I'd had to walk into a lot of terrifying, anxiety-inducing situations over the past couple years. Far more than my fair share, to be honest. But there weren't many that had made my stomach twist as much as it did right before I walked into the room on the Fusion Station where Sariel was waiting for me.

  She knew. She knew I was Jacob. That much was obvious. I realized just how much she had to know almost as soon as she had said we needed to talk. Of course she knew. She was right there when Manakel died. She knew I had his power. She knew I had Fossor’s power. She knew I was sent into the past-- but the truth was, she probably knew long before that. I was pretty sure she had known from the moment I manifested Manakel’s power. Maybe even from the moment she killed him in my body. She knew, and she let it go to preserve the timeline.

  And now we needed to talk about it.

  There was a part of me that would have eagerly chosen to run right back into a nasty, life or death fight again if it meant I wouldn’t have to go in that room and talk to Sariel about what happened in Egypt. Yes, it was cowardly and dumb. And yes, I was definitely ignoring the impulse to run away. But it was still there, as I stood in front of that door and braced myself.

  We had made it safely to the station without any more issues, at least for the moment. The ship was parked-- or rather, docked in the largest bay the station had, and most of the others were going through various debriefings with Athena, Abigail, and the like. Gaia was being checked out thoroughly in the medical lab for any problems, with Avalon and Aylen both right by her side.

  I was here by myself. Well, as by myself as I could be with the Flique. Not to mention Daffy and all the Original Fomorians I had in the Archive as well. And… well, Elizabeth, the girl from Salem. She was still being taken care of in there by a couple of my other selves who had a better idea of how to handle that sort of thing. Even with help, though, she probably wouldn’t be ready to have much in the way of outside interactions for some time. We weren’t gonna rush her. Hell, it wasn’t like any of us were lacking in things to keep us busy. Case in point: the door in front of me.

  What it came down to was, I didn’t have anyone extra here to play interference, or try to get between Sariel and me. Especially not Tabbris. She’d offered to be, had almost pleaded to be as soon as she knew what was going on. But I told her, and everyone else who looked like they might try to help, that this was something I had to do alone. I needed to talk to Sariel by myself.

  No more stalling. No more standing here debating with myself, or finding other things to fixate on. I couldn’t even use all the fighting down on Earth as an excuse to delay this. For two reasons, really. First, I had been expressly forbidden from going down there again, due to the attention and anger my presence would draw. It would just make things worse, by giving the Loyalists a target they would go through anyone to get at. And second, the fighting was basically done by that point anyway, as far as we could tell. Things were finally winding down, as all of the Crossroads Loyalists realized they really didn’t have a school or the lighthouse anymore, and that Gaia was gone. They had to do some regrouping instead of lashing out and attacking everything in sight.

  I had no idea what would come from that, or when they might just start up with the attacks again. But for the moment, things were starting to quiet down, and my arrival would just make it worse.

  Well, no sense stalling any more. I steeled myself while stepping forward. The door slid open automatically, as I walked right into what turned out to be a den of some sort. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves, a display screen masquerading as a window to take up the third wall at the back showed a view of a very pretty beach, a comfortable couch sat right in the middle of the room, and the fourth wall had a large oak desk with a fancy holographic computer screen and leather swivel chair. That, the chair, was where Sariel was sitting. She wasn’t facing me, but wasn’t really facing totally away, either. The chair was just turned a bit, giving me a profile look at her.

  After the door hissed shut behind me, silence returned to the room. I just stood there, my mind rushing through dozens of things I could try to say, before rejecting all of them. Story, who was riding copilot right then, didn’t say anything either. I’d asked them all to hold off and just let me do this myself without any help. Whatever happened next, whatever came from this, I wanted it to be because of what I said by myself, not what me and a committee of my peers came up with.

