“Sucks to be you then. I want to be hit by a car. I’d push you out of the way and end up in the hospital first,” Lila began, her voice angry and shaking.
“Lila!” Jasper gasped out in response, clearly not expecting her to say such a thing.
Emmet had to agree with him, and now, looking back, it made too much sense. She had gone out of her way to make him hurt her and she was directly getting herself involved in this time travel affair.
“I would. I really, really would. I really would Jasper. I would. You did so much for me. If it wasn’t for you, I would probably be dead in some ditch, or buried in my own basement years ago,” Lila went on to say, almost crying as she spoke.
“Lila, you don’t mean that,” Jasper tried to reason, a note of desperation now in his voice.
“Don’t fucking downplay it! We’ve both come from the same place and we’ve both been injured beyond our fucking boundaries. My right arm will never be OK again. My right hand physicall
Emmet waited and listened as Jasper and Lila continued talking. The conversation shifted away from Lila and her grievances to speculation of what could have happened to Emmet. Lila immediately began to establish a timeline, figuring out that the transfusion had to have happened before Emmet had rescued Jasper and brought him to her. Moreover, it had to have been before Jasper had first come to her, guessing that both Jasper and Emmet had gotten both of their injuries at similar times. “I’m going to assume that Emmet got the transfusion some time in my future, when he was on his own and after he rescued you. Emmet must have gotten the injury some time in that future, needing the transfusion, or, he got the injuries back in his own timeline, after you left him and jumped off the cliff. So he’s gotten the injury. The time that it took for you to be able to get up, without the nanobots, compared to your recovery from an even worse state now, looking at your stick
“Lila, did you really spend fifteen years waiting for me and doing what I said?” Jasper asked Lila. She had slung one of his arms over her shoulders, and supported him as the chief burden of walking was placed on him. He was the one to take the first step, and she followed after, making sure that he didn’t fall down after. All of the steps were small, and it felt like Lila took a small shuffle every two steps that Jasper made. She stood behind him, pushing his back upwards as they climbed up the stairs, both hands on the banister keeping him up and his back arching forwards, his eyes looking only upwards and never back. “I just kept the pendant safe from my parents for the most part. Sometimes, when I thought that you were a dream and there was no hope left in the world, I took out the pendant from underneath my mattress and just looked at it. I remembered what you said and I kept up with those breathing techniques whenever I was overwhelmed and reall
Jasper let Lila carry him over the threshold into the bathtub, picking him up like he was nothing but a thin sheet of paper, placing him down on a plastic stool, right under where the shower head would spray water. Unbuttoning his shirt, threading his arms through the holes, pulling off his trousers, Lila turned on the tap, placing her hand underneath the water to feel it warm up, before turning on the shower, soaking Jasper and filling up the bathtub. She turned it off after a few moments, and then ducked out of Jasper’s line of sight. She held out a bottle of shampoo and Jasper took it, beginning to lather up into his hair, running his hands through his hair. A small line of rubber ducks followed down the current and tides of water to float in front of Jasper, the yellow little shapes bobbing up and down in a nonsensical pattern. Jasper looked at them and smiled, before his eyes abruptly began burning and he dunked his hands underwater to rid them o
Jasper let Lila carry him down the stairs, his body draped over hers like an overly large sheet, as she walked ahead and had him follow her at one stair at a time. She walked backwards down the stairs and he looked forwards, directing her where to go. The small amount of activity that he had gone through left him slightly out of breath and Lila had giggled when she had heard his stomach rumble. When they came back to the office room, Jasper was the first to notice that Emmet was awake. He sat on the sofa and was looking towards the floor, his hair falling forwards to obscure his face and his hands on his lap. He gasped when he heard the door open, meeting Jasper’s own eyes immediately, and he jumped to his feet, making his way towards Lila and taking on a portion of Jasper’s weight. It was then that Lila ducked out the room, mumbling something that Jasper didn’t catch, and Emmet took over fully in carrying him. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” Em
“After we were both locked in that storage cupboard and I first left with the time machine, I went back in time to approximately fifteen years before this current year. I materialised in mid air near a cliff, and I fell a considerable distance before I landed. I acquired many injuries and it took me quite a while to heal. Lila was the one who found me. She was wandering around in the rain, in the middle of nowhere, and she was the one to bring a doctor to me. She and her abusive family took care of me. Her mother didn’t view her as a person but as an extension of herself to control and shape to her own will, and her father was a neglectful alcoholic. Her mother was violent, and her father, to balance the family out, did all that he could to minimise his involvement in her life, to her detriment. She… also begged me to take her with me, where I was going, but I refused, because, at the time, I intended to fix my mistakes and atone for my perceived negative inf
