In this one, Hero (she) and Villain (she) are childhood friends who turned into enemies. Hero works for The Bureau and can watch the past while Villain can travel to both the past and the future. Villain has seen things she cannot tell, but she keeps using the knowledge against Hero whenever she can.
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The Archives were empty. Thousands of shelves filled with books were everywhere, left unbothered in the constant silence that was not often broken.
Hero was roaming the alleys, shamelessly taking her time. She had come in uninvited, hiding from both security and her bosses. She would enjoy every second spent in this forbidden temple of knowledge.
The Bureau had sealed off the entrance, only granting it to highly trained travelers. And there were only a few of them, not mentioning that they had better things to do than to sit around and read, or so Hero assumed.
But she had not come for a book, nor for several of them.
She had come for more important matters.
When Hero found the room she had been looking for, she wasted no time. She slipped inside and locked the door behind her. There was no world in which she would allow anyone to disturb her.
The room looked like the rest of the place: filled with shelves and books. It was smaller, yet the corners were not visible, hidden in the darkness that Hero didn’t want to light up. The room itself was hidden in the back of the archives, just what she needed to be left alone.
There was a projector right in front of her.
Hero got closer and looked at the device. Even as a time-watcher, she could tell it was something old, very old. She liked old things and, despite the advice she had been given, she had learnt how to make it work.
She found the small keyboard - which was only made of numbers - and began typing.
Hero had come here for a reason. She had not dodged her coworkers’ questions or gone out the backdoor for nothing. She had not faked a new mission to avoid classes and lied to her caretakers for nothing, either.
The projector she was typing on was the projector. It was an old artefact that showed recorded messages from all around time and space. Ancestors or fellow coworkers who had stood in front of the same teachers she had been getting advice from. Any of the past time-watchers could have left a message.
And today was Hero’s birthday.
The projector seemed to click in place under her fingers and she let go. Light got out of the device, landing on the opposite wall.
Hero sat down and waited. Her eyes were getting used to the darkness around her as well as the harsh light that emanated from the projector. She did not care about anything else, anymore.
Hero still remembered what it had felt like to hear about this machine. Her teachers and advisors had all mentioned it the same week, and she had quickly grown obsessed with it. It was a projector that would play recorded messages from all over History. Time-travellers had not been to a lot of periods, but time-watchers had - at least in their own way. And many many days had a corresponding message engraved within it, sometimes several. All one needed to be able to watch it was to know latin.
And Hero was the top of her class. It had been easy for her to enter the right date using latin numbers. All she was hoping for was that she could understand what the coded message would say. Maybe she would even recognize the speaker? She was growing so excited that breathing was getting harder and harder.
There was nothing at first. It was all white, almost transparent, like the background of the message had been made blurry on purpose.
But then the speaker appeared.
Hero recognized her immediately. She had dreamt of her face too much to forget.
It was Villain. She was looking around her with curiosity, like she was only discovering how the whole thing worked. But then, her eyes landed on what was recording her, whatever it was. She grinned, obviously satisfied.
Hero stood up. She could not bear to be sitting down in front of such a sight. She felt in danger, as though Villain could suddenly jump out of the projector itself and threaten the Bureau’s beloved Archives.
But she did no such thing. She kept looking directly at Hero, and she shivered. Her grin was unbothered. The image flickered for a few seconds.
-Villain. She gritted her teeth.
When there was no answer, she swore under her breath. She could not hear her, of course she could not. This was only a recording, nothing more.
That was when it struck her.
Villain had gone to her birthday. She had typed in the right date, she knew she had. It was the original day, on the year she was born. Why had Villain gone there? Hero was still alive, still existing in her own timeline. Villain had not erased her, like she had feared she would so many times already.
So she kept waiting. If Villain had chosen to leave a message for her on this exact date, then the least she could do was to listen to her.
Villain kept staring at her through the projector, and Hero stared back. She took the liberty of observing who used to be her best friend. Her face was thinner, but her frame was not. It almost looked like she was sick, somehow. Before Hero could ponder more on it, Villain spoke:
-I knew you would come looking for answers on your own, although I have no idea when you will watch this.