  Unfortunately, nothing was actually coming to mind. I’d thought I’d know what to say once I was right there looking at her, but I had nothing good. Nothing that would make things better, in any case. After dismissing that rush of thoughts, my mind went to static. How could I start to say…

  “I’m sorry.” Those two words just tumbled out of me before I knew I was saying them. No lead up or anything. I didn’t know what would come next, but those two words led the charge. A very lonely charge, as it turned out, since I couldn’t make myself continue. I tried, my mouth opening to follow up those two words, but the only thing that came out was a slightly strained, wheezing sound. My eyes closed, and I took a deep breath before walking around the desk. It took all I had just to put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t go right up to Sariel, and I didn’t go to the couch. I moved around to stand in the area a bit in front of the woman, in the back right corner of the room, near the edge of the bookshelf there. Then… then I sat down right there on the floor.

  Folding my legs under myself, I sat down in front of Sariel, while she stayed perched on the chair. She wasn’t really looking at me, her gaze focused on the bookshelf just behind my head. It didn’t really seem like she was actually seeing them, though. I was pretty sure her mind was far away, seeing that day all those centuries ago all over again. It made me wonder just how many times she had played those events out again, while trying to think of all the ways it could have gone. Which also made me wonder how many times I would end up playing those moments out myself.

  We sat there in silence for a long moment, each of us thinking about those few vital minutes millennia ago, trying to ask ourselves the impossible question of how we could have done better, as if that mattered at all. It was done with, the mistakes had been made, the choices couldn’t be changed. Neither of us had that sort of power now. The truth was, we had to move on. We had to find a way to get past this, and burying or ignoring it wasn’t gonna work. We had to address it.

  My mouth opened once more, my voice trying its best to falter before I pushed on, repeating my own apology first. “I’m sorry. I… I thought I knew what you were going to do, how you would react to what you heard. Maybe because it made me think about how I would’ve reacted when my mom was gone. When you sent my ghosts out and… and then started coming down the lift, I thought I had to act quickly. I didn’t-- I didn’t give you time to talk about it. I didn’t give you a chance. I didn’t trust you, because I was… I didn’t know the person you were back then, and I was afraid of what would happen if I had to fight you, to stop you from… from changing history.”

  After another moment of faltering, I started to say something else, but stopped as Sariel spoke a single word. “Wait.” That was all she said, at least at first. That soft, whispered plea made my mouth shut, before I just waited in silence. However long this took, I would just keep waiting. I owed her that much, at least. If I had waited before, if I had just taken a moment to let her talk, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation. Maybe we’d be welcoming her mother back right now.

  “I hated you, for a long time.” That was the first thing Sariel said, after ‘wait.’ The words made me flinch slightly, but I stayed quiet and let her continue. “I hated you because… because I missed my mother. My mom has never been a full part of my life. I had her for… for very short periods here or there, as a young child. There were times when she was coherent, or at least some level of it. She would sit me up on her bed in the asylum and read to me, tell me stories, play with me, just… tell me how much she cared about me. Those were the best moments of my life back then. But… but the doctors always wanted to talk to her and run tests when she felt like that. She used to try to hide the fact that she was feeling coherent, just so she’d have a few extra minutes with me before they would come in and take her away for more of those tests.”

  Part of me really wanted to say something then, but I stopped myself. It wasn’t time for me to talk, it was time to listen. Swallowing back the reflexive words that tried to come, I remained silent and just looked up at the woman from my seated position on the floor, waiting for her to continue. Which she did, speaking as she stared at those books while seeing far into the past.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “When you-- we… when all that happened, I felt like I was that little girl again. My mother was right there. Both…. both versions of her. The one from the past, and the healed version that could exist in the future. They were both there, and I was that little girl again. I was a little girl who wanted my mother back. I wanted to sit in her lap and let her tell me about her adventures.”

