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Chapter 7: Miracle

Peter was woken up by the need to piss. The pressure in his bladder dragged his consciousness up out of deep sleep like a damn eviction notice. He groaned, and when he pushed himself up, the robe slipped off his left shoulder. Morning light flooded in from the terrace, pale purple rays filling the whole room.

Ace was still asleep. Breathing steady, one arm draped over his forehead. Peter didn't wake him. He padded barefoot toward the courtyard. The flagstones were cool under his feet, the dark gold material in the cracks flowing slow in the morning light. When he finished his business and stepped back out, his eyes couldn't help but land on the pool at the center of the courtyard.

Water welled up silently from a round opening in the bottom, spilling over the ivory white, smooth polished rim, sliding down the outer walls like a thin mountain spring.

Peter bent down, dipped both hands into the water, and splashed a handful onto his face. Droplets ran down his chin and dripped onto his chest. Then he looked down at his reflection. Long black hair hung down beside his cheeks. Two thick eyebrows slashed across his brow bones, looking like they'd been drawn on with charcoal. He opened his eyes wider. Peter hadn't seen eyebrows on his own face in over ten years.

He straightened up, his foot slipped, and he nearly went down. He grabbed the edge of the basin just in time. The spots on the backs of his hands were gone, the thick knuckles, the loose, sagging skin. All gone. Nothing left but smooth, tight skin, faint blue veins slightly raised on the surface, joints lubricated like they'd just grown in.

He lowered his head again, as if to confirm it. Peter stared at the reflection in the water. That young face stared right back. He slowly raised his other hand and touched his cheekbone, his jaw, his chin. As his fingertips glided across the skin, he could almost feel his pores breathing. His heart slammed hard against his eardrums. He opened his mouth. The reflection opened its mouth too. He tilted his head. The reflection tilted its head too.

The confirmation terrified him more than the discovery itself.

This planet was changing him. He now looked like a "proper" Jendellian. So young. In the prime of his life. A sick feeling rose up in his chest. This was a setup. Thinking back over everything that had happened since yesterday, Peter grew more and more certain of it.

Then Peter broke into a run and charged back into the room. The flagstones thudded under his feet in quick, muffled bursts. When he crashed through the hanging gauze curtains, the sash at his waist had already come completely undone, one side of the robe slipping down to his arm.

"Wake up!" He yanked the curtain aside, still catching his breath. "Ace, wake up!"

Ace curled up sharply, lifting his face from the pillows, eyes not fully open yet, one hand clumsily wiping the corner of his mouth. "What... what's going on?" He smacked his lips a few times.

"Look at me!" Peter bent down, practically shoving his face right into Ace's. "What do you see?"

Ace's eyeballs made two slow, groggy circles, his gaze sweeping aimlessly over Peter's face. Then he yawned and mumbled, "Your... your hair got longer?"

"Hair?" Peter's normally gravelly voice shot up high, almost cracking. "Hair?! That's all the hell you see?"

Ace flinched at the volume, pushed himself up, and rubbed his eyes. "Then what do you want me to say?"

"I got young!" Peter yanked open the collar of his robe, exposing his full, solid pecs, trying to prove his point. "I'm fucking twenty again! You didn't notice? What the hell are those eyes in your head for?"

"Peter—"

"Are you blind?!" Peter's voice bounced off the arched ceiling in echoes.

Ace's brow furrowed. He was quiet for a moment, like he was waiting for Peter to calm down. Then he sat up straight, rubbed the back of his neck, and his tone was strangely even. "I see it."

Peter froze. "Then you—"

"I see you," Ace said, his eyes resting on Peter's face, not dodging, not avoiding. "But you're just you."

A thin sheet of ice formed over Peter's heart.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Peter's voice dropped, though the end of it was already trembling.

Ace lowered his eyes, like he was weighing his words. "Appearances... to us Jendellians, they're not how we judge a person." He lifted his eyes and paused. "I still see you, Peter. It's not a big deal."

The air itself seemed to freeze.

Not a big deal? He'd known Ace longer than he'd known his own wife. From walking the same road to becoming strangers, there'd been laughter and heartache and resentment. The days hadn't always been easy. But somehow they always found their way back to each other. A sudden phone call. Showing up at the same event. A nod. A smile. Keeping it together on the surface like that could cover up the churning tides underneath. Until Ace ended up in the ICU, and that unspoken understanding they'd shared for years was cut short. But there was still so much left to say. They were supposed to have more time. So why... how could he just brush aside half a lifetime they'd lived through together? Without who they were back then, there'd be no who they were now.

"Peter?"

Peter took half a step back. The tears he'd shed on the balcony last night. That hug. Him staring at Ace's face. Black hair. Silver makeup. That young man's sorrowful face. Remembering it now, it all felt so foreign.

"In your eyes... what do I look like? This young face or an old man's face?"

Ace opened his mouth but no sound came right away. His pupils flared for a second. He didn't know how to answer.

That pause. That one pause was all it took. The thin sheet of ice over Peter's heart cracked.

"You can't answer," Peter said.

"I'm not—"

"Because you can't tell the difference," Peter cut him off. "Because to you, our past doesn't matter, right? So young me, old me, it's all the same to you—"

"That's not what I meant—"

"Then what did you mean?" Peter stepped right back and closed in on the bed. "You drag me to this godforsaken place, take me wherever the hell you want, make me wear a bracelet so I gotta wear this damn bracelet—and now you turn me into this and you tell me 'I still see you'?! What gives you the right to say something like that so casually?"

