EYEM #13
Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x female reader
Summary: You meet another version of the man you love and finally find out why the Universe is trying to kill you.
Word count: 5,800
Warning: violence, pain hurt and angst. Be prepared.
Series Masterlist | Spiderverse Masterlist | Astroboot’s Masterlist | thirstworldproblemss’ Masterlist
[Previous] [TBC]
Everything hurts. You don’t know where you are, you’re disorientated and queasy.
The first sight that greets you is the glow of scarlet eyes so piercing they cut through the blurriness of your vision.
They're familiar, but also different. Even though they’re identical to his, you know this is not your Miguel.
It takes you a while to make sense of your surroundings. Long moments for the nausea to dissipate enough that you can take in the dark moody blues of the space and recognize that you’re in the same sparse room as before.
Takes a few longer moments still before you register that your wrists and arms are restrained by strange threads made of an unknown material that glow up in an alarming neon red and you’re strung up and suspended in an intricate web from the ceiling.
You try to pull against your restraints, but it’s useless, your body won’t listen to you. You can’t even get your little finger to budge. You can’t fucking move.
“You’re alright,” The man who looks exactly like your Miguel says. “Try not to move. It’ll be better that way.”
You don’t listen to him, because why the hell would you. This is not your Miguel. You try again and pain sears through your muscles.
Shit! He bit you and now you’re paralyzed.
Panic races through your spine. You need to get out of this situation, now. Need to get out. Need to get to Miguel. Even if you can’t move, there has to be a solution somehow.
Lyla is meant to protect you right? She was built for that purpose. If you summon her then surely, “Ly–”
You can't get the second syllable out. Sharp pain stings inside your throat as you try to speak.
“Lyla’s not going to attack me," he says as if he can read your mind and knows what you were planning to do. "It’s a safety feature built in to make sure she doesn’t go rogue. The only time that gets overridden is if I’m a threat to your life."
Irritation crawls under your skin.
Fuck’s sake Lyla. Does this not count as a threat? Do fangs poised against your throat and taking a chomp out of you not qualify? The man bit and paralyzed you!
Despite two failed attempts, you try to move again, straining against the impossible heaviness of your numb limbs. Another jolt of pain shoots through your limbs as you do.
Miguel flinches at the sight of you as if there was an invisible thread connecting your body to his and he was able to feel every ounce of your pain.
His hand reaches up to cup your cheek to stop you.
“Don’t move,” he tells you again. “My toxins have paralyzed you and it will hurt you if you try to move. Stay still, nena. Please. You’re safe.”
If this was your Miguel, he would have been curt and snappy with you for being so stupid to move when it hurts. But this Miguel says it like a plea. Soft and gentle all at once.
His other hand comes to your collarbone, thumb gently wiping away the dried blood that’s pooled there. There’s an unreadable expression on his face as he stares at the dark stain of red on his fingers.
“This is the last time you’ll be hurt. You’re not going to die this time. I know how to fix this so you won’t die ever again."
Fix...it? What does he mean? Like make the universe stop trying to kill you for good?
You blink up at the man, unsure of what to make of his words. You don't trust this version of Miguel any further than you can throw him. The man knocked you out and tied you up...
But if he can fix it, even if the chance is small and far-fetched, what would be the harm in listening?
Your tongue is heavy and dry in your mouth and it feels like you’ve swallowed fistfuls of sand when you try to speak again. “Ho-how?”
“I just have to eliminate the root cause of why the Universe keeps trying to kill you.”
You prepare yourself for the pain that’s going to come again to ask him what he means. But luckily you don’t have to, this Miguel spares you of that.
“You’ve encountered another me in your dimension, right?” he asks.
You don’t answer him. But it doesn't seem to matter, because he already seems to have decided on the answer as he continues.
“It’s his fault,” he says with anger, his red eyes burn with an unnatural glow that sets your teeth on edge. “It’s his fault that this keeps happening to you. He’s the reason the universe keeps trying to kill you.”
