Wish You Were Here [IC]

[alderwitch]

Taylor and Jack blinked back into reality and she released her death grip on his belt to step away. The shaky breath she drew was habit as there was no air to fill their lungs with. She'd deposited them on the surface of the moon, or at least a moon, from all evidence provided. The ground was gray and dusty with distinctly less gravity then they had on earth.

The earth hanging full in the sky didn't look quite like any national geographic picture. The seas were more dingy than blue and the clouds wrapping the plant were a sickly yellow.

It was a dimension Taylor had been keeping an eye on lately, so it had been in her thoughts when she'd jumped them out of Scarab's Lair. Leaving Jack to adjust to the surroundings, Taylor took a few steps away from him and hugged her midsection as she briefly scanned the dimension out of habit.

[Avenger Assembled]

Jack stared up at the sickly Earth above, taking a moment to process exactly where they were and what was going on. "I'm on the Moon!" he shouted out loud, startled when he realized he could hear himself. Even Jack knew more about space than that. "And I can talk!" He took a step away, feet digging into the lunar regolith beneath his feet. "I don't breathe when I talk anyway, so I suppose that makes sense..." He looked at Taylor, his eyes wide, then reached out and put his arm around her shoulders. "I didn't expect this," he told her truthfully. "Where are we?"

[alderwitch]

Taylor started at his exclamation before smiling despite herself at his awestruck wonder. Sometimes she forgot that with all that Jack had seen, some of her day-to-day activities were still unusual to say the least.

The glow faded from her eyes and she looked her mundane self again, still wearing the sweater and jeans she had been on earth. Taylor shrugged and leaned her head on his shoulder, "I don't remember the scientific designation off the top of my head. Its a near-earth dimension but its dying. I've been keeping an eye on it. Its always possible that there will be an eleventh hour pull out, but its more likely the dimension will just blink out. The stars are already winking out if you look up. We're on the moon as its the furthest I can get and still be on a planetoid. Sorry, I can take us elsewhere, if you'd rather."

[Avenger Assembled]

"It...holy cow," agreed Jack, looking up at the sky. "What's happening here?" he asked, his voice careful. Like anyone else from the Freedom City area, Jack had grown up on stories of Omega and the Terminus. "Why is this dimension collapsing?"

[alderwitch]

Taylor followed his gaze upwards and sighed, which was a little odd in the vacum. Jack felt her shoulders lift but there was no sound of inhalation or exhalation. "Alien technology gone wrong. Its contained to this dimension, I assure you. Worlds collapse and new ones form. This one is of particular interest to a few scholars on Prime so I've been ferrying back information as it collapses. The earth below is still toxic and already marked as a dead planet on League records."

Taylor slanted a look up at his face and added with a note of apology, "We're not in any danger, Jack, don't worry. I really can take you someplace else. I just wanted to be away from the Lair and, well, for me I can run to the end of the Cosmic Coil if I wanted to. This takes no more effort than walking out the door."

[Avenger Assembled]

"It's all right," Jack reassured her. "I trust you. This is just...beyond my realm of expertise." Even the air here, or lack thereof, felt like it was dying, an oddly familiar touch of entropy on the skin of the walking dead. "We certainly are very far away from the Lair," he commented wryly. He gave Taylor the ghost of a smile before murmuring "I was half-worried you were thinking about leaving me here."

[alderwitch]

"I'll never do that." She replied solemnly even as she reached up to touch his cheek with a hand that for once was as cool as his skin. Although alive, in the void space her fingertips held onto none of their usual warmth. "Even if that goddess does manage to steal you away, I'm not going to rip you from your world."

Taylor's lips twisted downward and she pulled her hand away to let it fall listlessly to her side, "Far more likely I'd leave in that case anyways."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Contrary to what Ace would have you believe," said Jack evenly, "Moira really does mean nothing to me." He put his hand lightly on her shoulder. "If I couldn't resist the siren call of beautiful immortals, I wouldn't be here now, would I?" he suggested reasonably. He made a small noise, the sound traveling up his arm. "No one's going to steal me away, Taylor."

[alderwitch]

"Try to see it from my perspective, Jack. How happy would you be if I'd been the one who had an ex-godling popping up out of the woodwork and saying he'd be up for round two?" Taylor retorted in exasperation but she didn't pull away from the touch on her shoulder. If anything, she leaned into the comfort that implied, "I can't imagine you'd feel terribly secure. Especially not after having the highlights reel from Scarab stuffed into your brain. Personally, I feel the fact that I haven't burst into tears again or blasted anyone is a moral victory."

After that tart speech, Taylor paused and then added, "And the nudge I gave Moira totally doesn't count."

[Avenger Assembled]

"It was before we'd even met," said Jack quietly. "All I can control is the life I lead now, not the life I led before we met." He sighed himself, reaching up to rub his eyes as the sky above them darkened ever-so-slowly. "She was much less insane then. But I suppose a visit to your own version of Heaven will drive anyone pretty crazy."

[alderwitch]

"Jack, I don't hold your actions before we met against you. Even before Scarab's mental download, I knew about it. I already had the blow-by-blow details from Stesha, remember? When a goddess tells you that she still wants you and would like to have you back in her bed, it does make me insecure. How could it not?"

