Dust

by DuAnn Cowart

Against all probability, the end of the world was actually quite beautiful, the woman mused, lying on her back at the edge of a bright red cliff overlooking a boiling green sea. Ignoring the way the rocky terrain gnawed into her bony shoulderblades, she crossed her arms behind her head and stared up at what was still, at least in theory, a sky.

Since that first fateful Shift, when realities had collided and intertwined into overlapping layers, nothing had been the same. The mulitiverse had been tossed into chaos as night became day became water became rock, a continually shifting, undulating mockery of what had been. The cosmic and karmic dust created by the grinding together of numberless realities sparkled dimly in the sky as the tectonic plates of time and space crashed against each other, leaving only shattered peices behind.

'Domino', as she still considered herself, studied the exquisite beauty of the swirling sky, awash with deep hues of navy and lavender that thickened and swirled with deepening fingers of color, constantly shifting and refracting like a dark opal under a brilliant light.

Despite her best intentions, she found herself lulled by the beauty of the otherworldly dusk, knowing all the while that the peace was fleeting. This very world itself echoed her moods.

Instead of turquoise blue, the residue of days were now a faded, sickly orange, sometimes arid and harsh, sometimes shot through with wisps of mustard clouds. Days were either too cold or too hot, freezing or searing by turns as the sun was either barely a glint in the sky, or a broiling huge orb overhead.

She much prefered the nights- that much, at least, hadn't changed. Nights still retained some semblance of the beauty that had permeated their world Before. Instead of deep blue-black, the night time sky usually shone a velvet violet, sometimes smooth as the silk she still remembered in fevered dreams, sometimes broken and jagged with pulses of atmospheric energy that crashed into the ground like the memories that still plagued her.

She had survived longer than most, and she knew she had her mutant gift to thank, to blame, for that. She had always possessed a finely honed sense of the cadence and flow of the Shifts, and whether that was a legacy of the bond she'd once shared with their author or a result of her own innate abilities, it had enabled her to at least survive.

Staring up at the deepening sky, Domino exhaled, and her transparent facemask fogged slightly. One hand rose involuntarily, and she again resisted the impulse to yank it off and breathe deeply whatever poisonous atomsphere had turned *this* Earth into a barren wasteland. It was a favorite thought, lately, and the urge was growing stronger all the time. She bit her lip, stilling herself, and a ruby drop of blood appeared on her lower lip before it was absorbed, atom by atom, by her envirosuit to be recycled for her survival.

Her lips curved against her will as she remembered the Skrull corpse she'd taken the suit from. A former warlord of an invaded earth, the wizened figure had died of old age, as best she could tell. The body, when she'd stripped it bare, was perfectly preserved, testament to the alien technology that would prove to keep her alive for so long. Little had she known that it would keep her alive for so long, through so many changes, while the rest of the world died off, one by one as broken time moved ever onward.

She smiled humorlessly at her own choice of words. Time really wasn't time anymore, she knew. Such things as days and months and years no longer existed. Still, she was observant, and she could measure the passage of what she'd once called time through her own body, if nothing else. She was older now, black hair shot through with grey, once supple limbs growing brittle and aged, though whether that was from years or Shifts she no longer knew, and truly didn't care. Only one thing was certain- she was no longer the woman she once was.

Nothing was as it once was, she knew, and the knowledge sank to the pit of her soul like a stone through murky waters. These were dangerous thoughts. It wasn't safe to remember when she'd been a woman, alive and joyous-survival was far too important, and she'd met far too many people, back when there still were people, who had gone mad with memories of what and who had been. She was many things, but above all she was a survivor, and so she had locked all nonessential memories deep within her, the good and the bad, and only remembered who she had been in her dreams, when memories leaked through the walls of sleep and she awoke crying, gasping for breath, stunned by the power of the history that still lived inside her, no matter how hard she fought to keep it out.

Domino stilled herself, and looked back up at clouded sky, feeling the surge of those same emotions warring in her even now. She had always warred against emotion, but now, here at the end of all things. . . what did she truly have to lose?

The colors continued dancing across the sky as long-buried memories rose like mist, seeping through her mind and filling her with an odd longing that she recognized from old. She was surviving, but she certainly wasn't really alive. She hadn't been for a long, long time, the realization hit like bolt, and she was surprised to feel an unexpected pain lodge at the base of her throat.

