Blindsided

Gimme Sympathy

Song for today is Gimme Sympathy by Metric, which is SO GOOD and I've loved it for years. Major thanks to Dotemms and the Hole People for being champs and putting up with my rambles on the lore and my future plans!

----------

  The early autumn sunlight was filtering through the fruit trees, heavy with peaches and plums and apples and pears. Fat carpenter bees were getting drunk from the nectar and bumbling about, preparing to hibernate for the winter in their burrows. The spent vines were cleared, the next year's onion and garlic starts ordered, the smell of loam and organic matter in the air and sticking in hair and clothes. Sarv put down her snips, a basket of blush-colored hydrangeas by her side, and wiped her brow.

  Selever was due to make another big jump that day, his core growing at an exponential rate. He'd started doing multi-temporal jumps just last week, jumping forward and back in stable loops and bringing something back each time to prove he'd done it. The way things were going, he was getting ever-closer to being able to make the final jump home. And the thought made her heart ache.

  As well, she wasn't sure what was up with Ruv. He'd been fidgety and acting strangely since he'd come home a couple weeks ago from his walk. She knew that having to wait for her was probably niggling at him; she hated that she couldn't figure out what she wanted.

  She let out a huff of irritation, and pulled off her gloves to wipe at her face. Was it always this hard to love someone? She still felt like something was missing with them. It had been about three months now and while it was bliss, she couldn't get rid of a nagging feeling of incompletion. There was something unfinished between them, a feeling that there was something more that needed done. A leap of faith.

  Her heart wanted to be his in every way possible, but her head said it was too soon. The Vow aside, the truth was she was hesitant to leap. They were so close to something perhaps better left unknown. She could feel it, a deep dark feeling crawling from her gut and choking her with its vitriol. She felt deep in her bones that she didn't deserve his love and devotion, that he could do so much better than her. A fallen angel. The Devil incarnate.

  Did she deserve love? Happiness? Marriage to the man who had sold her his soul to stay by her side?

----------

  Selever spread his hands and disappeared in a flash of pink light. Sarvente and Ruv were holding hands, Rasazy scribbling in her notebook as three short seconds passed, and he winked back into the room in another flash of pink light.

"Did it!" He slapped down a newspaper. Sarv and Ruv walked over, and Ruv picked up the paper gingerly. September seventh.

It was the third.

Sarv scooped him up into a hug. "Oh well done, darling! That's a whole day longer than expected!" She put him back on his feet, pride swelling in her chest. "I am so proud, you're getting so much farther now!"

He shrugged, embarrassed. "Yeah, it's just creating a stable time loop. Making sure I remember where I go so I don't run into myself. Don't need any Dead Selevers now, Dead Selevers are the enemy." He shuffled his feet. "It's better that I'm going forward instead of backwards, there'd be a lot of Dead Sels to clean up."

  Ruv patted his shoulder. "Well it helps you're not fucking around with it anymore."

  Sarvente wandered over to her daughter. "Did you note that down?"

  Rasazy finished crossing her Ts and dotting her Is, and flipped the notebook closed. "Yeah I got it." She snapped her fingers at Sel. "Next time try tuning your metrics a bit, you were three seconds behind this time. You wanna get the window down to just one!"