No. No that’s not– You don’t know what he’s getting at. Don’t know what has happened to this version of Miguel that makes him believe this.
But you do know one thing. You don't need to listen to the rest of it to know. He is wrong.
Your Miguel has saved you. Protected you again and again. Put himself in harm’s way and nearly died to keep you safe. He would never hurt you.
“No,” you ignore the spasm of pain across your diaphragm as you speak. “He s-saved me.”
His mouth furls into a feral snarl, flashing the corner of his fangs. “You wouldn’t need to be saved if it wasn’t for him.”
“That’s not–”
“He’s an anomaly! Every Miguel O’Hara is!”
You blink up at him at loss for words. You don’t understand what he’s trying to tell you.
In front of you, this Miguel visibly grits his teeth, grinding down on his jaw, as he continues to speak in that low tone that simmers with fury.
“Humans are not meant to travel between dimensions. When I invented inter-dimensional travel, I violated that natural order without knowing it. Everyone I come across, everyone I saved, I’ve doomed, because that event was never supposed to take place.”
“You– you don’t know–”
He cuts you off before you can finish, “I’ve seen it!” he shouts. His hands curl into agitated fists at his sides. “After I lost you, I–I...”
He looks back at you and the words seem to die on his tongue.
As you hold his gaze you begin to see what you missed before. You were too focused on this Miguel’s anger to notice the grief pouring out of every inch of him.
“I lost myself,” he says, quieter now. “Lyla showed me a version of us in another dimension and it was the only thing that kept me going. We had a life together there. A daughter. You were happy there... Then that version of me died.”
He pauses again, lost in some memory that you are not a part of. Shame sinks into the hollowness of his sunken eyes and he looks away from you again.
“... And I replaced him. I thought it was harmless, that I was just replacing a version of me and the universe wouldn’t know any better. But I was wrong. He was never supposed to be in that dimension either. That whole universe collapsed because of me and our daughter and you died with it.”
Making a broad gesture through the empty air, amber light brightens up the space.
From behind him, a myriad of holographic screens flicker into existence, and you see images of yourself repeated and illuminated in all of them. You with pink hair. Another you with piercings. A you with tattoos and shaved cuts. Hundreds of variants of you wearing pieces of clothing that you’ve never owned. All of them, a different you, living their everyday life.
“Since then I’ve observed hundreds and thousands of versions of you in every dimension,” this Miguel tells you, as he gazes longingly at the screens that float above.
“All of them get to live full and healthy long lives. Do you know what every one of those versions of you have in common?”
He turns back towards you, closing the distance between you. “We never met. The reason you keep dying is because you meet me.”
His face is so close that a lock of his curl falls on your temple. Had this been your Miguel, you’d been tingling with warmth and excitement, now all you feel is a cold shiver.
“Every time we meet is because something I did inadvertently puts you in danger, and then I save you from it, starting the chain of events.”
Your mind flashes to that first moment you fell out of the Chrysler building. The blur of blue and red that came crashing into your life in pursuit of a villain and knocked you out of a skyscraper window.
“The universe is trying to erase your existence because of me. To try to correct the balance.”
Your face feels numb. Your mind is reeling from the revelation.
The question that you’ve had since this all began has finally been answered. Why this universe seemingly has it out for you. Why it has repeatedly tried to kill you. Why your world literally was about to end after you kissed him… It all makes a tragic sense now.
It’s because of Miguel.
You don’t know how long you remain frozen, crushed under the weight of the realization, before the sound of footfall joins the room, echoing in this empty space.
You hear him before you see him. Your Miguel. He calls your name and the familiar tone of it sends warm shivers through your spine.
Searching the space, your eyes land on his familiar silhouette in the dim light.
Miguel is struggling to walk, hunched over and limping forward despite his injuries. He looks so much smaller than what you are used to. There's blood dripping down his face and ugly red gashes ripping into his protective suit where one arm is clutching to the gaping raw wound.
