Love Knows No Chronology
By Jeune Ecrivain
Rating: PG
Summary: Phil/Keely reunion fic. Having returned to the 22nd century, Phil reflects on all of his past experiences and makes a decision.
A/N: This came out even more angsty than I intended. I apologize if this is too melodramatic for anyone, but I promise a VERY happy and significantly more light-hearted ending is soon to come! The angst here may prove to an advantage, since I believe that the greater the angst the happier the happy ending!
One of his first experiences in the 21st century had been meeting a girl who had at first struck him as quirky and unduly preoccupied with her social standing. Hoping to make at least some casual friends to get him through the duration of his stay in the century before his own, he had taken her need for tutoring in algebra as an opportunity to extend a hand of friendship towards her. He had been somewhat disappointed when she had at first accepted it only vaguely and with the provision that it not be public.
The next day, however, she had surprised him. Even when he had only a vague notion of the social hierarchy in 21st century brick-and-mortar high schools, he had known enough to tell that she had made a bold move in sitting with him at lunch that first day. With a small and almost shy smile that in some ways seemed to officially welcome him to the 21st century (without her even knowing it), she had accepted his invitation for friendship wholeheartedly in one seemingly casual move.
She had quickly opened up more and more to him with each passing week after that, and the young man too found himself sharing things with her. It was primarily through her that he had made two other loyal friends. It was almost entirely she who had made him grow more comfortable in the 21st century than he had ever expected to. She had made him feel like he belonged when he truly didn't.
It had been with her and her alone that he had shared his mind-blowing secret. To this day, he still marveled at how well she had carried his secret for him. True, she had initially stared at him as if she didn't know who he really was and walked away visibly numb from shock and deep thought. Yet she had come back that same day, looked him in the eye, and said with shy but warm reassurance, "Whatever secrets you have are safe with me." He still admired her greatly for being so loyal as to keep such a monumental secret with hardly a second thought.
From that day on, she had quickly become almost a part of the family as well as an even closer friend to him. The youth could remember vividly the time she had left a dance to which she had yearned to go only to join him and his family in celebrating a holiday that had yet to be established, using customs that were surely foreign to her. She had not only been willing to share his secret, but now she had willingly participated in an unfamiliar tradition for no other apparent reason than the fact that it meant something to him and his family. She had wanted to know about the very different world from which he had come and even be a part of it in any way she could.
In retrospect, it should have been no surprise that somewhere amidst the adventures they had shared involving his arsenal of yet-to-be-invented gadgets, his many missteps in adjusting to 21st-century culture, and the great escapades he and she had shared in the name of preserving his secret, he had fallen in love with her. Even now, he wasn't sure exactly when it had happened, but one day realization had struck him. He had fallen for her vivacious disposition, her golden blonde hair which always looked pretty no matter how she wore it, and her wide blue eyes in which he could often see her inner child dancing but which could simultaneously reflect great caring, concern, or even a youthful sort of intellect.
In one respect, he had quickly found out, he had been a normal teenage boy. He recalled wanting so much to tell her how he felt but never finding the right time or the right words. It was unusual for him to be at all hesitant to speak, but he had soon found out that being in love was a different story. His array of 22nd-century gadgets offered no weapon against the time-worn fear of rejection and of ruining a precious friendship in the risky attempt to turn it into something even more priceless.
This had made it all the more surprising how little it had taken for his true inclinations towards her to come to light. In one of his most vivid memories from his time from the 21st-century, she had stopped by his home to find his family attempting to wash the car. With a good-natured smirk on her face that he was sure had been worthy of Kodak, she had quickly involved herself in the undertaking, acting very much the expert on washing and maintaining 21st-century transportation devices with all the mock pompousness that came with it. He could still remember that moment when they had both taken a sideways step on opposite sides of the car to find each other face to face. She had looked from him, to the hose in her hand, and back at him. Then, her lips had formed a distinct shape that had made him wonder how so much mischief could be packed into a relatively small smile.
Having figured out her intentions a split-second too late, he had promptly found himself drenched from the chest up. He hadn't hesitated then in taking off after her, chasing her around the house and finally cornering her against the fence. Wrestling the hose from her grip, he had swiftly proven to her that payback was indeed a brat, causing her to emit a high-pitched yelp in the process.
But then, he had paused to look at her as she regarded him with that bright smile of hers and a playful spark still in her eye. Even now, he wasn't sure if he had been drunk from love or playfulness, but he hadn't realized how close he was drawing to her face, on which the bright smile was fading slightly as she had seemed to realize more than he had. His judgment hindered by some abstract force, he had brushed his lips against hers.
Then, just as quickly, his judgment had returned and he had pulled away.
"Sorry," was all he had managed to say sheepishly, praying that he hadn't just opened up a can of worms from which their friendship would never recover.
