She had never actually told him anything about her true origins. The specter had granted him a brief description, framing her as an entity who had been violently persecuted and chained by her own followers. Alice had never confirmed what the specter had shown. It was as if she merely glanced over that horrific historical fact and actively chose to believe a different narrative entirely.
"How should I believe in you if I do not even know what you are?" Lucid whispered.
Alice caught his words perfectly.
Suddenly, the entire metaphysical soulscape reacted to his doubt. The gentle coastal breeze escalated into a violent, howling gale. The relentless wind started to blow his hair wildly across his forehead. The thick grey fog obscuring his features clung stubbornly to his face, but the atmospheric pressure pushed painfully against his skin.
The environment deteriorated in a matter of seconds. The massive branches of the solitary tree groaned loudly as they were dragged downward by the sudden storm. The endless blue sky darkened rapidly, bruised by heavy black clouds rolling across the horizon.
Alice stopped looking at him with affection. That terrifying, unhinged smile vanished completely from her lips. Instead, she wore a face of total, absolute nothingness.
"Do you not believe in me?" Alice asked. Her voice boomed with divine authority, echoing through the turbulent air. "Your creator? Your reason?"
Lucid raised his free arm to shield his eyes from the harsh, biting wind tearing across the grassy field.
"Wait!" Lucid yelled through the roaring storm. "I did not mean it like that! It is just a question!"
Alice suddenly moved away from his body. She broke her tether to the ground and drifted upward into the violent crosswind. She hovered several feet above the thrashing green grass. Her white robes and heavy iron chains blew wildly in the gale, the fabric shifting erratically to expose her pale curves and the intricate binds wrapping around her chest. She looked exactly like a marble sculpture of a vengeful deity preparing to strike down a heretic.
"You question your belief?" Alice demanded.
'My belief?' Lucid thought bitterly, feeling a sudden surge of protective anger replace his terror. 'What exactly is my belief? Why is she the one deciding that? She is the one questioning me about morality?'
He remembered the brutal trials in the waking world. She was the one who had suggested he let a murderous soldier bleed out during the border conflict. She was the one who told him to look away after a dead flight attendant was found inside the burning train wreckage. More importantly, she was the one who never bothered to bring up the names of his deceased comrades from Earth. She had never once acknowledged Mary, Brian, or Garfield.
Lucid dropped his arm and glared up at the hovering deity.
"I do not care!" Lucid yelled at the top of his lungs, fighting against the roaring wind. "Who are you to decide what I am? Who are you to decide what I represent or whom I should place my belief in?"
He pushed himself up onto his knees, refusing to cower before her display of power.
"You refuse to tell me anything about yourself!" Lucid shouted. "I do not know what you are! You are hiding your true origins, and you dare to think that my faith is wavering!"
He looked up at the darkening sky. The wind was growing increasingly intense, ripping blades of grass from the soil and whipping them through the air.
"Bullshit!" Lucid roared. "Tell me who you are so I can believe in you! Tell me so I can love you for the person you actually are! The Alice that I know is not some untouchable divine entity. The Alice I know is a girl who laughs, who shares her knowledge, who is human!"
The word hung in the violent air for a fraction of a second.
The wind stopped instantly.
The heavy black clouds dissolved into nothingness. The howling gale fell completely silent, returning the soulscape to a state of absolute, unnatural tranquility.
Alice dropped from the air. Her bare feet touched the soft grass with a quiet thud. Lucid opened his eyes carefully. He had fully expected a metaphysical tornado to carry him away, or for her heavy iron chains to impale him against the wooden trunk of the tree. He had survived the wrath of a Monolith, but he did not actually know if it was possible to anger Alice to such a degree that she would willingly destroy him.
He looked at her standing a few paces away.
Alice was crying.
Large, silent tears slipped out from beneath her stained white blindfold and tracked down her pale cheeks. She raised her hands with trembling fingers and tried desperately to brush the moisture away.
Lucid rushed over to her. He stopped a meter away, his boots sinking into the soft soil. He fully debated whether he should step forward to console a being capable of tearing a city apart.
