President injured, no word from anyone, entire country in danger, and she keeps looking at the clock.
She had no idea it could feel this way and for a moment just luxuriates in the sensation.
She's so wrapped up in her work that she doesn't notice the door open.
She looks in the mirror and brushes her wet hair. She's trying to put what happened in the past. But that knife...it was tempting...is tempting.
"No," she says, her voice just above a whisper. "I won't do it."
There's a knock on the door.
Her mom fades away and then all else vanishes. She opens her eyes, finding herself laying down on the bed, the temperature back to normal and...
"Mom?" She sits up, wiping away tears, looking at the room. It's silent, no one else is there, she's alone. The picture by her bedside keeps shifting, the woman...the girl in the picture is so different from the face she's seen in the mirror for almost the last week.
She holds out her hands. 'Am I capable of violence? Would I hurt anyone I loved?'
It'd break my heart if you did.
"Please come back." She says out loud. Her heartbeat sounds magnified in her ears, her eyes hurt, and she can't stop tearing.
"I'm so tired. I just want this to end."
In her dresser is a knife. For self defense. Just in case. And what her mom said is true, if she's a danger, she should keep people from getting hurt. 'I might have hurt Angie.'
She flips through the notebook for a moment.
'I can't trust my own mind.'
Suddenly, she's calm, all doors closed and one left to open. This is better than waiting for a prophesy or for some psychopath to take revenge for things beyond her control.
She walks over to the dresser, her hand not even trembling, and opens the drawer.
She's staring off into the distance and looks very lost.
She turns over onto her back, no, that wasn't a dream and she'd had to resist the urge to scrub her face raw last night because she could still feel his saliva on her cheek. She bites her swollen lip and can't keep tears from streaking down onto her pillow. She swallows a sob and rolls onto her side, careful not to put too much pressure on the bruise.
Swallowing *still* hurt and she fears looking at her neck today. It's safer just to stay in her room where she can control who comes in and maybe not even see anyone.
Hopefully not see anyone.
'But there's Angela and Chase and they're going to wonder where I am and I have to be stronger than this, but I'm not...'
She feels violated, like some part of her has been taken away and she's not sure how to get it back. 'Can't stop him, can't get anyone else to stop him...'
She's going to be like this for a while.
Kim thought a walk would help. She thought several walks would help. But she found herself wandering aimlessly around the lake, knowing she should go back inside, but unable to make herself face the bar.
She can't blame her dad for lying to her. The weight of this knowledge is almost crushing because when she goes back home she'll know his future and he won't have any idea. 'Is that why I call him?' she wonders, 'because I know that we don't have long to patch up our relationship?' Sadly, it makes sense. She also knows why it's dangerous to try and change the future, but that he could go outside with full knowledge of his future. She tries to tell herself that even if he doesn't come back, they'll still have over a year together. But she knows that year will go quickly and she won't see him every day and he won't even come to the bar until January 2010 which means a lot of retreading and oh god he can't die.
She accepts that he can die, she saw him die in front of her, but it still doesn't feel *real* and probably won't feel real until she's standing at his funeral a year and a few months from now. And she's sick of people telling her she should be proud that he's willing to do this, that he's brave enough to face death. She doesn't want to be proud or brave, she wants to be selfish. Even though she's 21, she wants to be able to call him and hear his voice and have him there to spoil Angela and any other grandchildren and she wants to have him smile and that weight to be off his shoulders and she doesn't want him to die.
Kim looks up at the darkening sky, the unfamiliar stars swirling above her and she's not sure if there's a god that can hear her here, or maybe she'd have better luck inside the bar but she knows that with everything that's happened - with all the orphans her dad has helped create it's probably not fair to ask for a favor.
She sits down far from people and tilts her head up.
"I know my dad has done some bad things. But he always tried to save people and had to make impossible choices. He never meant to hurt anyone," she swipes at her face, sniffling. "I know that he fears eternal judgement...but if you, I mean, if you can look beyond....he's saved so many lives and he's my dad and I love him and I know that he doesn't deserve to be with the people he hunted. I...please, let him be with my mom in the end. He's not a bad person. He just..." she tries to finish her prayer but she doesn't want to make excuses and isn't sure that she's even making sense.
"No, forget about what I just said, please, just somehow save him. I can't believe that you'd let these things happen...all these really terrible things..." She thinks about Nita and that Elaine's missing and Chase and her dad...
The rest of the prayer is silent and she stares out at the lake letting tears fall and blur her vision.
He's gone. She knew he had to leave. It wasn't a matter of not knowing. And she knew he had to get his memory wiped but that wasn't the same as actually watching it and seeing her boyfriend go from there to...not really there at all. She puts the papers in a drawer. It's hard to think, hard to breathe even, because he's gone and whatever's happening out there...no she knows how he'll return, if he returns, if...
