32. Ethereal Echoes
32
ETHEREAL ECHOES
~JESSICA~
T he soft hush of the empty auditorium envelops us like a blanket—familiar, comforting, a cocoon of possibility. Dust motes dance in the streams of light cutting through the high windows, catching on the beams like tiny stars suspended in mid-air. The polished wooden stage beneath us still holds the warmth of our exertion, a living thing responding to the precise rhythm of our movements across its surface.
My breathing has finally slowed, the burning in my lungs subsiding to a pleasant ache that reminds me I'm alive, that I've pushed my body to its limits and found them farther than I'd expected. Beside me, Elizabeth's chest still rises and falls rapidly, her platinum blonde hair escaping its severe bun in wisps that frame her flushed face like a halo.
We've just finished our pas de deux for the spring showcase—our most challenging routine yet, one that required perfect synchronization, absolute trust, and the kind of connection that transcends mere physicality. Three minutes and forty-two seconds of pure expression, of storytelling through movement, of communicating without words what language is too limited to convey.
"That was incredible," Elizabeth breathes, her blue eyes sparkling with the particular joy that comes only after creating something beautiful through sheer will and discipline. "Did you feel it when we hit that grand jeté in perfect unison? The audience is going to lose their minds."
I laugh, the sound echoing in the empty space, bouncing back to us like a shared secret. "If we can replicate it on performance night. That's always the challenge, isn't it? Making lightning strike twice."
Elizabeth grins, nudging my shoulder with her own. "We will. We always do." She flops backward, stretching her lithe form against the stage floor, arms extended above her head in languid relief. "God, I love this feeling. Like I could fly if I wanted to."
I mirror her movement, relishing the pull of tired muscles as I stretch beside her. The ceiling of the auditorium arches high above us, painted a midnight blue with silver stars embedded in the plaster—a whimsical touch in an otherwise austere academy building.
"What would you do if we couldn't dance?" Elizabeth asks suddenly, her voice contemplative in a way that suggests the question has been lingering beneath the surface of her thoughts. "If something happened and ballet was no longer an option. What would you choose instead?"
The question catches me off guard, introducing a note of potential loss into our moment of triumph. I turn my head to look at her, studying the profile I know as well as my own—the straight nose, high cheekbones, the determined set of her jaw that softens only when she laughs.
"I don't know," I admit, considering the possibility with genuine thought rather than dismissing it outright. "Something that challenges me, I guess. I need that—the push against my limits, the satisfaction of mastering something difficult."
Elizabeth rolls onto her side, propping herself up on one elbow to look at me more directly. "Like what? What else makes you feel the way dance does?"
I laugh, the sound lighter than the weight of the question. "Fitness. Boxing, maybe. I tried archery at summer camp a few years ago and loved it—something about the focus required, the perfect stillness before release." I pause, considering other possibilities. "Hell, I'd probably enjoy a shooting range too. Anything that requires precision and discipline."
"Oh my God." Elizabeth's laughter joins mine, bright and genuine. "You'd be an assassin or something if you weren't a dancer. Little Jessica Calavera, elite hitwoman."
"Now you're pushing it," I protest, giving her a playful shove. "There's a big difference between enjoying target practice and taking out actual humans, you know."
But her words linger, creating an odd dissonance that feels like remembering something that hasn't happened yet. I shake off the sensation, focusing instead on the warmth of the stage beneath me, the familiar scent of rosin and wood polish, the comforting presence of my best friend beside me.
Elizabeth's expression shifts, becoming more serious as she sits up, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "Do you ever wonder if all this is worth it? The constant training, the sacrifice, the pressure to be perfect every single moment?"
"Worth it for what?" I ask, following her lead and sitting up as well. "For Juilliard? For Harvard? For whatever comes after?"
She nods, absently tugging at a loose thread on her leotard. "Yeah. Like, if we didn't dance, would there even be a point to going to Harvard? Would we still be so desperate for those scholarships? It sometimes feels like we're on this predetermined path, and I wonder what would happen if we just... stepped off it."
