DW Fic: September, When It Comes (1/?, with any luck)
It's been a long time since I posted something while I was working on it. This is because I once hit a block somewhere in the middle and I felt very bad about leaving my readers hanging. But, I think maybe I can lift this policy just this once for the following reasons:
Nine!fic, though it's a while 'till he shows up. You wouldn't like me writing Ten. ;) Oh, and also? This goes to strange, strange places. I just hope to heaven it makes sense. ^^;
Temporary summary: Love, loss, and an endless summer. (With additional observations on the generation and maintenance of the temporal claudication, or "time loop". )
Solstice
It was a perfect summer day, sunlight rich and thick and sweet as syrup on the ground. Just enough pure white, fluffy clouds in the bluest of all skies, enough of a breeze to cool the skin and blow the shalan petals in slow drifts through the park. The vibrant yellow scent that permeated everywhere, in all its forms, the proper smell of growing things and plants and life itself, youth itself, peaceful days playing and laughing and cavorting through every nook and cranny of the parkground.
She hadn't had many days like that, but it reminded her of them anyway.
"Ah, summer!" Jan laughed happily, lifting up his hand to catch a few of the petals in the wind. "Isn't this fantastic, Lora?"
"Cha! 'Course you think that, you're from the North, aren't you? You even have summers up there? The snow barely even ever thaws. After nine-tenths of the year spent in this hell, you'll learn to value our three-week respite. " But she was grinning even through her derision.
"That's what you said last year, and the year before that, ne?" said Jan, utterly unrepentant. "And here I still am, taking joy in this glorious weather, like any sensible person ought to be doing. It's a festival, isn't it?"
"We don't even get time off!"
"Still a festival! It's the solstice! That's not just something we made up, that's got objective astrological existence!"
"Astronomical."
"Whatever." He shook his head, grinning at the familiar patterns of their old jokes, brown hair lighting like ancient gold in the caress of the sun.
"Astrology is the vile chicanery. Astronomy is the actual science. Fairly big difference there."
"Elitist. What you need is to spend some time out of that damn lab and out in the good yellow earth."
"I'm here, aren't I?"
Jan's grin grew even wider; she pushed a chestnut braid behind her shoulder and grinned back. "That you are," he said.
And then he grabbed her hand, and she followed, laughing, into the thickest drifts of petals, around the grass-stained children, through the gaps between the bushes, around the fountains and off of all the paths, until they fell, trying to catch their breath enough to laugh, onto a park bench.
You lit my life, when I didn't even think I could be saved, she sang to herself, lifting a hand to brush a bit of hair behind his ear, marveling again at the autumn green of his eyes. Bringing back all the old songs of her childhood that she'd never, ever believed in. 'Till the end of the world, I'll protect you, the best thing in it.
He smiled and pulled Lora close, until their lips met-- but chastely; it was, after all, a public park. But it was Solstice, and anything could be excused. Who'd grudge lovers?
Jan sighed. "It really should be an official holiday, you know."
"Well then, you're just going to have to wait until tonight to celebrate like the rest of us." She kissed him again.
"But the sun's the whole point... why go to the sunset festival when the real show's at noon?"
"Because your lunch break is gonna end any minute now?"
"Here I am trying to be spiritual, and you bog me down with the practical details. You're a bad influence on me."
"And you love it." She chuckled.
"Godless prig, of course I do." He kissed her forehead and stood up, linking a hand in hers. "Come on, I can at least walk you back."
"How could I refuse that?" She rose, smiling, and followed his lead, back over the yellow hills.
"Anyway," she said, a minute later, "I do have actual work to do, unlike certain people I could name, so I might be a bit late-- but we'll definitely be in time for Sunset-- and then we can drop by that deli you like, and-- Jan?"
"Nah," he said, with a slightly weak smile, "I'm fine-- bit out of breath, that's all. What were you--?"
Fear flashed through Lora's eyes. "Just more lab work... clearing up after the students... checking the circuits..."
"Ah!"
"Jan?!" she cried, as he fell against her; she dropped to her knees, trying to cushion his fall. "Jan!"
"'m... dizzy..." he murmured, and cried out again.