  Her eyes shifted over, meeting mine very briefly before she looked away. “I had her with me in that pyramid. I had a chance to know, to know for a fact that she would be okay. Even if my memory had to be erased after that to maintain the timeline, even if I wouldn’t remember that she was going to be okay until today, I still had that moment of hope. No, not hope. Knowledge. I had a moment of knowing for a fact that she would be okay. And then that image appeared, an image of myself from the future. It was me from… from shortly before we met again in Salem, actually. That was when Charmeine’s ghost appeared to me and set everything in motion.”

  Leaning back a little bit, hands clasped together, Sariel murmured a very soft curse before continuing. “She blocked my memory of all that happening. Everything at the pyramid, I mean. I can’t even imagine how much power and preparation it took for her to do that, given how much I know about protecting and noticing manipulation like that. Hecate is a very thorough teacher.”

  She was smiling just a little at some memory of that training, before the smile faded. “But Invidia managed it anyway. Only for a short time. She blocked my memories of that day just long enough for that me to believe what she told me, about changing the past. So, I made the message for my younger self, the one at the pyramid. A message that told myself everything Invidia, as the ghost of Charmeine, had said. I told my younger self that the man who called himself Jacob would be responsible for Charmeine’s death, and the death of Manakel. I told myself that Jacob was a liar who couldn’t be trusted. It was a message from me, telling me not to trust you.”

  Finally lowering her clasped hands, Sariel met my gaze and maintained that connection that time. “But I was going to. I didn’t know what problems my future self had been through, I didn’t know if she was compromised. I didn’t know if she was confused, or being manipulated. I threw your ghosts out of the room because I needed a chance to think without you watching my every move, without you trying to talk to me through them. I needed to think. And then I came down the lift to talk to you. I wanted… I wanted to get your side of what my future self said. I wanted to see what you had to say for yourself. Maybe even find a way to stop whatever happened in the future to make that version of me say what I did. I was coming down to talk to you about all of it.”

  Gods, it was so hard not to say anything. I wanted to speak up, wanted to tell her again that I was sorry, that I should have waited and listened to her. I wanted to say all the things that kept bouncing through my head so insistently. The words almost escaped, but I caught myself before more than a single, soft sound could make it out. My hands clenched, as I met the woman’s gaze and made myself nod silently. I could listen this time. I could sit here and just listen to her.

  So, I did. I listened as Sariel continued. “That’s why I hated you for so long. Because I made my choice. Even after everything I heard, even after everything my future self told me, I wanted to give you a chance. I gave you a chance. And you… you didn’t give me one. You locked down the lift. You wouldn’t talk to me. You were going to send my mother through before I had a chance to talk to her, before I had a chance to help her. I made the choice to trust you, and you were going to… you did send my mother away before I could use her younger self to help save her older self. You took that away from me. You took my mother away.”

  Silence reigned between us for what felt like half of an eternity. Sariel opened and shut her mouth a couple times without actually saying anything else. Her gaze had fallen away from me, to look off in the distance. Finally, the silence broke as she added, in a voice that sounded as pained as I had ever heard it, “And… I took it away from myself. In a way, as much as you did.”

  That made my eyes snap over to her, finding the woman staring right back at me as she gave a single, slow nod. Her voice was still soft and weary. “I could have disabled the Necromancy defenses and allowed your ghosts back in. I could… have tried to lower the temperature and talk it out from inside the lift. I… knew that, even then. Generally speaking, it takes at least two to fight. You made a mistake, yes. But so did I. The truth is, I lost my chance to cure my mother that way because of the mistakes we both made. And then I spent centuries hating you, because it was so much easier to do that, than to hate myself even more than I already had. I hated Jacob to protect myself from my own feelings, my own failure.”

  Raising one hand to rub the back of her neck before running her fingers through those long strands of blonde hair, Sariel audibly swallowed. “I’m not saying that part of me isn’t still angry about what happened, or that I’m completely over it. In a way, those feelings are all new now. Because this should have been the moment. This should have been the time that we could actually heal my mother, now that you’re back and we wouldn’t be risking the timeline. We should be waking her up soon, safe and sound. But we can’t, because we don’t have a cure. And every time I think about my mother now, every time I think about how close we were to helping her, I just… I just get angry all over again. At you, and at myself. I’m angry… and sad.

