A Ghost of a Chance Chapter 7 — Dualities A Comics Retcon Story by Maggie Finson

Wherever I was it was dark. And cold, so cold I couldn’t even shiver. Both were strange things to be hit with since I had been brought back from the dead. Darkness didn’t hinder my vision at all, and I hadn’t felt the cold either.

Which told me that whatever was going on wasn’t at all normal. Or at least the roller coaster ride I now considered to be normal for me lately, anyway.

The darkness began to lift, literally, like a curtain in a theater and I started wishing it had just stayed down and keeping me from seeing the show.

“I told you that you would come to me, Diana Spectre.” A deep, rumbling voice filled with gloating and anticipation interrupted my reluctant look at my surroundings. I turned to see the figure I most hated in the world standing easily and without a care in the world — whichever world we were in, anyway at the end of a long hallway looking down it at me.

“I’d prefer a phone call.” I told the dark cloaked figure. “I have caller ID and could ignore your calls.”

He laughed and shook his head. “That is precisely the reason I’ve called you this way, my dear. I rule the dead, and you are one of them, after all. Why do you persist in denying that to yourself?”

“Because I refuse to allow someone, something like you to make my decisions for me.” I shrugged and moved a bit to the side as something brushed my arm, sending chills into places I’d never known I had. “Besides, I answer to a power greater than you’ll ever manage to be. So if this is a job offer, sorry, not interested, interview is finished, and I’ll be leaving now.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Diana.” He shrugged. I called you, only I can return you to the world of mortals. You can’t leave until I allow it.”

“Oh, you think so?” I actually managed a grin, if the rictus I felt my mouth moving into could be counted as that. Actually, it was more of a silent snarl. “I can tell that you aren’t dead, Necromancer. As such you qualify for my personal attentions just like any other vicious criminal.”

He did flinch a little as I moved forward to reach him, but there was something very wrong with all this. Alarm bells went off and I pulled back just as something — a vortex of force that threatened to suck me not only into its maw, but right into the evil suckers outstretched hands.

“Not that easy.” I told him while drawing back another bit, watching behind me for more surprises. Good thing, too.

A thick mist that had formed behind me started extruding skeletal arms with wickedly clawed hands reaching for me and they would have had me if I hadn’t been paying attention. As it was those claws ripped at my flesh, and tore it.

I staggered under that assault for a few precious seconds, and felt the freezing pain of those wounds as if they had been out of my soul. Needless to say, I screamed.

Pain is pain, after all. I’d felt it before, even after my resurrection into this pseudo-life I now lived and dealt with it. But this pain was different. It came with the things I was dedicated to fighting. Despair, terror (okay, I used that one too, don’t get picky here), loss, and a darkness so eternal it had texture.

I pulled away from that, shook myself and felt the gaping wounds begin to heal, while my rage, feeling like all the anger I had ever stored up trying to break the dam of civilized behavior I still tried to maintain most times, bubbled and fought to reach the surface.

“That’s right, Diana.” He crooned sibilantly. “Let it out. Feel the true power you possess in your rage. Take your rightful place in things and become the true Angel of Wrath. You are weak without it, missing something important and you know that as well as I do. Give in to it, my dear. Join with it. Become your rage!”

I was on my knees, screaming, but not in agony this time. It was pure fiery ecstasy as that incandescent rage started working its way out of the deep places I kept it and joyfully tried to engulf me in itself.

But a small, quiet voice answered that from just as deep inside of me. “No.”

Deena stood between me and that raging inferno and refused to move from its path. She looked at me with a mix of sorrow, compassion, and the purest love I had ever dreamed of while holding out a small hand to me. “He’s right, you, I, WE are not complete. Take my hand and we can start learning how to reach that without all this.”

It was a struggle. The rage yowled promises, whispered of power beyond my wildest imaginings if I would just let it out to show me the way. I won’t say it was an easy choice to make, much to my shame, but I managed to reach out enough to brush her outstretched fingers with my own.

And the rage went away. Oh, it didn’t die, or vanish. It simply returned to where I had it safely contained with the shuddering promise that it would be back. Shaking my head, I looked for my alter ego and felt a pang of loss when I didn’t see her. Until it dawned on me that she was there all the time, like I was with her. We weren’t separate individuals, or even parts of a whole. We were the whole, we were ME.

As long as that little drama seemed to have taken to play out for me, time hadn’t gone much in the way of forward since it had started. I turned and waved the taloned hands away. “Go! You don’t belong in the world of the living.”

The shapes attached to those limbs writhed, screamed out their own denials and fought to stay where they were. I stared at them for another breath while gathering something I’d just found inside myself and shouted. “Be Gone!”

