by queenB

When he wakes he can hear her laughter ringing in his ears.

He shakes his head as the last of his nightmares loose their hold on his thoughts and the dead calm of the wasted city fills his senses. It is always night here. And it is so very cold.

Before he has a chance to wipe the sleep from his blind eyes, he is moving again.

Movement is the only thing that's been constant since the shifts began, since reality warped and twisted his world with more than a hundred others. Movement, the chase... and her.

In the alley, he finds his bearings and clenches his fists inside a pair of faded and worn red gloves. He tugs at the collar of the coat he found a few shifts ago on a dead man and the wind calls his name as it blows hard at his back, screaming like a banshee through the narrow passages between high-rises.

She is above him.

He can smell the warm musk of her skin and hear the tattered ribbons cinched around her waist snap like a pennant in the breeze.

He climbs to the rooftop as he pictures her standing tall against the ever-present kiss of moonlight. When he reaches the top she is gone, her scent and almost silent footfalls leading north towards the rising star.

So he follows, racing over rooftops like he was born to do, like Stick taught him so long ago or so far away... depending on the dubious meaning of the word 'perspective'. All he knows now is 'down' and 'up' and 'her' as the air grows dead and calm like the empty borough below his feet and all he can hear is the pounding of his heart in his ears and the footfalls ahead of him.

The chase is the only thing that lets him know he is still alive. The chase is more important than eating and sleeping. The chase reminds him he is still a man. The chase is everything. The chase is... something.

He twists through the air, bounding over gaps in the cityscape, skirting the edges of the buildings like a ghost come alive. He swings with still-nimble hands off the thin girders of long-silent radio towers, bounds over crumbling edifices and ledges.... but she is always just out of reach, always just a few steps ahead. And he can hear her laughing, her rich alto driving him forward to the next rooftop, the next shift, the next decrepit world.

And as the moon rises slowly, casting cold fingers of dim radiance across his path, the footfalls before him stop suddenly and he can feel her staring at him, her gaze something palpable and real... something he has not felt in a long, long time.

He slows his pace as he walks over the cracked pavement toward her, his lungs burning and hungry for air. When he finally finds her, he reaches out a hand and holds a lock of her hair in his hand. Her black curls are matted and dreaded.

When he steps in closer to her, he can smell the salt on the top of her lip and taste her breath in the back of his throat. Her eyelashes tickle against his cheek and her heart pounds in between the beats of his own.

And he steps away... because as always she is too much.

He can still feel her watching him, her stare like a lead weight on his chest as she asks, "Why? After all this time... after all these worlds... why do you still chase me?"

His words are foreign in his mouth, speech being a luxury he has not often used since the world was no longer. "Because you're still running, Elektra."

Then he feels the crackling of another shift approaching, its painful energies burning white across his senses, making the hair under his tattered costume stand on end with tense anticipation.

Her breath pauses for an instant as the muscles in her legs tense and then release and she plummets off the rooftop into the awaiting arms of the next world.

And he follows because what he didn't tell her is this is all he has left anymore. He didn't need to.

Because when he wakes he will hear her laughter ringing in his ears.

And it's the only music that matters to either of them anymore.

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