Chapter Text
So there was this curse.
It’s a lot to get into right now — maybe later I’ll tell you more about it, how the old King-that-was left magic behind him that snarled in on itself and went even more wrong than it already had been. How it was gobbling up the magic of the new King and all the Heirlings, sucking their strength into itself, dragging more and more magic in as it got stronger…
All you need to know for now is that it was nasty, and getting worse, and too thoroughly rooted into Behind to be unmade. It wasn’t even really a piece of magic anymore, properly speaking — it was the damage left where one had been, cracks and chasms eating up everything even a little bit connected to the King it had been built around. Flaming egoist had reworked reality to leave a hole in it when he died, and the only way to fix things was to go back and unmake his magic before he did it.
Yeah. That’s time magic. Tricky stuff, and morally pretty questionable even if you can make it work — but when somebody’s created a magical sinkhole pulling in all the worlds after them, what else can you do?
Especially when you’re the Harbinger and apparently the only person with a prayer of preventing it. I mean, dealing with mad kings is sorta my job. And when you’ve gotta deal with a king’s magic… yeah, I was the only one who could tell it to Stop and actually be listened to.
So we worked on it, and did our research, and figured out a way I could probably reach back into the past and change this one specific thing without unraveling reality any further. Though, as Camellia pointed out, that wasn’t really the problem. Reality’s stubborn. Mess with it too hard, and it usually unravels you instead.
We didn’t really figure out a solution for that bit.
We weren’t quite sure what would happen! Weren’t even sure the reaching-back bit would actually take effect to fix things — what would happen to me if it did was sort of a secondary concern. But I set up all the safeguards I could: even got a wish to shield myself from the aftereffects.
And then I set up the time magic, and latched onto those cracks left behind, and reached all the way back to their source…
And ripped it out of existence.
It was stubborn, and fought back, but I held on tight and told it I’m the Harbinger, mate, the King doesn’t get to do what he wants anymore. And then reality started getting involved, trying to hold on to this thing that was supposed to be a piece of it — and then the holding-on started to be a problem, because the only way to really satisfactorily separate this magic from What Ought To Be involved separating myself as well.
You don’t want this, I told it desperately. Let me just cut it out. But it wanted to cut me out first. Only by clutching tight to the King’s bit of magic and taking it with me could I get rid of it — or else I could let go, give up, and retreat from the whole attempt.
Couldn’t do that, though. Because in reality as it was now, magic was going funny. Morgana and Ralph and Sarah and a whole host of other Heirlings I didn’t know were dying — Zero was dying — and they were just the start of the spreading cracks. Everyone I loved and a whole lot of others I didn’t even know were going to die, if I backed away now.
It was a hard thing, even so. It always is. But I gritted my teeth and held on.
And then it was done, and I felt the magic unraveling, and reality pressing on me, trying to pull me to pieces, to cast me out of it. Everything was blurry, inside and outside of me, everything was going away…
I heard a clamor of voices overlapping, all ones I knew and loved, some of them oddly echoing. “Ruth?” “Ruthanne.” “Pet!” “Ruth!”
Everything did go away for just a second, and then — snapped back. I was standing in my living room, like I had been, my magic exhausted, shaking with the reaction, but home.
Except that everything looked a little bit different, somehow, and none of the people who’d been gathered around me were there anymore. Instead there was a woman sitting on Zero’s couch, who looked up and gave a startled cry when she saw me — a cry that summoned a man across the hall from the kitchen, mug in one hand and a sheaf of papers under his other arm.
They both stared at me, faces pale, and I had to stare back. Because their faces had more lines and wrinkles than I remembered, his hair greyer, her figure plumper, but—
“Mum?” I croaked out. “Dad?”
She stood smoothly, letting her book fall to the floor. He walked up beside her, behind the couch, and placed his papers and mug down on the cushions. The mug fell over, spilling coffee everywhere, but neither of them seemed to notice.
“You’re not—” she said, then stopped and swallowed, hard, a few times.
He put a hand on her shoulder, and finished the sentence — or question — for her. “Ruth?”
Tears sprang to my eyes. I hadn’t heard my name in Dad’s voice for ten years, but I knew it — I knew them — knew the sounds of both their voices, the looks in their eyes. I couldn’t think of the people in front of me as anyone but Mum and Dad. “How is this happening?” I blurted out. “How’re you alive?”
“How are we—” Dad broke off, and they looked at each other.
Very carefully, Mum said, “Our daughter died ten years ago.”