"Shh! Shh, it'll be all right, Jan, Jan, I'm calling for help--" She fumbled with the phone on her wrist, hit the code for emergency services with shaking fingers. I'm in the middle of Westerview Park-- east of the fountain. It's my husband, he's collapsed--" She looked down; his eyes had closed again. "I think he's unconscious, his breathing's all shallow-- you have to help me!"
They would, the voice promised, but she had to hold on: five minutes, five minutes she spent in a daze, brushing her fingers through his hair, chanting his name, sometimes in whisper, sometimes raising to a scream--
"Ma'am!" Someone was beside her, a man in a uniform; he and another pushed their way to her husband's side, and she couldn't think enough to push them away. "Pulse is thready-- Ma'am, does your husband have any heart conditions?"
She shook her head. "No, there's nothing--"
"Anything in the liver, kidneys--"
"No, there's nothing, he's just-- he just collapsed-- his breathing went short and he started to hurt and then he just collapsed."
"All right, ma'am." They were loading him onto a portable table, she realized; they were half done already. Where had the time gone? "Ma'am, there is not enough room in the helicopter for all of us, okay? You're going to have to follow us to the hospital. Do you know how to get there?"
"Jan..."
"Do you know how to get there?"
"Yes." She forced herself to meet his eyes. "Yes, yes. Yes."
"Good. Don't worry, ma'am. We're gonna do everything we can."
And then the doors were closed behind them, and the helicopter was lifting again, sending swirls of wind and petals and honeyed sun around her.
Lora stared after it for a moment-- and started to run.
It took her only a few minutes to get back through the park-- her university, and therefore the labs, were easily within walking distance. She burst in the entrance on the second floor-- lunchtime, of course, nobody around-- and went straight for the stairs: one flight, two, three. She kept her key in her pocket always; for this abandoned place, it was a simple metal key: no one thought there was anything here worth securing.
"Well, look who's back."
She ignored the voice, heading straight for the machine. She wished she could get the thing to boot up a little faster, so she wouldn't have to listen to him for quite so long, but she didn't dare mess with what worked. Not when the stakes were this high.
"Earlier and earlier," he said, voice echoed oddly through the small brick room. "Seen a pattern?"
"Shut up," she said, and hit the second switch. All proceeding normally; the third would be ready in--
"It is a pattern," he said, "and it isn't gonna stop. You can't cheat death, Lora."
"Watch me," she said, and hit the third switch.
His voice grew strained, as it always did around the third switch; somehow that made it harder to bear, not easier. "It's gonna be earlier and earlier, Lora. Eventually it's gonna be the second the loop starts, and what're you gonna do then?"
"It doesn't matter."
"No. It doesn't. Because by then, this whole solar system is gonna be gone."
She sighed. Not this again; why did she have to suffer through this again?
"This-- machine--" he said, spitting the words out, "--is doing things to the fabric of the universe, Lora, to the fabric of time. It's not much longer before it starts to tear itself apart. It'll be the whole system, if you're lucky. This sort of thing could take out the whole galaxy-- the whole universe."
She let out a bark of laughter and flipped the fourth switch. "Galaxy? Maybe. Universe? Please."
"Lora--"
"You know what? If it'll make you shut up?" she said. "I'm not an idiot. I've read the equations, and I'm not an idiot."
"What the hell are you talking about?" He always started yelling at around this time, raising his voice louder than he had to to be heard over the drone of her machine, as if he was hearing something she didn't. It was possible. There was something strange about the man. She didn't care what it was. "Wait-- you're saying you know?!"
"Of course I know! You think I'd be able to build this thing if I wasn't able to figure out what it'd do? I'm a physicist, you idiot! I know what the damn thing's doing!"
That did shut him up, if only for a moment. "You know what you're doing... you know what the consequences of this will be... and you're still doing it?! What the hell is WRONG with you?!"
"Call it a mercy killing," Lora said, and flipped the last switch.
The machinery screamed, and so did the man. No matter how many times she'd heard it-- no matter how hard she tried to block it out-- those sounds combined always forced her to clap her hands to her ears, duck her head away, sometimes even fall to her knees, because the sound went through everything, even her bones. The power drain of this thing must black out the whole city-- but that was the beauty of it: the city would never know.
