𝙖𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙡 𝟯𝙧𝙙,𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟵
JULIETTE SAT IN THE BACK ONCE MORE, SLOWLY DOZING OFF WHEN SHE FELT THE CAR STOP. She blinked her eyes open, scared that she almost fell asleep, and took a look around from the window. It was pure farmland.
A part of herself smiled.
Juliette knew where her obsession with the countryside started. It's a memory she didn't share with everyone, considering the personal aspects of it, but Five knew. She had told him drunkenly one night when they found bottles of unopened wine in some kind of cellar. He asked why she always liked the countryside whenever they played those question games and she had told him. Candor was always a weakness for her when in an unsober state, but even then, he smiled at her response.
Juliette stepped out of the car when it rolled to a stop.
"Son a bitch. Klaus is Amish." Five said out loud, closing the car door and looking around the land.
"This explains everything." Klaus said.
"How exactly does being Amish explain everything?" Juliette asked, stepping closer to Five.
"Because! Look at this place. This is everything my childhood was missing."
Juliette didn't exactly know what he meant by it, but she still nodded. Klaus walked forward and that was when Five went after him. Juliette followed suit.
"Hey, Klaus. Wait up a minute." Five stepped in front of his brother. "Doppelganger check. You feel anything strange? Itching, gas, sweat, anything like that?"
"No. No, I feel great. Apart from the old rash on the tackle, what can you do?" Klaus muttered as he walked past both his brother and sister-in-law.
"Good luck." Juliette said and turned her heel to pivot away.
Klaus stopped, realizing what she was saying, "What? Wait, you're not coming?"
"This one you gotta do alone." Five shook his head and began walking away.
"Alone? Yeah." His shoulder slumped. "Yeah, okay. Yeah, I can do that, sure."
Juliette waved as Klaus disappeared into the sea of people.
Five took the wheel and Juliette jumped into the passenger side. Five drove in silence as Juliette watched the scenery. He drove down the road and ended up parking next to a large field with cows feeding off of it. Juliette opened the door to the passenger side and sat on top of the car, staring out into the field, as Five turned up the radio and sat in the back of the car. He put his feet up and began looking at the map, but always kept an eye on Juliette's legs – which indicated her presence.
"Five?"
He hummed a response.
"What do you want to do?" She realized her question was too ambiguous. "We have so much time now. Our bodies are reset so we have another what? Fifty plus years more together? Come to think of it, if we do end up living another fifty or so years, we'll be married for over eighty years. What do you want to do with that time?"
Five put down the map and actually thought for a second. He never actually thought about it like that. They had years that so many would love to relive. And now they could. Of course the world only saw two teenagers who were madly in love (probably believing they'd break up when they were "18") and technically they'd need new identities and such. They had a fresh start.
"What do you want to do?" He asked instead, unsure himself.
"Well, one thing is that I want to live somewhere nice. Maybe New York for a while or many move higher up the coast? Like Maine or Connecticut. I had enough of the heat back in Texas." She chuckled. "I think I'd like to go back to school. I never did get to study music or film back in 2005. I never got to travel, so I'd like to do that." She leaned forward, holding onto the car with her hands, looking down and into the car at Five, who finally caught her eyes, "Would you like to do that with me?"
Five smiled, "Anything." He leaned back, gesturing for Juliette to come down. She hopped down and sat in the car with Five, facing him as he faced her. "Anything with you, I'll do. We can finally have a life together. A second lifetime."
"I'd like that." She went silent for a moment, feeling the guilt build up in her. "I have to tell you something."
"Oh, I know." It wasn't condensing, more so approving that he knew she was hiding something. She kicked herself for acting like he wouldn't know. For every thing she knew about him, he knew three.
"I know that you know that I...exist here. Some other version of me." Five nodded at her words. She didn't say it, but with some sentences and the constant mutters around her from other people was enough for him to assume. "I...I don't know how you'll see me, other me, when you do."
"I'm not going to change my mind on you from another version of living a different life. I know that both of us changed the course of our life there." He said. "I am married to you. No one else. Not even Juliette 2.1 or whatever she is."
She reached out to brush his hair out his face, "I know. I just can't help but feel like I'll be judged because of the life choices she made."