I've never heard Elizabeth express doubt about our shared goals before. She's always been the driven one, the one reminding me of practice schedules and application deadlines, the one with color-coded plans extending years into our future. Her uncertainty now unsettles me more than I want to admit.
"What would you do?" I ask, genuinely curious. "If not dance, if not Harvard, what does Elizabeth Abercrombie's alternate life look like?"
She's quiet for a long moment, her gaze distant as if peering into some parallel reality where our feet never found pointe shoes, where our bodies were never trained into instruments of precise expression.
"I don't know for sure," she finally says, voice soft with contemplation. "But sometimes I think... maybe being in a pack wouldn't be as terrible as we've made it out to be."
The admission catches me completely by surprise. We've spent countless hours mocking the traditional Omega path—joking about the Alpha students who view us as nothing more than potential breeding stock, rolling our eyes at instructors who subtly push conformity over ambition for those with our designation. Elizabeth, especially, has been vocal about her determination to succeed in fields traditionally dominated by Alphas and Betas.
"You? In a pack?" I can't keep the astonishment from my voice. "Since when?"
She shrugs, a delicate lift of shoulders that have carried heavier burdens than anyone our age should bear. "Not just any pack," she clarifies. "Not with the kind of Alphas we see every day. But if they were good, you know? If they were kind, loving, wished for me to succeed in whatever I wanted to do. If they weren't like most of the assholes we see."
Her words paint a picture so different from what we've been taught to expect that I find myself contemplating it despite my instinctive resistance. "You mean if they supported you rather than controlled you?"
"Exactly." Her eyes light up with that particular intensity that appears whenever she's exploring a new idea. "If we were lucky enough to meet a pack that supported and protected us from the rest of the world, maybe being an Omega wouldn't be so bad. Maybe it would even be... beautiful, in its own way."
I consider her words, trying to imagine myself in such a scenario—surrounded by Alphas who viewed my dreams as valuable rather than inconvenient, who saw me as more than my designation, who offered protection without demanding subjugation in return.
"Do you think that's possible?" I ask, the question emerging more vulnerable than I intended. "That kind of pack actually existing?"
Elizabeth's smile turns thoughtful, almost wistful. "For you? Probably. If you just focus on building something versus letting revenge take over."
Her words strike an odd chord, resonating with a discomfort I can't quite place. "Revenge? What are you talking about? Revenge for what?"
The question hangs in the air between us, unanswered as Elizabeth's expression shifts—still smiling, but with a sadness that seems to belong to someone who has lived much longer, seen much more than our seventeen years should allow. She reaches out, patting my shoulder with a gentleness that feels like farewell rather than casual affection.
"When everything is good, and you're with a pack..." she says, her voice suddenly sounding distant despite her physical proximity, "let's be friends again, okay?"
Confusion washes over me, sharp and disorienting. "What are you talking about? We are friends. We've always been friends."
But even as I speak the words, something feels wrong—the quality of light in the auditorium has changed, shadows lengthening where they shouldn't be able to reach, colors bleeding at the edges like watercolors left in the rain. Elizabeth's form seems to shimmer slightly, as if viewed through heat rising from summer pavement.
"Elizabeth?" My voice emerges smaller than intended, uncertainty threading through the syllables of her name.
She smiles—that brilliant, full smile that could light up a room, that made everyone who saw it feel like they were being granted a special gift just by its appearance—and whispers, "Wake up, Jessica. Go back to the land of the living."
"What?" I reach for her hand, suddenly desperate to maintain the connection between us. "What do you mean? Who ? —?"
My question dissolves into confusion as the world around us shifts, reality bending like fabric caught in a strong wind. Elizabeth rises from her seated position, but as she stands, something changes—her form elongating, broadening, transforming before my eyes with the impossible logic that exists only in dreams.
I blink, and where my best friend stood just moments before, my father now stands.
