There was only darkness, there was no time, no pain, and no air.
Just motion.
Bruce drifted, alone in the void. The last thing he remembered was fire — the heat of the explosion ripping his body apart, the scream that never made it out of his throat, and the sight of Frank bleeding out beside him in the smoking ruin of Fort Blackridge.
He had died. That much was certain.
But now he floated, half-conscious, surrounded by endless dark. He didn't know what he was, or where he was, or if he was still anything at all. He felt… pulled. Like a thread unspooling across time and gravity.
And then he saw Frank.
Or at least — felt him. The same stubborn, hard-edged presence. The same warmth beneath the ice.
They weren't gone. Not completely. Not yet.
Something was calling them.
A presence, faint but bright, like a whisper made of light. A small orb glowed far ahead — not golden, not red. White. Pure. Clean. Soft in a way that didn't exist in the world they came from.
The light reached them.
It didn't speak. It didn't command. It simply split. One half drifted toward Bruce. The other to Frank.
They did not resist. They couldn't. The white passed into them like breath into lungs that hadn't yet formed.
And then they were falling again.
This time, it was warm, wet, heavy, and real.
Bruce blinked in the darkness — not with eyes, but with the soul. He felt walls tightening around him. Flesh forming. Limbs growing. Bones twisting, cracking, stretching into shape.
He felt heat, movement, and life. Then a heartbeat, but not just one, but two of them, but not his.
A woman's.
A mother's.
He panicked, and tried to scream, but he had no mouth. Just thoughts. Feelings. Panic.
Then he felt Frank.
Still nearby. Still there.
They were inside something. Together. Suspended.
Something stirred between them — a boundary pulled tight, then split. Like the snapping of an egg, and then he felt it and understood.
They were becoming two beings, not boys, but twin girls.
Bruce wanted to laugh. Frank would so hate this.
Oh how he wanted to speak, and he really did try to call out to him, but couldn't. And Frank was similarly silent, but present.
Then the dreams began.
The first came like waves — flickering visions bleeding into one another. At first they made no sense.
Steel cities stretched across entire planets. Forests bloomed under glass domes. The Moon was actually green and full of pine trees. Mars was red no longer, instead it was now sapphire and alive.
And at the edge of the Sol system he saw Starships in the forms of cathedral's, and they were huge like continents. Their massive forms were drifting towards a glowing station in the form of a spoon, a Jump Gate that opened at the center like a mouth in space, not dark but bright with a blue light.
Then the scene changed, and the horrors came. He could see a blackened Earth, cratered and radioactive.
Millions dead. Billions displaced. Entire cultures wiped away. Governments replaced with empires, churches with thrones.
Men with gold-plated armor paraded through streets of ash, shouting sermons and laws in the same breath.
Alien corpses lined space stations. Crying children watched their homes burn from orbit.
Bruce didn't understand most of it — but one image burned deep:
The Earth, split like a skull, cities flickering beneath mushroom clouds.
Then he saw himself there, dead again. Just one in the piles of dead, worthless, a number on a spreadsheet.
Seeing it he instinctively curled up tighter, but the dreams kept coming.
Not just of the end, but of what came after. He could see spaceships leaving Earth, and soon behind them clean rivers began flowing through the ruins of skyscrapers, and as years passed the green returned.
And up in space technology made miracles happen. He could see crops actually growing on asteroids. Jump Gates linked colonies across the stars like threads of silk.
On Jupiter children were being raised in underground dome shaped cities full of green, and in peace with full bellies. Forests were replanted on earth, and planted in all the Sol systems worlds. Humanity was reclaiming the parts of itself it had forgotten, and taking even more.
Although Bruce didn't know what any of it meant, but deep inside, something began to stir.
It was a need to see it happen, and a want to make a change. Then a childish hope, a vision came to him as he thought.
"I want to plant a garden also, somewhere green, maybe Greenland. To make it really green, now that would be something."
Then he felt Frank twitch beside him. Frank was still silent, but listening in his own way.
And as for Frank, well he saw his death again. He remembered looking down at Bruce, his partner, his brother from another mother, just laying in a pool of his own blood with a leg missing and half his ribs exposed, and he made a choice.
