RP Something to Remember


Lark’s responding smile is just a shade too soft. I wouldn’t mind you monopolizing my time, they carefully do not say, hiding their mouth behind their hand and glancing away.

The facade cracks almost immediately when they laugh at her joke, a genuinely delighted smile breaking its way onto their face. Their gaze flickers back to her, eyes crinkled with amusement. “Ha, yeah, no, that’s a good point. Hard to come by, those pesky rights.”

It’s easier, of course, to pass themself off as someone from the lower classes when visiting the past - less work on their part, too, since upper class outfits require so many little hand-sewn details that they decidedly do not have the patience for most days - but it does come with the unfortunate side effect of having to exist as, well, a nonexistent nobleperson’s servant, most of the time. Which isn't something they’d put Lily through, at least not without fair warning.

They snap out of their thoughts with a blink as some part of their brain registers movement. They twitch, suddenly alert again, but it’s only Lily. They watch her cross to the kitchen, face blank for a few moments as they wait for the instinctive wariness to pass. When they finally do answer, their voice is light, and they’re smiling once more. “Oh, yeah, I’ve got at least one Lark in London. I’ve visited all the major cities, so I can use the version of myself that visited as an anchor. It gets a bit tricky if you consider the different time periods I visited during, but generally I can just jump to where I want to go, locationally, and then do another hop up or down the timestream to where I want to be, temporally.”

That might be the first time Lark has explained that in as many words. They aren’t sure it entirely made sense, but rather than trying to explain further they shrug and pick up the glass of water they’ve been offered, taking a sip. They can hear Lily rustling about in the kitchen behind them, and after a moment of wrestling with their dumb twitchy hindbrain they turn, propping an arm on the back of the couch so that they can keep an eye on her.

Survival instincts are hard to shake. They watch her move about the kitchen, relaxing by degrees as more seconds slip away without anything breaking the peaceful atmosphere. It may not be as familiar as their own, but something about Lily’s apartment seems… safe. They keep dropping their guard without meaning to.

Is that really such a bad thing? They push the thought aside, unfolding from the couch and wandering over to the kitchen table so that they can peer over Lily’s shoulder at the ingredients she’s pulling out.

“You don’t have to make me anything,” they say after a moment. There’s something in their voice that they can’t quite pin down. They hope it’s faint enough that Lily doesn’t notice, whatever it is.

They’re torn, though. Part of them wants to accept the offer, if only out of a burning curiosity to see how well Lily can cook, but the other part… Hmm, well, they could probably have a little bit. It isn’t like they can’t eat anything while they’re temporally displaced; it’s just smarter to keep to smaller snacks so they aren’t stuck in slow metabolism hell.

They aren’t quite sure how to express that to Lily, so what they end up saying is, “But if you insist, I think I’d land somewhere around a one-toast on that very comprehensive scale.”

Their fingers tap against the table, and they look at the stove as though it’s a wild animal that might jump up and bite them at any moment, but they still find themself asking, “Is there anything I can help with?”

 


Lily nodded along as Lark explained how their time travel worked across locations, occasionally throwing in an ‘mhm’ when it felt appropriate. Truth be told she understood maybe half of what they were saying, and even then the half that she thought she understood was probably way off base. But it was nice to hear them talk, to explain things that were simply second nature and they hadn’t put much thought into. It was the same as if she tried to explain to them how she knew which move to use next in a fight, or which weapon she chose. It was just an instinct that she’d built up over years of training, of using her skills until they became habit.

Some part of Lily dimly wondered if Lark would feel the same way as she did if the roles were reversed. She hoped so.

Her counter argument was already on her lips, unbidden, as Lark insisted that she didn’t have to cook for them. She had to reel it back in and clamp her mouth shut. She wasn’t sure which reason would come out. Would it be that she was already cooking, so it was really no hassle? Or perhaps that everyone needed breakfast, since it was the most important meal of the day? Or maybe, just maybe, would she say what was truly on her mind? That she would do anything Lark wanted, that all they had to do was ask?

Lily was saved the choice by Lark giving in to her request almost instantly. By the time she would have figured out which argument to use, it would probably have been dinnertime. She put several strips of bacon into one of the pans, enjoying the immediate sizzle it made. She’d wait on the eggs a little longer, just so things could be done around the same time. Lark’s voice shifted and Lily glanced over her shoulder, smiling at them before going back to turning the bacon. She shoved the part of herself that wanted them to be closer down deeper and half-forced a chuckle at their response.

“Only one? If that’s all you want.” A flicker of worry crossed her brow as she thought of Lark’s skinny frame before she brushed it off. Lark ate plenty, she’d seen them eat takeout with her just the other night. She perked up at their request to help, doing her best to quell the fluttering feeling within her chest as she reached into a cupboard and pulled out a loaf of bread.

“Sure!” She said cheerfully, tossing the bag in their general direction. “Catch.” Lily was fully aware that she did those things in the wrong order, but Lark was fast enough, even without being able to stop time.

“I like my toast, well, about this color.” Lily pointed at her own skin, trying desperately not to flex and failing only a little bit. “Be careful, my toaster can be a bit finicky. It’s fine, though, I’ll eat whatever. Two slices please.” She turned back to the stove, giving an approving nod at the bacon’s progress. She poured a little fat from the bacon pan into the empty one, letting it heat for a moment as she opened the carton.

“Oh, how do you want your egg?” Lily called out. “If you want a runny yolk, I’m just letting you know there’s a one in three chance I break it.” She waved a spatula around for emphasis, leaning back against the counter while waiting for the pan to finish heating. “Just in case you wanna gamble.”

 
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Ah, she found the cupboard bread. Good. Lark had been wondering if they’d have to point it out, considering that they put it there before realizing she had a pantry, but they shouldn’t have doubted her attention to detail.

They catch the bread easily, barely blinking as they pull time to a stop for a half-second and snatch it out of the air. Number one mundane application of time travel: violating Newton’s first law of motion. They spin the loaf between their hands, scanning the counter until they locate the toaster. There it is. “Can do.”

They step forward without thinking, almost crashing into Lily when she turns more quickly than they’re expecting, crossing into their path. Their brain stutters, crashes, and reboots, and they blink, casting a sheepish smile her way as they step to the side. Right. Not their kitchen, not another Lark. It’s been a while since they’ve had to work around another person. Bad habit, expecting everyone else to move like them.

The toaster is beside the stove. They pull it a little further away from the coils and squint at the dials on it while they untwist the tie on the bread. Okay, well, that one is obviously a time dial, but what’s the other one? Temperature? Asking would be giving up, they decide, twisting the time down to one and the temperature (?) to five.

They pop the bread in and push the lever down, then lean back against the fridge, watching Lily cook from their new, closer vantage point. They could reach out and nudge her shoulder. They don’t. In fact, they fold their arms across their chest, smiling their best enigmatic smile. “Oh, however is fine, I’m not picky. Do you cook often?”

Fifty-five seconds later - Lily’s toaster is a little fast, apparently - the toast pops up, and Lark returns to their task. The bread is still very pale, and only lightly crunchy. They must not have given it enough time. They twist the time up to three - no, two and a half, no, three and… a quarter, there - and the temperature up to seven, and pop it down again.

“I didn’t know you liked to cook,” they comment, absentmindedly fiddling with their fingers while they wait. They don’t know much about her, they think.

