A Love Stronger Than Time

Chapter 8

Tuomas awoke to honey colored light filtering through the window, and was disoriented momentarily when he felt the warmth of another body next to his. Then he remembered what had happened, and happiness washed over him as he glanced down at the peaceful sleeping face of his love. His smile faded when the memories of her dream came back to him, and he sighed. He needed to speak to the Doctor somehow, to ask him about this. He didn't know much about time travel, but it didn't sound good. Maybe her timelines were overlapping and then all of time would collapse. And it would be his fault.

He carefully slid out of bed and went to make breakfast.

Tarja come out to the kitchen a while later, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

"Good morning, beautiful," he smiled. "Are you hungry?"

She nodded and sat down. He plated the sausage and eggs and poured two cups of coffee.

They ate in silence, the only sound in the room being the clinking of silverware on the plates.

"Are you okay?" he asked, noticing the distant look in her eyes.

She looked over at him.

He cleared his throat, suddenly feeling awkward. "I mean, after the, um, dream you had last night."

She looked down at her food. "I can't stop thinking about it," she admitted.

He didn't know how to respond, so he just sat quietly and waited to see if she would continue.

"This is going to sound insane," she began, "but it felt so real, like everything that I saw really happened to me."

Tuomas swallowed. This was not good.

"Dreams ... dreams can feel real sometimes, Tari," he said gently.

She sighed impatiently. "I know, and I've had those before, but this was different."

She shook her head. "Never mind, we need to get ready to go."

"Go?" he asked, and then immediately regretted it, realizing how stupid it sounded. He had to pretend like he knew what was going on if he didn't want her to get suspicious.

"To rehearsal," she said slowly. "Maybe I should be asking if you're okay!"

He laughed nervously, and then followed her back to the bedroom to get dressed.

While she was in the shower, he wandered around the house, looking at all of the pictures they had put up of them two together and the whole band. Awards for their albums- they had done three new albums he had never heard of.

And then he saw something that made him stop dead in his tracks.

There was a framed picture of Jukka, wearing his traditional bandana, earrings, and sunglasses, that said "Jukka Nevalainen. 21 April 1978- 14 November 2010. May he rest in peace."

Tuomas stood stock still, his body paralyzed with shock. Jukka. The friend he had known since the earliest days of the band back in Kittee. In the original version of time, Jukka had been taking a break from Nightwish because of his insomnia, but they had still kept in touch. What if he had died from something stress related?

Tuomas dropped his gaze to the floor. What had he done?

He went back to the bedroom and slid his phone off the nightstand, quickly typing Jukka's name into google. Tuomas' brow furrowed when he saw what the cause of death was. Ebola.

He knew that Ebola was a big problem in Africa, and that there had been a brief scare a while back when someone had it in the United States. Everyone had feared that it would spread, but the cases in the US were taken care of and the virus had been contained to Africa.