~1879~
Eliot spent the next six years working with Douglas to try and determine exactly why and how he had somehow managed to change what Minna had seen. After all, if they could figure out how it happened the first time, then they could have some hope of figuring out how to possibly make it happen again. They’d then have some hope of figuring out how to possibly save Claire, and maybe even all those others that needed saving, according to a two centuries’ old prophecy.
They followed up on every avenue of time magic they possibly could. They then delved into even more obscure spells, castings, enchantments and rituals. Eliot was determined to find some way to save the woman, yes woman, he had come to love so deeply in the nearly a decade and a half since she had first come into his life by the most fortuitous of accidents. Or had it been an accident at all?
But as June of 1879 began, Eliot started to question the very idea of using his abilities to change anything at all, especially the way in which he could. It was then that he started to truly believe in the idea of paradox that Douglas had warned him about so many times.
After a full day of trying to unlock the secret of how Eliot had somehow changed something that Minna had previously seen, the two decided to head to the post office at the center of town. They hoped that one of their other Awakened contacts that they had reached out to over the last several years would finally come through with whatever missing spell or secret would finally give them the answers they sought.
Only, the message that Eliot received late that June afternoon was not from another mage at all, but rather from his stepmother, and the news it contained was terrible. His younger half-brother, known to the rest of the world as Emperor Napoléon IV, had gone to battle for their country. And at the tender age of only twenty-three, less than a decade after Eliot had gone against all of Douglas’ warnings and healed Louis’ terminal illness, he had now been slain, the life Eliot had given him cut short. That gift cruelly wrenched away by fate itself.
Eugénie went on to tell Eliot that a cousin of theirs had been named heir by his brother, but the words blurred in his mind, just as his tears had blurred them on the parchment he held with shaking hands. For a long time, Eliot stood outside the post office, still clutching the now crumpled paper in his hands, staring off at the distant ocean. The tears were still pooling in his eyes as grief and doubt continued to plague his thoughts.
When Douglas emerged from the post office moments later, he looked way more pleased with whatever messages he had collected that late afternoon. Though, when he saw Eliot’s obvious state, his smile faded to a look of concern as he approached his protegé and lover of the last nine years.
“What’s happened?” he greeted Eliot softly, curbing the urge to reach for the other man comfortingly, as they were still in the center of town, numerous other citizens milling about them as they too attended to their afternoon’s business.
Eliot took a deep shaky breath, pulled from his own dark thoughts by the sound of Douglas’ voice. After taking another moment to compose himself, he managed a whispered answer, “my brother was killed.”
“What?” Douglas asked, eyes widened.
“In battle. I guess fate has finally made it clear whether I was really supposed to save him, hasn’t it?” Eliot sniffled, trying to force back more tears as he spoke.
“Eliot, you can’t think that way” Douglas attempted what little comfort he could.
Eliot simply scoffed, “can’t I? If I hadn’t healed him, he’d never have become the leader of our country. And he sure as hell never would have been on that battlefield” he exclaimed, his voice shaking in both anger and grief.
Douglas closed his eyes against the obvious pain the other man was in, “and if you hadn’t, he would have died years earlier, Eliot.”
Eliot simply shook his head as he tried to force down more tears. “Is this what happens when I try to change fate? Try to play god? Is this what will happen to Claire if I keep trying to save her, too?”
Douglas closed his eyes sadly once more. He then looked at the others moving about the cobbled streets around them. With that, he took Eliot’s arm and led him to a place out of sight, in between the nearby buildings. A moment later, they had once again been transported back to Douglas’ home, where they could speak freely without fear of Eliot’s current mental state drawing unwanted attention to either of them for any reason.
“You’re starting to sound like you want to give up, Eliot” Douglas told him warily.
“I think I have I pretty good reason for that, don’t I?” he sniffled as he collapsed to the sofa, burying his face in his hands, finally allowing the tears to flow more freely.
Douglas took a sad breath as he took the seat next to Eliot, gently placing a hand upon his knee. “One of the messages I received tonight contained a spell, Eliot. This could actually be the one that tells us how you changed things before.”
Eliot shook his head, “did you hear anything I just said. Changing things, it just leads to... pain” he finished in a whisper.