He dragged him toward the exit, or well it all was a bit blurry now, but he thought he did. He was dragging Bruce even as the fortress above began to crack, even as the fire crawled down the fuel lines, even as the bullets shattered against his armor like hail against a church bell. And then the mountain exploded, and nothingness followed.
The vision had ended, and he was here somewhere, or maybe nowhere. Just floating, like ash in the wind towards an unknown fate.
He couldn't speak, and he didn't want to anyway, for there was nothing left to say.
He had failed, again.
The war had been a lie. The mission had been a trap. The brotherhood they fought for? Just a contract signed in someone else's blood.
He felt that he should have been angry, but all he felt was cold. Until when suddenly the light came into the dark, like a single bright star on a pitch black night sky.
It was so white, warm, and pure. It didn't feel like it belonged here, and yet it was there before him.
He flinched as it reached for him — but it didn't burn. Didn't blind. It simply entered him, like a memory that wasn't his.
And suddenly, everything around him began to change.
He was pulled.
Sucked downward.
No, inward.
Into flesh, and Into form.
He could feel eyes he knew he shouldn't have had. He could feel fingers forming, growing. Then he heard the heartbeats within the womb.
He wasn't sure how, but his body was forming again. From scratch.
He wanted to scream and say something, but he couldn't. And then he realised it, he wasn't alone.
He didn't know how, but he swore that he felt Bruce next to him. He was smaller now, closer, and he knew that the bond of friendship was still there. Bruce was there, and he could also feel him.
Oh how he wanted to weep. Not from fear, but from the impossible weight of it all, and the joy.
Somehow they had been brought back. Not just him, but the both of them, together, but not as they were.
He could feel the shape of himself, and it was wrong. Softer, more fragile, so small. He was a girl.
Already he could feel his DNA setting out a course for his future, the breasts were going to come, his hips were going to widen, and his bones were going to mold into something gentle. He was going to grow into something extremely feminine, beautiful and attractive once he was older.
He wanted to vomit and scream, but he had no mouth. And well he didn't really care about the body, or that's what he told himself.
Instead what really broke him was the fact that he was alive, and Bruce was alive as well. And that somehow, some thing had decided that wasn't a mistake. They were given a second chance to live and be together again.
But then, suddenly, the visions began. They came hard, faster than bullets.
He could see cities leveled by war. Earth cracked like glass. From space it didn't look the same at all, parts were missing. And everywhere corpses were lined in trenches under broken flags.
But humanity survived, and It had mutated Into something more.
An Imperium, they called it. A machine made of laws and death and gold-plated words. It was a government of purity, built on ash and obedience. And across the stars whole alien races were cleansed under fire, planets were sterilized. And at the end there was peace, for a time.
Frank saw men like gods, wrapped in armor, preaching about light and order while starving colonies from orbit.
He saw rebels waving flags, only to then be crushed under metallic legs of mechs. Children were weeping in labs, and made into warriors that were impossibly tall and strong.
And then he saw planets consumed by a plague that made people sing and scream through rotten vocal cords. There was an army, no a horde of infected, mutated people singing and charging like a wave towards gun fire.
And before the horde, above the trench line manned by soldiers he saw the flag of man, it was waving high like a sign of defiance and unity.
And he whispered inside himself, quiet and cracked.
"No, not again."
He didn't want war anymore, he didn't even want revenge, or glory. He didn't care about right or wrong anymore. He had spent his entire past life in war and hell, now it was time for something different.
Now all he wanted, was a second chance. Just one peaceful life, one ordinary life.
A place where Bruce could plant his gardens and smile like an idiot and never know what it felt like to be betrayed by everything he swore to protect.
Frank curled into himself, into the warmth of the womb, and closed his soul's eyes.
He didn't pray.
But he made a vow:
"No empires. No war. Just us. That's enough."
And like so time passed. Until one day it finally happened. The cold came first.
Sharp and sudden. Not like death. Not like the kind of cold you feel from blood loss or snow on armor. This was new.
This was birth.
Frank felt it before Bruce did.
He was being pushed.
Pressed. Squeezed through something tight and wet and unbearable.
He didn't panic.
But deep down, he hated it.
The pressure grew — a thunder in the womb, a tremble through their mother's bones. Her heartbeat thundered like artillery.
Then came the scream.
Not his.
Hers.
Their mother.
