July 2015
I’d noticed the other day that she kept hanging around, smoking cigarettes and occasionally taking one of my beers out of the cooler. She kept changing the music to 
some sort of music that I thought was punk, or at least related to punk. At first I thought she was watching Bryce, and every once and awhile I’d hear them chatting. Bryce took more breaks than worked, so it didn’t really matter to me. She was about his age, so maybe she had a crush on him. Little young for me obviously, cute enough though, the constant changing colors of her hair was always entertaining.
Over time, I got used to her being there, occasionally handing me a tool as I worked on converting the warehouse into something useful. Smoking cigarettes, the occasional beer, or the American whiskey she favored.
I didn’t even really notice after a few weeks that my mood blackened on the days that she wasn’t around, or the way I even laughed occasionally at her constant stream of sarcastic jokes. If I thought consciously about her, it was as part of the team, figuring out how her teleportation platforms could help tactically, and how the youth of them all made me feel old. I was at least twelve years her senior, and eleven over Bryce. Hell, Henri with all her degrees was probably seven or eight years younger than me, and they all were so innocent. Even William with his sheltered existence. Yet so hopeful.
March 2016
We’d fought Thumbscrews to a standstill in the old subway, saving a bunch of the passengers in the process when it happened. I blamed myself even though I’d not been entirely with it and had missed the conversation. She thought she was invulnerable, damn it.
They’d been desperate to get some of the casualties out of there, and of course, her teleportation plats had been the quickest possible solution, so of course she volunteered to go get emergency services.
I’d raged at Henri for hours for allowing her to go by herself, but I blamed myself
Rook hadn’t even blinked an eye when I tortured the clown leader for a location, as I removed finger after finger until he gave it up.
When they got to the amusement park, I’d been in a rage. Panicked as they ripped thru 
the innocents who been changed by the damn gas into twisted version of carnival workers.
I’d been too late. I was always too late to save the girls. Always. I interrupted the spell, 
somehow, but it was too late. The witch had taken Gleam Shimmer’s body, and Gleam Shimmer’s voice screaming in rage because the magic wasn’t there tore into my soul. A voice that I had gotten increasingly used to hearing spew sarcastic gibes at everyone, including me, maybe especially me.
If it hadn’t been for Rook, I’d never have thought to do anything other than turn over the Hungarian girl’s body to Black Castle, somehow, somehow, she felt Gleam Shimmer’s “soul” in the other body.
We took her to Dr. George’s private clinic where Henri and I begged Henri’s father for help. Something in my face must have looked broken enough for the doctor to help.
For almost three months I stayed in that clinic, sleeping, hovering, torn away for only the most dire request from the team. My spirit blackened a little more each day.
When they took her again and mutilated Dr. George at the same time, I was little more than a monster. I would have done anything to get her back, and I did. I hadn’t told anyone, although I was sure the team suspected, but when they hit the base, I didn’t even try to take prisoners.
August 2016
I’d avoided her for the three weeks she’d been back. It hurt me in a way I didn’t understand then to see her walking around in the same type of clothes, but a different body. The sarcasm was there, and while I knew it was wrong, the new body was physically more curving, and…I tried to hide my reactions.
She was hurt and angry, depressed. She coughed when she smoked, passed out quickly from the whiskey. Afraid that we would make her leave because she couldn’t even feel her powers, and Bryce constantly pressed until I lost it and drove a massive right cross into his jaw. Our battle had been epic, although then the older brother was still stronger, and fought dirtier.
That night when she knocked on my door, that night…..I finally opened the door. She’d come down there every night for the last five days.
She looked up at me, attempting to smile with a seductive pose, but I could tell she wasn’t used to the new body yet, or maybe she really was just that inexperienced. It’s not that it wasn’t sexy as hell to me in the very revealing cut off shirt and panties, I just froze. No matter the age difference, she really wasn’t my type, I’d always preferred blondes.
When she quirked an eyebrow, and sneered, “Well big guy?” Maybe it was the slight fear 
I could see in her eyes, maybe it was the hope she always seemed to exude beneath the sarcastic exterior, maybe I just saw the broken person inside, and like called to like.
I paused, then smiled slightly, and she jumped into my arms. Her kiss was wild, sloppy, but fun. I discovered that night that she was much less experienced but in this, this I had immense patience.
