The Concept of Volatile Time

Part Two (Part Three)

Stock Market.

1929.

Little waver.

Little. No big crash, no nationwide panic, no people collapsing of malnutrition in crowded, tired and hungry streets. No No Promises in the Wind, no Of Mice and Men. She had stopped one of the countries biggest catastrophes in a stupid mistake, her mistake, the mistake she had made and it was all probably because she wanted Haru to hurry up.

Haru, oh my god. Turning to him, he looked just as angst-ridden and guilty as she was. Amara was seventeen, two years older than Haru, and she was beginning to realize that she couldn't handle the responsibility of what she had done.

The one thing truly enforced by their superiors was to not be reckless, not to mess up, not to damage what had to be done. In the eyes of a civilian, it seemed good that the Great Depression hadn't occurred. In the eyes of someone trained in the field, though, it was a mess no one could clean up. Emma and Dan seemed confused. This was her fault, and her friend was probably pinning it on himself. Haru had been the one to write out the document, after all. "Haru-" she whispered to him, but her words hung in the air like petrichor after a heavy rain.

She slid to the floor, bringing her knees up to her face.

"Is she alright?" Thomas asked. His voice sounded like it was underwater.

Emma and Dan immediately responded for her, but Haru stayed silent. There was a feeling like granulated sugar in her mouth, and she was nauseous, badly nauseous, sickly nauseous. Haru blames himself, I do the same but who's truly at fault? She looked down at her hands to distract herself, to see if there were any bracelets she could fiddle with to decrease her anxiety. Bad idea. She was wringing her wrists like soaked laundry, so vehemently that red strained marks were tainting pale skin. Looking at the sleeves of her jacket made the anxiety worse. The manacles, the white manacles, the binding manacles, the bonds that tied the trickster god Loki to his damnation, the same bonds that tie Amara to hers. Your fault, your fault, your fault, she told herself. This is all your fault. It's bad bad bad and it's all your fault. She put her head in her heads. Your fault, your fault, your fault.

Your fault, your fault, your fault.

A tan hand was on her shoulder, steadying her. She was trembling. Her breath was ragged, coming out in short gasps and it felt like her lungs were decomposing inside of her chest. "Breathe." Dan said in a calming exhale, and she tried to regulate her inhaling. He sat down next to her, something he had done when the attacks started when she was twelve. "It's okay, your okay. It's okay, you're okay. It's okay, you're okay." It has taken her a few years to tell him about pairing things into three's, and a few weeks for Dan to master calming her down. "It's fine, it's fine, you're fine." She shuddered, having stopped hyperventilating and was now exhaling in stuttered puffs of air.

She stayed there, with her head in between her knees next to Dan for a few minutes. She found that it helped not to look at people for a while, at least not until she was back to normal.

She looked up to see Haru and Emma staring down in sympathy, while Liam and Thomas looked at her with their (seemingly permanent) looks of confusion. "What?" She exhaled. "Is everyone perfectly sane here or something?"

There was a pregnant pause that hung in the air like morning fog, and then, "No." It was Thomas, reaching to help her up. "My older sister was an operative, but she left when her schizophrenia medication stopped, um, working. Plus, we lost a boy to suicide like a few years ago." The silence continued, in a possibly more awkward fashion.

Amara took his hand and pulled herself up, feeling the aftereffects of the attack lingering like strangled static staying in her legs and throat. Liam cleared his throat. "I'm sorry for, um, triggering you-" he seemed awkward and a little bit uncomfortable,"-but I'll continue. America's money-crazed twenties faded into the thirties, and the U.S. sort of coasted through the next five years," Amara felt Dan's hand back on her shoulder, keeping her grounded, "Germany had this Hitler guy who started leading this group called the Nazis, and they basically started World War Two. America joined in during '39."