by TylerRose.
Fear, anxiety, apprehension, indecision, guilt shame…With so many emotions removed, it seemed she felt nothing. One would expect to be numb, perhaps suffering from post-traumatic stress, but she wasn’t numb today. She had to work hard to focus, discarding layers of nothingness to realize what emotions she was feeling.
She was…
A huge sigh heaved from her chest as the atmosphere around her shattered.
She was relieved.
The team was alive, itself a major accomplishment. She’d expected at least two to die despite her efforts. Tony’s step father’s actions could not be altered. If he’d not blown up Sun Oil, the Rhutvak and Adamantine would have had immediate access to millions of gallons of liquid fuel. They would have used it to burn a path through everything in front of them. Since he could not be stopped, her own mother’s death also could not be stopped. She could come back a thousand times and might maybe save her mother once. She let that sadness go.
There was no city-wide power loss. No refugees had come to the warehouse. Some had taken refuge at Safe Haven, but only for the hours necessary for the army to say they could go to their own homes. A few who had lost their homes near downtown were put up as roommates in empty apartments within Safe Haven.
The wounded bikers in hospitals had been allowed to leave town without any questioning. These two weeks later, the tentative truce had been extended into the foreseeable future. They’d done too important a thing to ruin it with petty infighting.
She had planned for the worst and things had ended up the best they possibly could have. She would deliver their excess bulk supplies to Safe Haven so they would be used. Diapers could go to residents. She very much needed to see Kashandra, to hold her close and kiss those cheeks and know she was well and happy. A big, day-long party for the residents, perhaps, with the Iron Knaves and the Droghers in attendance, to celebrate the accomplishment.
Light knocking on her outer door drew her from contemplation. With a thought she turned the door handle to let Starbird in. Hours had passed since she’d sat down in her chair. It was 2pm, 32 hours after she’d come home.
“I’ll go if you’d prefer,” Starbird said in a tone far more subdued than was normal.
“If I’d preferred, I would not have opened the door. Come in.”
Star shut the door behind herself, and chose to kneel on the floor in front of the chair.
“I wanted to say thank you,” she said, voice passive beyond recognition. “I know you couldn’t warn me. I know you held back from the fighting so you could get me out of there. Gable told me you killed my brother and then teleported me back here.”
Tyler nodded. “Neutron had to be taken out and you defeated him in only about forty percent of the timelines I watched. I had to catch him off guard. I had to let you be hurt, let him think he’d won, so I could get that advantage over him.”
“And you were on the street when Jerome finished. To save Jerome?”
“To finish Adamantine myself if Jerome failed, which he did in a lot of them. The times I lost, it was because I had done too much fighting before facing Adamantine. Tried to save civilians myself, tried to fight soldiers.”
“So you had to hold back and conserve your energy in case Jerome died and you had to fight to save Earth,” Star concluded.
“Which meant I could be in place to cover all of you at critical moments. I wasn’t going to argue with all of you about it.”
On the verge of relieved tears, Tyler stopped and covered her face with her hands. Star rose to her knees and took Tyler’s hands in hers in camaraderie.
“We are all alive because of those plans. No one is going to say a single negative word about anything any of us did during that battle. Landra Ahr made it clear that we were to adhere to your plan, that any deviation would mean failure and death. I’m damn glad I listened and followed that order. I’m damn grateful you came to this timeline. Of all the others you saw, you ended up in this one. Thank you.”
Star did something Tyler had never seen. She cried, dissolving over Tyler’s lap in a puddle.
“I’ve never been afraid to die,” she gulped. “When it almost happened, I was so scared. I’ve never been so scared.”
“I know,” Tyler whispered.
Sharp knocking brought Star’s emotional overspill to an instant halt. She was on her feet, stalking to the nearest window and snatching a tissue from the box on the window seat.
Tyler rose carefully from her chair and used her walking stick to go to the door. Answering it herself gave Starbird time to collect herself. Jerome was on the other side. He smiled at her. “Morning, Fate.”
“Morning, Death,” she replied.
“Landra tells me you’ve been up for hours and haven’t eaten.”
“I’m not hungry, thank you.”
“Are you going to be coming down at all?” he asked, seeing Starbird near the window.
“Probably not. I overdid the other night and I’m sore.”
“Okay. I’m not gonna debate the issue. I’ve not been hungry much myself. Whenever Star’s finished here, I need to talk to her.” He closed the door and went back downstairs.
“Why did he call you Fate, and you call him Death?” Starbird asked.
Tyler grinned over her shoulder. “It’s an inside joke. I think I will go down for a bit.”
“Want help with the stairs?”
“No. I’ll meet you down there.” She teleported with her walking stick, appearing at the bottom of the stairs to walk to the rest of the way.
“I changed my mind,” she said to Jerome’s questioning eyes.
“Glad you could join us, Fate,” he smiled.
She couldn’t help but grin. “Any time, Death.”
“Okay, it’s an inside joke,” Starbird said as she came in. “So share it with the rest of us.”
“I will play the Audio,” Landra Ahr said, coming into the kitchen. “I am pleased to see you up and about,” he nodded to Tyler.