The wailing, the pervasive chill, the sense of despair just went away once I’d done that. No theatrical pops, puffs of smoke, no crackles, not even a whimper. It was just gone.

“Still think you can control me?” I turned to face the Necromancer again, this time not afraid of him like I now knew I had been. “My turn.”

There were no sparks when I hit him this time. Just a very satisfying feel of striking flesh, real flesh that had blood and bone underneath. Not that he just caved in and died. Like when have I ever had that kind of luck?

He struck back. With magic of some sort. Dark magic, but still magic and I recognized it for what it was this time. So could deflect it away from me. Not, fortunately, back to him. With my general luck that would have just fed the guy and made him stronger.

We traded blows for awhile. Him and his magic, but seeing as I was basically a soul given form, his disembodying trick backfired when he tried using that one on me. All he managed to do was help me get in closer.

And I reached a hand inside of him and yanked his out. What there was of it, and it was one of the nastiest, slimiest, ugliest things I’d ever want to see. Hopefully I won’t need to look at it again.

His body died while I held the squirming, screaming, vicious thing that had passed for a soul in him. Once that was finished, I still held the nasty thing and was wondering what exactly to do with it. Then it dawned on me. Exactly what it didn’t expect.

“You know.” Releasing the thing and watching it flow around the dead flesh it had inhabited I could only shake my head. “If this wasn’t so pathetic right now, I’d laugh. You don’t belong here any longer, if you ever did. Go.

I said, go.” I told it with a tone of voice a lot more gentle than I’d expected. “I imagine there’s a place that can either mend you, or render you down into something useful. But you need to leave this place, this realm, and never come back. If you do, I’ll be waiting. If you try, I’ll know it. So just go. Maybe even something like you can be healed in time, I don’t know. But I’m giving you that chance.”

Then blinked at the shambles surrounding me. I’d just fought the hardest, most important battle of my life — or whatever you could call it — in my own bedroom.

Worse, people were pounding at the door demanding to know if I was okay.

“So much for a little peace and quiet and savoring the afterglow of victoy.” I muttered while heading to the door so I could let them know I wasn’t dead or otherwise mauled.

“You have started to learn, daughter.” The Voice told me while I was taking a real break by floating above the city and just watching the Mississippi River. “I am proud of you.”

“Thanks.” I answered with a grimace. “But if you’re so, you know, powerful and stuff, would it have been too much trouble to drop me a few hints when the shit hit the fan? I almost lost myself in there, you know.”

“Hints?” The Voice sounded amused and insulted at the same time. “Why should a being I have entrusted with Justice itself require hints on how to mete it out? If you aren’t smart enough to figure things out without constant supervision, I made the wrong choice.”

“God, you sound like my mother here.”

“Close enough.” Voice responded with affection, the first I’d heard or felt from that source ever.

“Which one?” I questioned.

“That would be telling, now.” It, Him, She answered.

“I think I need to go talk with someone who makes sense.” I grumbled.

“Do that, daughter.”

So I did.

“I’m not her, Kyle.” I had to make sure he understood that I wasn’t his lost Alexandra in his gut as well as his mind. “I never was either.”

“I know that.” He nodded while looking straight at me, which was a gift all in itself since not many normals could bear to do that without flinching. “I only said you remind me of her, not that you are, or were her.”

Lifting one hand I gave the bone white, slim fingered, feminine thing a look and shook my head. “Truthfully, I don’t who I am any longer. Or even what I am when it comes right down to things that matter.”

“Oh, I think you do.” Kyle kept looking right at me, and shook his head. “Whether you’re willing to admit who and what that is to yourself is something else though. Let me tell you what I see when I look at you, and have since that first time in Las Vegas. Maybe that will help, maybe it won’t, but it can’t hurt can it?”

“All right, I’m listening.” I let out a sigh and settled into a chair I really didn’t need given that I could just float in the air but he was more comfortable when I did things that humans would. And since Kyle Raynor was about the closest thing I could call a friend in the world since I’d been brought back from the dead, that gesture was important to me.

“I look at you and I see a great sense of purpose, Diana.” He told me. “You have the strength to hold to that purpose even when it gets hard to even imagine seeing it through. That kind of determination isn’t common, but you have something else that you don’t show much of at all.”

“What would that be?” I had to work to keep my voice level and not allow the bitter taste of things never done or never to be done color the question.

“Compassion.” He told me. “You care, Diana Spectre. Whether you want to show that or not you do, and deeply, very deeply. Oh, not just for your ‘mission’, or for seeing that justice is done no matter how bad that may look to others at times. You do it because you care for others with a passion that borders on frightening in its intensity. And it enrages you to see innocents ground down by evil. So you came back to do something about that in the only way you could. As The Spectre.”

