The sun was just starting to set for the night, peeking out from behind buildings in the distance as if giving one final wave. 

Megan sat perched on top of one of the middle arches of the George Washington Bridge. Traffic zoomed by far underneath her, people on their way home from work, or out for a night on the town. She watched them come and go, expression relaxed and placid.  Songs she had heard a million times and knew by heart crooned on from little buds in her ears. Sweat from the climb to the top of the arch had dried a long time ago, and she was starting to get a chill from the breeze puffing past her.

She had left all of her weapons at home. Her usual street attire had been replaced with a loose fitting tank top that ended just below her rib, loose running shorts, and her phone. The time glared up at her from the device in her palm. 7:30pm. She was going to sit for a while in the dark and watch the city, with only the lights from the bridge and passing cars below her. Far below the sounds of water frantically slapping against the support beams for the bridge were drowned out by her music.

Her chin tipped up as a gust of wind passed ruffling her hair as it went, she let her eyes slip closed. She had been growing it out a little... the sides were no longer shaved. She looked scruffy, but it was a little closer to how he had liked it. There were no spiders with her tonight, either. She didn't need them with what she had planned. When 3am rolled around she would roll the dice again and let chance decide her fate.  That had been the time he had died at. She'd tried it before a few times in different methods and survived so far, so... third times a charm. 

When the clock struck 3, she would be attempting the longest dive into the waters below. Survival chances were minimal. If she did she'd have herself a good laugh and try again at a later date, doing something else. If she didn't... well, she'd get to see what lay beyond. Maybe she'd get to see Roach again. Continue that conversation from the couch and watch old cartoons for an eternity.

She glanced at her phone again.

Just seven more hours to go.

"See ya soon, Gregory."

It had been quite an... Interesting few weeks for Gregory Samson, otherwise known as Doc. First, he'd been minding his own business poking around this side of the rift, when... well, it closed, and all of the 'oh dear, oh dear, oh dear's in the world couldn't get him back again... He was stuck. Doomed to live his life in a place... slightly better than the place he'd been stuck in before.

Not so bad, actually.

He'd managed to spend the first two weeks securing shelter, gaining his bearings, and even lining up interviews for some employment opportunities.

Still, this reality wasn't all that good... He'd found this out from a little bug that had come from nowhere to tell him that the best parkbench was in danger. From this, he surmised that the him of this world possessed similar abilities, that this little one thought he was said him, and, well, little else, actually.

He had to explain to the little one, who went by Igor, that he was not the same Roach, and thus such a message made little sense to him. Still, he was able to convince little Igor to tell him more. More about the parkbench, more about this world's Gregory Samson, and more about this world.

He didn't like everything he heard, but curiosity got the better of him in regards to much of it; Evidentally, in this world, he had not learned to control his more base urges. He was a murderer... Thought according to Igor he was still the second best thing ever, after the Parkbench he'd been carefully selected to watch.

Equipped with only the desire to learn more, He chose to find himself. Perhaps he could reason with him? Teach him how to control his urges, and together they could do much good!

That was not so... Taken to the little apartment across the street from the building with golden doors he found only death. The fallen body of one so like him, but so different lay before a couch, a single gunshot wound to the back of the head having sent him from this mortal coil. Doc stared for some time, confronted so bluntly with his own mortality. Igor had screamed to the heavens his lament as well. He then got cleaning this mess up. It had been there some time, from the smell of things, and no one had bothered to make it right.

Hours later, he walked out of the little apartment, rubbing his finger after the mouth of the other him had reflexively stung him on the finger after he'd tried to move it to a better angle, and it had fallen off. Now though, Igor seemed quite distressed...What was it, midnight? The Parkbench was in danger!

With little better to do, he supposed he could humor the little being and check out his bench, which was presumably being vandalized? After a good hour of travel he'd started to come to the realization that unless there was a park atop the GW bridge, he was not checking on any normal parkbench.

A short, quiet climb found him most of the way up, Igor still fretting as he turned to chit at him a bit, and then skittered up higher. It was cold up here, but the giant cockroach wasn't bothered by it. The random woman sitting atop the highest support arch might be, though. He settled quietly in place, and then spoke in a polite drawl.

"You wouldn't happen to have seen an... incredibly important parkbench up here, would you have?"

She had been sitting for five hours so far and as of yet, her mind hadn't changed. Three more hours to go.

She started to zone back out, eyes staring out blankly at the city as songs in her playlist shuffled. During the pause, she heard something from behind and turned her chin.

