Fic: Time Turns, Leaves Fall (S&S)
Title: Time Turns, Leaves Fall
Author: lost_spook
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1352
Characters/Pairings: Ruby, Jet (OCs)
Notes/Warnings: Pre-canon, 1960s. S&S stuff happens. (Consider this an "Author Chooses Not To Warn" note, sorry.)
Summary: Time must go on, the leaves must fall. That’s why she’s here.
For element_flash September prompt “Falling Leaves”;
hc_bingo square “Trapped between realities” and 100 Element prompt 18 - Jet & Ruby - restrained & age regression.
***
Time must go on; the leaves must fall; youth must give way to age and age again to youth. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. That’s why she’s here.
*
Ruby stands half in front of the mirror and catches its reflection out of the corner of her eye; an image the house has been trying to hide from her. She can see the garden momentarily, but not as it is, or seems: the leaves have changed colour and they’re falling from the trees. If she turns around again, here and now, and looks into the garden herself, it’s spring and there’s still blossom on the trees.
“It’s nearly October,” says Jet. “This isn’t real - or it shouldn’t be.”
It isn’t real, thinks Ruby. She’s known that since they arrived, even if she’s only now found the key, the one object in the house that seems to recognise the true month and year.
“Ruby?”
Ruby smiles and then swings around to face Jet, tilting her head to one side. Brown hair falls over her shoulder in perfectly positioned waves. “Oh, no. It shouldn’t be, you’re right. And it’s more than the month, the season. Jet. When was this house built?”
“1935, I think. Yes.”
“And yet almost every item in it is over thirty years old.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes.” Ruby perches on the nearest chair, and taps its cushioned seat with her fingers. “This, you know. It’s forty years old. When was it made, Jet?”
Jet leans over and touches the back of the chair, running her hand along the dark, polished wood. “1951. I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” says Ruby. She’s had the oddest feeling, ever since they got here. She’s been here before, or she will be again. And aside from that, it’s only the same problem again. Funny how they all hate time moving onwards - they hate to grow old, to see other things or people around them fade and break. Someone wants to return to a better time, or a time they think was better. She’s lost count of how often that desire has been used to cause a break in the corridor. They don’t want the clock’s hands to count on, the seasons to pass. They want to find a time that suits them and stay there. Wanting spring and summer but never autumn and winter. And yet that’s not how it is, how it ever can be: autumn must come, the leaves must fall.
“Where is he?” she asks Jet. “The man?”
Jet nods her head towards the kitchen. “In there. Making us coffee, he says.”
“Is he?” Ruby doesn’t go to look. He’s wrong as well: at least twenty years younger than he should be.
“What do we do?” Jet looks at her. “If we can’t leave -”
Ruby smiles again: her brightest smile. “Oh, but we can. I’ve found the key to the door, Jet. Go in there and talk to him again. And when I tell you, both of you must go. Exactly when and how I say.”
“But if he’s the cause -”
She shakes her head. He is, and he isn’t. “He’s using the house. He’s lived here for fifty years. He shares its memories. And something hiding in its walls decided to make use of that, to whisper in his head, to take time back inside the house - twenty-three years, I think. That’s far enough for him - but it - it wants to go back further. We have to stop it.”
“Ruby,” says Jet, putting a hand on her arm. Ruby’s cold; Jet’s fingers are warm. “There’s something else, though, isn’t there?”
Ruby looks at her then, and nods. “It does feel… almost rehearsed. As if I had been here before.”
“But you haven’t, have you? It’s the distortions in time that are confusing you, surely?”
“No,” she says. “I haven’t been here before, but I think perhaps I will be.”
“Ruby, what is this? Stop it.”
She laughs, and kisses Jet’s cheek. “It doesn’t matter. When I give you the word, take him away from here. It’s important.”
“You’ve got something in mind, haven’t you?” Jet’s evidently puzzled by Ruby’s behaviour. “You know, if this is going to be -”
“One of my unnecessary dramatic gestures?” Ruby interrupts her with a mocking query. “Been talking to Steel again, have we, Jet?”
“That isn’t the point.”
Ruby fixes her with a look. “You know how bad this is. Now go.” If it’s a dramatic gesture, why shouldn’t it be? Why shouldn’t she leave with a flourish? But she doesn’t say that, not aloud or into the other’s thoughts.
Jet pulls a face at her and then walks away, into the kitchen.
Ruby stares around the living room and then heads out into the hallway. She’s certain of what she’s seen and sensed here and sure of what she must do, but she needs to check. There are traps of more kinds than one and she mustn’t make a mistake. She goes over the entire house again, picking up small items and touching furniture, until she returns to the mirror. She puts her hand on its frame and her eyes glow red.
