When he recovers, he responds. Well, there's always causality.
Causality? Lark will repeat, curious.
Causality, Wally will confirm as he buries his face in the crook of her neck, as he breathes her in—tastes her in his throat and feels her in his lungs. He will go on to tell her: Causality is cause-and-effect. Things influence other things—they don't just happen.
So you don't think we just... met. Even later, Wally will remember this, and he will know what she really meant: You think this was up to chance. Wally despite his sceptical nature will, by then, know better.
Well, we did meet. But us meeting doesn't exist in a vacuum. There were choices—causes, I guess—leading up to it.
Lark will not look impressed. Wally will fall over himself to change that. Like—You needing to get to Allender by nine-thirty to meet with your sister-in-law. The bus to Allender being late. Me being early. You choosing to walk to the Enchanted Florist. Me choosing to run.
He continues: All these causes lie in the past of us meeting, and us meeting is the future of the effect that was caused.
It will take Lark a moment to process all this. Then, she will argue: Those aren't causes, though. They're circumstances.
I'm trying to—look, Lark. What I'm trying to say is, nothing happens just because it's going to happen. Other things have to happen first. Like A—he will kiss her neck—to B—he will kiss her jaw—to C. (He will kiss her lips.)
Lark, distracted for a moment, kisses him back. Then, she looks upset again. But—the fact that these other things have to happen just for us to happen—that has to mean something, right?
Wally will laugh, because in his entire life he has never had pillow talk so scientific. You really want to believe we're meant to be together, don't you? Have you considered that we're together because I chose you? Because you chose me?
Lark will be silent, because her entire worldview has always operated on the basis that everything is predetermined: the past, the present and the future are already set in stone. She does not like the idea that anything is left to chance, especially Wally West and the love for him she has only just begun to admit out loud.
Look, birdie... Wally senses he could have handled this conversation a little better, and so, he will lift his face to look at hers, reach down to tuck a thick curl of hair behind her ear. Maybe we were always going to meet. But by the theory of causation, that still would've been predetermined by an event in the past. An action. It could've been anything. Anything you've done, anything I've done, anything anyone we've ever known has done.
That sounded like destiny to Lark.
Every action has a consequence, and every consequence led me to you.
Consequence? Lark will huff. You make me sound like something you have to suffer. Like something you can't escape. Like—
Fate? Wally will counter. And Lark, stunned speechless, will not be able to do anything other than smile.
In the present, however, Lark Lennox does not yet have any of Wally West's metaphysical insight. And so she is forced to ascribe to her belief that everything is decided, that life is a movie and existence, her existence, is scripted.
It is a part she must play, and it goes something like this:
WALLY
Wally West. Have we met?
𝑖𝑖. When Wally Met Lark . . .
Start from the beginning