Oh... It was Roach? Huh. Maybe she'd died already. She pinched herself on the wrist when it smarted she tossed that idea back out as quickly as it had come. Maybe lack of sleep was finally catching up with her and she was starting to hallucinate. Well... at least she wasn't alone anymore.

She hadn't heard what he had said over the music in her ears. She turned her head back around. "... Remember when I got the @#$% kicked outta me and nearly died?" It was hard to hear her own voice over the song, She pressed on anyway.

"Two broken ribs, punctured lung, couple'a ruptured organs..." Megan chuckled humorlessly, letting her naked toes curl under her crossed legs. The last laugh left with a puff of air and she fell silent for a moment.

"... Thought I was dead for sure... but then I woke up and there you were. Your ugly mug was the first thing I saw, and... I hadn't ever been so happy to see you."

She didn't turn back to look at him. For all she knew the vision was gone and if she looked she'd ruin it. She had so much on her chest to say that she had never gotten the chance to.

"Some small part of me wished that I could have said yes. That I could have dropped everything and gone home with you, and that it would have all gone back to normal. Before.... before."

"You said you were sorry for being you... but it was what made you you that I liked. It's me. I'm what ruined it. Stuck here with the ghost of a dead woman hanging over me. Wallowing in all of my failings. I gave up everything."

She fell silent again as one song ended and another started. Two hours to go, her phone reminded her. Two hours of just her and her thoughts.

"Kinda wish you had killed me for real a long time ago. Would have gladly bypassed a lot of this @#%$."

Oh... She was the Parkbench. He didn't understand the reference, but the context put it in perspective. To his alter self, this woman was very important. And, judging from the way she spoke, the way she stared at the water with and empty longing that reverberated through him like a long, deep note, He had been very important to her. He pulled himself to a sitting position a little closer to her, his legs hanging off the side of the support.

She was going to kill herself.

He sat silently and listened to her for a while. She spoke with such pain. Many equated the greatest pain to screams in the night, laments filled with passion. The grim reality was that the opposite was true; True, deep pain was most often heard in empty, hollow words. When one no longer had the energy or momentum to move forward, they gave up.

This was the end of a life.

He slowly looked over to her his antennae twitching a little, and then curling with conviction. Fate had brought him here. Well, Igor had brought him here, but fate was involved. He was here to save her.

A hand lightly reached out, and landed on her shoulder for a light pat; Should she turn, he would be pointing to his ear holes as if to ask if she might take her earbuds out.

She got lost in her thoughts, unaware or uncaring when the object spurring all of them moved closer to her and sat down. Withdrawing into her head, she thought back through all of what they had been through. Crashing parties, ruining days, exacting revenge on people for precieved slights. She hadn't laughed like that in years.. or, well... not until just recently.

A small blonde flitted through her mind, but she pushed the thoughts away.

Fun wasn't a reason to keep on going. She had no purpose, no reason to get up in the morning or go to bed at night. Her usual antics no longer brought the same feeling of accomplishment. Her heart hardly even raved when she got in a fight.

... she was tired. So very, very tired. Sustaining herself had become an unwanted chore. She felt like she was ready to see see what lay beyond this mortal coil.

A familiar hand touched her shoulder and she flinched from the contact. She wasn't scared, nor had it hurt... at least not in a physical sort of pain.

"Guess you aren't a figment of my imagination after all, huh?"

She didn't turn to look at him, but she did reach up to knock one of the earbuds out. "... Can't be the real deal, because I put a bullet in his brain myself... must mean you are one of those duplicates from the other side? From the Rift." She honestly didn't care what his answer was, she was still mostly talking to herself.

"Don't want to know if you are like him. Can't find the energy to care... but I've got a few hours to chat, if that's what you are up to."

Megan spotted the small cockroach skittering around and lowered her hand for it to crawl onto. She hadn't been able to get the names of all his children, but she knew a few. "Long time no see, Igor. Didn't realize he still had you following me around."

Her lungs constricted and she blinked away a sudden hotness in her eyes, squashing the feeling like she had so many cockroaches.

"wish I could understand you so you could tell me all about how Gregory was doing before.... before..."

She trailed off, looking away from the bug and back out toward the city.