It isn’t strictly true. They probably know more about her than she does about them, at least for now. But it isn’t wrong, either. There are plenty of minutia that are bound to slip through the cracks, when they’ve limited their time with her as much as they have.

(And, oh, how that makes something inside them ache, knowing that they could gather more of those minutia if they only gave themself the time. Why can’t they have her? Why can’t they try? This is why they shouldn’t have given themself the faintest hint of an opportunity. It’s cruel.)

The toaster pops. They drag their gaze up from the kitchen tiles, only to find that they’ve thoroughly ruined both pieces. They sigh, and tug the charred toast out with fingertips that no longer register heat as clearly as they should. “Shoot. Where’s your trash can at?”

 


The sound of crinkling plastic and the subsequent lack of cursing meant that, at least to her, Lark had caught the bread. Lily turned to make a joke about it and– oh. They were right there. Lark was right there. There’s a single moment where they’re almost touching, mere inches between them as Lark stared down at her with wide emerald eyes, her blue ones almost sucked into the depths. It felt like a year, it felt like a moment, she didn’t want it to end. If she didn’t know any better, Lily would have assumed that Lark used their powers to extend this moment, letting time coil up behind and in front of them in order to stretch it out for as long as they could.

But she knew better.

Time for Lily snapped back all too suddenly, all too soon, and Lark nimbly dodged out of her path as she turned back to the stove, the searing heat that covered her having nothing to do with the lit stove in front of her. She hastily grabbed two eggs and cracked them into the pan, a bit of grease spattering up and hitting her exposed arms. Lily didn’t feel it, instead glancing sideways and biting back a laugh.

She knew her toaster was a bit weird. She’d got it at a Goodwill for like, three dollars back when she’d had to worry about things like that. That toaster had been with her through everything, and sure it wasn’t the greatest with time or with temperature but it was a reliable old thing. She wasn’t going to throw it out just because it didn’t work perfectly. She’d keep it around until it kicked the bucket, probably observe a three day mourning period, then forget to buy a new toaster and never eat toast again.

While it may have been weird, Lily had never given her toaster the look that Lark was currently giving it. Their hand hovered over the dials, hesitantly moving between them and twitching the knob one way then the next, as if her toaster was a bomb that could detonate if they did the wrong thing. She watched with barely concealed amusement as they gently, yet firmly pressed down on the handle before leaning back against the fridge (after a moment to ensure that the bread stayed in the toaster).

Lily just managed to shift her gaze back towards the stove as Lark’s flicked back to her. She barked out a laugh, short but still sweet, at their question as she evacuated the bacon onto a plate lined with paper towels, moving the pan off the burner and turning the heat off.

“Not that often.” Being depressed certainly had a way of killing one’s desire to put effort into food, but she’d been working on it. Honestly it was nice to cook something for someone else, especially the current someone else she was cooking for.

“Been getting back into it. Just because the Lotus left me a bunch of money doesn't mean I can spend it all on takeout. Plus something something macros?” Lily had never been big into fitness or bodybuilding shit, with all they preached about maximizing protein intake and whatnot. She worked out because she liked how it made her feel and liked being strong. The fact that she could show off her guns every once in a while was just a pleasant side effect.

The toaster popped, and Lily saw Lark shuffle over to it, fiddle with some dials, and push it back down. This time their gaze didn’t return to her, instead slipping off into that unknown place it went when they thought she wasn’t looking. Lily flipped the eggs and turned to face them, taking up her usual resting spot against the counter.

“‘Like’ is a pretty strong word. Honestly it was a lot of trial and error.” Lily’s eyes swept over them, not in a gross way. More like getting a chance to see a live painting when you’ve only seen it in photographs, finally being close enough to see the brushstrokes, the little flaws where the artist messed up that blended together to make a singular lovely piece. “I burned a lot of shit, gave myself food poisoning a couple times, but I’ve got a solid repertoire of meals that won’t kill me or anyone else I cook for.”

Lily knew she was staring, but she couldn’t help it. Lark wasn’t beautiful, they weren’t gorgeous, they weren’t a knockout. But they were breathtaking. They were a night sky in the country, the stars spread across the sky in an infinite expanse. They were a cool lake, sunlight dappling across its surface, just begging you to jump in with a promise of how refreshing it would be. They were a mountain in the distance, snow-covered and towering in all its majesty. They were a sculpture, a painting, something crafted out of clay and only given a thin, transparent layer of glaze. They were rough and imperfect and you could see the places where they were flawed, where they’d patched the cracks and painted over the mistakes, even if there were a million other examples they kept hidden. But all of it made Lily’s heart ache more the longer she looked at them.

She was in love. Somehow, someway, Lily had fallen head over heels for this silver-haired time traveler that popped in and out of her life at completely random moments. And she had no idea how she was going to tell them.

The popping of the toaster sent Lily approximately three feet into the air. She quickly turned back to the stove, hoping that Lark had been similarly jolted from their reverie so they didn’t notice hers. The slightly smoking toast reminded Lily that she had, in fact, been cooking. She flipped over the eggs to find a charred, blackened thing staring back at her.

“Over here,” Lily said, reaching over to open the cupboard under the sink and pulling the trash can out. She put it between them, dumping the charcoal that once was eggs into it and watching with slight amazement as Lark plucked the definitely still burning hot toast straight from the toaster with their bare hands.

“And here’s the error.” Lily chuckled good-naturedly. If Lark hadn’t burned the toast she would’ve felt a lot worse about delaying their breakfast. Almost on cue her stomach let out a loud growl of protest, which she was pretty sure even Lark could’ve heard. “Alright, let’s try this again, shall we? Try two minutes on five and a half, that usually works for me. I probably should have told you that before, sorry.” She made sure the pan was clean enough before adding in some more bacon fat and bringing it back up to heat before cracking some more eggs in, keeping her attention firmly on them.

 
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“Thanks.” They drop the ruined toast into the trash with a smile that doesn’t quite reach their eyes, and then in a blink they’re standing at the sink, running reddened fingertips under the water and watching flakes of ash circle the drain with a distant expression.

It isn’t quite the same. The faint scent of smoke hangs in the air, but it’s tinged with egg and toast instead of particle board. Lark dries their hands and cracks open the window over the sink. For the smoke detector, they rationalize, knowing that it’s more than half a lie and telling it to themself regardless. They stand there for a long moment, hands on the edge of the sink and eyes focused on the brick wall of the apartment building across the way, standing so still that it’s difficult to tell when they pinch the fabric of time over itself, except that sometimes their exhale will turn into an inhale halfway through. They let the fresh air filter through their thoughts and clear their head some, enough that they can shake it off and keep moving.

They’ve got toast to make. Lily is waiting for them. Now would be a terrible time to dwell on things that they have no hope of changing.

They return to the toaster, pick the bread up, and don’t wonder when they’ll next have to visit that time and place. They don’t think about singed skirts, or mirrors, or younger Larks with more determination than sense. They deposit two fresh slices into their respective cages, set the dials, and push the lever down, stepping away almost as soon as it clicks.

“It’s alright. I should’ve figured, that was what it was set to to start with. Guess the scientist's life just isn’t for me.” The joke falls easily from their lips as they reach into the cabinet beside the stove, snag a plate, and step back again, setting it on the counter with a muted rattle. Their hands are jittery. They cross their arms again, tuck their hands firmly against their sides, and lean their shoulder against the freezer door, smile faint but firmly present and gaze sharp.