Victor Calavera looks different than I remember—older, lines etched more deeply around his eyes and mouth, silver threading through the dark hair at his temples. But his presence remains unmistakable, the particular quality of contained power that always made rooms feel smaller whenever he entered them.
Yet there's something else now, something I rarely witnessed in my childhood—a softness in his expression as he gazes down at me, a pride unmarred by expectation or condition.
"You don't belong here, my dear," he says, his voice exactly as I remember it—deep, resonant, with the faint accent that became more pronounced whenever he was tired or angry or particularly moved.
I frown, struggling to process this latest impossibility. "Belong where? Where is this?"
He doesn't answer directly, simply continues to smile in that unfamiliar, gentle way. I study him more carefully, noting the changes time has wrought—the additional gray at his temples, the deeper lines around his mouth, the slight stoop to shoulders that once seemed incapable of bending.
"You know, I never got to tell you this," he says, regret coloring his tone with surprising vulnerability.
"Tell me what?" I ask, rising to my feet to stand before him, suddenly acutely aware of how small I still feel in his presence despite the years that have passed.
"I'm proud of you, my Vesper."
The words—so simple, so ordinary in any other father-daughter relationship—strike me with physical force. How long had I waited to hear them? How desperately had I worked for them, pushed myself beyond reasonable limits in desperate hope that one day he might look at me and see something worthy of that simple acknowledgment?
"Dad?" The word emerges choked, disbelief warring with longing.
His smile deepens, the expression transforming his features into something I glimpsed only rarely in childhood—the father beneath the empire builder, the man beneath the myth.
"Next time..." he says, his image beginning to waver like a reflection in disturbed water, "maybe in the next life, I'll be a better father. One who's not so focused on building an empire that isn't centered on making my sweet daughter happy."
The world around us continues to dissolve, the auditorium's familiar contours blurring into indistinct shapes, colors bleeding into one another like watercolors left in the rain. Only my father remains clear, his gaze holding mine with an intensity that transcends the disintegrating reality surrounding us.
"Go back to those men," he says, the instruction gentle but firm, brooking no argument despite its softness.
"What men?" I ask, desperately trying to cling to this moment, to understand what's happening before it slips away entirely. "What are you talking about?"
He huffs, the sound so achingly familiar—the same exasperated noise he made whenever I questioned his decisions, whenever I pushed against boundaries he considered fixed and immutable. But now it carries a different quality, almost amused rather than irritated.
"I don't like them," he admits, his form growing increasingly transparent as he speaks, "but I guess they did good in my absence."
I try to reach for him, to grasp his hand or his sleeve or any part of him that might anchor us both in this dissolving reality. "Dad, wait! I don't understand! Who are you talking about? What's happening?"
But he's already fading, becoming more impression than image, more memory than presence. His smile is the last thing to disappear—that rare, genuine expression I sought so desperately as a child, that I would have given anything to earn and keep.
"Be happy, my Vesper," his voice whispers, surrounding me even as his image disappears completely. "That's all I ever truly wanted."
I reach into empty air, grasping at absence where presence should be. "Dad! Dad, come back!"
But there's nothing to hold onto, nothing to keep me anchored in this place that feels increasingly less real with each passing second. The world continues to dissolve around me—the auditorium, the stage, the dust motes dancing in shafts of sunlight—all of it bleeding into darkness at the edges, contracting toward a single point of light that grows more distant with each heartbeat.
I'm being pulled away—or perhaps the reality is being pulled from me, receding like tide from shore, leaving me stranded between worlds. I fight against the current, struggling to maintain my position in this space where Elizabeth still lives, where my father speaks with pride, where past and present and possibility blend into something that feels like healing.
But the pull is relentless, drawing me backward with increasing strength. The last pinpoint of light contracts to nothing, leaving me suspended in absolute darkness—not the comfortable darkness of night, but the complete absence of everything, a void that feels like the space between heartbeats, between breaths, between lives.