"Fuck," she murmured, tears welling precariously in her eyes. The beauty of the night, the weight of the solitude she'd endured for so long- it bore down on her with the pressure of the ages, and she slowly lost the will to fight it anymore.

What was she fighting by locking those memories away? Who was she trying to protect herself from? Even madness didn't matter anymore. At least the lunatics that had swarmed the Shifts in abundance could *feel*, at least they weren't dead inside. Not like her, not like the cold woman she'd forced herself to become.

She was Domino, and she survived. She didn't care. She didn't feel or cry or indulge in anything as stupid as hope that a Nathan or one of her kids had survived the chaotic hell his failure had thrust them into. Shivering despite the regulated temperature of the suit, Domino lay there, stretched out across the red rocks of what she fancied had once been Muir Island, overlooking what had once been a sea, and tried her damndest not to do just that.

Hope was futile in this world. She had long since given up on finding anyone living, much less anyone she had cared for or even known. The Shifts had grown so vicious, so intense that she knew better than to believe anyone she knew, or loved, might have survived.

Love, her thoughts hung on the word, turning it over to examine it like an unfamilar specimen for dissection. What a strange word to think about now, at the end of everything. She'd so rarely permitted herself the use of that word in the past, when she was alive, that it seemed the highest form of mockery to use it now.

Before the Shifts, that word had carried with it connotations of weakness, of vulnerability, of need. She had scorned it, for the most part, she remembered wryly, and had to laugh quietly at the presumptuousness of youth. She didn't need it then- she certainly didn't need it now.

She swallowed, and tried to feign amusement at this latent streak of cowardice. Protected by her stolen suit, she'd breathed in the vacuum of space, she'd swam through boiling water, she'd lived through the very rendering of time and space itself as the universe Shifted around her. She'd lived through all this, and more, and she was still here, and she was . . . so . . . damn . . . tired . . . of it all.

What would it hurt to remember who she had been, who *they* had been?

Gazing at the beauty of the dusty sky, lost in overarching loneliness and despair, Domino lay stretched out across the red rocks of what she fancied had once been Muir Island, overlooking what had once been a sea, and tried to convince herself that both the foolishness of the past and the horror of this damn crumbling of reality didn't matter.

Nothing really mattered anymore, she sighed, and the sentiment was not a novel one. The melancholy phrase contained the same words she'd repeated like a dark mantra a thousand times, the same hopeless drumbeat of syllables that had characterized her life since the Change.

This time, though. . . for some reason she wasn't inclined to accept that fate so easily.

Domino inhaled sharply, and looked away, overcome by another surge of repressed emotion, the lost defiance that had always marked her returning so vividly after so long an absence. She had lived so long in helplessness, dependent only on the suit and whatever meager substinance she could find to survive on that she had grown isolated, locked tightly in herself.

With a start, she realized that she didn't want to . . . live like that anymore. It would be easy- so easy- to end it all right now. To cheat the damnable Shifts of their final prey, to take what little control she had left and die as she had lived, by her own terms. Her gloved hand shuddered as it rose to her facemask, resting lightly on the small clasp that would open it up to expose her to the elements.

Her finger brushed the clasp again, then jerked away as if burned. "No," she grunted, surprised at the depth of unfamiliar feeling. "Fuck that," she whispered in a hoarse voice, unused syllables sounding rusty and dull to her own ears. "It's not taking me that easily."

She owed him that much, she swallowed, and the thought brang yet more unsuspected pain. She wasn't one of the Twelve, she bore no responsibility for what had happened, but she had. . . loved him, and she would do this much in memory of what he had done, of what he had tried so desperately to do. The emotion felt hollow now, like a phantom pain of a missing limb, but it was more than she had felt in years and she found herself jealously guarding it, unwilling to part with the pain that echoed dully in her chest.

She caught her breath, and the horrible truth that she'd avoided so long finally caught her- even this miraculous suit couldn't keep her alive much longer- she'd be damnded if she'd go without remembering who she had been before Nathan's Shifts had taken it all away.

Nathan's Shifts. She grunted, rolling on her side. It had been a long time since she'd thought of them that way, preferring to forget her former lover's part in the collapse of order. Even the thought of his name made the strand inside her that was tuned to the Shifts hum with anticipation.

