author Keren Ziv
rating G
summary temporal cold war fic.
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
-Segals Law.
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They have a standing date for each new day: to find each other at a footpath in Golden Gate Park. Today he's lucky. He wakes up in his own apartment and takes a shuttle to the park north side of the park, then jogs the rest of the way, well past the tulips in the west, until he finds the ducks. She's there already, and with her is a child.
They nod to one another and make their way to the tiny changing rooms at the beach that is never used, no matter when they are. As he closes the door behind them, he drinks in her sight.
The temporal cold war fatigues her.
Her bones are too big for her body, and they stick out like weapons from odd places beneath her clothes. Averting her eyes from him, she chews on the stub of an unpolished nail. It would have been rubbing salt in the room, he thinks, if the nail had been polished. In their own time, she would never paint her nails. Then again, in their own time, she would never bite them to the stub.
As he walks to her, she whispers that this is not her child.
Today, he tells her. Today, it is their child, until tomorrow becomes theirs again. He's not certain how many times he's been in this position, in a timeline not his own, consoling a woman over a child that she never birthed.
He touches the walls of his prison with his eyes, skimming the curve of her body again in all its irregularities. There is something wrong with her: she remembers. It wears on him, this love for her that is his damnation. With her, he's been given a gift. (With her), he's been cursed. It is her past that has allowed her this ability to stay outside of time's maneuvers and manipulations.
She sighs and reaches out a hand to trace the cracks of the wall. Now, there have been bombings. Indeed, the building shakes even at this moment. On her hip, the child mimics her movement, pudgy fist stretching toward hers. It turns its face to him, and he realizes that its eyes are too blue and hair too blonde to be his.
Tomorrow, he promises her over the ears of the child that cannot be theirs, its skin and hair will darken and its eyes will become dusk. He touches her hands lightly, and she shrinks from his touch. He knows that she feels the blame for this, feels the accusations that he's never voiced. She can never be sure, but she knows that it is Tolaris or the Seleya or even her own rebellious will that's led her here. She is out of step with her species, and so is out of step with everybody.
Except him, he reminds her. They're on the same dance.
Oh, but sometimes they're so far apart! Sometimes she wakes and finds that she is twenty years younger than she was the day before, and he's so youthful in front of his spoiled spirit that it aches her, it truly does. She wakes some days and finds herself with him, and he's old, older than she'd ever thought a person could be, and there is this devotion for him so strong in her that she breaks. And yet, many days, the man next to her has a fair complexion and light hair.
And some days he wakes with a star that speaks twenty languages, he says. But he always comes back to her.
The day has passed now, and with it any anger and punishment thought earned by them. It's become a yesterday, like the thousands of yesterdays before it. The child faces him and blinks, smiles. Impulsively, passionately, he gathers them to his breast. He falls asleep with the two of them in his arms; the morning could bring neither.
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finish