“Have you got a favorite? Food, that is. Any Pond family recipes that survived the gauntlet?” They’re fishing. They know they’re fishing. They could be in dangerous waters, too, for all they know. But it’s better than letting the conversation drift; much better than opening the door to questions they can’t answer. And besides, they’re curious. Despite themself, despite everything, they want to know her. They want to take the pieces of her that they can unearth, or that she’ll give them, and squirrel them away in their memory, save them for a rainy day. For a day they won’t let themself think about. So they know what words to put down in a letter they haven’t written yet. So they know how to say goodbye, when they’ve only barely allowed themself to say hello.

It isn’t love. It can’t be. They won’t let it. That would be… inexcusable. Cruel, crueller than they think themself capable of. But still it threads through their ribcage with the soft brush of thin vines and fragile leaves, a creeping ivy that they don’t have the heart to tear out just yet. They look at her, and it feels like standing on the edge of a cliff, like spinning in a decaying orbit around the sun. It can’t be flying, so it must be falling, but it can’t be falling, so it must be standing still, and they can’t bear to stand still, so it must be running away. But not yet. Not yet.

And she’s beautiful. She really is. They keep trying to brush it aside, to will themself not to notice, but inevitably they find their gaze drifting to her smile, her eyes, the curl of dark hair around her ear, the bunch of muscles in her shoulders when she grabs the spatula. They look, and their mind catalogues it all, translating glimpses into memory even as they think, I don’t deserve to remember any of this. Not when I’ll be leaving her behind, before long.

She doesn’t know. She won’t know a thing until the bridge is burning behind them. They’ve made sure of that. Lark looks on, and smiles, and says nothing. The abyss behind their eyes is dark and hungry and ancient and hidden. Carefully hidden, lest the flame catch too soon.

 


Lily successfully managed to avoid startling as Lark stepped across the kitchen in the space between seconds. It wasn’t that she forgot they could do that, moreso just that there was no warning, no bell around their neck that jingled to indicate a displacement from where they were less than a second ago. She glanced sinkwards once she heard the window slide open, some joking comment stuck in her throat.

Lark wasn’t looking back at her, ready to start their second round against her shitty toaster. No, instead they were gazing out her window at the serene view of the neighboring building. Lily could tell they weren't actually looking at that. Lark had a habit of going almost unnaturally still when they were zoning out, which matched the far-off look in their eyes, as though they were seeing something, it just wasn’t remotely close to this place, or even this time.

A stray breeze trickled in through the window, helping to waft away the scent of burnt toast. A few idle strands of Lark’s hair shifted in the breeze, and Lily couldn’t help but wonder what lay beneath the surface. She’d spent enough time with them to know that Lark was hiding something from her, caught it in their distant gaze, in the ragged ends of time that they stitched together, hiding whatever had originally happened there. Part of her wanted to break down, shake them and beg them to tell her what was going on, what they were hiding. The rest of her knew that would just push them away. That was the last thing she wanted.

And like that the moment passed. Lark turned back, their usual crooked grin snugly in place, and returned to toasting duties. Lily pushed down that part of her again, determined to enjoy the moment. It was fine. Everything was fine.

“I don’t think there are any Pond family recipes.” Lily joked back, attempting to lighten the mood that she’d managed to put herself in. “My parents weren’t really good cooks, and we never saw my grandparents that often.” She kept a careful eye on the eggs, refusing to let them burn this time around.

“I don’t really have a favorite, just whatever’s tastiest.” Was that something to be ashamed of? Did that make her sound like a glutton? She just enjoyed food, there was nothing wrong with that. Focus, Pond, they asked you a normal question, you gave a normal answer. It’s fine. Relax.

“When it comes to cooking, I kinda like easier stuff. Big fan of marinated chicken and vegetables though.” Lily flipped the eggs with a quick twist of the spatula, feeling a small bit of pride at the lack of yellow seeping out under the whites. “It’s simple, y’know? Just cut it in half lengthwise, throw it in a bag with some sauces and herbs, let it sit a few hours, then cook it up. Easy flavor, easy cooking.” She slid the eggs out onto their respective plates, glancing up expectantly at Lark.

“How’s the toast going? I’m hungry.” Lily flashed a grin at Lark to show there was no rush as she moved the plates to the table, setting the bacon in the middle, between their two plates. Maybe a little closer to Lark’s. Just in case they wanted some.


“That was so good!” Lily whooped as she and Lark walked away from the theater. There had been a general buzz in the crowd as intermission was called. People got up to stretch their legs, use the bathroom, get snacks, the usual. She’d been confused when Lark had gestured for her to follow them, but had done so without question. It wouldn’t do to get separated from her guide while temporally displaced. They led her outside and after a glance, let her know they were leaving with a quick jerk of their head.

It had been incredible, Catherine Tate and David Tennant seemed to just shine whenever they were acting together. Sure it was a bit hard to understand without subtitles, but by a certain point Lily felt that she could keep up, so long as she focused all her attention on the performance. Which was a little difficult when Lark was sitting next to her. Her attention kept drifting in their direction, wanting to see their reactions, hear their laugh, joke with them about David Tennant’s gay little outfit and curly straw.

“Why’d we have to leave during the intermission?” She asked, glancing at Lark with a gleam in her eyes. “Is it only good for the first act? I’m not complaining, you probably know the best time to leave just about anything, huh? One of the side effects of time travel, I’m sure.” Lily let out a sigh, taking in the warm air and the setting sun.

“Where to next? Back to our time? Or are there other ways we can get in trouble in England?” Her gleam took a turn for the mischievous, while her smile remained playful. Whatever Lark wanted to do, Lily was up for.

 
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“Ah, that’s a shame,” Lark says, their voice light but with a kind of polite distance that seems to discourage any reciprocation of their questions. They still file the information away, though their brain snags briefly on the use of past-tense around her parents. (Dead or just distant, they wonder, but they know better than to ask.)

She’s focused on the stove, and, with the threat of being caught staring diminished, they find their eyes drawn to her profile, watching the small twists in her expression, the flick of her lashes, the way her lips move as she speaks. Her words wash over them, the cadence all that really registers in their mind, and when she glances back at them they wait just a second too long before looking away, their thoughts having slowed to a crawl without them noticing.

“Ah,” they say, with a perfunctory little clearing of their throat as they turn back to the toaster, perfectly composed. They pick the toast out of the appliance and plop it on a plate, demurring, “I suppose you could say-”

A flash of green, perfectly timed, and their minutes-removed future self cuts in, “-it’s already done.”

The future Lark, grinning, brandishes two perfectly toasted pieces of toast. They plop them onto the plate, and then sketch a bow and disappear again. Lark, who has just finished buttering the first two slices, does the same for the others, drops two pieces of bread in the toaster, and joins Lily at the table.

“Mundane applications,” they remind her. They’re so pointedly not smug that their smile loops all the way around into a smirk.

It’s nice to have fun again.


“Mm, something like that,” Lark not-lies, leading them further from the theater with every step. It’s somewhat true, if not the whole truth; the real problem is that the play is only a comedy for the first act, making its heel turn into tragedy after the intermission as Shakespeare was so fond of doing.

How do they know? Well, they hadn’t been the only Lark in the theater, and the other one sure wasn’t their past self. They’d gotten a text.

