The Fifth Healer

72.

I nod, feeling her finger brushing against my chin as I do so. She nods. Time falls away. Tourists fall away. Car noises, distant and below, fall away. It happens all at once, that tangled ball of time yarn linking every event in the universe-Ainsley, letting her finger drop, sliding it off my chin. Her gazing into my eyes. The straight line of her lips curving into a one sided smile, lifting her freckled cheek toward a gold-speckled, hunter-green eye. But also, the smile fading. A cloud passing over her forehead and raining down into her eyes.

"It's too late," she whispers, above the din of the city and the tourists and the restorative construction. "If only-"

She scrunches her eyes closed and shakes her head.

"Nikolai," she says. "If only we had this conversation sooner. We could've had more time together."

"Time is imaginary," I say. "A single second can be split into infinite slices. You know that."

"But still," she says. "My heart is real."

"Your heart?"

"What do you think it's felt like, all the times you've been so...well, cold toward me?"

We break eye contact, and I look at the nearby grass.

"You know the rules," I say, guilt and regret sinking over me. "About relationships."

"Ef the rules."

"I was trying to protect you."

"From what?"

"Retromancy."

"You wanted to protect my memories? My mind?" she asks, as if these were trifle things.

"Yes," I say, thinking that would be obvious.

She points at her chest. "You should've been trying to protect my heart from rejection."

"Ainsley, I'm so sorry, I-"

"Broken hearts are real injuries. People die of broken hearts."

"But we can have more time together. Stay. Just a little longer."

She sniffs, and I see she's on the edge of crying. "It will just make it harder when I leave you."

"Do you have to leave? I mean, still?"

"You think finally admitting you're attracted to me is going to make me want to live out the rest of my days in that regressive underground bunker?"

"I'm not asking for that," I say. "I'm asking for one more day. To explore our options." I hate to dangle this, but it feels like my only option. "Maybe I can find a cure for you."

But that doesn't move her as I had hoped.

She says, "I don't want to waste my limited time on a pointless search for a magical cure while we have to hide our mutual interest in each other so they don't put our brains in a microwave or whatever."

"It's not a wasted day if we spend it together."

"So leave with me."

"What?"

"Come away with me. You want to spend time with me? Come do that."

"But what if-"

"Nikolai, I want to enjoy the finite remainder of my life. I want to do that with you." She shakes her head and frowns, gasping for a breath, whispering, "Why can't that just be enough? Why this obsession with fixing me?"

"Because maybe there's a far better life available to you. Maybe your time doesn't have to be so limited."

"So I'm not good enough for you as I am? You have to fix me before you'll be with me?"