Doc was mostly silent after getting her attention. He nodded shortly in conformation and noticeably started a bit when she bluntly revealed that she'd killed him... Well... The other him. He eased after a moment, reminding himself that just from what he'd heard in his short time here, the one who called himself Roach was not at all him. He was a monster... Doc believed in second chances, but he also believed that one could also go too far; The Gregory Samson of this world had crossed a line. He had tortured, killed, and tormented for his own enjoyment and satisfaction.

This woman, whoever and however she was, had done a good thing in killing this man... And it was tearing her apart.

Igor perked up when she acknowledged him, his one antennae jutting up as he ran in a quick circle. The little bug chittered shortly, and Doc glanced down to him, and back up.

The woman reflected more on the bug for a moment before going silent again. He let it settle for a moment. "He said always... Igor... He said he would always be watching. He admires you, Igor. He firmly believes you are a park bench for some reason, but he admires you. He told me on the way here that years ago he'd been told to watch you because you are the most important treasure in the world."

He mused for a moment. "I know little about the one you know as Roach... I only know that he was a killer and a monster... You, however... You seem to know the he that was not a monster. Can you... Tell me more about him?"

She laughed. Short, empty, and final. His park bench. The most important treasure in the world.

It simultaneously sickened her and broke what was left of her heart. She stared down at the little bug in her hands, struggling against the urge to claw her fingers inward and crush him... this living reminder of what she was missing. A softer side of herself she didn't acknowledge much wanted her to keep him for however long he lived.

"It'll take too long to fully describe the Gregory I know. He was a monster, yes... insane, violent, unpredictable. There was no question that he needed to be stopped, but..."

She paused. There weren't many people who she could talk like this to. About him, in a way that showed any affection at all.

"He was so many other things once, too. Family...father, brother, sister, second cousin, children... all rolled into one being. we used to sit and watch old toons together, talk about politics and celebrities. I comforted him, I like to think, and he comforted me. He liked to wear silly things on his head, talked with the most terrible British accent you've ever heard, and I always had to kick him out of my closet, or out from under my bed."

She snorted, reflecting back. "... I don't think people ever got how his brain works. His quirks,his jokes. They were frightened by how he looked even before he got a word out of his maw. To them he was Roach... to me he was Gregory Samson. We met on a park bench seven years ago."

She moved to set Igor down again. "I think... when I left it pushed him over the edge. He got worse, and there was no going back."

His last words came floating back to her... did she think it would have been different if she had stayed?

... It's the only thing I will ever regret."

He listened again. So much of his job was listening. He'd learned to enjoy it. A conversation could be like music in the way it ebbed, flowed, and created beautiful art. Even more so, the act of listening was nearly as cathartic as speaking was as well. He'd helped so many by being an ear for them, and more so by speaking after.

Roach, as he'd been called, was a complicated being, it seemed. He meant a lot of things to this woman, and they were all things she needed. With him gone, a large part of her was empty. He understood that. He knew that pain deeply. "Even so... You did the right thing. You know you did, and it must have hurt you so, so much. At times, such pains can become so great that they numb us to the world."

He looked out over the water, the city... "Where I came from, our kind are... As close to outlawed as a being can be... My wife... Perished. Many did on that day. I nearly did. For a long time, I wished I had." He stared down, now. It wasn't so long ago that he would have needed to fight the instinct to jump. Even now, the smallest voice told him he would fly.

"Losing everything I lost that day... It made the world into a dark place filled with... so much nothing. But given time... Given purpose of self... I made it through. Can you tell me about you? What is your name... Or are you truly a park bench? I am open to the thought."

She half listened to him, filing away his story for if she needed it in the future. Did she care much though? Eh... not really. She was pretty set on this whole idea of throwing herself off the bridge and seeing if she survived. She did angle a sidelong look at him though, more trying to humor him and what he was doing.

It was strange talking with someone who looked exactly like Greg had, and yet... wasn't him. The Gregor Samson sure as hell wouldn't have sat there attempting to get her to not jump. He'd have encouraged her. Maybe even joined her, and then pulled some trick before they hit the water to ensure that they (or at least he) survived.

Shit, she missed that idiot a lot.

The spider mutant turned her attention back to the other Greg, the one from the rift. SHe hadn't bothered to interact with that whole drama. She wasn't interested in knowing what it was like on the other side, and from how he talked about it she had been right to avoid it.

"He referred to me as a park bench because that was how we met. I was sitting on a bench, watching spiders cause havoc in some stupid shop that annoyed me. He picked the whole bench up and tried to carry me off." She chuckled. "I wasn't aware how the name had really stuck until now, but... that was Greg for ya."