You’ll want to leave now. Tell her-

“-They promise a duel, and it never happens. Or so I’ve heard.” There’s a strange note in their voice; it’s too smooth, like they’re reciting the words from something that they’ve memorized, and underneath that…

Well, whatever it is, it’s wiped away by the time they turn to her, their usual smile shaded with something playful, just this side of coy. “Oh Lily, there are plenty of ways to get in trouble.”

Dangerous waters, some part of their mind reminds them, but they brush it off, holding her gaze for a moment and then offering her their arm. “Shall we?”

Their future still lurks ahead of them, but it can wait. They wait for her to take their arm, and then sail off down the sidewalk, placing their hand on hers when they turn a corner and pulling the both of them through the strands of time, to step out into a brisk night where the London Eye is lit up like a star over the Thames.

They conveniently forget to tell her to let go.


Lark isn’t sure what makes them think of it, but after a few hours of puttering around London, visiting random shops and cafes and tourist traps, they sit up, suddenly, knocked out of their idle examination of the London skyline by a singular thought.

“We could fix Shakespeare.” Wait, no, that wasn’t the full thought. They scramble after it, though externally all they do is pause and knit their eyebrows together, looking out the window of their pod again as though that would remind them. “I mean…” Ah, yes. “If you wanted to, I don’t think we ever did get to spar properly. And the play didn’t have any sword fighting in it. A critical lack, really. So… I might know a place.”

The grin they turn on her has danger written all over it, but really, that should just be implied with them by now. “If you’re interested.”

(You really should stop inventing reasons to be close to her, they think, but they take her hand anyway when she agrees. And they forget to let go until they’ve reached the clearing they purposefully arrive a little ways away from, even though there are plenty of anchors they could’ve picked that would’ve dropped them right within its bounds.)


The day they take her to is warm without crossing the line into hot, even once they leave the shade of the trees and step into the clearing. The ground under their feet is partly grass and partly dirt, torn up in sections from previous scuffles but clearly tamped down again with care. Most of the trees at the perimeter bear at least one scar, and a few still have shuriken embedded in them.

Lark’s hand leaves Lily’s when they step into the sun, and almost immediately they flicker over to the other side of the clearing, reappearing beside an honest-to-god wooden treasure chest. They pick the lock on it in seconds, and toss the lid open to reveal a trove of assorted weaponry. They select two blunted wooden blades and get back to their feet, dusting their skirt off before turning back to Lily with a grin.

“Feel free to pick something for yourself, if you want. Mi pile of random blades is tu pile of random blades,” they laugh, clear and bright. Something about the training clearing just brings them back to simpler days. Ah, they remember putting that gash in that tree trunk. They wander over to run their hand over the scarred bark, and there’s a pep in their step that’s usually absent.

 


Lily nodded, adding a slight pout on the end for good measure. She’d perked up when they had mentioned a duel, and had deflated just as quickly when they mentioned that Shakespeare failed to follow through on his promise. Typical straight guy behavior. Although she wasn’t sure if Shakespeare really was straight. There were all those rumors, and anyone who wore tights and used that flowery of language was probably at least a little fruity.

She was so distracted by ruminations on the sexuality of a centuries-dead Englishman that Lily didn't have a chance to focus on Lark’s tone, on how it was too slippery, plasticky, manufactured perfection from a person who was all rough spots and (sometimes not-so) perfectly covered up cracks.

That cheshire grin, however, was all too familiar. It was the devil extending a hand with the promise of trouble, and as long as the devil was draped in silver and green, Lily would grab that hand as tight as she could. Granted, it wasn’t quite a hand. But an arm was just as good.

“Lead the way,” beautiful. She finished in her mind, internally cursing at her cowardice not to say it aloud. But any self-loathing was left behind with the fog clouds of their breath as they pulled her along, eager to see what the city had to offer. Of course, she was prepared for when Lark pulled their arm away and they just walked side by side, any contact between them brief and accidental.

They never did.

And she couldn’t have been happier.


“Hm?” Lily’s attention was drawn away from her important work by the sound of Lark’s voice. She wouldn’t exactly say she hung on every word as soon as they spoke, but if they narrated an audiobook series, she’d put it on to sleep.

For the second time that evening, the mention of swordplay caused Lily to perk up like a dog who just heard a certain word beginning in ‘t’ or ‘w’. Sparring was like a reward to her, so maybe the comparison was a little too apt. Lily turned to face the other person in her ferris wheel pod, letting the rude gestures and words she'd been writing on the window in her breath-fog fade into the night sky.

If the grin on Lark’s face had danger written all over it, Lily’s was its younger sibling. Similar, but with a touch more feral energy. One hand snapped out to wrap around Lark’s wrist, a gleam in her eyes like moonlight reflecting off steel.

“Am I interested?” She responded sarcastically. “C’mon Lark, you know me! What are we waiting for?” The past hours had been enjoyable, anything was when you had good company, after all, but a proper spar would honestly be incredible, just the thing to get her blood pumping. Then she’d have an excuse if Lark ever managed to hear her heart threatening to shatter the bars of its rib cage prison.

As the world dissolved into green swirls, the now semi-familiar feeling of dipping into the time stream taking hold of her, the last thing that Lily saw was a pair of glowing green eyes, white pupils stark in their contrast. She wished she could hold onto that view forever.


It was a stark contrast, the cold of a wintry London evening to the warmth of the clearing they took her to. If Lily hadn’t had the temporary intermediary of the timestream she’d probably have instantly started sweating. But this was nice, and Lily didn’t even notice Lark’s hand slip out of hers as she spun slowly in a circle, taking in the entire space.

She had never been here before in her life. This was the most comforting place she’d ever been. The whole place was covered in scars, be they the healed-over slashes in the bark of the surrounding trees or the patched-up gouges in the ground where a foot or strike had dug too deep. Some scars had been left to heal on their own, some taken care of by loving hands, familiar hands.

Something about the moment felt intimate. Not in the same vein as seeing them naked (get that image OUT of your head, Pond), but arguably even moreso. This felt like Lark had peeled back a bit of themselves to reveal the shifting, emerald-tinged soul underneath, not just letting Lily see it but letting her stand in it, feel it, be a part of it.

Tears had started to bead up in her eyes before she heard something thud to the ground. The comic value of Lark throwing open an actual fucking treasure chest, seemingly without the key, let the immensity of the moment pass her by, although the weight of it still sat in the back of her mind.

“Do you even have the key for that?” Lily asked, knowing damn well they probably didn’t. She sidled over to the chest, leaning into it and rummaging around before emerging with two wooden sticks, handles perpendicular to the body. She didn’t bother to hide the grin on her face as Lark’s musical laughter washed over her, throwing the world into sharper colors, deepening the greens and warming the yellows and browns. Lily gave her tonfa an experimental spin, letting the body of the weapons come to rest against her forearms. They obeyed without hesitation, movement smooth and fluid. So wonderfully taken care of, even for training weapons.

“Bringing me to a forest in the middle of nowhere and nowhen and showing me a chest full of blades? You sure know how to show a girl a good time.” Lily practically beamed, bouncing on the balls of her feet in excitement.

“You’re lucky I left my engagement rings in my other pants.” She joked, for once a telltale flush not spreading across her face. She quickly stowed the weapons, shoving one end into her shirt and letting them hang as she put her hair up in a quick ponytail. Retrieving her weapons from their improvised sheath, Lily spun them around again as she locked eyes with Lark.

“May I have this dance?”

