"What do you remember? About what happened between Captain Krieg and your father?"
"Dusk remembers it better. To be completely honest with you, I still don't think she's fully recovered from it."
Puffed, sore eyes stared at the two brawling men. Dusk rubbed her eyes to try and clear her vision, watching her father stabbed by an unusual projectile.
"Lorelei! GO!" her father barked at their mother, planting his boot firmly into the bad man's chest and kicking off. "ALALA systems, MAXIMUM CHARGE!"
Dusk squirmed in her mother's' tight embrace, as Dawn continued to bawl beside her. She wanted to help her father, her heart rate intensifying when she saw the blood seeping out of the crack in his visor, and the puncture wound in his chest.
He seemed to notice her, as he nodded his head. "Dawn. Dusk. Don't make the same mistakes your father did."
She watched as his suit unnaturally vibrated, his movements were stuttered, like a frame by frame slideshow but way faster. A burst of golden energy erupted from the cracks in his suit, staggering the bad man long enough for their father to walk over.
He wrapped his gigantic arms around the three of them. "I love you. Lily... do it now!"
In the same motion that had led to his hug, their father had slid the two girls and their mother on their backs across the flawless metal surface into the shining green portal behind them. Dusk reached out, screaming at the top of her lungs.
"DADDY!"
"Sis? SIS!"
The vision of the strange office they had arrived in molded on itself in a vortex, shaping into the familiar location of the Simulation room. Dusk stood beside Dawn, dressed in their finest dresses. Several men clad in the same armor as their father stood behind a lone man with a camera drone looming in front of him.
Their mother was there, with Uncle Jorge and Aunt Katherine on either side of her. The girls glanced at each other in confusion, as a light fizzled just behind them. Dusk's eyes ran with tears as she reached up towards the hologram behind them. She didn't know it at the time, all she had seen was a perfect rendition of her father.
"Face the camera, kiddies." the man with the drone said calmly. "It'll be over soon. If we're going to make a statue for you and your dad, we need you guys to cooperate."
"Dad?!" Dusk stood up, her hands fazing through the hologram, but to no avail.
She could hear her mother's cries behind her, followed by a pair of heavy footfalls. Dusk turned back to see the looming presence of Uncle Jorge above them.
"I know you're hurtin' love." He crouched down, his helmet disassembling. "We're making a gift. For you and the future generations that he's helped."
"Why won't he talk to me? Pick me up?" Dusk asked, her bottom lip trembling. "Daddy?!"
Uncle Jorge shook his head, and his usually stern face softened as he pulled Dusk in for a close hug. "That's a hologram, love. It's not really your father."
"I don't mean to sound impatient, but I really have a time crun-"
"They've just lost their father." Jorge hissed, turning to face the man. "-and you dangle some hologram in front of them and expect them NOT to want to interact with him? You have the hologram, take a picture with me posing with the girls, when they've calmed, and then just super impose him into your blueprints."
"Ms. Harlowe. Is your sister okay? "
"You're the doctor, sir. I'm just a teenager with a dream of becoming a teacher, not a therapist."
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Dusk gasped as her sister's incessant tugging on her braided ponytail brought her back into reality. She stared at the mirror at the corner of the therapist's office. Her deep green eyes stared back at her, with a single lock of her snow white hair fluttering like a pendulum between her eyes.
Brushing it out of the way, she glanced over at her twin, technically 'younger' sister Dawn. Her eyes met with Dawn's deep blue eyes, as they filled with tears again. Dawn's began to well up also, leaning forward and hugging her sister tightly.
It had been eleven years since their father sacrificed himself to defeat the evil Daniel Krieg. As such, the twins had been recommended to seek help from a therapist, Doctor Earl Bogart, to help them reconcile the pain and move on with their lives.
"What more is there to tell you?" Dusk said, giving a sideways glance at Earl. "We've been coming to you for eleven years, you know every bit of the story that we know."
"True as that may be, Dusk." Earl sighed, readjusting his tiny spectacles down his crooked nose, the result of an unexpected outburst a few months prior. "It has become increasingly more clear that neither of you have exactly healed from the event."
"What did you expect?" Dusk scoffed. "We essentially watched our father die, and then that very same day, were asked to sit pretty in front of a hologram of him for a fucking statue."
"In fairness." Dawn piped up, always the optimist. "The statue was to commemorate him, and to remind us that he was a hero."
"You can keep shoveling that bullshit story as much as you want." Dusk shrugged her sister off. "The point remains that a statue doesn't exactly bring him back. They can call it a 'gift', I call it a 'sick reminder' that Dad is dead."
"If I may?" Dr. Bogart cleared his throat, combing his two sided full mustache with a hand. "Your father was a noble hero. The statue was in fact made as a reminder. Not that he had died, but that his actions were for you, your sister, and the future of Humanity and it's allies."
"That still doesn't help the feeling I suffered!" Dusk stood, fists clenched, Dr. Bogart flinching. "Do you have any idea what it was like; to stare at a unresponsive, digital version of your father? Calling for a hug like he used to give you? To be ignored because you didn't realize it was a goddamn machine?!"
