Participants:
Scene Title | Repeat After Me |
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Synopsis | After feeling once again out maneuvered by the forces of fate, Richard Ray decides finally to take his own advice. |
Date | July 8, 2021 |
New Chicago
“So now you want to listen, Epstein?”
There’s a rush of activity around the vehicles of the convoy as fuel tanks are checked and cargo is loaded for the next leg of their journey. The stink of gasoline and exhaust lingers in the air, clinging to everything like a sheen of oil atop a lake. Richard is stalking across the cracked asphalt with an expression that could kindly be referred to as a ‘scowl’, tight lines visible at the edges of his eyes where the sunglasses end and the lips beneath his growing facial hair twisted unhappily. His voice is sharp-edged, the syllables barbed, but the man it’s directed towards can probably tell that he’s not the one that the anger’s truly directed at.
“You didn’t want to listen the first time I tried telling you.”
The ground between him and the hulking vehicle is eaten up quickly by his long strides, that emotion roiling beneath the surface finding an outlet in motion at least. He has the air of someone who has to keep moving right now, because if he stops–
He doesn’t know what will happen.
“Yeah, that was before I watched someone get their soul punched back into their body,” Tay mutters, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, “saw my dead father on an interdimensional telephone call,” wait what, “and sat front-row while a mousy redhead had a complete fucking meltdown while yelling at God?”
Tay slowly raises his hands in the most helpless of shrugs. “Let’s just say my entire fucking worldview has had a few shakeups over the last couple of days.”
“I told you. We’re from another world, where things went left where this one went right. I know your father, there,” Richard replies with a tight shake of his head, “We’re here because we’re fucking desperate. Because there’s something that’s almost but not actually God that’s going to destroy the entire fucking world we’re from, and we’re a goddamn Hail Mary pass to try and stop it by picking up something in Alaska that - hafuckingha! - it turns out probably doesn’t even exist, because the guy who sent us here is fucking us for his own fucking agenda. We don’t even have a way home, but someone from the future told us that we find one and are promptly murdered as soon as we get home. Also, apparently Gracie isn’t Gracie at all, and the aforementioned Entity sent her to keep an eye on us for some fucking reason.”
“There,” he bites out,”You’re read in now.”
What a shock that Tay wasn’t willing to listen before, that all sounds perfectly reaso– no, wait, that all sounds completely insane.
Tay shifts his posture to one foot, hand on his hip. He lowers his head into his hand, rubbing his forehead, and then exhales a slow and patient sigh. “Okay,” he says in a way identical to the way Avi says okay when he really means what the fuck are you talking about.
Lowering his hand and raising his head, Tay looks past Richard and stares off into the distance, sliding his tongue over the front of his teeth, then shakes his head and looks back. “Okay,” he reiterates with a subtly different tone, the kind Avi uses when he’s giving up trying to understand something.
“So Gozer the Gozarian sent Gracie to spy on you because…” Tay trails off, hoping Richard has an answer to that. “Because the piece I’m hanging on here isn’t the fucking cartoon nonsense you just said, but the like, rationalizations.” He makes a little invisible box with his hands. “If—if you’re here to…” he tries walking back through that overwhelming mess, “do a thing in Alaska. That—is bad for the Antichrist or what-the-fuck-ever, why’s it spying on you and not doing the smiting thing?”
"Because– because that's not really why we're here, even if that's what we were told. Because all of this is someone else's grand fucking plan and all we can do is ride the fucking rails and have blind fucking faith that everything works out, and I don't even know what's going on anymore or even who is manipulating all this and– " Richard flings his hands up, and then slams both fists into the side of the Wildcat, his head following to thump his forehead against it - although more gently.
He closes his eyes, drawing in a slow, ragged breath. "I can't keep doing this," he exhales, barely audible past where he stands.
Tay is silent for a while, only the sounds of the city beyond the vehicle bay provides any backdrop. Industrial; welding torches, saws, torque wrenches. Richard rests like that for a bit, leaning against the Wildcat.
“Back in ‘98, when I was just a dumb fucking Jarhead kid, I got sent off to do some shady shit in Kosovo…” Tay says, coming to rest his back against the Wildcat next to Richard. “Small unit, six guys, just stirring the fucking pot. We knew we had two, maybe three COs above us giving conflicting orders based on shitty intel.” He reaches inside of his jacket, producing a pair of hand-rolled cigarettes he bartered for in the city. He puts one in his mouth and lights it with a mini torch.
