Just Because Hell is Other People Does Not Mean Heaven is Yourself

•••

There was a pause that felt like an eternity where nobody moved. Time itself seemed to stop for a moment, allowing me to process everything that had just happened while simultaneously overwhelming me to the point I couldn't grasp it.

Seeing myself (?) was an experience I could have never prepared for. Photos, the mirror... none of it was like the real deal. It was both horrifying and reassuring - none of my insecurities were anywhere near as bad as they were in my head, but then again, they all still existed.

Humanity was not meant to have mirrors.

Finally, I laughed. My voice sounded disembodied - if I hadn't been feeling my mouth move, I wouldn't have believed it came from me. "Good one," I replied with a scoff, rolling my eyes. I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing, and thus, it couldn't be real. "Nice power, though."

Still, I didn't get up. Not because I didn't want to, but because I felt physically frozen.

Minta, looking just like me, groaned. "It's not a power. Oxygen makes you look like this," Minta explained, gesturing to her -my- body. Luckily, her voice still sounded somewhat different from mine. A little deeper, a little less nasal.

I paused again, blinking for a moment. Short circuiting, but not enough to fully stop talking or take the moment to process the situation. I felt like I must be dreaming. Or on drugs. "Right," I said slowly. The fight within me was still there, simmering. "How come when I hold my breath, I don't turn into you?"

"Earth doesn't have uranium in its air," Minta explained, as if I was expected to know anything about that. Like I would ever have guessed that made a difference.

"Alright," I replied, beginning to feel frustrated about the fact that apparently I would think it was a good idea to beat myself within an inch of my life. "So how do you look like you, then? If oxygen changes you into me."

Minta smiled conspiratorially, as if waiting for that question. She opened her mouth slightly, reaching in two human fingers to grab something small and shiny. "Uranium capsule," she explained. It was a tiny chunk of metal, not much different from a filling. "As long as it's under my tongue, it keeps me from looking human."

With that, she pocketed it. I watched her hesitantly, checking to be sure she wouldn't whip out a gun or a knife or any other potentially lethal weapon.

She didn't.

It struck me as odd that in human form, she had both eyes, where her Vakilian (?) form did not.

"Okay, and why are you being chill all of the sudden?" I asked now, frustrated by how nonchalant she was being. Completely 180. Frustrated with myself for immediately being hooked in and interested. Frustrated with myself for pausing the fist fighting fest for the moment.

"So many questions," Minta chided. I rolled my eyes.

"It's a damn good one," I argued, standing up, ready to start swinging, and shifting to a more comfortable spot. "Forgive me for not wanting to die." The couch in my room seemed inviting, and only a little stranger to be sitting in-as opposed to the floor-in this situation. It sunk with my weight.

"I suppose," Minta agreed, although not very enthusiastically. Regardless, she did answer. "It's hard to explain without telling you everything... but it was imperative you find your strength. And, speaking as you, the best way to do that was to simulate a battle."

I blinked slowly. Everything about this was annoying. It made me wonder if I, myself, was annoying, or if it was just Minta. "By simulate a battle you mean almost kill me," I remarked dryly.

Minta shrugged. Her hair, my hair, shifted gently as she did so. "You could say that," she admitted. Still, with a glint in her eye, she countered, "Still, you won the fight. Just as I thought you would."

"You mean you wanted me to win? How could you ever have predicted that?" I asked, exasperated. Minta opened her mouth to answer, probably with another thing that wouldn't help me understand much better at all.

Taking matters into my own hands, I quickly shifted gear. "I hate all of this cryptic, half answer bullshit," I groaned, leaning my head back slightly . Scooting forward on the couch, my fingers on one hand wrapped gently around the edges of it as I gestured around with the other. With a soft, weary smile, I suggested, "If you're going to give me all this interlude, just start from the beginning. Otherwise, can we get back to fighting? This is making my head hurt more than it already was."

Minta sighed, her annoyance matching mine. She cocked her head back slightly. "Alright, but no questions until the end, deal?"

That sounded like an impossible task, but I nodded. "Deal. But if I think you're lying, I have every right to take you out."

Minta groaned with annoyance, not bothering to grace me with a response. She took a deep breath, and began to tell her story.