 
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“Nope!” Lark squints up into the tree even as they answer, stretching up onto their toes to reach for something in the branches. “That would make it too easy for the little Larks to get into it unsupervised. Not that the lock’s all that hard to pick, but I had to make it at least a little bit challenging.”

The tip of their sword finally catches on what they’re reaching for, and they pull it down, inspecting the belted scabbard for a moment before fastening it around their waist. There are swords already in the sheaths, but they’re real swords, so they toss them back in the direction of the weapon chest and replace them with their wooden ones.

Of course, looking back in that direction means looking at Lily again. Maybe it wouldn’t, if they had half as much self control as they liked to pretend they do, but it does, and they do, watching her hop around and put her hair up with a fond kind of amusement. It reminds them to put their own hair up, but they don’t turn away even as they wrangle the silver locks into a messy pony.

It’s one of the more dangerous games they play, deciding where to rest their gaze and for how long, but in this moment, in this sun-drenched clearing, they give in, temporarily, and just let themself look, drinking in the sight of her happiness. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Not here, not now. (Not yet.) But it’s the least of what she deserves, and the most that they can give her in the time they’re allowed.

Her joke draws a surprised laugh from them, and the smile they slide her way has more of a teasing edge to it than they normally allow themself. “Probably for the best. The Athlais are sorely lacking in spare cattle. Providing for a dowry would surely drive us to ruin.”

Behind the humor, their own jest harbors an uncomfortable tinge of truth. It would ruin them in so many ways, trying to forge a more permanent connection between the two of them. They can’t have her, they remind themself, not for the first time, but the thought falls away, slipping through their fingers like so much sand, when her eyes meet theirs. Ocean blue, dark and deep and dangerously inviting, meets forest green, and they smile, finally snapping the elastic into place around their hair and retrieving their twin swords. This is one invitation they won’t decline.

“You may.” They spin their swords in a practiced, performative circle, then step forward, testing her guard with light, telegraphed slashes. Even with the relatively lazy attack, they’re watching her closely, years of training having given them the rather unshakeable instinct to try to read her next move from her stance and grip.

 
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God, that smile. Lily wasn’t sure when she’d decided that she would burn down the whole world if it meant seeing that loose, carefree smile light up those eyes like sunlight-dappled leaves again. But seeing the emerald glow from within made her swear that oath a dozen times over.

The smile was infectious, and Lily found herself returning the favor with a small, sweet one that shone bright in her eyes. Her fingers relaxed and tightened on her batons, instinct drilled into her head not to hold on too tightly, lest it be ripped from her hands.

Lark made the first move, and Lily responded in kind. The familiar clack of impacting wood rang through the clearing; steady, deliberate strikes, only superficially seeking flesh before being blocked. It was a tune that had sank itself deep into Lily’s bones long before the fateful day she’d met the time traveler, and it resonated through her.

Strike after strike, Lily and Lark danced around the clearing, a back and forth of who was leading who. More than once Lily was surprised to find herself being led along, a certain silver-haired beauty having once again adapted to her strikes, necessitating a transition into a different style.

Lily let herself have the thought. Normally she would have shoved it to the back of her head and pushed harder. But god damn it was she tired of pretending. She was tired of pretending not to notice the way their hair looked like a waterfall of molten silver when the sun struck it, how the rough scars of their hands felt good against hers, how she’d kill to have them look at her with a smile in her eyes.

Another strike came her way, and Lily let it slide off her baton, darting backwards instead of following up with a counterattack. She held up her weapons in a makeshift ‘T’ before setting them on the ground.

“Damn, Lark. I always forget how you’re not just a pretty face.” She panted, a thin sweat already starting to prickle her forehead. She quickly pulled off her long-sleeved shirt, revealing the cropped tank-top underneath, before balling it up and tossing it to the side. Lily rolled her shoulders before kicking up her tonfa and snatching them out of the air.

“I can’t help but notice a distinct lack of green light in this clearing, though. And I don’t mind a little bruising.” A thin layer of blue light winked into existence, outlining Lily’s arms and weapons before fading, just in case they didn’t get her hint. The flirting came naturally, and she roughly shoved aside the part of herself that warned her against getting attached, that she was only embarrassing herself.

Lily was going to fucking enjoy herself, and enjoy being around the person she’d come to care about most in the world. Even if she wasn’t ready to admit it to them yet, she could admit it to herself.

And that was victory enough.

 

Everything about the scene is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The ground beneath their feet is well-trod, and they don’t have to look to know exactly where every root and rock and stumbling block lies. The sharp clack of wooden weapons mixes with the heat of the sun and the scent carried by the breeze (turned soil and grass and growing things) to create a potent blend of nostalgia. They know this place. They know this dance. The memories are so close at hand that they’re practically tangible, layering over everything in a shimmering haze that lags just a few seconds behind their perception.

Lark has lived a hundred days like this one. Maybe more. (Definitely more.) But none of them are exactly like it, because fighting Lily is nothing like fighting themself. The memories they have of everything else don’t include her, and so the shimmer can’t touch her. All it does is tangle into knots around her edges, leaving her somewhere between black hole and supernova; every time she moves, she leaves a trail of void and scattered stardust, broken shards that only they can see.

It distracts them, for the first couple minutes, and they cede more ground than they intend to while they recalibrate, adjusting to the novelty of sparring with someone new. They’re still faster, as they’ve come to expect when they fight anyone else, but she’s definitely stronger, and she knows how to use that strength, her technique cleaner and more refined than anything they’ve ever bothered to learn. They’re pushed onto the backfoot more than once when they try to press an opening and wind up losing the clash.

They can’t even be mad, not when her smile looks so triumphant; they just grin right back, circling around for a new angle of attack. It’s certainly a challenge, keeping up with Lily Pond, but that isn’t to say it’s impossible. Because of her training, she tends to fall into a rhythm with her movements once she gets in a groove, and they can read it if they watch closely enough. Then it’s just a matter of acting on that opening before she notices that they’ve figured it out, using their speed and longer reach to drive her back.

They’re squinting slightly against the sun, trying to pick up on her latest tempo shift, when she steps away. It takes them a moment to register why, but when they realize that she’s calling for a time-out they straighten out of their battle-ready posture in an instant, sheathing their swords so they can fix their hair.

Her comment makes them roll their eyes good-naturedly, an irrepressible quirk to their lips. Their face is already turning pink from the sun and exercise, but they don’t sound too out of breath as they deadpan, “Gee, thanks. I do try to look as pitiful as possible.”

When they turn back, their gaze flicks over her curiously, and they breathe a sigh that’s just a little too heavy to be fully planned as they let their arms fall. Something flickers in their eyes, there and gone too quickly to catch, and they look away briefly before letting their smile tick up on one side.

“Well, I just thought you might think I was cheating,” they demur in a drawl, taking a few steps closer to her while they shrug out of their jacket. They toss it in the general direction of her shirt, leaving them in a mint green turtleneck with three-quarters sleeves. While still not exactly seasonally appropriate, it’s at least a step closer to proper sparring attire, being more fitted than most things they wear. They pluck at the sleeves idly, readjusting the seam as they continue, completely unhurried. “But if you insist, I suppose I could oblige. Wouldn’t want you getting bored, now, would we?”

The Lark in front of her doesn’t draw either of their weapons. They just look up, still smiling, and hold their arms out to catch Lily when the Lark that had crept up behind her whacks her in the back with a pillow. It’s one of those roughly square, solidly stuffed pillows that are meant to be forgotten on camping trips, they note idly, already digging through their memory to find where they last left it even as they catch her forearms.

