Viennese Waltz: The Long Road Home

After that, the rest of the story seemed almost anti-climactic to Rose. The Serbian government acquiesced meekly to most of the harsh demands, and the few they had reservations over Franz Ferdinand allowed to be hashed out in a conference in neutral Athens, sending his hand-picked representatives there with strict orders to be as punitive as they dared without backing either side into a corner that would precipitate military action. (He also took advantage of the sudden, unexpected death of the Chief of Staff, General Conrad, to make the needed changes at the top, and appointed several trusted, able men to key positions in his new government.)

Within days of the signing of the resulting Treaty of Athens, the new Emperor stunned the world again with a series of pronouncements: first forcing his vision of a federalist empire granting semi-autonomy to the various regions and ethnic groups within the Austro-Hungarian borders past the resistance of those in power under him who still clung to the old totalitarian methods; then proposing talks towards forging an actual independent Pan-Serbian country from the recently annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina and independent Serbia, to be named Yugoslavia; and most astonishing of all, the signing of the first tentative agreements between his government and those of several of the other major European powers towards the creation of a new supra-national body of arbitration which would supersede individual treaties. The League of Nations was struggling to be born.

Finally, about a week after the last, with the time jumper still trying to change its color every time she checked, came the announcement that the last major continental holdout to the League of Nations, the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, had tossed his wild-eyed, dubious adviser Rasputin out into the cold and signed the agreement.

The cafe they were sitting in – indeed, the entire City of Music – erupted in wild cheers when the word came over the radio. Many who had reacted doubtfully to the new Emperor's ideas at first had over time come around to support them wholeheartedly, disavowing their former resistance avidly. Rose and Alex joined the toasts and singing with tears in their eyes, giddy with joy.

Rose didn't even think to check the jumper again until they straggled home, long after midnight, and she stopped off at the bathroom below the garret. There she held her breath, slowly pulling up her sleeve, opened the jumper, and unlocked it.

The backlight was glowing vivid orange. Her own timeline had been split off from Alpha, for good and for certain. She could go home again.

And Alex? came the question. A wistful, tender smile crossed her lips. No. Oh, she was very fond of him, and grateful for all he'd done, but she wasn't in love with him, nor he with her, she knew. They had both lived up to their promises on the train: that wasn't in the cards for the two of them.

Slowly climbing up the last flight of stairs, she opened the garret door and discovered Alex standing stock still in the middle of the floor, reading a piece of paper – a letter had been slipped under the door while they were out. She couldn't see his face, as he was facing away, but it struck her, hard, that his hand was trembling.

"Alex?" she asked softly. "What is it?"

He jerked, gasped, then swiftly folded the paper up and stuffed it into a pants pocket. "Nothing," he mumbled, then turned and slipped past her before she could get a good look at his face, muttering about his turn in the bathroom. She stared at the now-empty doorway, gaping for a moment, then shook her head. Whatever it was, it was his secret, and she wouldn't pry.

Looking around the room she'd grown to love, and come alive again within, she smiled wistfully. She kicked off her shoes and padded around the room, lighting all the candles, then flicked off the electric lights. Then she got undressed, and slipped under the covers to wait.

He took a very long time in the bathroom, but finally the door opened again and let him in. He stopped in the middle of the room, looking at the candles with an unreadable expression, and she held out a hand to him. "Come here," she whispered. He looked soulfully at her, then seemed to make up his mind, slipped out of his clothes and dropped them in a heap on the floor, and joined her. They made love slowly, tenderly, bathed in combined candlelight and moonlight. Rose knew she was telling him goodbye, but somehow... it felt like he knew it, and was replying with the same.

She didn't figure out why until much later, after he'd fallen asleep. Alex was lying on his back, one arm around her as she laid with her head on his shoulder, watching his chest rise and fall with each soft, slow breath, prolonging the inevitable. Then he slipped into a dream, twitching and moaning softly. And finally his mouth opened, and he moaned a name.

Not hers.

"Sonia. Sonia!" he cried softly, longing soaking through the words.

Sonia? His cousin? Rose raised her head off his shoulder and gazed at him, perplexed. Then, remembering, she slipped gently out from under the covers, scooped up his pants where he'd dropped them, and poked her hand in the pocket. The letter was still there. She pulled it out and carried it over to the window, the full moon shining through it giving ample light for reading.

The words scrawled crookedly across the paper seemed breathless, desperate; thoughts skittering across the surface of a mind driven to distraction like cold water droplets on a hot skillet.

