Any happiness to see her boyfriend slowly faded as the silence around Joan continued. She had no memory of the first loop, and no memory of the way she’d betrayed Vell and gotten him killed. Nobody wanted to explain it to her either. Harley had a lot of choice words for Joan right now, many of them illegal to say out loud in a few countries, but she couldn’t say any without risking the secrets of the time loops. Unable to say anything they wanted to, the loopers stayed silent, and deliberately avoided eye contact with Joan.

“What’s up, guys? Did something happen?”

“Leanne’s uncle died,” Harley said. Leanne, surprisingly, played the part, and shifted her anger into an expression of sadness. Harley continued on. “Sorry, we’re just a bit broken up about it, you know, this is a bad time.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Joan said. She scooted a bit further from Vell, much to his relief, and stiffened her posture in an attempt to be more formal. “Let me know if you need anything, or if you want to talk-”

The stare she got from Leanne in that moment reminded Joan who she was talking to -or talking at, rather. Leanne had never so much as sneezed around Joan, and after the story Vell had told, that wasn’t going to change. Joan, recognizing that she’d put her foot in her mouth, stood up.

“Well, again, let me know if you need anything,” Joan said. “Vell, I’ll see you later.”

Harley restrained herself from mumbling “maybe” under her breath. She waited until Joan was safely out of earshot to say anything.

“Alright, so your psychopath girlfriend doesn’t remember murdering you, but you remember getting murdered,” Harley said. “Time to make like a truck and dump, Vell.”

“I can’t just break up with her,” Vell said. Harley held up a hand to emphasize what she was about to say.

“Vell Harlan, you are an adult and you are allowed to end a relationship for any reason if you no longer feel comfortable in it,” Harley scolded. “Whether it’s them being rude to the waitress or you know, abducting you with black magic and killing you. The latter being a pretty good fucking reason!”

Leanne nodded in agreement while Lee shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Vell shook his head.

“That’s not what I meant,” Vell said. Lee looked up with a brief glimmer of relief that quickly faded as Vell continued. “What if I break up with her and that pisses her off enough to kill me again?”

Lee nearly bit her tongue off from cringing so hard. Harley shook her head.

“She’s not that evil,” Harley said. “I think.”

Their standards for Joan had dropped a lot in the past few minutes, and Harley was no longer sure where they stood. Vell managed to nod in agreement, though. His death had been unintentional, and a result of extreme circumstances.

“Okay...but I still need, uh, a reason,” Vell said. “If I just dump her for no reason, all our friends will think I’m the asshole.”

“Vell I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Harley began. She then put a finger to her lips, thought for a moment, and spoke again. “Actually I don’t hate it at all, I should’ve told you this a while ago: Nobody actually likes Joan that much.”

“What?”

“Yeah, nobody said anything because like, it’s your life to live and we don’t want to interfere in your relationships, but have you not noticed that pretty much no one ever hangs out with Joan unless you’re around?”

Lee considered protesting this, but said nothing.

“She was already kind of iffy before everyone found out she hangs out with Kraid, and that just made everything way worse,” Harley continued. “Even Renard figured out she’s bad news, and like, he’s Renard.”

Vell stared at his own clenched fists and sat silently. Harley looked at Leanne, who silently nodded in her direction, then at Vell. Harley took the hint.

“Hey, Vell, I know I’m seeming kind of flippant about this but, I get it,” she said. “This sucks. I understand the good stuff you saw in Joan, I do. But, ultimately, you saw her as better than she really was. I’m sorry she let you down you like that.”

The expression of sympathy didn’t do much for Vell’s mood. He rubbed his temples and then stood from the table.

“I need to, uh, do something,” Vell said.

“Might get some sleep,” Harley suggested. “Maybe take a shower, try to relax. You know where to find us if you need us.”

Vell nodded and stumbled off. Harley watched him go with pity in her eyes.

“Poor guy,” she mumbled. She had genuinely hoped that Vell might be a good influence on Joan, but ultimately Vell had been too willing to overlook her flaws and forgive her mistakes. She just wished he’d been able to catch on sooner. Everyone else had realized Joan was bad news a long time ago. Harley turned to discuss the situation with Lee, but she had snuck away while Harley wasn’t looking.

----------------------------------------

Vell spent most of the morning face-down in his pillow, moping and cursing his own foolishness. Motivation to stop the downward spiral came in the form an irresistible aroma from the kitchen. Even at his most depressed, Vell would never be able to say no to Renard’s cooking. He wandered his way into the kitchen and found a plate being shoved into his hands before he even had time to ask what was cooking.

“Here you go,” Renard said. “Lamb kebabs. Probably won’t compare to how your family makes them, but I hope it’s close enough.”

The hearty pile of meat and veggies atop the flatbread didn’t look exactly the way Vell’s mother made it, but it looked delicious regardless.

“I’m sure it’ll be great, thanks,” Vell said. He took the plate and headed for the living room as Renard hastily plated up three more portions for himself, Luke, and Cane. The four roommates sat scattered around the living room and ate in silence, waiting until Vell had finished to address the elephant in the room.