Parting your mouth, you desperately try to warn him and scream that he needs to run. But the noise is garbled and choked. Nothing remotely close to a word comes out of your mouth. Even if it did, it wouldn’t have helped.
Miguel is too distracted by the sight of you. Too focused on reaching you that he barely registers the sight of his other self standing beside you, and then it’s too late.
It happens so fast, your eyes aren’t able to register it. One second his cosmic Doppelgänger is beside you. The next he is gone.
He leaps into the air with a ferocity that chills your bones. His claws slashes through the air and he pounces on Miguel with the entirety of his body weight.
Miguel doesn’t stand a chance. He’s already wounded and weakened. There’s been no time to heal. He’s still heavily bleeding from his abdomen and the bone-deep wounds where the damage meant for you had torn through him instead.
His body lands on the floor with a painful heavy thud. Even from this distance, you can hear the air rush out of his lungs with a pained and choked wheeze.
“Do you know what you have done?” His voice drips with venom as he fists his hand into Miguel’s hair, yanking his head upwards, level with his. “Why couldn’t you just have left her alone?”
Miguel snarls with an ugly grimace as he tries to wrangle himself free to no avail, pinned as he is on the ground. He meets the man’s stare without cowering even as he is unable to stand upright, wounded and bleeding out.
“The fuck are you on about?” Miguel spits out. He surges forward, ramming his forehead into the other man.
The blow of it sends the Doppelgänger reeling back. But it doesn’t last. He snarls in anger before he lunges forward, grabbing for Miguel’s head to slam it back down into the ground.
All you can do is helplessly watch the scene unfold before you.
“You still don’t get it do you?” he growls, raising his arm in the air to deliver another forceful blow.
There’s a nauseating bone-crushing sound that makes you sick to your stomach when his fist connects to Miguel’s jaw.
“You should never have gone to her world. You didn’t belong!”
He clasps around Miguel’s throat in a painfully hard hold, pinning him there against the ground.
Miguel’s tanned skin bleeds white around the dented imprints of that talon grip, cutting off blood circulation until you’re sure he can no longer breathe.
“She died because of you!”
The words make Miguel freeze. The whole of his back stiffening.
A fisted hand hammers down on Miguel’s face and you squeeze your eyes shut before you see it connect. All you hear behind your closed eyelids is a sickening crack that you know means something is broken.
Silence follows, and you barely dare to squint your eyes open, terrified of what you will see. Even though you’re bracing yourself, you’re still not prepared at the sight that greets you.
Miguel's body is slumped and motionless on the ground. The other him towers over his defeated form. There’s an eerie calm to his movements as he gets up and steps back.
On the ground, Miguel looks so much smaller than when he's lying in bed next to you under the covers and your heart beats painfully fast in your chest, unable to intervene.
The other man raises one leg above Miguel’s still form, poised like a sledge-hammer and holds there.
His foot comes down, delivering a shattering stomp that reverberates through the space. You swear you can feel the suspended webs holding you, shake and tremble against your skin from the after shock.
The air thins in your lungs. Hot, wet tears spill down your cheeks. For a long and dreadful second, you’re not sure if Miguel is still alive.
Then you hear a tiny, pained whimper, from the ground.
You don’t know what you feel anymore. Fear. Sadness. Anger. Relief. Everything inside you is drawn in a tight knot and aches at the pitiful sound of how much pain Miguel must be in. But there’s also the tiniest of hope, because as doomed as this all may seem, at the very least he’s still alive.
That's all you care about right now.
In front of you, his other self cocks his head to the side. He narrows his eyes as he looks down at the defenseless body on the ground with a disdain that you've never seen on those features before.
“You intervened with the canon when you jumped into her dimension. Do you understand?” he says with a quiet barely contained anger. “The universe keeps trying to kill her, because you, an anomaly, entered into the picture and altered the course of her life."
Something sharp protrudes from the back of his arms, as he speaks.
"But I can make it right," he says and you see the sharp long appendages extend from both sides of his upper arms.
You stare at them with a growing fear, as they grow sharp and menacing, into blades that glow ominously red.