The screaming stopped; she got up from her knees, cautiously. Even after all this time, she never could get herself to believe that that god-awful noise had actually gone away for good. But it had; she could feel the heat emnating from the machinery, but it was intact. And that man was finally quiet.
Man, though, she thought, was probably a misnomer, given the contents of his pockets, his very odd arrythmia, and the reaction he always had to these timeslides. Whatever he was, he'd taken to passing out after the slides, for longer each time, for which she was profoundly grateful. Like a nagging wife, he was. Besides, it gave her more time to put some supplies in his room to tide him over until the next slide.
She went back up the stairs, to the first floor, since Shel Rofer would be on the second, and she'd take the secretary's inane chatter over Rofer's vindictive gossip any day.
"Ms. Kuski!" the secretary greeted her, as always. "Emerging from your den?"
"Ah, yeah, winter's over, isn't it?" Lora smiled at her. "Solstice is in a couple weeks, isn't it?"
"Thirteen days," the secretary said happily. Lora never had understood why the woman would keep track so damn precicely, but she didn't care: it was as good a way as any to check her time. If the machine got decalibrated and started the loop too late, she could lose all the time she'd bought them. "Where are you headed off to?"
"Gonna restock my lair," she said, so the secretary wouldn't ask when she came back with the grocery bags; "then I think I'm headed off home. I think I've earned an afternoon or two off, don't you?"
"Absolutely! You need a little sun. And if you should happen to indulge in any other less-than-scientific pursuits while you're gone, well, so much the better!"
"Tisa!"
"You've got a nice young man and you should enjoy it! Now get out of here, child, and get some fresh air into your lungs!"
Lora hit her heart with her fist in a mock salute and hurried out the door. Five seventy-one; three minutes and her phone should ring. Maybe four, never fewer than two. She could call him, but she'd tried that before; she'd spilled it all to him, the whole story, and he hadn't believed a word. How could he? She'd tried to pass it off as a bad dream or a bad joke, but he'd kept looking at her funny right until he-- right until the next iteration, and that wasn't how she wanted to spend this time. It had to be normal, all of it.
She paused in front of the store, just as her phone rang. She smiled and turned her earpiece on. "Hello?"
"Hey, Lora!"
"Aren't you supposed to be attending a lecture? You slacker. What juvenile mischief will you get yourself embroiled in next?" She grinned.
"It got out early! And it was on filing procedures, anyway. This is what Assistants are for, everyone in the room knew it. But this means I can be home early!"
"Yeah?" She walked into the store. "And what use will you make out of this glorious opportunity?"
"I'm making cookies."
"And..."
"Fixing dinner?"
"And...?"
"The dishwasher?"
"There we go. And don't you let it detract from the quality of your dinner, either."
"Yes, Authority of All." He laughed. "Crazy woman. You going to be late?"
"No-- in fact, there's just one thing I've got to do in the lab, and then I'm coming straight home."
"You? Really?"
"Even world-renowned geniuses get days off! It's a goregous day, and I'm spending it as I see fit. So have those cookies ready!"
"Yeah, okay. Love you."
"I love you too," she answered, voice going soft. Suspicuously soft, she thought; but Jan just broke the connection, so she couldn't have been too bad. Good.
She paid for the food and headed back to her dungeon, as she'd called it even before she'd gained a prisoner there. Said prisoner was still unconscious; he'd fooled her a few times, but these days, the claudication seemed to knock him out for longer and longer. Probably it was a sign that the universe was crumbling. Too slow for her taste, but this at least gave her time to reprovision his room and get out before he woke up and started moralizing at her. Which was annoying, because it was so fruitless. He thought she shouldn't destroy the universe; she honestly couldn't give a damn anymore whether she did or not. Irresistable force, immovable object. Fundamental difference of philosophy.
She closed the door, locked it, and watched as he started to stir. Possibly a bad idea; the look he gave her was bleak and scrambled and might've broken her heart if she thought for a second he had a corner on it.
"You're going to wreck the world," he said, hollow-voiced.
"It's wrecked already," she said. "I'm just saving us the wasted time."
And she headed up the stairs, into the endless summer's sun.
(--)
- -I was like thirteen. I should probably get over it now.
