56. August 31, 2202 Boston, Massachusetts #2
Oliver loved and hated the gift: loved having the physical reminder of his parents, but hated that he needed it. For weeks he had been secretly terrified that he was forgetting things about them, the details that made them more than ghosts.
He wept for the first time since the accident, then hated himself for crying in front of his brother, who hadn’t said a word about it.
When his tears stopped, he didn’t say thank you.
He told Theo, “I wish they were real.” Which wasn’t exactly what Oliver meant, but somehow, Theo had known what he was saying.
He told Oliver that their parents’ memory and their love were the same thing, and that was—and always would be—real.
“Hey, Christmas waffles is a great tradition,” Oliver says.
Theo clinks his beer against Oliver’s, and they both drink to it. “How’s the time travel going?”
“I had an appointment at Aevum today,” Oliver says. “They denied my access.”
“What does that mean?” Theo asks.
Oliver sighs. “It means I’m too sick to travel.”
Theo stops with his beer halfway to his lips. “So, that’s it?”
“I hope not.” God, he hopes not. “They’re suspending me for a week, then I have one more chance to try again.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s good if it works,” Oliver agrees. He doesn’t want to think about what happens if it doesn’t.
“At least you got some trips in,” Theo offers. “You got to see things you never would have seen otherwise. Like that ballet. That’s got to count for something.”
He’s sure it would have, before Beatrix. He crumples onto the counter with a groan.
“What?” Theo asks.
He doesn’t understand. But how can Oliver expect him to, when he has never told him anything about his life, about Beatrix, about what he really gifted to him. Maybe it’s time he did.
Oliver lifts his head from his arms. “I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise me you’re not going to say one fucking word until I’m done.”
Theo looks taken aback. “Okay. Promise.”
Oliver straightens and takes a drink. Theo pulls out the stool next to his and sits. He waits, prepared to listen to whatever it is Oliver has to say.
He tells Theo about the Globe and the woman who tried to pick his pocket.
About how, against all odds, he met her again in Venice, one hundred years later, but completely unchanged.
How he danced the entire night with her without realizing who she was.
How they met throughout history, in moments big and small and only theirs.
How leaving her became harder. How she’s waiting for him in 1965, in a little village on the border of Wales that no one has ever heard of.
He takes a swig of his beer. It does nothing to dull the ache in his chest at the memory of Beatrix, leaning against her doorframe, watching him go.
Oliver waits for Theo to say something, to talk to him like a child who has had a bad dream, to tell him it’s not real. That Beatrix can’t possibly be real.
“It’s not your fault, Oli,” Theo says quietly.
It is. He should have told Beatrix how he feels, should never have risked leaving her without a goodbye. But Oliver has made the same mistake people always make. He thought he had more time.
“You believe me?” Oliver asks, relieved but surprised at his brother’s easy acceptance.
“Yeah, I believe you.”
“Why?”
“I can tell when you’re lying,” Theo says. “You’re terrible at it. And I’ve never seen you as happy as you were just now, talking about her.” He seems saddened by the thought. He finishes his beer. “I hope you get back to her. You deserve for something to go right in your life.”
Oliver meets his brother’s weary gaze. “You deserve to be happy, too.” If anyone does, it’s Theo.
Theo, who was only nineteen when their parents died.
Who had to tell the police the bodies in the car were their parents and had to tell Oliver their parents were dead.
Who raised Oliver while he went to college and worked two jobs and applied to medical school.
Who put up with all of Oliver’s teenage bullshit—and, if he’s being honest, his adult bullshit, too.
Who still opened the door when Oliver showed up on his steps and said he needed him.
Theo slides off his stool. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Why not?” Oliver says. “You worry about me.”
Theo rolls his eyes. “I’m supposed to worry about you.”
“No, you’re not,” Oliver insists. “You don’t have to take care of me anymore.”
“Oli—”
“Let me finish!” Oliver shouts. That stuns Theo into silence.
“You don’t have to take care of me. But I’m glad you did.
I can’t imagine how fucking hard it was for you to raise me when you were barely more than a kid yourself.
And I appreciate everything you did, everything you sacrificed for me. But you can stop. I want you to stop.”
Theo’s eyes shine.
Oliver presses on. “Do you remember that storm that rolled through at the end of the funeral?”
Theo nods.
“You were up there reading Mom’s and Dad’s eulogies, and I wasn’t even listening to you.
I was watching the clouds come in.” He had sat on a wobbly chair in the front row, pretending the two closed caskets held someone else’s parents.
The sky overhead rumbled with thunder, and a man whose name he had forgotten said something about his mom and dad bowling with the angels.
“It sounds so stupid now, but I was convinced you were going to get hit by lightning. Fucking terrified you were going to die right there in front of me, that they were going to bury you all together, and I was going to be the only one left.”
“Jesus, Oli,” Theo says, his voice hoarse.
“What I’m trying to say is I get it. Why you asked Aevum to look up your future. We were both afraid of being left alone.”
“I know it’s against all their rules, but if I could, I’d go back and change it,” Theo says. “I wish I never went to Aevum.” One choice that shaped their entire relationship. How different would it be if Theo could undo it?
“It worked out in the end,” Oliver says. He doesn’t believe in fate exactly, but there’s no denying it. If Theo hadn’t gone to Aevum, or hadn’t waited to show him his obituary, or hadn’t felt so guilty about it that he gifted him with time travel, he never would have met Beatrix.
“At least something did,” Theo says. He sounds defeated, like everything that has ever gone wrong in Oliver’s life is his fault.
He brings their empty bottles to the sink. The rain has let up outside, and Oliver takes it as his cue to leave. Theo insists he can stay, but it’s still not home.
His brother walks him to the door.
“I’ll bring your clothes by this week, after work sometime,” Theo says. “We can grab dinner, if you want?”
“Sure,” Oliver agrees. He pulls the door open and the night air greets him, cool and damp and smelling of wet pavement instead of cinnamon. He hesitates, something nagging at him, a regret one step away from hatching in his guts.
“Oli?”
He came here because he didn’t know what to do.
He knows now, even if it isn’t the answer he wants.
There is nothing he can do. He has no control over whether he will see Beatrix again.
He might already be too late. All he can do is rest and hope that this, too, will all work out in the end; that the universe, like Theo, thinks something should go right in his life for once.
He won’t leave anything else up to fate or luck or the universe’s whims. He still has a chance with Theo—a choice—and he won’t make the same mistake he made with her.
Oliver pulls his brother into a hug, catching him off guard. “I love you,” he says. His voice is choked, the words rusted from too little use.
So are Theo’s. “I love you, too.”