..

Alex, my darling:

Fritz is dead. The foolish, foolish man thought he could handle the motorcar, even on the icy mountain roads. Am I wicked for thinking only that now I am free? He was not a bad man, he always treated me kindly, but I should never have let them bully me into marrying him.

Alex, I don't care what anyone thinks any more, I don't care what they say or do to me. You are the only man I have ever loved, the only man I will ever love. Please tell me it is not too late. Tell me that you haven't found someone else. Tell me I still have a chance for happiness in this world. Tell me that you forgive me for being too weak to stand up to Papa and Mama in defense of you – of us.

Write to me, Alex, and tell me you still love me! If I do not hear from you soon, I don't know what I will do. Yes, I do: I will come to Vienna myself, and win you back from whatever floozy thinks she can love you as well as I. No one ever can, no one ever will.

Forgive me, my darling! I am only yours, forever more!

Sonia

..

By the time she reached the end, tears were slipping down Rose's own face, feeling the desperate love of this other woman she apparently partially resembled. She looked back at the now-silent form of the sleeping man on the bed, smiling fondly at him.

"Alex, old buddy," she whispered, much too softly to disturb him, "I think you just became the marrying kind."

She laid Sonia's letter on the little table, opened up so he would know she had seen it, and fetched a blank sheet of paper from the desk for her own note.

..

Alex:

You're on your way, and I must be on mine. Consider Blue Wolf my wedding present to you both. Thank you for rescuing me, and for teaching me how to laugh again.

Rose

..

She silently skimmed on her old blue jeans and her favorite blouse, and shoes. She looked at her little carpet bag and her other clothes and shrugged. She wasn't usually a skirt-wearing person, anyway. She did pick up the precious book, however, the first edition of the original The Tale of Bad Wolf, and tucked it under her arm.

Then she blew a kiss to her gallant, slumbering savior, opened the time jumper, found the proper destination in the memory banks, and sent herself back to the future.

^..^

Watching through the windows of the gas station as the goon grabbed her old self coming out of the restroom, she dashed inside and picked up the car keys she'd dropped, grinning, then walked calmly out to her old beat-up car and drove home. Good thing I'd already paid for the gas, she thought and grinned again.

She sat in the car for a few minutes, watching Pete's shadow through the curtain in the front room, gathering her courage for the coming task. He would have set the alarms the moment she'd left earlier that evening, paranoid as he'd become. She decided to make an entrance to get his attention, climbed out of the car to stand beside it, quickly calculated the distance, and jumped herself into the kitchen.

"Whoa!" Pete cried from the doorway behind her. He'd almost walked right into her. "I didn't hear you come in!" He walked past her to the fridge. "I thought you were on your way to the university?" he asked over his shoulder, not really looking at her. As always.

"Change of plan," she began. "We've got a job to do, Dad – "

He suddenly held up a finger, gazing in consternation towards the front door. "Wait. I didn't hear the alarm go off. How'd you get in?"

"With this," she replied patiently, holding up her arm with the time jumper.

At last, he looked at her. It took him a second, then he asked excitedly, "Is that the transport disk? Did they get it working?" The American techies had been working for months on the disk Alpha Rose had left with them, having used it to jump them from harm's way in St Ives across to Ireland.

"No, Dad, it's something better – "

"Is it from Ulva? Is she back?"

Rose took a second to tamp down the hurt and jealousy at the eager look on his face at the thought that he might meet her twin again. "No, Dad, she's not back. It is from her, though. Or at least from her world."

"What is it, then?" he asked impatiently.

"It's a – a jumper. And it's better than the transport disk, for two reasons. One, it doesn't require somebody at a control station somewhere telling it what to do. All the circuits are right here. And two... Dad..." She paused, making sure she had his attention. "It takes the wearer, and anybody holding on to her, through space... and time." She emphasized the last two words, seeing his eyes go wide, and nodded. "We can go to any place, any time, we want."

"Are you kidding me?" He reached for her arm. "Let me see that."

"Later, Dad," she pulled her arm away, and repeated. "We've got a job to do."

She had his attention now, that was for sure. "What do you mean? What job?"

Blinking back sudden tears, she swallowed, and said the words she'd been waiting for six long months to say – longer, for all those aching, empty, guilty years since that dreadful day in Southampton, the words Jared had told her back in the Hub were finally possible to say. "Go get your gun, Dad."

"We're going to go save Mum."