RP When the Clock Runs Out


Lark hates this, but at least this is the last time they’ll have to come here willingly. They know what role they have to fill, and they knew it was this them the moment they looked in the mirror and recognized their outfit, the wear of their shoes, the picked-at blemish near their jaw that won’t fade for another few days.

Inevitability is a bitter pill to swallow. The timeline demands and demands and demands, but they’re fresh off the heels of a week of camping and they can do this. Fate vanishes as soon as they drag her off their older self and drop her, but they anticipated that, can anticipate most of this now that it’s nearly over.

They’ve heard her monologue thrice now, and by the fourth time it’s losing its effect. They keep their eyes on the only Lark older than them, who is still kneeling on the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

“What is she talking about?” Their twelve-year-old self snaps, hushed by a Lark a mere four years older as they fight to keep them contained and away from the danger.

When Fate reappears, Lark looks on. Their older self is still and silent, and for a moment everyone else in the room freezes as well, because they aren’t moving. They make no effort to dodge, and even though they know what’s about to happen Lark still finds themself holding their breath.

Just as Fate’s finger tenses on the trigger, the youngest Lark finally recovers from their paralysis. “No!”

They throw themself at their older self, and time obliges them. The only problem is, they don’t hit Lark with enough force to knock them aside very far, but they hardly notice with their eyes screwed shut. The gun clicks against an empty chamber.



(There is a moment.)

(A moment when the timeline shifts, cracks, splinters. A moment where Lark could choose, a moment of free will.)

(In a different time, they travel back to when their younger self confronted Fate, and they wrangle themself before they can do any damage. Their death becomes a distant dream, a nightmare that they wake from breathless and fearful and alive, wonderfully alive.)

(In a different time, they walk away. They don’t go to the office that they know to be their end. They make a different choice. The story doesn’t play out the way they know it should.)

(In a different time, they’re dead long before they reach eighteen.)

(Of course, free will doesn’t apply to them, and it never has. It doesn’t take long for the rot to set in. Those timelines go dark, fold in upon themselves until there is just Lark, at the center of a dead world. And then there is nothing more, and there never was.)

(There only is.)​



“Do you really think you can get me with a fucking gimmick?” Lark asks, snapping their head up and baring their teeth in her direction. Their eyes are dry, no longer staring emptily through the ground. Their dad was right; they should’ve been an actor.

They wrap a protective arm around the younger Lark clinging to them, their other hand shooting out to snatch at Fate’s gun with the intent of tearing it out of her hands or at least keeping it pointed at the ground. “You presume too much, you make a mirror from a sliver of glass. You forget; I know how this ends.”

 
“There it is!”
Fate laughed, a bitter ugly thing. She let the weapon slip from her fingers, useless now that the charade was over.
“Thank god, I was starting to get worried.
‘Oh look at me, I’m Lark, I’m a kicked puppy who is slowly marching towards the inevitability of my own death’.
Fuck, if you’d kept doing that I would have probably left you alone. Such a bummer.”
Fate stepped back casually, her mouth twisted in a shark’s grin, with shining eyes to match.

“But the anger, the fire, that’s what I was missing.”
Fate continued retreating, knowing their eyes would follow her. After all, it was her show. She leaned against a support column, the tip of a booted foot resting against the other. She withdrew a can of Monster, cracking it open but not yet bringing it to her lips. Her head lolled to the side, her eyes meeting those of the Lark holding her gun.

“Oh by the way, is that your card?”
The black revolver began twisting, warping, unfolding itself into a new card in Lark’s hands. The face of a skeletal horse stared at them, looking up from a field of green. The card’s title was written in neat strokes along the bottom, glowing with red power as they read it.

XIII Death

The world around them froze, and Fate finally brought the can to her lips. She took her time, emptying its contents before tossing it behind her where it clattered against the floor. Fate cackled as she stood between the two pillars, admiring her handiwork, her perversion of the one constant in Lark’s life. Well, one of two. But she’d take care of that in a moment.

“Poor little Lark,”
Fate drew a card and let it fall to the ground. It stood on its edge, inverted, its face towards Lark, before slowly sinking into the floor.
“It must be tragic, knowing you’re gonna die, knowing the who, when, and where, but not the why.”
Another dry chuckle as tendrils of darkness began to descend from the ceiling, wrapping around the pillars.

“But through it all, you’ve at least had yourself. After all, who better to comfort a hurting child than someone who’s already dealt with the issue?”
The coils snaked further downward, hitting the floor. Fate spread her arms, and they found a new target, latching onto her hands as they tightened on the pillars, darkness pooling in her palms.