"You won't." He said it like it was final. What he said went. She wouldn't be judged. Not by him. Not by his siblings. Not by herself. He'd make sure of it. "Something else is bothering you." Again, he said it like he already knew.
Oliver, she thought, but she shook it away. He didn't need to know. He wasn't going to know. That was something she'd take to the grave. And she almost did twice. She could do it a third time.
"Viktor's plan." She leaned back in the seat. It wasn't a lie, but she couldn't look him in the eye. "I almost agreed with Viktor...about going back. Mainly because of Allison, though. She lost her daughter and when it comes to kids I–" She swallows the lump in her throat. "I also thought of my mother. I wonder if she felt the same way and I...I wish I could see her again."
And at that time, somewhere in the different timelines and universes and whatever it is you'd want to call it, Elena Valendur was smiling at a picture of Juliette – in some she is only a baby, others she is toddler, a ten year old and even her sixteen year old self – and held it close to her. She knew her daughter was out there somewhere. And she knew she was safe. That was all that mattered until she saw her again. If she ever did.
Five sighed, "We can't mess with time again. It's too risky."
"I know." She nodded, looking at her hands. "I know. I'm happy nothing happened here, but it doesn't stop the 'what ifs'." She bit the inside of her cheek in order to keep her emotions in check, "Is it bad that sometimes..."
Five's heart dropped and he almost wished it hadn't. He was being selfish. He knew what she was saying. He understood it was coming out of the greatest parts of her noble heart. But he couldn't help but wonder if they'd even had met in the original timeline. He had the candor in his heart to say yes, but also enough to say that they wouldn't have made it.
If she missed her old life, what else did she miss?
"Five." Juliette's voice brought him back. She saw it and she knew she should have never said anything. "Never in my wildest nightmares have I ever thought for a second that I would have my old life if it meant you were gone. Don't you ever doubt that I wouldn't trade everything in the world to have you."
Five didn't respond until he could get the lump in his throat to back down, "I can't risk that. I lost you twice. I will not do it a third time."
His word, like hers, was law.
"And I lost something too." She pointed out. "I lost your voice." Her fingers trailed his jaw. "I lost your loving smirks and smiles." Her index finger skimmed his lips, "I lost your eyes." Upwards towards his cheek. "I lost your wonderful mind that I have yet to figure out." To his temple. Oh that mind. "And most of all," Her finger traced all the way down to the middle of chest, slightly maneuvered over to his left, "You."
If Juliette didn't know Five so much, she wouldn't have noticed the pink tint in his cheeks nor would have known that the ends of his ears turned red although they were covered by his black hair. Her own face was turning warmer – not that she wasn't bold enough to compliment her husband, but that he was staring at her and only her.
"I love you." Was all that Five could muster up.
He was always a man of few words, expressing more in actions than words ever could. He wasn't a poet like Juliette, who could muster up words from the ends of the world and the pink skies that arose at dawn. She could take the time from noon to night and turn it into the lyrics of what is and what will be for them.
He loved her dearly. And if he could bring himself to, he would go back and time and give her what she wanted. But he couldn't. He had believed her dead once, watched her die the second, and he refused a third time. It was love that drove him to move the clock of time forward and backwards in order to please her, but it was, too, love that had him plastered on the word 'no'. He wouldn't do it. And it was because of love.
He would grow old with her. He would move to the countryside. He would be there at her graduation. He would support her through any career she chose. He would watch her sleep on slow mornings and as she woke up in the middle of the night. Their life was there now. And he only wished that she, as long as the rest of his family, would accept it soon.
Because if there was one thing he would not do again, it would be this.
He lost so much of life.
He was never going to lose Juliette again.
Juliette leaned her forehead against his, "I love you. More than you know, Genius."
She had lost so much in her life.
She'd make sure she'd never lose Five again.
Juliette leaned into Five, his arm wrapped around her waist, as they looked over the map. There were a few places that Five and Juliette both wanted to see – one place in particular was highlighted with little stars that Juliette drew. It was a special place that only Juliette and Five knew of and would continue to keep.
(Even from you, dear reader.)
