(Interlude) Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story
Elsewhere…
On a dark and stormy night, a famous neurosurgeon crashes his car off a cliff and begins a journey that will change everything.
Around a glowing table in Long Now, a group of Ancient and powerful ghosts gather. The owner of the lair has some things to say, and no one wants to hear them. They need to vote, but the image on one of the mirrors of a vibrant white-haired ghost boy wearing an old and powerful relic and laughing with the Princess of Wakanda makes them hesitate. The screens flicker around his life, laughing with that same Princess of Wakanda, holding hands with a boy in a superhero suit and a mask, leaning against his orange haired older sister on the bottom bunk of a twin bed in a crowded dorm room, in a living room surrounded by siblings and friends and laughing, and lastly, images of him alone, falling through a portal, fighting in a war that shouldn’t have been his, sitting on a throne of ice while snow falls around him, utterly alone. The last images are painful, hard to accept, but they won’t change. That doesn’t mean they can’t put the vote off just a little longer.
In the swirling green of the Infinite Realms, a ghost with dark hair and blue eyes who isn't sure how long he’s been dead makes a new friend named Ellie. She says he’s faster than any ghost she’s ever met, except for maybe her brother. But her brother flies, and he runs. Ellie thinks he’s weird but fun, apparently, and she sticks around. She asks him his name. He tells her he thinks it might have been Pietro.
In a lab in Amity Park, Winter and Bruce lean over a microscope side by side while Winter enthusiastically explains the different properties of ectoplasm. Bruce smiles as her eyes twinkle, and she passes him a cup of tea. It’s late, and he should probably have left a long time ago. Winter probably should have stopped brewing tea and talking and laughing, because she knows things that Bruce isn't supposed to. But she didn’t, and she doesn’t want to. For once, she wants to do something for some reason other than that she’s supposed to.
Kendra Paris wraps her coat tighter, standing outside a small apartment in Bucharest in the dead of night, and thinks about how much Clockwork is going to owe her for agreeing to this. She knocks again, impatient, and the door flies open. The man is holding a gun, but he’s subtle about it. If Clockwork hadn’t warned her, she might never have noticed. As it is, she keeps it in the back of her mind, but she doesn’t honestly think he’ll use it on her.
“My name is Kendra. A friend of mine asked me to come talk to you. He said you met my brother Danny, during the war?” she offered, with a small smile.
The man watched her, his face slipping into a little half-smile. “Yeah, Danny was a good kid. Deserved more than we could give him. I always hated watching him shiver in the snow. He hated the snow. Could never wait for the sun to rise, either. Said the dark freaked him out.”
Kendra didn’t need Clockwork’s advice to know this was a test. “Are you sure we’re thinking of the same kid?” she asked, lightly. “Danny loves the snow. And he can’t get enough of watching the stars, even though it messes up his sleep. He wants to be an astronaut, someday.”
The man relaxed, marginally. The hastily pulled on glove slipped down his left arm, and Kendra caught a glance of metal as he opened the door wider.
“Come in, then,” he invited, voice gruff.
Kendra smiled and slipped in past him. “Thank you. I have a lot to tell you.”