- -This prologue actually stands very well on its own. Except for the "but, but, what, are they trapped or do they get out or WTF??" cliffhanger aspect. (And I could always just tell you.) Still, even if I never did finish the rest, it's a strange little story in its own right.
- I've managed to get some work done on it lately. I suspect that moderate guilt and Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" on repeat might be able to get me through it.
- For heaven's sake, how many readers do I have to disappoint?! Especially on LJ! (largely due to the fact I'm still too lazy to crosspost much)
Nine!fic, though it's a while 'till he shows up. You wouldn't like me writing Ten. ;) Oh, and also? This goes to strange, strange places. I just hope to heaven it makes sense. ^^;
Temporary summary: Love, loss, and an endless summer. (With additional observations on the generation and maintenance of the temporal claudication, or "time loop". )
Solstice
It was a perfect summer day, sunlight rich and thick and sweet as syrup on the ground. Just enough pure white, fluffy clouds in the bluest of all skies, enough of a breeze to cool the skin and blow the shalan petals in slow drifts through the park. The vibrant yellow scent that permeated everywhere, in all its forms, the proper smell of growing things and plants and life itself, youth itself, peaceful days playing and laughing and cavorting through every nook and cranny of the parkground.
She hadn't had many days like that, but it reminded her of them anyway.
"Ah, summer!" Jan laughed happily, lifting up his hand to catch a few of the petals in the wind. "Isn't this fantastic, Lora?"
"Cha! 'Course you think that, you're from the North, aren't you? You even have summers up there? The snow barely even ever thaws. After nine-tenths of the year spent in this hell, you'll learn to value our three-week respite. " But she was grinning even through her derision.
"That's what you said last year, and the year before that, ne?" said Jan, utterly unrepentant. "And here I still am, taking joy in this glorious weather, like any sensible person ought to be doing. It's a festival, isn't it?"
"We don't even get time off!"
"Still a festival! It's the solstice! That's not just something we made up, that's got objective astrological existence!"
"Astronomical."
"Whatever." He shook his head, grinning at the familiar patterns of their old jokes, brown hair lighting like ancient gold in the caress of the sun.
"Astrology is the vile chicanery. Astronomy is the actual science. Fairly big difference there."
"Elitist. What you need is to spend some time out of that damn lab and out in the good yellow earth."
"I'm here, aren't I?"
Jan's grin grew even wider; she pushed a chestnut braid behind her shoulder and grinned back. "That you are," he said.
And then he grabbed her hand, and she followed, laughing, into the thickest drifts of petals, around the grass-stained children, through the gaps between the bushes, around the fountains and off of all the paths, until they fell, trying to catch their breath enough to laugh, onto a park bench.
You lit my life, when I didn't even think I could be saved, she sang to herself, lifting a hand to brush a bit of hair behind his ear, marveling again at the autumn green of his eyes. Bringing back all the old songs of her childhood that she'd never, ever believed in. 'Till the end of the world, I'll protect you, the best thing in it.
He smiled and pulled Lora close, until their lips met-- but chastely; it was, after all, a public park. But it was Solstice, and anything could be excused. Who'd grudge lovers?
Jan sighed. "It really should be an official holiday, you know."
"Well then, you're just going to have to wait until tonight to celebrate like the rest of us." She kissed him again.
"But the sun's the whole point... why go to the sunset festival when the real show's at noon?"
"Because your lunch break is gonna end any minute now?"
"Here I am trying to be spiritual, and you bog me down with the practical details. You're a bad influence on me."
"And you love it." She chuckled.
"Godless prig, of course I do." He kissed her forehead and stood up, linking a hand in hers. "Come on, I can at least walk you back."
"How could I refuse that?" She rose, smiling, and followed his lead, back over the yellow hills.
"Anyway," she said, a minute later, "I do have actual work to do, unlike certain people I could name, so I might be a bit late-- but we'll definitely be in time for Sunset-- and then we can drop by that deli you like, and-- Jan?"
"Nah," he said, with a slightly weak smile, "I'm fine-- bit out of breath, that's all. What were you--?"
Fear flashed through Lora's eyes. "Just more lab work... clearing up after the students... checking the circuits..."
"Ah!"
"Jan?!" she cried, as he fell against her; she dropped to her knees, trying to cushion his fall. "Jan!"