“What? No, you did—” I stopped. Because they were right in front of me, and they looked maybe ten years older than they’d been then, and I’d just…
I backed up a couple steps, until I could feel my couch against the back of my knees, and sat down hard. “I think — I think I did something to time,” I said, looking up at my very much alive parents.
They looked at each other again.
“I’ll make coffee?” Mum suggested.
A hysterical laugh bubbled out of my throat.
“That’s it?” I croaked out. “You’re not more worried? More suspicious?” Because I knew I’d been messing about with time, and part of my brain was still clamoring that this was some kind of trap. If they were telling the truth, and their dead thirteen-year-old daughter had shown up ten years late with a missing arm—
“You’re in our house,” Mum pointed out, not ungently. “And if you want coffee, you’re a guest, at worst. I think we can afford to relax a bit.”
Part of me wanted to protest at the idea of being a guest here, but I bit my tongue and reached out to the house instead. At first there was just — nothing. It felt like an ordinary house, just solid human-world brick and mortar and carpets. I pressed a little harder, instinctively. C’mmon. It’s me. You know me — even if you haven’t seen me in a long time, you oughta know me.
And then I felt it. Just a little, not the full, easy awareness of my house I was used to having, but — enough to recognize.
I relaxed. Then it occurred to me that trying to grab their house maybe wasn’t the best idea if I didn’t want my parents scared of me, and I looked back to them a little guiltily.
Mum had a hand to her mouth, eyes bright. Dad had his head tilted wonderingly like he was listening to something.
“Well,” he said softly. “Seems like the house thinks you’re you.”
Oh. Yeah, I guess that would be encouraging — I didn’t remember using my house like that before they died, but I suppose they could tell it was recognizing me. I ducked my head, grinning a little guiltily.
“Oh!” I said then, jumping up. “We, ah. You might want a towel or two for that.”
They both looked down at the couch, covered in spilled coffee. Mum exhaled hard and swatted Dad on the shoulder.
“All over the Sherlock Holmes?” she cried, picking up the mug and then her book. “That was a gift!”
He lifted his hands, laughing. “Blame her!”
Suddenly I was laughing again, too, and only a bit hysterically. It was mad, it was all mad, but that was my mum and dad in front of me bickering. Whatever the flaming heck I’d done to the timeline — and I would have to figure that out — I couldn’t help but enjoy this miracle for a bit.
“Lemme help,” I said, coming forward, and neither of them warned me off. “I’ve got some experience getting stains out of stuff.”
We managed to save the book and Dad’s papers as well as the upholstery, with a bit of magic on all sides, and Mum brought in coffee and we all sat down — staring at each other across the coffee table.
Dad broke the silence first, a hand resting on Mum’s knee as he spoke. “So,” he said, watching me with those kind, steady eyes. “You don’t look like you’ve been dead for ten years.”
“Haven’t been dead at all,” I agreed, cracking a smile. “But I’ve also been living in this house for the past ten years as far as I remember, and you haven’t, so… time stuff.”
They exchanged another glance, and suddenly and fiercely I missed JinYeong.
Where was he, anyway? If I’d changed time enough for my parents to be alive, what else had I changed — but no. Couldn’t think of that right now, had to take things one step at a time.
“So you’re saying you changed time so that you lived?” Mum asked, and then pressed her fingers to her forehead. “No, of course not. You’re saying…”
“I think,” I said slowly, “I changed time so that you lived. And I didn’t. But neither of those were the changes I was aiming for, so I don’t really know what happened.”
“Start at the beginning,” Dad advised, thumb stroking slow and steady across Mum’s knee. “What—” I saw him hesitate, like he was trapped between two questions. “What happened to us, in your version of things?”
Wasn’t that the loaded question. I looked down at my coffee — quite good, if a little weak for my tastes. “You were murdered,” I said quietly. “The old King of Between and Behind thought I was an Heirling, so he sent — he sent a killer after me. He bargained with you, your lives for mine, and you took the deal — so he killed you and left me alive.”
When I looked up, they were both staring at me in what looked like bafflement. “You’re saying it was—” Mum said, then broke off and tried again. “The King doesn’t kill Heirlings!”
“The current King doesn’t,” I said, and then it hit me that if I’d died ten years ago, I had no idea who was currently on the throne. “At least, not in my time. The one before him did — soft-looking sort of bloke, sort of like a golden retriever until he stops being friendly? He died about five years ago in my time?”
