Chapter Text
Dust and debris swirled in the air above her. Maddie stumbled to her feet, only to brace herself on the countertop as a wave of dizziness overcame her. Everything hurt: that dull ache in her bones she sometimes got when it was too cold as she slept.
What…happened…?
Little green stars dotted her vision. Maddie blinked, trying to get them to go away. They didn’t.
She was in…a salon, she thought, except it had been the victim of some kind of disaster. Chairs were overturned, bottles spilled everywhere, sunlight filtering in through the shattered front window. Green fires dotted the store. Something was wrong with that, but her head was too foggy to figure out why.
“Mom?”
Maddie stared at the storefront. Her son stood on the other side of the window. “Danny?” she muttered. What was he doing there?
“Mom! You’re okay!” Danny clambered through the opening and began picking his way across the room.
“Danny, there’s glass…you need to….” She couldn’t get the thought out.
Danny ignored her warning and walked heedless of the debris, as if it weren’t even there. “Mom, it’s okay. I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Maddie squinted. In the firelight, he almost seemed to…glow? She blinked away more of the green stars. Danny was covered in a layer of dust that made his dark hair appear lighter and his usual NASA t-shirt appear darker.
“C’mon, Mom. Let’s get you some help.” Danny moved to pull her arm around his shoulder, only for his hand to go right through her side. He froze.
A shock of cold ran through Maddie’s body. That wasn't.... She watched as Danny pulled his hand out and stared at it. His eyes darted between his hand and her face in confusion. They glinted green in the firelight.
“Danny, you’re hurt,” she said, reaching towards him. Her son bled from a large gash across his forehead. The blood, too, seemed to glow.
Danny’s eyes widened in horror. “No no no,” he said, looking around frantically. “This isn’t happening.”
He gasped, then fell to his knees. “This can’t be happening!”
It took Maddie a moment to look at what he found.
Danny knelt next to a body covered in salon detritus and blood. He’d pulled off his shirt to stanch the bleeding. Metal shrapnel had pierced its chest in several places. It wore some kind of jumpsuit, with goggles that had been knocked askance on its head.
It was then that Maddie felt the tugging. From a place deep inside her chest, something lightly pulled her towards the body, while something else pulled her…elsewhere. She couldn’t tell.
A pressure appeared on her neck as Danny checked the body for a pulse. “No no no! Mom!” he said, looking back up at her. He was crying glowing tears. “You can’t be–!”
The little green stars were clustering into tiny blobs that gravitated towards her.
“Danny, what’s…?” She trailed off. The body was…the body was hers.
“Mom, please! I don’t–I don’t know–” Danny looked at her expectantly, as if she had answers. Her head was so foggy. She didn’t even remember how she got here.
“I’m not–I’m not–” His expression changed. “I’m not gonna let this happen to you.”
The glow surrounding Danny brightened, and he reached up and yanked Maddie down, back into her body.
Maddie stared up at her son as he held his shirt to her wounds. “C’mon, Mom. Live. Please just live.”
More green blobs clustered around them. The tugging sensation to…somewhere else grew.
Danny grit his teeth. “I. Won’t. Let. This. Happen!”
There was a flash of light.
The tugging vanished.
Maddie gasped. Bright warmth bloomed in her chest, and with it, pain. Lots and lots of pain.
The last thing she heard before she passed out was Danny, no longer glowing in the spectral firelight, calling for his sister….