No. Nononono.
This can't be happening. This can't be real.
You wrench against the restraints around your limbs and pain sears through every single cell of your body. But right now it doesn't matter. You have to move. Because you know what’s going to happen if you don’t.
"I can save her. If you die, she gets to live. All you need to do is stay down,” he says.
To your horror Miguel does. Miguel doesn’t move. Doesn’t resist. Doesn’t fight back. The tight tension in his muscles go slack, and his arms drop at his sides.
The most stubborn man in the universe has stopped fighting. He’s given up.
That man is going to kill Miguel. You can’t stay still and let it happen. You have to move. God, please please, you need to–
“I have to do this to keep her safe,” the Doppelgänger says, “You want that too. It’s all we ever wanted.”
Pain tears at the seams of your skin, sharp and fractured like broken shards and glass splitting through your skull until you’re sure you are going to vomit. You ignore it.
In front of you, he raises his arm above Miguel’s head until it looms over him like a reaper's scythe.
Ripping through the last of the hindrance holding you down, adrenaline and pain mix into a sickening concoction until you lose sense of your surroundings.
It's only a few feet away.
You can’t stop, even if it hurts. Can’t stop even though your vision flickers white with bright dotted spots. Can’t stop, because if you do– you’ll lose him.
You leap, throwing yourself in front of Miguel's slumped form on the floor.
Everything hurts. Pain sears through your insides, scraping every inch of our flesh. It burns and crackles in the marrow of your bones.
You spread your arms out in an attempt to make yourself bigger, trying to shield as much of your Miguel as you are physically capable of.
“Nena…” the man above stares down at you, wide-eyed and frozen.
He's stopped, the sharp blade protruding from his arm suspended inches from your face.
“Cielo! Move,” Miguel barks from under you.
“No!”
There’s no fear in this moment as you say the word. Even with the honed blade looming over your head. Even though all it’d take is one swift downward movement to end it all, you’ve never felt surer of your safety.
Because this close, you can see it now.
This other Miguel, different as he may be, is still Miguel. If there’s one thing you learnt in these last few months it's that more than anything, no matter how hard-headed and wrong he might go about it in his methods. This man will always choose your safety over everything else. Your survival. Your life.
That’s why Lyla still hasn’t overridden her safety protocol. Because your life is not in danger, not by his hands.
If he has to go through you to get to Miguel… He wouldn’t. You can tell that much.
And if your life is the only shield you have to offer the man you love, then you’d gladly lay it down under the guillotine.
“I won’t let you lay another finger on him,” you say as you stare up at the other Miguel defiantly. “Not as long as I’m alive.”
The man narrows his eyes, seething with an anger that radiates from every inch of his body as he spits out the syllables.
“He is killing you.”
His lips quiver, hands trembling as he looks down at you. You recognize that expression. It's the same one Miguel held when he was looming over you, vowing to eliminate the Avengers in order to protect you.
The same pain in his eyes, whenever he fears for your survival... because he's already lost you once.
That's what this is...
You see this for what it is now.
Despite the fact that he’s a stranger, in spite of all the differences, you see him for who he is. The anger, the blame on his own other self, on your Miguel. The haunting guilt he has towards himself.
When he says, ‘he,’ he's not just referring to the man behind you. He's talking about himself.
Kneeling upwards, you move towards this man, ignoring the burning pain that shudders through your trembling arms as you reach up to cup those all too familiar sharp cheeks. He flinches at the touch, as if he didn’t expect it.
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. You didn’t kill me,” you tell him.
His eyes widen and he turns his face the tiniest fraction into the palm of your hand, chasing after your touch.
“Maybe you and him are the reason the universe tries to kill me. But I’m still glad I was able to meet you."
At your words, you can see the determination in his eyes waver. The way something in him cracks open and falls apart at your words.
"I'm sorry," he says, and the words bleed with guilt. "I'm so sorry. It's all my fault."
