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One in a Million 1/1
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
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[AN: All lyrics save the 'Can you hear me' belong to Stevie Nicks. No
copy-right infringement intended.]

The night was black and starless, like the deep empty pit that was her soul.
The train jostled  roughly as it rack-rack-tacked down the tracks, passing
in and out of the lights that lined the railroad. She was curled up in a
huddled bundle, balanced on the caboose, the lonely, dead weight of her
heart her olnly traveling companion. On this night, so cold that it
penetrated her worn boots and numbed her toes, the memories were especially
clear and painful. She could see him as clearly as if he were sitting beside
her, and longed for his arms to be wound around her small and shivering
form. 
    <Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about> it was
her mantra, it was her life, the essence and substance of her very survival.
But tonight she couldn't help but think about it.

***

Outside my door,
The rain is falling,
A cold, wild wind will come,
There's some one for me somewhere,
But I still miss that one.

No, I never got over ,
Those blue eyes,
I see them everywhere,
And I miss those arms that held me,
Baby, when all the love was there.

And I wonder if he's sorry,
Ending what we had begun,
Well, there's some one,
For me somewhere,
But, baby, I still miss that one.

- "I Still Miss Someone (Blue Eyes)" by Stevie Nicks- The Other Side of the
Mirror.

***
    
    "Rembrandt?" Colin Mallory poked his head in the other man's hotel room
timidly, "Can I talk to you?"
"Sure, man, what's bothering you?" Rembrandt asked. He was actually glad to
get a chance to talk to Colin- the boy was so shy, after all.
"It's... it's about Quinn," the young man said taking a seat next to
Rembrandt, "I'm worried about him."
"Worried?" the other man echoed.
"Yeah, you know how me and Quinn have been going drinking every night, just
for kicks, he said?" The Cry'n Man nodded. "Well, it hasn't been really just
for kicks. He does this...thing, in every bar we go to."
"Thing?" the feeling of dread in the dark man's stomach was growing by the
minute. He looked at the man, or boy really, before him, and wondered what
could have upset him so.

"We go to six, sometimes eight bars a night," Colin informed him, "Quinn
just walks in and looks every woman in the bar over. Most of the time it
ends right there, but sometimes, he sees this woman. It's always the same
one, her double or whatever. He'll get rid of her companion, if she has one,
and he'll talk to her. I never hear what he says, but after he does he
always says he's sorry, that he mistook her for some one else and then he
walks away." By this time, Remmy's stomach was bucket of rocks, and with a
sense of foreboding, he asked Colin;
"What does this woman look like?"
Colin thought for a moment before answering earnestly, "She's pretty- brown
eyes, brown or red hair.. I think she dyes it. She's a lot shorter than
Quinn."
"Wade," Rembrandt whispered, as if with the very sound of that name he was
transported to another time and place; a happier one, when sliding was still
an adventure filled with mystery and discovery. In that time, which seemed
so long ago that it was almost once upon a time, when the unit that had been
the Sliders had ben Whole. They'd still had the Professor and, more than
that, they'd had beautiful shinning Wade to light their days. Since then,
Remmy had watched Quinn with draw from the group, becoming more and more
isolated. On more than one occasion, Remmy had awakened to Quinn's
whimpering in his sleep. He made up his mind to talk to Quinn as soon as he
and Maggie got back from the store.

-----

    "Hey, Q-ball," Remmy said as he took a seat on the couch beside Quinn,
"Wanna talk?"
"I guess," Quinn sighed as he turned off the T.V, "Wadaya want to talk
about?"
"Why don't you tell me what you've been doing at night," Rembrandt
suggested. He wasn't accusitory, he was merely worried about his friend.
Quinn looked over at the Cry'n Man and said tersely;
"Colin told you." No denial, no question, just the absolute certainty.
"Quinn, he's just worried about you, that's all. He's your brother after
all, he cares about you," Rembrandt said, putting a hand on Quinn's
shoulder, "You miss her, don't you?"
"More than you'll ever know," Quinn sighed, long and low, almost like a
moan. It pierced Remmy's heart, leaving it bruised and aching for his
friend. 
"But what does it have to do with her doubles... Colin says you've been
looking for them on every world?"
"Ever heard the saying 'one in a million'?" Quinn asked with tears in his
eyes.
"Sure," Remmy replied.
"Well," Quinn explained logically, "There are an infinet number of people
through-out the multiverse, an infinet number of Wades. If Wade was one in a
million, then there has to be another one, identical to her... somewhere."
"You think our Wade is dead?" Rembrandt asked, astonished that Quinn had
given up hope.
"She's dead, and I killed her," the young man murmured, "All because I won't
listen," with that he got up and put his coat on, heading for the door.
"Where are you going?" Remmy asked.
"Out." 

-------

    She glanced at her stolen timer. Three more days- she had to keep
moving! If she stopped moving, the Kromaggs might catch up with her, and
more over, if she stopped she would remember, and remembering hurt. So she
kept moving, always going and never slowing down. That was her existance,
there was nothing else.  With that final, dismal thought, she fell asleep.

