Hi! I hope you all like this fic! It was written for QLFC, where I have joined the Harpies as Chaser 3. My main prompt is time travel a la Star Trek (reboot) films, so I'm using travel through a singularity in a spaceship, as well as divergent timelines.
Optional prompts: Gratitude, Coral, Alone Sometimes by the Mowgli's
Kind of a fusion between Harry Potter history with some Star Trek/space elements.
I'm not alone cause I wanna be alone
It's just the way it went down
~Alone Sometimes, The Mowgli's.
…
You never meant for any of this to happen. This isn't what you planned; it isn't what you asked for. You only ever wanted to protect your family. To avenge your little brother, because the truth is that you can't forget seeing the light leave his eyes, and you can't forget seeing Rookwood standing over him, laughing.
He was nineteen. Fred was only nineteen, and then he wasn't anything at all. He was just dead.
You shake your head, trying to get rid of the image of too-cold brown eyes staring up at the stars, unseeing. It's enough that he haunts you in your sleep, his eyes cold and broken in a way they never were in life. Can't you get some peace while you're awake?
Anyway. The point is, you only ever took the starship because you heard whispers about Rookwood being seen.
It wasn't legal, not in the new world where the Dark Lord ruled the galaxy and anyone who didn't follow him didn't have rights to fly a starship. But you… you have long since stopped caring about legalities. You stopped around the same time you saw your little brother die, around the time the law did nothing to punish the man responsible.
It used to be so important to you. It used to mean everything. You clung to the law so tightly you betrayed your family, the people you love. You made mistakes. You made so many mistakes. You're still not sure if going after Rookwood is one of them, just another mistake, but you could never have done anything else. You heard his name uttered in whispers and you knew.
So you stole a starship and you took off after him. You didn't mean to take it straight into the singularity.
When you notice the pull, notice the way you can no longer turn, notice the gravity of the singularity dragging you down, you figure this is the end. You figure this is how you will die. But it's okay, because you watched Rookwood shoot into the singularity in front of you, and if you die, at least he dies too. You feel gratitude, knowing that the man who killed your brother is dead. At least the universe has righted this injustice, even if it took years.
You spare a moment to regret the people you are leaving behind, to regret making your parents lose another son, your siblings lose another brother. You think about Oliver, your best friend — and maybe more. Maybe if you were braver. Maybe that's just one more thing to regret.
You close your eyes as you shoot into the heart of the singularity. You don't expect to open them. The world goes quiet, and you can feel the blood pounding in your ears, can hear your own pulse breaking the silence — and then the world speeds up again. You open your eyes to see fractures of color — aquamarine and coral and ivory, spiky and jagged across your vision.
And everything feels upside down and backwards and you're throwing up in a corner of the starship cabin. It feels like your intestines are trying to crawl their way out your throat. You dig your nails into your palms and breath deeply.
After a few long minutes, the world rights itself slowly. It doesn't stop the feeling that something is wrong, but at least you feel a little less inside out. Your stolen starship is floating in the blackness of space. There's no sign of the singularity. There's no sign of anything at all. You feel… alone. Space does that sometimes, presses down in a way that makes it feel like you're the only humanoid left alive, but this is… different. This is stronger.
You take another deep breath, and start booting up the console, seeing if the starship is dead in the water or if it just shut down for a moment. You take a second to thank the stars that your stolen ship has good vacuum sealing even under no power.
You turn a dial, and the ship rumbles to life beneath you. You breathe out. You check the nav panel. You stare.
According to the nav panel, you are about 700 light years from where you entered the singularity. The dial that usually shows the stardate is shattered.
This is fine. It's fine. You expected to be dead. But if you aren't dead, neither is Rookwood. Which means you aren't done, so you check the nav panel again. The nearest planet, Senris, is only an hour or so away at warp 4. You lay out a course, set up the nav panel, and you breathe.
…
Except then you reach Senris, and the feeling of wrong just increases. You radio in to the spacedock, but your stolen credentials don't scan and they won't let you dock. And… yes, the starship is stolen, but if they knew it was stolen, they would let you dock and then arrest you. It's like your credentials don't exist at all. You don't know what that means. You don't think it's good. But you can't ignore it, so you hook up to the 'Net and set your pad to tell you the news. That's when you notice the date.
That's… that's got to be a glitch in your pad, doesn't it? You weren't even born in 2122. None of your siblings were. It's a glitch, that's all.
Except then the news starts to flood in, and this is history, but not history as you remember it. The Dark Lord hadn't risen yet in 2122. You know that. His first rise was 2130, his disappearance in 2135, and his second rise was thirteen years later in 2148, when you were 19. Five years ago.
There should be no one using that name now. But… If it's not a glitch. If the singularity flung you into the past… maybe it tossed Rookwood even further back. And with that thought, you know what you have to do. You have to find the Dark Lord. You have to find Rookwood.
This is better than revenge. Better than chasing after a man out of vengeance, despite knowing that it won't make Fred less dead. This is a chance to give Fred life. A chance to make sure he never dies at all.
You have made enough mistakes.
It is time to rectify them.