“It's not your fault," you tell him again. "It’s okay, Miguel, I don't blame you. Even with all the near deaths and the end of the world, meeting you is the best thing that happened to me."
He’s not your Miguel. You know that. But despite everything that preceded this moment, your heart still hurts for this man.
All you know is that you want to make him feel better. You just want to make his hurt a little bit less painful.
“If it was my choice. If it were for me to decide. I would still want us to meet. I’m going to choose that every time. And I think that’s what she would’ve done too."
A glossy wetness shines over his scarlet eyes that threatens to spill and you ache for him.
Even if the man in front of you is not your Miguel. He’s still Miguel.
You will always recognize him, not in the identical physical features of his face. Not the stubborn angle of his ridiculously sharp jaw. Nor his obscenely large build.
No. It’s in the sadness of his eyes. The longing that he holds for you whenever he looks at you. The love you can plainly see there, no matter how hard he tries to hide it from you.
You are the woman he loves above all else. In every universe.
You can see that now.
“I think that’s what I’d always choose, Miguel. There are many versions of me but I know that every me will love every you in every universe if given the chance.”
His shoulders slump, the burning anger in him dims as his chest visibly deflates in front of you. Then he stands there, staring down at you with that aching defeat etched into the corners of his weary eyes.
“If I let you go,” he starts, voice so quiet it almost sounds like a whisper. “Where would you go from here?”
You stop to consider his question.
If you leave here with Miguel, your life as you know it is never going to be the same.
The comforts of your everyday life in New York will be lost. No more Netflix, or fancy lemony cupcakes, or the barista that knows your order before you open your mouth.
You will never know what your life will look like from one day to the next. What the world itself is going to be, jumping from one foreign universe to another. That should be terrifying to you.
But somehow it isn't.
What's scary is the thought of going back to the life you had without Miguel there. The life that was so painfully mundane and ordinary that you had no moments of importance worth remembering seconds before falling to your death. The life you spent that was trapped in the machinery of habit, without a speck of color and excitement in your life.
As confusing and downright scary every day has been since you met him, you’ve never felt more alive. Never felt safer than when Miguel is by your side. You wouldn't give it up for anything.
In your mind, there’s only one choice you want to make.
“I am going to leave my dimension with him,” you say. “The world won't have to end and we’d be together.”
He shakes his head, disbelieving. Those sad eyes, still pinned on yours.
“No matter where you run to, it would start up all over again," he says, biting down on his bottom lip with worry. "The universe will eventually try to erase you because it thinks you're an anomaly. That would be the rest of your life, running from dimension to dimension.”
He throws a look behind you where Miguel is lying on the ground, the disdain and anger coming to life again, before he continues. “If he dies, if I kill him, then that connection is severed, you could go back to your normal life.”
You turn behind to look at your Miguel. He has an expression on his face that mirrors his other self. One of defeat and sadness and disbelief.
“I don’t want that. I don’t want a life he’s not a part of.” You turn back to the other him, squarely meeting his eyes. “Please.”
Other Miguel looks like his world is ending as he looks at you. For the longest moment he doesn't say anything, and you aren't sure what his answer is going to be or what he is going to do. If he's going to hold you here against your will and kill Miguel despite your pleas.
Then he drops his gaze to the floor and you can see that he’s holding back tears.
“Go,” he whispers.
He steps back from you, retreating step by step to widen the physical distance between yourself and him, and turns away with his back towards you.
You immediately scramble towards your Miguel, arms reaching for him. It’s not graceful, your limbs still hurt and your movements are clumsy. But you try to ignore it so you can loop Miguel’s arm over your shoulder and try to haul him up on his feet.
Predictably, Miguel is already starting to protest and scold you, “Cielo, you can’t–”
“Not now, Miguel,” you cut him off, and for once he listens.
His mouth presses into a firm line as he strains to stand upright, trying not to lean on you for support to get up, but failing to do so, leg buckling under his own weight.
Your hand shoots out around his waist to hold him steady, the slick blood from his wounds painting your fingers a bright red. You swallow down the worry, prioritizing getting away above all else for now.