------

    Quinn's mind was playing tricks on him again, he knew this as he slept.
For his dreams had decided on something like the memories of his time with
Wade on the Meteor World. Only this time, there was no Arturo to interupt
them, and with slow, shy kisses their passion mounted until they'd knocked
all the food off the table and were desperately stroking each others bodies.
He held Wade, caressed her, moaned her name against her skin, the feeling of
her flesh beneath his finger tips was exciting beyond measure. And at last,
they lay there together, bathed in their sweat, the basement floor (how had
they gotten there??... he didn't care) cool against his skin, Wade's head
pillowed on his chest. Sun spilled through the open basement door and down
the stairs, bathing them in the remaining glory of their love. Wade moaned
and moved against him,
"Has the world ended yet?" she asked.
"How would I know? I've been kind of distracted," he answered as he burrried
his nose in her soft hair....

    Quinn jolted up in bed, half expecting to feel Wade's warmth still
wrapped around him. But there was only the cold empty bed and the stiff
hotel sheets. The red display of the timer clocked down three hours until
the slide. With some embarrassment, Quinn realized the sheets were sticky,
and he was suddenly very glad everyone else was asleep. Carefully, he got
out of bed and stripped it of the sheets, carrying them towards the
bathroom, as he remembered doing a few times in his youth. He didn't bother
to turn on the bathroom light as he put the sheets in the tub and turned on
the water. Slightly dizzy, he turned on the lights and the sink, splashing
some cold water on his face.  When he looked in the mirror, he let out a
startled gasp. There written in haulting script, right on the mirror, was a
strange verse.

Beware the danger, 
as you cross the great water,
Beware the strangers new to your eyes,
Be careful of people who look not straight at you,
The keeper of Time is blind.

Then, at the bottom of the mirror, almost as an after thought;

Can you even hear me?

    "No way," he said sadly, "No way."

------

    She awoke, her body still tingling. <Give it up, stop dreaming> the six
months of hell she'd endured at the hands of the enemy had not been able to
break her soul, nor her love for him . She thought abstractly, at him,
trying to reach across the multiverse and touch him with her heart, with her
love, where ever he was. And she did, though she didn't know it, for it was
soft, lighter than a ghost's eyelash, but it was there.

    She forced herslef up, she had to keep moving. She moved down the
deserted alleyways, her stride powerful but purposeless. At one point she
stopped, gazing at a wall were some teen had started grafetti, but had been
scared away. They'd left their can of blue spray paint sitting on the
ground, and she picked it up to look at it. With a mocking laugh, mostly
directed at herself, she opened the can and wrote on the wall:

Seems like a thousand days since you've been gone,
Where are you? Sometimes I hear you crying.

-----

    "Hey! Mallory! Wait up!"  Maggie called out as they walked towards the
Chandler Hotel.
"Yes Maggie?" Quinn asked tiredly. He hadn't been able to go back to sleep
last night, and on top of that, he was sick of Maggie's thinly disguised
advances. They'd landed in an abandoned part of L.A., most of the brick
walls were covered with spray paint, layers of teenage deffiance scrawled on
top of one another.
"What's up with you, you've been acting kinda strange lately," she put a
hand on his shoulder, and added suggestively, "Maybe I can help."
"Forget it," Quinn replied, "I'm fine." It wasn't Maggie he wanted, to was
Wade. Wade, in all her shinning glory, her bright smile and bottomless brown
eyes. That brought up last night's dream, making the longing inside him more
intense... bodies moving in unison, in a rhythm that was theirs and theirs
alone. He sighed and moved on, not waiting for Maggie to catch up with him.
"Hey Q-ball!" Remmy shouted.
"Yeah?"
"Look at this!" the other man gestured towards a nearly bare wall. Quinn
read the single bit of writing on it and felt like crying. Somewhere out
there, someone else was dying of a broken heart, just like he was.

-----

    Here we go again, Colin thought as he watched his brother scan women in
the room. None of them were satisfactory tonight, so he took a seat at the
bar and ordered a beer. Colin gazed around, offering the occasional
apologetic shrug to the few females that had noticed his brother's scrutiny.
Just as he was about to turn and order, he saw the door open.

    The woman who walked in was small, but her baring was filled with
elegance and grace, her brown eyes proud and tired. Her long hair looked
like it had once been dyed red, and she wore tied back with a red bandana.
Her jeans were full of holes, and he coat a collection of rags, but she was
still striking. her eyes imeadiatly shot past Colin, as if pulled by an
invisible leash towards Quinn. Almost reluctantly, she approuched the bar,
until she stood directly behind Quinn. When she spoke, it was in a soft,
tearfilled velvet voice that made Colin shiver.
"Hello, stranger," she said softly. Quinn stiffened and slowly turned
around. Colin watched something like life pour into Quinn's eyes when he saw
the woman.
"Wade!" he cried, gathering her up in his arms. Wade returned the embrace,
tears flowing in earnest, "I'm so sorry,Wade," Colin heard his brother
whisper, "I love you."
Softly, so softly it almost couldn't be heard- and indeed, maybe it wasn't
susposed to be heard: "I love you too."

And all was right with the world.
Or, at the very least, all was right on Earth 169.