“Soup sandwich,” Tay says, cigarette bobbing up and down in his mouth. “That’s what we’d call the jumble-fuck orders.” He takes a slow drag off of the cigarette. “But we had t’follow them, ‘cause not doing that meant not going home, and being stuck out in the Shits for the rest of our natural fucking lives.”
Tay offers the cigarette and lighter over to Richard.
“But then maybe we didn’t always follow the orders to the letter.” Tay admits with a crooked smile pinching his cigarette between his lips.
“Heh.” Richard lets out a vaguely-humored snort of breath before pushing himself off from the side of the truck, one hand rubbing over his face, shades pushed up and over his fingers briefly as he does so. He settles them back into place with a sigh and reaches out to accept the cigarette, and the lighter.
“What do you do when they know you’re going to disobey orders, and know how you are? Epstein…” He trails off for a moment to tuck the cigarette between his lips and light it, fingers cupping it against a breeze.
The lighter’s handed back, and he slumps his shoulders back against the truck, taking a drag of the nicotine before blowing out smoke again. He looks at the cigarette for a long moment before saying quietly, “I’m tired, Tay. I’ve done this dance so many times now, and I just… I don’t know if I have it in me. Something has to change. I can’t just color by the numbers anymore. I can’t just say my lines and trust the fucking play director anymore. I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to get ahead of the game, but I never could.”
“I had a code name once, you know. Red King. We were all– “ He waves the cigarette-bearing hand vaguely, “— chess-themed. People thought I took that one because I was in charge. The joke that nobody ever got is– the king’s the weakest piece on the board. The king doesn’t have free movement on the board, you mostly only move him when forced.”
He looks seriously over at the other man, “I don’t know if I’ve ever made a choice in my life that was really mine, not since I was born. Isn’t that– isn’t that fucked up?”
From off to the side of the two men, toward the back of the vehicle, comes a quiet sneeze. It sounds more like it should belong to a kitten than a person. All the same, there stands Captain Destiny, rubbing under her nose with her sleeved arm to relieve the itchiness.
She looks anxious.
“You slip your leash,” she answers the rhetorical posed by Richard with a sort of caution. “You just… make yourself unpredictable.” The blonde’s shoulders come up slowly in a little shrug.
It’s then that they notice the smoke from their cigarettes merely curls upward on its merry way, unimpeded by the wind. The sounds of the city still present, but almost more distant. “If a moment in time doesn’t happen on the clock, can it really be known to anyone?”
She grimaces. “I wanted that to come out sounding more mysterious and less…” Whatever that just was. Blue eyes then focus on Tay, wide and unsure. “I’m not really out about being able to do this.” It used not to function this way either. “So if this can just be our secret…” Des smiles, uncertain, before looking back to Richard. He already knows what she’s capable of. What she could be capable of if she had more than just memory of Odessa’s training and practice.
Tay leans forward just enough to see Destiny past Richard’s silhouette, then leans back against the truck. He looks over at Richard, then up at the sky. “This fucking guy names himself and all his buddies after chess pieces, then gets mad when he’s played?” Tay barks out a laugh and pushes away from the Wildcat, running both of his hands over his head with a smile.
“All seriousness, Rich, you keep thinking shit like that your head’s gonna pop. Sometimes you just gotta stick to the plan, and take a shot when you see it. Pick your battles, y’know?” Tay glances at Destiny, not sure precisely how much she eavesdropped on, but assumes enough.
Tay plucks his cigarette out of his lips and gestures to Richard with it. “Look, man, you and yours came a long fucking way here and I gotta figure it was for a damn good fucking reason. You got this whole gagglefuck of people.” He gestures around to the convoy. “It ain’t that you're surprised you got dicked, you’re just surprised how big the dick is. I get that.”
Taking a drag off of his cigarette, Tay blows the smoke over his shoulder politely. “If you wanna lie down and stop now, I ain’t gonna talk shit to you. It ain’t terrible here and I heard a few people already talking about sticking around after what happened back on the road. Cut their losses, set up here.” Tay pinches his cigarette between forefinger and thumb, motioning to Richard.
