Young Writers Society

James seemed to be opening up to more than simple obvious answers, but Evaline didn't expect the conversation to take a nosedive like this. She listened until he was finished talking, letting the long pause between them be indicative that he was done.

Of course she could remember that James five years ago was sensitive and often fell into a cycle of self-pity. She had always wondered if he ever broke free from it. It didn't sound like he did.

She didn't know what to say, and she knew she wouldn't have known what to say if this were her five years ago, too. The silence started to get far too long to be comfortable, but she didn't want to fill it with insincerity.

"So what happens if people here find out I'm just a normal human?" he blurted before she could come up with a response.

Evaline sighed. "James," she said, the word sounding strange coming out of her mouth. She turned to face him. "Do you want to go back to Nye?" She paused. "You don't have to answer now if you don't know or don't want to tell me. But if you do have an answer now, would you tell me?"

James felt his headache pressing against his skull again with more persistence. He turned his face towards her just a little, but he didn't look at her. His eyes weren't really focused on anything in particular.

He pressed his lips together, having to take a deep breath, not sure what he wanted to say.

"I don't want to burden you with my indecision," he decided to say. "There's nothing for me to return to in Nye, and here, on Earth, everything is foreign."

He could've said more, but he didn't. It would be redundant, anyway.

He could see out of the corner of his eyes that Evaline was still watching him like she was looking for a reaction.

"A wise man once told me that people who are suffering are not a burden to others, even if they think they are one. And now I'd like to pass the same words to you," she said.

James slowly looked over at Evaline, squinting his eyes ever so slightly.

A wise man. If she was talking about him...? What was she trying to get at?

"It wouldn't burden me to know if you do or don't want to stay. I think the information would help figure out what to do," she continued on. "But if you don't know, that's okay too."

James didn't like that he could feel his walls going up again. He didn't like that his mind was interpreting her words as insincerity. But fighting against it was so tiring, and his headache only seemed to get worse. Why couldn't his body not be affected by his brain?

"I think..." he started. "I don't know."

He made a face, scrunching it up in frustration, and shook his head, looking straight ahead instead of at Evaline again.

"I don't have a straight answer," he said. His eyes flicked back over to her. "And you didn't answer my question. What would happen to me, if I was discovered to be a normal human with no powers."

Evaline finally broke the stare, looking out into the dusk night. It was getting dark, so she reached in her bag tied around her waist and pulled out a matchstick to light the wax candle she had pulled from the chest. She left the candle in front of them so there would be better visibility.

She knew he was deflecting. And he seemed to already have an answer, even if it was still unsure. He just didn't want to say it.

That was telling enough. She had lived through this once before, after all.

"I can answer any questions you may have to make this less foreign and easier for you," she said. "For instance..." She took a deep breath, knowing that the question was going to come up sooner or later.

"I thought about telling the others that you're a... non-powered human," she said, noting with mild amusement that he considered himself a normal human. "But it was easier to go with the story and say you had a time power instead. I think that was a good cover, anyways. Everyone out here despises people with time powers, so it'd make you less desirable, even if fertile. But no powers means your theoretical child would take on whatever power the mother would have. That means no mutations, and no marriage. Or compatibility test. Whatever you want to call it."

She paused for a moment to imagine a world where marriage didn't exist and people could have children freely with whoever they wanted. That did exist, once. And it delved into chaos and anarchy because of the sheer amount of mutations. As much as people here disliked that they couldn't bear children unless they returned to the sectors, it was needed to keep the peace and not cause power imbalances.

But someone like James would disrupt that completely. He was an impossible situation, and she wasn't even sure if people would believe it even if word did get out. But she'd want to minimize the risk as much as possible and simply let people assume he was a man who had weak control of his time power that no one else could see anyways.

Evaline paused again, looking back at him. "I'm just trying to protect you."

James knew this was real, and hypothetically, could become a very serious situation, but he had to keep himself from making more stupid jokes. It was a default reaction he had to actively repress. Mostly because he didn't want Evaline to think he wasn't taking it seriously.

And she didn't seem too impressed by how he'd changed, either. Humor included. Even if he did make her laugh once or twice.

"I... appreciate that," he said slowly. Finally, he took another bite of his pear. "I don't know why I thought the default response would be to kill me since I don't have powers. I think I was thinking of the whole... non-powered versus powered people war. If I'm remembering that correctly."

