The Timeservers

Chapter 14

New York City, New York

The Spire

Guardian Park

December 4, 227 P.F.E

1320 hours
A mob, an angry mob rushing after black cars. People who Leo loves are inside, he doesn't know who they are, just that he loves them and he can't let the mob get them. He runs in front of the crowd, leaving a trail of broken items behind him as he runs into an alley. He breaks a bottle against the wall and hopes he doesn't have to use it. Still, they chase him, catching him and holding him back as people run in front of him. They squeeze by to get to the people he loves to hurt them. Their faces were angry. Most of them are yelling things at the departing cars. Some of them are holding weapons, makeshift or made to hurt.
Leo yells, lashes out. He gets pulled back by the crowd, forced to the middle and the harsh arms of someone who doesn't want him to stop the mob. Leo looks up, seeing a face contorted by pain, anger, suffering. The man holding him is huge and has dirty stubble growing on his chin. He has eyes that are looking for any excuse to fight and a nose that must have been broken more than once. The man looks down at Leo and grimaces. "You aren't worth all this. We all have families to." The arms around Leo tighten, cutting off his air. They warm, burning his chest. Leo starts slashing with the bottle at random, terrified.
"You can't get them! You can't get them! They're doing this for you too!" Leo yells back, trying to get the person holding him to let go as stars start to fall in front of him.
The cars disappear but the mobs still run, crushing Leo, flattening him to the ground and pressing as the man drops him, now immobile from lack of air.
"Let them go! You have to let them go!" he wheezes. Tears are flowing down his cheeks now, hot and blinding. The mob twists into meaningless colors, greys, and they flatten him till there barely any air left. His ribs burn and he's not sure if it's from all his yelling or from the crowd stomping over him.
"Leo, stop it. They made it Leo, they made it!" someone yells, but it's far off, quiet. "It's okay, they made it."Leo stops struggling, realizing that the arms around him are still there but now relaxed.
He's not sure when his eyes closed but Leo cracks them open now, seeing a face that takes him a moment to recognize; Kelly. Kelly's face is terrified but edged with anger. Panic rises up in Leo as the worst scenario flashes through his head.
"Tell me I didn't hurt anyone." Tell me I didn't hurt Sophia, flashes through his mind but he's too afraid to say it aloud, like that will make it real. Bile rises in Leo's throat and the sweat that covers him, sticking his hair to his forehead and neck, goes cold. If he wasn't already pale he would be.
"No, got here in time. What were you thinking? Told you to stay away from her for this reason! Why didn't you go back to the floor? Why didn't you lock yourself up?" Kelly rages, releasing Leo so that he can use his arms in expressing his anger. "What would you have done without me getting here on time?"
"I don't know," Leo admits, taking in a shaking breath. He covers his face with his hands, hoping that it will help somehow. Protect them. Kelly had wrested him to the ground so Leo rolls onto his side, folding into himself and trying to put as much between his shattered mind and the world around him as possible. "I'm sorry, I tried. I'm so sorry. She said something and it came on faster than the other times."
"Kelly, what's going on?" Sophia asks, her soft voice trembles a little and it comes out as barely a whisper. She backed away after Leo pushed her and then had been pushed farther by her brother once Leo had flown into whatever world that was. Now she presses the blanket to her chest, holding it for comfort and staring, numb, at Leo's shaking form on the ground. The tears she'd been crying earlier come back.
"If he tells you to go, don't think twice. Just get out of there as fast as possible. Lock him in and find me. Don't try anything on your own. It might only make things worse," Kelly orders. He turns to his sister now, looking her over for any injuries Leo might have inflicted before he got there.
Sophia backs away from her brother's probing and sinks to the ground beside Leo. Kelly tries to pull her away but one glare in his direction makes him stand down. She hesitates for only a second before placing a soft hand on Leo's quaking shoulder. Leo flinches away, cracking open his eyes to see who touched him. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he warns; voice almost lost and raw from crying and yelling.
"I'm not scared. Besides, I think I can take you." Humor was the wrong move and Leo retreats further as a response.
"Don't even joke about that. I don't want you to ever have to find out."
"What just happened?" Sophia turns to her brother.
"It's a side effect of the tear think. Memories come back sometimes, you know that. They don't quite reach the surface in most cases; just cause headaches, insomnia and nightmares. Sometimes, the memories are worse though. When he remembers something and it manages to break through it's almost always bad. He's right back there to. Playing out the memory, stuck in whatever terror he was in before. He can't really tell whats real and memory."
"Isn't that dangerous, what if he gets triggered on a mission?"
"Then he wouldn't be a Guardian," Kelly's response is cold, but the implications burn in each of their minds. Leo's not a Guardian he's a Historian. He'd be sent to an integration camp, probably never seen again and branded as a danger to society.
"Who knows about this?"
"Just me and him. The first time it happened was a few months ago. It was a few days after you got together. We were on a survey mission in Alberta. Something triggered him. That whole trip he'd been having headaches and been distant. He never stopped. Not even to sleep, not that he could've. He doesn't even know if he's the one who lived them or just witnessed them in the tear. No one else can know, okay. No one. If anyone finds out, especially Viper and Wasp, he's out of here and you know what that means."
"What if I can help him?"
"How?"
"I can figure something out to help him. Dig around a little."
"It's probably no use trying. Just let me recover; trust me when I tell you it's coming on. Usually I get a bit more warning," Leo sighs.
Kelly and Sophia are surprised by him speaking, but Sophia recovers quickly. "Let me try to help. Neither of us wants you to go."
But what's left of him to stay?