Five began to sing out loud as Juliette hummed along to a song on the radio. It was strange truly, Juliette was always the one singing and Five the one humming. There was just something freeing about being in a timeline where nothing was wrong, nothing keeping them apart that allowed them the luxury of comfortability.
Five kept on looking for places for him and Juliette to go to once they finished the whole Sparrow business (or at least ensuring none of his siblings would be murdered or would murder). He looked to Juliette, who was staring into the field of cows, and he couldn't help but smile at her.
When he first began feeling something for Juliette, he felt angry at himself and like he could never truly love her – he didn't deserve it nor did he ever believe that he could have it. Now, as an almost 60 year old man, he couldn't imagine not having Juliette.
And when he didn't, it was hell on earth.
But now he did.
So what if he was head over heels for his wife, especially when they were alone? Many would believe that it didn't fit his personality and at some point in his life, he believed it. But he was Juliette's through and through.
He couldn't help but smile.
They were finally together.
Juliette turned her head for a second to glance at Five, who was already looking at her. She opened her mouth, candor finally wanting to spill out of her throat when there was rubble in the ground. Her hand latched onto Five's shoulder as a shockwave passed the car and onto the field.
Juliette watched as a whole field of cows disappeared.
The wave passed within a few seconds.
Juliette stumbled out of the car, "No. Nononononono." She rambled in a panic. "Five." She said, "Where are all the cows?"
"Can't we get one fucking day off?"
JULIETTE SAT IN THE CAR, IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT, WITH HER HANDS ON HER HEAD AS GIVE DID EQUATIONS ON THE WINDOWS OF THE CAR. She breathed heavily, trying to understand what could have gone wrong. Everything was fine. Everything was okay or at least she thought so until now.
Five was so concentrated on his equations and Juliette was so focused on how things could've gone wrong that neither thought to confront the other. Five's vision of a life was crashing and Juliette's castle of love and happiness was crumbling.
Juliette finally came out of her mind when Klaus came running down a hill with...
"Oh my gosh–" She muttered before turning to the wheel and began firing up the ignition. "Get in!" She shouted to her husband and her brother-in-law.
"Why can't you just get along with people?" Five asked as his hand collided with Juliette's door and shut it before he rounded the car to the passenger's seat.
"I tried!" Klaus shouted.
Juliette was shaking as Klaus ran over to a woman, who stood in front of the car, handing something to him.
"KLAUS!" Five shouted from the passenger seat, watching the angry villagers getting closer. "Come on! Get in! It's now or never."
Once Klaus got into the backseat, the tires spun round as Juliette flew down the road. She looked behind her, paranoia seeping into her neck, as she tried to figure out what the hell was happening. She thought back to the Commission Handbook and recalled multiple anomalies that could have occurred.
But nothing stood out.
"Damn it!" She hit her hand against the steering wheel. "What happened? How is this all happening? There has to be a reason and I can't think of Jack right now."
"I have no clue." Five said, running a hand through his hair. First the lobsters and now cows. It wasn't a coincidence.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing. Timelines are chock-full of riddles." Klaus said as he opened up the book that he was handed. It had articles and multiples at that. "Get this. My mom died here before I was even born!" He pointed to a photo as he showed Five.
Before I was even bor–
Juliette slammed her foot on the break, accidentally throwing Klaus forward and Five as well. She stopped the car and turned to Klaus, "What did you say?"
"Ow, Missy." Klaus muttered as he held his head. "I was just saying that my mom died before I was born."
Before I was born. Timelines. Missing animals. Shockwaves...
"Oh my gosh." She turned to Five who had a similar look on his face. "Grandfather paradox."
Realization came onto his face, "Shit."
"What's a grandfather paradox?" Klaus asked as Juliette drove down the road again, slower, but still at a rapid pace.
"You should know." She said, the full force of the world being placed on her shoulders. "We're living in one."
novaspeaks: ahh yes, the romance, the love, the hopes...all crushed. these two sincerely need to be happy in their lives - first the apocalypse, then the commission, 1963 and now alternate timeline that isn't much better...my babies will be happy eventually.
also ive been figuring out a shipname: either jive or vargreeves or halendur, etc. if you have any, please share <333
so...what happens now? who knows...(me, i know but im trying to be suspenseful). love you all lots and see you in the next one, my darlings!
𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 - 𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