"Liza, oh god, Liza," Mable gushes as her tears fall to the floor. "I can't believe I've found you, at last."
"Yes, May Bell, you don't mind if I call you that, do you?" the face makes its request.
Mable holds out her hand and touches the cheek of the one who speaks. "Yes, you can call me May Bell. I am forever your May Bell," she accepts the entirety of her friend without reserve and can't believe she is touching her, even in this distorted fashion.
"May Bell, you need to listen to me," Liza says softly, but with authority. "You need to let me go. I know all that you have done to bring me back, seeking out the pieces and putting them back together again. It is simply commendable. But child, please, you need to get on with your life."
Mable shakes her head in stubborn refusal of the truth.
"Please May Bell, you need to listen to what I say and take in my words," Liza pleads with her all the more. "Your quest for revenge mixed with a rescue mission is not healthy. Master destroyed me and absorbed me back into his body. I didn't have the power to escape, I still don't. But if I did, coming back to you will do you no favors in the end."
Mable tries her utmost to put her feelings aside, but they are buried too deep for her to discard them outright.
"It may feel good at first, even like a dream come true, but it will turn to disappointment and then a living nightmare," Liza summarizes the years that would pass between them. "I am not what you need anymore. You have moved on even as you look back and forged a new life for yourself and a new purpose. I know your assistance of those children was subsequent to your mission, but you helped them all the same when you could have left them to their dark dreams."
Mable does her utmost to listen even as she swims against the torrent of her feelings.
"May Bell, not all altruistic endeavors start off that way," Liza educates her friend. "In fact, most start for purely selfish motives. But once it is discovered how helpful the actions prove, they are then repurposed. This is your calling, to save children from their nightmares using the power and your mind. You can help so many. You just-"
"But Master destroyed your mask," Mable interjects and points to the remains. "I don't have any powers anymore."
"But I can give it back to you, and make it part of you," Liza informs her. "But you have to make a choice. I don't have enough power to do this for you and the countless others you will save, as well as manifesting myself for your enjoyment."
The dream warrior starts back as though wounded. "No. No! NO!" she explodes stronger each time as she turns in circles before stopping with a stomp toward those she's been conversing with. "Why does it have to be me?! Why does it have to be a choice?! Haven't I already suffered enough?! Must I give more of myself even as I have given back already?! Where is the justice in that?! How is this even remotely fair?!"
"Mable please-" the face tries to reason with her.
"No Liza, I need you to listen!" the irate woman shouts back and clenches her fists. "I love you! I love you to death! You saw me, you saw my actions, but you did not see into my heart! I can't, I can't let you go again, not when I'm this close!"
"Then you've made your choice," the face states without any emotion at all.
"No! Yes! I don't know!" the dream walker babbles on and bobs her head about. "This is impossible!" She starts crying again.
Liza is at a complete loss.
Marie steps forward. "I have no idea what is going on, but I know a crisis when I see one," she offers to the best of her ability while stepping forward and embracing her friend. "Mable, it's okay. Just look inside yourself and you will know what to do."
The beleaguered woman looks to her roommate. "But why do I always have to give?" she queries as she tries and fails to retain her rage. "When is it my turn to take?"
"Oh sweetie," Marie consoles her as she places a hand to each cheek of her friend. "You have to know by now, good people are always giving. And they can only ever expect getting among other good people."
"Then I shall be the bad person!" the flustered woman shouts as she throws up her hands. "Then I can take from everyone!"
Marie laughs. "Come on Mable," she spouts once she has control of her breath. "You could never be a bad guy, you're too much of a good guy deep down." She stares her right in the eye. "A bad guy wouldn't have cared about me being hungover or Simon's hang up over his device, or all of the people that you help on a daily basis. Mable, seriously, are you heartless enough to punt a puppy into the sun?"
The woman at a crossroads can't help but smile. "No," she manages as she suppresses a giggle.
"Of course not," Marie affirms and nods her head.
"But I don't want to lose either," the woman on the losing end of things rebuts and shakes her head.
"Mable, honey, look," Marie starts in as she redirects her friend's attention to the face. "Really look at what is in front of you and take off the rose tinted glasses."
The woman of questionable motives does as instructed. She gazes upon the face before her and sees her friend staring right back. But she heeds the advice given her and really takes the time to look.