“You still sure you wanna put powers on the table?” They ask one last time, their voice remarkably steady considering the silent laughter dancing in their eyes. The other Lark hasn’t left yet, only retreated a few steps, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

 


Lily flashed a smile at Lark, free and loose, matching their brilliant, crooked grin that so often graced her presence. Her eyes skirted over them as the jacket was shrugged off. The turtleneck wasn’t exactly revealing, but for someone who tended to shroud themself in cloth, the tighter than usual fit gave Lily a somewhat better view of their slender frame.

Her eyes may have lingered a little longer than necessary, but surely a second or two beyond the typical would be excusable. After all, what were a couple seconds to someone who commanded the flow of time?

She almost missed their question, something about her being bored, before something solid smacked into her back and sent her pitching forward. Instinct kept her weapons from slipping from her grasp, and she would have righted herself before too long. But before she could, Lily felt familiar scarred hands on her forearms, strength propping her up as she gazed into forest-green eyes that were silently laughing.

Not at her, and certainly not in malice. It was the silent laughter of a joke passed between friends, between co-conspirators as their eyes flicked back to what Lily knew would be another Lark clutching some kind of object. They didn’t even have the decency to attempt to hide the pillow when she turned to glare at them, conveniently forgetting to extract herself from Lark’s clutches.

“Is there no honor amongst Larks?” Lily said, mock offense running through her voice as she finally removed herself from their grip, already ignoring the part of her that wanted their touch to linger. She pushed it to the back of her mind, shelving it next to another thought involving a plurality of Larks.

“I was thinking more along the lines of stopping time to fuck with me.” Lily moved back, attempting to make herself equidistant from the both of them. “Instead of, y’know, temporal inevitability.” She spun her weapons eagerly, eyes darting from one Lark to the other.

“But what’s an unfair fight between friends?” She left the other part of the statement unsaid, unfinished only to her. Something in her gut clenched. Baby steps, Pond. She’d get there one day. For now it sat in her chest, a heavy thing around her heart that didn’t constrict it, just occasionally was hit by its rhythm. The cage had grown larger in recent days. She hoped the gap between the bars would be wide enough one day for it to slip through.

 
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“None,” is the new Lark’s cheerful reply, right on the heels of the first Lark’s unapologetic “Nope!”

They let her step away uncontested, finally drawing their swords again and pointing them steadily in her direction as they move to stand next to their future self. The other Lark continues to stand right where they are, their smile a curious mix of mischievous and benign and the pillow hanging loose in their grip. On closer inspection, it looks like they’ve picked up a utility belt as well, though Lark can’t tell at a glance which of theirs it might be.

“It really doesn’t seem fair, does it?” The future Lark muses. Lark starts to shrug, their eyes still on Lily to watch for her next move - and they catch only the briefest hint of movement in their peripheral before a pillow whaps them upside the head.

“Hey!” they protest, swiping out in a belated counterattack that falls just short of their already-retreating future self. The other Lark just laughs at them, backpedaling faster when they try to follow, and throws the pillow at their face before turning and running in Lily’s direction. “Cheater!”



“You started it!” they call without turning, ignoring their past self’s indignation as they finally reach Lily. They grab her wrist and tug her along with them for a few steps, long enough to pull her into the time stop that their past self tries to trap them in, before letting her go and darting off into the trees.

Really, they think, not needing to turn to know the exact moment that their past self gives up on chasing them and tries to resume their fight with Lily, they should’ve known better. When has Lark Athlai ever been on anyone’s side but their own?

 


For a moment, Lily had resigned herself to the task ahead, to the difficult but exciting challenge of fighting two time travelers at once. But then the betrayal came, the knife in the back the very same weapon that had been used against her. Lily let out a laugh at the expression on Lark’s face before the future Lark pulled her away a bit, letting their grip slip away just as quickly.

“Looks like you’re your own worst enemy!” Lily pivoted, pointing a tonfa at Lark in a mirror of their previous stance as she taunted them. “They’re on my side!”

“Ha! Guess again!” Came a retort from the forest, accompanied by something slightly softer than the pillow smacking the back of Lily’s head. She glanced downward, taking her eyes off Lark for just a moment, to see a single cobalt blue beanbag lying on the ground by her feet. “Traitor.” Lily spat in the general direction it came from before turning back to the fight at hand.

Just in time to bring up both tonfa in a block as Lark crossed the distance between them in the space between seconds, going from a ready stance to a vicious downward slash. Shimmering blue flared up around Lily’s arms as she fortified them against the sudden assault, pushing them back and taking a moment before beginning the dance anew, azure blinking in and out of existence around her as she called upon her powers to make the playing field just a bit more level.

Unfortunately, it appeared that the Future Lark had other plans. A hissing noise filled the clearing shortly after they disappeared, and after a few minutes fog began to crawl across the clearing, clinging to the ground and never climbing higher than their ankles. There was an almost mystical air to it, Lark’s movements cutting lines through the fog whenever the clock stopped, the sudden absence sending tendrils curling up in their wake.

“Ah, dang.” Came the voice from the woods once again before another object sailed into the clearing. Lily didn’t have time to make it out before it hit the ground, exploding into a massive cloud of smoke that practically filled the clearing. Her visibility went from clear to practically zero, barely being able to see a couple feet in any direction.

“Lark?” She called out hesitantly.

“Yeah?” The responses came. Both she expected, and one of them was about the correct distance as well. The other was the issue, mainly the fact that it didn’t come from the woods anymore. Almost as if sensing her thoughts, another beanbag burst out through the smoke. Lily only barely managed to bat it away before a laugh followed. Future Lark was apparently tired of waiting in the woods and had decided to come back to the clearing.

What followed felt like the most intense half-hour of Lily’s life, but probably only lasted five minutes. Cautious movements through the smoke, followed by explosions of fighting, a few sharp strikes blocked on either side before both parties faded back into the smoke. Lily had already fended off several more bean bags, as well as narrowly dodging what suspiciously looked like a pie tin filled with whipped cream.

A figure loomed in the smoke, already starting to disperse by virtue of being in an open space, and Lily lashed out. She stopped just shy, tonfa mere inches from Lark’s chin as she noticed they didn’t have any swords. Future Lark then. Unless they disarmed themselves to confuse her. It was only then that she realized they were holding something, pointed directly at her head. Lark flashed her with that sickle of a trickster’s grin before squeezing the trigger.

A small stream of water splashed against Lily’s forehead, running down her face in small rivulets. Their eyes remained fixed on hers even as their smile grew, and the hand not holding a comically small water pistol spidered over to their shoulder, clearly searching for something, perhaps another one of those smoke bombs they’d used to obscure the whole clearing.

Their smile waned ever so slightly as their search bore no fruit, and their gaze flicked over her shoulder, eyes widening. Lily caved, glancing quickly over her shoulder just to receive another splash of water for her troubles. She turned back to see their grin restored to its full splendor as they let out a cackle and squeezed the trigger repeatedly, spraying her with even more water before diving back into the smoke. Lily followed in hot pursuit, chasing after them even as their laughter cut in and out, the smoke curling behind them as they slipped through time like low-hanging foliage.

She dogged them, every step of the way. When Lark stopped, water pistol in hand ready to unleash some fresh prankster hell on her, Lily went low, wrapping her arms around their midsection and dragging them down to the ground. In the same moment there was a loud clatter of metal against dirt, accompanied by the equally loud splash of water and a spluttering noise from somewhere off to their right.

