sophie.

Chapter 16

APRIL 1ST, 1963

It was the next morning, and we were whispering things under the sheets in his bed. We hadn't done anything the night before, if that's what you were wondering. I came in around midnight because I had a nightmare, and while that was true, I really just wanted an excuse to see Adrien ruffled with sleep and shirtless. Almost silently at the time did he open his sheets and I threw myself in, and before I knew it, I actually fell asleep.

By the next morning, I'd woken up first, and looked over at Adrien's quiet rise and fall of his chest. His face wasn't very composed, and with his head leaning against the pillow just so, his mouth hung open a little bit. I smiled in the morning light and softly poked his nose, wondering if it'd wake him up. In response his mouth closed and his eyes tiredly opened a little bit.

"What are you doing?" he asked with a smile, and picked up a lock of my hair that fell forward on my face.

"Taking a picture of this moment," I told him. God, was I corny. And I knew it. But at that point in my life, I decided to let it all in. Whether it would last was yet to be contested.  He smiled again and I couldn't help smiling back, and really, we just became a fit of grins. We started whispering in the soft, comforting solemnity of the morning, and eventually I came back on the topic of time travel. It might not have been the perfect morning discussion, but it was one I felt like I needed to know all the details to.

"So if you were in Polo that day, how come you didn't know that a future Entity of yourself crashed into me? I mean, I know you can't really read about that stuff in the newspaper because it's blurred out, but it doesn't seem very likely that the news would stay away from you." Adrien kept his relaxed morning glow as he pondered how to respond, and I watched his features as he did so. I really liked how he thought. It was as if every consideration crossed his face.

"When Brady Warren was younger," he started, "he proposed a theory. That while there was temporal inevitability -- you know, things that are going to happen to you, without contestation -- there's also temporal implausibility. Basically, events that cannot occur in time because doing so would be... well, implausible. The theory never magically showed up in the manual, like it does sometimes, but there's never been a time that it wasn't true.

"Think of it like this. After Brady died and I crashed into you, a newspaper article came out in Polo about it, right? Well, Daemon's crew got a hold of the article and came to Polo a few days later. That's why I -- my future Entity, that is -- disappeared."

"Oh?" I asked. I'd basically settled on the idea that his disappearance was a mix of Daemon's threat and general time traveler wishy-washiness, but now that I had a concrete answer, my delusions were stunted. The "what" also stood for the fact that Adrien's previous timeline criss-crossed like mad.

"Yeah," he affirmed. "That's why I left. But thing is, when Daemon came to Polo, there were two versions of myself running around. There was a pre-Brady version of myself on a business trip in Oklahoma City with Robert, and the new version that knew you. Temporal implausibility comes into play in the fact that Daemon's crew never had a chance in encountering the younger version of myself, because that Entity wasn't aware of the car crash. Sort of a self-healing time thing. Consequences follow the Entity that created them."

"But about your disappearance," I started. I was way more interested in  that now. I didn't have to say anything else for Adrien to get the hint. At this point his face became a little more serious under the sheets.

"It started a few months ago. Out of the blue, really. See, for years, Robert has kept two consistent living quarters in both 1963 and 2013. Because my body is naturally acclimated to this specific timespace in 63, they came after me here. I don't know where Daemon got his information, but it's irrelevant now. So when he came to find me, Robert took me to the year 2013 -- sometime mid-November -- and stowed me away in his flat above the antique shop. The day before the crash, Robert and I left for Oklahoma, but a few days later I decided to come back alone and visit Brady, and then... well, you know." The indication was obvious. "After that, when I started Watching, I crashed into you. The first day and a half were fine, just until after I finished my date with you. At that point I was ambushed by Daemon's crew and went timespace hopping to avoid them."