“Let’s go,” you tell him, and he gives you a curt, almost compliant nod as the two of you move together with clumsy steps and rely on each other for support.
Behind you, the other Miguel is still standing turned away from you. You stare at his wide back as you walk away.
With each step that broadness looks smaller and smaller in the distance. The lonely and grief-struck silhouette of another version of the man that you love, that so clearly loves you, disappears out of sight as you leave him behind.
Miguel is quiet. He won’t look you in the eye as both of you try to hobble your way to the corridor you had landed in when you first came to this dimension.
It takes you both an eternity. It's nothing short of a miracle Miguel is still alive and even though the toxin is wearing off in your system, you still feel sore. Every muscle in your body is cramping, worse than any time of the month you’ve had to endure so far in your life.
You gain an entirely new appreciation of what Wong must’ve gone through and if there is a way to send interdimensional gift baskets, you remind yourself you should get one for him as an apology.
“This should be safe enough,” Miguel tells you as you reach the secluded space.
You both slump down to the ground, catching your breath with your backs leaning against the wall behind to hold you upright.
“Are you okay?” you ask him, which is a silly question for a man that probably has at least half a dozen broken ribs, internal bleeding, and a fractured jaw from the looks of it.
Despite all those bodily injuries though, Miguel is acting unbothered.
“Yeah, give me a minute and I’ll get us out of here.”
He wastes no time as he reaches over for your wrist and fiddles with the dials on your watch,
A hologram appears above, but there’s no sighting of Lyla. He hasn’t summoned her and as far as you can see it’s all just gibberish coding that he’s inputting. You have no idea what he’s doing but if you had to take a guess, it looks like he’s manually inserting the programming of the next jump to ensure it’s the right location this time.
He’s quiet and concentrated like always, eyebrows furrowed, as he works. Then out of nowhere, without looking up from what he’s doing, he speaks.
“What do you want to do once you get out of here?”
"Sleep,” is your immediate answer and Miguel laughs quietly at that as you continue. “Recover, just... rest, for a while, I guess"
"Sounds nice.” He shuts down the illuminated screen, presumably already done.
Then he’s quiet for a long moment, just sitting there next to you.
“...and after that?” he asks, breaking the silence.
“I guess since I’m going to be traveling different dimensions now for the rest of my life, I’d want to go to all the cool places? Like one where there’s talking raccoons. Or a dimension where we all have sausages for fingers, or one where all life forms are rock based.”
He pays close attention to you, face resting in the palm of his hand, as you tell him of these made up otherworldly dimensions.
“If we happen to jump into another dimension that’s similar to my old one I wouldn’t turn down Beyoncé tickets, provided Lyla could get them or we could just have her hack into restaurant booking systems and get us into all the exclusive places.”
There’s a small smile on his face as you speak, and your chest feels warm at the sight of it. Somehow after the day you have had, barely escaping the end of the world, going through an assassination attempt by the Avengers, being ambushed by another version of Miguel, you both made it through.
That tiny smile of his feels like a prize at the finishing line.
You slide your fingers across the space between you, until you find his knuckles, interlacing his fingers with yours.
"Anything would be okay, really. As long as I get to be with you," you tell him.
His smile turns wistful, as he nods back at you, squeezing your fingers back between his. “Yeah, that would be nice.”
There’s a lingering moment that you share in the comfortable silence. It’s unlike him. The Miguel you know would have wanted to make the jump five minutes ago, but you figure he must be tired.
He’s been shot at, thrown off buildings and beaten half to death by his own Doppelgänger today. He’s more than earned a minute or two of rest.
His head tips up staring into the moody blue ceiling above. “I love you,” he says.
It’s sudden and a bit out of nowhere but your face tingles. Warmth fills your chest until there's so much of it you're not sure you can contain it inside you. Then he continues.
“If there was any doubt. I love you, this you. Even if I find you to be absolutely batshit insane sometimes.”