It was odd. One minute, I'm fighting to the death in my own living room, mildly rearranging the entire decor, and the next I'm sitting down listening to story time. The ottoman I would normally put my feet up on had shifted out of range of the central area, and as I looked around, several decorations had fallen off the wall.

Great. I was lucky there were no holes.

"I was born in another universe eighteen years ago as (Y/N)(L/N), same as you. I grew up in the same house, with the same parents, with a relatively similar life. I got my powers at the same time, I had pretty much the same friends. Sure, there were some changes, but the biggest difference happened when my mother left - I left too."

"Wait, pause-" I interjected, holding up a hand.

"I thought we said no questions," Minta commented. "If you're going to ask a question after every three sentences I'm just not going to tell you."

"No, this is important. Can you change back?" I asked. "This is really weird, having to listen to myself."

Minta glanced at me with a slight bit of annoyance, but shifted back fairly quickly. Her potentially Vakilian appearance was much more threatening, but much less bizarre.

"Happy?" she asked dryly. The way she stood over me became much more apparent with her extra height.

"Yeah," I replied with a nod, trying to pretend her intense gaze didn't scare me. "But I have one more question. How are you here?"

Another universe? Did she expect me to believe that?

Minta waved dismissively. Her physiology didn't present like it should be able to be so nonchalant. "I was getting there. Just wait."

"You're meaner than I am," I commented offhandedly.

Minta rolled her eyes. "That's what happens when you're from another universe. You're different."

I opened my mouth to ask another - or several - more questions, but opted to keep it to myself. To politely wait. For just the moment.

"Anyway," Minta emphasized, giving me a little bit of side eye, "Yes, I'm from another universe. You, in another universe."

It irked me a little, her impatience. Maybe she knew all this, but I didn't. And it wasn't like we were friends or anything. Maybe she looked like me, but she wasn't me - didn't act like me, didn't talk like me, probably didn't think like me.

"In my universe, your mother left when I was seventeen. I had just gone through a massive mission failure, a close friend had died, and I was ready for a change of pace. In my universe, your Earth was claimed by Vakilia, not Viltrum."

I bounced my knee up and down, trying really hard not to ask any questions.

"It made sense, too. My powers are not like yours. Where you have your healing and your emotions and everything else you can do, I can dimension jump and play with peoples minds. The only things we have in common, really, are our strength, and our ability to drain life."

"During my short time on Vakilia, I learned how to really hone my powers. Which brings me to why I'm here - why I ever came."

Minta paced as she spoke, something I was all of the sudden wondering if I did or not. She glanced at me occasionally, as if she was hoping I'd still be listening. Just little things that felt so human.

Little things that I wouldn't put it past her to have studied and learnt to do. Little things that part of me documented as a possible threat.

As curious as I was, I would never be so curious to forget who I was with.

"I was curious, you know. About who I was in other universes. And I took a few peeks. Just because I could."

I nodded. I had to admit, that sounded like me.

"I've seen every timeline, and out of the billions of different universes similar to ours, you are only born in a couple thousand of them."

This, in and of itself, was a shock to me alone. I didn't know much about multiverses, or anything beyond the solar system for that matter, but that sounded like a relatively 'small' number.

Still, I had to wonder what counted as 'similar.'

"Of those, half of them you go to Vakilia with your mom. In half of the other half, you die with the Guardians." I exhaled slowly, eyes widening. That confirmed a suspicion of mine, I suppose, and made me feel only a little better - whatever killed the Guardians would've killed me, too. I couldn't have saved them.

If this was true, that ruled out Minta. If this was a lie...

God save me.

Minta paused for a moment before finishing, taking a deep breath. "Out of the remaining universes, in all but one, you destroy the earth."

My jaw dropped. I breathed, the next words from my mouth hardly audible. "That's this one," Minta and I said at the same time, our voice a haunting symphony.

Minta nodded. "The issue with this one, though, is that your ending... still wasn't good. I can't tell you for the sake of messing things up further, but it's a relative tragedy. Which I thought was strange, because the whole timeline seemed to be so much less concrete than any of the other ones - and that's when I realized somebody was messing with it."

"Uh, yeah," I said. "Apparently you."

