I Sang in my Chains

by When the Wind Stands Fair

Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea - 'Fern Hill' by Dylan Thomas. Matt and Emily consider their entrapment in time. No pairings but spoilers for 5.3 and 5.6.

I Sang in my Chains

Time held me green and dying,
Though I sang in my chains like the sea
- 'Fern Hill' by Dylan Thomas

Matt Anderson

Have you ever had that feeling? That weird swooping in your stomach like when you miss your footing over a drop and the next step is a lot further down than you expect? Well this is sort of like that. Sort of.

But it's not just that.

You know when you light a sparkler? The burst of hissing and spitting, the frantic, leaping sparks. You look at them and feel something stirring really deep inside you. Something primal, something you don't quite understand but don't want to end. It's that feeling that says 'You are holding fire in your hand. You can drop it and be safe, or you can keep it and be alive'. It's a bit like that too.

Imagine that. Try to picture that feeling. Billions of sparklers, trillions of electric shocks in every cell in the body. I can feel every nerve ending, screaming and singing in sheer joy.

I am the only one who has ever felt this. The only one who has ever stood on the crux between one time and another. I can see everything. And it's beautiful.

Looking straight ahead I see my home, newly fledged and angry. Planet Earth in an endless dance around the sun. I see the collision with Theia and I see Earth growing up. The grey clouds turn white and oceans begin to form in the space of a split second. The moon forms and Earth suddenly has a dancing partner.

I am the only one who has ever seen this. This knowledge strikes me like a rock and I can feel myself aging. I am no longer a scared boy with too much responsibility. I have seen this.

Except that I am still that scared little boy. Faced with the age of the Earth itself, what it has been through; constantly changing, being destroyed and remade over and over again, but always surviving...I am proud that I can call it my home. I am humbled that I could have played such a role in saving it.

Behind me, there is a blue and green and red and white planet. Oceans and forests, deserts and ice. It is the Earth, no doubt about that, but it is even older. It looks different.

The continents are a different shape, and I cannot tell if this is before or after the twenty-first century. I don't care; it's stunning. This beautiful, beautiful world. Life survives here, against all the odds.

No, it doesn't survive.

It thrives.

Down there, right now, there are dinosaurs or people or mer creatures. There are no future predators. They were the spawn of the future that never happened, and they have no place on this new world.

Neither do I.

I am the spawn of the future, and I never happened.

Is that why I am here? Watching the Earth go through what no-one else has seen? Is it saying thank you? Is it saying goodbye?

Or am I?

I am stood in the anomaly. I know my choice. Leaning left, I see the desolate landscape of my childhood. It is dead. It was dead long before I was born. Leaning right I see dust and rubble in a screaming wind that is all that is left of New Dawn. Out there are the only six people who know what I'm doing, the only four who know what I've done. They are wondering what is happening; maybe even waiting for me to return.

I remember all those years ago, stepping with my father from hell to Eden, just an impressionable young teen. We didn't know how long it would be until convergence, but it felt like forever. Now it feels so very short.

I have always known that the mission would likely kill me and I never had a problem with that. But I always thought it would kill me and that would be that. This is worse; I have to choose. Dead or Alive? Old or New?

Left or Right?

And I don't want to go. I never want to go.

What will happen if I leave?

Please don't make me leave. I want to stay.

And I do. I know it now. This swooping in my stomach; it isn't terror of the world to my left; it is yearning for the world to my right.

But I don't belong.

As much as I hated the Future Predators, they are my kin. Erased from a place we have no right to be. And I no longer have a reason.

What will happen if I stay?

Please make me leave. I don't know what will happen if I stay.

The last survivor of the land of the dead. The last hurrah.

I don't want to go back there. Let me stay.

I remember their faces. Six faces imprinted through time.

Connor. Abby. Becker. Jess. Lester.

Emily.

Please let me stay.

Again, I look left. That world is dead. There is nothing. I have nothing.

I look right. That world is so alive! I have no family there, and I don't have a past. But I have a future. Is it enough?

I look down. Two paths lead from my feet. If I take the left one I will never have existed, and the Earth will continue as it should. If I go right...

...I don't know.

I am still screaming and singing in joy and terror. Every cell is on fire and I feel...vital. Life is thrumming through me, in the instant before I die.

Then I notice.

The sparklers are still going, but they are not as bright. I know Connor's anomaly has almost finished its work.

It is time to decide.

Left or right? Life or death?

I look down at my feet.

I take a step.

Crunch.

Rubble cracks beneath my foot. I smile and keep walking. The anomaly closes soundlessly behind me.

There is dust; the air is thick with it and I can barely see but I know they are there.

They wait for me just as surely as I knew they would.

Connor and Abby are holding hands. Their faces are tearstained. I remember that this is not the first time they've watched an anomaly close on someone they care about.

Emily sobs quietly into Becker's shoulder, wrapped in his protective embrace. He is as stoic as ever, but I see the shock and pain on his face. The pain of losing yet another friend.

Because that's what we are. Somewhere along the line we became friends. They see me, they shout my name, and I am running and so are they.

The girls reach me first, and I pull them both into my chest in a rough hug, pressing a kiss to Emily's temple. I touch Connor's face and feel Becker ruffling my hair.

'How did you survive that?'

'I have no idea.'

But I do. I survived because I chose to, and I vow never to tell them of the alternative. I'm here now.

I wrap an arm around Emily's waist, pulling her into my side. She returns the embrace. Our strides match perfectly as I realise we are more alike than I first thought. She had a choice too. Had she stayed in her own time she would have died. She chose a place far removed from what she was used to in order to have a future and be with those she cared about.

