sophie.

Chapter 15

It turned out that during my little escapade in the damaging timespace, there'd been an encounter between Adrien, Valentine, and one of Daemon's messengers, Bones. The tall one, with the varying levels of subtle (yet ultimately expanding) dislike for me. He had white-blond hair and usually wore all black like some mourning Hamlet. And apparently, during the impromptu meeting, which took place in a restaurant in Polo back in 1963, he'd slipped into their booth while they were eating, causing Valentine to cough on a piece of pie. The announcement was simple, if also totally sinister. 

They had Sawyer. Bones made no indication that he was holding back on information, and in his explanation did he say that, in the small time gap between when Soy was knocked out and when Adrien arrived, Daemon had intervened again and intercepted Sawyer's recovering body.

"But they can't do that, can they? Sawyer's not a traveler," I tried to tell them. We were still parked on the street near my house, in 2013. The windows were tinted, so there was only a microscopic chance that someone would recognize me in the car and cause the timespace to Refresh. Plus, Polo's full of really old people, at least in my neighborhood, and they all go to sleep at like, five PM. So I was in the clear. Not only that, but I think the moment that I met up with Adrien and Valentine, we were marked with a Staple. Don't ask me how that would work, if the timeline were to thereafter damage. Something tells me that all three of us would go back to the original point of the Staple, but how much would we each know?

[TWA]

The idea that we were a group gave the suggestion that we'd all Refresh together, but the concept was overrided by the fact that we each convened from separate times. We'd both go back to the Staple, still with all the information that we exchanged, but I'd be on a different plane of travel than them.

[/TWA]

But I wasn't really thinking about all that in full. Sawyer was my main concern.

"Well, we can't promise you anything. Maybe Sawyer is a traveler, maybe he isn't. I haven't heard about any previous situations in which a commoner experienced the travel, but given that your friend was passed out during the move, he wouldn't be aware of it. Any number of alternate theories are thus possible," Valentine explained.

"So you're saying he could be in the year 3750 and not even know it?" I asked.

"If he isn't a traveler, that would be the expected scenario. But if he is, he could be forced into any timeline without bearing a commoner's consequences, knowing the year or not," Adrien explained. He was trying to keep the conversation purely informational, but I could hear my voice rising, trembling. 

"So they could just abandon him if they wanted to? Throw him in a timespace to rot away?" I asked. The thoughts were horrifying, and with my mind wandering, I couldn't keep control of my worries. Sawyer was my best friend, and, I don't know, maybe I thought at one point that I was seeing him as something more. He was my brother, and I was practically his sister. The prince and the princess of suburbia. And now he was stuck in a place -- time -- that was potentially impossible for me to track, if Daemon's crew chose to keep it a secret.

"Relax, they'd never hurt your friend if it meant they could have me," Adrien explained. He could tell I was hurt, and from the front seat, he didn't have much room to comfort me, so I crossed my arms as if I were cold. But he did something unexpected: he shoved himself between the front seats and reached into the back, put his arm around me, and held me in an assuring brace.

"Don't worry, Sophie. He won't be hurt."

It took a few minutes to warm up, and it may have been awkward for Adrien in that position from the passenger seat, but I couldn't help feeling thankful for him. Once he departed from our hug and returned to his seat, he kept his body turned to face me.