"I remember nothing," Alice confessed. Her voice was barely a whisper, broken and fragile. "I only remember that I am superior to all of this."
She lowered her hands, letting them fall uselessly to her sides.
"But when you called me human, it was as if a memory woke up in the deepest depths of my mind," Alice continued, her voice catching in her throat. "My soul responded to that word."
She took a slow, hesitant step toward him.
"I do not remember this feeling, nor do I remember this specific memory," Alice admitted truthfully. "But I am glad that you see me as that."
Then she stopped. She shook her head violently side to side, her divine arrogance trying to reassert control over her fracturing identity.
"No," Alice muttered, her voice hardening slightly. "No, I am not a human."
She looked up at him and forced a terrifying, disjointed smile onto her face.
"I am a goddess," Alice declared stubbornly.
Her smile shattered immediately. She started to break down into heavy, uncontrollable tears, her shoulders shaking with the weight of her forgotten trauma.
Lucid stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. He pulled her flush against his chest and held her close.
He did not know what to feel. The reality of their situation finally sunk over him, burying his previous anger under a wave of profound exhaustion. It was entirely evident that even she did not know anything about her own existence. She was navigating this void blindly. If she possessed no memories of her own origins, how could he possibly expect any truthful answers from her?
He looked down at his own hand resting against her back. He closed his eyes and rested his chin against the top of her head.
"Do not worry," Lucid spoke softly into her hair. "I will handle it."
He corrected himself immediately.
"No, we will figure it out together," Lucid promised.
He tried to pull away from their embrace to look at her face. As he moved back, her hand reached out frantically and grabbed his shirt. She gripped the white fabric tightly, clearly unwilling to tear away from his physical presence.
Lucid stopped pulling away. He reached down and held her hand gently.
"I have my absolute faith and devoted love in you," Lucid told her. His voice carried a tone more intimate and sincere than he had ever managed before. "I understand you."
'She needs me to validate her existence,' Lucid realized internally. 'She needs me just like how I need her to get back home. Without me, she will just be a forgotten thing fading into total obscurity.'
He evaluated her trembling form. He wondered deeply about the mechanics of their symbiotic relationship. Was he dancing on her strings, or was she the one dancing on his? Nobody could tell the difference anymore. They were completely entangled.
Lucid smiled slightly, the expression hidden entirely beneath the thick fog covering his face.
Alice reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
Suddenly, Lucid felt incredibly weak. His knees buckled beneath him. The metaphysical toll of the emotional confrontation finally caught up with his mortal body. He fell forward toward the grass.
Alice caught him immediately. She held him securely as she sunk down to her knees, taking his weight without a struggle. She shifted her position and sat comfortably beside the thick wooden roots of the tree. She carried his head gently and guided it slowly down to rest perfectly upon her lap.
She caressed his hair. She ran her soft fingers through his hair once, and then twice.
Lucid felt incredibly sleepy. A heavy, overwhelming exhaustion pulled at his consciousness.
His eyes squinted against the light. The remaining clouds parted entirely, revealing the endless blue sky above them. The atmosphere became impossibly bright. Sunlight hit his face directly until Alice crossed her body in front of the glare. She blocked the harsh sunlight, framing his head safely under the cool shadow cast by her chest and shoulders.
Alice smiled slightly, looking down at his resting face.
Lucid reached his hand upward toward her cheek.
'Maybe she is not so bad after all,' Lucid thought lazily, his defensive walls finally crumbling under the weight of his exhaustion.
Alice enveloped his reaching hand with both of hers. She brought his knuckles to her face and held his hand tightly against her cheek.
Lucid blinked slowly.
The last image his drowsy eyes registered before his vision completely blurred was Alice resting against the tree. She was holding his hand close to her face, pressing his skin against her cheek as she continued to cry silently.
'Why is she crying?' Lucid wondered, his thoughts slurring together. 'What a crybaby.'
He blinked again. The vibrant green grass and the towering tree faded away.
Total darkness consumed his vision.
"Goodnight," Alice said softly into the quiet air.