Douglas sighed sadly, “the spell itself doesn’t change anything, it just works as a beacon to see the moment in the past when a new time line was created. It lets you see what happened to change things and turn the wheels of fate in a different direction.”
“I’m pretty sure I know that moment. It was the one where I decided to heal my brother after you, yourself told me it was too big. Mystery solved” he finished sarcastically, his grief and fear sharpening his tone.
“I don’t mean when things changed with Louis, I mean when they changed with Claire. What caused you to become her second love, what caused you to Awaken? The moment time split and a new reality was created. Don’t you want to know that?”
Eliot took a long moment, but finally responded, “it’s already changed. Why does it even matter now?”
Douglas allowed another sad sigh, “I just assumed that if we knew the precise moment something changed, then we’d know how you changed it. Wasn’t that the answer we wanted, so you would know how to do it again?′
“I don’t even think I want to do it again, not anymore. Like I said, it doesn’t matter now. Now that I know that everything I changed with Louis, it was all for nothing anyway” he whispered, defeated.
Douglas then went from sadness to anger, “so because the life you gave your brother only lasted for a few years, that somehow means that it was pointless? I’m sorry Eliot, but that’s ridiculous. You gave him years of life he wouldn’t have had otherwise, and how can you say any life is meaningless? Be it six years or sixty years? Every second means something, and you gave him millions of seconds that he never would have had otherwise. How can you think that’s meaningless? That it was all for nothing?”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
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Giving into that logic that Douglas had hit him with, Eliot did eventually agree to at least try the magic. Though his doubts remained, if it was truly just a way to see the past without actively changing it, then he imagined there at least wouldn’t be any massive repercussions, or disappointments. After all, whatever he would see was something that had already happened, and what damage could just looking back into the past honestly do?
After all the preparations and casting, Eliot was now seated on the floor of Douglas’ home, staring deeply into a scrying bowl sitting before him, filled with water. He spent the next several moments waiting for those visions of the past to come to him. Waiting to finally know the precise moment when he had supposedly somehow changed he and Claire’s destiny originally, and how he had even done it.
Slowly the water rippled at last. Faded and broken images became more clear the longer he concentrated on that water. Eventually, he began to recognize what he was seeing. There in the waters a scene materialized before his eyes. It was that night in England, when Eliot had first discovered what Claire truly was. What came into view was a vision of when he had been out on Hollister’s balcony, fighting every instinct to just run in fear from Claire and all her kind, never to see she or them ever again.
As Eliot focused in on the vision with confusion as to why he was being shown this particular part of the life he had already lived, he came to make out sound as well, and once again, he heard that conversation he had first had fourteen years earlier:
“The only thing that ever made me feel safe again was Claire, the woman who’s supposedly not human” Nicolas stated pointedly.
“Claire helped you?′ Eliot replied, forcing down his own emotions then.
“Claire is very good at fixing broken things” Nicolas allowed a smile, “it’s her way of trying to fix herself, I think” he smiled again, as he repeated almost the same exact words that Claire herself had said to Eliot weeks earlier.
Eliot looked down with another shaky breath, “it is getting rather cold out here. I think I’ll go back inside, after all” he whispered. Nicolas simply offered a sad smile and moved back through the patio doors and into the warmth inside once again.
But it was at that point in the vision of the past that something changed. It was something that Eliot had not even consciously remembered, and perhaps the very reason why he was being shown this moment after all. Just as his past self had moved to follow Nicolas back inside Hollister’s home, something made him stop at the doorway, and turn to look back at the balcony behind him suddenly.
As his past self turned at some distraction, Eliot in the present gasped as he saw what his past self was now seeing, though he had no memory of it himself. There on the patio where he had just finished his conversation with Nicolas, another figure now stood.
Past Eliot swallowed hard as he found himself looking straight at yet another version of himself, a version of himself who now somehow stood before him with some sort of message.
