“How’d you even know those were illusions?” Rebecca asked. She was reclining in one of our chairs, arms folded over her belly, while I was stretched out across my couch. It almost looked like a slapdash therapy room in its own strange way. All that was missing was her writing all my issues down on a clipboard.
“He made so many wild things. You know, there were all so vivid and looked realistic, and I couldn’t feel anything from them.” I was staring right at the dim light above my head, running the events back through my head. Remembering getting slashed up made the light scars left from the wounds ache. “He needed to look strong so much it gave away his secret. It was a little dumb luck. Not feeling wind on the skyscraper made the lightbulb go off that what he was doing wasn’t real.”
“Those slashes were pretty convincing to me and even more to Megan.” Rebecca stretched her legs out and looked right at home.
“Well, that knife was real. It was the only thing he had that could hurt me.” I ran my fingers over a few of the scars that were left on my body. If we’d been able to get the cuts healed up right after I got them, they wouldn’t have left any scarring at all. Just a limitation the nice guy who helped patch me up. “If he just, you know, killed me instead of trying to scare me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”
“Okay, let me ask you this: if you knew going into that fight that you would end up killing him, would you have stopped and let him attack us if it meant you got to spare his life?”
“No, of course not.” I was almost offended before I realized it wasn’t an accusation against me.
“Then you took the life of a madman to save two others. You saved a little girl’s life.” I tried to hunt for any reason why what I did was wrong. It wasn’t like I deliberately wanted to kill Eric. “I’m no therapist, so I can only tell you what I think. What I think is that you will never truly shake this guilt you’re feeling.”
“Something tells me you’re right.” I turned my head into the cushion so she couldn’t see my miserable expression, not that it was exactly a secret. In my head, I had three lives that came to an end directly because of me. The guilt from my parents is what ate me up more than anything, so feeling the same about Eric wasn’t a surprising revelation for me.
“But that doesn’t mean it has to be the only way you feel about it.” I could hear her readjust in the chair. “Ethan, we were defenseless. I had no power, no voice, and I don’t know how to fight. Megan doesn’t even know what her power is. Are you happy we’re alive?”
I could feel myself start to get emotional. All the overwhelming thoughts and feelings I had from the Tomb crashed against me like a tidal wave. I was thrilled that they were alive, and that we got them both out of there, obviously. Or maybe it wasn’t obvious since she had to ask me. But come on, one of them was just a kid for crying out loud. How could I not be happy that she made it out safely with Alex?
“Yes, I’m happy that both of you are alive,” I finally confirmed.
“Then think of that whenever you feel guilt.” Rebecca paused for a moment to let me process everything she was giving me from her perspective. “She misses you. Real bad.”
“Who does?” I shut my eyes and took a deep breath.
“Megan,” Rebecca softly replied. My chest felt tight and I felt trapped in my own living room. “Lori, Alex, Lizzy, your sister. All of them, really. I don’t really know you, but I was hoping to see you more out there.”
I tried to imagine how life would be if I hadn’t met Rebecca or Megan. No, life if I had let them die instead. If I felt that bad about killing a criminal and a sociopath, losing one of them permanently might have sent me down a path I never would be able to recover from. A world with them in it was a better one.
And I was just so tired of being in my miserable state of mind. Tired of all the soft looks, like I was an expensive glass decoration that you just left in a case and never interacted with out of fear of breaking it. Tired of all the hesitation if I mentioned something, no matter how insignificant it might have been. Tired of my own powerlessness. Tired of not being able to function like a normal human being. Once in my life was enough.
“Thanks for the pep talk,” I said, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. I knew I wasn’t “fixed” or anything. It might not have been something I would ever get over. That wasn’t Rebecca’s job, and I didn’t want it to be. I knew I was going to carry the guilt I felt for a long time. I had a guilty conscience for just about everything, and that was just who I was. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to change that. That didn't mean I couldn’t be someone better.
“Looking better already!” Rebecca exclaimed. Her sudden bursts of enthusiasm reminded me of Lizzy just a little bit.
I had a newfound surge of energy that I didn’t know what to do with. I thought about using it to knock out some schoolwork. If I really busted my ass, I figured I could knock out the rest of the year’s work over the weekend. Still, it seemed rude to just crawl back into my room with Rebecca sitting right there. I quickly ruled out going to train or doing some cleaning, again out of the concern of being rude.
“Have you been around Luna yet?” I asked, heading toward the door.
