The Rendezvous // Thomas Sangster

Silence

Have you ever just existed? Without really thinking or feeling, just a floating sensation. Almost like an other body experience, where you seem to be floating above yourself without really processing things from your own point of view. It's empty. Just empty. Your body is a shell, and you feel like you're suspended through time. 

That's what it's like for the first few moments, as I look at my brother's dead body on the ground. 

I'm not me. I'm just floating and the prison that is my flesh stands on the floor. 

Then my mind catches up with me. I seem to attach myself to my body again and I take a stumbling step forward, mumbling, "Hero."

He doesn't respond. 

Of course he doesn't, I think. He's dead. 

"Hero!" I scream, staggering towards him.

A pair of strong arms wraps around me, pulling me away from my brother. I fight against them, using every ounce of strength that I have to resist whoever is pulling me away. My only thought is that I have to get to Hero. I have to try to fix him, just like I fixed Dylan. But even as I try to fight against the arms that hold me, I know that I can't save him. The bullet hit him in the lungs. He'll have severe internal bleeding. His right lung will be filling up with his own blood right now, and he'll be drowning in the very stuff that was designed to heal his body. 

Someone is talking to me, calling my name. 

I ignore them.

Slowly, due to the struggle I put up, I'm dragged into a room. It's a dark office. The only light comes from the door, which leads to the hall. However, the door is shut as I try to escape back into the hall again. My sobs are amplified by the walls in the office, and I feel arms wrap around me again. I listen to the voice this time. 

"Stephanie." Thomas says, his voice heavy with emotion. 

I respond by wrapping my arms around him and burying my face into his chest. I cry shamelessly, until his shirt is soaked with my tears. I cried with the force of someone who was vomiting; at least, that's what is sounded like. I fought to keep air in my lungs. A gasp, and enormous inhale as I choked out another sob. Then a gasp again. It hurt to cry like this. It was physically painful. 

Thomas, who could tell that if I continued to cry like this I would pass out from lack of oxygen, pulls away and forces me to look at him. I can barely see the shadowy outline of his facial features in this darkness. He hushes me, whispering, "Stephanie, I know. I know that this is hard. I understand. But, you need to calm down. You need to breathe, okay? Breathe with me. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale."

He takes deep, long breaths with me, until I finally manage to control my breathing. My lungs still ache. My heart aches. My mind aches. 

In a way I felt it was my fault that my mother died. If I hadn't been so ambitious, or perhaps if I had called to check in with her more often I would have found out about my mother. Veronica Bennet might not be another name on a gravestone back in Florida. However, I recognized the same guilt ran through me as Thomas. It's easy to blame yourself for past actions, but you've always got to give credit knowing that you would change things in a heartbeat if you could. Until time travel was created though, it was simply an empty desire. Some things couldn't be controlled and that was okay.    

But this was different. This was present time. Not the past. This was my fault. I got Hero into this mess. I'm the one who brought us all back to Florida. I let Hero come. He trained. He watched. And the last thing he did was try to save someone who didn't really deserve it. Now I'm alone in the world. My mother is gone, Red is gone, and now Hero is gone. The people who love me most in the world are dead. And my father...well, he's not been in the picture for years.