“What was it like,”
Fate asked her captive audience.
“Knowing that you couldn’t change anything, ticking forward like a good little clock?”
Her eyes had gone black, and the tendrils uncoiled from the pillars, her hands coated in the viscous black substance. Fate took a step forward, retracing the steps she’d taken just a few moments before.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret. I don’t like being told what to do. I never have.”
Fate drew closer, a cold grin spread across her face.
“And I don’t like the idea that what I did was inevitable, that all of this was predetermined.”
She felt the power of the first card fading, its ability stretched thin between the five time travelers.

“But you’ve never truly been alone, have you? You’ve had yourself to comfort you, to ensure that you kept marching along your little path, to weave the tapestry of Lark.”
Fate stopped, towering over the child in front of her, the youngest Lark she had seen, even younger than the one who had attacked her and set these events in motion.

“Let’s cut that thread, shall we?”
And Fate reached out to cup the youngest Lark’s face in her hands.
 

The cloth under their face is warm and dry. Lark almost doesn’t want to move, but they have to know what the scary lady is talking about. They lift their face to watch her and the arm around them tightens.

None of this makes any sense. What’s happening now? Lark looks to their older self for guidance, because surely they’ll know. Older Larks always know what’s going on, they know what to do and when to do it.

But they’ve never seen themself look this way. Their face is hard-set, staring down the lady with her gun still in their hand. She’d dropped it, which doesn’t make sense. Lark has seen movies, bad guys don’t just give up their weapons.

It makes more sense when their older self is suddenly holding a card, something with a green background and a flash of white in the center. Then everything slows down to a crawl, and it feels like swimming through molasses just to drag their eyes around.

And then they’re frozen, eyes wide, completely confused by all of her words as she keeps stepping closer. Their older self will know what to do. Why aren’t they doing anything? Why can’t they move?



“No!” Lark struggles halfway out of their older self’s arms, one hand outstretched towards the pair on the floor as they desperately try to think of something, anything, anything to do that will change this.

But they can’t manage anything before they’re halted in their tracks, still aware of what’s happening but unable to move. Their gaze drifts to the Lark still standing across the room, to the pained acceptance on their face as they stand with their hands balled into fists by their sides. They- they didn’t see that before. It’s so much worse seeing it all the second time.

Her words are poison in their ears, because they have been fighting. They’ve been fighting all this time, she can’t take that from them no matter what she does, but it’ll never matter, will it?



It’s a struggle to keep their younger self away from the others, but Lark knows they’d only be another target, another piece of leverage for Fate. They haul the twelve-year-old back like an unruly cat, their arms around their waist and the weight of inevitability pressing down on them.

It’s like being at the bottom of the sea, but they have to do this. They have to, and they hate it, and their only consolation is that from where they’re standing Fate can’t see their expression crumple just before the pause catches them, too.

They had to.



Lark’s eyes never leave Fate. Time whines in their ears, and it isn’t quite a sound but nothing else comes close to encapsulating the slow scream building in volume as the river resists being stopped.

They can hardly hear her words, but they hardly need to. They’ve heard her four times before, and they can forget nothing. They bide their time, and wait for the moment when the bubble snaps.

She’s reaching for their younger self, and even though they know how this ends they’re still there, shoving the child out of the way. They’re still there, feeling Fate’s hands land on them instead.

The last timer hits zero, and the silence in its wake is deafening.



Lark is in motion as soon as time is theirs again. There’s hardly time for them to do much of anything, but this is important. They can’t stop their younger self from falling into the sharp corner of a broken desk, but they can scoop them up and tuck their face into their sweater as the screaming starts.

They cover their younger self’s eyes, shield them as best they can, and it’s all they can do even though they know it won’t be enough. They hold them close, though they know that in an instant even that, too, will be ripped from them as the timestream drags the displaced flock back to their proper times.

This is how it always goes.

This is the last time they’ll come here willingly.

This is the second-to-last time they’ll come here at all.



Lark thought they were prepared to die. They’ve been in pain before, experienced more than their share of cuts and breaks and burns, but it’s nothing compared to the immense agony that overwhelms them now.

There is not a shred of pride they can cling to. They hardly register the floor under their hands becoming the floor under their arms becoming the floor under all of them.

And it’s so bright. It’s so bright, and so loud. Was it always this bright, and this loud? They can’t think a single coherent thought past the cacophony of a million million pieces of glass and metal crashing breaking falling ringing ringing rin-



The darkness claims them, and the curtain falls.

 
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