Dahlia has lived in our universe as an immortal for centuries. She has a soft spot for this universe - all the good and all the bad - and has made the best of an admittedly bad situation. Her universe? It...went through some things, but who cares, w...
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"OKAY, WELL, CLEARLY this isn't going the way we thought it would go," I said to Marcus once we were back in the kitchen. "Although, just how did you think this would go?"
He wordlessly heaved himself onto a stool.
I folded my arms across my chest, staring at him until he spoke again.
"I'm just not ready to listen to your I-told-you-so speech," he said with a sigh.
"Too bad, because here it is." I paused for dramatic effect. "We're fucking this up, badly. You're fucking this up. I told you that this wasn't the way to go, but did you listen? No. Because Marcus, who has no inkling of how to be normal, is always right. Right?"
His eyes swung to meet mine. The defeat I saw in them was palpable. "Dahlia, please." He looked away. "You know, I'm not under any delusions, Dahlia," he said softly. "There was no one on Neutralis who would have ever wanted to give me a child. I had no prospects at all. And then...Simone happened."
"I'll go try again," I whispered after a moment had passed.
"Sure," he said. "You do that."
I grabbed a knife out of the wooden knife block on the counter. "It's not what it looks like," I told Marcus, and then I walked back into the lion's den.
Walking on eggshells hadn't worked, so perhaps the direct approach would?
Simone was still fighting the ropes, to no avail.
"Deep in your heart, Simone, you know this isn't a prank."
She stilled, glowering at me.
I inhaled deeply. "Marcus and I... We're your birth parents." Saying those very words to her was like, well, it was like opening Pandora's Box. Now that they were out, I'd never be able to take them back.
"We're older than we look, obviously, but that's beside the point," I continued. "The point is that we can't be killed. You can't be killed. At least, that's how it should be. How it was. My best friend was murdered. Permanently. His body was found in his apartment." I swallowed, remembering how cold Marcus had sounded as he recounted this to me. "He'd been dead for days, Simone. The only thing that should be able to kill us is some kind of gas that was manufactured in our world. It shouldn't be able to work here – just like a lot of things from our world – but it has. My friend was just the beginning, of that, we're sure."
Simone's stare was blank when she finally spoke. "My parents, huh?"
"Yes."
"You've got a lot of nerve, trying to feed me this bullshit."
I sighed, thinking the words that I was sure were going to be ingrained on my brain. Pretty fucking stubborn. Just like your father. I winced as I dragged the blade of the kitchen knife across my palm.