"Dusk." Dawn stood, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Dr. Bogart didn't kill Dad. I'm so, so sorry they did this to us, but the truth is everyone has been shaken up by Dad's death, even to this day."
"Yes, the statue was poorly timed. You remember the explanation Mom gave us."
" ' They wanted to capture you two as kids, to add the sense of his willingness to protect the innocent. ' " the twins spoke in unison, as if rehearsed.
"I still feel like this isn't entirely about the statue." Dr. Bogart mused, easing up as the twins sat back down on the couch. "Dusk, I cannot help you heal if you do not tell me what's on your mind."
Dusk relaxed her shoulders, as she placed her hands in her lap. She stared down at the gap between her clasped hands, as her vision swirled back to the scene just before he hugged them and sent them sliding on the floor.
The bad man had disappeared like a black, inky cloud. Kind of like an evil spirit, a ghost. He had stabbed their father with something that, for once in their time ever witnessing their father harmed, caused him to bleed. She watched as the crimson fluid of her father's blood splattered onto the floor in front of them.
"Lorelei! GO!" he barked once more, only this time, she recalled the bad man's head turning to face her.
A face they had all once trusted beyond measure, and all she could see in Daniel's eyes were evil incarnate, twisted portals into a hell that she didn't want to think about... and both of them were staring right at her. Daniel became the cloud again, attempting to approach them, about the time their father's armor pulsed that golden light.
The black, inky cloud faded and the evil man recoiled from it. When she returned her focus towards her father, who knelt down to hug them, she could see in the crack of his visor. His blue eyes, similar to Dawn's, looked at her with a sense of pride, but also immense sadness. Thinking back on it, her father hadn't been his usual stoic self, he was sad, as if he knew this was going to happen.
When they slid along the floor, she saw that his back was to them, but his arms were splayed wide, like he was accepting Death. When Daniel tried to fling a projectile at them, her Dad caught it and threw it back to it's sender. In a weird shimmer of movement, however, his fists were at his side, with his back to her, but his head tilted to face them over his shoulder.
"Forget about me." she could have sworn she heard him say, though she always chalked it up to her mind forcing her to suppress it.
Tears streamed down her cheeks again, the droplets splashing against her wrists. She hunched forward, as the jerking sensation deep within her took over. She wrapped her arms around her knees, burying her face in between the knees.
"He asked us to forget about him." she cried. "Or at least, I think that's what he said."
"This is new." Bogart leaned forward, interest peaked. "Progress. Why do you think he would say such a thing?"
"I got a look at his face, just before he sent my sister, my mother, and I through the portal. It was a face of sadness and acceptance." Dusk paused for a moment, her tears running down her jeans. "He knew he was going to die. He was planning on it."
"Dusk?" Dawn asked, as she rested her head on her sister's shoulder. "He would have never asked such a thing. He loved us too much for that."
Dr. Bogart leaned back in his chair as he pondered what was said. "Perhaps, in asking you to forget about him, he hoped to ease your mind?"
"No." a familiar voice called from behind the two. They didn't need to turn to look to know it was their mother, Lorelei Harlowe.
"If what Dusk says is true, than it was very much in Blaine's nature." she said, gently taking a seat between the sisters, outside of her armor but instead clad in her officer's uniform. "Blaine never knew his father when he was their age, at the time. The only man that he was 'told' was his father, he ended up going on a journey to seek him out. That was how Blaine got 'conscripted' into the Spartan program."
"So you suggest that, he feared that they would seek similar pursuits? To go on some epic quest to find him, when in all reality he'll have long passed?"
Lorelei's arms gently pulled her daughters closer, as she bowed her head. "Sadly, if I know him as well as I like to think I do... yes."
Dusk and Dawn's eyes widened as they turned to face their mother. "He wouldn't have asked you to forget because he didn't love you two. There was no question how much he loved you. The damn fool loved you both so much he refused to hold either of you because he was afraid he would break you."
"He gathered an entire armada of past allies and friends together, just to run diversion while he and I came to rescue you both. He pulled every favor he ever earned in his entire lifetime, just to make sure you both were safe."
"He knew what it meant to grow up without a father, and so I firmly believe he wanted you not to 'forget' him, but to forget what happened to him."
"-but why?" Dusk asked. "Why did it seem like he accepted his death? Why did he just leave us?"
"Daniel was a sneaky, clever weasel of a man. If your father didn't completely ensure his demise, he knew that monster would come for you two, and without your father to defend you, he feared what would happen."
"I assume the hour is up. I'm sorry that we've run over." Lorelei said hurriedly as she stood.
"No no." Dr. Bogart held up a hand. "Mr. Harlowe was a hero to me, much like everyone else. I do feel like we've made some good practice today, though. I look forward to seeing you two again next week, in hopes that we may finally begin to heal, yes?"
Last edited by Shad0wChas3r on February 4th 2019, 3:03 pm; edited 3 times in total