The Time Traveler's Wife - The Other Side

The Album

January 2020

"Good morning, Birthday Girl," Carmilla greets as she walks downstairs to the den and finds Laura nursing a cup of coffee while reading her Twitter feed.

"Good morning," Laura says, giving her a peck on the lips. "There's a pot of coffee on the counter."

Carmilla gives her a second short and sweet kiss before she goes to get a cup of coffee and returns. "What time are the guests supposed to start showing up?"

"A couple more hours," Laura replies, shifting on the couch to make room for Carmilla.

"Ah, don't bother," she says, putting the cup of coffee down on the table. "See you in a bit."

Within seconds, Carmilla disappears. Laura stands to pick up the discarded clothes, but immediately afterwards, another Carmilla reappears in her place, facing away from Laura.

"Hah, that was so weird," Laura's says, clearly confusing Past Carmilla.

Past Carmilla turns. "What...?" she asks, still focusing after traveling.

"Uhm, Future You just traveled," Laura explains, pointing at a pile of clothes on the floor at Past Carmilla's feet. "And seconds later, you appeared."

"Oh." Past Carmilla quickly puts the clothes on.

Laura giggles and hands her the cup of coffee. "Good thing I didn't hand Future You this mug before, or we'd have another broken mug on our hands." She takes a sip from her own mug. "Although maybe you didn't take it from me on purpose." She settles in on a couch. "I'm gonna assume you're from the past, so just make sure in January 2020, you don't take any mugs from me."

Past Carmilla swallows hard, staring into the mug of coffee, but not drinking it. She looks around her. "So we're still together in 2020? Living in this house together?"

Laura's eyes widen in realization. "Oh my goodness. Right! You must have just traveled from the night of our rehearsal dinner. Which means we just had... a huge fight."

Past Carmilla nods, staring into her mug.

Laura sighs and mulls over what to say. She takes a deep breath. "I know you're angry. I know that what I did was a betrayal, and maybe unforgivable, and that you're probably gonna have to be furious at me for... a really long time. And I know that you don't want to listen to anything I have to say. But you're stuck in our future house for a bit, unless you wanna venture out into the cold January air, so here's my pitch."

Past Carmilla slowly looks up and her face softens a bit.

"You're stuck with me. Even if you go back to your present and decide you don't want to marry me, which is totally valid, this isn't gonna stop the fact that you will continue to travel back to see me. Or travel forward to see me. I mean, as far as I know, this is the only time we've ever done an actual swap of Carmillas, where you travel between two points of time seconds apart." Laura sighs. "You're gonna go back and find out we got married. I'm not gonna get into how because-- spoilers. But that's what's gonna happen. Assuming Future You and Past Me got their shit together in your iteration."

Past Carmilla takes a slow sip of coffee but doesn't speak.

"And when you go back to your time and find out we're married... Don't back out. And not because I'm all righteous and looking for you to make good on a promise Future You made." She laughs weakly. "Because if the past three years has taught me anything, it really is that I have no business trying to be righteous. I was so used to thinking I knew you better than you knew yourself because... for a long time that was true, in a way. In 2017, I didn't realize that the things I did to uphold what I thought was right for you could cause so much damage. When I sent that invite to your mom, I was so dead-set on what I thought was right that I was willing to do the one thing you never did to me-- withhold information without being upfront about it. And it's something I'm still working on, because I've become so used to protecting you that I forget we're supposed to be in this together. And I hope that you know that I never meant to sacrifice your trust."