TIME & TIED: DESTRUCTION

ARC 3.1 - With Chartreuse

PART 48b: TALKING TO HERSELF 2

“Hi Carrie. Elizabeth,” their third incarnation said with a hesitant smile, nodding at each of them as she reached their position. She was dressed identically to Elizabeth, which only made sense.

“Hi Buffy,” Carrie said dryly.

Buffy’s nose crinkled. She eyed Elizabeth. “I think I’m funny, but really, I’m not.”

“Would you prefer Betty?” Carrie snarked.

“Hell no,” Buffy and Elizabeth retorted as one.

Elizabeth hadn’t read much in the way of the Archie comics, but she knew enough to not want to be linked to a nice blonde girl-next-door persona by name. Besides, if they were going to pick another name derived from “Elizabeth”, Buffy had better pop culture connections.

Carrie’s smirk became a frown. She pointed at what Buffy was carrying. “I take it one of those is mine, the other is Elizabeth’s?”

“Logical, yeah?” Buffy remarked, looking thoughtful. She thrust her hip out to the side, motioning for Elizabeth to retrieve that particular time machine. Elizabeth obliged her future self.

“So,” Elizabeth sighed. “Now I have to take this machine, Carrie’s, back to our home, leaving it under the bed. After which I take the older device which is there now, back in time to about three minutes ago. Whereby I can retrieve my own machine - that being the one Buffy has here - becoming Buffy and returning this present day machine back to Carrie’s room, using myself, now.”

“That’s making my head hurt,” Carrie groused. “Literally.”

She wasn’t kidding. The permanent dull ache in Elizabeth’s own head, the one which had become a sort of ‘background noise’ ever since the awakening of her temporal powers? It had increased over the last few moments to a level that was... not more painful exactly, but impossible for her to ignore. But then, hadn’t that been part of the point behind this trip? Seeing what she could accomplish with time travel?

“Just go,” Buffy suggested. “Close out the loop.”

“Yeah,” Elizabeth agreed, after pressing the heel of her hand briefly to her temples. “You two keep talking here.”

She began to jog off, her athletic strides quickly taking her away from her doubles. She only heard Buffy ask, “So where were we in our talk?” and Carrie’s retort of “I was wondering if you were here trying to change my past” before she was out of earshot.

***

It occurred to Elizabeth after a few minutes of running that getting home in five minutes versus forty-five minutes really wouldn’t make much of a difference in terms of the eventual outcome. Except in terms of how tired and sweaty she’d be. So she slowed to a walk, muttering “Where’s a convenient skateboard and automobile tow when you need one?”

Elizabeth hefted the time machine at her side. Hopefully she’d be able to set Carrie’s version of the thing properly. Frank had been more focussed on demonstrating how the machine could be set to return back to their present, versus a second trip here to her birthday. Actually, it was a pity she had to use Carrie’s machine at all; the one she currently held had to be set for the right day and time already.

Her walk stopped altogether.

Why couldn’t she simply take this machine?

Her headache flared up larger, making her grimace. “ASIDE from you,” she addressed it, bringing her hand back to her head. “I mean, come on, it wouldn’t be my first paradox.”

Way back before her power “awakening”, she had dropped off an apple at Frank’s place, then later picked it up, only to time travel back, and then drop it off. Bootstrap paradox. And this was no different. She had now given herself a time machine - which she could use to time travel back, and then hand it off to herself.

In fact, this sequence was actually more sensible than the apple had been, seeing as it had the potential to be perfectly temporally consistent - an identical time machine existed in this present, under Carrie’s bed.

So what if she didn’t swap them?

Her headache was becoming an incessant pounding, but now that she had this idea, her curiosity wouldn’t let her drop it. The point behind this trip hadn’t really been to talk about Chartreuse - it had been more to see what she could do with time travel. And she remembered the conversation on her birthday, more or less, so that wasn’t changing anything - it had to be this subtle paradox which had been poking at her subconscious through the summer. Right?

So could she do it?

Elizabeth fished her spare coin out of her pocket. When time travelling, you always carried a spare coin from the present - there was random variance to the time machine, meaning that you could land a day, or even a month off of your intended target. It was rare, but annoying.

She looked up and down the street, then retreated back into the shadows of a nearby house that had no lights on. Once there, she fell to her knees, set the time machine down onto the ground in front of her... and dropped the coin in.

NOW she had a migraine.

But at this point, it would either work, or it wouldn’t, right? Before she could stop herself, she’d reached out and yanked down on the lever.

The sensation of the temporal void sucking at her was familiar.

The sensation of the ice pick sliding into the side of her head was new, and hurt like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was even worse than the time she’d been shot.

Elizabeth screamed. Loudly.

But then the headache was gone, reduced to the normal dull ache, and as her scream died out, Elizabeth realized that she was no longer where she had been. She was still kneeling, but out in back of the restaurant. There was a man a very short distance away, holding onto her own time machine, the one she hadn’t just used. He was looking in her direction, his eyes wide. A cigarette fell from between his lips.