Taylor shook her head at him and tilted her face up into the darkening night sky. "Its not a matter of holding what you've done against you, honey. Its more about being very shaken about what I could lose. I don't know how to explain it any better than that."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'm sorry," Jack admitted. "I'm not used to being in this situation." He looked away from the grim sky overhead to study Taylor, pushing aside the death all around them for the life they had. "I just..." He took a step closer, both hands coming down on her shoulders, then his arms around her. "Taylor, you're the only woman I've ever known who I could truly give my heart to. You're the only woman who's ever loved me. There's no one else. I don't think there could be."

[alderwitch]

"Oh, Jack," It came out in a soft sigh. Taylor relaxed back against him, her eyes closing as the tension started to leech out of her shoulders finally. She reached up and splayed her fingertips over his arms, the new engagement ring winking like a promise in the dying starlight.

Taylor was silent for several long moments, before her quiet voice broke the silence, "Is it always going to be like this do you think? Escaping off to the end of the universe after a knock down drag out fight? For a moment or two I thought it would all come to blows."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Actually," Jack admitted, "that went considerably better than I expected. Most of my interactions with the city's heroes have been much less frightening than I thought they would be." He'd already told her how he'd fully expected at least a lethal attack the night the Knights broke up. "I was sure Ace was going to whip out a cross to try and purge you of the demons I'd planted there."

[alderwitch]

Taylor laughed despite herself and tipped her head back to look at him, her expression amused as she said dryly, "Considering the amount of talk about or sex life, I'd be worried about where, exactly, he thought you put those demons."

She shook her head and pulled a small and very technical looking device out of her pocket. Taylor hoped there weren't any buttons that she'd have to press. She had made it very clear that any sort of monitoring device she carried over would have to be idiot proof. Tech was not her thing. Deciding that the blinking lights were a good enough sign, she nodded up above them. "We're going to lose the last of our light here in a bit. Did you want to stay or go? If I'm right, it should be quite a lightshow when the new universe replaces it."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'll stay," Jack murmured, looking up with her at the dying sky overhead. "I've always been better in darkness anyway." Jack wasn't much of a philosopher; it was probably the only thing that saved him from being really depressed about his existence. He watched the sky with her in silent communion for a few moments before asking, "So do you want me along when we talk to your parents? I imagine that's the proper way to do it."

[alderwitch]

"Then we might as well be comfortable," Taylor opinioned as she reached up to her necklace. Like a magician pulling a scarf from their sleeve, Taylor pulled the cloak out from where ever she kept it while she wasn't wearing it and spread it over the ground.

Once she had tugged Jack down to join her and settled into his shoulder, she answered his question. "Honestly the coward in me thinks we should head to Vegas and just tell everyone after the fact, but I really do want my family there. They'll be happy once they get over the shock of how fast it is. My parents think I just turned twenty one. I don't even graduate until this summer."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'll find a business to tell them I run," agreed Jack. "So they don't think their little girl is marrying a deadbeat." He smiled a little, bending down to peck the back of her neck. "Let's not go to Vegas. Though there is always the chapel in the Atlantic Casino," he added with a weak little chuckle. He closed his eyes. "I know this is insane, you know?" he murmured. "But we're superheroes. We're supposed to be able to get what we want. And I want you."

[alderwitch]

Taylor's husky chuckle bubbled up at that and she turned to give him a mock-serious look, "I'm pretty sure that's not what super heroing is about. I could be wrong. I'll have to dig out my super-hero handbook and see if that's in here."

She twisted and twined her arms around him, snuggling into his side, "Besides, you already have me. Any ceremony is just to celebrate that but ring, or no ring, you're already stuck with me, I'm afraid."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I think I'll somehow survive that," said Jack with a smile, bending down to kiss her soundly. He appreciated the cloak; it blocked the sharp lunar regolith from his skin, and let him think about more pleasant matters. Was it self-indulgent, after the horrors of the day, to think about what he was considering? Just before he could do more, he heard a small noise from the sky, an impossibility in vacumn, and looked up just as true darkness began to fall across the sky. The sun was going out.

[alderwitch]

Jack felt more than heard Taylor's soft sigh of dissapointment as he pulled away to watch the sun flicker out. In the darkness, she cuddled closer to him and pulled the edge of her cloak up over her legs. The sun faded slowly from a brilliant ball of fire, to more of a slowly cooling ember as if everything in it was slowly ceasing to burn. It was a scientific impossiblity under the normal laws of physics but the entire universe was flickering out, more with one last rattling breath than any great bang.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Sorry," Jack murmured with a smile as he moved in close to kiss her. "I had to see the second most important thing here." He kissed her in darkness, his knowing hands and keen nocturnal vision not hampered at all by the lack of light. It was easy to find each other here, with the barriers of the world left behind them, and so they did. When even the planetoid beneath them faded out, they paid attention only to each other in the drifting darkness. And when finally the great burst of Creation's light erupted all around them, it was a celestial counterpoint to their moment of togetherness at the birth of the new universe.