“You were already destroyed. How could you have audio?” L’Roc-ai asked.
“This armor was activated before we left that morning. It recorded everything.”
“Did you wake up this morning and know you were going to die?” came Tyler’s voice.
L’Roc-ai gasped audibly when she heard Adamantine command “Release him.”
“Yeah, that thud is her throwing Dominion across the roof at Adamantine’s feet,” Jerome said. “Damn, you were sexy up there.”
Landra Ahr translated the exchange between her and Adamantine for Gable and Tony.
“Kill the fucker now,” Tyler said.
“I’m workin’ on it.”
Nothing more. The video ended and there was silence for half a minute.
“So you’re Fate and you’re Death.” Gable chuckled. “That is too cute. We should have cute names like that,” he said to Starbird.
“Too bad you couldn’t just fuck Adamantine to death,” Tony sniped.
In a flash he was flying backward through to the dining room and over the table. Tyler pinned him to spot where wall became ceiling, psionically, choking him, eyes gone black.
“I coulda left your useless ass dying under a building, ya stupid misogynist fuck!”
She vanished and Tony fell hard to the floor, gasping for air.
“Shit! Way to go, Tony! She only just came back,” Jerome snapped. “That was uncalled for!”
“She did not leave the warehouse,” Landra Ahr said. “But seems to be packing a bag.”
“Not if I can help it,” Jerome said, already at the hallway. He sprinted up the stairs and didn’t knock.
Tyler was throwing clothes into a suitcase while muttering. Not a “going away for the weekend” kind of packing. She was taking entire piles at a time from her dresser, thumping them into a fast-filling case.
“No no no no no no no no no,” Jerome said, taking the next pile from her hands.
She spun to get another, slower for her injury. “I’ve spent the
better part of a year ignoring his broadcasting,” she spat, “I’m not about to put up with it from his mouth. Not anymore.”
“I don’t blame you one bit,” he said, taking that pile from her hands and putting it back into the dresser.
She picked up the pile on the bed and dropped it into the case. “I cannot stay here if he is here.”
He seized her by the wrists, stopping her in her tracks with a bubble of Staff Power. “I just got you back. I’m not about to let you run away again like I did last March. Never again.”
“Let go of me.”
“So you can teleport away? Nuh-uh. Not a chance. You’re not going anywhere,” he declared.
“You can’t hold me forever.”
“Watch me,” he said, pulling her against his chest for a hug. “Landra tells me I got two or three thousand years now that I have all this Staff Power in me. How much time you got?”
“Three or four thousand years.”
“Well, there you go. We’ll stand here like this until one of us dies.”
She snorted a laugh at the ridiculous notion...and how hard he was trying. A few seconds of silence and he spoke almost under his breath.
“Please don’t go, Ty. I don’t care if it’s only back to Mickey’s. Don’t go. I hated not having you here where I could feel you near. Where I could hear you breathe.”
She looked up, intending to reply, and was silenced by a firm kiss.
“Don’t go,” he whispered.
She glared up at him. “Ya know, without Earnol influencing me to leave Earth, it’s almost impossible to say no to you.”
“Hmm, does that have possibilities.”
“Let’s get out of here. Southwyck mall’s open, right?” she asked.
“Out here, everything’s open.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you at the Torino.”
Not until he’d helped her put everything back into the drawers, however. Only then did he go down to get his shoes and start the car. Tony had left. Again. This time he wouldn’t ever be coming back. He’d left with the check Landra Ahr had been holding from Jerome, buying him out of both businesses. Before going to the car, Jerome stopped in the gym to see the assistant manager. Jerome promoted him to head manager, and told him to hire one or two shift managers to help out.
They meandered down each wing, Jerome not minding her slow pace. When he started piling videotapes into his arm she told him not to bother.
“Give it eight years and VHS will be obsolete,” she said.
“What’s replacing it?” he asked.
“You know how vinyl was rendered obsolete by the CD?
“Yeah.”
“Same thing but it’s called DVD. Gable is already getting ready for it. One disk will hold a movie, commentary, deleted scenes, making-ofs, and up to five languages. By 2005, stores will hardly carry any VHS, and that will include video rental places.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“Yeah. Invest heavily in a thing called Google the day of the IPO and sell that stock two years later.”
“What the hell’s a Google?”
“It will be the largest Internet Search Engine in the world by 2005. You should invest in AOL now and sell the minute it hits $100 a share in early 1998. Don’t bother going back to it after that. You’ll want to liquidate much of your portfolio in the summer of 2000, before the election. Then buy in again a year later in Bio and Security companies and the internet-based businesses. Buy heavy in oil now and sell in 2008 when it hits $140 a barrel. Don’t buy in again until it bottoms out again at $25 a barrel,” she trailed off, seeing a familiar face passing by the doorway.
“What happens?”
She put down the two compact discs in her hand. “I’ll be right back.”
“No, you don’t. I’m with you,” he said, and put the tapes down on the music rack to follow.
He caught up with her easily, followed her line of sight to see the same familiar face.
“Isn’t that--?”
“Yep. Fucker.”
Mother’s second husband, holding hands with some young blonde thing not more than twenty years old.