“You’re not the boss of me and I’m not the boss of you,” Emmet continued, shifting his head whenever Jasper’s eyes tried to move away from his own. “You have to believe me. You are not responsible for Lila’s actions and I do not believe, even for a fraction of a second, that Lila is out to do harm or something, anything nefarious to the people that you have sworn revenge on. You and I both know that we cannot make her do something that she doesn’t want to do. No one can make her do anything that she doesn’t want to do. She is not going after any of your enemies. She is not going to kill anyone. She is not going to harm anyone. And you and I both know that she is incapable of harming anyone. When I was in the future, she kept me deliberately tied to a bed to prevent me from prematurely moving about and causing further injuries. She fed me food that she cooked herself and made up a separate identity to keep me safe from both her employers and the genera
Suddenly, the door slammed open. “Here’s breakfast! Lunch is in the fridge! I’m late! OK bye!” Lila quickly shouted off a group of phrases in quick succession, before abruptly slamming the door shut again. Both Jasper and Emmet stared at where she had been, only seeing a tray carefully balancing and clinging to the surface of the sofa, one side tilting significantly more than the other. On it were two steaming hot bowls, with spoons laid out next to them, as well as a little, folded sheet of paper with the image of a tea set drawn on top of it. Emmet moved first towards the teetering tray, lifting it up before it could fall off and create a mess that he knew that he would be cleaning up, and brought it to where Jasper could peer inside of the bowls. It looked to be a soup of hot milk with tiny strands of almost clear noodles, accompanied by various other fragments of crushed nuts, all of them differing in size and types, ranging from f
Lila knew that listening in to such a private conversation was wrong, but she couldn’t help but lean in a little closer when she heard her name. She heard the two men in her office, the two men in the photograph, discuss what she had done in the future, and their reasonings. It felt like she was back on the school playground and overhearing people talk about her like she didn’t exist, like there was some other kind of idea of her that took her place whenever she was stood in front of them. It was quicker and easier to lie and pretend that she was late for work, when she was actually a good five minutes early. She didn’t stick around to hear the end of the conversation that was happening in her office, opting to begin the days baking and then lock herself inside of the shop where she wouldn’t have to make meaningful conversations with anyone. Rolling up her sleeves and dusting the surface of her worktop with flour, Lila pulled out all the label
“Why’re you sleeping on the floor like that? Come on, get up. You’ll hurt your back doing that,” Doctor Marigold chided, dragging all her bits of heavy machinery around the office space to prepare for her demonstration.Behind her, Lila remained still.“I know that you’re not dead. Come, get up already,” she called out, stepping over a few sheets of paper that she had laid out to grab Lila by the shoulder and heave her up into sitting.The stubborn girl just flopped down again, not opening her eyes.“If you get the fuck up, we can move the flight a week forward so you can stop worrying about it,” Lucy Marigold shouted across the room.Like a rubber band, Lila snapped back up and finally opened her eyes.It had been harder to see the bags below them when they had been closed and Doctor Marigold wondered if she should buy the girl some sleep tablets.“I’m awake,” Li
Yolanda seemed to understand that she needed to back off and stop teasing Gretel, when the other woman's eyes suddenly misted over, and it was if she was no longer a part of this world.She kept the bubbling annoyance within her away from her face, putting on instead a mask of concern as she reached out and poked Gretel's arms, trying to maybe prod her out of her stupor and bring her back from the recesses of her mind.Yolanda had never actually seen somebody collapse inwards to a catatonic state over her own actions.It was interesting to see it all happen and fold out in front of her.She poked Gretel again, touching her in the face lightly to see if that would possibly work to pull the other woman out of her mind and back into the world where she was needed proper.It wouldn't reflect well on her if Gretel didn't wake up within the hour.It didn't feel as
When she awoke, she was sat ready to eat and was dressed just like her mother, in a pastel blouse and a lungi down to the floor.Lila looked down at herself and jumped when she heard rattling, noticing the ten, or so, bangles on each arm and the lines of mehndi that ran down all the way to the hems of her sleeves, resting halfway between her shoulders and elbows. A pin held her blouse shut at the top and a quick once over of her hair, with one of her hands, revealed that it had been styled in a simple bun and adorned with flowers.“This is weirdly romantic,” Lila commented, staring at the lit candles nestled in the variously sized candelabrums set around the circular room.There was no door, but a giant window which led to a balcony outside. There was no ceiling but the walls reaching upwards, all the way up, until they formed a dome in the same shade of dull brown that coated the floor and the giant, round table in the centre.The only dishes