"I am now," Minta corrected. "Somebody messed with it before me. Somebody has been messing with it. I have reason to believe that if you hadn't begun to learn the full extent of your power through me, you would already be dead."

"Probably by you," I complained, pointing an aggressive finger at her. I was supposed to believe this? "You're the biggest threat here. As far as I know, you killed the guardians. And didn't you say you wiped out Vakilia?"

Minta sucked on her lip, pausing for a moment. "I did say that," she confirmed. "I did. And I did do that, in several lifetimes. Which means, just so you know, that you did that. But not in this one. And not in mine."

Fire burned behind my eyes. "Do you know how much trouble you caused me? First of all, I thought I was going to die. Second of all, I had to confront my own humanity. And third of all, that's a shitty thing to do! I would not do that to myself! It's like... suicide with extra steps!"

"That's why I had to do it," Minta continued, her calmness making me even more upset. "In almost every universe, at some turning point, you see yourself as a god. And you become a villain."

"You're a villain!" I accused, standing up. My hands glowed that sickening shade of green, for just a moment. "I should've killed you when I had the chance."

"You have the chance now," Minta offered. She paused, studying me. "But you haven't taken it. Whether or not I'm a villain is a matter of opinion, but the important takeaway here is that you aren't."

"I wouldn't have ever been," I insisted. I stood still, facing Minta with locked eyes. She broke eye contact first, resulting in me slowly sitting back down again.

Minta shrugged, again much more nonchalant than I liked. "You'd be surprised what you're willing to do when you have something to lose. The human spirit in an inhuman body is a terrifying thought."

I wondered what she meant by that.

"How do you expect me to believe you?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. "Even if all of this is true. I still don't understand."

"Ask me any question you want and I'll have an answer," Minta offered.

I narrowed my eyes. "Alright," I said slowly. "You clearly know all about me. How do you know my powers?"

"I saw you using them in the future," Minta answered simply.

"You can see the future?" I asked, shocked. I wasn't sure if I was more impressed or in disbelief. To some extent, I'd gathered that much information, but hearing it said out to me was so much crazier.

How come I didn't get that power?

"Only others futures," Minta corrected, the slight edge in her voice suggesting this was a sore subject. "And only bits and pieces. It's like a summary, not a whole story."

"Are our stories relatively similar?" I asked, for curiosities sake.

"Not really," Minta admitted. Looking at her now, in her Vakilian form, I had to wonder if we'd look the same like that, too. "Obviously, I live on Vakilia, which is a pretty big difference. In my universe, there is no Mark - I dated Rex before he died."

"You dated Rex?" I asked incredulously, eyes widening. I almost laughed.

Minta nodded. "There were quite a few universes where you dated Rex. There was even a universe where you dated William, and another where you got with Immortal. In one without Mark, you got with Omni-Man."

"Omni-Man and Immortal are insane choices," I commented. I let out a long and low breath, clapping my hands against my thighs.

I guess when you start to get into your 500th year, age gaps don't mean as much anymore. Still, that information was comical to me.

"Not Rex?" Minta asked, raising an eyebrow to the best of her ability.

I shrugged, a light blush on my face. It was something I hadn't realized I'd ever admitted to myself - although I guess I didn't need to, because Minta had herself. "Well, he's my age. Maybe if he wasn't dating Eve when I first met him - and didn't, you know, cheat on her."

"There were quite a few universes where you didn't care about that," Minta stated.

"Yours?" I asked, not quite accusatory but certainly cautious. Certainly not mine.

Minta shook her head, appalled. "He was a childhood friend in mine. Like William is to you."

"And he died?" I kind of felt bad. A little.

Minta waved dismissively, although her eyes lingered on the floor. "It's in the past now. After two years, you start to move on."

I knew she was lying the way I know myself.

"So, what, then?" I asked, trying to dodge the subject. Unsure how to comfort myself in this scenario. Certain I'd rather hear nothing than the wrong thing. "You came here to teach me about my powers, I guess, by nearly killing me. And I suppose that means you disappeared by returning to your original reality. Why are you here again?"

"I need your help," Minta stated. "My universe is already falling apart."