I did get around to downloading the app Lori mentioned a while back that would help direct me around the Luna base. Sadly, it hadn’t been too useful for me since I’d been back. I barely left and always had someone to guide me around on the rare occasion I did leave. Getting a good walk in after nearly a month might be good for me. My already-thin legs weren’t looking too great.
I had wanted to try one of those cafés I’d passed and Rebecca didn’t object to heading that way, even smiling a bit when I brought up the idea. She was still getting used to both the time period and the building, so she admitted she had been following a lot of people to sample everything the twenty-first century had to offer without giving much input of her own. I felt that one. It didn’t feel like I’d made a decision for myself since the start of the year.
“Here’s the café that I passed with Lori one day,” I said, stopping in front of the door after a quiet, albeit pleasant walk. I was still amazed by the small-town authenticity, despite being built into a wall inside a massive underground complex. It had a wooden door, wide window with bright letters spelling out a name I couldn’t say, and it even had an awning. It looked both nice and weird being indoors. I held the door open, like the wonderful gentleman I was, and took in the atmosphere.
I was reminded of the log cabin style hotel I stayed in the night before we found Rebecca. It had that same cozy, welcoming vibe to it. All the tables were a dark, rich wood with dim lights on them. The window must’ve had some good tinting on it, because it was hardly letting any of the hallway’s bright light in. Rebecca looked around curiously at some of the décor of the shop. It was mostly cheesy and peppy sayings with some newspaper clippings of important events that caught her eye. Those things clashed with each other a bit, but oh well, it wasn’t my place to decorate.
“Did they have coffee back then?” I asked, looking at the menu. The barista was a chipper young woman who couldn’t have been much older than myself. Her smile broke for a moment when I asked Rebecca that seemingly strange question, like she couldn’t tell if I was about to pull a prank on her or something.
“It was around, I think. Never tried it though, since I was mostly a farm girl.” She tapped her chin and I noticed she had a cute little dimple that appeared when she pursed her lips together. “What’s it taste like?”
“There’s a bunch of different kinds, so it depends. You can get them made up certain ways if you ask for it.” Stopping to think about it, I realized I never had coffee myself. Caffeine could give me some bad shakes, so I always left that to Shelly. “Do you like cold drinks or hot drinks?”
“I didn’t exactly have cold drinks regularly until recently, so let’s try something cold.” From behind her glasses, Rebecca squinted at the menu board. A few seconds later, she shook her head. “Not sure I know what any of these names mean.”
“Whatever cold drink you recommend,” I told the barista with a sheepish grin. I saw some chocolate covered croissants in the display next to us. “Oh, and two of those, please.”
I paid and we took our seats. The barista mentioned that she was baking fresh croissants and she’d just bring everything to us when it was done, as long as we were okay with the wait. We were totally fine with that if it meant fresh pastries. I tapped my hands on my legs, not really sure what to talk about. Without any other customers around, it was weirdly quiet. It made a rare instance where I would have welcomed a crowd of people. Rebecca remained silent as well, though she didn’t look nearly as uncomfortable as I imagined I did.
“How old are you?” I asked, realizing too late it wasn’t a proper question to ask a lady. My face started to burn, and I shut my eyes, trying to think of ways to do damage control. “Er, when’s your birthday? I mean, sorry, I can’t wrap my head around the dates of everything.”
“September seventeenth.” She left out her birthyear with a sly grin. I tried to do the math in my head based off what I knew of her. I even started counting on my fingers like a kid before she laughed and gave up on waiting for me to figure it out. “I’ll spare you the fun of doing math. I’m twenty-two. Biologically, at least.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I always thought people from that time were more,” I paused, not really sure what the right word was. I really didn’t want to offend her by saying the wrong thing. “I don’t know. Rigid?”
“Things weren’t as convenient back then. A lot of us had to be tough just to survive.” Rebecca shrugged and rolled her shoulders. She pulled up the sleeve on her right arm and flexed, showing an impressive bicep. “That’s why I look like this. I was always expected to help out just like a son would have been. So now I can do...what’s it called? Bench pressing? I can bench press a live bear. Still, I probably fit in more here. The people are nice. Less racist and scary than living during the rebellion next to a border state.”
“Um, are you...uh...I mean...” No coherent sentence could make it from my mind to my tongue.
Another sly smirk pulled Rebecca’s cheeks up. “Are you asking me if I’m a racist? No, I’m not. My parents were both racists and didn’t mind slavery, which were a couple reasons why we didn’t get along. I wasn’t going to do anything like supporting owning another human being.”