“So which one’s your plan?” Tay asks. “Cause I either gotta finish gassing the girls up, or figure out which one I’m taking back east.”
“Hey, Des,” Richard murmurs, glancing her way– and for a moment he looks at her as if seeing someone else, then shakes his head, “I mean, you know I’m not gonna tell anyone. You’re not wro– “
Then Tay speaks, and he can’t help it– he lets out a laugh of his own, his head thumping back against the Wildcat again. “Fuck. Fucking Epsteins. You’ve all got the worst fucking metaphors, do you know that? You’re– you’re right. You’re both right, and… fuck,” he mutters, more thoughtfully now as he takes a drag off his cigarette and blows it upwards, closing his eyes.
“No. No, we can’t lay down and stop now. Sorry. Both of you, for having to listen to that, I just…” He grimaces, then opens his eyes again, looking between them both, “It’s a lot. And I’m tired. And I didn’t– I didn’t expect that extra knife in my back. But you’re right, I can’t keep playing by the numbers. If I’ve got any hope of taking the narrative back I’ve got to make my own moves. I need to stop thinking about the game board they’ve set out and start thinking about how to knock it over. I need to stop listening to the orders we were given and start listening to…”
“But, you're right,” Ezekiel admits. “The message — wasn't going to work. My road always ends here. Walter Trafford stood right where you are in our future. My failures are circles.” Sliding his tongue over his teeth, Cardinal exhales a ragged breath. “I’ll get it right next time.”
Overhead, the lasers of the Mallett device wobble and grind together as they spin. But the lasers are being bent upward, distorted by the insane gravitational force exerted by Magnes’ power gone berserk. “I had to think bigger.” The entire facility begins to rumble, pressurized pipes begin to blow.
Ezekiel’s eyes are that of a madman, stolen from Cardinal’s friend. “Welcome to the new beginning, Richard.”
“…I have to start listening to myself,” he mumbles around the filter of the cigarette. He pauses for a moment, then nods, “Sure, Richard. Why not. One more time ‘round the Ferris Wheel.”
Destiny’s lips move as she silently repeats those two words to herself, drawing the shape in the air in front of her while she tries to decide how much of this confusion of hers she should try to clear up and how much to just write off as the cost of doing business with world hoppers. She eyes Tay a moment, further debating if she wants to ask if she should want to know what’s going on that has Richard in this state.
Whatever it is, she knows it’s bad, because he looked at her in a way he’s never looked at her. It stirs something in her chest and it makes her uncomfortable, but not in any way she blames him for. “Haven’t we talked enough about circles within circles?” Des asks softly, brows up and slanted with concern, repeating the words she’d heard from Else just a few days ago.
Tay smiles with a hint of relief. “There’s a bottle of Vodka under the driver’s seat in Scout,” he calls to Richard while backpedaling toward Tinderbox. “Half of it’s mine. We’re wheels rolling in thirty.”
It’s as simple as that to Tay. A choice is made. Forward momentum. And he’s going to follow that until another option presents itself. No need for debate, no need for deliberation. Always forward, or else.
Richard lifts a hand as Tay starts to walk off, letting it drop back to his side. “Maybe this isn’t a circle, if you look closely enough,” he replies quietly, looking down at the cigarette in his hand, “Maybe it’s a spiral.”
He pushes off the side of the Wildcat, stepping along over to the back and reaching up to grab a hand-hold to pull himself up and into it. “I need you to pay close attention, Destiny,” he says as he steps over to one of the bunks, dragging a duffle bag from the others beneath it, “I’ve got some very specific messages I need you to deliver.”
Destiny wobbles a little as Tay starts to move from the small knot of their group, one eye squinting shut against the headache coming on. This is easier in small groups, or wider-open spaces where she doesn’t have to worry about people wandering into her limited sphere of influence.
Or out of it.
The invisible thread that extends out from her and to Tay is gradually losing its slack, like he’s a dog running out of leash. A laid back dog, but… the metaphor is getting away from her like Epstein from her power. She either has to move to keep up, or pull back. She flashes a look to Richard as though he might have any idea what’s going on in her head or the question she’s not asking him or anything like it.
Richard’s seen the finesse that Destiny’s counterpart displays when using her ability. What happens when she tries the same is not that. She holds her hand out and wags it at her side vigorously, like trying to shake loose strings from a spider’s web from her fingers and it’ll just—
Destiny sighs with relief, her whole body sagging with it when Tay simply stops moving.