Just the thought of his name made her expression weaken, and she seized the opportunity to pry into the vault of her thoughts, warring against ingrained instincts to force herself to confront what was left of her memory before she finally fell prey to the end. No phantom ache now, she closed her eyes and allowed herself the very rare- and very real- luxury of remembrance, and the pain was so exquisite that she shivered.

Searching, she saw that the memories were rusty, elusive, and they ducked and hid behind barriers erected over a lifetime. Frustrated, she opened her eyes, and the flickering sky stared back at her, taunting her with this final bit of failure.

Spitting a vinegary curse, the anger itself a small victory against the apathy that bound her, she coaxed the memories slowly, muscles taught with fear as she sought to recall exactly who she was, what she had been. Here, at least, she was real. In the shadows of her memory she was more vivid and more alive than the ghost that walked around in her body now.

Muttering a long-forgotten curse, she squeezed her eyes shut defiantly, and ruthlessly drew upon mental techniques that Nate had taught her so long ago, trying not to feel that part of her that still was his cry out in relief as she allowed herself to remember, even in this small way, something of what he'd been to her, a glimmer of hope among the sorrow that he'd wrought.

She went slowly, allowing herself to sink into herself, to ease into her buried past. So long a time alone had taught her patience, and despite the time elapsed, this was *her* mind, herself, and she knew damn well she would find what she was looking for eventually.

And she did. Dancing at the edges of memory, she saw herself as a very young woman, scandalously dressed and armed to the teeth. The very image made her smile. So young, so brash, so . . . completely unaware of how glorious she was- it was hard to believe she'd once been this completely happy. The image faded into a battle scene, a brutal, bloody paen to warfare and destruction, and Domino nodded. This, too, was who she was.

This was the easiest vision of who she was, she knew. It would be so easy to categorize the woman she'd been as merely a fighter, a soldier, and to leave it at that. She shook her head tightly, genuinely horrified, a wellspring of emotion spilling out like water in a desert. No, by all that Had Been, no. There was more to her than that. Here, at the end of everything, she forced herself to remember more than that. *She* had been more than that, if only for a while.

Once upon a time she'd been a teacher. There were unlined faces and bright costumes, vivacious joy and deep despair, and a true, undying trust that came from the knowledge that no matter what else she did, she would never let them down.

Once upon a time she'd been a friend, a teammate. She remembered comrades and girlfriends, margaritas and hamburgers and kung-fu movies and practical jokes, and things that had once made life joyous.

Once upon a time she'd been a lover. Men spun rapidly through her mind, pale and dark, short, tender and passionate, and no matter who or what they'd been to her, no matter how much or how little, she looked back and she loved them for how they'd made her *feel*. Interspersed with the others, all through her ages, was him, of course-no matter who or what she'd found, it always came back to him.

Nathan, Cable, the Askani'friggin'Son. Here, in her memories, at least, he wasn't the Destroyer of Worlds. Here, he wasn't cursed, wasn't the pariah who had brought death to the universe- here, more than anywhere else in the universe, he was just a man, and she remembered him.

Nathan. He'd been her constant, her touchstone, back when there were such things. Unaware of the tears coursing down her face, she looked inside herself and saw him scattered through her memories like the ever changing stars in the sky. She saw him through their lives, watched as his hair faded from auburn to silver, she watched as his smooth face grew lined, and then smooth again. She'd met so many of him during her early travels in the Shifts, and allowed herself to be lulled by them back in the early days when they stil harbored hope for the future. She hadn't seen any of him for such a long time.

She blinked away the tears. Time, yet again. Time had clothed him like a shroud, as long as she'd known him, and he'd tried his best to both run from and pursue a destiny that would bind it to him. She'd called it folly, mocked his most closely held beliefs in an effort to get him to lighten the hell up, but somewhere, deep down, she'd always believed that he would do it. She'd always had complete faith in him in this as in all things, and no matter what she said, she'd always truly believed that he would one day finish his mission and defeat Apocalypse.

She had never dreamed he'd fail, and condemn all humanity-all reality- to this fate. Even after the Shifts, when he-when all of him- had been locked so deeply in guilt and despair, she had always thought that he'd succeed in his quest to regather the Twelve, to save humanity somehow. She never thought he'd fail in that, too.

Decades worth of pent up emotion exploded in her like a star, and she sat upright, trembling. Closing her eyes, she thought of him again, and the image became so intense that it took her breath away.