Over the next months we discovered we were both quite exhibitionist souls, which came as a great surprise to me given my proclivity to hide in the shadows, to blend into the scenery, her passions pulling me into the light. With my strength and dexterity that meant that we explored sites around the building, on the beaches, rooftops, balconies, cars, movie theaters, restaurants, bars. Where she led, I followed.
We explored, constantly. The darkness in my soul spilled out, but I could tell she never felt anything but safe with me, and I slowly gave up my control. In some way I never analyzed, I could sense how her body reacted, and knew to the thinnest of edges where pain was no longer pleasure, and I never quite crossed it. Never once did she have to use her safe word. Of course, with my regenerative powers, and high tolerance of pain, she could do whatever she wanted to me, and she did. The monster within me welcomed the pain.
March 2018
I’d gotten everybody out of Alliance One, but most especially her. The UDP had ambushed us in flight. We should have known they’d have a tracker in McCray, but our arrogance in our own abilities and Titan’s abilities had compromised the advanced prototype aircraft I’d acquired from Jacob Guggenheim.
I’d waited until the last possible moment to get her under control, but it was a lost cause. I ejected late, trusting that one of the team would catch me, or if it really went to hell, that my broken body would heal.
I’d been right, someone caught me, but it was whoever the fucker was that had led the ambush in the UDP craft.
Whatever he injected into me, well, it didn’t really negate my regenerative powers, it was just some sort of flesh-eating acidic virus that dissolved my flesh faster than I could heal.
I was dying, Gleam was holding me when I came to after the second time Rook had healed me. The pain was agonizing.
She was leaning over me, as she sat there with my head in her armored lap, her helmet off, tears streaming from her eyes.
I grunted in pain as I took my burning right hand to remove the glove off my left. I could tell she was screaming at someone to hurry it up, but in this case even my enhanced senses just meant the pain roared more thoroughly in my ears.
I lifted my left hand up to cup the side of her face, “It’s ok baby, it’s ok. You’ll be ok. Just keep holding these fools together, ok?”
She was shaking her head, the tears sliding down onto my hand, “You’re not going nowhere, you fucking Aussie snake.”
I was losing control of my features by then and I could feel my skin rippling, trying to heal a body that was dying, fighting a losing battle, and my voice became more sibilant, “Baby, I’ll misssss you…….” A deep, ragged, liquid breath, “I….sssshould have told you……before, “followed by a coughing spree…. “I love you. You ssssaved me.”
When I awoke three days later in the medical bay, she was laying in bed with me, asleep. When I flicked my forked tongue out to the lobe of her ear, she screeched, slapping my face, before gasping “Fucking gross from a corpse.”
“You smell…..” and as her eyes narrowed, he changed tacks quickly, “tasty.”
She glanced down, smirking, “That was quick.”
“Oh, it definitely won’t be quick.” I paused, “In case you didn’t hear me through all those tears, I love you, you crazy purple haired punk warrior goddess.”
She preened under the comment, her tangled hair unwashed from three days of laying in the med-bay with him, “About fucking time you bow to the glory, you old randy bastard.” She leaned into kiss me….then whispered, “I love you too, you fucking snake.”
APEX had to re-sterilize the medical bay later that night.
June 2018
I’d told her about Olivia, while explaining that if there was a risk that Anubis was going to win, that I wanted to see her in person, if not meet her.
She’s run crying from the room. I didn’t understand why, not really. Not then.
She hadn’t talked to me other than monosyllables for the next week, even though we had been busy in South America, then at Whitley’s grandmother’s house.
I’d finally gotten fed up on the trip to Scotland, but Henri had arranged for the two of us, to share a room, per Shawna, and we’d made up, gloriously.
She’d still been mad that I hadn’t told her, but we’d agreed, no more secrets. Ever. Nothing was going to get in between us. Not if we were honest with each other.
It turned out that she kept her secrets. Would it have mattered? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’m just lying to myself again.
July 2018
We’d been all around Port Hedland that day, the day after we met Olivia at the motorcross track.
The day I’d found out Amelia was still alive. Alive and hated me. She’d helped me get over the shock, in the barn, in the car outside the vintage record store downtown.
Now we were on the beach where Dad had taught me to fish.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t have a plan, and now Titan has arranged for her to race in the US.”
“I thought you said the ex was dead.”
“I thought she was, all the records said she was.”
“Yea right.”
“I’m not lying…..
“I know, its just……a lot to take in. You have to get her back. You have to make sure she knows you’re her dad.” This time, its her head in his lap, looking up at me. “Brett, seriously, you have to do this. Its important. I know.”