He couldn't see her yet, but he could feel her — flesh trembling, lungs gasping, muscles wracked in agony as she brought them into the world.
Bruce stirred beside him.
Even now, Frank could sense his softness.
His confusion.
His wonder.
It almost made him laugh.
Almost.
Then the light hit him.
A blinding slap across the eyes.
His lungs burned. He choked.
And then he screamed.
A real one, this time.
High-pitched. Weak. Involuntary.
He had never screamed like that before.
Not when he was shot. Not when he was betrayed. Not even when the mountain exploded.
But this?
This humiliation?
This helplessness?
It broke something inside him.
Hands — soft ones — lifted him into the air. Cold metal pressed to his skin. A cloth wiped at his mouth, his nose, his face.
He blinked.
Saw a face.
A woman with eyes like frozen lake water.
She was crying.
She whispered something in a language he half-remembered from lullabies on old radios, and something to do with the winter war and world war 2.
"Kiitos… kiitos Herra… minun tyttäreni…"
Hearing it Frank froze, he could somewhat understand her words or the meaning of them, which simply meant, "Thank you, Lord, for giving me a daughter.."
Then he heard a second scream.
Bruce.
His twin.
Born only seconds later, flailing and squirming and pink-faced in the midwife's hands.
Their mother sobbed harder now, reaching for them both.
She looked exhausted. Beautiful. Pale. Stronger than either of them had ever been.
The midwife wrapped them in thick wool, handed one to each of the waiting arms.
Frank felt her mother's heartbeat again — but from the outside this time.
And Bruce?
Bruce was already wriggling.
Already trying to suckle their mother's breasts. Seemingly already forgetting who he had been. Although he could see that he was still just the same simple dufus he had always been.
Frank closed his eyes. He also wanted to forget and happily play the part of some simple baby, but he wouldn't, not yet, and probably not ever.
Then another voice filled the room. It was their father.
Low. Steady. With a Finnish accent buried under years of silence.
"What will we name them?"
Their mother smiled through her tears.
She looked at Frank first — now cradled against her chest, shivering.
"Fiona," she whispered. "My fire in the cold."
Then she turned to Bruce — now curled in the crook of their father's thick arm, eyes wide, mouth already working.
"And this one… Bella. Beautiful light."
Frank felt his heart ache, but he didn't fight it. And it wasn't like he could. He was a she, and she was Fiona now.
And his partner, Bruce, was Bella now, and it was done.
They were born again, alive again and together.
And no one in that quiet room would ever know the kind of monsters they had been. And they would hopefully not know of the world they came from. Hopefully this time there would just be peace. Surely the world would not follow the same course.
Outside the timber house, the wind whispered through the pines, shaking the last dustings of frost from the branches. The stars shone cold and distant above Mount Mansfield, unmoved by what had just happened in the small, candlelit room below.
Inside, all was still.
The fire crackled low in the hearth.
Annalise slept in bed, her arms curved protectively around her daughters. Her face was soft now, the creases of pain slowly fading as exhaustion took her. Her lips murmured prayers in her sleep—old ones. Finnish ones. Words of protection, strength, and peace whispered in the language of the forest and snow.
Elias sat beside her in a wooden chair, unmoving.
He didn't speak. He didn't cry.
But his hand remained on the blanket that covered his daughters, one large finger resting gently against each of their small arms.
His daughters.
It still didn't feel real.
Not yet, and so he kept watch over them like he was still a soldier. The twins lay between them so beautifully. They were small, soft and swaddled in wool and silence.
But within their minds, they weren't quiet at all.
Fiona did not sleep like a newborn should.
Her body was still, her breathing shallow, but her mind was a storm behind her closed eyes.
She saw fire and smoke. The twisted metal bones of machines half-buried in Martian dust. Cities stacked like bones under the weight of golden banners.
She heard a language she didn't recognize, but somehow understood. A chant.
"Glory to the Light. Glory to the Emperor, and glory to humanity."
She felt her pulse quicken. Her tiny fists clenched under the blanket.
She tried to scream, but only let out a breathless murmur.
From the other side of the bed, Bella stirred.
Bella's dreams were warmer. Although not free of war and darkness, but softer around the edges.
She saw domes of glass under alien suns, greenhouses blooming with impossible flowers. She saw bees the size of cats pollinating forests on the Moon.
