Goodbye

Lauren awoke with a start. She found herself tucked into a bed surrounded by stone walls with no windows, an inner room of the garrison lit by candles. I'll never get used to all this sleeping and waking up in different places… She winced when she considered the possible connotations of that thought. A small snore alerted her to the presence of another person in the room. Glancing sideways, she found Gil asleep in a chair dressed in a rumpled musketeer uniform. Lauren leaned up on her elbow and brushed his knee with her fingertips. "What are you doing there? It's late; you should be asleep in your own bed," the girl told him quietly.

Gil's eyes fluttered open, and his expression went from confusion to delight. "It's afternoon, Lauren. You've been out all day. When you fainted, we put you to bed and we've been taking turns watching to see if you wake."

"I didn't 'faint,'" she mumbled in a weak protest, grimly remembering the night before. A hand to her face confirmed that the spy's hit had bruised her cheek. She met Gil's eyes briefly and saw them flick downwards and then away. Puzzled, the girl looked down and realized that she still wore the strapless gown with her scandalously naked shoulders exposed to the world. On another occasion, she might have shared in the musketeer's embarrassment, but by now she had ceased to care what this time thought of her. Lauren collected herself for a moment—So this is it. She turned to the still half-asleep boy and told him, "I have to go, Gil."

"Go where?" he asked, his gaze snapping back up to meet hers.

Another sigh escaped her lips. "Back to my own time." Lauren looked at the ceiling, anticipating his reaction.

The boy got distressed on her. "No, you don't have to go anywhere—stay here. This is your real world, your time, where you belong!" he cried earnestly.

"You believe me? About the different times?" she asked quickly, watching his face again.

Gil grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently. "I always knew there was something different about you, ever since I saw you rummaging through the kitchen cupboards in your breeches—if you say it's true, then I believe you."

Withdrawing her hand slowly, the girl changed the subject. "I see you're back in the musketeers."

Gil cleared his throat and leaned back; he had been sitting at the edge of his seat from the excitement. "Uncle Martin sent for me as soon as the others brought you and the dead spy back. Jacques told him that you risked your life to get me my position back, and he granted it in honor of your bravery."

"Oh, so he's dead," Lauren said bluntly. She did not have to specify who. The thought of the slimy spy made her blood boil—she wished she could have punished him by her own hand.

Gil did not seem to notice her darkened expression as he continued. "I heard that Jacques got the first hit, but Siroc finished him off."

That brought a memory to the forefront of her mind. She seized his hand frantically, sitting straight up. "Gil! You have to do something for me: tell Siroc that the spy wanted him and said something about him being a slave."

"You can tell him yourself," he said quietly with an intent stare.

The girl sighed and fell backwards on the hard mattress, her hands going to rub her temples, a strange headache coming on. "No, Gil. I am going home. I left everything right in this world. I'm done."

"Lauren…" the musketeer began, but she shot him a look that pleaded for him to stop arguing. Gil changed his mind and said, "I understand." With a look of remorse on his face, he kissed her hand, laying it reverently back at her side, and Lauren closed her eyes again, a small smile on her lips.

The boy looked down at her for a moment. He leaned forward once again and placed a gentle kiss on her lips, whispering against them "I love you." But she was already gone.

Lauren woke up again, this time back in her hospital bed. She looked sideways to see the one other person there, a girl slightly younger than Lauren who was sitting on a rolling chair watching a rerun of Friends on the room's television. "Hey!" came the friendly voice of her cousin Ellie when she looked over her shoulder at the newly awoken girl.

"Hello," Lauren croaked out of her dry throat. The first thing she noticed was that her lower lip was numb and, when she reached up to touch it, very swollen. "What happened?" she slurred.

Ellie rolled a few feet closer to hand her a glass of water from the bedside table as she answered, "You fell off Bud about…" She checked her watch. "Oh, about six hours ago."

Lauren sputtered, the water escaping from her fat lip to drip down her blood and dirt smeared shirt. "Only six hours?" she asked incredulously. All of that dream happened in six hours?

"Yes," her cousin replied, watching the television once more and not seeing the girl's reaction. "You have a lovely, purple bruised shoulder, eleven stitches on the inside of your lip, and you probably won't want to look at your face in a mirror anytime soon… and a concussion, too. You'll be okay though."

Lauren set the glass on the table and laid her head back on the pillow, trying to absorb all the information. So everything in France really was a dream… But of course it was—you knew that, she mentally chided herself. She rubbed her forehead with a hand and immediately brought it before her eyes. There it was—a red, raised scar across her palm.

The girl smiled and relaxed. I am not crazy. I really did fall into France.

Falling

One year later…

Lauren traced the scar on her hand, a thin line drawn across her palm. Ellie had told her that it happened in the ambulance on the way to the hospital—some strange, random accident with some sharp tool, but Lauren could not believe that, not after what she had seen.

After her six hour adventure, she graduated from high school and moved on. Now she was at Furman University, not Georgetown. At last minute she sent in an application because the campus was beautiful, full of gardens and fountains that reminded her of Versailles—and brought back the memory of one special night…

She strolled across the quad, on her way to a French history class with her paper on the musketeers tucked neatly in her copy of Alexandre Dumas' Twenty Years After; no matter how many times she read it, she still felt that Gil was somewhere in there, hidden amongst the pages of other people's deeds. Lost in thought, she failed to notice the crack in the sidewalk, catching her toe in it and falling forward to her hands and knees. Lauren cursed softly under her breath in French learned form the garrison men and scrambled to collect her papers before the autumn wind stole them.

She was too late for one—it soared on the breeze, taking a perch in a willow tree. With a deep sigh, she secured the other papers and set her backpack on them at the base of the tree for good measure. She swung up on the lowest limb without hesitation and made her way up the branches to retrieve the elusive sheet. Stretching her arm as far as she could, Lauren managed to grasp it in her fingers and began to pull back for her descent when her foot slipped and she fell. Expecting to break a bone by landing on hard concrete, the girl was surprised when her fall was broken by something a little softer.

"Oouf!" it exhaled loudly, and Lauren realized she had landed on a fellow student, apparently male.

She rolled off of him immediately, blushing furiously and trying to apologize and explain, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! I slipped trying to get…" But she trailed off as her eyes met familiar looking green ones.

"No worries," he grinned. "If I had known that women fell from the sky here, I would have come a lot sooner." Lauren just sat and stared. The guy cleared throat nervously. "Ready to get up? You aren't hurt are you?"

His voice breaking the trance, she looked away. "No, I think you sufficiently broke my fall…" The girl smiled back as they helped each other up. "Are you a freshman?" she asked.

"No, junior transfer student. The Dean's my uncle so I got in easily." He winked, and Lauren's breath caught in her throat.

"Your name?" her voice wavered with hope.

"William Chantal, but my friends call me Gill because I swim as much as a fish does. I'm here on a swimming scholarship. You?"

"Lauren Cantre. I'm here to study French and history."

They stood, watching each other like old friends meeting again after a long time apart. He started, "How rude of me—would you like to get some coffee or something?"

Lauren looked back oddly and replied, "I'm not much for coffee but I'd enjoy some hot chocolate." Grinning, he offered her his arm with a wink and she took it, following Gill wherever he would take her, across the campus quad or across ages.