  “Because here’s the truth, Felicity. I hated you because I thought… I thought the fact that you didn’t trust me enough to even talk to me meant that I wasn’t worth being trusted in the future. You were from the future, you knew me, and you didn’t trust me. That didn’t hurt nearly as much as losing the chance to help my mother, but it wasn’t fun either.”

  The chair creaked a little, as she pushed it back and then slid down to the floor with me. “I know you’re sorry. I am too. I’m sorry I wasn’t better then. I’m sorry that I can’t completely let go of that anger. I want to. I don’t hate you, Felicity. I know what happened was a mistake. I know you were doing the best you could, and I am sorry for my part in putting even more pressure on you. I would never want to do that. I’m sorry for anything and everything I’ve done to add to the pain you’ve felt. You have been there for Tabbris, you are her sister, and you’re a remarkable young woman.”

  Her hand rose, paused in the air like that, then moved to gently touch my chin. “There was a time when I believed that forgiving someone meant not feeling any negative emotions about what they did. I thought that if you looked at someone and still felt those things, then you couldn’t forgive them. I was a child, who believed that a lack of anger led to forgiveness. But I’ve come to understand that that’s wrong. Forgiveness isn’t something that comes because you stop being angry. Forgiveness and anger aren’t opposites at all. One doesn’t war with the other. Anger is an emotion, a natural reaction to an experience. Forgiveness is something you choose to do.”

  I felt her fingers brush my cheek before she pulled back. “I am angry about what happened back then. Even more so now that the wound is fresh once more. I feel that disappointment, that anger and sadness. I feel all of it. I feel the anger at both of us, for what we did, for the mistakes we made. I feel the pain of knowing that we could have helped my mother, that she could be better right now, but isn’t, because of what we did, because of the choices we both made then.”

  With a heavy sigh, Sariel pushed herself to her feet. She stood there, staring at me for a few seconds before extending her hand. “I am angry at both of us. But I care about you, Felicity. I care about the person you are as a whole, not about one mistake you made in the past. Know this, hear it and believe it. I forgive you for all of it.” Her voice caught, cracking a little before she managed to push on. “You are one of the most amazing young women I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and I could not have sent my baby to anyone better.

  “I forgive you for not being perfect, for making a mistake.”

  My eyes closed. Story remained completely silent, respecting my wishes to do this on my own. I felt a shiver run through me. The… god, my stomach was in knots. Why did I feel sick? This was a good thing. This was what I wanted. Why did it make me feel like my stomach was going to twist itself inside out? Was it all just the emotional stress? There was quite a lot of that, to be fair.

  Finally, I opened my eyes and accepted Sariel’s hand and let her pull me up. The two of us stood like that, facing one another with our right hands clasped together. “Thank you,” I said, once I’d managed to force the words out past the lump in my throat. “The idea that you hated me was one of the worst experiences of my life. You’re my sister’s mother, and two of my best friends’ mother too. I know you said you forgive me, but I still need to say that I’m sorry. I could have found a better way to get through that. I could have given you a chance to talk. I could have trusted you. I should have, but I didn’t. I’m going to make up for that, whatever it takes. I’ll help you find a cure for your mom. I will. We’ll figure something out, I swear. I’ll help you. And maybe, while we’re at it, we can find out whatever happened to Cassiel too.”

  Sariel gazed at our clasped hands for a moment, a complicated-looking series of emotions crossing her face. There was still anger and disappointment there, just as she’d said. But also so much more. Her expression flickered through all of that, before eventually settling on confusion. “Wait…

  “Who’s Cassiel?”

  Joke Tags: Oh That’s Easy? Sariel? Just Go Read About Half Of The Summus Proelium Serial And Several Specific Interludes In This Story. I’d Say Roughly A Million Words Should Catch You Up