sophie.

Chapter 14

To clarify, I insisted that they take me home to the night that I'd left, and with a hesitance did they agree. They didn't bother getting up from their seat, and when Valentine pulled out the truncane again, I started to feel a catch in my breath. I thought about how he was revealing it in public, but as I looked around, I saw that no one even cared to notice our booth, much less what Robert had in his hands. I exhaled in relief as he put the device on the table and looked up at me.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Sophie?" Valentine asked again, and I resolutely nodded, looking down at the table in distracted thought. "Okay, then. But we'll be checking up on you at the end of the day to make sure you're not in any trouble. Without a truncane, but with the properties of a traveler, you have the ability to get stuck in a time loop without a way out. So be careful." I nodded my head again, and his hand, which had been lingering on the truncane, firmly grabbed it and cranked it clockwise, murmuring the coordinates to our next destination.

I didn't find myself as much in awe at what surrounded me during the travel that time; while it was definitely fascinating, all I wanted to do was deny it. The booth had somehow made its way into the travel as well, but it lost a sense of realness to it. So as I idly felt its replica in front of me, I crushed myself with inner turmoil. My booth turned into a single chair, a familiar one that I had next to my bedroom desk, and the boys lost their seat. The world became very real for a moment, and as the last of the sounds faded away, I knew I was back where I belonged.

DECEMBER 10TH, 2013, 4 AM

"Well, there you go," Adrien said quietly, as if I had hurt him. Had I? I'd denied the life that he claimed as his own. Realistically, I was a jerk. But I just wanted to sleep for a little while, and go back to a normal life for a day or so. Maybe then I could think rationally, or apologize for my apparently harsh words.

"There I go," I repeated in a mumble, and without another word, Valentine gave some coordinates I didn't care to remember and the duo was off, and I sat there, watching the wall behind them. I didn't do anything for a little while. But then it began.

The series of events that followed were hard to explain in the short run, but later, as I separated myself from those events, I started to understand what had occurred. We'll start with the actions of day one.

Imagine me, waking up the next morning at ten AM to get ready for work like I normally did. As "normal" as I wanted my day to be, I wanted to do it through laziness, AKA not through monotonous work. But I got up anyway, took a shower, had a breather, and headed down into the kitchen where I saw my dad.

"Morning, dad," I said with a casual sigh, then went to the cabinet to get some cereal.

"Morning, Soph. Mom will be home, and we'll have a discussion then," he said. He was referring to my run-in with the cops the night before. I turned around to look at him, spoon in hand, but my upcoming defense was wasted due to the fact that he had disappeared. Strangely enough, the kitchen island disappeared and the fridge just as well, and before I was able to question the change in setting, the spoon had left my hand, and an over-loud radio switch blasted through my reality, unapologetic and deafening. I would've shut my ears with my hands, but the next thing I knew, the world had switched back to the beginning of the day when I woke up, and the radio noises tuned in perfectly with the alarm. I'd damaged the timeline -- but how?

I spent a good ten minutes sitting on the bed with my hands clenching the sheets, and I wondered what had caused the timespace to restart. What had I done wrong? What did I do that the timeline couldn't fix? The first rule of time travel was that time is self-healing, so obviously something occured that was vital in the run of things. I steadied my breath and decided I would go to the kitchen before taking a shower, and thereafter stumbled down the stairs and met my dad, who wore his morning robe and had a cup of coffee in hand.