She knows this mirror, she thinks. Or no, maybe it’s more that there’s a pattern to this that she recognises. Maybe it is merely that she’s seen this kind of thing once too often.
And then her examinations pull an image out of the mirror: she’s seen this looking glass before. She’s seen herself inside it. There is a pattern, and she is part of it.
She concentrates, trying to ignore that. Even if it is true, if this is a path set for her to walk along, she has no choice left but to do so. She moves her hand to the mirror itself and forces it to show her more until the glass cracks. Behind her, so does a window pane. She merely continues to intensify her work on the mirror. The crack spreads - and the back door opens.
Now, Jet, now!
Jet knows when not to argue, and she leaves. Ruby can’t see her from here, but she feels it: the sudden removal of her fellow element’s presence is a physical pain that she must ignore. If she stops, it won’t be the mirror that cracks, it will be the corridor itself and perhaps Ruby, too. If she continues, she’ll be cut off from all of them, all her colleagues, but no - she won’t think about that.
She sets her mouth and raises her other hand to press that against the glass, too and it shatters, only a few pieces remaining in place, incomplete reflections of Ruby. It’s working, though. She doesn’t need to turn around to feel time shifting back into place, or to know that the garden beyond her is moving onto autumn. The leaves will fall.
She can’t let go now, though, and she’s swallowed inside the last pieces even as she pulls them in after her.
*
She’s sitting in the garden, under a tree in blossom. It’s spring, 1946.
It isn’t, of course. It’s only one reflection this mirror has seen; one of many. One place to hide a creature that would pull time out of shape and destroy reality, and one place to trap an Element.
Ruby closes her eyes and leans back against the tree. There’s no more to be done, so she shuts her mind to the reality and only thinks that an unreal half of a garden is better than nothing. It could so easily have been nothing, she knows.
But it does mean that there’s something in here with her: her garden has a serpent hiding inside it. She wonders uneasily what it will do.
They promised me you, it says, from everywhere and nowhere, and here you are.
Ruby only opens her eyes, and gives a smile. “Lucky you, then,” she says, still unbreakable and brilliant.
*
Time must go on; the leaves must fall; youth must give way to age and age again to youth. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. That’s why she’s here.
***
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:
Author: lost_spook
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1352
Characters/Pairings: Ruby, Jet (OCs)
Notes/Warnings: Pre-canon, 1960s. S&S stuff happens. (Consider this an "Author Chooses Not To Warn" note, sorry.)
Summary: Time must go on, the leaves must fall. That’s why she’s here.
For element_flash September prompt “Falling Leaves”;
hc_bingo square “Trapped between realities” and 100 Element prompt 18 - Jet & Ruby - restrained & age regression.
***
Time must go on; the leaves must fall; youth must give way to age and age again to youth. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. That’s why she’s here.
*
Ruby stands half in front of the mirror and catches its reflection out of the corner of her eye; an image the house has been trying to hide from her. She can see the garden momentarily, but not as it is, or seems: the leaves have changed colour and they’re falling from the trees. If she turns around again, here and now, and looks into the garden herself, it’s spring and there’s still blossom on the trees.
“It’s nearly October,” says Jet. “This isn’t real - or it shouldn’t be.”
It isn’t real, thinks Ruby. She’s known that since they arrived, even if she’s only now found the key, the one object in the house that seems to recognise the true month and year.
“Ruby?”
Ruby smiles and then swings around to face Jet, tilting her head to one side. Brown hair falls over her shoulder in perfectly positioned waves. “Oh, no. It shouldn’t be, you’re right. And it’s more than the month, the season. Jet. When was this house built?”
“1935, I think. Yes.”
“And yet almost every item in it is over thirty years old.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes.” Ruby perches on the nearest chair, and taps its cushioned seat with her fingers. “This, you know. It’s forty years old. When was it made, Jet?”
Jet leans over and touches the back of the chair, running her hand along the dark, polished wood. “1951. I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” says Ruby. She’s had the oddest feeling, ever since they got here. She’s been here before, or she will be again. And aside from that, it’s only the same problem again. Funny how they all hate time moving onwards - they hate to grow old, to see other things or people around them fade and break. Someone wants to return to a better time, or a time they think was better. She’s lost count of how often that desire has been used to cause a break in the corridor. They don’t want the clock’s hands to count on, the seasons to pass. They want to find a time that suits them and stay there. Wanting spring and summer but never autumn and winter. And yet that’s not how it is, how it ever can be: autumn must come, the leaves must fall.