-I thought you knew everything. Hero mumbled.
-I do know everything, mind you.
Hero felt cold sweat dripping down her back. She turned around, trying to see what was hidden in the darkness. But no sound came from the shadows, the only sound was her shallow breathing. Did Villain know her that well as to predict her answers this way?
-Anyway. I suppose I only meant to wish you a happy birthday, so here I am. How old are you turning today?
Hero looked away. She could barely handle seeing Villain in real life, and having her displayed for her and her only felt too much. But, when the silence lingered, she looked up and saw that her old friend was waiting. Or it looked like she was, at least. She gritted her teeth before she sighed, defeated.
-How peculiar, Villain resumed talking, it seems like your tenth birthday was only yesterday.
Hero closed her eyes. She could not stand it, she was on the edge of diving into old memories. She had repressed many things, she was aware of that, she had intended to repress them. And she had no intention of getting reminded of good times she would probably never know again.
The projector suddenly clicked next to her. Hero turned to it, alarmed, and she saw that it was being worked over, like something was taking control. The light flickered again, but Villain’s image never disappeared. The keyboard clickety-clacked and Hero was left no time to try and understand what was going on, because the image had changed.
She saw herself. She was way younger, sitting at the kitchen table of her parents’ old house.
She looked happier than ever.
Hero felt her heart stop. Villain was nowhere to be seen on the image, and yet the pain that flowed through her entire being was worse than before.
It was her tenth birthday.
She was so young, so full of life and happy about the smallest things. Even with no sound, she could hear her parents singing her happy birthday song as they brought the huge cake in front of her. She saw her younger self laughing when her father kissed her on the cheek, when her mother put a party hat on her head. There were presents on the table next to her, and several kids seemed to be singing along. But one stood out.
Younger Villain got next to her younger self and clapped harder than everyone, laughed harder than the rest of the table when she finally blew her candles. She saw herself leaning toward young Villain and whispering something in her ear, probably the wish she had made. She didn’t remember what it was.
-So long ago, yet so close in our timeline.
Villain came back on the screen. She could have looked the same, she could have been with her in the Archives and watched those memories with her. But everything was different, and nothing could ever give them those lost years back. Not that either wanted to switch sides.
-There is no point in remorse. You would be wasting your time thinking that regretting what happened could change anything.
Only then did Hero feel the streams of tears that went down her cheeks. She sniffed pathetically, already hating herself for allowing such a thing to happen.
It was long ago. She had to make peace with herself, she had to force her brain to understand that nothing would ever be the same. And if saving timelines and lives meant that she would never feel this happiness again, then so it was.
But she would not look at Villain again. She knew that she was still there, acting like she could see her when all she was looking at was a random point in space-time.
-Come on, you cannot be angry at me for showing you a good memory.
-I very much can. Hero spat despite herself, still not looking up.
-I only did you a favour.
-No you did not! You only meant to hurt me, because that’s the only thing you can and want to do when it comes to us and to what we could have been, you are nothing more than an obstacle and you-
-Had your bosses shown you this, you would not have reacted.
Hero managed to look back. The background was back to transparent. Villain was still there, still looking like she never should have. Since she had resumed talking, it only comforted her that she was not in the same room as her.
-I know you will see this, one day.
Villain reached out toward the point that was recording her message, as though to soothe Hero. But she could not stand it, that was her breaking point.
She hurried toward the projector and studied the keyboard, looking for the one key that would stop everything and turn off the device. Villain’s voice echoed behind her.
-And I know that it will take you even closer to the truth. To me.
Hero kicked the projector so hard that it crashed on the ground. The noise could have woken up the entire crew of security, had the door of the room been opened. Pieces of the device flew everywhere, hitting Hero’s arms and leaving burning traces there. But she couldn't care less about the pain, or about the damage she had caused.
All that mattered to her was that, when she looked up at the wall the image had been projected on, Villain had disappeared.
She ran out in the night, going back to what she knew.
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