“Okay,” she pushes herself into motion and follows Richard around the back of the truck, corners of her mouth turned down in a frown. She’s concerned, and it does not abate once she’s listened to what he has to say.
“Wait, what? To who? To where?” The concern falls into something else. It’s that look he gets from Odessa when she’s about to argue with him.
"The problem is that my hands are the ones on the steering wheel here," Richard explains in a rush that shows he's thinking faster than he's talking, hefting the duffle bag onto one of the bunks and unzipping it, "Nobody knows me better than Edward does - not your Edward, obviously - and the team is going to listen to me even if I'm not officially in charge here. Even if they're pissed at me, even if they don't agree with me, they'll still follow my lead. Which means we're going to stay on those rails, which means we're going to keep playing their game. But there's no way in hell I'd abandon everyone I care about, everyone I love here. I'm loyal to a fucking fault, it's one of my biggest goddamn weaknesses. He knows that, too."
He adjusts the clothes stuffed into the bag, and then moves to collect some bottles of water to shove into the room he's made.
"So that's exactly what I have to do. But there's some shit I need to put into motion first, so I need you to do that for me."
Even before he says the out loud part, Destiny sees all the signs that lead up to it. “Wai— No, no. What?” She grasps him by the arm and forces him to turn to face her. It’s more forceful than she’s ever been with another human being. “Nobody’s going to listen to me! Where do you think you’re going to go?”
She already knows the answer to that, but she needs to hear him say the out loud part again.
“Destiny.” Richard’s pulled by that hand, and he lets her pull him, and stops as he looks back at her. One hand comes up, pulls off his sunglasses, and he looks at her seriously; eyes dark as midnight, shadowed from lack of sleep. “You’re possibly the most important damn person in this entire Convoy. People will listen to you if you make them listen to you, and you can,” he tells her firmly– but then his voice softens, “I trust you. I need you to do this.”
The young woman standing in front of him wants to get caught up in that moment, in that revelation of faith, to just simply bathe in that sense of accomplishment…
But that’s just not who she is. “I’m Odessa fucking Price,” she says to Richard, expression mostly flat, but still not quite able to hide her bewilderment. “You trust me when no one else will. But the others? Everyone else in this little convoy could turn around and go the fuck home, and it wouldn’t matter.”
She pokes Richard in the chest. “Your people are only going to see the face of a war criminal. Of someone whose name could be used as a verb interchangeably with betray.” She points at herself again. “No one who needs to get there is going to follow this to Natazhat.”
Oh. Richard looks at her for a moment– that shift, those words– and after a moment he just laughs, a hand coming up to rub over his face. “I don’t need you– her– to lead them. You’re right. They wouldn’t. They don’t need to. I just need you to relay my final orders for now.”
His hand drops, and he says bizarrely, “I am knocking Alex Trebek the fuck out and turning this into Family Feud and I need you to help me do that.”
It baffles her enough that it derails the assumptions that put her on that train of thought. She blinks rapidly and looks notably softer when she clears the fog of confusion. “Oh, heck,” she breathes out, embarrassed about lapsing for a moment into someone she’s not. Richard seems to bring it out in her and she doesn’t like it.
“I…” She hesitates and Richard knows she’s feeling more herself again when her look of determination would look too childish on Odessa’s face. “Maybe.” Destiny shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “But you need to put all your cards on the table with me.” She raises her hand, first finger extended and draws a circle in the air above their heads. “This is just us. Right here. If you won’t tell me what’s going on, then I can’t…”
She folds her arms and shakes her head. “I just can’t.”
“Destiny…” Richard looks back at her, admitting, “I don’t have any cards. Not a one. No secret information. No contingency plans. No hidden allies. None. They stacked the deck against us and put us in a place where we had no cards except the ones they gave us. If we keep following the plan they set, we die. We’ve already talked to someone from the future who saw our corpses.”
“The only way to win - to live - is to flip the table and start a new game. So we need to do that.”
“So what are you going to do? What am I supposed to do?” Destiny’s brows furrow, she blinks hard several times. Holding her ability this way is a strain, but she keeps at it. She has to learn to do this for the sake of everyone.
