That night Sam had the same nightmare he had been having for a few years now. He was sitting at a desk and his leg was chained to the chair. Piles of books and papers stretched to the ceiling on either side of him and no matter how hard he worked the piles never got smaller. A faceless man and woman paced around him wearing black business suits.
"Who was the first European explorer to discover New Zealand?" The woman thundered.
"Um, um, Abel Janszoon Tasman on 13 December 1642." Sam said.
"Scientific name for crocodile?" The man bellowed.
"Crocodylinae." Sam answered feeling a bead of sweat roll down his back.
"Hey Sam!" He looked up and saw Fred and Joe waving to him from a distance.
"Sam come on," Joe called to him. "Hurry up!"
Sam tried to wave back but his arm wouldn't move. He looked down in terror and realized that his arms were now shackled to the desk.
"Hey!" Sam yelled struggling to break free. "Let me out of here!"
Fred and Joe started to fade and Sam was left in the dark again with the man and the woman glaring down at him.
"Samuel!" The man slammed his fist on the desk. "Focus or you will fail this exam!"
"How many atoms are in potassium?" The woman snarled.
"Um, um," Sam struggled to free himself and found it difficult to breathe. "6.022× 10 to the twenty second power!"
The man and the woman laughed menacingly and snarling grins appeared under the shadows where their eyes should have been. "WRONG ANSWER SAMUEL!"
"Hm, guess he wasn't as smart as we thought he was." Joe and Fred turned away and faded completely.
Sam felt tears sting his eyes but when he opened his mouth to try and call them back, no sound came out. Suddenly, the desk he was shackled to fell through the darkness and he screamed in terror. All around him voices were laughing maliciously as he fell, ignoring his cries for help. Then he heard a different voice, a softer familiar voice.
"Sam, Sam." It called. "Sam, SAM!"
Sam gasped awake and saw San-Li looked down at him in concern. She caressed his the side of his face and Sam leaned into her palm gratefully. She then drew her hand back and gently hit the side of his face.
"Hey!" He said laughing a little.
"Hey, yourself." She laughed a little nervously. "You scared me tossing and turning like that. You sounded like you were having a nightmare."
Sam shrugged and sat up. "It was nothing really."
He sat up and it took him a moment to realize they were in the bedroom at the inn. He was in his pajamas while San-Li was wearing shorts and a tank top. He got out of his futon and went over to their luggage.
"What are you doing?" San-Li asked him.
"Nothing." He mumbled pulling out one of his textbooks and a flashlight.
He went back to his futon and opened up to the chapter he was last reading, clicking on the flashlight to see better.
"Really?" San-Li said folding her arms across her chest. "Are you actually studying? I thought you already finished your midterms."
"I did." Sam mumbled. "But I still have finals."
"Yeah in four months."
"I still have to be ready for it."
"Ugh." San-Li leaned over and pulled the book out of his hands.
"Hey!" Sam glared at her. "Give that back, San-Li."
San-Li held it out of his reach and put a hand on his chest. "What's your gpa right now?"
"5.01." Sam made another lunge for his book. "Why does that matter?"
"Because it sounds to me like you can afford not to always be studying." San-Li pushed him onto his back.
"No, I don't think I can." Sam grumbled folding his arms.
San-Li sighed and laid down next to him. "What in the world is wrong with you that you think that you always have to study? Don't you know that you're already the smartest guy in the world?"
Sam sighed and rubbed a hand against his face. "What if I'm not though? What if end up failing?"
"You won't. There's no way you would." He felt San-Li lay her head on his shoulder. "But even if you did I'd still think you were pretty amazing."
Sam felt the corner of his mouth twitch up but he still couldn't shake his nightmare. San-Li must have felt him shudder because she gently squeezed his arm.
"Tell me." She whispered.
Sam took a deep breath and told her what happened in his dream and that he had been dreaming it ever so often for the past couple of years. When he finished he was surprised and a bit offended to hear her struggling not to laugh.
"Hey," Sam sat up frowning. "It was pretty traumatic okay."
"I'm sorry." San-Li chuckled and sat up too. "But first of all Fred and Joe aren't the brightest bulbs themselves, but they wouldn't abandon you for something as stupid as failing some sporadic pop quiz."
"It isn't the quiz itself, it's what it represents." Sam insisted. "If I don't keep studying and working hard I'll lose everything I ever worked for."
"And if you keep pushing yourself too hard and stressing out so much you'll have a psychotic break by the time you're twenty five. Besides," San-Li's voice softened and she caressed his cheek. "You have absolutely nothing to worry about. It's your love of knowledge that matters, not how much of it you can spout out at a moment's notice. "
Sam practically melted at her touch and he smiled at her. "How is it that you always know how to make me feel better?"
"Well duh isn't it obvious?" San-Li laughed and rolled her eye. "I love...you."
San-Li froze in shock and snatched her hand away from his face.
"Wait." Sam sat straight up and stared at her. "What did you just say?"
"Nothing." San-Li rolled over so her back was to him. "Nothing. Forget I said anything."