Dad shook his head. “Haven’t heard of any change in kings since — what was it? The fifties?” Mum nodded, looking thoughtful. “That king definitely had Heirlings killed, from what we’ve heard. He’d been doing it for decades, off and on… but it hasn’t happened in a long time.”
I closed my eyes for a second, trying to make sense of this. Math. Numbers and dates, they’d help, if I could put them in order… A King of Between and Behind who’d been killing Heirlings for decades, and died in the 1950s. A new king since, who hadn’t been doing that. It sounded like Thomas Lynne had been up to his regular business for a while, but then…
Oh.
I opened my eyes. “I think I might know what I did,” I said slowly, remembering the feel of that rotten magic in my grasp, as I ripped it away from the universe.
Mum raised a worried eyebrow at me, which rationally shouldn’t have made me feel guilty, but c’mmon. It was my mum.
So I squirmed a bit, internally, as I admitted, “I… might’ve killed the King about seventy years early?”
“…That would explain some things,” Mum said, after a pause. “Though I really think we need someone here who knows more about Behind politics and magic…”
And then Dad suggested to her, “Your uncle?”
I sat bolt upright, every question and worry fleeing my brain for sheer incredulous delight. “Yeah,” I blurted out, beaming. “Please call him!”
Zero was here. He was alive, and presumably healthy — and my parents already knew him? In this world with the old King long in the grave, if Zero had been able to get to know my parents, things must be better.
Dad blinked, and then grinned back at me — his full, bright grin, that I’d never seen anything quite like since I was thirteen. “Guessing you know your Uncle Zero in both worlds, then,”
“Could say that,” I agreed, swinging my feet happily.
Mum had a smartphone in her hands, and was frowning at the screen. I had to blink a bit before I realized what was bothering me about that; she’d never had one before. But then that was back in, what, 2013? When they’d all been flip phones at most, as far as I could remember, and a bit less widespread. And, I recalled, they weren’t on the run in this world.
While I’d been tracking those thoughts through to their conclusion, Mum had looked up and back to Dad. “While I’m texting him,” she said, brow furrowed, “I’m wondering if I should ask him to bring his… expert on magic?” Her eyes slid over to me.
I couldn’t help grinning again, tilting my head at her. “Grey eyes, lotta tweed, likes his tea?”
There was a curious look on Mum’s face, but some amusement there, too. “That’s the one.”
“Yes,” I said promptly. “He’ll be loads of help.” Testing my luck, since we’d already gotten this far, I added, “And tell Zero to bring the vampire, too!”
Dad said, eyebrows climbing, “JinYeong? What’ll he help with?”
My husband and my uncle and Athelas were all still here, all knew my parents, and they’d be coming here in just a few minutes. This was the weirdest my life had ever been, but — maybe accidentally killing the King had been the right thing for everyone.
“Emotional support,” I told Dad gleefully, and drank my coffee.
As I lowered the mug, I saw Mum’s eyes were following it — no, following my hand, gripped around the handle. Her eyebrows were creased in a thoughtful look I recognized. When her mouth opened, I braced myself for a question about my arm.
I wasn’t braced for “Ruth, is that… a wedding ring?”
Heck.
Yeah, that was a reasonable thing to be asking about, too.
I had a single panicked moment where I thought about convincing it to turn into something else, to pretend like it was an ordinary ring and not a wedding ring — but that wasn’t likely to work, and even if it did, I didn’t want to lie to my parents. Not now, especially.
“…Yeah,” I admitted. “Reckon he doesn’t remember a thing about me right now, though. So what would you call that? I mean, how married am I?”
Mum said, softly and a bit blankly, “Married.” I saw her exchange a stunned look with Dad.
He put his arm around her and then looked at me, smiling crookedly. “You’re doing a very convincing job of not being a fake,” he said. “I don’t think anyone planning this would’ve gone so far as to make up a marriage.”
“Reckon so,” I agreed, laughing a little, self-consciously. Of course it’d be weird for my parents to have their daughter to show up as an adult no matter what, but to show up married, with evidence of a whole specific life they knew hadn’t happened — yeah, that’d be weirder.
I glanced down, stroking the smooth band with my thumb. I was still married, as far as I was concerned — I’d made my vows, and even if they didn't bind JinYeong anymore, I wasn’t interested in breaking them. But… “I don’t really want to be answering questions about it,” I said thoughtfully. “Reckon I’d better take this off before anyone else shows up.”
Telling a strange JinYeong he was married to me didn’t sound like a recipe for success. Letting him assume someone else was married to me sounded much worse.
