[ A response to the future self prompt. ]

June 2019

The war has been raging on for years now. She is part of it for seven, seven this November, and she has grown far from that young cocky page. She is a knight now, far wiser than her younger self. More practiced, more knowledgable, she is part of something that transcends time and space itself. She has watched leaders rise and fall, watched as the city explodes around them, and somehow she has survived despite all of that. Not all were so lucky. She stretches out from under Thanos' arms and slides from the couch. Alex walks around the studio apartment in the nude, mostly because she knows Thanos likes it, and because she can't be bothered to find pants.

The large burn scar has turned into a wonderful piece of artwork over the years. The nerves never grew back, so having someone stick a needle in a thousand times over was nothing. It depicts a great wind dragon fighting off the darkness with wind and strength. A testament to a long ago ordeal that she only half remembers.

The rest of her body is riddled with scars, scraps and bruises, some fading, some fresh. She pulls her long hair into a pony tail as she flicks through her phone. It's a Saturday, but her boss could have called her in to work overtime. Her studio's game is due out in November after all, but they're making good time and are ahead of schedule. No messages from her boss signals a day of lounging around until dusk.

She walks over to the window and stares out briefly. When the war got bad, it started to spread out of Destiny City. It wasn't just driven by Chaos; Order had had their own hand in the whole thing. They'd tried to kill the Negaverse by suffocating it. But Chaos was everywhere but that point. It was like trying to go after an infestation of ants one ant at a time.

They started burning buildings with even the hint of Chaos energy.

A lot of people died. A lot of innocents died.

Officials called it faulty gas lines, or terrorists, or robberies. People slowly started abandoning the inner city and migrated into the suburbs to avoid the destruction. Some even left entirely. Everyone in the know knew what it was though. Oh, they denied it of course. Both sides denied any fault of it. How could Order possibly rain so much destruction down, when it was Chaos who was the infestation to snuff out? Chaos would never destroy their own city; it was those of Order who held no idea of consequence.

It was somewhere around year 4 when Alex took a stand. She separated herself from either side and focused entirely on protecting the city. It made her a lot of enemies, but she'd found incredibly strong bonds in other places.

"Mmm musing again, love?" Thanos drapes his arms over her, teasing her gently. She giggles and smacks his hands away. Her face sombers up after a moment. Thanos is one of those strong bonds she'd found. Aligned with no one but her, he fights not with magic or a fancy get up, but a damaskan steel b*****d sword and a kevlar vest he stole from a raided police station. He is one of the very few who know that Alex is Andronicus and vice versa, and one of the even fewer who have seen and been inside her Wonder.

(A certain senshi of treachery frequents her Wonder and mirrors as well.)

She designs video games. He puts in wiring and fuseboxes for a living. They're incredibly close knit, and neigh inseparable on the battle field. Alex pecks his cheek and looks out at the city. It's calm this morning, a slight haze from the fires of the last battle curling around the buildings.

She tells him no, just looking on her city and wondering how long it will continue to survive. He chuckles in her ear and comments that it has lasted this long, why shouldn't it continue to survive. She rolls her eyes and turns to him.

"The city is not impervious. The war is out of hand, and all we can do is play damage control," she says with a sigh. He silences her then, as she starts to rant on about the war, and the morning blissfully falls away.

The Code's idea of balance was not what everyone thought. Bring balance to the Force, and it shall end all suffering, it had said. But those skeptical of a talking parchment were right to be. They tried for balance, they even succeeded. What they achieved was not the happy ending the knights thought it would be. It is no end, it is no victory. It is only an unending struggle for dominance that no one can win.

For Order cannot exist without Chaos, and Chaos cannot exist without Order.

Alex learned this long ago, before the heavy fighting started. She understood it and resolved herself to it.

She has been a part of this war for seven long years now. She has bled, she has cried, she has felt loss in those seven years. She knows it will never end. She will be in this war until the day she dies, only to be brought back once again some thousands of years later to fight it again. There is no end, there is no peace. There is just two sides in a stalemate.

This is her future and she grimly accepts it.

WC: 923