Chapter 5: Recipe for a fake Life (2)
[Perspective Shift: Vara Vane]
The grocery store was too loud. Not the noise… but the life. The colors were too bright. The choices were too many. Cereal boxes screaming with mascots. Detergents promising a happier life.
It was all a lie.
She pushed her cart mechanically. One squeaky wheel chirped a rhythm that grated on her nerves.
Squeak.
Squeak.
Squeak.
She just needed food. She wasn't hungry, but she knew she had to eat. Karl would have wanted her to eat.
Karl.
The name was a shard of glass in her mind. She pushed it away, focusing on the linoleum floor.
She turned into the dairy aisle for milk.
As she stepped into the aisle, she stopped.
There was a man standing about halfway down, staring at the yogurt like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. He was tall, with brown eyes and a handsome build that suggested he wasn't unfamiliar with physical work, though he was dressed casually.
But it wasn't his appearance that made her stop.
It was the hum.
Her powers had been quiet lately, a dull ache beneath her skin, but suddenly, they flared.
She frowned, her eyes narrowing beneath the brim of her cap.
She felt... familiar energy.
It was faint, like the smell of ozone after a storm has passed, but it was there. That familiar presence that had always buzzed around her brother. It was clinging to this stranger.
And beneath that... she felt herself.
Not the hollow shell she was now. But a version of herself that felt... loved.
Curiosity, a sensation she hadn't felt in years, tugged at her. She pushed her cart forward, the squeaky wheel announcing her approach.
The man seemed intensely focused on the nutrition label of the yogurt. But she could sense the tension in his shoulders.
As she passed him, the space between them seemed to compress. The air grew heavy.
Without meaning to, her magic reached out. An invisible tendril of red mist uncurled from her fingertip and brushed against the fabric of his reality.
[The Vision]
Flash.
The grocery store vanished.
Rain… relentless rain. Germany.
Vara was seeing through the eyes of... herself. But not herself.
She was standing under a large black umbrella. The stranger from the dairy aisle was holding it. But he looked younger. He was smiling at her and the look in his eyes… It was a look of absolute adoration.
"Because nobody should be cold," he said.
The scene shifted.
She saw herself and a living Karl sitting at a dining table. They were laughing. The stranger (Aryan, a voice in her head supplied) was passing Karl a bowl of stew. Karl bumped Aryan's shoulder, a gesture of brotherly affection.
Karl is alive here, Vara realized with a jolt of agony and joy. They are happy.
She felt the emotions of this other Vara. And the way Aryan's presence felt like a warm blanket on a winter night.
The scene shifted.
A living room. Music playing. She was dancing with him. She felt the ring in his pocket… she didn't see it, but the other Vara knew it was there. He was nervous. He was going to ask her. And she was going to say yes.
"I love you," the other Vara said.
"I love you too," Aryan replied.
The love radiating from him was so intense, so pure, that it felt like a brand against her soul. It was the life she had been cheated out of… the devotion of a man who looked at her as if she were the only thing in existence, a future stolen from her the moment the hunters destroyed her family.
Then, the screams.
Witch Hunters.
She saw them within the crumbling sanctuary of the Spencer estate… Aryan, Karl, and her own variant. Karl and the other Vara had moved instinctively, putting themselves between the attackers and Aryan as they tried to flee through the mansion. It was a desperate stand in the place that had been their sanctuary.
The flash of gunfire.
The deafening crack of explosives.
She saw as Karl was struck down first while trying to buy them a few seconds of hope, followed moments later by her own variant, who fell right in front of Aryan.
"No!"
The scream ripped from Aryan's throat. It was the sound of a soul shattering.
The vision zoomed in. Aryan was on his knees in the mud. He was holding her… holding the dead Vara. He was shaking her, begging her to open her eyes. His tears were mixing with the rain, washing away the blood on her face.
He loves me, Vara thought, her heart breaking for this stranger. He loved her and he lost her.
Suddenly, the horizon dissolved. The ground beneath Aryan turned to dust. The sky turned a terrifying shade of nothingness. Everything was collapsing. She didn't understand what she was seeing.
She saw him, still clutching her dead body, being pulled upward into the void. He was unconscious, his face a mask of agony. A rift opened…and he was sucked into it.
The universe behind him simply... ceased to be.
He survived, she thought. He's the only one left.
[End of Vision]
Snap.
Vara gasped, stumbling slightly. Her grip on the shopping cart was the only thing keeping her upright.
She was back in the grocery store. The fluorescent lights were humming. The squeak of the wheel was still echoing.
She stopped the cart, her chest heaving. She looked at the man… Aryan.
He was still standing there, staring at the yogurt.
Her mind was reeling.
It was real, she thought. The residual energy existed because her other self had been so obsessed with him, so desperate to love and protect him, that her love and unawakened magic had latched onto his reality. It had become a permanent shield, fusing to him as a lingering protector.
A complicated web of emotions tightened around her heart.
Jealousy. Jealous that another version of her got to live a normal life with her brother and this man. A life where for a time, they were safe.
Grief for him. She saw him holding her corpse. She knew that pain. It was the same pain she felt every morning waking up without her family.
Suddenly, a feeling took hold of her heart. It was the most dangerous feeling she had ever felt. It was a feeling of possessiveness, a need to possess him. It uncurled in her gut like a dark flower.
He is alone, she thought. Like me. He lost his Vara. I lost my family. The universe brought him here. To me.
She looked at his back. He seemed so ordinary. But she had seen the way he looked at her in the rain. She had felt the heartbeat of a love that belonged only to her.
He belongs to me, a small voice whispered in her mind.
She sensed the residual energy again. There was no doubt it was hers… or rather, her other self's. Her love remained preserved within that energy.
He didn't know she had seen what he was hiding. He was trying to be normal, trying to blend in, she realized. Just like her.
She straightened her posture. She pulled her hood down slightly, to compose herself. She wiped a stray tear from her cheek before he could see it.
She wouldn't tell him. Not yet. If she told him she knew, it might scare him. He might run. And she couldn't lose the only other person in this universe who understood the specific frequency of her pain.
She pushed the cart forward, closing the distance.