"Absolutely not," I replied immediately, almost jumping on it. "I'm not dimension jumping for you. You come invade my life and you think I'm going to just do this big favor for you? And before you even ask, no, you can't stay in mine. There's already one of me, and that's more than enough."

Minta scoffed. "Believe me, I do not want your life," she stated, more offended than she needed to be. "I need you to figure out who else is dimension jumping here. Because whoever they are, they're fucking with my reality, too."

"How do you expect me to do that?" I asked. "Take a survey?"

"I think whoever it is will reveal themselves in time. I'm just asking you stay vigilant, and you keep training."

"I would've done that anyway," I dismissed.

"You would've," Minta agreed. "But your main focus would've been Mark. I'm not asking you to do this for me - I'm asking you to do this for yourself. Remember, I know you."

"You're smarter than I am," I remarked softly after a long pause.

"And you're stronger than I am," Minta agreed.

"No, I mean you're terrifying smart," I admitted, wishing the words weren't true. "You're something else altogether."

"It's easy to be smart when I know what's coming next," Minta said. "I've seen every outcome there is to be. I've seen your outcome, however blurry it is. You're smarter than you think you are, Affinity."

I still didn't know what to make of her. Should I trust her, the way you trust a sibling? Should I disregard everything she was saying?

How could I know what was true and what wasn't? If she was a carbon copy of me, if we were exact, I'd know. Because I could look inside, and I'd know.

But she wasn't. Maybe she was me, and everything I was, but that meant she was all the good and all the bad. She was me, in a different quantity.

All I could do was guess. All I could do was have faith.

Just as she, if she was honest, was having faith in me.

And if all else failed, I supposed, I could always kill her. If she knew what was best for her, if she wronged me, she would never come back.

"When you showed me all those scenes," I asked slowly, struggling to meet her eyes. They played through my head on the daily, one or another of them haunting me. "Were they real?"

Minta's lips pursed, her face tightening almost unnoticeably. She knew exactly what I meant.

"There was a universe where they were real, yes. Some of them, that was this universe. For most of them, though, it was others. I borrowed from various timelines," Minta explained. "The more vivid ones, I'm not sure which ones were most clear, were things you've thought of before. Either your own memories or your own insecurities. Anything foggy was either a memory of mine, either something I saw in another timeline or something from my universe."

"Which ones were real?" I asked, the question hurting me to ask. "Of the ones I don't remember... Which ones happened here?"

"The ones of your mother. And the guardians."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

Somehow, that was worse than I'd expected. Somehow, that felt like the worst answer.

I sighed silently, feeling heavy. It was reassuring that my friends weren't going around behind my back, but not enough to dispute all the questions I had. All the questions my mother couldn't answer.

"Earlier, you said something... 'the Earth was claimed by Vakilia'," I recalled, little bits and pieces slowly beginning to click. "What did you mean by that?"

Minta's eyes widened. "You don't know?" she asked.

I shook my head. Slowly. Afraid I should know.

"Earth is highly sought after in every universe," Minta explained. "Humans are a valuable resource - in my universe, we consume them for sustenance."

"You eat them?" I gasped, jumping in place.

"Absolutely not," Minta exclaimed, holding up her hands in surrender. "We drain their life force for our own. That's why Vakilians are 'everlasting' - if we consume enough life, we're virtually immortal."

"That's fucked up," I noted. But, granted, not the most fucked up assumption I'd made about Minta.

"It is," Minta agreed. "But there can be mercy to it. Like your mother, in that vision I showed you."

I knew the one she meant. In the hospital.

"She would consume the life of terminally ill patients. People who weren't ever going to heal. In exchange, they got a final five minutes of bliss."

I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I'd been mulling that possibility over in my head ever since I saw that scenario.

Alright. I felt alright.

"But Earth isn't claimed by Vakilia in this universe?" I asked for confirmation.

One by one, pieces were beginning to make sense. Things were falling into place.

And I didn't like where they were landing.

"No. It's claimed by Viltrum. Anything else?" Minta asked. A spark lit in her eye. She knew I was onto something.

"Yeah, I've got one more," I asked, already sure of the answer but afraid to accept it. "Who killed the guardians?"

For the moment it took for Minta to respond, I felt like my heart stopped.

"Omni-Man," Minta replied. "Omni-Man killed the guardians."