Time & Space

When is she?

The man places his hand on the DNA scanner that is used to provide access to the room. With the ability to manipulate time however he wanted, he began to age and corrupt certain parts of the scanner that prevents him from entering. The only reason he didn't remove the door from the timeline entirely is so he could be as delicate as he can. Despite knowing what he was dealing with, it just felt wrong to him to brute force it.


The door slides open to his demand, letting him into the room where they had preserved and stored her body. Just from the simple extraction earlier, he learned that the reason they even kept her body was to figure out if she somehow had something to do with how the man of time had operated. However, there was a sense of uncertainty when he looked through the commander's past.

Whatever it was, it didn't bother Zach, as all he wanted was to see her once more. On foot, he slowly approached what seem to be a specially designed casket, a pod even. Right as he stood beside the pod, he placed his hand on it, feeling a familiar sense of comfort and love. He closed his eyes and inhaled, bracing for everything to burst through him. With the same hand, he began to move it to a window on the pod that was fogged up by his entrance.

He wiped it. Inside was once his lover, in an inevitable eternal sleep. The man who had heartlessly massacred thousands held back tears. Gladness, closure, loss. Nevertheless, his tears began to flow uncontrollably with his hand forming a tight fist as he looked down at the face he had once always cherished. Everything he had lived for, was gone, yet she was right in front of him.

To process it all, it was something he had never thought was going to happen. For some reason, his mind manifested several false hopes that there was a way to keep her. Lo and behold, it was really the end. He needed time.

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Depending on who tells it, the amount of time he sat and mourned beside her varied. There have been words of it being hours, days, years even. Time moved and worked strangely around him, no one knew how long it has passed for him, but what was known is that he sat there, leaning right against where her head was. Pain beyond the torture he went through.

Eventually, he quietly got back up. With his hand placed on the pod once more, tendrils of time began to form out of it. The tendrils seep into the pod and wrap around her. His surrounding flashes into a different environment. 

From everything he had learned, he knew that she had lived a full life without him. When they had offered to clear her mind of him, to be able to live a life without the burden of him, she must have taken the offer. He had just travelled back through her life, and there she was in the distance, sitting with her lover.

Completely indulged, it was clear she was living her best life with her new life without him. As much as he wanted to intervene, to get her back and live the life they had planned, he knew that it's going to do nothing more than just more harm. In silence, he watched her life unfold as an observer. 

From meeting her new lover to starting a family, love until the end, it made him wonder... things. Maybe, this was how it was supposed to be. Perhaps she was not meant to have invited him that day. That he was supposed to live this life of solitary all along, and he was a mistake in the equation that had prevented her from... this all along.

A normal life. Ever since she cared for him, her life had changed so drastically even before she had found out about his second life. His existence only burdened her, and this was her chance to finally live her life.

After watching her new life completely unfold, never being noticed, he finally reached the end of it. On her deathbed in the hospital, her health deteriorated with age. Her beloved family had stayed with her, even her ageing husband stayed overnights at the hospital with her.

However, the moment she left was the moment everyone left the room to speak with a nurse. With the empathy, he has for the fear of dying alone, and how there are no consequences as it was basically the end, the golden-haired time traveller decides to slightly intervene. With his aged former lover looking away, he moved his hand onto hers and began to caress it gently.

The feeling of it causes her to slowly turn her head to look at him. He looked at her with a loving smile, his eyes forming tears that he desperately try to hold back. Knowing that she does not have any memories of him, it couldn't hurt 

"Zach?" She calls out under her breath, the weak voice still containing an audible sense of disbelief and joy. She weakly forms a smile on her face, her fingers gently grasping onto his. Even with age, she still could smirk and tease him, "I guess it's really time for me, seeing an angel like you here..."

Shock was an understatement of how the man felt, frozen in disbelief that she could still say his name. Words tried to force themselves out of his mouth, but his mouth only hangs open as he was unable to even mutter a single sound. 

"I've been waiting for you my whole life..." she whispered, closing her eyes as tears flowed down onto the bedsheets. Right after that, she passes.

Without a word muttered, Zach fell to his knees from how weak they were. With both of his hands grabbing one of hers, his tears began to overwhelmingly stream out of his eyes. He placed her hand on his face, begging for her to caress his face like how she used to. Her lifeless hand lay limp on his wet face, as his cries becomes very audible.

She never stop believing in him, and it was too late to go back and fix it. She was gone.

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After crying out every last bit he had, he stood quietly beside her. His figure and his face shadowed with the star that was behind him. He realised what he must do.