Blue Monday

Chapter 18 - Two Worlds

***ALEX***

While Gideon rails against Thompson - and I wholeheartedly agree with everything he says - I continue to hold Fionna against me. We're both crying bitterly, and it's hard to say who's taking Steve's death harder out of the both of us.

At one point, Fionna's head tilts down against my chest, and I hear a faint metallic clinking. I see her Kingdom Hearts pendant.

Fionna looks up at me. Oh, sorry about that, she thinks, stowing the blue heart back under her shirt.

It's okay, I think. It'll be okay, Fi. Everything's gonna be fine.

We're pretty much cried out by now, but neither of us wants to let go of the other. I continue to cradle her head, stroking her hair. Both her arms encircle me, her hands positioned to feel the rise and fall of my wings under my shirt.

I think about what Steve said earlier. How his heart was being pulled in two directions at once. Now I'm experiencing the same feeling. On the one hand, there's Juliet, with whom I've formed my strongest romantic connection ever. On the other hand, there's Fionna, and I'm sure what we had between us could have been something equally special - if only she were still alive.

In my head, though, I know there's no chance of me and Fionna getting that spark back. Not now that we're supposed to be stuck in separate universes.

Speaking of which, aren't Gabe and Gideon and I supposed to be getting back home?

I ask Russell about this, and he responds by rubbing his forehead. "Well, if they really bombed the city...that's gonna make this really hard. We're gonna want to get out of town, that's for sure. Of course, it's possible that there's some areas of the tunnels that might have caved in..."

I wipe my eyes. "Okay. You guys lead the way. I wouldn't even know the first direction to go in."

Russell and Annie open the door again - the one through which we came in. Before we leave, however, we spare a minute or so to look at Steve's body. Gideon stands over him, tears falling from both his eyes, while Gabe stands to Fionna's other side, hugging her while she hugs me. It's like that shot from the Prisoner of Azkaban movie where Harry hugs Hermione while she hugs Ron. The main difference, however, is that unlike in the movie where it only appeared that Buckbeak had been killed (and it was eventually proven that it wasn't the case), we actually saw Steve die. Gideon and Fionna even felt him die, the way I did for Fionna.

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that Steve wasn't so visibly scared of the idea of dying - for real this time. Maybe because, unlike the death of his first body, this time he wasn't forced to kill himself. This time, he was surrounded by friends. He wasn't alone.

But eventually, we are forced to move along. Thompson has Kyle help him carry the body to the crematorium - which, conveniently, is underground and therefore should not have been affected by the bomb. It's also in the opposite direction from where the rest of us are going, so they leave us to get out of the city without them. As Russell and Annie lead us down the tunnel, I try to keep track of where we're going in my head. But since I'm in a totally unfamiliar place without a reference point for what direction we're moving in (even Russell can't get a decent compass reading off his smartphone app, both from lack of reception and because of some kind of magnetic material present in the tunnel walls, I think), I'm soon forced to give up on that.

For what feels like several hours, we keep on walking through the tunnels. We're forced to do a hell of a lot of backtracking, because there's more dead ends than I can count on both hands and both toes. Many of these aren't supposed to be there, but are instead the result of cave-ins, exactly as Russell said before. Every time we reach another cave-in site, Russell curses under his breath and smacks his phone repeatedly.