“I would say, yes, my love. We have gone back in time. Question is: why? And where is the ‘us’ that are supposed to be here?”
“In the future, where we are supposed to be? Shit. They are going to have no idea what is going on. At least we already lived this,” she says.
“We are both exceptionally clever. I am sure we will catch on quickly,” CK says arrogantly. “But I do not want to stay here and live out the next hundred years again. No fucking way. You have to get us back where we belong.”
Everyone is staring at them like they just came here from the future, which they did.
“Oh, Christ!” CK snaps suddenly as he looks at her. “Past ‘me’ isn’t going to want to come back. He is going to want to stay exactly where he is…with you…his wife.”
“Erm, for those of us who are finding this hard to follow. Can you please explain?” Devon ventures.
“We are from a hundred years in the future,” CK says mildly. “Seems your Aefre has switched us about somehow.”
“Why
is it our Aefre, err Liv, that switched you about?” he says, affronted. “How do you know it wasn’t yours?”
They share a glance, and he clears his throat. “She wouldn’t have brought us back to this time,” is all he says.
“What do you mean?” comes the suspicious reply from Lincoln, “This time?”
“They can’t say,” Sebastian pipes up. “Anything they do or say can dramatically change the future.”
“What are you, some kind of time-travelling expert?” Cole snaps at him.
“Have you never seen Back to the Future?” he responds. “And you call yourself an actor.”
“This is ridiculous,” Lincoln says. “Time travel is not possible. You two have gone off somewhere when you Astralled out of here and hit your heads or something.”
“No, Linc. We are who we say we are. We are from 2113,” she says to him, shaking her head.
“So, you are married now?” Cole says quietly. “How long for?”
“We can’t tell you that,” she says to him, feeling his pain. She pulls her hand out of CK’s and goes to him. He lets her, only because he is smug.
She pulls Cole close to her and hugs him tightly. “We are still in love,” she whispers to him. “We just aren’t married anymore,” she adds. He hugs her back fiercely.
“No, I don’t want to believe this. I don’t want to believe that you left me,” he says sadly.
“I didn’t leave you. You left me,” she says and then claps her hand to her mouth as CK rumbles behind her in warning. “Aefre.”
“No,” Cole says. “I wouldn’t. I won’t,” he says determinedly with a look at CK.
“Aefre, you need to get us out of here, right now,” CK says. “Before any more damage can be done.”
“I’ll try,” she says, stepping back.
“Don’t you know how?” Xane asks, suddenly entering the conversation.
She shakes her head. “No. Where we come from, I never had this Power.”
“You will do now as your past self has learned it,” he says.
She smiles at him and says, “Still giving me direction, I see.”
He tilts his head at her. “Oh?”
She ignores him and closes her eyes. Gripping CK’s hand tightly she tries to find the Power inside her that will take them home. CK is right. There is no fucking way she wants to live through this time again with what is coming. They barely made it out alive the first time around.