Our Future
Chapter 21: Practice and Trust

“I guess you should try, huh?” he whispers.

“I already changed what I did today, what if it changes everything?” I ask worried.

“It’s two hours. How much could happen in two hours?” he asks.

It toke fifteen minutes for Melody to get bit and half an hour to get Quinn killed. Farren attacked Gabriel and it toke an hour to replace them, lots could happen in two hours.

“Lots, all it toke was one person to become a zombie and look what happened to the Earth,” I reply.

“Well, what, are, you going to do?” he questions.

“I don’t know, I honestly don’t know, Daniel,” I whisper.

“Well, it would be nice to know when so I don’t randomly wake up back in my old house. Melody accepted you now, what makes you think she won’t accept you three years prior to now?” he exclaims.

“Daniel, you don’t understand. She’ll still be in love with me. I’ll break her heart. At least she had somebody else to go to and talk to all this about and love. She might hate me like Emily after this. We’ll have to deal with her again. And my mother. And who knows what my father will do,” I exclaim in return.

“I had to tell my family, too. There will always be people you disappoint and who don’t accept you. That’s life for us. They need to learn to accept people who are different and they never will if they aren’t challenged,” he answers.

“I’m scared. What if I lose Gabriel? What if he replaces someone else before we...?” I mutter.

“You’ll have to accept that, too. If it happens. He loves you. He’s obviously liked you for a while. Who’s not to say he didn’t like you back then either? He just didn’t say anything because he thought you were going on a different path. He was considering your feelings and trying to move on. When you told him he toke a chance like when he told you he was gay. He was hoping to be accepted both times, and for the most part, he was,” Daniel continues.

“Everybody will have concerns about rewinding the clock three years. But what we have to think and hope is that people will remember and trust their memory and try and prevent the apocalypse, “he adds.

“And if they don’t remember?” I ask.

I was still considering the options; it was my power after all.

“Why would they give you the power if you couldn’t stop it? I highly doubt they want you to fine tune your mistakes,” he whispers.

“What if they didn’t plan on it? What if it was a mistake? An accident?” I ask.

Not everything was perfect. We weren’t. Angels weren’t. What if God’s plan wasn’t either?

“I’m not going to force you. It’s your choice and your power. I’m just telling you what I think you should do. I know I’d love a second chance with my family and Joey would, too. But Joey thinks like you and would probably think about where he was three years ago opposed to now. It wasn’t any prettier back then then it is now for him. I was trying to help him. Help him get over Vlad; help him with his mother and brother. He had lot of stress and now he’s just stressed for different reasons. He worries about me, the warehouse, the future, my power, the zombies. At least before they were normal worries,” he concurred.

“I could ruin people’s lives, Daniel. Yours included,” I mumble.

“Nathan, we can all adapt to new things. It’s what humans do. At least we’ll be alive,” he reasons quietly.

I sighed. He wasn’t helping. He had his own opinion. He wasn’t at risk of forgetting the past three years like the rest were. I had become so much in the last year. I admitted who I was, told people and fell in love. I’d lose all of that if I went back. I’d have to confess to Gabriel again and break Melody’s heart again. I’d have to tell my mom again and tell my dad for the first time. His reaction was keeping the ball in centerfield. It would edge towards the ‘go back’ goal and then roll back to its original position.

I slumped to the floor, tired. I could feel my grasp on time slip and Gabriel unfroze. Daniel teleported away before he was noticed and Gabriel and him got into another quarrel.

“Nathan, what’s wrong?” he asks curious.

I forgot he no longer knew. All he knew was it was a choice. That’s all he knew, it could be all he ever knew.

“Nathan?” he inquired again.

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I was just thinking,” I lied.

It was the first lie I’d told in a while to him. That was because of what he was now and how much he’d been around lately.

“Liar,” he claimed.

Couldn’t hide one thing from him. After a decade I was the window and he was the fog.

I stared at him and then lay down. I hadn’t slept in probably almost twenty-four hours or at least that was what it felt like.

“Nathan?” he called again.

He wasn’t angry, surprisingly. But I ignored him. He crawls around me and lies in front of me so I could see him. He held one of my hands with one of his own and the other reached over to touch my face, I blinked nervous. His thumb ran back and forth, across the space under my right eye. I starred at his arm in wonder. If I rewind time how long would it be till we were in the position we were in now? I silenced my mind hoping he hadn’t heard.

I closed my eyes, welcoming his touch. I felt him inch closer to me. I opened my eyes nervously. His face is mere inches from my own. I looked away.

“Nathan, what’s going on?” he asked smoothly.

I still didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure of so many things. Whether I wanted him to know or wanted to rewind time. Whether I wanted a second chance to do everything. I didn’t think everything I had done in the past year could be done again, now anyone’s response to that was going to be ‘you did it once, why wouldn’t you be able to do it again?’ Because, I was a different person back then. I had grown and learned in these last three years. If I went back who wasn’t to say I’d feel the same way about Melody again? I knew my sexuality wasn’t a choice it was just who I was. But if Melody hadn’t ‘died’, I wouldn’t have discovered that I was gay.