“Where is he?” she asks Jet. “The man?”
Jet nods her head towards the kitchen. “In there. Making us coffee, he says.”
“Is he?” Ruby doesn’t go to look. He’s wrong as well: at least twenty years younger than he should be.
“What do we do?” Jet looks at her. “If we can’t leave -”
Ruby smiles again: her brightest smile. “Oh, but we can. I’ve found the key to the door, Jet. Go in there and talk to him again. And when I tell you, both of you must go. Exactly when and how I say.”
“But if he’s the cause -”
She shakes her head. He is, and he isn’t. “He’s using the house. He’s lived here for fifty years. He shares its memories. And something hiding in its walls decided to make use of that, to whisper in his head, to take time back inside the house - twenty-three years, I think. That’s far enough for him - but it - it wants to go back further. We have to stop it.”
“Ruby,” says Jet, putting a hand on her arm. Ruby’s cold; Jet’s fingers are warm. “There’s something else, though, isn’t there?”
Ruby looks at her then, and nods. “It does feel… almost rehearsed. As if I had been here before.”
“But you haven’t, have you? It’s the distortions in time that are confusing you, surely?”
“No,” she says. “I haven’t been here before, but I think perhaps I will be.”
“Ruby, what is this? Stop it.”
She laughs, and kisses Jet’s cheek. “It doesn’t matter. When I give you the word, take him away from here. It’s important.”
“You’ve got something in mind, haven’t you?” Jet’s evidently puzzled by Ruby’s behaviour. “You know, if this is going to be -”
“One of my unnecessary dramatic gestures?” Ruby interrupts her with a mocking query. “Been talking to Steel again, have we, Jet?”
“That isn’t the point.”
Ruby fixes her with a look. “You know how bad this is. Now go.” If it’s a dramatic gesture, why shouldn’t it be? Why shouldn’t she leave with a flourish? But she doesn’t say that, not aloud or into the other’s thoughts.
Jet pulls a face at her and then walks away, into the kitchen.
Ruby stares around the living room and then heads out into the hallway. She’s certain of what she’s seen and sensed here and sure of what she must do, but she needs to check. There are traps of more kinds than one and she mustn’t make a mistake. She goes over the entire house again, picking up small items and touching furniture, until she returns to the mirror. She puts her hand on its frame and her eyes glow red.
She knows this mirror, she thinks. Or no, maybe it’s more that there’s a pattern to this that she recognises. Maybe it is merely that she’s seen this kind of thing once too often.
And then her examinations pull an image out of the mirror: she’s seen this looking glass before. She’s seen herself inside it. There is a pattern, and she is part of it.
She concentrates, trying to ignore that. Even if it is true, if this is a path set for her to walk along, she has no choice left but to do so. She moves her hand to the mirror itself and forces it to show her more until the glass cracks. Behind her, so does a window pane. She merely continues to intensify her work on the mirror. The crack spreads - and the back door opens.
Now, Jet, now!
Jet knows when not to argue, and she leaves. Ruby can’t see her from here, but she feels it: the sudden removal of her fellow element’s presence is a physical pain that she must ignore. If she stops, it won’t be the mirror that cracks, it will be the corridor itself and perhaps Ruby, too. If she continues, she’ll be cut off from all of them, all her colleagues, but no - she won’t think about that.
She sets her mouth and raises her other hand to press that against the glass, too and it shatters, only a few pieces remaining in place, incomplete reflections of Ruby. It’s working, though. She doesn’t need to turn around to feel time shifting back into place, or to know that the garden beyond her is moving onto autumn. The leaves will fall.
She can’t let go now, though, and she’s swallowed inside the last pieces even as she pulls them in after her.
*
She’s sitting in the garden, under a tree in blossom. It’s spring, 1946.
It isn’t, of course. It’s only one reflection this mirror has seen; one of many. One place to hide a creature that would pull time out of shape and destroy reality, and one place to trap an Element.
Ruby closes her eyes and leans back against the tree. There’s no more to be done, so she shuts her mind to the reality and only thinks that an unreal half of a garden is better than nothing. It could so easily have been nothing, she knows.
But it does mean that there’s something in here with her: her garden has a serpent hiding inside it. She wonders uneasily what it will do.
They promised me you, it says, from everywhere and nowhere, and here you are.
Ruby only opens her eyes, and gives a smile. “Lucky you, then,” she says, still unbreakable and brilliant.
*
Time must go on; the leaves must fall; youth must give way to age and age again to youth. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. That’s why she’s here.
***
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there: