Growing Up Claremont

[Electra]

Erin pursed her lips, looking like she was deciding whether to answer at all, then shrugged, grinning a little. "Well, like I said, it's hard to beat Mark just for cute. He could be on TV if he wanted to, I'm sure. But it's hard to even work up a good fantasy when he doesn't give me the time of day. I guess I like spending time with James the most. He and I play video games at night when I've finished all my work, and it's fun. He's got something big bothering him too, but neither of us really have to talk about it. And that's good. You should hear him play guitar."

[alderwitch]

"Guitar, and a car! Be still my teenage heart," Alex laughed, stretching her legs out in front of her, and resting her weight back on her hands, "James has the bad-boy charm going for him completely, and he has the deep-tormented thing. He seems like the oldest of the guys maturity wise. He's always nice to me, but definately in a kid sister sort of way. I didn't even know he played. So what about Eddie and Chris?"

[Electra]

Erin shrugged. "I dunno, what do you think? I mean, Chris isn't very much to look at, but he's got a flying machine. And, well, I don't know what it is, but you want to listen when he's talking. I haven't spent that much time with him, though, and I think he might still be pissed at me for spoiling his special moment at the concert." She rolled her eyes. "And Eddie just wants all the attention he can get, all the time. He's cute enough, but just being around him is kind of exhausting. I know who your top two are already, but how about the others?"

[alderwitch]

"Well, Eddie's sweet but a little ADD. Top two, aside? I dunno." Alex screwed up her face, giving the topic as much consideration as she had the driver's ed book earlier. "I think, I'd totally have like a fling with James if I was that kinda person. He's got the whole bad boy thing going on, and I bet he'd be a lot of fun but I don't think we'd actually have that much that we see eye to eye on. Plus, totally cute."

She ticked the boys off on her fingers as she went, "Eddie seems so young, so it's hard to see him in a romantic way. I have a blast hanging out with him, but it's exhausting. Plus, don't tell him, but I like country music. Chris, however, of those three, I'd totally do like a long term thing. He's kinda nuts, but in a good way. He's got a great sense of humor, which is totally important."

[Electra]

"And a flying machine," Erin agreed with a nod. "But also a girlfriend, from what he's been saying. Doesn't hurt to look, though. I'm not sure I could deal with anyone who flat out wouldn't listen when I tried to warn him about something, though. There's no trust there, if you can't give and take warnings."

Erin closed her book and stared at it for a minute. It didn't take a psychic reading to see that she was wrestling with something. "Can I ask you a weird question?" she finally asked, looking up at Alex. "If you had the opportunity to go back in time and fix a mistake, and you knew that nothing you did would make things worse, but that it could make things very, very different... would you fix it?"

[alderwitch]

Alex closed her books and rolled over, obviously giving the question her full attention, "I suppose that depends on the exact details of a particular situation, and what was to be gained and lost depending on my actions. How certain I was that changing just one thing would result in the outcome I wanted, how selfish the desire was. I think I'd try and make the choice based on logic rather than my personal emotions as much as possible."

She laced her fingers together, "When we were five, Mike hit a boy and he flew accross the room. As far as we're aware, the boy died. Mike's hated his powers since then. If I could go back and change that, I might be tempted, but it's part of who he is now and while tragic, it's one of the many things that make him who he is and will be. If we're talking about something like what wiped out your world, I think that's a situation that might warrent some meddling."

[Electra]

Erin rested her chin on her fist, elbow balanced on her upraised knee. "It's something I've been thinking about for a few weeks," she admitted. "Darian, Quark, the little guy who makes all the gadgets, says that he can rig up a machine that's a dimensional transporter and a time machine. I could go over, and then back, and try to find where it all went wrong." She closed her eyes. "He opened a portal to my dimension. Right in front of my house. The front door was open, and I could've stepped through and been there in twenty paces. But I couldn't make myself move."

She let out a long breath. "I feel like a coward. If there's a chance, I have to take it. What could go wrong that's worse than what already happened? The only thing more that could possibly go wrong would be that I eradicate myself somehow, and that doesn't matter so much. But I'm afraid to go back, because I like what I have here. If I go back, I don't know what would happen."

[alderwitch]

Alex rummaged around for a moment, pulling out a notebook and flipping to a blank piece of paper. "It's not too likely you'd eradicate yourself. Here, look,"

Quickly, she sketched out a time-line, noting points of history on it with little cross hatches, then she marked off a divergent stream and added in the notes of Erin's history on that one, "We're on Earth Prime, right? At some point, your dimension's history and ours diverge, creating the world that you came from."

She drew a line over, from one timeline to an earlier point in Erin's, "You go back and change history, and it spikes off in a different direction, creating an alternate history for that dimension and an alternate future, but your timeline, the one you came from exists. It's just no longer stable so it collapses back into the multiverse, having existed but no longer currently existing. The future and present of the people in that dimension don't change, it just no longer becomes the dimension that is going to be. Effectively erasing it but not erasing who you are. It would leave you the sole survivor of a collapsed singularity."

Sometimes it was easy to forget just how bright Alex was until it came up in casual conversation.

[Electra]

Erin stared at the diagram, then at Alex. She repeated the procedure a couple of times. "All right... I think you're saying it won't work like I think it will, but could you do it again more slowly and in English?" It wasn't the first time they'd had that conversation, sometimes Alex got carried away enough in helping her roommate study that she forgot Erin wasn't anywhere near her mental plateau. "I mean, if I went back and kept myself from getting the shot of vaccine that I got, wouldn't it never happen, and I'd just dissolve?"

[alderwitch]

"Oh, sure. Sorry. Look at it like this." Alex set the pen down and raised up her hands, "If you go back in time and prevent things from occuring the way they have, that future will cease to exist. It did exist at some point, however, so the world you remember with the zombies and everything will no longer become an active timeline. Instead it will collapse in on itself, but it did exist at some point so you will continue to exist. Everything in that world that has happened, will have happened. It just won't happen again."

She paused to take a breath and slow herself down before she got into the complicated bits, "It will no longer be the active time line for that world. It will be a potential that never comes into existence. Because it has existed at some point, you'll continue to exist but your past won't change. You won't change. It will all still be just as real to you, but if you go back to 'your' world, you'll be a temporal anomoly for that dimension, as opposed to being a dimensional anomoly in this one. Does that make more sense?"

[Electra]

Erin was silent for a moment, staring at the diagram with an expressionless face. "So I could shut down that timeline, so it doesn't exist anymore. No more dead world. But it wouldn't bring anyone back." Her voice was very quiet, and if they hadn't had their heads together, it might have been inaudible. "Not even time travel, even if it worked perfectly, would fix anything."

[alderwitch]

"Yes, and no," Alex looked up at her friend, her eyes bright with tears, "You can't change what's happened to you, but you could - theoretically - change what the dominant time-stream for the dimension is. Your family would be alive, but they'd be no more your family, in a way, than the ones in this world. There would be another Erin there that had her parents and her sister and whatever the future of that world holds for her. You can't change your past, but you could change their future. It might not count for anything, or it might help you a lot knowing that you did everything you could."

Alex paused and reached out to squeeze Erin's hand, "I'll go with you if you decide, you know. If you need to go back to your world and kill all the zombies, or go back in time to stop it. Whatever you need to do, I'll go with you."

[Electra]

Erin pulled away, wrapping her arms around her knees. "It wouldn't fix anything," she said again. "There's already an Erin and a White family that didn't live through any of that. What good would it do to make another one, or a hundred other ones? It doesn't change a goddamned thing." Her voice was no louder, but the color was creeping back in, anger and bitterness. "The most I could do would be to finish the job, make it so all the people who died really were just a bad dream, and take the world away from whoever was fighting over the bones. What's the point?" She dropped her head to her knees.

[alderwitch]

Alex went to place a light hand on her back, knowing she might not welcome the human contact but feeling the need to offer it even if it was rejected, "The point is, you can change the world, but changing yourself is much harder. You can't erase the memories you have, but you can protect other people with what you learned from them. You have to do what will make you feel better for once. You're a hero, Erin, and I mean it. You have fought so long and so hard. So very hard, but now you have to decide for you what will help you sleep at night. If changing the timeline of your world will do that, let's go wrangle up Quark. If you want to go wipe the slate of your world clean, we'll go do that. If you want to go hit something until you can't think anymore, there's the combat simulator downstairs. None of it will erase your life, but some of it might help with today. Eventually, it will get easier. I promise."

Alex kept her voice strong, but soothing rather than confrontational as she spoke, the book forgotten and closed to the side. "You're not alone, anymore. I'm here to help. The whole team is. Even when that help is just giving you space but I don't think there's a single one of us that wouldn't follow you wherever you need to go."