He wanted to know about her. Her name, probably what she was feeling, if she had family back home, the usual please-don't-jump shpiel. She went silent for a moment, considering what to do. Hell, if she was gonna die anyway maybe she really should just open up and tell someone everything.

"You asked for it." She muttered, before pushing herself to her feet and stretching her whole body out. "My name is Megan Rova, I am 32, born and raised in Eugene Oregon." Her arms dropped from overhead to her sides, hanging there relaxed and straight.

"I fell in love young, nearly got married before I chickened out and ran away. Ended up here eventually, where I met Greg. Changed my name a lot because my would-have-been-husband Trent came after me. Met an assassin at some point and slept with him. Met a thief at some point and slept with him too. Trent tried to kill Greg, So I killed him. The first person I ever just.. murdered. Suffocated."

She paused for a breath, remembering how that man had convulsed as hordes of spiders packed themselves into his mouth and nose. "I found out a while after that, that I was pregnant. Almost went to term before I lost it. Doctor said that I can't have kids... body isn't equipped to produce a proper baby. They come out dead and twisted. Half flesh and half lumps of spider. I've tried four times for a baby... it's the same every time."

She wasn't looking at him, back to staring out at the waters below. "I've killed so many people. Most of them deserved it, some didn't... I think at one point I ate a guy too, but I can't recall. Had a really weird dream and woke up in a sewer, covered in blood." She turned her face to him then, clouds parting slightly to cast moonlight down on them. Her eyes glowed in the white light, and the tattoos decorating her body stood out.

"I feel like i'm going in the same direction Greg did. I can only eat raw foods now, and sometimes when i'm with people this little voice in my head wants me to take a bit of them, See how they taste." She laughed. One short puff of aim that couldn't have been more humorless if she had tried.

"I stay away from the few friends I have because... what if? I'd like them to remember me for what we had, and now because I lost my shit and tried to eat their face off."

Her thoughts, like always, rounded back to that damn dream. "And to top it all off, some asswipe a while ago decided to put the whole damn city in some stupid dream world. Half of us here don't remember, but a few do. I do. In that godforsaken dream, I was a better person. I fell in love with a guy I have zero chances with here, and everything I do day to day reminds me that I will never achieve anything close to that again. That I will never be that woman."

Her gaze was still fixed on him, but she moved it just for a moment to check the time on her phone. "Any other questions?"

So, not a park bench at all, but an Oregonian. Close. Her story started innocently enough, and quickly escalated from there. She could not reproduce; he shared that unfortunate side effect with her. She was killer as well, she had terrible urges, and she may have even eaten someone. She was afraid of what she was becoming. He had felt this fear.

He could help her, as he'd helped himself.

"Actually... If it's not a bother, I do have... many more questions... Seeing as you appear to have some time... Could you tell me... More? These urges... Are they heard or felt? Is it truly a voice? What does it say? Your friends. Can you tell me about them as well? Perhaps I know a version of them as well? After all, it's a small worlds."

He pontificated for a moment, and then spoke up again. "What do you know how to do? Surely you have talents to rely on. How else did you get this far?"

"Felt." she started flatly. "I get the urge to just attack people. Claw, bite, however I need to do it to get to the meat."

She didn't look impressed with it, either. She had become someone who was always in control of herself, and tried desperately to control her surroundings as well. "Eh, I've only really got one true friend. There are a few on the side that come close, but I don't think they care for me as much as I do for them." Saph, that blockhead. As thick as paste in the brain department, and still one of the most brilliant people she ever knew. "I'm not telling you about my real friend, because she doesn't have anything to do with this and I refuse to get her mixed up in my drama. The others, well... I ran with a guy, the one my dream self loved, for quite a while. Helped him out with jobs and such. I look after him and his little growing family from time to time because he's an idiot and I worry about him."

She sighed, "Dont think that it's a mutual feeling, though. I could drop off the map permanently and I doubt he'd notice."

"The othhers, well... either dead and gone, or lost contact with me. Haven't been able to find hide or hair of em'"

She glanced at him after his last question, arms crossing over her chest. "Some of it's a trade secret that I'm not spilling. Other than yhat... well, I know how to hide, find people, kill people, and... that's about it. I tended to spent the rest of my time finding somthing fun to do to keep myself occupied. Hell, just a few weeks ago me and this other girl set out to.. " She realized who she was talking to, temporarily forgetting it wasn't Greg.

"ah, never mind. You wouldn't understand."