If you're just starting in this series, it's part three (after Bayek of Nowhere, Father of No One, and Bayek, Through All Time. There's also a little collection of oneshots called Khemu of the Twenty First Century). I did my best to make sure it makes sense, but obviously reading the whole thing is going to help the most.
-/-
Elijah's last night at home is spent wide awake and worrying.
Tomorrow he's leaving for school. He's leaving for the school where he's going to be away from his dad and his home for months. And yes he's excited but he's also—
He's scared. He hasn't been genuinely scared in years, and why should he be? He has people he can count on, skills he can count on, and… well, come on. What kind of danger could compete with what he's seen already?
(College. Turns out college is just as terrifying as time travel, as knowing his dad's been turned into a statue, as temporarily losing his mind.)
He texts Khemu, and then Elina, but neither one answers so Elijah assumes they're both asleep. He tosses his phone onto his desk and turns over in bed. Then he turns back. He's not at all tired, and he's thinking a million miles a minute.
About one in the morning, his bedroom door creaks. Elijah sits straight up in bed, fumbling instinctively for a weapon. He's not exactly a fighter, but he's a Sage, a time traveler, and the son of an Assassin turned Hidden One. He has had people try to kill him before, and he's had to learn to defend himself.
"It's me, Elijah."
"Oh." He relaxes. "Dad, I thought you were asleep."
"I couldn't sleep," he says. "And I thought I heard you tossing and turning in here."
Hidden by the darkness in the bedroom, Elijah smiles sheepishly. "I guess I'm nervous," he says. "I've never been away from home for that long."
"Well," his dad says. "That's completely untrue."
Elijah shifts over on the bed and sits up to give his dad room to sit down. He feels the mattress dip. "Okay," he admits. "I've never been away from home for that long for such a normal reason."
"See?" his dad says. "This won't be so bad compared to some of the things you've already done. And you can call anytime."
Something about the way his voice catches on the words makes Elijah think that what he's actually saying is please don't forget to call.
Elijah moves closer and hugs his dad. "You know I love you, right?" he says. "I'm going to miss you."
They sit in silence for a long minute. Elijah's eyes are wet, and he can feel his dad's arm tight around his shoulders.
When Elijah eventually decides to say something, it takes him two tries to get it out. It feels important though. It feels like the kind of thing he's supposed to say before leaving home for the first time to go away to school. "When I was a kid," he says. "And I left Mom, I didn't know what I was doing. I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know why. I didn't think I was going to find you and get a real family."
"Elijah."
He pushes on. "I barely felt like a person before. You, and Khemu, and Elina, you changed all that."
Then he stops, because—in that moment, he knows how much his dad loves him. He knows that, and he knows his dad knows how much Elijah loves him. There's nothing he can say now that will do anything but ruin the moment.
He falls asleep less than fifteen minutes later, and when he wakes with he sun the next morning, the rest of his life begins.
-/-
The first eighteen years of Elijah's life have been more eventful than most people's. He'd started life as a Sage, knowing and understanding things that he just shouldn't have been able to. He remembers being born—from the very first minute of his life, Elijah had been different.
For a muddy, lonely several years, he'd lived without really living. He'd known plenty, but he hadn't been connected, to anything or anyone, not until the day when he'd woken up and known it was time to leave. He'd come to the Hidden Ones, where he meet first Khemu—his first friend—and then Elina, and his dad, and in a way himself.
They'd had to get rid of Juno before things could calm down enough to just let them live, but they'd done it. He'd helped. He'd gotten a life, and for several years he'd just… gone to school, hung out with his friends, lived with his dad in peace. Until Aita had come from the distant past and… well, there had been misunderstandings.
He'd run to the past with Khemu, Elina, Khemu's mother, and Layla—a family friend, by now. They'd traveled from century to century, recruiting help, gearing up for what they thought was going to be a fight with Aita. Things had gone wrong. Elijah had lost himself for a while and believed he was Aita. Khemu had spent a year with pirates. And in the end, they hadn't even needed to fight. All those people they'd recruited, they'd just ended up talking to Aita, convincing him that humanity was worth putting up with, even respecting, from an isu point of view.
It had worked so well that Aita had gone out and adopted—well, unofficially adopted—a human daughter. Elijah sees Ana fairly often, when Aita brings her by to visit, and for a month or so every summer when she comes to visit, and spend some time with people that are actually the same species as she is. She's very observant, and notices things that most people don't—Elijah thinks she must have had to adapt to living with isu, who just know things that humans don't. Instead of knowing, she notices.