"'m... dizzy..." he murmured, and cried out again.
"Shh! Shh, it'll be all right, Jan, Jan, I'm calling for help--" She fumbled with the phone on her wrist, hit the code for emergency services with shaking fingers. I'm in the middle of Westerview Park-- east of the fountain. It's my husband, he's collapsed--" She looked down; his eyes had closed again. "I think he's unconscious, his breathing's all shallow-- you have to help me!"
They would, the voice promised, but she had to hold on: five minutes, five minutes she spent in a daze, brushing her fingers through his hair, chanting his name, sometimes in whisper, sometimes raising to a scream--
"Ma'am!" Someone was beside her, a man in a uniform; he and another pushed their way to her husband's side, and she couldn't think enough to push them away. "Pulse is thready-- Ma'am, does your husband have any heart conditions?"
She shook her head. "No, there's nothing--"
"Anything in the liver, kidneys--"
"No, there's nothing, he's just-- he just collapsed-- his breathing went short and he started to hurt and then he just collapsed."
"All right, ma'am." They were loading him onto a portable table, she realized; they were half done already. Where had the time gone? "Ma'am, there is not enough room in the helicopter for all of us, okay? You're going to have to follow us to the hospital. Do you know how to get there?"
"Jan..."
"Do you know how to get there?"
"Yes." She forced herself to meet his eyes. "Yes, yes. Yes."
"Good. Don't worry, ma'am. We're gonna do everything we can."
And then the doors were closed behind them, and the helicopter was lifting again, sending swirls of wind and petals and honeyed sun around her.
Lora stared after it for a moment-- and started to run.
It took her only a few minutes to get back through the park-- her university, and therefore the labs, were easily within walking distance. She burst in the entrance on the second floor-- lunchtime, of course, nobody around-- and went straight for the stairs: one flight, two, three. She kept her key in her pocket always; for this abandoned place, it was a simple metal key: no one thought there was anything here worth securing.
"Well, look who's back."
She ignored the voice, heading straight for the machine. She wished she could get the thing to boot up a little faster, so she wouldn't have to listen to him for quite so long, but she didn't dare mess with what worked. Not when the stakes were this high.
"Earlier and earlier," he said, voice echoed oddly through the small brick room. "Seen a pattern?"
"Shut up," she said, and hit the second switch. All proceeding normally; the third would be ready in--
"It is a pattern," he said, "and it isn't gonna stop. You can't cheat death, Lora."
"Watch me," she said, and hit the third switch.
His voice grew strained, as it always did around the third switch; somehow that made it harder to bear, not easier. "It's gonna be earlier and earlier, Lora. Eventually it's gonna be the second the loop starts, and what're you gonna do then?"
"It doesn't matter."
"No. It doesn't. Because by then, this whole solar system is gonna be gone."
She sighed. Not this again; why did she have to suffer through this again?
"This-- machine--" he said, spitting the words out, "--is doing things to the fabric of the universe, Lora, to the fabric of time. It's not much longer before it starts to tear itself apart. It'll be the whole system, if you're lucky. This sort of thing could take out the whole galaxy-- the whole universe."
She let out a bark of laughter and flipped the fourth switch. "Galaxy? Maybe. Universe? Please."
"Lora--"
"You know what? If it'll make you shut up?" she said. "I'm not an idiot. I've read the equations, and I'm not an idiot."
"What the hell are you talking about?" He always started yelling at around this time, raising his voice louder than he had to to be heard over the drone of her machine, as if he was hearing something she didn't. It was possible. There was something strange about the man. She didn't care what it was. "Wait-- you're saying you know?!"
"Of course I know! You think I'd be able to build this thing if I wasn't able to figure out what it'd do? I'm a physicist, you idiot! I know what the damn thing's doing!"
That did shut him up, if only for a moment. "You know what you're doing... you know what the consequences of this will be... and you're still doing it?! What the hell is WRONG with you?!"
"Call it a mercy killing," Lora said, and flipped the last switch.
The machinery screamed, and so did the man. No matter how many times she'd heard it-- no matter how hard she tried to block it out-- those sounds combined always forced her to clap her hands to her ears, duck her head away, sometimes even fall to her knees, because the sound went through everything, even her bones. The power drain of this thing must black out the whole city-- but that was the beauty of it: the city would never know.
