sophie.

Chapter 20

I was the last traveler. It was big news. 

The car ride away from the park was a stunned kind of silence, and we didn't really know what to say, but it was clear that both our minds were reeling from the encounter. And also, because I was driving, and because I'm not exactly the best driver, I drove past the street that led to my house. But I kept on, even after Adrien pointed it out, because my stomach was grumbling and I had a craving for corporate-owned Mexican.

We went to the Taco Bell in Marco.

As per usual, the people in Marco gave the most disconcerting and unabashed stares, their questionably accurate Polo-radars seeking me out like a heat missile. About twenty seconds after entering, my intense counter-stare sent almost every pair of eyes back to their crunchy tacos, except for one small boy, who no matter how hard I glared him down, wouldn't flinch. I look intently at his mom before she took his arm and made him sit back down in the booth.

"You're a sight, Soph," Adrien told me, and I smiled. We ordered a mess of food and sat down.

"So we need to talk about what we just heard," I started, because at that point if one of us didn't address the situation, it'd probably never come out.

"Are you planning to do something?"

"Well if you're not, I definitely am. I'm tired of going around wondering if this'll be the moment that they ambush us. Or if they ambush us at all," I responded.

"Please don't think I don't want things to get better, because I do," Adrien interjected. "It's just, every time I do something, a body drops. I've had people disappear from my life without knowing it was goodbye.  And Daemon — if we're going to take apart this problem, you have to understand why I'm not completely eager to step on board. I want to make sure we're safe." His food was lowered and it looked as if even he didn't expect for all of those words to come out. I sighed.

"It's on our shoulders to fix this, Adrien. And that means solving problems, alright? Because the entire world's going to end if we don't try and change it."

"But you heard Trunc — there's going to be an 'unavoidable alteration.' Tell me if I'm wrong, but that sounds a bit permanent."

I didn't sigh again, not aloud; more of a brain sigh. There was a seriously sad, fairly hopeless side of pessimism that was showing itself through Adrien, and it was definitely throwing me off. I'd always romanticized him to be an adventurer; and in fact, yeah, he was one. But he'd set inexplicable parameters for those adventures, and if his problems lied beyond them, he would readily let them rot into toxicity. He never focused on the bigger picture, or the broken picture — whatever picture metaphor fits with the whole 'end of the world' thing, and it was grating against me. But I didn't say this, because it wasn't in my right to try and change him without proof that things could be different, could be better. I was going to power through.

"So, what we know so far is that Daemon causes the end of the world. It... it probably happened in his home timeline," I thought, remembering my dream. His wife and kid were in it, and as far as I could tell, nothing about that dream was inaccurate or misleading. "Do you know when that is?"

"No, not off the top of my head. But Robert and I have an index of many different traveler's details, something that mainly he and Brady worked on together. And I'm fairly certain Daemon's on that list, way near the end."

"Well, probably. It wouldn't make sense if the end of the world happened at a time before now."

"Wait, that's right — If I remember right, he's at the very end of the list. The latter 4000s. "

"Jesus. So the reason he's the latest traveler is because he didn't leave the world open for another one."

"Well, maybe we can change that," Adrien picked up. I smiled at him.