She takes a painful breath. Chase had his memories erased. He stood there and let someone mess with his mind all because *she* couldn't stop telling him things and she'll spend the rest of her life making up for that moment. She feels like she failed him. She knows that he suffered for the mistakes she made. Everyone told her to stop telling him things, to avoid mentioning the future and she couldn't stop and now...oh God she didn't know.
She tries to tell herself that Chase isn't gone, not really. He's back home and right now probably entering her dad's office and trying to remember the details of a really strange dream he had the night before. And she's there, working, and having no clue how much things will change in about a week. Last night she held his hand, trying hard not to mourn its loss because the future is a place where many people die and plans are destroyed. She feels terrible that he will go through it, but there's nothing else to do. The time she spent in the world where he tried to stop it was enough evidence that even though she may feel guilty the rest of her life she would have still pushed him to get his memory altered.
The thought that maybe that's not what changed things at all is one she won't let herself dwell on for too long.
'Nita,' she thinks and feels guilty all over again. Nita put herself in danger to protect a world that wasn't even hers. Kim hadn't wanted to go upstairs. Part of her wanted to stay by the door all night, just in case time moved in a way they couldn't predict. But she knew he wasn't coming back tonight, and maybe not tomorrow either, and she doesn't want to consider that maybe he won't be coming back at all and she won't see him until she's unBound.
Nita saved her world. Kim realizes in an odd moment of clarity that she would do the same for her in an instant if it was necessary.
But now Chase is gone and a tiny part of her doesn't want to fulfill her promise to him. She glances at the drawer, it would be so easy to burn the note, to lie and tell him that he didn't want to know the memories that he...and she's horrified by that thought process. No, he told her he wants to know everything and after what she asked him to sacrifice, honoring his wishes is the least she can do.
'I'm so sorry, Chase,' she thinks - and she is, not just for the memory modification but for all the time she made him worry and then when she stupidly told her dad about them and didn't listen to him when he told her that was a bad idea. And everything that Chase has to live through...which isn't her fault but she knows the man she spent time with last night - that was the last time she'd see him for a while.
She lays down and looks at the pictures changing in the frame. When she sees Chase she grabs the frame and holds it against her chest, not even bothering to stop the tears.
Kim comes into her room and sits on the bed.
She knows she should feel something - the last words she said should have made her react but instead she just feels...numb. Well, no, she doesn't feel numb exactly, but the anger's no longer there.
And after talking to Chase she was furious because he had been crushed by the news. She had wanted to give him a few days, a little time...and then gently lead into the truth. But she couldn't blame Chase, not really. He was just trying to help, to prevent bad things from happening, he thought he could change the future.
Well, he did change it, but not for the better. She could only blame one person for what happened and the truth of that became clear as she was talking to her dad, the truth she could not unsee. It was his fault. Because he didn't listen, because he was either addicted or having withdrawl symptoms from heroin and so wasn't thinking and didn't consider any bigger picture and he was so damn focused on the idea of being right that he never even entertained the idea that Chase was right, that he should have listened to the warning and not...snapped.
When she closes her eyes she can still hear that laugh - the one that said 'there's nothing more you can do to me'. And while she knows that's not *her* dad, she can't separate them in her mind. Even after Elaine's help she can't divide them (beyond knowing that he isn't dead) -- which makes her think that maybe that's really what he is and she was wrong and blind for not seeing it earlier.
He doesn't mean to hurt people, he just can't tell right from wrong, which means that he needs help but she can't help him, not with this, he needs much stronger help than she can provide.
She kept excusing it, thinking that his behavior was because of his job but now she sees...
And so she's not angry, or sad, or hurt...she's not sure how she feels -- maybe relieved because she's realized that no matter what she does she can't help him and that he might be alive but the man she remembers died a long time ago.
The words her mom wrote come back to her.
Please take care of your father, he still thinks of asking for help as a weakness, but sometimes I fear losing him to the other side. There are evil forces in the bar. Please try to keep him grounded and remind him of who he is, if he forgets.
"I'm sorry I failed you, mom," she whispers. And now she feels the tears begin to fall.
A little girl crawls over to her, she looks very familiar and Kim has a flash of memory, remembering holding the little girl in her arms and watching over her at night. She knows it happened but she can't remember how or when.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" She smiles at the little girl, an infant really. The infant looks up at her with big eyes.
"You left me," she hears, which is impossible, but the infant is speaking.
"I don't even know you."
"Of course you do, don't you remember?"
"Where are your parents?"
"Daddy's away and it's all your fault."
"My fault? What did I do?"
"You couldn't stop talking and you told him too much and you destroyed everything." The infant sobs and her tears turn to blood.
"Please, please don't cry. I'm sorry." Kim kneels in front of the girl and tries to comfort her but she's gushing blood
She feels a hand on her shoulder and looks up expecting to see her dad. Instead, it's Tony.
"You're dead," she whispers, remembering the funeral, Michelle...
"No, I'm not."
Kim looks down at the little girl but there's only a pool of red.
Kim opens her eyes and expects to find blood on her hands.
One is gently supporting the other.
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timeasmymeasure