“Do you want—” Mum started, then fell silent. Busy wriggling off my ring, wedging it between my thumb and my thigh for leverage, it took me a couple seconds to look up.
“What’s up?” I asked, nudging it into my palm and closing my hand around it. It was a wrench to take it off, but… it was the smart move, I told myself again.
Mum had a funny look on her face, half wry, half thoughtful. “You’re very… practiced,” she said slowly. “At doing things one-handed.”
Ah. So we were gunna talk about my arm after all.
“Well, I’ve been doing that a lot longer than I’ve been married,” I said, shrugging, and slid my hand into my pocket to put away the ring. “Lost the arm at eighteen, got the husband at twenty-three.”
“How—”
“Heck!” I said, startled. My ring had clinked against something hard and smooth in my pocket, and I’d just realized my phone existed. I pulled it out. “Sorry, it’s just — what d’you reckon happens when a phone shows up in a new reality? Is it gunna freak out when it realizes I don’t have an email account, or a service provider, or…?”
Mum was laughing, soft but real, and Dad started chuckling a second behind her.
“This is a real problem!” I protested, but I couldn’t help grinning. “All my stuff’s on here!”
Still chuckling, Dad said, “Put it on airplane mode, figure out the rest later.”
“Good plan.” I did that, and while I was at it, I reset the wallpaper to something blank and generic — it had been a shot of me and JinYeong in Seoul, which would almost completely undo the point of taking off my ring. Then I tucked the phone back into my pocket. “Y’can see the pictures and stuff later, if you want,” I offered.
Mum frowned. “Won’t that tell us something about… your husband?”
“Oh. Well, yeah, but…” I had to think about it. “Nah, I don’t mind you knowing. You’re my mum and dad, you’ve got a right. It’s just that it’d be awkward in general.”
“Ah.” Mum’s frown melted away into a smile. “Later, then.”
In her voice, it sounded like a promise. More than that: like a gift. “Later,” I agreed, smiling back.
They didn’t ask any other questions while we waited for Zero, and I only asked one — a big one, that I probably should’ve thought of sooner.
“So if the old king’s dead, and Zero’s friends with you… what about Zero’s dad?”
Mum’s lips pressed together in a way that told me at once she knew something about him. “He died not long after the old king,” she said.
There had to be more to the story, but that was all I needed to know for the moment. I relaxed with a sigh. “Good.”
When Zero got there, I felt him come straight through the front door without knocking — felt another presence trailing behind him, too, blood-edged and familiar as my own name.
Zero drew to a halt in the doorway, looking at me with cold, assessing eyes. “This is what you called me about?” he asked flatly.
“Rude,” I said, grinning at him. His head reared back a little, like he expected me to attack him, but I didn’t care — I was too happy to see him up and walking and his usual icy self.
(He’d been pretty weak, by the end of things, before we got to the point of me changing time — doing better than a lot of Heirlings, both because he was Zero and because Athelas and Camellia were right on hand to help fix the damage, but still. Seeing him wither away, not even able to fight it… That hadn’t been fun.)
And then that other presence trailed up next to him in a waft of cologne — slim hands in his perfectly-tailored pockets, head tilted to one side, dark eyes glittering curiously at me. That gave me a stab to my heart in a way nothing else had yet, and in a way I wasn’t quite ready for. On the one hand, that wasn’t my husband — not the way he looked at me like I might be a fight or a meal, not the detachment where I was used to warmth and welcome. On the other hand, it was JinYeong, and that stupidly pretty face and familiar scent made my shoulders ease even while they hurt.
Heck. I was gunna have to get him to fall in love with me again, wasn’t I? And I still didn’t understand how I’d done it the first time.
“What tests have you done?” Zero asked Mum and Dad curtly, breaking open my train of thought. I’d been gazing into my coffee, avoiding too much eye contact with JinYeong, and now I looked back up hastily.
He was here. Mum and Dad were here. And so was JinYeong. My heart lifted again, because everything else was fixable.
Mum had smiled wryly, like she was expecting him to be suspicious. “Not a lot,” she said. “But her magic feels right, and the house recognized her, and…” She shrugged, laughing a little. “I don’t think anyone could do quite such a good job faking our Ruth. Or that they’d fake her in quite this way.”
“One-armed, for instance,” I couldn’t help throwing in cheerfully. “Though I suppose it does make me more ‘armless.”
Dad dropped his face into his hand and groaned loudly; Zero just sort of blinked at me; JinYeong grinned; and Mum gave a surprised little snort and then shook her head. “See what I mean?” she asked wryly.