“So,” Luke said. “You seem like you’re having a rough day.”

“The worst,” Vell said. He took a deep breath and let it out as a long, rumbling sigh. “I think I have to dump Joan. I just, uh, learned some...things, and I don’t think I’m comfortable dating her anymore.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cane said, trying his best to sound surprised. “She tell you about the roommate stuff?”

“What ‘roommate stuff’?”

“Ah fuck,” Cane said. “Seriously?”

“Cane, what ‘roommate stuff’?” Vell repeated. Cane sighed. Apparently he had to be the bearer of bad news now.

“Look, that stuff she was saying at the start of the year about why she doesn’t have any roommates? About how they all transferred out to be with their friends or something?” Cane began. “Yeah, I was talking to my brother and he said the school doesn’t do that kind of stuff. Did some digging, turns out the roommates didn’t transfer to be with friends, they transferred to get away from Joan. I don’t know the full story, but apparently they were making introductions, talking about their research projects, the other chicks said Joan’s was a little crazy, and Joan got a little more crazy.”

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

“What did she do?” Luke asked.

“I don’t know. Like I said, I couldn’t get all the details,” Cane said. “I confronted her about it and she said she was going to tell you ‘soon’. That was weeks ago, though. Guess that’s just another thing she lied about.”

“Christ,” Vell said, putting his head in his hands. “Fucking christ. What’ve I gotten myself into?”

“Credit where credit is due, we helped you get into this mess,” Luke said. Their theatrical self-sabotage had helped set the stage for Vell and Joan’s first date, after all. “And we can help you get out of it.”

“Yeah,” Renard said. “We can do that thing they do on TV where you just become such a terrible boyfriend that she breaks up with you.”

“I love those plots,” Luke said. “But also, we’re like, adults. We pay taxes.”

“We do?”

“Yes, Renard, we do. Or we should, anyway,” Luke said. “Do you pay taxes, Renard?”

“Maybe.”

“We’ll talk about your possible tax evasion later,” Luke said. “Back to Vell. We have to take things at least a little seriously sometimes, and this is one of those times.”

“Oh yeah,” Renard said. Vell nodded along with Luke’s logic.

“Yeah. I don’t want this to be some gimmick. I just need to communicate. Openly and honestly.”

With the woman who killed me last night, Vell added to himself.

“Would you guys mind sticking around tonight? Just like, chill in your dorms.”

“That bad, huh?” Luke asked. The fact that Vell no longer felt comfortable being alone with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend said a lot about how badly their relationship had broken down. “Yeah, we got you. Just give a shout if you need anything.”

“Hopefully not a literal shout,” Cane said. “But it could happen.”

“Not helping, Cane,” Luke snapped.

“What? The way those girls talked, screaming seems likely,” Cane said. “Just giving our boy fair warning. He’s had enough people being dishonest with him lately.”

“I appreciate it,” Vell said. “I think.”

“And when all this is over, I’m going to make the hell out of some comfort food,” Renard offered. “So, look forward to that, and, good luck I guess.”

“I’m going to need it.”

----------------------------------------

Alone in her dorm room, Lee stared at her phone. Her contacts list was open, displaying all the people she talked to the most. Harley, Vell, and then Joan. All the people she would usually turn to in a situation like this, and now she felt she couldn’t speak to any of them.

She wasn’t stupid enough to try and defend Joan, not now of all times. What Joan had done was vile and reckless, but there was so much more to Joan than her impulsive mistakes. Lee couldn’t help but recall the good times, the time spent laughing, working together to solve apocalyptic problems, the many, many, many hours spent plotting the downfall of Lee’s father. Mostly the hours spent planning downfalls, in fact. They had done a lot of fantasizing about that.

While elaborate plots of patricide might be considered “unhealthy” by some, Lee considered them a sign of a healthy friendship. Even after everything, Lee couldn’t help but consider Joan a friend -one of the few true friends she had. She didn’t want to lose Joan -but neither did she want to alienate Vell and Harley by defending her.

Lee grew tired of staring at her phone and put it away. After a moment of thought, Lee decided on her course of action.

To do nothing. Because she was afraid to do anything else.

***

Vell held his breath as the door to his dorm opened and shut. Other then the click of the closing door, the room was dead silent until Joan sat down on the couch next to Vell.

“Hey Vell,” she said, the cheer in her voice making it clear she was blissfully oblivious as to what was about to happen. “How’s Leanne holding up?”

“Oh. Right.”

Just another uncomfortable conversation Vell got to have.

“That was, uh, well, Leanne’s uncle isn’t dead,” Vell said. “Harley sort of came up with that on the spot to cover for...me.”

A cold shiver ran down Joan’s spine, and Vell could not help but notice. He took a deep breath through his nose and held it for a moment. A thousand variations of this sentence had run through his head, and none of them were good. Vell went with the least-worst option.