Evaline was impressed that James even remembered that. She couldn't recall exactly how many times she even mentioned that. Maybe only once.

"There was a war a long time ago regarding that, yes," she said. "And your fake story would be before those times."

She made a mental note to later give him more resources to learn more about this. Get up to speed. Feel less foreign. Plus, she recalled that James liked history. Maybe he'd find Earth history interesting.

"Maybe you'd have gotten killed back then, but now it's quite the opposite," she added. "Now, you'd be a living relic of history. I'm not even sure there are any more non-powered humans. They all turned to creatures called neanders. I doubt we'd come across them, though. After the war..."

She paused, realizing for the first time that, without context, James probably didn't know which war was which. "The recent war," she corrected, and was about to elaborate some more, but then James spoke up.

"Are there names for the wars?" he asked. "So I can tell the difference."

"The textbook names are The Genetic War and The Rebellion," she said. "Although, the rebellion ended only five years ago. You might hear it be called different things. Those involved called it The Order, but the sectors called it The Rebellion, so it depends on who you're talking to. The Genetic War happened so long ago, we all throw the word 'war' around and understand the context."

"Did the rebellion end... while you were in Nye? Or after?"

Evaline saw the question coming, but she barely had time to brace for it. She leaned back against the tree wall and looked out into the night sky, noticing how it was still a dark purple hue.

"After," she answered. "About two months after I woke up from what I thought was a dream."

Two months.

Five years ago, she had been afraid of going home because she expected to be dead in two months. It had hit him a long time ago, but it was entirely different hearing her say it, with her own words. All of the guilt hit him again at once.

Yes, she'd survived. But he didn't know that. Not until yesterday. He was beyond relieved that she had, but from what little she had told him, and from what little he knew, when she woke up - if it really had only been a night - it must have been hell. Hell to think it was all a dream. Hell dealing with the extreme fallout of her powers, which she'd overexerted.

Just to save him. And then he'd wished her away. All over a horse.

The war ending must have been part of what saved her. She'd been wanted, but with the war over, he assumed that wanted status was lifted. Or at the very least, the threat was decreased to some degree. Otherwise, she wouldn't have survived five years later. Unless she'd estimated incorrectly. It was impossible to tell the future, but he knew he didn't expect to be alive long either.

He should've been dead by now. Neither of them were where they expected to be five years ago.

Evaline, at least... seemed better. No thanks to him. But she wasn't hallucinating.

She still avoided talking about things, like she did at first. So did he.

Far too many seconds passed after her answer.

"...I don't want to pretend like nothing happened," he finally whispered. His eyes were locked on a spot on the floor of the tree, and he sat with his shoulders hunched forward, and his hands brought together in his lap. His hands tensely held each other, and one of his pinkies twitched.

He didn't think either of them was ready for the conversation, but he knew the longer they waited, the heavier it would weigh on him. It would only get harder to talk about. Harder to ignore.

For him, anyway.

He pretended all the time. He would be an entirely different person for months, even. But he was tired of it. He was tired of pretending. And he was tired of avoiding the elephant in the room.

This could end terribly in numerous ways. He could imagine many of them, but there was no way for him to know.

"But I also don't want to force you to talk about what happened," he said.

There was a brief pause before he clarified.

"With us. The day you left Nye."

Evaline felt her chest tighten again after she heard James whisper that he didn't want to pretend that nothing happened.

Before the anxiety started to trickle in, she was first able analyze that statement. It occurred unprompted, and he seemed nervous to say it. This must have weighed on his mind for some time. Of course it did, given their history.

It wasn't like she was pretending none of it happened. That was the method at first, but that was because she convinced herself that it had to just be a dream. Now that she knew all of it was real, she simply just didn't want to talk about it. It was foolish of her to think that James would want the same treatment.

But she didn't know the extent of what he wanted to talk about. Just the day she left, or... before, too?

She felt the anxiety wake up and begin to lazily crawl through her veins, affecting her thoughts. Evaline had to close her eyes and focus to keep herself collected. At least, from the outside.

She didn't know if James still dreamed of the alternate timelines after she left. She didn't know if he had received her last message. And, to be frank, she didn't know if she wanted to know. She thought had had moved on from this.

Still with her eyes closed, Evaline furrowed her brows and set her head against the tree wall.

"Did you dream about the erased timelines?" she asked after a long pause, voice neutral.

She started with another question. That was something. He would take it.

“I did,” he said. “For a little over a month after.”