I float in this nothingness, no longer certain if I'm moving or still, if I'm falling or flying, if I'm returning to something or departing from everything. Time loses meaning, extends and contracts simultaneously, passes without passing.
Then, distantly at first but with increasing clarity, I hear voices—familiar yet strange, as if heard underwater or through thick glass. They speak words I can't quite understand, in tones that convey urgency without specific meaning. The voices grow louder, more insistent, pulling me toward them with increasing strength.
"...not losing her..." A deep voice, resonant with authority and something that might be fear beneath controlled precision.
"...blood pressure stabilizing..." Another voice, quieter but no less intense, clinical terms delivered with undercurrent of desperate hope.
"...fighting..." A third, gruff and strained, as if pushed through clenched teeth or tightened throat.
"...Jessica..." This one clearer than the others, cutting through the darkness with laser precision, familiar in a way that makes something in my chest ache with recognition. "...come back to us..."
The darkness begins to recede—or perhaps I'm emerging from it, rising through layers of consciousness like a diver ascending from ocean depths. Sensation returns gradually—pain first, sharp and insistent, radiating from multiple points across my body. Then pressure—something tight around my wrist, something else against my chest, weight against my legs.
The voices grow clearer, resolving into recognizable patterns despite the static still buzzing between my awareness and full comprehension.
"...stubborn even at death's door..." A hint of admiration colors the observation, warming what might otherwise have sounded like criticism.
"...wouldn't have it any other way..." Affection transparent beneath gruffness, a particular quality of tenderness that belongs to only one person in my limited circle.
I struggle toward these voices, toward the pain and pressure that signal return to physical form, to consequence, to the messy reality of being alive with all its complications and contradictions. Each metaphorical stroke toward consciousness requires enormous effort, as if swimming against a current determined to pull me back into comfortable oblivion.
But I persist, driven by something I can't quite articulate—a need to know what happens next, to see these men whose voices call me back, to discover what Elizabeth meant about building rather than destroying, what my father meant about being happy.
I try to open my eyes, to speak, to move—any sign that would communicate my return journey to those waiting. But my body remains unresponsive, a leaden weight refusing the commands my mind issues with increasing frustration.
Exhaustion threatens to pull me back into the void, the effort of fighting against the current depleting what little strength I've managed to gather. It would be easier to surrender, to float back into that peaceful darkness where pain can't reach, where questions don't need answers, where loss doesn't cut with such sharp edges.
"Come back, Nightshade." The voice—Bastian's voice, I recognize now—reaches me with perfect clarity, as if spoken directly into my consciousness rather than to my physical form. "We're waiting for you."
We. Such a simple word, but it carries weight beyond its single syllable. We implies connection, implies belonging, implies something I've denied myself for longer than I can remember.
With renewed determination, I push toward the surface of consciousness, gathering whatever strength remains for one final effort. The darkness begins to fracture, hairline cracks appearing in the void, light seeping through in brilliant filaments that grow broader, brighter with each moment.
And then, like breaking through the surface after being submerged too long, I emerge—gasping, disoriented, alive in ways that hurt and heal simultaneously. The darkness shatters completely, replaced by overwhelming sensation—too bright, too loud, too much pressure, too much pain.
But beneath the discomfort, beneath the confusion and fear and lingering disorientation, something else pulses with quiet insistence—something that feels strangely like hope, like possibility, like a future I never allowed myself to imagine but that suddenly seems within reach.
Elizabeth's words echo one final time as consciousness fully reclaims me: "When everything is good, and you're with a pack...let's be friends again, okay?"
And as reality solidifies around me, as the dream recedes like tide from shore, I finally understand what she meant—not about our friendship, which never truly ended despite her death, but about permission. Permission to move forward. Permission to build something new from the ashes of what was destroyed. Permission to see the four men who have crashed into my carefully constructed isolation as something more than temporary allies or convenient protection.
Permission to belong somewhere, to someone. To them.
To my pack.