“Was that insensitive?” I asked. I picked at my fingernails under the table and let an awkward silence fill the space between us.
She shook her head, sending her red hair around her face. “I think it’s a reasonable question. After all, you don’t get too many chances to talk to someone who lived through those tensions at the time. Rosie wasn’t sure about me at first. We cleared up any confusion before there were any issues.”
It was interesting to have someone from the Civil War era right in front of me. I almost had trouble imagining someone from back then not being racist. I brushed the thought aside as being silly immediately. Not every single person could’ve had the mindset of a slave owner or one who supported it. It’d be like assuming everyone in Boston was racist because the city had built a reputation over the years.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the notebook she brought with her.
“Oh, this?” Rebecca held it up, keeping a tight grip so none of the pages were exposed. “Sketches. I’ve always liked drawing. The internet’s been great for looking up pictures for inspiration. When I can navigate it, anyway.”
“That’s so cool.” I kept eyeing how tight her grip was on the edge of her notebook. “Could I see them?”
She hesitated, nervous green eyes flittering between the notebook and my own gaze. “You promise you won’t laugh?”
“Did you draw something deliberately funny?”
“No, they’re just not very good.” The same nervous lady that knocked on my front door was back. Go figure, you could be from any time in human history, and it’d still be a little terrifying to share your art to others.
“If you don’t want to show me, no worries, I get it.” I smiled. “Practice makes perfect, so keep it up either way.”
She chewed her lip and held the notebook to her chest. Her eyes kept darting up to mine before going back down to the table, like looking at me would somehow make all her drawings worse before I could even see them.
“Okay, just promise you won’t laugh.” Rebecca slid the notebook over to me. “That’s a fresh book, so there are only two in there. I have another one filled up back in my apartment.”
I had no intention of laughing. I hardly had a creative bone in my body. I got a B on an English assignment where we had to write a short story to help our creative writing. The best thing that could have been said about mine was that it was competently put together and wasn’t plagiarized. I wasn’t exactly hurtling high bars on my own to throw stones in glass houses.
Making sure I didn’t laugh didn’t prepare me to see a detailed sketch of my face on the first page. Even calling it a sketch was a stretch. It was so complete and well done that it was almost like staring back at a selfie that was done with colored pencils. My hair was shiny, falling in just the right places to frame my face perfectly. My eyes were big, filled with a confidence and determination I wasn’t sure I ever had. Even my lips looked full and my eyelashes long, giving me the slightest understanding why Lizzy and Eric called me pretty. Not even the bleeding cut on my cheek could detract from that, or the jaw that I was certain didn’t look that strong in real life.
Frankly, I had never looked better.
“Hey, this is me, right?”
“Huh?” Rebecca opened her mouth to continue before her eyes went wide. A bright blush ran up her neck to her face and ears. She hissed, “Give me that!”
I did as I was told, relinquishing the notebook without any argument. Her reaction made me suddenly uncomfortable. Was that how I looked to her? Since I had the cut on my cheek, it had to have been from the Tomb. I didn’t feel like I had looked that good. Being on the verge of being killed wasn’t something I typically associated with bringing out my eyes.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Rebecca mumbled. She put the notebook on her lap. She kept her head low, hiding her expression behind her hair.
While her sudden shift to shyness was cute, I didn’t want to her to feel bad. “Sorry about that. If it helps, I think that’s the best I’ve ever looked. I’m flattered.”
I wasn’t the best at reading or picking up signals, especially when it came to girls. In high school, there had been times when I’d see a girl talk to a guy in a way I considered normal. Usually, she just...didn’t do anything besides strike up casual conversation. Then I’d hear her loudly complaining to her friends that he wasn’t picking up on the “obvious” signals she was giving him. The whole thing about trying to date confused me. Was it harder to just ask someone out than to try and give vague signals that might only make sense to one person?
But Rebecca having drawn me in her notebook—probably one of the first things she drew—was a signal not even I was dumb enough to ignore. I wasn’t going to take it as a guarantee she was interested in me. It was that and the nervous way she kept looking up at me that did that. I just had no idea how to handle it.
“Uh, really, I thought it looked nice.” I laughed and picked at my nails again. “Is that vain to say?”
When she looked up again, her eyes narrowed. “You don’t think much of yourself, do you?”
To my surprise, the question didn’t catch me as off guard as I thought. “I think I’m okay. I know I don’t have the looks that ladies would fawn over. I’m not overly talented and I’m not overly bad at things. I feel like I’m just an average guy who can make weird shield things.”