Ace's frown deepened. He stood up from the bed and quickly tried to explain. "It wasn't me who did this—"

"Then who? Jendell again?!" Peter pressed.

Ace sucked in a breath and let it out. "I don't know! I don't know why this is happening, alright?"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Peter's voice rose again, trembling like it was about to split open. "Why didn't you just say, 'Hey, Peter, just so you know, there's a side effect—you might turn young'? You didn't say anything. You just shoved that goddamn apple at me and tossed me in here—"

"Hey! I gave you a choice. You're the one who wanted to come with me!"

"What choice? Did you let me choose?！"

"It wasn't me who did it—" Ace stood up. He was half a head taller than Peter, but right now he felt so small, like something was crushing him. "It was Jendell. She... Peter, I can't control these things—"

"I don't believe anything you say anymore." Peter cut him off. "When did this start? How much haven't you told me?"

Ace's lips moved, but no sound came out.

"You know what," Peter's voice suddenly dropped low, "last night on the balcony, when you were going on about all that bullshit theory, Einstein, relativity, 'you Earthlings'—I thought you were just talking crazy at the time. But now I get it."

Ace raised his eyes.

"You're not Ace," Peter said.

Ace looked like he'd been slapped across the face. His whole body went rigid.

"You borrowed his face. You wear it like a mask. The way he laughs, the way he talks—I don't know how you did it, but you stole all of it. You're not him. You're not even human. What the hell are you?"

Ace's eyes began to redden. His lips pressed tight into a straight line. He stayed silent for a long time. So long Peter thought he wasn't going to say anything at all. Then he opened his mouth, and his voice was rough as sandpaper.

"I'm gonna hit you."

Peter stared at him and let out a cold laugh. It was short and dry, like a cough. "Fine."

And Ace lunged.

When they crashed together, Ace's robe tangled around his legs. He stumbled, one knee hitting the ground first, but he still managed to shove Peter down the next second. Peter's back slammed against the flagstones, and he grunted in pain. Ace straddled his waist, fists coming down. The first punch landed on Peter's face, the second went wide and grazed past his ear. Peter threw his arms up to protect his face, feeling Ace's fists hammering down on his forearms, his shoulders. Not too heavy, but fast and relentless, wild and reckless.

But Peter waited. He waited until Ace's breathing grew heavy, until the gaps between those punches stretched out longer.

Then he shot his arms out, grabbed Ace by the shoulders, and yanked him down. Their foreheads cracked together with a dull thud. Ace cried out in pain, his whole body jerking backward. Peter seized the moment, flipped him over, and pinned him down. His knee pressed into Ace's side. He raised his fist.

The fist stopped in midair.

Ace lay beneath him, face turned up. The silver makeup on his face was smeared and streaked with sweat. His eyes were red-rimmed, his lips slightly parted, breathing rapid and ragged. He didn't dodge. He didn't raise a hand to block it. He just lay there with his face upturned, looking at Peter's fist hanging frozen in the air.

Then a tear slowly seeped from the corner of his eye.

Peter watched that tear slide down past his temple and disappear into his hair.

He straightened up and climbed off Ace. Bare feet on the flagstones. He spat to the side. There was a trace of blood at the corner of his mouth he hadn't bothered to wipe away.

Then he turned and walked. His footsteps echoed under the arched ceiling for a long time before they finally faded. Ace didn't move. He stayed lying on his back on the floor, staring up at the empty dome above him.

A choked sob came through the air. Then another. Soon it was smothered, turning into ragged breathing.

After a long while, Ace finally pushed himself up off the floor. He looked down at his hand. A small patch of scraped skin on his knuckle. He stared at that wound for a moment, then slowly clenched his fist.

He stood up and walked toward the terrace, his steps unsteady. In the distance, the laser cannon stood against the violet sky, the people of Jendell swarming around its base like ants, the metallic clang of their tools carrying over from far away. He gazed in that direction for a long time. Gradually, he began to smile. At first, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth. But that smile crawled across his face like spreading cracks, wider and wider, until his shoulders started shaking with it.

"Faster! Do it faster!" Ace shouted out toward the open fields, his voice lifted and carried by the wind. "You want my life, don't you?! Then fucking take it!"

The people below stopped their tools and lifted their heads. Ace stood at the edge of the stone platform, his robe billowing in the wind.

"Take it all! I don't... I don't care anymore..."

His knees buckled. He slid slowly down, collapsing onto the stone platform, his forehead pressed against a pillar. Tears poured out without warning, big drops splattering onto the stone. His mouth was open, but only shapeless gasps squeezed from his throat. Laughing and crying at once, shoulders heaving, he curled up there.

He lifted a hand and wiped clumsily at his face. As his palm scraped across his cheekbone, he felt something gritty. He looked down and opened his hand. Silver powder and colored paint had mixed together, watered down by his tears into a gray, muddy mess, clinging to his skin. Ace wiped at his face again. More powder flaked off. He stared blankly at his hand.

...

At that moment, in a hospital room on some distant planet, the monitor's waveform pulsed across its black screen inside the ICU.

Jendell Ace：