Zia had been lingering about the storage rooms in the large multi story building, tossing the crystal piece back and forth in her hands. She had it, now she just needed Cassandra to stop holding the channel closed. She reasoned she would know when it happened and so had been lurking on that floor in the days since they retrieved the crystal from Patient Zero, and that’s when it hit her. Vivid hallucinations, feelings, smells, sounds, sensations, all in one cluster.

It felt like something had been holding back these memories, and then they arrived all at once. Visions of a future, or at least, she had the distinct idea it had been a future. The Negaverse had won, Luxor was there…

She felt dizzy and staggered back against the wall, sinking down as she tried to unpack several layers of sensory overload.

She remembered being cut, but not dying. She remembered the woman coming to her home and being afraid of her. She remembered being taken and this time, she did die. She didn’t remember glory or carnage, as usually comes with war. Her demise had been slow suffocation by the banality of the suburban lifestyle she had always been trained to pursue, a lifestyle she thought she had shunned when she broke away to go play host to Zirconia.

She lingered there in the hallway, holding her head with complete stillness and still not hardly comprehending what was happening, her frozen form shifting only when tears started freely streaming down her face.

Telling Luxor to give up the carnival.

Threatening Kairatos when he showed up for help.

Cowering in Pyrite’s presence.

Being weak, being selfish, being used, being scared, it was all there, all at once. It didn’t come in a fully flowing timeline, it all garbled and overlapped like someone had been collecting them to dump on her in a single moment, and it incapacitated her there in the hallway outside the storage room. Stuck, unable to move, and unable to stop bearing witness to all of the awfulness that she would do and be done to her.

When it finally released her, she slumped forward, and took a solid moment to push herself up. She nearly collapsed again as an ugly noise of grief gasped and croaked its way out with more tears. It couldn’t be real, but it felt real. So real, and it had such a profound physical and mental effect on her she wasn’t she what it had been, real or not. All she knew was she needed to see someone and reconfirm their existence. She remembered Luxor the best, but Kairatos was closer, and the thought of him left an odd sense of absence in her chest, an ache she thought would make her double over.

She stumbled to her feet and went for the elevator. She wasn’t able to break into a run, but there was urgency threaded through every movement.

The way the elevator ding echoed through the space suddenly shot a strange feeling of wariness down her spine, and she became acutely aware of how deserted this section of the building was. A lot of it was outside of business hours. It was a multizoned building and not entirely residential. Caroline rented a lot of the amenities.

It was in the late hours of the night, and in a way it had never bothered her before, she could feel the stillness of the place as the elevator moved up floors, too soon for her tastes. Being alone here had never bothered her, not ever. Her mom’s company leased out the majority of the building. It was a nouveau riche palace and she was the goddamn princess. She reveled in being alone in the halls, they were the closest thing to having legitimate territory and lordship that existed in the modern day.

It was jarring to not. To feel weak and exposed as she stared at the numbers on the elevator, urging it to go faster. She felt like time had warped specifically to defy her, since she could have sworn the numbers slowed if only for a fraction of a second out of spite. It was a weird brand of fear, a sensation she loathed as it crippled her and was so starkly embarrassed by she would never admit. This was irrational, and as badly as it fueled her actions no one needed to know it had happened. She was a child who knew ghosts didn't exist, but wanted to quickly exit the haunted house nonetheless.

Another wave of realization in the silence came as she dwelled on her future, or at least a future.

”What a terrible fate, dying quietly and a letdown to everyone who ever came to you.”

Zia’s chest tightened as she whirled around. The voice almost purred at her.

“Hello?”

”We could have been something, the two of us, together.”

And in that moment she could almost see Zirconia in the elevator with her. At least briefly, and then she was gone. “We were never going to be any… thi…”

Zia trailed off, suddenly feeling stupid and paranoid. Zirconia, the real Zirconia, had gone dormant years ago. Her only evidence of ever having existed were the fact Zia could use her powers. She shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. The lack of sleep was making her lose her mind, she realized. Once she found Xanthus, she would get a little perspective. He would be there, even if grumpy, and everything would be okay.

Even though her face was splotchy and tear streaked and she had a killer migraine. Migraines were survivable, though. They had become a much more frequent reality since the nightmares started. Probably just her defense mechanism to losing so much sleep. But when the ding sounded announcing her arrival on the penthouse floor, she exhaled with euphoric relief. The home stretch, and she could shed this paranoia and never speak of it again.

“Xan?” She called out before she even got to the door, wondering if he was home or if he had gone out on patrol. But as she turned the door handle, she stumbled, her migraine coming on in a sudden and debilitating wave.

She grit her teeth and pressed forward, doing her best to shake it off as she walked in.

“Hey, Xa—“

The rest of his name caught in her throat before she could even gain appropriate volume, and the action of putting weight on her forward foot was interrupted in a way that made her stumble and grab the wall for support.

”Do you want to change your fate?”

And Zia slumped to the floor, unconscious as she was pulled back within her own mind.