“An average guy who nearly gets himself killed protecting two girls he barely knows, right.” She folded her arms over her chest. There was disappointment in her eyes. “That’s just your regular, run-of-the-mill thing to do.”
“I’m not...I wasn’t just going to let two innocent people get hurt like that.” I scratched at my wrist, suddenly flustered. The seat felt like it was trying to wrap around me.
“You’re a good person,” she said.
“I try to be nice.”
Rebecca shook her head again. “No, not nice. You’re good. I’m sure you’re nice too. I just think there’s a difference between just being nice and being a genuinely good person.”
I wasn’t sure why I wanted to dispute what she said. I wasn’t a bad person. I didn’t intentionally do bad things. I always tried to do nice—or good—things whenever I could. Why did it bother me to have that kind of thing acknowledged? Shelly could say I was a good person and that didn’t turn me into a ball of nervous energy. Rebecca was again staring at me with those green eyes that felt like they were trying to burn through me to my soul.
I didn’t have more time to worry about Rebecca’s praise or why my portrait hidden away in her notebook gave me butterflies in my stomach. The barista walked over and set down two plates between us, throwing a glance at Rebecca’s exposed bicep. The croissants we got were massive, way bigger than the ones in the display, with melted chocolate dripping over the sides into a gooey mess on the white plate. Next came our iced coffees in massive glasses. I was getting heart palpitations just imagining all the caffeine I was about to put into my body.
“Enjoy, you two!” The barista did a little wink and threw up some finger guns at me before heading back to the counter. The butterflies in my stomach somehow got worse.
“The serving sizes in this time are more generous, that’s for sure,” Rebecca noted. Her eyes scanned the pastry and the delicious chocolate, her look teetering on baffled at their sizes. The pastry had shifted her focus away from me, thankfully. “Cooking is better too.”
The croissant tasted outstanding, maybe even more so when I bit into it and got warm chocolate all over my face. Since it was so warm and melty, it dripped down all over my clothes. Apparently, they covered and injected the croissants with chocolate there. Did it taste great because of it? Yes. Was I also a mess because of it? Yes. Rebecca just sipped her iced coffee, watching me with an amused glint in her eye, clearly doing her best not to start laughing at me. To make the melting chocolate worse, I felt my face start to heat up.
“What’re you doing tomorrow?” Rebecca asked. She was doing the sensible thing by using a fork and knife to eat the messy food.
“I’m not sure. I haven’t had any concrete plans in a while.” I wiped the chocolate off with some wet wipes that were smartly provided on every table. Had I been alone, I would just use my finger to clean it off my face and then licked it off my fingertips. With a pretty lady across the table, my goal was to avoid further humiliation.
“Lizzy’s team is doing a training exercise. Want to watch it?” She carefully ate her food to avoid making the same mess I did.
My reflex was to decline the invitation and make up some excuse as to why I couldn’t attend. I’d been declining every invitation I reasonably could for an outing for the past month. Eventually, people just stopped inviting me. I knew it wasn’t out of malice, and I wasn’t going to blame them. If I was in their position, I wouldn’t want to have my plans held up for someone I knew was going to decline. The world still went on around me, no matter how involved I was. I punched down that instinct to decline and put on a weak smile.
“Sure, it’d be nice to get out again,” I said.
“Great!” Rebecca stood up in our little booth and hit her head on the low-hanging decorative molding. She rubbed her head and sat back down, again her turn to be embarrassed. “Sorry about that. I’ll be at your place again at nine tomorrow. Sound good?”
“Sure thing,” I replied, trying to see if she was bleeding. I was worried if she might’ve just concussed herself right there. What if a brain injury was the only reason she’d actually agree to swing by? “Wait, wouldn’t it be more confusing for you to walk there and then to the training rooms?”
“I think it’ll be fine.” She gave me a funny half-smile and shook her head. “I like the company. As thanks for today, I’ll show you more of my drawings. If you want to see them, I mean.”
“Oh, now that’s a reason to get out of bed in the morning.” I meant it. I wanted to see more of her art. Rebecca went scarlet, though didn’t look unhappy.
We finished our breakfast and parted ways. I’d offered to walk her to her apartment, since the iced coffee had my hopped up with energy to burn. She had insisted that I did more than enough by making her breakfast and treating her for the café treats, so she politely turned it down. Still, for the first time in too long, I genuinely felt good about a day. Maybe it wasn’t anything “truly” productive. It felt good to feel like I had some control back in my life again.