She saw animals curled beside children in underground homes, safe and fed and happy.
She saw water, so much of it being poured across Mars by machines shaped like whales, slowly making red into green.
She didn't understand any of it, how did such machines work, but she wanted it. She wanted to learn, and she wanted to walk barefoot in moss again. She wanted to make the world soft, happy and pretty.
And in the center of her chest, so small it could barely be seen, a tiny glow began to flicker.
It wasn't bright. Not yet. Just a soft pulse of white. Once every few seconds, like a second heartbeat.
It was the white core, still weak, still barely awake, but it was there.
Inside Fiona, it pulsed too, but slower. Hotter. Heavier. As if the weight of the world already rested in her bones.
Neither girl knew what it meant or even what it was. They didn't know how to use it, and they could hardly even feel it, for now it was just a strange warm feeling within their chests.
They only knew that when they dreamed of each other, the warmth grew a bit more and they liked that, it felt funny.
Then Bella stirred again. She let out a soft sigh and turned her face toward Fiona's.
Fiona didn't move, but one of her fingers reached blindly beneath the blanket and found Bella's hand.
She gripped it, not tightly, but firmly enough that it meant something.
And for the first time since the fire, since the gunshots and the betrayal, since the mountain collapsed on top of them—
They slept in peace together.
The next morning came with birdsong.
Muted and shy at first, just a few notes from the snow-laden pine trees. Then more, until the forest outside the Redford cabin pulsed with soft whistles and chirps beneath the pale blue sky.
Inside the house, the hearth had burned low, but the warmth lingered.
A pot hung over the coals, water beginning to simmer. Dried juniper berries and yarrow leaves floated near the top, not for medicine, not this time. Just tea.
Annalise moved quietly through the kitchen in her wool socks, a shawl pulled tight over her shoulders. Her hair was down, wild and soft, falling over her collarbone in loose strands. The twin girls slept nearby in a basket crib, bundled and blinking, not crying, just… watching.
Fiona's eyes were open already.
She didn't move.
She simply stared at the beams above the ceiling, eyes unblinking. Her core pulsed faintly in her chest, a dull warmth that seemed to match the rhythm of the wind outside.
Bella was curled against her side, still half-asleep, her mouth moving slightly as if talking to someone in a dream. She smelled like lavender and milk. Her lips were pink, her hair a silver tangle across her brow.
Annalise glanced at them and smiled, small and tired, but real.
She knelt beside the crib and pressed a hand gently against each of their bellies.
"Still warm," she whispered in the Finnish language. "Still strong."
Behind her, the door creaked open.
Elias stepped inside, carrying a full load of firewood across one shoulder.
Snow clung to his boots. His hair was damp with frost. His jaw clenched slightly, always clenched, like there was something he still wanted to say but didn't know how.
He set the wood down by the hearth, not loudly, not carefully, just enough.
"Tea?" Annalise asked without looking up.
He nodded. "Thanks."
She poured it into two mugs, steam rising.
He stood behind her, looking down at the twins.
"They look different," he said after a moment.
"Different from what?"
"From… us."
Annalise smiled again, barely.
"Maybe they're from something better. Or maybe it's the blood of our ancestors that's coursing through them. And maybe, just maybe they are up there right now watching over us."
Elias didn't answer. He just sipped his tea and looked out the window.
The mountain stood silent above the treetops, capped in white.
A hawk circled far off in the blue.
Back in the crib, Bella stretched. Her little hands reached upward, eyes blinking open.
She turned her head slowly toward Fiona and smiled, a real smile.
Fiona blinked once. Twice. Then turned away.
Still not speaking. Still not crying. But watching everything.
Elias crouched beside them and touched Bella's foot.
"She'll be loud," he muttered. "That one."
Annalise sat beside him.
"And this one…" she said, touching Fiona's forehead. "Will be quiet. Like you."
He nodded once.
"I'll build them something," he said.
"What?"
"Something to grow into."
Later that day, he walked into the woods behind the house, axe slung over his shoulder.
He didn't know what he was building yet, a cradle, a fence, a future.
He only knew they were here now.
And the world was already changing.
And inside the home time seemed to pass slowly for the girls. But soon days slipped into weeks, and the world stayed soft and warm, full of wool blankets, crackling fire, and the steady rhythm of their mother's breath.