It's a weird world that Elijah lives in, a weird life he lives, even if most of high school has been relatively calm. Still, there's still the occasional blip of interest. He's never going to be able to completely move past whatever it is in his head that wants him to think he's Aita, but he's learned to live with it. A couple years ago, when stress at school was making it happen more and more, his dad had sat down with him and talked him through some of the techniques he'd used in the animus to fight the bleeding effect. That helps a lot. And the Hidden Ones—the combination of ex-Assassins and ex-Templars that most of Elijah's friends and family are a part of—are focusing more and more on issues in the past these days. Elijah doesn't keep track that closely of what they do from day to day, but one of the things they do is help Sages throughout history that have gone crazy. Elijah tries to make sure he's always there to help with that.
All that's going to have to stop now. Khemu's already been away at school for a year, so Elijah has heard all about how hard it is to hide things that make you different. He's going to have to be just a normal freshman.
Moodily, Elijah kicks at the leg of the dining room table. He's never been a normal anything. It doesn't sound like much fun.
"What did the table do to you?" his dad asks, as the two of them pick at their breakfasts.
"Nothing," Elijah mumbles.
"Okay then, what else is bothering you?"
Elijah takes a deep breath. "Everyone's going to know I'm weird," he says.
"So what if you're—"
"And I like being weird," Elijah says. "I don't like having to hide it." His dad is grinning at him before he even finishes the sentence. "What?"
"You're never going to be able to hide that you're weird," he says. "It's all over your face."
Literally, it is all over his face. Elijah inherited his face from Aita, who doesn't even look that normal, with his mismatched eyes and untamable hair, compared to other isu. Elijah always draws stares, whatever he's doing and wherever he goes. Still. "Thanks, Dad."
His dad puts his hand on his shoulder and squeezes. "You're going to do great," he says. "You're going to make friends, and learn things, and when you need us, we'll always be here."
It's that last part that really makes it okay. It takes Elijah's fear and turns it into regular old nerves. He can deal with that. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
His dad grins at him. "Great," he says. "Then let's get the car loaded up."
-/-
Elina had struggled with the decision of whether or not she should even apply to college. By now, she's fully committed to the Hidden Ones. That's her future, and she's happy with it. Running around between centuries, traveling through time, fixing whatever kinds of problems might pop up? Yea, please. She can't imagine anything better.
In the end, three things make her decide to go. First of all, it's something her dad wants, and that matters. He wants her to have a full education, and in the long run four years isn't such a long time that it's worth arguing about. Second, there are things she can learn in school that will help her in the past. She decides on a history major, and looks forward to four years of being the only person in that program that knows for sure her degree is going to come in handy. And third, her friends are going. Khemu's already been at school for a year, Elijah has already made it clear he wants to follow him, and Elina isn't ready to not be with them.
When it comes right down to it, that's what matters the most.
Her dorm room is tiny, and her roommate is quiet and bug eyed, like she's perpetually surprised by the world around her. Elina's… not fully sure what to make of that, so after a little bit of small talk she skulks her way into the boys' dorm and finds her way to the room Khemu and Elijah are going to be sharing for the year.
She can't pretend she's not jealous. They get to live together while she's stuck on her own with a stranger.
"You guys have a lot of stuff," she announces, looking around their room. She can hear that her voice is louder than usual, trying to cover up how she's feeling. "I mean, more stuff than I brought, and definitely more stuff than my roommate brought, I don't think she—"
Khemu surprises her with a hug. Elina looks at him with surprise. "It's going to be okay," he says, voice serious. In the last few years he's gotten taller, and filled out, and at times like this he reminds Elina a lot of his dad. Bayek has this kind of rock solid, reassuring presence that Khemu is starting to grow into.
"I don't know," Elina says. "It feels all wrong."
"I know," Khemu says. "That's just how it feels when you start."
Elina is still skeptical, but Khemu's hug and his words are having an effect at least.
"I feel the same way," Elijah admits from where he's surrounded by a cluster of boxes. "But Khemu says it goes away."
"It'll go away fast," Khemu promises them both. "Faster than it did for me, because we're all together."
"I'm a floor up and two hallways away," Elina complains. "That's not all together."
"It's a three minute walk," Khemu says.
"Well it's longer when you get lost on the way," Elina admits. She's not great at directions, and everywhere in the dorms looks exactly the same to her. Her argument is half hearted though. It's hard to stay too upset after a hug from Khemu.
She sits down on one of the beds—Elijah's, it looks like, judging by the boxes he's barely started to unpack—and rummages around in his things while the boys start to bicker over how much space they each need. Elina's content to just sit and half listen, but after only a few minutes she hears Elijah go quiet and scramble to his feet.
"What's wrong?" she asks, looking up and tensing for a fight.
"I don't know," Elijah says. "Someone's coming though."
And then a moment later she feels it too, a sort of electric buildup in the room around her that she's eventually come to realize is a sign that someone's time travelling toward them. As usual, Elijah's sixth sense picks up on the change first.