“I don’t know how to be a father…maybe she’s better off here.”
“No. No. Trust me, no.”
“Will you help me?”
“Yes….I………”
“What, baby?”
“Nothing, nothing. You’ll do great…….I think you’d be a great father.”
I was looking out over the beach, so I missed her mouthed, “for our kids.”
“Ok…..I am not sure how to even start.”
“You idiot, you just start. Your going to have to start with a talk with that screaming blonde harridan that you were stupid enough to stick your dick in repeatedly.”
“I thought she was dead……”
“It doesn’t matter Brett. We’ll do it. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.”
It was the last conversation we had before she died.
November 7th, 2018
I’d thought she’d died, not her body of course, but her mind. No matter how much I had talked to her, brushed her hair, even attempted to dye it once. Slept in the med bay with her. She never moved, not for over forty-five days and Whitley’s updates had been no change, no progress, nothing. I’d been too involved in my own problems to recognize Whitley’s grief.
Whitley had said she couldn’t find her presence when they got back from Argentina later in July. That it was different from Bryce. I’d dreaded that had meant that she’d somehow been snapped from the body, that maybe she was now encaged in that horror of Black Castle Detention Facility.
I’d killed her. I’d taken her out to the damn beach, making us easy marks. I’d thought I could protect her. My arrogance.
Titan found her armor quickly, so of course we went after her. When we fought the witches, I was sure we were losing. I’d pushed through the spell, my determination to rescue her allowing me to withstand all the pain.
She’d been possessed by some powerful witch, I wasn’t quite sure if it was a true possession by some sort of demonic force, or the coven mistress. I’d heard in my mind her gloating about taking this body, and its massive magical potential. So powerful and so wasted on this puny mind, which enraged me even further.
So I clawed forward, slowly getting to where I could grasp her arms where she stood facing outward towards us, but her eyes black, vacant of Gleam’s distinctive personality, filled with malevolence.
I broke one arm with my powerful hands, and screams 
echoed. I broke the next one, because before we’d broken mental spells with physical trauma. Finally I’d bitten her, draining the power coursing through her. I’d bitten again and again, and finally I heard a whispered “Brett?” and then an explosion of power that knocked me out and I heard her scream, physically and mentally.
When I’d awoken Rook had healed the body, but couldn’t find the soul, or whatever she said. We’d won, but at what cost?
I’d been wrong of course. We’d all been wrong, or not paying attention. Oh at first, maybe, well, maybe a lot of things. But she’d come back, she’d just been captured again. Maybe forty to fifty days after the return to the base. Titan 9 had said, exactly, but it didn’t matter. By then….by then…..by then I’d discovered that I was in love with two women, and……..
I’d released Olivia and Amelia, Mum, from the armory, then returned to her. Even Amelia had thought me an idiot from telling Shawna right away, once she found out but by then of course, it was too late.
I had promises to keep.
She jumped into me, wrapping her arms and legs around mefiercely. “Fuck, I’ve missed 
you, ya giant walking snake.”
We kissed passionately, deeply, but she sensed something was wrong. “What is it?”
“We need to talk.”
“Right now?”
I held her tightly, before looking down into her beautiful eyes. “You’ve been unconscious for over three months.”
“So?”
“Well, I’ve been spending time with Olivia, like you said, and well, with Amelia obviously too. And…..maybe…..”
“Maybe what….” She asked, her beautiful eyes narrowed in suspicion and, maybe, fear.
“Well, we….she’s been helping me with my memories. Some of them have been flooding back. And…..” I sighed painfully.
“And what, Brett?” and she has taken her hands from around my neck, putting them flat against my chest.
“I….we….”
“Did you fuck her? Did you FUCK HER?”
I winced, before nodding and whispering numbly, “Yes.”
The slap is powerful, but not even close to what I deserved. “Let me go.”
“I can’t, I don’t…..want to.”
The tears are streaming down her cheeks, but her voice is full of quiet pain, “Let me go you sonofabitch.”
As I dropped my hands to my sides, she ran out of the only home I had known in years.
I whispered softly, “We promised no more secrets. No matter what.”
Today
I stepped out onto the smoking deck at Brewski’s. She’d looked beautiful, as she always did. The pain had ripped at me. After the third time she’d talked about fucking absolute strangers, and how hot it could be, I needed a break. Fuck, she even had Amelia answering questions about one-night stands. That was all I needed.
I’d done that. I’d killed her. Killed Us. I’d put that gleam in her eye.
Last Dreams 