To Rescue a Villain

Chapter 19

"And you should have seen episode one!" I told the blond waitress as she filled my cup for the third time. Ever since I'd started talking about this, her eyes had begun to bulge and she'd started listening like her life depended on it. "It was crazy!"

"What happened?" she asked urgently.

"Well," I took a sip and slammed it on the table. "It started with me killing my grandmother, which I totally don't blame myself for since she is a..." I stopped myself from finishing that sentence. "Then...then, I got my job at Hikarius and my boss was just as bad as he is here. And then I got married to some chick that I'd never seen before. Did they even show her onscreen? Anyway, we had a daughter and she looked just like me and I named her Polly and things were great but then..." My voice raised in pitch every time I added a "then".

"Then I got a job working on the moon's space station and I hired these bounty hunters and there were aliens and explosions and things were going great...Then, I got word that my wife died! Imagine that. And then," another raise in pitch, "the people I was working with tried to kill me for no reason at all. No reason!"

She raised an eyebrow at that as though she assumed I was exaggerating.

"I'm not kidding! After I survived the attack, I was gonna use some alien technology to blow up the world but ..."

This next part made my chest start to burn and I had to clam my mouth shut. Something was clogging my throat. I tried to speak a second time but instead of making noise, tears began streaming down my cheeks and I couldn't stop them.

"Then...they killed my daughter.....Right in front of me. They killed Polly." For some reason, my brain hadn't managed to wrap itself around that thought. "Then when everyone I had ever loved was dead, they looked me in the eyes and shot me in the chest."

Sighing, glad to get that out in the open, I chugged the whole glass and wiped both of my cheeks in hopes of stopping the tears. After seeing her sympathetic face and realizing how I looked, I tried to laugh. "It's kind of funny to get so emotional over a daughter I never even had," I admitted.

"I think it's fine," the girl whispered.

"I just don't understand why my girlfriend would have something like that. Like, how did she even make it?" I laughed again, more forcefully this time. "Can she, like, see the future or something?"

When I looked back up at the waitress I was shocked to see that she too had liquid running down her face. I wasn't sure why. Maybe she was just a really, really sympathetic person.

"Maybe..." She paused and reached a hand out to cover my own, which was an invasion of privacy I didn't appreciate. "Maybe your girlfriend just so happened to be from a parallel universe where you and your world were just a fictional tv show created to entertain teenagers."

I scoffed. "Like that would ever—"

"And maybe," she choked, "she cared about you so much that she came here and met you and decided that she would dedicate her entire life to saving you and your daughter from death."

"That's..." I immediately sobered. "That's...impossible."

The waitress continued to cry but didn't say any more.

As we sat across from each other, both tear stained and full of memories we hadn't asked for, the pieces finally started to fit together.

Mary's sudden appearance in a field. Her avoidance of discussing family. Her clinginess to me. Her nightmares. Her stopping me from killing my grandmother, which had been the first step into my insanity.

And her starting to work for Odette, someone she would have trusted because she was in the show.

"It's not possible," I whispered, my eyes truly opening for the first time. "You can't be..."

Mary nodded. "My world is called Earth and in it, you're just a figment of someone else's imagination. I would have told you but...I thought it might end up destroying the timeline or something." She looked away. "I'm sorry, Derek."

"It's..." I had to turn away too. Starting to feel heat from her touch, I brushed her hand away and rose, the legs of my chair scraping against the floor and grabbing Odette's attention from her spot behind the counter. "I need some time to think about this...away from you."

"I really am sorry, Derek," she repeated, reaching toward me.

"I know you are." I just can't see you right now. "I'll be back later." I turned to leave. "Don't wait up for me."

So I left her there, looking prettier than I'd ever seen her and more stressed than I ever wanted to make her. But she couldn't expect me to just absorb this information and be okay with it. I wasn't as flexible as she was.