“So, is she finally asleep?” Emmet asked the boy stood behind the counter. He was exceedingly slim for someone surrounded by sugar all day and Emmet could make out the outlines of his spindly elbows through his shirt. His face held a no nonsense, blunt, and almost bored expression. “Yeah, she is. She’s been knocked out on the sofa since I sent her back there,” Kai answered the long haired man in front of him, his hair pulled back by a ribbon matching his eyes before being pulled over his shoulder once more. He looked vain. “Oh good. Don’t tell her that I was involved,” the man asked, putting both his palms up to face Kai. “I’m telling her that you’re a fucking weirdo for that,” was the scowled answer. “No. Seriously, don’t tell her. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. She’s known my partner for longer that I’ve known him. She doesn’t trust me with him. Why’re you making that face?” Emmet tried to justify himself before giving up
“Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?” Kai asked Lila, watching her sway on her feet and clutching the front counter.“Yes,” she gasped, dropping her head into her hands, elbows on the table.“Go and lie down on the sofa. Go to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when I have to leave for college,” Kai instructed her, tapping her on the shoulders and shepherding her towards the office.“… fine,” she conceded, letting Kai move her along towards the back.“You know that this just proves my point,” Kai pointed out, pushing her through the boundary of the door and closing it behind her.“Fine,” she whispered back to him, talking into the silence of the office.She let herself fall over the sofa, draping her upper body over the arm rest and letting her head be cushioned by the pillows. Shuffling a bit over to put her body entirely on the sofa, Lila f
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now again!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now keep on going!”Lila landed each punch, timing her breaths to the count as she moved her fists, dodging underneath the swing that came towards her head, before blocking the second hit that came to her and moving along with the force of the fist that hit her arm.The swinging punching bag forced distance between Lila and Tweedle Dum, and she stepped back to where she was stood before, within the path of the moving bad, to put more distance between him and her.“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”Lila punched the bag once more, landing all of her hits.“Okay, time for a break,” Tweedle Dum announced, grabbing the punching bag and pulling it back to him as Lila moved away from the centre of the room, sitting down on one of the rickety plastic chairs at the side of the room.She took of
“Bitch! Why’d you run off and abandon me like that!?” Lila shouted from behind the counter when Kai finally walked back into the store.She was waving her hands about and wore an apron covered in flour as the single customer in the store, an old man precariously balancing on his cane, slept whilst leaning on the radiator.“I thought that you wanted some bonding time with your family so I left you to do that it private!” Kai answered her, tiptoeing past their unconscious patron, in a combination of whispering and shouting.“They’re hardly my family and you left us in the middle of a public café!” Lila cried, not modulating her voice at all.In the background, the old man began to snore.“But you still talk to them a lot like you do to me, so I let you, and besides, I got about fifty more pages of Good Omens done in Waterstones,” Kai appealed, finally at the counter and opening up the
Gretel and Silver had their fun as he continued to teach her how the interface worked and how he had managed to figure out that the system was an older model from the lack of integration between the screen and the touch pad, and explaining how easily it would potentially be to do so once the technology, as displayed in this device, had been demonstrated and established to work in a functional product."We were working on something like this as well, back in the workshops back home for the company that I was in the research and development department for. We were trying to get our motion sensors to be as small as possible for more commercial and personal use of technology that we could sell to the public and those who couldn't afford the contact computers.We had no idea on how their tech worked, because of trade and company secrets and all, but we managed to piece together a few things by looking at the patents and when we bought a few and m
“Alright, the shop’s free. Why are you actually here?” Lila questioned, crossing her arms and staring down at the tablecloth of Jasper and Emmet’s table.“I’ve got lesson now. I’ll be back in a few hours,” the teenage boy behind Lila announced, picking up a bag that had been hidden behind the counter the entire time and rushing outside.Lila continued to stand there, waiting for a reply.Jasper couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t meeting either his or Emmet’s eyes.“Are you planning to leave us?” he asked her back.Lila’s fingers dug into the creases of her shirt,” I’m going to be leaving for a trip soon, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Kai’ll be running the shop and will be looking after things, broadly. He lives here now and I scheduled my leave for when his school term ends so he can take care of things.”“On thi