It went without saying that he hardly got any sleep that month.

A whole month...

Evaline was afraid to press for details. She didn't want it all to come rushing back at once. She didn't want to relive the pain, especially hearing it from James's perspective.

Perspective. She didn't know how these dreams worked. She had never asked, even when she was in Nye. She just knew he had them.

"These dreams," she said again, not having moved. "Were they only from your perspective?"

“...No,” James said, finally giving up on finishing the pear anytime soon. “They jumped between different perspectives.”

He paused, trying to not remember them.

“I would see the same memory, from different perspectives.”

Over and over again.

Evaline was sure she already knew the answer, but she wanted to ask one more question. Just to be sure.

"Chronologically?" she continued. "The dreams went from beginning to end? With different perspectives?"

“Not always,” he said. “Sometimes I had to... try to piece it together.”

Evaline felt one final question rise up at the back of her throat, but at the last second, she swallowed it down, deciding to not ask. She wasn't sure she wanted to talk about it.

She opened her eyes to stare at the dark walls of the tree across from them, watching the light from the candle flicker across the wood. It was dark outside, now. She suddenly found herself too afraid to look at James, sitting next to her in the dark with only a lit candle as a light source.

"It wasn't your fault," she said instead. "And I want you to know that I don't blame you."

Because if anyone were to be blamed, it was her. She could have prevented this from ever happening, but she was too selfish.

James felt his body begin to stiffen. No. He couldn't change how Evaline said she felt, and he couldn't assume she was lying just to keep the peace, but even if she didn't blame him, he knew he hurt her.

He tilted his head towards Evaline, but he didn't quite look at her. Not directly.

"You may not blame me," he said. His words were careful, slow, and intentional.

"But I broke a promise. I didn't keep my word, and I broke your trust. I know a simple apology cannot mend what five years of time, pain, and distance have torn apart. But I want you to know that I am sincerely sorry. Without exaggeration, and without excuse. You deserved better."

He hated that he had to hold his heart at a distance to say what he wanted. But he didn't know any other way. He hoped that Evaline would know he meant it, even if she wasn't able to receive it. Even if she'd changed. Even if she didn't want to hear it, or if she wasn't ready to hear it. There was no way for him to know that.

"I never did get a chance to thank you. For saving my life. More than once. And I want to say thank you."

Regardless of whether or not he thought his life was worth saving. Finally, he did look at Evaline.

"And... I don’t blame you either. I forgave you. I already have."

He stopped, and his eyes dropped to the ground. He hadn't realized he'd started fidgeting with his hands again, rubbing away a spot of skin on the back of his hand. He forced his hand to separate and held them in loose fists.

"You don't have to respond," he added. "Its... okay. I hope that was okay. To say."

Evaline didn't know if she was talking to the James five years ago or the new James now. She didn't know if he was just saying this because he meant it or because he thought this was what she wanted to hear. She didn't know what to think, and she was barely even able to look at him, nevertheless hold his eyes when he looked at her and not through her.

"I... you..." she began, but she found herself at a loss of words.

He was apologizing for something that happened five years ago. He was apologizing for something that she thought she had moved past from. He was apologizing for something that had an implication: that they were partners founded in trust and a simple promise.

Evaline didn't want to reopen the wound.

She tightly closed her eyes to hold back a stinging feeling that hurt, trying to find the right words for this. "I can't do this," she finally blurted out quietly, fighting the urge to get up and walk away.

I can't do this again.

She should just tell him.

Evaline took a shaky breath. "You should know," she continued on, voice somber but steady.

She didn't want to tell him at a time like this, but James needed to know. He needed to understand. She opened her eyes to just barely look at him, and for a second, she let her demeanor fall and the sadness and longing leaked out of her eyes.

"I've chosen to erase a lot of my memories with you," she confessed. "You have to understand. I was convinced none of it was real, even if it was so vivid. It was the only way for me to move on."

And let go.

Evaline faced forward again, staring blankly at a spot in front of her. "It's not that I don't remember anything. They're just dulled, like recalling a faraway memory where you only remember the events but not the details. And that's why... it doesn't bother me anymore. You really don't have to feel guilty about what happened. I don't think about it anymore. It's okay."

She was staring at the wall in front of her, voice and face neutral and calm. There was one more thing she wanted to say. One more thing she knew must have been on his mind, and she wanted to voice her thoughts before he could.

"We can still be friends."