Zero’s lips twitched, but he smoothed out his face again. That was still a lot more expressive than he’d been when he came in; I realized he must actually trust Mum and Dad.
“There are a lot of ways to fake personality, as well as appearance,” he told Mum, a bit grimly. “I’m not certain of any that would work this long after death and account for aging, off the top of my head, but…” He glanced at me. “I don’t know how this could be possible with time-alteration, either. I’m not the expert in either field.”
“Yeah,” Mum said, and she seemed to sigh. “How long’ll it take for you to go pick him up?”
Zero glanced at me again. “Not long. I’ll make sure of it. In the meantime, can JinYeong stay with you?”
“If she wanted to hurt us, she’d probably have done it before getting all enthusiastic about you coming over,” Dad said. “But sure, JinYeong can stay.”
Something in that made Zero hesitate, and look at me with more uncertainty than he’d shown before.
“Know you pretty well in my version of reality,” I said, guessing what he was wondering. “Good to see you’re okay here.”
“Good to see I’m—” He stopped abruptly. “I’ll be on my way,” he said, addressing my parents again. Then he turned to the vampire behind him. “JinYeong. Behave.”
JinYeong scoffed and shrugged his shoulders at him. “I am always perfectly behaved,” he said in pouty Between-edged Korean. “Tell the old man, not me.”
Zero just glared at him for a second, then turned and left directly through the door (not the doorway) like a very icy whirlwind. In his wake, JinYeong shrugged again and sauntered over to the couch, where he stood looking down at me.
“You are in the most comfortable spot,” he said, still Between-edged, his eyes very dark and liquid as they fixed on mine. “Move.”
“Flamin’ rude thing to say to me in my own house,” I said, staring stubbornly back at him. “Or my parents’ house, anyway. What are you, five years old?”
He tilted his head, gaze growing more speculative. “I wish to sit on this couch,” he said, slower and… warmer? He didn’t sound annoyed, which was odd. “Let me sit on it.”
“I’m not stopping you,” I said, speaking very slowly and distinctly in my turn. This was partly to tick him off, partly to avoid letting the lump in my throat show through my voice. “Y’don’t need the whole thing!”
His eyes flicked between me and the other half of the couch, with a hint of uncertainty in them. Then he smiled, pinched up his trousers slightly and precisely, and sat down next to me — exactly like he’d done thousands of times before.
Then he smiled at me, lazy and glittering and vain, and purred, “Is this good?” in a tone that made me sit up in shocked realization.
I hadn’t heard that tone in years. It was the particularly annoying one he’d used to use on women when — “Are you trying to whammy me?” I demanded. “That’s — that’s flamin’ rude!”
JinYeong blinked at me, smile turning into a surprised scowl. “Wae?”
“Don’t you think I can’t tell,” I said, even though I’d missed it for the first several seconds — heck, maybe longer. “I’m immune, but I still notice when some irritating little mosquito is trying to charm me into submission.”
I hadn’t called him a mosquito in years, either, but he’d just earned it. The flaming cheek, to try that seconds after meeting me!
“It is useful for asking questions,” he said sulkily. “Hyeong would have appreciated it.”
“Yeah?” I demanded, curling my legs up under me. Hopefully that’d keep me from sticking my feet in his lap, at least. “And who died and made him king?”
At that, JinYeong grinned, surprised and real, and I saw my husband again.
“The King died,” he said. “But Hyeong refused to be made king after him. He was very stubborn about it.”
“I bet he was,” I said. Then I realized I was grinning back, and hid my face for a second behind a swig of coffee.
“Regardless,” I said once I’d swallowed, “I’m just as stubborn about vampires trying to make me do things against my will. Or fae, for that matter. Your types of mojo don’t work on me, so buzz off, all right?”
He shrugged again, pouting slightly. “It was worth a try.”
“We wouldn’t have let you go very far,” Mum said, her voice startling me more than was reasonable, “even if it had worked. Though I can’t say I expected it to.”
“And if it had,” Dad added, wryly amused, “it’d mean our girl got a fair bit weaker over the past ten years.”
Looking over at them, I saw they were both amused — but more at JinYeong, I thought, than at me. I grinned at Dad, and he grinned back for a second, quick and conspiratorial and familiar in a way that made my heart soar.
“Anyway,” he said then, and stood up, “I’d best start some more coffee — and some tea. JinYeong, you want anything?”
“Coffee,” JinYeong said precisely. Then, surprising me a bit, he added, “Please.”
