Prompt!fic: Grand(mother) Paradox (PG13, Jordan/Lexie)
Havenverse Random Prompt Generator
“You know I could have helped Vasha Crocker kill Mabel Finney back then... and maybe then the Troubles would be over,” Jordan spits, still shedding pondweed and dripping and hating the entire universe and particularly the part of it that is Lexie deWitt, laughing her ass off. Who the fuck decided to put a fish pond where a perfectly decent road used to be, six generations back?
“Yeah, but we know what else you did instead,” Lexie snerks, waving a leather-bound book that looks over a hundred years old and makes Jordan stop in her tracks and swallow in a gut-punch of recognition. Mabel...
It starts to hurt. It’s going to hurt more, she realises.
It’s going to hurt singularly every time she looks at goddamn Lexie’s face.
Lexie’s face, crowing amusement right now. “Vince found it in the old storage archive from when the museum closed. Apparently Mabel’s torrid lesbian love affairs were the subject of some geriatric chortling both before and after they realised the dark-clad, glove-wearing stranger who spoke of coming from a world far in the future was you.”
Jordan does not need her relationships to be unpicked and critiqued by the filthy minds of the goddamn Teagues. “...Fuck!”
“She gets pretty detailed.” Lexie grins. “Apparently that tongue is capable of more than just insults, after all. Hey, cool it, c’mon, I’m sure there must be children with tender ears somewhere within a mile radius. And sorry about the pond. Miscalculation. At least we found your letter, eventually... and now you’re back.”
Jordan isn’t sure she wants to be back. All she did while she was there was freak out about no phones and the disease and sanitary conditions and wow but the fucking misogyny, and now... She thinks all of it might be a decent trade-off for the one person she could touch and could feel her back actually wanting to touch and be touched by her. Even if it would only have been for a matter of months more.
“On the bright side,” Lexie adds, “You’re definitely one up on Nathan. No trail of paradoxical offspring.”
The rings on her fingers, bright against the dark of the leather bound diary, gleam as she waves it in the sun, back and forth, hypnotic. Jordan can’t wrest her eyes away. Mabel, Veronica, Sarah, Lucy, Audrey, Lexie... she thinks. Wretchedly. Her voice cracks with hope as she gets out, “You don’t...?”
“Remember?” Lexie’s mirth pulls right back in an instant. “I don’t remember Nathan, Jordan. And that was only one life away. Or three,” she reconsiders, her lips dragging down into a frown.
Jordan fights the urge for all she’s worth but she can’t not ask, when after three months spent in 1875, this is all of Mabel Finney she’ll ever have. All that remains. The words come out a hiss, as her hand trembles on the air between them: “...Give me the book.”
But Lexie surrenders it without hesitation.
“You know I could have helped Vasha Crocker kill Mabel Finney back then... and maybe then the Troubles would be over,” Jordan spits, still shedding pondweed and dripping and hating the entire universe and particularly the part of it that is Lexie deWitt, laughing her ass off. Who the fuck decided to put a fish pond where a perfectly decent road used to be, six generations back?
“Yeah, but we know what else you did instead,” Lexie snerks, waving a leather-bound book that looks over a hundred years old and makes Jordan stop in her tracks and swallow in a gut-punch of recognition. Mabel...
It starts to hurt. It’s going to hurt more, she realises.
It’s going to hurt singularly every time she looks at goddamn Lexie’s face.
Lexie’s face, crowing amusement right now. “Vince found it in the old storage archive from when the museum closed. Apparently Mabel’s torrid lesbian love affairs were the subject of some geriatric chortling both before and after they realised the dark-clad, glove-wearing stranger who spoke of coming from a world far in the future was you.”
Jordan does not need her relationships to be unpicked and critiqued by the filthy minds of the goddamn Teagues. “...Fuck!”
“She gets pretty detailed.” Lexie grins. “Apparently that tongue is capable of more than just insults, after all. Hey, cool it, c’mon, I’m sure there must be children with tender ears somewhere within a mile radius. And sorry about the pond. Miscalculation. At least we found your letter, eventually... and now you’re back.”
Jordan isn’t sure she wants to be back. All she did while she was there was freak out about no phones and the disease and sanitary conditions and wow but the fucking misogyny, and now... She thinks all of it might be a decent trade-off for the one person she could touch and could feel her back actually wanting to touch and be touched by her. Even if it would only have been for a matter of months more.
“On the bright side,” Lexie adds, “You’re definitely one up on Nathan. No trail of paradoxical offspring.”
The rings on her fingers, bright against the dark of the leather bound diary, gleam as she waves it in the sun, back and forth, hypnotic. Jordan can’t wrest her eyes away. Mabel, Veronica, Sarah, Lucy, Audrey, Lexie... she thinks. Wretchedly. Her voice cracks with hope as she gets out, “You don’t...?”
“Remember?” Lexie’s mirth pulls right back in an instant. “I don’t remember Nathan, Jordan. And that was only one life away. Or three,” she reconsiders, her lips dragging down into a frown.
Jordan fights the urge for all she’s worth but she can’t not ask, when after three months spent in 1875, this is all of Mabel Finney she’ll ever have. All that remains. The words come out a hiss, as her hand trembles on the air between them: “...Give me the book.”
But Lexie surrenders it without hesitation.