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Superworlds - 2.3 - Bittersweet
🕑 Added 2023-07-06 10:12:44 +0000 UTC“Jane,” he said finally, “It’s not that I want to die. And it’s not that I’m not grateful, it’s just…” He waved his hands about, trying to find the words. “Time travel! You know! This is dangerous. You told me it’s dangerous. Didn’t you?!”
Jane didn’t answer. When she’d first travelled through time – during the Black Death’s onslaught, on the outskirts of Detroit, when she hadn’t known what she doing and when she’d used the power she’d just absorbed without thinking, the Time Child having provided her with precise, pinpoint instructions – it’d been disturbing, but not deadly. Coming back, too, to 2001 from 1988 hadn’t really been something she’d had to think about – she’d known instinctively where she was supposed to be and when, like she retained an anchor somehow to her original time. In the six months since that day however, every time Jane had reached consciously for the time travel power, it was like the very universe around her became unstuck; she caught a glimpse, a brief flash of a reality so overwhelming it threatened to shatter her mentally, and then inevitably she immediately pulled back, terrified by the sudden brush with infinity and obliteration. In retrospect, the first time around the child’s guidance, her own ignorance, her injuries and the adrenaline surging through her veins had somehow inoculated Jane from the sheer magnitude of being able to move outside a single, stable timeline. That was no longer the case. Jane understood what she could do now, the enormity of it, and the moment she reached consciously to rearrange things that awareness threatened to consume her mind.
“Was the Child there?”
“No.”
“Jane!”
“Dead! You were dead!”
“And- and I appreciate that, but you-” Again, his voice faltered as he struggled to find the words. “You can’t just… change things!”
“Why?” Jane snapped, folding her arms and glaring at him, “Why can’t I change things? What’s the point of having these powers if I can’t-” she swore, “-change things?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Matt sighed, “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“It is what you’re talking about! It’s what you’re always talking about! You’re always on me, always trying to make me feel bad like, urgh you can’t do this, you can’t do that-”
“That’s not what I’m trying to-.”
“It is! You are trying to do it! You’re, you’re trying to- you want me to- why should I stand by?! Why should I let bad things happen, when I can stop them, when I can make it right?”
“Jane we’re not talking about being a superhero, we’re talking about time travel!”
“So?!” Jane cried, “What’s the difference? Why the hell can’t I, I, I could do it, if I practised, if you’d let me even try to-”
“Oh so now it’s my fault?”
“I’m not saying that!”
“Jane it’s time. You don’t. Mess. With time travel!”
“I’m not… the Child! The Child messes with time travel!”
“Oh, right, so we’re just doing what the Child does now? The mysterious magical death child who we know nothing about, yeah sure, sounds great!”
“Why are you always against me?!”
“Against you?! Jane I’m trying to protect you! I’m on your side!”
“I’m not the one who needs protecting!”
“I know that!” Matt exclaimed, throwing up his hands. He shook his head in despair. “I know that. You’re the strong one, you can do whatever you want, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I know!”
“That’s not-”
“But where does it end Jane? Huh? Okay, you save me, great. Do you save other people? Friends? Strangers? From all bad things or only murder? Huh? Do you stop someone from being robbed? Except why is the robber robbing people? Are they a drug addict? Broke? Did they have a bad childhood? Do you fix all that too? Do you go back in time and stop their work closing? Do you stop them drinking? Do you go back and give them better parents?”
“You’re being absurd.”
“I’m being logical. If you change one thing, then you can change everything and- where does it stop? Does no one die? Is no one hurt? Is no one unhappy?!”
“You’d rather let people die than save them?”
“We’re not supposed to play God!” Matt started to swear then caught himself, forcing the exclamation back down. He took a deep breath, then held up what he wanted to be placating hands. “Jane, I know you. I know you! You can’t let things go, you’ll want to fix them, if you let yourself loose then you’ll- you’ll just want to keep fixing. It’ll never be enough!”
“He killed you!” Jane cried, “Some worthless, piece of crap nobody, he killed you!”
“Well maybe I was supposed to die!”
“No.” Jane shook her head, staring at him, her face hard as stone. “No, if that’s how you’re going to be, if you’re going to- no, I’m not going to talk about this, I’m not- I won’t-” She took a step back, shaking her head. Matt reached out and caught her wrist even as she pulled away, her arms crossed, trying to force her to look at him.
“Jane.”
“No.”
“Jane.”
“No!”
“One day I might die,” he told her, holding on even as she continued to shake her head, “Me, our friends, your dad – you have to accept that.”
“No. No I don’t. Why are you talking like this?”
“Because I don’t want-” Matt fell silent for a moment, struggling to find the right words. “I don’t want you to do something wrong. I don’t want you to lose sight of yourself. You are so, so powerful.” He squeezed her arm. “Nobody is meant to be able to do what you can do. Nobody is supposed to be that strong!”
“Oh, don’t give me this-”
“With great power-”
“If you say one more word of that Spiderman crap I swear to God-”
“But it’s true!” cried Matt, “We have to be so, so careful! Not just with the time thing but with Captain Dawn, with the superhero-”
“Oh, so no you don’t like me being Lady Dawn?”
“I’m not saying that,” Matt sighed, “It’s just… there’s so much at stake.”
“You think I don’t know?!”