The more she stares, the more the visage starts to break down and it becomes apparent that she is merely an amalgamation of many such beings that are slipping and sliding around each other without any one of them maintaining their form long enough to be recognized as their own being.
"You see it now, don't you?" the face breaks through the stillness. "I hate to tell you this, but I was never more my own individual than the isolation allowed me to be. Liza, doesn't exist, not really. I am, and always have been, more a construct of everyone else's interpretation, than I have ever been my own person. And if you are to move on then you must realize that I am little more than your mascot, and a construct closer to raw ore than refined stone."
Mable opens her mouth to say something, but cannot find the words. "But I love you," she finally blurts with all the intensity of one who doesn't care how they sound.
"Sweetie, no," the face refutes the assumption. "You love the old Liza. The one who played with you as a child. And had I the power I'd give her to you. But I have been too long swimming in this amalgamous mass, absorbing all the other entities that float within. I am no more who you want me to be than I am a dream of more pleasant times."
The woman warrior of dreams takes a breath. She has accepted the logic of the circumstance, but she still holds back and she doesn't know why. She just can't help feel that this is a defeat, but she knows she has no choice. "Please," she capitulates and bows her head, that none may see the disappointment on her face. "Grant me the power."
Marie holds her close. "You won't regret this," she assures her roommate and gives her a squeeze.
"I hope you're right," Mable whispers so low, hardly anyone can hear her.
The face begins to pulsate and wriggle as she breaks down into a body without form and surrounds the two women in a sphere of crackling energy. "I love you May Bell," the voice of the woman formerly known as Liza spreads around the enclosure. "And my heart is large enough to hold two." With that a brilliant flash of light emits and is gone the next second along with everything else.
Now there is only the void and the three actors, Mable, Marie and Master.
The amalgamation turns about. He does not look happy. "I let you win and this is how you repay me?!" he shouts aloud as he closes the distance. "You take from me?!" Energy ripples all around him. "That was not very smart!"
Mable barely hears what is spoken as she is so awash with the power permeating her person. She looks to the irate individual. "No," she utters and allows the energy to manifest into a pair of chains bolted to the floor.
Master struggles against the bindings and strains them nearly to breaking. He laughs. "This is the best you can do?!" he scoffs and flexes his muscles, so to speak.
Mable smiles. "It is enough," she remarks and refurnishes the chains.
Master laughs. "It can hold me, for now," he admits as a sickening grin crosses his face. "Or can it." More straining till the popping of metal this time.
"Mable?!" Marie suddenly speaks up as her body becomes aglow. "Mable what's happening?!" The light intensifies. "I feel strange and I can't, I can't stop it!" The ground rumbles all around them and starts cracking.
Master laughs. You stupid, stupid girl," he chides her and stops trying to break the chains. "You've awoken a nova. You've doomed us all." He continues his merriment. "And just to show how good a sport I am, or how vindictive, I never can tell, I'm going to save you from her so you can live with what you've done." He dissipates, leaving behind a skeletal figure.
"Mable. I can't, STOP!!!" Marie shouts as her whole body goes critical and implodes, becoming a singular point to which all things are drawn.
"Feel that?!" Master queries over the sound of the whole world collapsing into itself with a voice all around the lone inhabitant. "That is some real power! Problem is, it can't be controlled or sustained! You've just condemned your friend to a living death! Way to go hero!"
For Mable it sounds as though the world all around her is being torn apart and there is nothing she can do about it. Even though her power has been restored it will not extend beyond the protective sphere that is the amalgamation's final act of cynical heroism.
All at once the bubble bursts and she finds herself standing in a black void with her friend collapsed onto her knees with her body smoldering. "Marie," she calls out as she walks over to her.
"Mable, is that you?" the smoking woman replies groggily as she struggles to lift her head.
"I've got you," the dream warrior assures her roommate as she lifts her with some difficulty. I"ve got you."
"Mable, what is going on?" the woman who is a nova inquires weakly as she fights to stand upright.
"It's okay Marie, I've got you," the warrior woman ignores the obvious question and sticks to reassurances as she works to get them out of there. "We're getting out of here."
Mable calls upon her power now as glittering dust encircles them both and causes their persons to vanish in the next moment.
What they don't see is the structure of the dream collapse all around them and get swallowed up by the void that lay just beneath the surface. Just like the onion Master compared Marie to, little slivers are peeled off as the layers fall away and there is little left that could be considered a structure of any kind.