After a brief pause that had seemed much longer to him, she had lowered her head slightly to force him to look her in the eyes. "For what?" she had almost whispered.
"For…doing that. For kissing you," he had said. "You probably didn't want that to happen."
She had then shaken slightly, but she had stealthily re-established eye contact and said, "What makes you so sure I didn't?"
Her response having surprised him, he had stammered. But either she had somehow deciphered his utterings or she had been too impatient to wait for better articulation, for she had given him the smallest hint of a smile before kissing him softly on the lips.
It had then been his turn to initiate eye contact as he looked into her blue eyes to confirm what he thought and hoped she was telling him. Her eyes had responded practically with a command. His face finally breaking out in a lopsided grin, he had obeyed that mandate and kissed her again, this time more passionately. If there had been any doubt left as to the message she had been sending him, it had been erased when she had returned his kiss with equal passion.
They had shared several more such kisses before they had decided to get back to the car before his family became suspicious.
Thus had begun the most meaningful and perhaps the only true romantic relationship the young man had ever had. He had taken her to a small but cozy Italian restaurant for their first official date, and they had eventually made it a routine outing. They would spend many hours laughing together, watching a movie, or just talking and sharing their life's ambitions with one another. If they would run out of things to talk about, they would soon be engaged in what in the 21st-century was referred to as a "make-out session."
The youth stifled a sob, remembering the time he had first told her he loved her and vice versa. One thing that the 21st and 22nd centuries had in common was a widespread acceptance of the fact that young love rarely lasts. But he hadn't cared. When he had said those three little words to her, he knew he had meant it. And somehow, he knew she had meant it too.
Then, the day had come when he had cursed himself for completely forgetting that the place and time period he had grown to call home (largely because of her) were not where he belonged. He should have known the day would come when he would have to return to the world from which he had come. In retrospect, the irony did not escape him that the fixing of the family time machine, an event that couldn't come soon enough when he had first found himself stranded a century behind his natural lifetime, had then come far too soon.
When he had finally managed to say the words that he had never wanted to say to the girl he loved, she had looked at him blankly for a moment before tears could be seen sneaking out the corners of her eyes and she had finally abandoned her composure and rushed into his arms. In that moment, they had held each other tight, not wanting to let go. He had kept hoping that his dad would find another problem with the time machine, but in the end, he had known that there was no facing the fact that he and the girl that he had held onto for dear life were worlds apart. That's the way the timeline had been designed, and he had been powerless to do anything about it.
The image of her face as she had watched him step into the time machine after saying her last good-byes was burned into his memory. She had looked like a young child who had been dropped off at day care for the first time and was watching longingly as her parents left her seemingly alone.
Upon returning to the 22nd-century, the youth found the familiarity of the world in which he had been born of little or no comfort. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, he did his best to convince himself that he was where he belonged, that as much as he wanted to hold her in his arms again, to have her fall asleep with her head on his shoulder, to be with her as she went through life, it just wasn't meant to be.
So there he sat, six months later, still longing to see her, to hold her, to hear her voice. When he had first returned to the 22nd century, he had believed himself to be a fool for allowing himself to fall in love with a girl that fate had so obviously not designated for him. Now, he felt like a fool for ever leaving her, for abandoning the life he could've had with her in favor of a world in which she was surely dead and buried (though he resisted any conscious thought of the 'd' word) in the name of the now trivial fact that it was where he "belonged."
Recently, however, he had begun to espouse a different idea about where he belonged. Perhaps it was due to nothing more than a mind desperate for some hope to which to cling after months of rationalizing the loss he felt, but nonetheless he entertained the idea. He now questioned the assumption that fate works within the framework and context of naturally occurring chronology. He wondered if perhaps the unnamed force known as fate operated independently of the proper chronological sequence of human history. If this were true, than it was very plausible that he and his family's time traveling mission had happened for some predestined reason. He didn't know what that reason was for his sister or for his parents, but he knew what the reason for him was. Fate had broken the laws of chronology in order to let him meet the person with whose life he was meant to share his own. His own apparent failure to make any significant progress in getting over his 21st-century romance seemed to support the concusion.
Being not at all naïve, however, the youth did not expect his family to believe such a proposition. They would surely try to gently remind him of where he belonged and that his musings were the product of albeit understandable wishful thinking. For this reason, his argument in approaching his family about the radical idea of returning to the 21st century on a more permanent basis would be based more on Wobbyism. He would play on his family's nostalgia for what they themselves missed about the 21st century, which he had always been able to tell was not at all insignificant. Though they hadn't become nearly as deeply attached to anyone in the 21st century as he had, he knew that they still had a considerable number of heartstrings tied to a time a hundred years in the past. He would use those heartstrings and not his own to draw them back and, with any cosmic luck at all, convince them to return to the century that had become a second home to them.