Lark cackled as they both went down, a flash of emerald light from off to the side throwing their features into sharp relief. Lily took a moment to drink it in, every curve and line of their face, the dark circles and glittering eyes, the sheer unrestrained laughter.

Then the ground caught both of them, Lark transforming from a thing of beauty into a thicket of elbows, knees, and just general boney bits. Lily tried to catch herself before falling on top of them, only half succeeding as her arms were trapped underneath Lark. She let out an ‘oof’ as air was forced from her lungs, but as the smoke finally dispersed the clearing was quiet, save for Lark’s raucous laughter.

 
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Lark is doing their level best to keep the ‘sword’ in ‘swordfighting’, but having to dodge annoyingly accurate projectiles every five seconds is making that task more difficult than it should be. At least the timing is consistent - aaand of course as soon as they think that they take a bright green beanbag to the temple, exactly four seconds after the last one. The look they give their future self borders on mutinous, but all they get is a cheery wave before three more beanbags sail out of the treeline and they’re forced to initiate evasive maneuvers.

The smoke is worse. Lark keeps getting turned around, which ordinarily they wouldn’t have considered possible, but it seems nothing is impossible for a determined time-traveling asshole. They actually find the edge of the smoke cloud once, but as soon as they do they feel something (someone) brush by just behind them, and when they turn their future self turns with them, staying in their blind spot just to steal one of their swords and push them back into the smoke.

Fighting their future is an exercise in futility. Fighting Lily is slightly more productive, especially once they steal back their second sword, but someone keeps spinning them in circles whenever they get a minute to breathe, making it impossible for them to keep a bead on her location.

Finally, after what seems like hours but is only actually a little over half of one, the smoke starts to dissipate without immediately being renewed, and Lark sees a shape standing a little ways away in front of them. They rush towards it, but three-quarters of the way there their foot catches on something, and they stumble to a stop.

Under their foot is a thin rope. It’s tied to a stake, which is still solidly hammered into the ground. They blink at it in tired confusion, realization dawning just in time for them to look up and see the bucketful of water about to splash down on them.

The mannequin they’d mistaken for their future self is the only one to witness the realization turn to grudging respect. They don’t even try to stop time; it’s a damn good prank, and they walked right into it.



Lark knows that they’ll lose the fight if they let Lily catch up to them, but they can’t resist turning to watch their past self set off their water-bucket trap. It’s absolutely worth it. Revenge is sweet, even if it is paradoxically cyclical.

They’re already laughing when Lily tackles them, but seeing their past self wipe water from their eyes and try to flick it in their general direction makes them crack up even more. They don’t get very long to savor it before the other Lark is swept away by the light of the River, but they catch the tiny smile on their past self’s face and know the grudge won’t last any longer than it needs to.

Hitting the ground winds them, and their laughter turns breathless while they struggle to get enough air to fuel it. Lily is silhouetted by the sun above them, and they squint up at her while they swipe a knuckle under their eye, wiping away a few mirthful tears. Several curls have escaped her increasingly messy ponytail, one hanging down far enough to tickle their face, and they don’t even think about it when they reach up to tuck it back behind her ear, their fingertips lingering against her skin for a few milliseconds longer than necessary before their brain catches up and they draw their hand back.

“I guess you win, then, huh?” Their laugh is breathless for entirely different reasons now, their heart hammering against their ribcage, and they let their gaze drop to her shoulder. There’s a bit of dirt smeared there, right where they remember one of their beanbags hitting her, and before they know it their traitorous hand is brushing the mess away. They know they shouldn’t, but they let their hand rest on her bicep, their thumb sweeping across the old scar that cuts all the way around her arm. They give her arm a gentle squeeze, their voice curiously soft as they add, “I should’ve known not to bet against you.”

 


Lily managed to adjust herself while Lark kept laughing, prying her arms out from underneath them and propping herself up on one hand, the other elbow still digging into the dirt. Their laughter was music to her ears, and Lily smiled down at them softly, tracing the shape of their face with her eyes. The brilliant flash of light that was Lark slipping to another time, probably to become this Lark, had faded.

Their face was no longer lit with bright emerald light, but instead with the soft warmth of the sunlight filtering down through the trees. It added a bit more color to their usually pale face, accentuated by the flush running through their cheeks that Lily told herself was just because they’d been sparring and/or engaged in a prank war. That’s also why she was breathless, and why her heart was beating against its cage, straining against the bars.

Their hair was flared out around their head, dozens of mercurial tributaries flowing into a pair of deep green eyes that sparkled with mirth. Lily’s breath caught in her throat as she felt their fingers brush against her skin, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. She searched their face for something, but found their eyes unable to meet hers. Just as quickly as it had soared, her heart was pulled back to earth. Of course, they were just getting her hair out of their face. Nothing more.

“Yeah, I guess.” Lily said, doing her best to keep her voice level. She didn’t want to ruin this, she couldn’t. The feeling of those familiar rough fingers against her skin jerked her from her thoughts like a bucket of cold water. Electricity coursed from their touch, Lark’s thumb brushing over the long-healed scar where her arm had been cut off and regrown. Her chest tightened as though it was her heart they were squeezing instead of her bicep.

Their words buzzed in Lily’s ears as sparks crackled across her brain. They were close, closer than they’d ever been before, so close that if their breathing timed right she could almost feel their chest against hers, and how she ached to have that timing right. Lark’s hand was on her arm, squeezing softly and their touch was lingering, that wasn’t normal. Lark was a creature of quick, discrete touches, passing things that were there one second and gone the next. They didn’t stay, and yet. Their arm wasn’t moving, it was staying, they were staying, they had stayed for days now. Each time Lily woke up she had expected to be alone in her apartment, for them to have vanished in the middle of the night, treading silently through an emerald door that she couldn’t follow through. And every morning since she’d been proven wrong. They’d stayed, they’d fallen asleep together, they’d barely spent any time apart since they showed up on her doorstep asking when she wanted to go. She’d cut their hair, fallen asleep and woken up with their head in her lap, made breakfast with them, and come to the realization that she was completely, totally, irrevocably in love with Lark Athlai.

Lily was moving before she fully knew it, her supporting arm bending in order to lower herself. Her lips brushed against Lark’s hesitantly before pressing down a touch more firmly. It wasn’t rough, nor a thing of desperate yearning. It was a soft kiss, one filled with a thousand and one questions that Lily didn’t have the nerve to voice. The thoughts racing through her mind stilled, brought to a halt in sheer awe of what she’d just done. Lily didn’t realize herself until she finally pulled away, separating her lips from Lark’s after what felt like an eternity crammed into a couple of seconds.

Her face flushed as Lark’s face came into focus. Fuck. Shit. Shitshitshit.

“Fuck. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Lily stammered, looking anywhere but Lark’s face, knowing that glimpsing the betrayal written there would shatter her. “I fucked everything up, I’m sorry. Shit, I’ll just-”

She could barely complete a full sentence as she shifted awkwardly, trying to create space between them as quickly as possible before starting to push herself upright. God, she had to fucking ruin everything. They’d take her home, probably touching her as little as possible before vanishing into the ether, and she’d never see them again. She’d broken her own heart, and Lily had no one but herself to blame.

