Epilogue

After some searching, Daria and Quinn managed to unearth a trolley used for carting several heavy boxes. Then, gingerly, they lifted their aunt onto it, praying that they were not making her condition worse.

As they steered the trolley through the downtown streets, they could not help but marvel at the tableau before them, of unmoving cars and frozen pedestrians. One person was in mid-bite of a sandwich, while another had tossed a ball that hung in the air. A pickpocket was in the process of stealing a wallet, which Daria paused to return to its rightful owner. Quinn glanced down at her aunt's face, almost suspended in a look of intense pain and terror. She had to look away.

Neither Quinn nor Daria knew where the hospital was, and so headed toward any vaguely hospital-looking building. They crossed busy streets in the middle of rush hour, praying the time discrepancy would not give way. Fortunately, the nearest hospital was not far off, and bone-weary and sweating, they at last wheeled their aunt through the emergency room doors. However, as they looked upon the residents in mid-stride, they realized that their problems weren't over. Daria walked in front of a stressed-out looking nurse and waved her hand in front of his face.

"Hey!" Quinn called out. "Wake up!"

Nothing happened, and the sisters just looked at each other.

"So how do we restart time?" Quinn wondered.

Daria shrugged, and snapped her fingers loudly. Nothing.

"What happened to bending metal?" asked Quinn, annoyed. "You were the one who started making cars fly and stuff."

"That was a fluke," Daria said indignantly. "I don't even know how I did it."

Quinn clapped her hands loudly. Nothing happened, so she tried it again, harder.

"You may not have woken anyone," Daria observed, "but across America, every lamp in Wal-Mart just turned on."

"Ha-ha," said Quinn sarcastically. "Can't you, like, read their thoughts and make them wake up?"

"Can't you?"

"I could only do it for Phelps. You're the one who could do it for everyone else."

"Quinn, we're moving at super-speed - they wouldn't know what I was saying."

"Wait!" Quinn exclaimed. "I have an idea!"

She went over to Daria. "Hold still..." She then slapped her sister hard on the cheek.

"Agh!"

Scowling, Daria rubbed the mark that Quinn had left. The scene remained unchanged. "I thought it might work!" Quinn said peevishly.

"Quinn, that never works!"

"Well sure - I know that now," Quinn shot back.

The sisters' frustration was about to spill over, when they noticed the clock start to speed up. All at once, as if a force field had been broken, Daria and Quinn were whisked back into the same time frame as the rest of the world - and Daria had to jump out of the way to avoid getting struck by the nurse.

Amy's pained wail cut the air. Back in normal time, she continued to bleed heavily from the large gash in her abdomen. Daria and Quinn veered around and gazed at her with worry. Quinn took the trolley and shoved it toward the nearest resident surgeon.

"You have to help her!"

As Amy was carted away on a hospital gurney, a nurse informed Daria and Quinn that their aunt would need a blood transfusion during the surgery, and the hospital's supply of her blood type was low. Therefore, it would be better for the hospital and the patient if blood could be donated by a member of the family. Daria and Quinn looked at each other: They weren't so sure it would be a good idea for their blood to mix with Aunt Amy's. Still, neither of them knew how to stop time to wait for their father to arrive with their mother, who might not even be the right blood type. Quietly, the sisters followed the nurse to the blood donation area; whatever the risks, the greatest of all was that their aunt could bleed to death.

Daria's type was a clear match, so she submitted to having a big needle jabbed into her arm. Once her blood was taken away, she and Quinn settled in for a long wait.

About two hours into the surgery, Helen burst into the waiting room. Trembling and teary, she engulfed her daughters in a hug and held them tight. She was followed by Jake - yes, it was Jake again, not Norlek. Somehow, everything that the big, tentacled creature had been had folded back into the human Jake Morgendorffer. Aside from a little stiffness in his neck, he seemed no worse for wear.