All right, so maybe he wasn’t quite back to where he’d been when I’d met him. I was glad of that, anyway.
Dad came over and held out a hand for my mostly-empty mug. “Refill?”
“Yes please,” I said promptly, handing it over to him. He took it with one hand, and ruffled my hair with the other.
My breath caught and my eyes stung, but I heard JinYeong hiss warningly next to me. “Careful!” I said, beaming up at Dad through the sudden film of tears. “Due diligence, remember? You’re gunna make Zero worry.”
“And we can’t have Zero worrying,” Dad agreed, smiling softly down at me. He tugged a bit on my braid, then moved away. Good thing, in a way; another few seconds and I’d have been crying properly.
Mum said thoughtfully, “You’re not suspicious of us, at all?”
Dad, halfway to the kitchen, stopped as if to listen.
That… was something I had to stop and think about for a second, once she’d said it.
“Not really,” I said slowly. “I mean, I was the one mucking about with time. For someone to have yanked me into an illusion, or a construct, from that—” I shrugged, tapping my fingers against the arm of the couch. “It’d be pretty hard to do at all, for one thing, and I’d probably pick up on it, for another. I’m pretty good with dreams and constructs.”
I grinned. “The other option is that you managed to knock out everyone here while I was doing my time magic, and took over the house, and you’re strangers who know enough about my parents to fake them perfectly and to have a convincing explanation prepped to tie into the magic I was just doing. Oh, and you can also impersonate Zero and JinYeong.” I shook my head. “I think the timeline-altering’s a lot simpler, as explanations go. And that’s even if you didn’t feel like you — which you do.”
Mum relaxed a bit into the couch, and Dad kept going to the kitchen. “I wouldn’t have thought Occam’s Razor would come down in favor of time travel,” she said, smiling wryly, “but I see your point.”
“Technically not time travel,” I pointed out.
JinYeong scoffed next to me. “This one has learned to think and to talk,” he muttered in Korean. I almost answered him, before I realized — there hadn’t been any Between to that, and from this JinYeong, that probably didn’t mean he expected me to understand without help. It meant he was talking to himself.
Right. Maybe I’d rather keep it that way for a bit. Just to see what happened.
“Rude,” I told him, resisting the urge to uncurl my legs and kick him. “Don’t talk in your own language without translating.”
He grinned at me, sharp-edged and lazy. “Oh?” he said, still not bothering to translate — no, now he was deliberately shutting out any use of Between on his words. “What will you do about it, mystery girl? Will you make me stop?”
“People who keep talking languages they don’t want other people to understand,” I said, smiling pleasantly right back at him, “should get ready to have other people learn those languages.”
There was a flicker of interest in his eyes. “Good luck,” he said, as Dad came back with a tray.
It wasn’t a tray I recognized, which threw me a bit, but it looked like something I’d have had about the house. After a second I realized Mum and Dad must’ve bought it at some point. The mugs were clustered around a glass pot of coffee, which wasn’t my style, and the teapot was one of Mum’s that I usually left in the back of the cupboard — but the teacup next to it was Athelas’ favorite.
Seeing that made me feel warm: more evidence that the people I cared about here cared about each other. Which… well, that wasn’t even something I’d have thought to ask for, with my parents and Athelas.
…Hopefully it wouldn’t go too badly whenever I had to tell them about Athelas in my timeline. I winced a bit as I took back my mug. It was gunna be messy no matter what, and I’d known that from the start, but… Well. Best to cross that bridge when we came to it — there was too much happening right now, I couldn’t start thinking ahead.
So I sipped my coffee quietly, just looking around the room. Little things had changed, here and there. There were some bits and bobs I’d gotten rid of or that’d been ruined in my timeline, but there were also missing things, like the old telephone table, and some new ones I didn’t recognize at all.
After a harder look, I realized the biggest overall difference was how much more normal it looked. There were a few photos on the walls here and there, and a cabinet at the end of the room by the stairs actually had a TV on it.
It was weird. My parents… they really hadn’t been on the run here, had they?
Suddenly I wondered what they’d think of all the things they’d taught me, before — how to move out fast and be ready for trouble, to lose a tail and to shoot a handgun and to forget. Had their daughter been allowed to use Between freely? Something about that thought made me shy away from it.
While I was still thinking, though, the door opened again. Zero was back — bringing another presence with him, softly glimmering silver. I relaxed a little, hearing the two sets of footsteps come down the hall. They were all here now.
Then Athelas came into the doorway, Zero a step behind him, and my heart dropped down to my stomach.