The screaming stopped; she got up from her knees, cautiously. Even after all this time, she never could get herself to believe that that god-awful noise had actually gone away for good. But it had; she could feel the heat emnating from the machinery, but it was intact. And that man was finally quiet.
Man, though, she thought, was probably a misnomer, given the contents of his pockets, his very odd arrythmia, and the reaction he always had to these timeslides. Whatever he was, he'd taken to passing out after the slides, for longer each time, for which she was profoundly grateful. Like a nagging wife, he was. Besides, it gave her more time to put some supplies in his room to tide him over until the next slide.
She went back up the stairs, to the first floor, since Shel Rofer would be on the second, and she'd take the secretary's inane chatter over Rofer's vindictive gossip any day.
"Ms. Kuski!" the secretary greeted her, as always. "Emerging from your den?"
"Ah, yeah, winter's over, isn't it?" Lora smiled at her. "Solstice is in a couple weeks, isn't it?"
"Thirteen days," the secretary said happily. Lora never had understood why the woman would keep track so damn precicely, but she didn't care: it was as good a way as any to check her time. If the machine got decalibrated and started the loop too late, she could lose all the time she'd bought them. "Where are you headed off to?"
"Gonna restock my lair," she said, so the secretary wouldn't ask when she came back with the grocery bags; "then I think I'm headed off home. I think I've earned an afternoon or two off, don't you?"
"Absolutely! You need a little sun. And if you should happen to indulge in any other less-than-scientific pursuits while you're gone, well, so much the better!"
"Tisa!"
"You've got a nice young man and you should enjoy it! Now get out of here, child, and get some fresh air into your lungs!"
Lora hit her heart with her fist in a mock salute and hurried out the door. Five seventy-one; three minutes and her phone should ring. Maybe four, never fewer than two. She could call him, but she'd tried that before; she'd spilled it all to him, the whole story, and he hadn't believed a word. How could he? She'd tried to pass it off as a bad dream or a bad joke, but he'd kept looking at her funny right until he-- right until the next iteration, and that wasn't how she wanted to spend this time. It had to be normal, all of it.
She paused in front of the store, just as her phone rang. She smiled and turned her earpiece on. "Hello?"
"Hey, Lora!"
"Aren't you supposed to be attending a lecture? You slacker. What juvenile mischief will you get yourself embroiled in next?" She grinned.
"It got out early! And it was on filing procedures, anyway. This is what Assistants are for, everyone in the room knew it. But this means I can be home early!"
"Yeah?" She walked into the store. "And what use will you make out of this glorious opportunity?"
"I'm making cookies."
"And..."
"Fixing dinner?"
"And...?"
"The dishwasher?"
"There we go. And don't you let it detract from the quality of your dinner, either."
"Yes, Authority of All." He laughed. "Crazy woman. You going to be late?"
"No-- in fact, there's just one thing I've got to do in the lab, and then I'm coming straight home."
"You? Really?"
"Even world-renowned geniuses get days off! It's a goregous day, and I'm spending it as I see fit. So have those cookies ready!"
"Yeah, okay. Love you."
"I love you too," she answered, voice going soft. Suspicuously soft, she thought; but Jan just broke the connection, so she couldn't have been too bad. Good.
She paid for the food and headed back to her dungeon, as she'd called it even before she'd gained a prisoner there. Said prisoner was still unconscious; he'd fooled her a few times, but these days, the claudication seemed to knock him out for longer and longer. Probably it was a sign that the universe was crumbling. Too slow for her taste, but this at least gave her time to reprovision his room and get out before he woke up and started moralizing at her. Which was annoying, because it was so fruitless. He thought she shouldn't destroy the universe; she honestly couldn't give a damn anymore whether she did or not. Irresistable force, immovable object. Fundamental difference of philosophy.
She closed the door, locked it, and watched as he started to stir. Possibly a bad idea; the look he gave her was bleak and scrambled and might've broken her heart if she thought for a second he had a corner on it.
"You're going to wreck the world," he said, hollow-voiced.
"It's wrecked already," she said. "I'm just saving us the wasted time."
And she headed up the stairs, into the endless summer's sun.
(--)