“Don’t you think maybe there was a reason Captain Dawn didn’t use his powers?” Matt pressed on, “Don’t you think maybe he might’ve been scared that even with the best intentions he’d screw up, about crushing people underfoot?”
“Please,” Jane scowled, rolling her eyes, “You didn’t meet him. He wasn’t being a role model, he was a sad, broken man scared because Mommy wasn’t around to tell him what to do anymore.” She vehemently shook her head. “I will not be like that. I can’t be like that. Matt, why won’t you listen?!”
“I am listening!”
“You’re not! You always do this, you’re always against me, it’s like you hate me, you always-”
“Jane.” Matt’s deadpan voice cut her off. “Stop being ridiculous. I don’t hate you.”
“You do, you want to be dead, you want to be with your fangirls, you-”
“JANE. Come on.” He continued to hold his gaze, firm and unrelenting. “We’re a team. Listen. Listen! We’re a team. We are trying to work this out. This is not normal. Any of it. I’m just trying to be safe.”
Jane scowled, still not meeting his eyes, instead staring resolutely at the ceiling. Matt pressed on, still holding onto her arm.
“You can change the world,” he told her, “Really, easily change it. And there’s nothing most people could do to stop you. That’s crazy. Isn’t that crazy? You know how few people can say that? You know how few people there are that can just makeeveryone else do what they want?” He shook his head. “The Dawn stuff. The time stuff. Especially the time stuff. If you start looking at it like the key to every problem, pretty soon the entire world’s going to start looking like locks.”
“You talk about me like I’m evil,” Jane sniffed. Matt’s sighed and his expression softened. He pulled her into a stiff, resistant hug.
“You’re not evil,” he reassured her, “You’ll never be evil. But it’s not evil the road to Hell’s paved with. I’m just… I’m just worried about you. I’m trying to make sure you don’t get lost.”
Jane dropped her gaze to the floor.
“You think I’m lost?”
“I think you’re trying. I know you’re trying. I’m just trying to help.”
They lapsed into silence, the tall, stiff girl in the gorgeous shining dress and the rumpled, soft boy with his arms around her.
“I’m not sorry,” Jane said eventually. She pulled back and finally met his gaze, though with what was very much still a glower.
“I know you’re not.”
“Why should it be any different?” she asked bitterly, “Why should this be different to any power?”
“Because it’s time,” Matt replied. He moved to sit on the couch, pulling Jane gently down to sit beside him. “You can’t mess with time.”
“He killed you,” Jane pleaded, and her expression melted into longing, her voice infused through not with anger but a desperate need for him to understand. “He killed you. I can’t… I’m can’t just let that happen.”
She pulled free from his embrace. The couple lapsed into silence, each sitting facing slightly away from the other on opposite sides of the couch. Matt shook his head and sighed.
“We should’ve been more careful,” he said finally. Jane’s face scrunched up.
“I should’ve been more careful,” she echoed. She dropped her head into her hands. “I should’ve just grabbed you and blasted out, the minute there were crowds.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I panicked.”
“You hadn’t had time to shift,” he told her, soothing, shaking his head, “You’d just been in interview mode, you were still thinking like that. Neither of us had taken off our ‘public relations’ hats.”
“I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“Jane, you went back in time to save me.” Matt reached across the couch and took her hand. He held it, feeling the warmth, waiting until finally she relented and met his eyes. Her face was wracked with pain. “I will never say you don’t do enough.”
Her hand clenched his tight around his fingers. Matt smiled.
“Someday I’m going to die.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Someday I’m going to die. No, listen. Talking about it doesn’t make it any more likely. And if it’s gotta happen, it’s gotta happen. We can’t…” he shook his head, “…we can’t rewrite the universe so I stay alive.”
Jane’s grip loosened, and she pulled away. Slowly, dress still jingling when she moved, she pulled her legs up onto the couch, hugging them close to her chest.
“Jane.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Jane.”
“Go away if you want to die.”
“I don’t…” Matt sighed, exasperated, “I don’t want to die, I just… when you gotta go you gotta go. My time is my time. Like ideally my time is like, eighty years away, but I just… I just don’t want you royally screwing something up trying to save me.”
Jane continued staring straight forward, her eyes narrowed and her arms wrapped around her knees. It was a cool night, but Matt knew she wasn’t doing it for warmth – the power of Dawn meant the girl never got cold anymore.
“I’m going to protect you,” she muttered, still refusing to look at him. Matt shuffled over beside her and lay his head against her shoulder.
“No,” she complained, making a weak attempt to shrug him off.
“It’s okay.”
“Go away.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. You’ll see. It’ll work out.”
He reached an arm around her shoulders and slowly, through her half-hearted resistance, turned Jane’s head to face his own.
“Everything’s going to be alright.”
The girl’s hard expression became a mixture of longing and pain. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath then blinked rapidly, forcing her gaze up. Then suddenly, without any warning, she leaned in towards Matt and kissed him, full on the lips. The boy gave into the movement, letting her push him back, wrapping his arms around the back of her dress. Slowly, they sunk down into the cool, waiting softness of the leather couch. Matt relinquished the embrace, clapped his hands and the automatic lights faded, dousing the room in midnight.
And then slowly, from amongst the soft, gentle sounds that began murmuring up from the embrace of the sofa, there flowered within the darkness a soft, golden light.