Past Eliot’s fear was clear, as was present Eliot’s deepening confusion as he watched as this other version of himself now spoke to his past self in a calming tone, “you may not understand this now, but I have lived the night you are living now. And I know your fears. But I’ve come to tell you that you have nothing to fear from her, from Claire. She will love you deeply, she will never harm you, despite what she is. And her love for you will change you. It will make you into something you can’t even imagine, if you’re brave enough to let it. That love you share with her will be what makes you into what you are meant to become. What you need to become, and what Claire needs you to become. You can’t run from it, as much as you may want to in this moment. You have to embrace it, let yourself love her. You, Claire, the world, all need you to find your destiny. You won’t remember seeing me here tonight, you can’t. Not yet. But you will remember my words. You have to.”
And with that the vision was dispelled in the past as well as in the present, causing Eliot to gasp as he slid back from the now clear water before him. He took several breaths as he tried to make sense of how that strange vision could even have happened. How could he have gone to the past and given himself the one message that made him finally push away his fears and try to let himself love Claire? After all, Eliot had no ability to travel through time itself. At least none that he knew of... not yet anyway.
“What did you see?” Douglas asked from where he had waited, watching worriedly.
“The moment things changed. And how they changed” he added in a hoarse whisper.
“How?” Douglas asked, desperate to know that answer himself.
“I wanted to run when I first discovered what Claire was. I was seconds from doing just that, fourteen years ago” he breathed heavily, “But Minna was right” Eliot managed, “I was the one who did change things that night after all.”
“I’m not sure I understand” Douglas stated warily.
“Neither do I, right now” Eliot admitted with another shallow breath, “but I guess I’m meant to find out.”
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“I think I figured something out” was Eliot’s excited greeting as Douglas groggily awoke from his night’s slumber on a morning a few weeks later.
Douglas squinted over at where Eliot was pouring over scrolls and spells and calculations as he sat at the desk at the side of Douglas’ bedroom, “have you been up all night?" Douglas returned hoarsely.
“This schedule works out better when I want to spend time with Claire” he answered absently, “but did you hear what I said? I think I figured something out, finally.”
Douglas stifled a yawn as he slid to the edge of the bed, pushing long tangled locks from his face, “something?”
“I think I found something that may explain how I could have went back and changed things with Claire.”
“Ok...” Douglas stated as he watched Eliot with concern.
“This one here, it lets you go back to explore your past memories.”
“Otherwise known as remembering?” Douglas returned with a raised brow.
Eliot just shook his head, “no, I mean it actually lets you go back to a place and time in your own memory and actually interact with yourself there.”
“Interact?” Douglas asked as he continued to give Eliot a wary look.
“Yes, but the catch is that you can only do it with your own memories. The only thing you can interact with is your past self. It serves as an anchor of sorts, linking past you and present you. So, I couldn’t go back and see anything that happened before I was born, for instance. Or anything that happens to someone else, unless I actually happen to be there with them at the time” he scowled slightly.
“Ok... so...?” Douglas questioned.
“Think about it. That means present me can go back and tell past me things I know now but didn’t know then. Which sounds an awful lot like what I saw in the scrying bowl, doesn’t it?”
“Ok, so you’ve basically given yourself psychic abilities?” Douglas restated, “but you can’t actually change the past, just warn yourself about the future?”
“Which could essentially change the past, couldn’t it?” Eliot pointed out, “I mean what if, in another life I did run away from Claire? I never would have become Awakened, or at least not at the time that I did. I could also go back and warn myself when bad things happen to others. Like Claire” he added in a near whisper.
“But Eliot, say that this next part of that prophecy happens. Say that something horrible like that does happen to her. Just because you know about it, doesn’t mean warning yourself about it would actually change it though, right?” he attempted to keep Eliot from a possibly very serious case of false hope.
“But knowledge is power. And if I know how and when it happens then there’s a chance that I could change something, anything. There’s a chance I could make some small difference and start a new time line again. One where it never happens at all. Isn’t there?”
“I suppose anything’s possible. We’re living proof of that” Douglas sighed, “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up is all, Eliot.”
“Well, hope is all any of us really have isn’t it? And maybe that is why I went back before and made myself stay with her. Because if I hadn’t, then some terrible alternate life would have happened instead. One where I was never with Claire, never Awakened, never came to America, never became what I’m supposed to become. That could be exactly why I had to go back to that exact time and place: So I could be here today to find that hope. If anything’s possible, then isn’t that possible too?” he asked pointedly, desperately.