As David consciousness returns to him, he becomes aware of being dragged through some underbrush. When the dragging finally stopped, he was surprised at whom his rescuer was... Sophie.
Sophie had changed considerably since she and David had last been together. She had lost all of her childhood innocence and became bitter about life itself. She had become very well versed in the cruelties of the world.
Sophie asks where the other two that where with him are. Michael is relieved to know that David is okay. David explains to Sophie who Rosalind is. Sophie wanted to know if Spider-Man wanted Rosalind. David grimly replied that yes, he did, for babies. Sophie then asked David if he was in love with Rosalind. His thoughts on this subject:
A word again… When the minds have learnt to mingle, when no thought is wholly one’s own, and each has taken too much of the other ever be entirely himself alone; when one has reached the beginning of seeing with a single eye, loving with a single heart, enjoying with a single joy; when there can be moments of identity and nothing is separate save bodies that long for one another…. When there is that, where is the word? There is only the inadequacy of the word that exists.
But instead his reply simply was, ‘We love one another.’ He then tells Sophie about his ability and she tells him that her mother had always suspected it. Sophie says something that then prompts David to ask her if she is in love with the Spider-Man. She tells him not to call him that, his name is Gordon, and that yes, she does love him. She then tells David that they should have killed her, it would have been kinder than her sterilization and banishment to the Fringes.
David then makes plans with the others, Rosalind, Petra and Michael to kill the guard outside where Rosalind and Petra are. Sophie says that this is too risky for David to do and offers to do it herself. She makes her way to the tent and does the deed. Sophie then leads Rosalind and Petra back to her home, back to David. Her home is a cave inside a hill. David thinks that her home probably demonstrates what luxury is in the Fringes. Sophie had helped David, Rosalind and Petra because she doesn’t want Rosalind to be with Gordon.
Chapter 16 - "A Place Among the Fossils”
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