Bruce and Frank had once stormed through deserts and fortresses. Now they lay curled in a cradle woven from pinewood and linen, both of them small, pink, and occasionally damp.
The first challenge wasn't death or betrayal.
It was diaper's.
Bella, once Bruce, learned very quickly that crying earned immediate attention. And she learned just as fast that diaper changes were hellishly undignified.
The wipes were cold.
The cream was sticky.
The cloth was rough.
She flailed her tiny legs each time, making odd little grunts of protest, which only earned her a soft shushing and a tighter wrap from her mother.
Fiona didn't cry. Not even during changes.
She clenched her fists, held her breath, and stared at the ceiling like a prisoner accepting her sentence.
But when Bella was changed first, Fiona would squirm and twist until she could grab her sister's arm. Her tiny fingers curled around Bella's wrist and refused to let go.
It was the same every time.
Fiona held her tighter than necessary.
Bella didn't mind.
She smiled at her sister with drool on her chin and babbled something that sounded like, "Ba-ba-daaa."
Mother Annalise adored dressing them.
Every morning she picked matching outfits, soft little wool dresses in shades of pale blue and cream, with tiny embroidered birds or stars on the collars.
Sometimes she'd giggle to herself and put little ribbon ties in their hair, even though their hair barely stayed in place. Bella's silver tufts stuck out at odd angles. Fiona's hair curled slightly at the ends, always falling over one eye.
After dressing them, she would sit cross-legged on the rug and bring them out to the main room, laying them on a sheepskin mat by the hearth.
"There," she whispered. "Now you watch the fire while I grind the herbs. No kicking your sister."
Fiona immediately rolled onto her side and pulled Bella against her like a protective bear cub.
Bella squeaked, half-surprised, half-amused. She blinked and tried to mimic her mother's words.
"Äiti," she whispered one afternoon, then again louder. "Äiti!"
Annalise gasped.
She knelt beside them, laughing softly. "Yes, sweetheart. That's me, your Äiti, or mother in English. Well done, you're learning very well."
Bella beamed.
Fiona frowned slightly, jealous she hadn't said it first. Her lips puckered as she tried to repeat it, but what came out was more like "Aaa...tii."
Annalise clapped anyway. "Good girl."
They were learning, and after that crawling came next.
And with crawling came chaos.
Bella was bold, curious, and aimless, the moment her arms were strong enough, she began dragging herself across the floor, trying to grab anything with texture.
Rugs. Baskets. Elias's old boots.
She got stuck under the rocking chair twice.
Fiona, on the other hand, refused to move unless Bella did. She stayed close, crawling behind her like a pale little shadow, always one step behind, always reaching for her.
When Bella fell or hit her head on a table leg, Fiona would let out a shriek louder than Bella's actual cry.
She once tried to bite the table in revenge.
Elias nearly dropped his tea watching it happen.
"They're fierce," he muttered to Annalise that night.
"No," she said with a proud smile. "They're alive."
Then each day came the breastfeeding.
Neither of them remembered it from their past lives, of course.
But that didn't make it less awkward, especially for Frank.
He had stormed compounds, killed warlords, once pulled three men out of a burning jeep.
But nothing had prepared him for being cradled against a breast the size of his head, feeling the strange, instinctive urge take over.
The warmth.
The taste.
The hum in his chest.
It was mortifying.
Every time Annalise lifted her shirt, Fiona tried to look away, only to find herself suckling without conscious thought.
Bella, on the other hand, took to it like she was born for it.
She made little happy noises as she drank, her hands gripping the edge of her mother's shawl like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Fiona glared at her from the other side, cheeks red, fists clenched, pride shattered.
Annalise never noticed.
She just stroked their hair, sang old lullabies, and whispered stories about Karelia, about winter bears and stars that danced above frozen lakes.
They learned words slowly.
"Puu" — tree.
"Lumi" — snow.
"Vesi" — water.
And eventually…
"Vuosi…" whispered Fiona one day, pointing at the calendar hung by the fireplace.
Bella squinted.
The numbers were strange, but familiar.
1991.
They both stared at it for a long time.
And then, without saying a word, they leaned against each other and closed their eyes.
They understood now.
What time it was.
What year it was.
How far they had come back.
And how far they still had to go.