“I’m so confused,” she says helplessly.
"Improvise."
Richard flashes her a roguish grin, “Only thing I’ve got left. Okay.” He claps a hand on her shoulder, leaning in closer, “First thing you need to do is go back the way me’n Tay came from. Find Robyn and Silas. Try and make sure they don’t leave Gracie behind. She’s in Robyn’s custody; tell her to make sure Nat doesn’t kill her or something. Tell Silas that until I get back, he’s in charge of the away team.”
Silas isn’t even part of the away team.
“Wait. What?” The more he says, the less Des understands. “Why would— If Gracie wants to stay here, shouldn’t she stay here? Why would Nathalie kill her? If Nathalie wants to kill her, why would Gracie want to stay?” She stares up at him, eyes wider than before, the furrow of her brow deepening. “Please explain.”
“She’s an admitted spy. It makes no sense whatsoever to bring her along,” Richard agrees with a brief, curt dip of his head, “Doesn’t matter. And she certainly could still decide to stay here, if that’s what she wants– not saying to force her, but if she will, bring her.”
He holds up a hand, “I can’t explain, because I’m not using logic here, Des. Please. Just listen.”
“She’s a what?”
Destiny turns her head and stares off into the distance, trying to put pieces of the puzzle together with so very little context. It’s a solid thirty seconds before she turns back to Richard again. “So, I tell Quinn she’s in charge of Gracie and I tell Silas that he’s in charge of everybody else? Is… Is that all?”
“Two more messages. Elliot needs to tell Liz to find Lisa, to tell her nothing, but do anything she suggests,” says Richard, holding up two fingers, “And then tell Eve… that the only way we survive is by painting outside the lines.”
His lips twitch slightly, “She’ll fucking love that, I guarantee you.”
“Lisa?” Destiny leans in a little. If her eyes get any wider… Well, they just can’t at this point, honestly. She brings her hands up to her face, fingers steepled together against her mouth. It’s an Edward face.Her eyes close and her head dips down, a deep breath drawn in through her nose.
Her hands drop, slapping against the front of her thighs. “Okay,” she agrees, understanding at least that she isn’t supposed to understand, but not loving it. “Aaaaaanything else?”
Please, oh please, let it be something she feels she can actually help with.
Richard pauses, his eyes flicking briefly left to right as he tries to think of any other immediate things that he can put into motion. Then he gives his head a tight shake, “No. I think that’ll do for now.”
He turns back, reaching out to grab his bag, “Let’s hope I can put together a plan that I’d never make on the fly.”
“Is there anything I need to tell Tay?” She glances off to her side where Tay is stuck in place with the rest of the world beyond them.
“Just…” Richard shrugs the bag over his shoulder, “…make sure he knows I’m not giving up. I’m just changing my tactics.”
Slowly, Destiny nods. “I can do that.” She swallows anxiously and looks away, clearly conflicted about something. “What are we supposed to find at Natazhat?” she asks, looking back up with her head still tilted away. It magnifies her uncertainty and lends a suggestion of guilt.
“We’re supposed to find some sort of technology that’ll shield against the solar wind,” admits Richard with a shake of his head, pausing there beside the cots, “Although I don’t know how they’ll have the time to build it, so– fuck, given how little I trust the guy who sent us here, maybe it doesn’t even exist. Certainly sounds like we fail, listening to our time traveler.”
Destiny once again mouths the part of that statement that most bewilders her. Time traveler. Her eyes may permanently get stuck open wide for all that she’s been part of her various expressions during this conversation. This one suggests internal screaming.
“So, what?” She does not look at Richard again when she begins her query. “It’s supposed to just put a shield around the whole wide world to protect it from the biggest sunburn of all time?”
“So we were told,” admits Richard, “Some sort of research at the HAARP, manipulation of the magnetic shields around the planet. I know it seems a little far-fetched, but–” He offers her a wry smile, “Like I told Tay, this was a Hail Mary pass anyway.”
Destiny struggles. She knows that what Richard and the others are looking for isn’t there. She takes a deep breath and meets his eyes.
“Richard, do you trust me?”
An eyebrow lifts slightly, as Richard looks back at her. Despite that, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Do you think I’d be talking to you like this if I didn’t? Of course I do.”