You can’t help the silly grin tugging at your lips. The dopey feeling that buzzes bright in your veins. You feel slightly lightheaded and you aren’t sure if it’s a side effect of the toxins or just his words.
“Miguel, I lov–” you start, but he cuts you off.
“I know,” he says, turning his gaze to you, as he squeezes your hand gently in his. “You don’t have to say anything. Let’s just stay here for a while. Just like this.”
He doesn’t say anything after that.
The two of you stay like that in the moody darkness, his thumb smoothing over the front of your hand in soothing motions, as he looks down at you like he doesn’t want to take his eyes off of you. It’s a while longer still, before finally Miguel seems ready. He takes your hand that he’s holding and brings it close.
“Lyla,” he summons. “Take us to the next location.”
At the command, there's a bright burst of strobed colored lights surrounding you. It’s blinding your vision as it throws you into motion even as you’re sitting still.
Then before you know it they fade into a bright sterile whiteness. You wait for your surroundings to reform. To see a skyline and buildings and city lights.
But there’s nothing.
“Wait, where are we?” you ask.
Everything is blank and white and endless here. Empty space as far as the eye can see. Dread seizes you. You’re in the void again.
Why are you here?
How… Is the watch broken? Did the two of you fail? But it worked before. You shouldn’t be here, how–fuck, your vision starts to flatten. The ground underneath you is unsteady. Everything blurs. You can’t breathe.
“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” Miguel says, taking your hand in his as he squeezes down. “I sent us here.”
He says it so casually, your brain doesn't quite register the meaning. What does he mean he sent you here? On purpose, why would he–
“What do you mean? I don’t understand, Miguel, why would you–”
He hushes you soothingly. One hand comes to cup the back of your head, stopping you mid-sentence. “You’re not going to stay here. We’re just doing a drop off.”
“Miguel, what–”
He leans down, forehead pressing intimately against yours, there’s a sad smile on his face as he meets your eyes. They’re soft and gentle, and your chest squeezes painfully tight just looking at him.
“I already told you, didn't I?” he tells you, both hands coming to cup your cheeks. “I’m not going to let you die.”
Without missing a beat, he’s already moving on before you even have a chance to retort.
“Lyla,” he calls, and you hear the ping from your wrist. Can feel the slight vibration as the hologram takes form. “Run the updated protocol."
There’s a bright glow that forms all around you. Bright light crackles at the edges of your vision and there’s a delayed reaction in your brain as you try to process everything that’s happening around you.
He lets you go, taking a step back. “I love you, Cielito. I will always love you.”
Shit! He wouldn’t. Why?
“Take her home for me,” he orders.
You step forward trying to grab hold of him but it’s already too late. Your fingers grasp for him, but it sinks into nothingness, Miguel is already gone and so are you.
You find yourself inside a small studio apartment.
There’s no one besides you.
There’s a sole window sill where the view of New York City is entirely obscured by the neighboring building and its ugly brick wall. Not an inch of the skyline is visible.
You’re surrounded by clutter and second hand furniture that is all too familiar. A cheap IKEA Ingatorp dining table. Laundry still piled up on the bed. Dirty dishes stacked up in a tower over the sink.
You know this place.
You’re home.
Dedication & Credits: To my favorite moose @thirstworldproblemss. Thank you as always for listen to my insane ramblings and machinations, even though you literally do not even go here.
To @guruan who I have been dying to share this chapter with for so long! Thank you for all the amazing art, thank you for your help looking through dialogues to make sure the Spanish used reads right. Thank you for crying about this man with me.
And last but not least big hug loves and smooches to @djarinsbeskar who gave this a second pair of eyes in the eleventh minute when I was freaking out about the copious use of Doppelganger, her advice was invaluable to me and without her I probably would've put this on ice over the weekend. Please send her all the loves! cause she is amazing and beautiful and gorgeous. Also do you know that she has her DEBUT NOVEL SENSUAL SUMMONING coming out soon? please check it out and sign up to her newsletter.
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