“I’m sorry, Joan, I just, uh...I don’t think this is working. We shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

The words hit Joan like a knife in the gut. She recoiled from Vell, just as Vell recoiled from her in turn. He could see her fists clench and her muscles tense as her face briefly flared with that familiar anger and frustration, the same deep-seated rage that had pushed her forward to her fatal mistakes on the first loop. Vell drew back further, ready for whatever came next.

What came next was a single tear. It rolled down Joan’s cheek, cutting through the tension in her body. The anger diffused in an instant, replaced with a sadness that weighed down on her and had Joan slump forward. She sobbed once and then attempted to rein in her emotions, rubbing away the single wayward tear.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” she huffed. “I’m okay. I’m fine.”

Vell stayed silent. He’d been expecting this to go much more poorly. In retrospect, he should’ve known better than to expect anything in his life to be straightforward.

“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t seen this coming,” Joan said, restraining a sob as she spoke. “I know I’ve got some issues.”

“It, uh, doesn’t come down to anything like that,” Vell said. He wasn’t sure why he was trying to reassure the woman who’d killed him. He’d been expecting the same bitter, angry person he’d seen on full display in the first loop. The tears threw him off guard. “Sometimes people just don’t-”

“You’re sweet, Vell,” Joan said. “Really...sweet. But it’s fine. I get it. I’ve been here before. A lot. And I always made excuses, but I…”

Joan hesitated and stared down at the floor for a moment.

“I don’t have any of those excuses with you,” Joan said. “So I guess the problem is me. And I’m...sorry. About that. About me. I wish I could’ve been better.”

Vell didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. On the other end of the couch, Joan waited in silence, perhaps waiting on some words of reassurance that were never going to come, or perhaps just lost in a rare moment of introspection. Eventually she took in a deep, shuddering breath. Her hand drifted towards Vell, but he was too far away to touch.

“I’m going to go,” Joan said. “I’ll...see you around, I guess.”

Joan left, and shut the door behind her. Three dorm room doors opened the minute she was gone.

“You good?” Cane whispered, not yet loosening a tight grip on a baseball bat.

Vell didn’t know how to answer that.

----------------------------------------

After indulging in Renard’s promised comfort food, Vell had been feeling a bit aimless. He ended up, as he often did, bending Harley’s ear to his problems. She was more than happy to listen.

“I just really don’t understand it all,” Vell said, after recapping the events of the breakup. “I was all prepared for that angry, spiteful person I saw on the first loop. Then instead, I got...I don’t know.”

Vell looked at the clock. This time on the first loop, he’d been getting restrained by black magic and then killed. He’d been expecting to see that same side of Joan -the rage, the pride, the selfishness, when confronted about the end of their relationship. Instead she’d been almost a completely different person. Calm, and restrained, able to admit fault and introspect on her mistakes. Sensing his internal conflict, Harley gave Vell a little tug to pull him closer, letting him rest his head on her shoulder.

“People are complex, Vell,” Harley said. “Joan’s bad, but nobody’s all bad.”

“Except Kraid,” Vell said.

“Except Kraid,” Harley agreed. “But the rest of us...We’re a lot harder to figure out. You, and me, and Joan, we all got flaws we need to work on. Sometimes we do that by ourselves. Sometimes we need help. Sometimes people think they’re improving on their flaws, but they’re just building new ones. We’re all lost, trying to find our way, and Joan’s just...more lost than most of us.”

Vell shifted uncomfortably on Harley’s shoulder. She was a lot shorter than him, so leaning over was uncomfortable, but it just felt nice to have some human contact. Harley noticed his discomfort and shifted to better accommodate him.

“I know what you’re thinking, Vell,” Harley said. “You don’t owe her any help. Not if it means putting yourself in danger.”

“I guess you’re right,” Vell said. Harley patted him on the head and then changed the subject, for his sake.

“So. New Year’s break in just a few days,” Harley said. “You ready for two whole weeks with no apocalypses?”

Soon, classes would be put on hold for two weeks, until the new year, giving the loopers a brief reprieve. Vell had initially planned on spending the break on-campus due to travel expenses, but Lee had offered to spend her parents money on the travel costs, so he was going home.

“Honestly? I could use, you know, the distraction,” Vell said. Being back with his parents would be nice, but the ranch lacked much-needed diversions.

“Ha, fair,” Harley said. “You want to get Lee’s parents to buy me a ticket to go home with you? I wouldn’t mind finding out the origins of your cowboy bullshit.”

“Thanks, but, uh, no thanks,” Vell said. “I’m still trying to figure out how this part of my life and that part of my life are going to interact, you know? How to balance the normal life stuff and being caught in this crazy loop stuff.”

“I get you,” Harley said. “It is pretty wild.”

“Yeah.”

The conversation lulled while Harley called out to Botley. The diminutive robot curled up in her lap like a cat, and she rubbed his round head.

“Hey Vell?”

“Yeah?”

“I know it can kind of suck being stuck in this ‘crazy loop stuff’, but...I’m really glad you’re stuck in it with us. You’re pretty cool.”

“Thanks. You’re pretty cool too.”

“You’re damn right.”