“That’s you asking me to trust you,” Destiny counters. But he’s answered in the affirmative, so she nods. Her hands are trembling. “I’m not telling you everything. I’m not telling you the whole truth. I… Now I can’t. Because if you know, then you’ll act on it, and you’re trying not to be…” Her face screws up in her expression of consternation. “You see my problem?” She shakes her head, changing it to a statement. “You see my problem.”
She shakes her hands out at her sides. “So I’m… I’m keeping something from you, but I need you to trust me that I have a reason. And that when it’s… safe? Or when you need to know it? I’ll tell you.” Her eyes beg him to believe her, they speak to her worry he won’t.
Richard watches her for a long moment. “The more information I have to look at, the better. If you weren’t going to tell me before, then it wouldn’t…” He shakes his head, then, “No, if you don’t think I should know it, then I’ll trust that. I trust you.”
He offers her a faint smile, “All we can do is what we think is right.”
The little blonde presses her lips together and nods. If he weren’t leaving, she wouldn’t feel compelled to say anything at all, but if he’s going to go on ahead of them…
But Destiny believes in Edward Ray.
The best she can do to keep Edward’s confidence and Richard safe is to reveal that everything isn’t as it seems while not saying what. “I trust you,” she tells him quietly. “But I’m worried.”
She looks down at her feet. “Do you have anything you want me to tell Eddie?”
The questions she asked were specific enough that Richard has reason to wonder, now, but he doesn’t press. He said he trusted her, and he’s not going back on that, as much as she can see he wants to press.
As she asks that, he glances away. “Tell him– I’ll see him again. And that he is family. Even if he doesn’t think so.”
Destiny nods her head. That she can understand. “He’s as close as I’ve got family, too…” Her gaze darts away briefly before coming back to him. “Do…” She’s about to rock the boat when she doesn’t need to, but she wants to know. “Do you trust me because you trust her?”
At that, Richard laughs. “A little,” he admits, moving to step back towards the open back of the Wildcat and reaching a hand out to ruffle her hair, “But honestly? You’re more trustworthy than she is, as much as I love her. You’re a better person than she is.”
He hops out of the truck, then glances back, “That isn’t an insult. She’d agree with me. But don’t tell her I said that anyway.”
She ducks her head a little when he ruffles her hair like she’s a kid. She’s — at least in appearance — noticeably younger, and she’s used to it, but she’s chagrined anyway. “I can’t tell her anything, anyway.” The cheer she’s known for creeps back in, mouth quirking up a little. “I mean that literally. I don’t have… I’ve never had a way to tell her anything.” There’s a hint of fondness to her, even if she’s realistic about the other her that sometimes seems to inhabit her skin. “I know she likes me. I know she’s seen some of my life. I’ve… I’ve seen some hers.”
Her expression tells him that it wasn’t all good or even neutral experiences. “But I know she tries. And… I know she trusts you. I know how she feels about you.” And it makes Destiny second-guess herself. Her motivations and her opinions, the things she believes to be true that aren’t from her own experience.
The moment stretches on and she finally holds out her hand to shake, and a half second later changes her mind and surges forward for a hug. “You be safe, Richard Cardinal.”
Richard starts to reach out for the hand, then he’s surprised by the hug– and he breathes out a chuckle, wrapping an arm around her in return. “You too, Destiny Price,” he murmurs, “You too. You’re more important than you think. Don’t forget that.”
Then he’s pulling away and striding for the edge of the time stop, “You should be able to catch Robyn and Silas if you hurry, since this didn’t take any time.”
Destiny doesn’t cling, doesn’t try to hold him there. She withdraws and slides her hands into the pockets of her coat and nods. “Good luck.”
Right back out of her pockets come her hands, lifting into the air and moving about as if conducting some arcane spellcraft. Eyes closed, she traces circles in opposing rotations through the air in front of her, her thumb and middle fingers coming together as they close, drawing out to either side from there.
A conductor calling fine to a performance. Time resumes, Destiny wobbles for a moment, one foot staggered ahead, a hand slapping onto the side of the Wildcat to catch herself. She feels dizzy, head fuzzy. “I’ll get used to it eventually,” she promises herself. Looking over her shoulder, she watches Richard’s retreating form.
Only he’s not there anymore.
Just a shadow.
The temporal manipulator smirks faintly. “So that’s what that feels like.”