And then Aita is stumbling into the room from nowhere, off balance in a way that Elina doesn't usually associate with him, clutching Ana tight against his chest. They're both disheveled, Ana is crying, and Aita looks afraid.
Elina looks sideways at Khemu, who looks as clueless as she feels. He shrugs and they share a weird Elijah stuff is happening look. It's a familiar look after all this time, but Elina hadn't been expecting to have to drag it out the first morning they all get to college together.
"You know what this is?" Khemu whispers, sidling over to her. On the other side of the room, Elijah and Aita are having what looks like a very serious conversation in the isu language, peppered with the occasional comment from Ana.
"What?" she whispers back.
"An adventure," Khemu says grimly. "Something big is happening."
Elina hesitates, then nods. "Something happened to Aita, you think?" she asks.
"Him or Ana," Khemu says.
"I hope not Ana," Elina says. She watches as Aita lowers his adopted daughter to the floor and hugs her tight. The movement seems somehow unbalanced. "Poor baby."
"She's not really a baby," Khemu says. "She's eight now."
"She's a baby," Elina says again, watching the way Aita dwarfs her. Then her eyebrows shoot up (she can actually feel the muscles on her forehead twisting as her eyebrows go rocketing upward) when Aita steps forward and vanishes.
"There's been an uprising," Elijah says somberly, in English. "In Aita's time—well, something's happened. He didn't tell me all the details, but some humans have gotten their hands on an apple of Eden. There are riots, and a lot of isu on human violence."
"Oh no," Elina says, following this thought process to the logical conclusion. "They would have hurt Ana?"
The girl makes a noise halfway between misery and terror.
"We have to watch her," Elijah says. "I promised Aita we would, just until things calm down there."
"It's time travel," Elina says. "Shouldn't he be able to come right back?"
"He'll come back when the time is right," Elijah says. It's the kind of infuriatingly vague answer that apparently comes with having a sixth sense. She's heard this kind of stuff from Elijah a thousand times over the years, and from Aita several times as well. She knows better than to argue with it by now. "Things need to calm down, and sort of… settle into one timeline. There's too many variables there right now, and too many branching alternate histories."
"Sure," Elina says, as if this makes total sense. It does to Elijah and it does to Aita and that's all they need to know for right now. Well, that and the fact that between the three of them, they're going to have to find a way to take care of an eight year old.
As if this thought has occurred to all three of them at the same time, they look down at Ana. She stands between them, shaking all over and holding her arms tight across her body. "Come here," Elina says softly, and Ana runs to her immediately for comfort. It takes a while to calm her down, and in the end she only stops shaking when the three of them wrap her up in one of Khemu's blankets and tuck her into a corner of the bed.
"Elina," Elijah says quietly, reaching out to grab her elbow. "You need to talk to her."
"Me?"
"Yea."
"Why?"
He'd been so nervous only a few minutes ago, torn up with anxieties about school and leaving home. Now, as tragic as the circumstances are, he's in his element. So is she, if she's being honest—so is Khemu. They're used to this kind of excitement, this is they stuff they can deal with.
"Because I know she's not going to talk to either of us," Elijah says. "And I'd reallylike to know what's going on in the past."
"Aita didn't tell you?"
"Not much," Elijah says. "I've never seen him that…" He looks for the word. "Frazzled?"
"Oh," Elina says, without enthusiasm. "Great. Because that's a good sign." Aita's never frazzled.
"I know," Elijah says. "Talk to her?" He gestures back to Khemu. "We're going to have to figure out how to hide her in here until Aita comes back, and there's something I want to look at."
Elina nods. "Yea," she says. "I'll do the best I can."
So while the boys huddle up in the opposite corner of the room, Elina climbs up onto the bed next to Ana. "Can you tell me what happened?" she asks.
Ana's eyes are wide. "Is she going to come here?" she asks. She has a pretty accent, sort of lilting in a way that makes her sound like she's always about to start singing. Elina has never heard it from anyone else, not even the isu she's met—they don't have to learn English, the way Ana has, they just know it.
"Who?" Elina asks.
Ana shrugs with one shoulder. "People came to the house," she says. "They had a fight with Daddy, 'n he got hurt…"
"Hurt?" Elina echoes. "How—"
Ana tilts her whole body forward and mimes stabbing something at Elina. For a second Elina stares at her, then her eyes flick over to where Elijah and Khemu are standing. Elijah is squatting next to Khemu, looking at something wet and red on the floor where Aita had been standing.
This, Elina finally and fully realizes, is bad.
-/-
So here is chapter one, hopefully it is liked, and I am sorry it took so long to get it up! All I want to do is write about Odyssey right now. :'(