The waiting room was deserted, which gave the Morgendorffers ample opportunity to talk - and reflect. Daria thought about DeMartino. His violence toward Amy had upset her so much that she had targeted him first. It was because of people like him, who pretended to be your friend before stabbing you in the back (or in this case, the front), that she was a misanthrope. But yet... the more Daria thought about it, the more she wondered: What if DeMartino had been trying to save her? If he had done nothing, Phelps surely would have burned her to death. Could it be that by wounding Amy so severely that she was taken out of contention, he had given her the chance to escape?

"I'm sorry about Gob," Jake said morosely, when the topic of his former friend's deceit was mentioned. "I wish I had known. I sensed it once or twice, but I never knew how resentful he was. I wish he had told me. I wish we could talk -"

"After what he did to Amy?" Helen broke in, lips curling with rage. "You would even think of talking to him again?!"

Jake stared off into space. "I would just like to know why."

Quinn told Jake about her experience in Phelps's mind... what she could remember. Sensible of her mother's fragile emotions, Quinn skimmed over the more harrowing details and stuck mainly to her attempts to get Phelps to reveal his name. True to her promise, she did not say the name aloud - just that it was long, with far more harsh-sounding syllables than any other Xulfanex name she had heard. Jake turned away, pondering.

"Most people on Xulfanex don't have long names," he said.

"Maybe some of it was just words, and I couldn't understand them," Quinn offered.

"The only ones that did... I wonder..."

"What, Dad?"

"As a youth, I used to hear stories about spirits that lived in mountainous regions. They looked not unlike regular people from Xulfanex, but they had special abilities." Jake chuckled. "I used to wonder if I was one, and had wound up in the House of Madadogg by mistake. But once the great warlord took over, many of the mountains were defaced, and their forests burnt down. Afterward, I never heard those stories much anymore. I thought it was because I had grown up, or because the great warlord frowned upon such blasphemy. Maybe it was because the spirits had been captured and killed, or imprisoned."

"You can kill a spirit on Xulfanex?" Daria broke in.

"Most of them, though it was generally supposed to be harder. I never met any when I was enslaved in the salt mines - but then again, I'm not sure if I would have known if I had. The great warlord had ways of stripping everyone down in the end."

"But what would that have to do with revealing his name?" Quinn wanted to know.

"Supposedly... there was a story... if you got a spirit to reveal his true name, he would have to return to his home and douse himself with water from the sacred river. After which, his memories would be cleared, and he would have to start over."

"Start what over?" asked Daria.

"Just... everything. His life." Again, Jake chuckled. "It's a silly story, I know."

"But maybe that's what he wanted," said Quinn. "He was so upset about what happened to his family, and so afraid to let go."

"Maybe he realized that it was the only way he could ever truly take on the warlords," Jake mused. "Even more important than having ultimate power."

"In any case, he just up and left," said Daria.

"Yeah," Jake whispered. He looked at Quinn and reached for her hand. She hesitated before taking it. His palm felt so much like human skin, it was hard to believe it was just a costume. "You know, I've tried in the past to get him to reveal his name, but he never would. I had to break a mind meld a few times, before he swallowed me up. Somehow, he must have cared about you a great deal, if he was willing to tell you his secret."

Quinn flushed. She thought about how she had almost gotten lost in Phelps's mind, how she would still be there if he hadn't revealed his name. He had the chance to take her with him, but instead he had let her go.

"Dad," she asked. "Do you ever miss Xulfanex?"

Jake frowned. "Sometimes," he said. "I miss the way it was when I was a child. Plenty of times I wished I had the passion to go back and fight for it the way G-- the way others did. But as I've said, the truth is that I let it go a long time ago. The people with deep emotional ties are the ones who should fight for it to the end - they would be stronger and tougher than I ever could, because my emotional ties are here. Given the choice between Xulfanex and earth, I would always choose earth."

"Are you sorry you've spent so much time running?"

"No," said Jake. "I'm happy that I can finally stop."

Quinn squeezed his hand.