All through her life-that-was, he had been there. First her employer, and then a teammate and partner, then friend and lover, inexorably bound to her side as they had blithely strolled through life. Everything had seemed so important then, she remembered, each skirmish a war, each battle a crusade. Everything had meant so much *more*, back then, before the Shifts, back before reality shattered. Even her demons had made more sense back then.

For the briefest of moments what was vanished, and Domino found herself once more in what had been. Heart in her throat, Domino remembered how she and Nathan had danced around each other, as they took each other's bodies for pleasure, hiding what else it meant to them both, turning a deaf ear to the needs of their hearts as they spun together in a perpetual dance of deprivation and desire.

Fuck, what had she been thinking? She wanted to scream at her young self, tell her to wake the hell up and enjoy life while she had it, to not be so incredibly selfish as to waste what time she had before the universe crumbled. It was the worst kind of stupidity to waste what time she had, to hoard joy like a miser. Even in the Shifts, even after life had ceased to make sense, there was *some* reason to it, some reality as long as they were together.

Forcing past her triumphant anger, Domino looked past it to search for tenderness, for some glimpse of the person she'd been that could balance out this selfish arms-length of the heart. She made a soft cry and seized on one image in particular, a cold night in San Francisco when he'd come to visit, and for the briefest of moments she thought she felt his arms around her again as they lay tangled together in her warm bed, laughing and talking as if they were both as young as their bodies were.

She remembered him, saw all her memories of him at once, and didn't even notice as the suit reabsorbed the wasteful tears that were streaming down her cheeks like twin rivers. Now, at the edge of her days, she would admit what she could not have allowed herself to all those years ago, back when she was alive.

She loved him. With all that she was, she loved him, loved him for his strength, for his passion, for his faith, for his unwavering trust in her. And with all that was within her, she hated him for failing and leaving her here like this, alone at the edge of the universe.

His face appeared before her again, and she shook her head, blocking out the image, remembering again why she didn't let herself remember. She opened her eyes and looked around, at the unnatural sky, at the lifeless rock, and the acid-scarred waterbottom that once held the basin of life. Faded amethyst eyes full of glimmering tears, she stared up at the matching sky, idly fingering the clasp of her facemask again, wondering how long she'd take to die.

She rose to her feet and stared down the cliff, the remainder of her life riding on the cusp of the moment. For an instant she saw herself plummeting into the burning sea and finally bringing this eternal solitude to an end. She paused, and took another step forward, and then another, then another. She stood at the edge of the precipice, toes poised over the void, the sky rapidly darkening overhead as the lavender shifted to violet, marking the transition of another empty day into another twisted night.

Her night could be over soon. All it took was just. . . one. small. . . step. . . and it would all be over. It would be so easy. She was so tempted.

Then, out of the depths of her spirit, a still small voice spoke. It was defiance, and it was laughter, and it was peace. "No," she finally whispered, her face alight with the inner fire. She glanced down dizzily, then stumbled quickly away before the void could claim her, her unused voice grinding like an unoiled door as she stared at her shaking hands, "No."

She deserved more than that- they deserved more than that. Nathan, her kids, a universe full of strangers who'd lived and loved and never suspected it would one day be gone-they all deserved to be remembered.

She, who was still living, owed them that much.

She bowed her head, fighting the apathy of years with an exhausted determination. It didn't have to be this way. She would see him again, find herself again, when this crumbling night faded, and she would tell him all about it, and the night would come full circle, and they could go on to wherever souls in penance went. All she had to do was hold on.

With that thought in mind, she lay back down in the rocks and stared up at the sky, and watched the faint light flicker among the last of the clouds. She could do this, bear witness to the end, and in so doing, be a living, breathing affirmation that once there had been life and joy in all the broken worlds, that reality had existed, and even if nothingness completely subsumed that which had been, that it *had been*, and that nothing could change that.

She could do that much, if nothing else. She who had caused so much death could now be a living testiment to life itself.

So, blinking away the tears, Domino lay back down on the red earth and stared up at the darkening sky, a faint smile playing on her lips. Night was coming, but it wasn't alone. She would be there too, and with her, the memory of all that had been before. One day it would end and she would join him, join them all, but that day had not yet come. For now, she would face what came, and bear witness for them so that they would not have lived in vain.

She lay back down on the rocks, a safe distance away from the edge, and turned her attention back to the silent sky, watching the colors dance as the lonely twilight shaded into night.

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