My grip tightens. So does hers.

Inside that anomaly I felt alive. Free. I felt the release of the responsibility that has plagued me since I was chosen for the mission.

I knew I had been dying. I knew I would have died had I refused to make the choice at all. I made the decision and wrapped myself in the new chains and responsibilities of that choice.

Now I was home, with my friends and the woman I now could let myself love.

And I sang in my chains like the sea.

Emily Merchant

'Not the sort of thing a woman talks about.'

'You, as a woman, are not equipped mentally or emotionally to cope with such matters. Now leave it to the people who know what they're doing!'

I grit my teeth and stamp down hard on the retort I am so desperate to utter. 'They have no idea what they're doing!'

Three years away from this life has caused me to forget the rules and boundaries of this time. It has caused me to forget the heavy hand Henry ruled my life with.

I am no longer used to this.

Especially as I know both the alternative and the future. I am used to being in charge, or at least my opinion was valued and considered.

Not here.

Here I am chained a surely as the Tree-Creepers I used to hunt. I am a possession to be carted around and shown off. Henry's hunting dogs hold a greater position in his consideration than I do. At least they can decide where to go on the hunt.

But come the night everything changes. I shed my chains and become someone else. I leave the docile Victorian wife behind and reveal who I became when I first stepped through that gateway three years ago.

I am a huntress.

Not in the way Henry hunts; loud and brash and far outnumbering his prey. That is a coward's hunt.

And I am not a coward.

I slip alone through the gathering shadows, stalking a prey with abilities far superior to my own.

He is a master of his art; perfectly built to kill whatever he must.

I am but a human, yet I stalk him nonetheless.

He is armed with deadly claws and teeth, and a vicious turn of speed.

I am armed with two knives, secreted from the house kitchen. They are large knives but small in comparison to his great sickle-shaped talon.

My knives make me long for one of Matt's EMDs. A weapon that can disable prey from a distance would give me an advantage over my prey but, as it is, I have only my knives, my wit and my hard-learned courage. It may not be enough.

Every day another victim is named and I – unknowingly – am blamed. I am finally forced to admit that my prey bests me in all areas but one.

I learned during my travels that, while many creatures can adapt to many environments and some are extremely intelligent, nothing can best a human in surviving against all odds.

Intelligence helped us survive through the worlds; that and sheer tenacity, and now it helps me make the best of the one I came from.

After many weeks, I have finally found the creatures nest. I believe it was the first place it saw in this world, therefore the place where the anomaly, as Matt called it, appeared.

I am silent as I creep through the darkening streets. My knives are cold and reassuring inside my cloak. Lamp-lighters see my silhouette and flee in fear.

I ignore them; I am not the danger.

He is.

His nest is in a half-abandoned warehouse. It drips with water and stagnant mud and...I stop.

On this occasion, it drips with blood.

The creature has killed again.

I do not know what sort of creature it is. Matt would know but he's not here.

I am alone.

The only woman in this time to break the chains tying us down, if only in secret. This is what the anomalies do to us who encounter them; they show us the world and ensure we will never again lead the life we lead before.

I can hear it.

I've seen it before, just a glimpse. Blue-grey hide, small spines down its back. Now it's odd coughing bark echoes through the damp halls.

I melt noiselessly back into the darkness; I cannot afford to let it catch me unawares. So far, all victims were alone when killed. This creature hunts individuals, separated from the group.

I am alone; I must not let him see me.

This is my freedom.

Here I am not Lady Merchant: wife of Lord Henry Merchant.

I am Emily, who has survived what others cannot begin to fathom.

I have survived the past and found a home in the future, found a man who values my opinion and considers me worth saving.

But he is there and I am here.

We are alone.

The scrapes and barks move away and I breathe again, following.

Passing a window, I happen a glance over London.

The Thames is filthy. Sluggish and slow, it wends its way to the sea, passing Westminster and Big Ben. The great clock shines in the moonlight and I realise how late it is. I have been gone too long.

Leaving my quarry for another night, I slip out the front doors, escaping the nest.

I have not been missed; I doubt I will be; no-one seems to care for the private wanders of the lady of the house, except to gossip.

I ignore the parlour maids and manservants, smile as I remember Matt's complete lack of both and dry humour in commenting on them, and slip into my room, changing into attire more suiting a woman of my standing.

I try to ignore Henry's dark glare as I arrive late to the dining table. Passing off my absence as merely losing track of time, I sit and mind both my tongue and my manners.

I am quiet through the meal. Henry is pleased, no doubt believing I am recovering both my position and remembering my place s a woman.

I reality I am planning my escape.

Once I have dealt with the creature I will leave this place and never return. I will find another anomaly and try to make my way back to the twenty-first century; the only place I have ever felt at home.

I may have been born here but I am no Victorian woman.

I am free and not even Henry can keep me here.

I sit quietly and mind myself, and they do not hear.

They do not hear me singing.

I saw this snippet of the poem when I was sat in my Psychology class and the plot-bunnies started having neuron-implosions (are neuron-implosions real?)

Anyway, I wrote it down so it would leave me alone long enough to get home from school, then tried to work out who would be saying it and when. I came up with Matt [5.6] and Emily [pre-5.3].

Unfortunately, once I get an idea it doesn't tend to let me sleep, so I've had a very tired week, and am likely to have another one as I have finished the third in my Clipper series, and am now struggling with the second. (My friends all give me weird looks when I tell them I wrote the third before the second and had the idea for the fourth before I thought about the first. Is it any wonder I don't get much sleep?) Does this happen to anyone else?

Please review!