“My mother isn’t dead two whole weeks.”
She turned the opposite direction from what he did, heading around the central open audience pit.
“Corpse is barely fuckin’ cold,” she muttered.
“What are you doing, Tyler?”
“Not a thing,” she said, watching as the pair stopped at a burger place and brought their food out to sit on the steps and watch the fountain.
She continued around and down the steps. Jerome chose to stay at the top, knowing he’d be able to hear since the fountain was between its shows.
“Hey, asshole,” she said to her former stepfather.
“Tyler? I thought you were in California.”
“Shows how uninformed you are. So, were you fuckin’ this one before or after my mother – that would be your wife – died ten days ago when Sun Oil blew up?”
“Wife?!” the blonde exclaimed.
“So that would mean before. He never told you he was married, did he? Her name was Mary and she was 53 years old. They were married for almost six years before she died. He prefers them younger like you, though. He cheated on her with at least three others just like you.”
“That’s enough, Tyler. Go away.”
“Has he hit you yet?” she asked. “Hmmm…no. Not you. But he broke a lamp, didn’t he? Got mad for no real reason and hurled it at the wall. Didn’t he? Scared the shit out of you too, didn’t it? And then he was all silk and sweet afterward, wasn’t he? Take the warning, Debbie. Leave right now and go call your friend Greg to come get you. He’s much better for you and has been too chicken to tell you how he feels because asshole here likes to beat up guys who take an interest in territory he’s marked. Go.”
Debbie ran up the stairs in tears, past Jerome and outside to a payphone. Jerome returned his focus to Tyler, and began to descend the wide steps as the asshole in question stood to face his stepdaughter.
“You really are a despicable piece of shit excuse for a human,” she was saying. “I never was afraid of you and you know it. What are you going to do? Hit a young girl walking with a cane? Hit me in public? I’ll kill you where you stand. Right here.”
“I think I’ll sit and eat.”
“Wise choice. Enjoy your last meal. Contemplate your last fuck.”
“I’ll be enjoying that insurance check too.”
She smiled. He’d not caught the last meal remark. “Yes, I bet you will.”
She walked up to Jerome and they continued back around the other side of the fountain to look down on it and the steps. The fountain began its hourly show. They stopped at the rail to watch, neither seeing the water display.
She watched. She waited. When the right smug thought crossed his mind, he took a huge bite of hotdog to go with it. He never did chew his food well. He swallowed the bite nearly whole. For some strange reason his throat closed around it. He tried to wave an arm, to get up get help, but found he could not move. Frozen to the spot, unable to signal his distress, unable to cough it up or swallow it down.
His eyes lifted and he saw her twenty feet up the back wall, behind the gushing geysers of light colored water.
[You know I’m doing this,] she thought to him. [My mother deserved a hell of a lot better than you. I hope you rot slowly while the worms digest you.]
The five minute water show ended and she turned away, releasing her hold on him. She and Jerome walked down the rear wing toward Macy’s, window shopping before having lunch in Friendly’s.
“Feel better?” Jerome asked when they came out.
She smiled up to him. “Much! Shall we go see a movie? I’d like to see something funny. I’m in the mood to laugh.”
Sitting in the back row corner of the theater, he put her across his lap for a make out session that put the teenagers five rows in front of them to shame. Hand under her t-shirt or up her denim s
kirt, he brought her to climax numerous times. In the car afterward, sharing a joint during a leisurely ride home, Jerome’s phone rang.
“It’s for you,” he said after the hello. “Your father.”
She hadn’t expected a call so soon. “Yes, Dad?”
“You said it was okay to call you at this number. Your stepfather died a little while ago.”
“Did he? Someone shoot him in the face for fucking their girlfriend?”
“No. He choked to death on a hotdog at Southwyck Mall.”
“No kidding. And I care because?” she asked.
“Because I’m still Executor of your mother’s estate. She never changed it. I have the insurance checks from her death. With him now dead, you get it all. He hadn’t changed you as beneficiary either. It’s not a whole lot but will certainly be a help. Where can I meet you?”
“How about I come over to your place tomorrow,” she suggested.
“Okay. I’ll be home around six. I’ll get the second check rewritten before then if possible. The insurance office is in the same building as my office.”
“Okay,” she said, and terminated the call.
“Did you know he was going to be at the mall?” Jerome asked, stashing the phone back in his pocket.
“No. In my Home Line, it was about six months after the battle. Still a fluke I saw him, and he was at Northtowne with a different chick.”
“So you killed your stepfather twice. That’s some meant-to-be retribution.”
At home, a kiss see you later, and she went up to her room to rest a while…and ended up sleeping through the night in her exhaustion. No, not exhaustion, she realized as a spot on her thigh burned and itched. Landra Ahr had stuck her again and made her sleep through the night until the alarm had gone off.
Fucker.
She dressed and pulled an envelope from between journals in her bookshelves, and ported down to Jerome’s door.
“Morning, sunshine. I bawled Landra out for you,” he said when he opened it. “You’re up early.”
She shook her head. “He needs to stop doing that. I have to talk to you a moment.”
