I drop a kiss on his cheek. “Yeah. From now on.”
Before another disaster can catch up with us, we walk into the shimmering rift. For the first time, I’m not on the run, desperately tumbling through, trying to escape. I’m walking towards something hopeful. A tingling warmth ensconces me, a buzzing vibration through August’s hand, up my arm, all through me, but around us too. He never lets go.
The crackle of crisp hay sounds beneath my foot as the hayloft swims into view, gloriously lit by a blaze of afternoon sunshine. The smell hits me first, fresh and rural and so real. The smell of England. The smell of springtime. Of life.
“Slayer…” He grips my hand a little tighter, looking at me with purest love. “You did it. You actually did it!”
It’s real, all of it—real and tactile, solid and beautiful. The most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.
Until I see his smile.
This is what it feels like to have someone you love feel proud of you. To view you with complete and unadulterated adoration. It’s flooring, and the only thing that can ground me is his kiss.
When the others stumble through, when he turns to help them, I collapse down onto a hay bale. One of the hay bales we moved with our own hands. How long ago? Has it been seconds since we left? Hours? Years?
Textures never looked so gorgeous before—the grain of the wood, the precision and delicacy of a spider’s web, the rusting metal bolts in the ceiling. All of it, every piece, stardust older than human comprehension, formed into miracle after miracleafter miracle. Forces of nature so complex, so beautiful. But none so complex or compelling as our love.
“Do you need to rest?” August’s hand on my cheek, his words soft and close over the voices of the group, the living celebration of what we’ve done.
“No. I want to get home. I want to get started on our new life. Right away.”
He pulls me to my feet. “We’ve already started. Nothing’s going to stop us now.”
We retrace our path, out of the barn, across the paddock, along the riverbank to what we hope is the place we plunged into the water. Our walk back is, of course, far slower than when we were being chased by that lunatic future August. And I realise what a pleasure this is, to experience something with my August, with my friends, that no one else from my time can ever touch. The world as it was so long ago, but just as precious as ours is.
It’s night when we find our way to Primrose Hill. We had to ask directions from a local, and that didn’t go well. Then it’s all we can do to stand around and hope the time slip ends.
Under cover of night, we climb to the top. It feels morbid to get onto the still-erected scaffold, but it feels worse to sit beneath it, so we settle a little way down the hill, and lie on the grass. The barn might have been a nicer resting spot, certainly a warmer one, but when August drapes his arms around me to keep me warm, I’m more than okay with this.
The stars are brilliant, brighter than I’ll ever see them again in the centre of London. Bright and in their place, for now and forever, because I fell in love. With myself.
We lie there for hours, half dozing, until Jon and Assassin August stop fiddling with each other’s fingers long enough to notice, “Buildings! Buildings all the way!”
I almost slip down the hill with August’s enthusiasm to get me on my feet. “The pub! We need to get to the pub!”
There’s some commotion when we burst through the doors there, but none of us stop long enough to pay attention to it. We run through to the back room, slam the door behind us, and dive through the waiting portal.
It’s with a mixture of extreme trepidation, then fierce relief, that we arrive back in our own time, if not our own reality. If any time passed here, it’s impossible to tell. It’s already dark outside, and as soon as I remember our pockets are stuffed full of the money we made breaking into the cafe, we’re on the move again, buying tickets at the station to get to Cambridge University, spending the rest on as much food as we can carry to eat on the way.
The computer lab at Cambridge is empty but open, and the rift’s there too, waiting for us. Then, just on the other side, on a nondescript table, we find Assassin August’s particle accelerator. He closes the rift, pockets the accelerator, then we make for Jon’s van, and he drives us straight back to London.
Everything’s in place, just as it should be. Every drop of water, sparkle of sunshine, winter breeze, and glint of leaves is fresh and new and precious. The food we scoff on the way is pure junk, yet it feels deeply nourishing. As does the music Jon blasts on the stereo, astounding Assassin August all over again.
The company of these friends is precious to me, now more than ever. None of us are inclined to go far from one another, least of all my August, who’s never out of reach. But the group needs to part. Sleep’s been a distant memory for most of the past week. And a bed that I can actually sleep in? It’s a sensation I’ve almost forgotten.
We say goodnight to Shashi and Amber first, then Jon automatically makes for mine.
It’s a lot quieter without Shashi and Amber. There’s that feeling of a whole suddenly missing a piece. Both Jon and Assassin August are oddly quiet, the two of them in the front.
My frazzled brain finally pumps out the logical piece of the next puzzle to be solved: logistics. “So, we’ve got three Augusts now,” I commence.
Assassin August looks back at me a little nervously. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve got my accelerator. So I can go. Somewhere…”
“You can’t go yet,” Jon blurts out, watching Assassin August more than he’s watching the road, which is making me kind of anxious. “We just got back.”
“I… um…” Assassin August stares out his window into the bleak dark of a British winter. “I hadn’t thought it through. I kind of expected us to die.”
So I tell him, “August, you’re clearly coming home with us.”