"Well that'd be kinda hard to do." Sam said quietly. "Especially since I sorta... definitely... love you too."
San-Li stiffened and she scoffed. "Please. You don't even know me."
"I don't know your history." Sam corrected. "But I have a pretty good idea of who you are."
"Oh really," San-Li looked over her shoulder at him. "Who am I, Sam?"
"Well," Sam felt his face grow hot, but he reached over to touch her arm. "You are an incredibly amazing girl, woman, who makes me laugh, who's honest even if it's brutal. A person who's strong and independent, and smart. And who makes my life fun and exciting whether I want it to be or not."
San-Li gave the barest of smiles. "You forgot psychopathic time thief."
"I'm sure you have your reasons." Sam shrugged. "Even if you aren't comfortable telling me-"
"My entire family was murdered when I was a kid."
Sam blinked and sat straight up. "What?"
San-Li rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. "There's a lot about the world of time magic that you guys don't know about. Time agents, time enforcers, time keepers, and of course the Warp Wizard. All of them are supposed to, in some way, keep time flowing the way it's supposed to."
"Were you a time agent?" Sam asked.
"Naw," San-Li shook her head slowly. "You have to go to school for a few years to do that. I came from a family of time keepers. We're supposed to work directly under the Warp Wizard and we're trained from childhood to be able to blend in to any time period to make sure history stays on course."
"What happened?" Sam's voice dropped to a whisper.
"I dunno." Tears filled San-Li's eye but she kept staring at the ceiling. "When I was ten my mom woke me up in the middle of the night, shoved me into a hidden room, and some people broke in and slaughtered my entire family while I watched helpless and frozen in fear."
"Ten?" Sam's jaw dropped. "You were ten?"
When he was ten Joe had gotten The Book for the first time and his biggest worry was not getting home in time for dinner or his mom would ground him. San-Li's entire family had been killed before her eyes.
Sam swallowed. "Is that what happened to your eye?"
San-Li laughed humorlessly. "You and your obsession with this stupid eye!"
She sat up, tore off her eye patch, threw it to the ground, and pushed her bang back. Her left eye lid had a large straight burn over it that looked like it with was made with a heated piece of metal and the iris was a dull gray instead of black like the other and there were red cracks in it that glowed like dull embers.
"This," She said pointing to it. "Is where my bond to the Warp Wizard used to be."
"You were bonded to the Warp Wizard?" Sam asked astonished.
"My whole family was and our bond was always in our left eye." She chuckled. "Hell, I even knew the last Warp Wizard even before he became the Warp Wizard."
"You did?"
"Yep." San-Li wrapped her arms around her knees. "We were best friends until we were nine and then he warped and when came back I was still nine, but he was twenty. When you warp you may return at the same time but your body keeps aging. The very next year my family was murdered and when I asked him for help he actually told me no."
San-Li smiled but tears were streaming down her face. "That bastard told me that that was how history was meant to run. I swore I'd get The Book from him even if it killed me. And that's when he put the ban on it. So I broke our bond the hard way."
"You burned your own eye?" Sam's eyes widened in horror. "You burned your own eye."
"Yeah," She whispered. "I would rather burn both eyes and be blind than be bonded to that heartless bastard."
"I'm so sorry." Sam shook his head slowly. "I can't believe- that's horrible."
"Oh wait, there's more." San-Li chuckled darkly. "For some reason the people who murdered my family aren't traceable through regular time magic. I can't even use my pocket watch and travel to when my family was killed to try and prevent it. So I had to go through the black market to find clues which is how I became a time thief."
San-Li suddenly straightened up and wiped the tears from her face. "So you see why I'm no good for you Sam? Do you see why I keep everything a secret? Because I refuse to move on Sammy-boy. When I find the ones responsible for my family's murder...I'm going to kill them. Mercilessly. Like they did my entire family. My parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my grandparents, my...my little brother..."
Sam stared at her silently trying to process everything. San-Li's past was incredibly dark and he wasn't entirely sure if he could handle someone with that much baggage. Or could he? There were times when she didn't seem like anything was wrong in her life. As a matter of fact, she was always the one cheering him up and making him cut loose. She seemed happy and free around him. And maybe that's what she needed...
"You don't have to say anything." San-Li sighed breaking the awkward silence. "You don't need any of this mud in your squeaky clean life. I shouldn't be selfish and try to keep you. So I guess I'll have to let you go."
She reached for her eye patch, but Sam grabbed her arm. She sighed and hung her head.
"What are you doing, Sam?" She asked sadly.
Honestly, he didn't know. And it felt good not to know. For once it felt good not to know what he was doing.
"Just," he licked his lips nervously. "bear with me for a moment."
Sam reached out and laid a hand against her cheek and lifted her face up to look at him. He stared at her and she stared back at him, her face still wet with tears. She almost looked afraid of what he might say. But Sam didn't say anything. Instead he pulled her into him and kissed her deeply, and she responded, for once being the timid one. Sam turned off all thought and pulled her down onto the futon with him and held her in his arms for the rest of the night.