[Electra]

Erin flinched at the touch, a movement violent enough to draw an alarming creak from the bunk bed she was leaning against. Even without reading her, Alex could feel her roommate rejecting the contact, or the comfort, or both. A moment of quiet stretched into a few minutes while Erin laboriously pulled herself back together, tucking away the impact of what was, after all, merely a terminal diagnosis for a world that was long dead. She started taking deeper, more measured breaths, running through the meditation exercises she was taught, just enough to get by. Eventually, she raised her head again, her face composed and dry.

"I'll have to talk to Quark, I guess," Erin told Alex, her voice distant. "He seemed to think the theory was different, but he was vague on how it would work. I don't even know how I would go about figuring out what to change. But I guess we've got all the time in the world, if what you're saying is right. That world's not going anyplace." She picked up the book again, leafed through it. "Did they tell you what time the class is going to be meeting? I'll have to write it in on my schedule."

[alderwitch]

"It's a dodgy subject, and I'm sure he understands it better than I do," Alex didn't withdraw her hand at the flinch, although she did as Erin began her meditation exercise, "As time travel's involved, there's plenty of time. Especially to make sure that the trajectories are correct."

She sighed slightly as Erin changed the subject and tucked her hands in her lap. Alex was emotionally self-contained and secure enough to not let a flicker of emotion other than concern show at Erin's reaction. She was pretty sure that the bulk of her speech had gone ignored or unheard about dealing with her emotional baggage for Erin rather than the people that died. Survivor guilt was a brutal beast. "Two o'clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

Alex glanced down and quietly closed her notebook as she continued to project that calm steady presence into the room that she usually provided as she retrieved her driver's ed book. It was hard to read anything else in that face other than a faint shadow of sorrow beneath the concern, "It shouldn't be a difficult course, I don't think."

[Electra]

"I think you're probably right, it's just a sophomore level class." Erin unfolded herself from the floor and went over to the large schedule chart she'd tacked to the wall. She snapped the first pencil she tried to pick up with one careless flick of her fingers, but was more cautious with the second as she started moving things around on the list. "Working with Summers will be weird, though. I guess it's better than Coach Jones or something like that."

The calming aura Alex was projecting seemed to be helping some, especially as Erin finished regaining the appearance of composure. "Summers wants me to start sparring with Mike. I don't know if that's a good idea," she told Alex. "What do you think?"

[alderwitch]

"Hmmm," Alex tapped her pencil against the neat lines of her homework, "Yeah, I could see that. Mike holds back too much and if he was up against you, that would be way harder for him to do. He's also got great control that I'm sure he could show you a few tricks with. Mike's almost as strong as you are, did you know?"

She jotted down a few notes in her book without looking up, "He holds back a lot because he's afraid of hurting someone and I don't think either of you could really badly hurt the other one."

[Electra]

"I know he's strong," Erin said dubiously, "I saw him push over the jumbotron at the stadium. But he doesn't seem like much of a fighter." She waved a hand, impatient with her own words. "Not in a bad way, really. Who wants to fight in every situation? But I don't know that he would really fight in a sparring match. And I really don't want to hurt him on accident. The first time they had me up against a live trainer, she told me to come at her with everything, and I almost put her down on the mat. And she was really, really strong."

She raked her fingers through her hair, disordering it into strange waves. "Make you a deal, okay? I'll follow you if you go on a date with Mark, and make sure no one messes it up, if you come out when I spar with Mike and make sure I stop if I need to. I know you can get into my head, and his. You'll be able to tell if things are going bad."

[alderwitch]

"It's a deal." Alex agreed with a smile, finally looking up from her book, "I'll even go you one further and have a talk with Mike before you're sparring match. I know how to phrase things that he both gives it his all, and doesn't get in over his head. I'm not above manipulating him for the greater good."

She chuckled and shook her head, "And he'll know I'm doing it and why, even. Did ya wanna go find him now?"

Unsurprisingly, Alex kept everyone's schedules in her head.

[Electra]

"Maybe you could go find him," Erin suggested, "and I'll meet you in the gym in maybe an hour?" An hour would give her some time alone to make sure she wasn't about to snap any more pencils or equipment, or worse, just because she was feeling a little more off than usual. "If nothing else, we can tell Summers I followed his advice before we start classes with him."