“Don’t set me up on some pedestal.” I quietly said while thinking about what he had just said and tied that to recent events. “I was never what anyone would have called a good person, I did more than my share of bad things when I was alive. I’m not, and wasn’t all that proud of those things, but they can’t be swept under some metaphorical rug like they hadn’t happened. I was far from being an innocent, Kyle.”

“An innocent couldn’t have come back to do the things you’re doing.” He answered simply. “An innocent wouldn’t have been able to handle the things that drive you now, or make use of the gifts you’ve been given.”

“Gifts?” I almost choked on that one. “I have a human identity for when I’m not out hunting down criminals to get rid of, and do know what I do for a living when I’m her? I’m a whore, Kyle. Is that a gift?”

“Depends.” He gave me a shrug and actually grinned. “Are you an addict? Do you steal from the people you — umm — take care of? Do you hurt people? Are you forced to do it?”

“None of the above.” I admitted and was a little flustered when he made me think of things that way. “I help out when I can, and there are people around there who are a lot worse off than I am. I don’t exactly have a heart of gold, but I don’t turn my back on people who genuinely need something I can give them either.”

“So in a way, you’re giving several times over.” He gave me a look that plainly said he’d scored points in something I still hadn’t completely caught. “Obviously you like what you’re alter ego does even if you won’t admit it because it is a kind of giving of yourself even if you do take money for it, it’s a job, people have to eat, and I don’t imagine the girl you are is any different from anyone else in that respect. Is she?”

“No.” I had to admit and felt a twinge of guilt when I realized that I actually did like doing that kind of thing as Deena.

“And you don’t waste the money you make either, do you?” He gave a penetrating look with that one and I just shook my head. “Didn’t think so.”

“I never gave much of anything to anyone, before I — died.” I thoughtfully nodded. “Not that having what money and stuff I had did me a lot of good, especially at the end.”

“But now you actually try to help people around you with what you have.” He grinned, scoring another point in whatever the game was. “Which is more than you did in your — uhh, former life?”

“Yes.” I answered quietly. “It is, but I still don’t like for people to know I’m doing that. I’m no angel.”

“You might be surprised about that one. Angels aren’t all sweetness and light according to the old stories. Not even close in most cases.”

“Well, I’d qualify for it then, I suppose.” Shaking my head I gave him an exasperated look. “But all this talk isn’t getting much of anything accomplished is it? I have things that need doing.”

“Before you leave…” He gave me an odd, almost longing look. “Can I meet her, your other self?”

“Why?”

“Just call it curiosity, if you want. But she is part of you, and a piece of the puzzle that you’ve become isn’t she?”

That would involve a level of trust I hadn’t been able to give anyone, even in my former life. To show him my human self would make me vulnerable in ways I didn’t even wish to consider. But you have to start somewhere, I suppose. I nodded and Deena was sitting in his apartment the next second.

I gave him a nervous look, not at all the self confident girl I generally showed myself as being and to make it worse he just stared for a few moments.

“Well, this was a mistake.” I whispered and rose to leave.

“Wait.” Kyle stood and walked towards me with an odd expression on his face. “You’re beautiful, you know that, in both guises you’re beautiful. But I think there is one thing you need to do before you can start being whole, a complete person in both of your personas.”

“What would that be?” I asked, nervous under his regard and losing my usually flippant attitude.

“You give, and you give, and then you give more.” He told me, standing right in front of me so I had to look up to see his face. “Don’t argue, you do that, but you also have to learn how to take things that are offered once in awhile. You don’t want to do that, take anything someone is willing to share, and that is your biggest weakness, Diana, or whatever your name is right now.”

“Take what?” I questioned then grinned in spite of my roiling stomach and emotions. “And it’s Deena.”

“Deena.” Nodding he reached out a tentative hand and touched my arm. “Pretty name, but I’m going to offer you something here, something you need to accept. I don’t know how, but I do know that’s important for you, and for others.”

“What?” I didn’t back away, but wasn’t all that happy about what I thought he was going to give me.

“My trust.” His face didn’t show much emotion, but I could sense it just below the surface in him. “I haven’t given this kind of trust to a woman or anyone for a long time, Deena, not since Alex died and it’s precious to me. But I’m giving it to you like you gave yours to me just now. Vulnerabilities can become strengths if they’re shared with the right people. I think you need to understand that before you can become what you were really meant to be.”

“And what would that be?”

“An angel.” He answered softly. “A real, gloriously beautiful, terrible, powerful angel. But also one who is compassionate and loving. It’s in you, Diana — Deena, you just have to allow it to awaken is all.”

What happened after that is none of your damned business.

But I will say I finally got that kiss from him.