As soon as he realized that she was looking back at him, he dropped the device back down onto the cardboard boxes where she’d formerly concealed it, and sprinted for the back door of the restaurant. Obviously eager to get away from the screaming blonde girl who had appeared from out of nowhere.

Had he been rooting through the trash while on a smoke break? Elizabeth (Buffy?) supposed it didn’t matter.

She shakily pushed herself back to her feet, then picked up the now ‘impossible’ time machine sitting before her. With it braced at one hip, she went to get her own machine back, managing to pick it up too. Once she had them both in hand, she marched back around the corner of the building, heading towards the shadowy figures of her prior selves.

Carrie didn’t look too pleased by this development.

“Hi Carrie. Elizabeth,” their third incarnation said with a hesitant smile, nodding at each of them as she reached their position. She was able to distinguish them because she was dressed the same as Elizabeth.

“Hi Buffy,” Carrie said dryly.

She crinkled her nose, and eyed Elizabeth. “I think I’m funny, but really, I’m not.”

***

“I was wondering if you were here trying to change my past,” Carrie retorted.

Buffy didn’t immediately respond to her. In fact, Carrie briefly wondered if “Buffy” was back to being “Elizabeth” now, but decided that way madness lay.

Her body double ultimately sighed. “You know I can’t answer that. If I say I did talk to Chartreuse, you won’t. If I say I didn’t talk to Chartreuse, you will.”

“Who says?”

“The whole ‘I’m not going to be you’ rant as you beat me up earlier?”

“Oh.” Carrie rubbed her arms again, trying to stay warm. “Meaning you’re going to leave me with the illusion of free will, even as I do what is presumably written in stone for you?”

“Effectively,” Buffy admitted. “Sorry about that.” She glanced down at the time machine she was holding. “Though, here’s the thing. Some stuff that SEEMS to be written in stone? Can be reinterpreted.”

“How in hell do you reinterpret being a temporal weapon?” Carrie shot back.

A pained look settled on Buffy’s face. “Yeah. That is our ultimate question, isn’t it?”

Carrie slumped. “Yeah,” she agreed. “More to the point, I guess we both know that there’s a future ‘us’ out there, who is part of some upcoming war... and who is not liking that, from her point of view, we’re the ones messing up her past. Possibly messing with her very reason for existing.”

“And she’s gonna come for us,” Buffy continued, voicing the thoughts they’d been having for months. “She has to. The question is, will we be ready for her?”

“HOW? How does one even prepare for a battle with oneself?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy admitted. “Just... talk to Chartreuse.”

Carrie stared. “You really think she can help? Or could have helped?”

“I think... we need all the friends you can get.”

Carrie sighed. “This is so messed up.” She let out a long breath, then bowed her legs in a bit. “Worse, I still REALLY need to use the washroom.”

Buffy smiled, gesturing back at the restaurant. “Go then.”

Carrie frowned. “For serious?”

“I’ve said my bit, we’re done here.”

Carrie hesitated, feeling like there was something more she should say - but nothing came to mind. “Fine. Time travel safely,” she concluded, before running back to the warmth and relief of the nearby building.

****

The time travelling Carrie, aka Elizabeth, aka Buffy, walked around the side of the building and sat down. She knew she couldn’t leave yet. Because Carrie now knew why she’d had those residual effects after talking to herself on this day. And while she had no idea if remaining in this time period would help to spread the effect out a little more, she had decided that leaving too fast would be irresponsible.

Her headache flared up a couple minutes later. She swallowed. She tried to remember what had happened back then, on her birthday.

Her birthday. Yeah, she couldn’t have picked the day after? It had to have been the day itself, the night she’d been out with friends? “I can be such a jerk,” Carrie whispered. In fact, she might very well be her own worst enemy - literally.

The headache became an incessant pounding.

One of the problems with time was how it tended to mute one’s memories. On her birthday, she hadn’t remembered it getting any worse than this. She now recalled collapsing to the floor at the sink in the restaurant bathroom. She also recalled twisting her palms into her temples, choking back sobs until the feeling subsided. But it had only been a severe headache.

Except it hadn’t been - she knew now it would get worse. Ice pick worse.

NOW she had a migraine. Carrie braced herself.

Yet whether it was the knowing that it would happen, or the fact that she was spatially removed from the trigger event... for whatever reason, it didn’t feel like an ice pick to the skull, and so she managed to keep from screaming. Still hurt like the devil though.

Then, nothing. Background noise. Life as normal.

With a shaky hand, Carrie reached into the pocket of her jacket for the tools that would allow her to reset the time machine. “Shielding,” she murmured aloud. “My next session with Chartreuse, we’ve gotta talk mental shielding.”

Less than five minutes later, only one Carrie remained in the present. She would not use the time machine again for several months, not until her senior year of high school.