 
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The silence sits a moment too long, settling a little too heavily around them, and Lark lets out a slow, careful breath, gathering their wits in preparation to play it off as a joke, as much as they don’t want to. When they finally find the nerve to chance a glance upwards, though, they find Lily’s face much closer to them than it was the last time they checked, and drawing closer by the second.

They freeze, a dozen half-formed excuses still trapped under their suddenly unresponsive tongue.

Oh. Oh, no, some part of their mind whispers. No, I was so careful. Not like this, not again. I can’t do that to her.

Lily, the majority of their brain refutes, unfairly persuasive for all its brevity, and they know, damn them, damn it all, that it would be a lie to say they don’t want this. Still, they search her face, looking for an out, for an escape route, for any way that this ends without breaking both of their hearts. They can’t find one.

She’s close enough now that they could count her freckles, if only they could get their head to stop spinning long enough to keep the numbers straight. They count four across the bridge of her nose, three on one cheek, two on the other, and there are more, they know there are more, they can see them right there, but then her lips are on theirs, and they forget why they’re counting anything at all.

Their eyes slip shut on pure instinct, their mind blissfully silent, but barely half a second passes before she’s pulling away, and the world rubber-bands into awful, unwanted clarity once more. They don’t realize how badly their lungs are burning until they take a breath, reluctantly opening their eyes. Lily’s face is redder than they’ve ever seen it, and they’re sure theirs is the same, but they’re also sure that they could never pull it off half as well, because she is beautiful and they are weak and - shit, she’s trying to apologize. She’s apologizing to them, and isn’t that backwards?

They aren’t thinking, or maybe they’re thinking too much, all their careful reasoning crashing together in a wall of meaningless noise. All they know is that she looks devastated, and she’s pulling away from them, and they aren’t ready for this to end. Not now, not like this, not with Lily thinking that she’s the problem, that it was ever her failing instead of theirs, for being a coward and an idiot and falling foolishly, irrevocably, hopelessly in love with her -

Their grip on her arm tightens, their other hand snaking around to the nape of her neck, and that’s all the warning she gets before they’re pulling her back down. This kiss is nothing like the first; it’s messy and desperate and grasping, and for every question it answers it introduces twice as many new ones, because Lark kisses like a forest fire, all warm, solid connections and crackling heat, but their touch is achingly gentle, one hand sliding up her shoulder to cradle her jaw and the other rubbing soft over the short, prickly hair of her undercut like a silent apology for crimes they haven’t yet committed.

They don’t know how they’re going to come back from this, or what they’re going to do when the future inevitably comes knocking. All they know is that it doesn’t matter, because nothing is more important than convincing Lily that she was never the problem. And if they have to burn their world down in the process, well, what’s a little more flame to a walking funeral pyre?

 


Lily couldn’t believe what she’d done. How foolish did she really have to be, to think that Lark had truly wanted her? That they weren’t just being nice, a friend trying to make her feel better? Something slimy bordering on disgust twisted in her stomach as Lily pushed up, keeping her gaze away from Lark and trying not to shake in revulsion at what she’d done. She was prepared for them to yell at her, to shove her off, or to even simply slip back into the timestream and dump her back at her apartment.

She was not prepared for them to kiss her back.

The hand on the back of her neck snapped Lily out of her thoughts, the fingers lightly digging into her skin before dragging her downward. Her lips crashed against Lark’s and Lily felt herself melt against their heat. She let her arm collapse, any space between her and Lark rapidly shrinking until her body was pressed against theirs. She was starving, she was drowning, she was dying and Lark was everything she needed to live.

Lily made a sound that could have been a whimper as she buried her free hand in Lark’s hair, those tangled silver strands that she’d wanted to run her fingers through for so long. Something in her chest swelled and burst, her heart forgoing slipping through the bars of its cage in favor of simply shattering the damned thing. She twisted, bent, burned under the heat of Lark’s flame, was melted and reforged in an instant.

Lily broke the kiss, pushing herself up enough to gasp for breath. She saw Lark beneath her, flushed and panting. She probably looked just as disheveled, but Lark wore it like a crown, the pink tinge complimenting their pale skin, making their eyes shine so much brighter. There were beautiful people in this world, and while they all certainly had their place none of them could even hold a candle to Lark Athlai.

 
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Kissing Lily doesn’t feel like a mistake. Everything about her is warm and solid and wonderfully alive, her pulse a hummingbird-fast thrum under their fingertips, and when they pull her close she melts into them like they’re the first rainstorm after a decade-long drought.

Lark doesn’t really feel like a rainstorm. They feel like their blood has been replaced by lava, and they’re burning up from the inside out. They think it’s a miracle their fingertips haven’t crumbled to ash by the time she pulls away, leaving them breathless and burning and stupid with self-destructive yearning, still caged in by her arms on either side of their head.

They stare up at her, taking in those soft eyes and that rumpled hair and shy smile, and all they can think is that they have never wanted anything as much as they want for her to keep looking at them like that. It cools the fire and complicates things all at the same time, because the fluttery feeling in their chest is an unfortunately familiar one, and it refuses to be tamped down again now that they’ve let it loose.

Lark takes another second to catch their breath, and then they lean in to kiss her again, softer this time. One hand stays on her jaw, but the other ghosts down her arm until they can press a palm into the grass and push themself up. Only halfway - then they twist, pushing her underneath them. Before she can fall, time twists around them, the rush of green there and gone in an instant as they draw the both of them expertly through the current and deposit them in Lily’s apartment just as their past selves vacate it. They land on the couch, Lark breaking away briefly to check their surroundings. A small, triumphant smile quirks their lips when they turn back to Lily, widening when they see the look on her face.

“Mundane applications?” They suggest, more than half a laugh in their voice.

 


Lily had been about to lean back down, to complete the circuit that had sent electricity coursing through both of them. They both wanted more of it, she could see it in Lark’s eyes, sharp and all-seeing, while no doubt hers was hazy, focused entirely on them. She could feel it in the way their lips had pressed against hers, devouring her if only she’d let them. And God she would have let them if she didn’t feel the exact same way.

They kissed once more, a softer thing that let the hunger simmer before it would undoubtedly explode again. Lark pushed themself up, and Lily moved with them, giving them space to shift. Then without warning they twisted, flipping them both into the time stream. For a brief second Lily felt weightless, surrounded by the stars and streams and an endless expanse that were all the emblematic color of her…lover? Partner? It felt too early to put any label on it, although Lily was honestly having a hard time putting any thoughts into intelligible words. At least not ones that wouldn’t make her die of embarrassment if Lark heard them.

Just as quickly as they had pulled her in, Lark shoved them both out of the time stream, pinning her down to the couch as they reappeared in her apartment. Lily was not responsible for the noise she made. Her heart skipped several beats as she stared up into those green eyes framed by curtains of silver.

“I would hardly call that ‘mundane’.” She responded, a breathy laugh betraying her fluster before it was her turn to drag them down. Time lost meaning, minutes slipping by as all of her attention was focused on the person currently on top of her. But she was trying to put out a fire with jet fuel. She shifted underneath them, one hand untangling itself from their hair and slowly sliding downwards, eventually coming to a rest on their thigh. It was a question, a desire, something she craved so badly but wasn’t able to express with words. Lily paused for a moment, searching for an answer on whether or not to continue. She knew she was quick, messy, all jagged edges and smudged lines. The last thing she wanted to do was break a piece of Lark in a desperate attempt to make them fit together.

 
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