Daria and Quinn were dozing against Helen when the surgery ended. Amy was wheeled out of the operating room into the open hallway, where Helen could see that she still had a breathing tube in her mouth and several more tubes running from her arms... but at least she looked peaceful. As the nurses and orderlies wheeled her off to recovery, the chief surgeon appeared and asked Jake and Helen if he could speak with them alone.

"I didn't want to upset your children," he said, as they stood across the room from where Daria and Quinn were gathered. "Although Ms. Barksdale is in stable condition, she lost a significant amount of blood, which sent her system into shock and put her in a mild coma."

Helen took a deep breath, and Jake put his arm around her.

"She could come out of it at any time, but sometimes a coma can linger for weeks, or even -"

"Yes, I get that," Helen cut in. With difficulty, she asked. "And her child?"

The surgeon's expression became graver. "We tried to save it. We did all we could. But the trauma Ms. Barksdale suffered was too much. It was stillborn."

Helen squeezed her eyes shut as tears trickled out, and Jake looked haggard.

"However," said the surgeon, choosing his words carefully, "it was not a healthy fetus, and from the looks of things, would not have survived to term under any circumstances."

"What do you mean?" asked Jake.

The surgeon's face grew a shade paler. "It was deformed," he said. "Severely... deformed. Its legs, its lungs... nothing was developed the way a normal human fetus would be this far along in pregnancy."

Helen and Jake looked at each other.

"Usually I would encourage her to try again," the surgeon said in a soft, sad tone, "but there was so much hemorrhaging in her uterus, that in order to stop the bleeding, we had to perform a hysterectomy."

Amy remained in a coma for a week. When she at last awoke, she saw her boyfriend Joel standing over her, and had only vague memories of what had happened. In the rush of sensations, the question of how she could see so well without her glasses occurred to her only briefly.

The Morgendorffers told Joel that Amy had been in an accident, and that the stillborn child she gave birth to had been his. It hurt them to lie, seeing the devastation on his face, but there was no way he could hear the truth. Amy needed time to come to terms with what had happened. Maybe they would talk about it with her, someday.

And so, after more than a week's absence, the Morgendorffers returned to Lawndale. As they had guessed, their house had been ransacked, though Daria suspected the culprits were more likely looters than police officers with a warrant. She wondered half-heartedly if her Cannibal Fragfest CD-ROMs had been taken. She felt like playing something tame.

The next day, Daria and Quinn returned to a Lawndale High abuzz with rumors about their disappearance and that of two teachers. No sooner had Daria opened her locker when Jane took her aside in a hug that practically lifted her off the ground.

"God, Jane - now they'll definitely think the rumors are true."

"Daria, where the hell have you been?! You don't know what they've been saying around school."

"That Mr. Phelps and Mr. DeMartino ran off to elope in Sweden?"

"Besides that. First there was that rumor Quinn was dead, then that Quinn had killed one of her little fashion fiends and your whole family was smuggling her across the border. For days I didn't heard a goddamn thing from you, so I imagined the worst."

"Believe me Jane, you haven't."

"Oh yeah? Try me."

Before Quinn could even get through homeroom, she was summoned to the principal's office. As Phelps had warned her, two police officers were waiting to interrogate her about the death of Stacy Rowe.

Quinn answered their questions as truthfully as she could: She and Stacy were talking in the bathroom, when Stacy's eyeballs burst and she suddenly collapsed. Quinn had put her arms around her to revive her, but nothing more - and if she could have brought her friend back to life, she would have. Quinn's tears during her account moved the officers, and later, when they replayed her testimony on their recorder, they could not find anything that would suggest foul play.

Skin samples from Stacy did not reveal any skin or nails from Quinn. There had been no weapon present at the scene of the crime, or anywhere else. Investigation into Stacy's heath records revealed that she was on a powerful antidepressant, and had complained about an occasional rapid heartbeat. The forensics team assigned to her case concluded that she might have had a heart attack, which sometimes caused the victim's eyes to bulge; they had seen it happen before.