“Please, tell me,” Gabriel whispered.

“I can’t,” I answer automatically unsure of what I wanted for him and everybody else. “I just...I can’t. I’m sorry.”

I roll over and get up. I leave. I wanted to sleep so I snuck into the room beside the children’s where the guys slept. I toke up an empty sleeping bag. Nobody was beside me; Michael was sleeping near the door and Rider at the back. Hayden was a row over in the middle, he was sleeping beside Jess. Jasper and Abele were in a third row near the foot of the class room furthest from the door. Arran was near the back as well as Landon in the third row.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But it was fitful; I kept waking up every five minutes. I covered my head with a pillow trying to block out the sunlight that was coming through the cracks between the wood on the boarded up windows. I had no idea why this warehouse had windows. Warehouses were used to store things it wasn’t necessary for them to have windows. I hoped nobody tried to disturb me when they woke up. Of course their curiosity could get the best of them and they’d probably ask why I wasn’t off sleeping either by myself or with Gabriel. My and Gabriel’s relationship had become public knowledge at this point just like Daniel and Joey’s relationship. None of us had been killed over it, yet.

I shifted in the sleeping bag so I was facing the door, yet, it wouldn’t do me any good cause the pillow was over my head so if the killer was silent I wouldn’t see them coming. I might hear them but my hearing was muffled as well.

I sigh. I was going to go insane if I didn’t make a choice but how could you choose a future for others? It was selfish technically. If I stayed here it was because I wanted to stay with Gabriel and make the most of the remaining world.

If I went back I was thinking of everyone else.

If I didn’t go back, people could call me a monster, selfish and condescending. Maybe, even, possibly in some people’s eyes...psychopathic if you wanted to go that far. I would be thinking about what I wanted and felt and now would have been good for the whole of society.

“Nathan,” a voice said over a bridged mind link I was unaware of. It was an unfamiliar voice. But I sensed I knew the voice despite not recognizing it.

I was silent, waiting to see if it spoke again.

“Office Building,” it spoke again nervously as if unsure of whether or not I could hear it.

I lifted the pillow off my head and looked around. Everyone was still sleeping. It was probably almost six-thirty. I rose and snuck out of the room and down the hall and out through the hole in the fence where the giant rock was. I pulled up the mental map and started at it try to figure where the mind link was coming from.

I noticed the dot on top of the same office building I was supposed to be on in today’s future.

I froze, if Gabriel could read minds his father probably could, too. I wonder if the clone of his could, too. It could be a trap.

“Please,” the voice whispered.

I sighed.

Maybe it would help me make my choice. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I’d die. These were all possibilities. Paths I had to choose from. One thing I wasn’t going to do was sit around and watch others die.

I made my way to the office building on foot and then spread my wings and flew up to its roof.

There was the jet-black haired, camouflage shirt and tan pants guy.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“Tommy, I’m from a future where there is no apocalypse. I can time travel. I’m your son. If you go back you can stop it. People will remember,” he explains quickly.

“Why do you kill Melody?” I ask.

“Melody? I have to kill a clone. Is that her name? Didn’t know they had names,” he mumbles.

“You have to make sure you kill the clone and not the real one, okay? The real Melody has a kid to take care of, okay?” I exclaim.

“That’s not a problem. I can tell the difference, like dad. He will replace you again if you go back. He loves you. Love always replaces one another,” he whispers.

“When does this all happen?” I ask.

“You mean me. About fifteen years from now, don’t worry you guys are great parents,” he replies smiling. “If two points are destined to touch...the universe will always replace a way to make the connection. Even when all hope seems lost...certain ties cannot be broken. They define who we are. And who we can become. Across space...across time...along paths we cannot predict...nature always replaces a way. There’s nothing more terrifying than the future. And nothing more inevitable. There are some so devastating, you can’t imagine surviving them. So you fight and you run. But no matter how far you run, or how hard you fight, the future catches up. Fate catches up, Tim Kring said that. And it’s true,” he quotes.

“Tommy, I...” I trail off.

“If you go back, Melody won’t hate you. She knew. She could tell. If you don’t go back, I don’t exist. There will never be a cure. The only reason I exist is because you’ve been thinking about going back which makes me and my brother possible,” he exclaims.

“We have two children?” I mumble.

All of this seemed impossible. None of us imagined normal lives where we had families and jobs because we thought the apocalypse was the future and no one wants to bring a child into that kind of world.

“Me and Cameron. In March of 2113. We’re twins. He can fly, levitate, you know,” he informs me.

“Tommy, I don’t know if it works like that,” I reply.

He advances and hugs me, “Dad, please. I want you to be happy and have a family. I want to grow up in a world I know I helped save. You told me that story in our future. How I came to visit you in the apocalyptic future,” he reasons.

This is scaring me. Was I really supposed to go back? Was he really not going to be born if we stayed here?