Another area of inquiry rested with the missing Lawndale High instructors, Anthony DeMartino and Alfred Phelps. Some students had reported seeing Mr. DeMartino doused with blood, which brought up the question of whether he might have been responsible for Stacy Rowe's murder. Since Alfred Phelps was missing, perhaps he was an accomplice - or perhaps another victim. Investigators tried to determine whether either had cleared their bank accounts or purchased plane tickets on their credit cards. In any event, they left Quinn alone - exonerated, relieved, and guilty. She almost wished they had been able to uncover a link between her and Stacy's death.

Still, if the Lawndale police had forgotten her, no one else had. Although her home life lurched back to something approaching normal, Stacy's death hung between Quinn and the rest of her family. She felt closest to her father, who seemed to relate to what she was feeling, though he never said if he had gone through it himself. Quinn was very happy to have him move back into the house.

With Daria, she had a bond that she wouldn't have thought possible a few months ago - but Daria had never killed anyone, and that left some tension between them. Quinn knew that while she felt relieved to not carry the burden, Daria was aware that she, too, could kill at any moment. Quinn felt her sister's eyes on her at all times, observing how she coped. She wished that Daria would just go back to treating her like a vain pain-in-the-ass, but in her position, Quinn was sure that she would have behaved no differently.

Her relationship with her mother distressed her more. Conversations with Helen left Quinn ready to burst into tears, though not because she felt her mother didn't love her. Had that been in the case, Quinn could have confronted Helen and gotten everything out in the open. Instead, she carried a dull ache in her chest at all times, as her mother smiled at her without warmth, or hugged her like an extra-heavy grocery bag being lifted from the car. Quinn wanted to believe that her mother was just upset about Aunt Amy and anxious to restore their family unit, but she knew the true reason: Helen didn't know how to treat her. In the heat of their confrontation with Phelps, it was easy to say that she would never view her daughters differently, but at home, Helen had more time to think about the daughter who had killed - yet had not been punished. Remembering her clients past and present, she wondered: Did Quinn live daily in sorrow, or did she brush aside her crime as a simple inconvenience of having so much power?

Quinn wanted to tell her mother that Stacy's death was with her all the time, that in her dreams, she watched her die over and over. Sometimes Quinn was able to save her, but too often she awoke crying out Stacy's name. Then there were dreams where Stacy did not die at all, but walked and chatted with Quinn as if it were just another day at the mall. Quinn awoke from these dreams smiling, only to recall the truth with the sudden taste of bile. She wished she knew if the Stacy in the dream were Stacy from beyond the grave, telling her she was all right... but Quinn could never remember anything her friend had said.

Quinn had other dreams, too - ones where people she loved died horribly. In the dream that shook her to the core, she awoke from a nightmare and ran into her parents' bedroom, only to find that the power of her emotions had split her mother into pieces while she slept, as if an internal bomb had detonated. This was why she did not confide in Helen. She was still fearful of her strength - though her father was slowly teaching her how to bring it under her command. While it hurt to see her mother act so distant, all she could hope was that some day, they both would come to terms with their feelings.

Meanwhile, at school, Quinn's fellow students remained abuzz about Stacy. Quinn knew that they stole glances at her behind her back, and whispered rumors about her being a murderer. Her own friends treated her differently. While Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie were as attentive as ever, Quinn somehow felt that their hearts weren't as into their servitude as they had once been.

Strangely enough, she took this plunge in her social status in stride. After all she had been through, she could certainly handle a little gossip. Besides, if they weren't gossiping about this, it would be something else she had done. She was different now. High school students noticed every subtle change, and each time Quinn was present at an event that did not seem entirely normal, they would gossip about it, and more rumors about her would fly. They couldn't control themselves anymore than she could.

Quinn was a half-human, half-alien teenager with, super powers that she was only beginning to understand. Even with help from her father and Daria, it would be a long time before she had finally mastered her gifts.

It was the price she paid for choosing to live on earth. Compared to all other options presented to her, she wouldn't have it any other way.

THE END