[Fiction] Timeslip's Trial: A Bitch to the End

[Dawn OOC]

“A bitch to the end,” Sean sighed as he snapped the cuffs around the starscape wrists offered to him.

“I trust you,” Timeslip said. “I trust that you and the Knights will not arrange for an ‘accident’ to befall me.”

“But why me?” Sean grumped, taking her arm and walking her into Cade’s warp. “And why here?” The sands of the familiar beach shifted under their feet. They’d been happy here once, and it was all the harder to consider the future they faced. His hard-won calm was fleeing, and he tugged her toward the hole in reality a little harder.

“Sean, I just gave birth 12 days, 6 hours, 19 minutes and 4 seconds ago,” Timeslip said softly. “Please, don’t yank on my arm.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want a prisoner abuse suite on my hands,” Sean grunted, but he eased up on his pull.

“Sean, I thought that wouldn’t be a risk with you.”

Sean closed his eyes. “Angie,” he said, and even the emotionally disconnected Portent could hear the pain in his voice. He stopped and his strange eyes stared into her invisible ones. “There is no universe in which this would be an easy task. Even if I’m not sure I love you anymore, I am sure that I loved you once, and that means something.”

“I’m sorry,” Timeslip replied.

“Aren’t we all,” Sean muttered and guided her gently through the warp.

* * *

Timeslip had never believed that the monkeys would be true to their word, but they were more than true – or they weren’t involved in this at all. She never saw a single baseline during her trial. At night, she was guarded by mixed shifts of Casablancans, Utopians and Elites, the latter who were hired expressly to keep her alive. In fact, she had been turned over to them after being processed by the Knights. Of the Elites, Bullet was her favorite; he reminded her of Santa Claus, a jolly and somehow fat nova who was famous for his narrow Q-Bolts. The Casas chatted with her, friendly and distant. The Utopians didn’t talk to her at all, if they could avoid it.

Her judges were three in number, set up just as she had specified. One was Marie “Lawless” Hughes, a well-known French-born Casablancan who was famous for her theories on workable anarchy. The second was Chandrakant Iyer who was a fervent Utopian and philosopher; perhaps the most interesting fact was that he and Lawless had a professional animosity toward one another as their beliefs clashed horribly. Yet it was clearly a professional disagreement, and it was left behind in this situation. The last judge had been a judge before his eruption, but telepathy is not a trait that anyone wanted in a courtroom, especially in the early days when Luke Dover had trouble controlling the power. Now, the New York judge found himself as chief judge, simply because he’d refused to join any of the factions for novas and he had a legal background.

And this was the group that would change the world. Worse of all, they knew it, with an iron certainty.

* * *

Sean came to see her with a regular frequency. The talk slipped to Yokiko, whom Timeslip missed horribly. The set of pictures that she had taken back with her were passed through the bars of her cell over and over, to anyone who would take them. Sean, in return, forced her to endure pictures of his “daughter.” It was something to do.

“… miss her so much, Sean,” Timeslip said late into his visit one evening. He’d have to leave soon, and she knew that she’d be left with the strangers guarding her; while she was coming to know them, they were not her friends.

“I bet she misses you, too,” Sean said. He was trying to comfort her, but she felt the tears rise, and she was glad to see him go. She hadn’t realized that Yokiko might miss her.

His last visit was the hardest. The judges had been in private deliberation for five days now, and there had been speculation that they would have a decision soon. Timeslip felt her time growing shorter and shorter.

“…grow up so fast, Angie,” Sean was saying, his voice soft.

He’d made her want to cry again. He did it so easily, with his gentle voice and understanding, bizarre eyes. “Don’t call me Angie. I’m Timeslip,” she snapped.

Sean pulled back as if she’d hit him, and Timeslip felt that last nail in their faltering friendship of a coffin. “Sure,” he said. He left not long after, never calling her by name, either name.

Her verdict came down the next day.

* * *

June 3, 2017

“We find the defendant, Angela ‘Timeslip’ Waters guilty,” Judge Dover announced, and Timeslip felt her world stop. It was literally for a second, when she was out of her body, out of her mind, out of time. She glanced back at the last row, where Sean was sitting. He looked a thousand years old. The image of her daughter floated in front of her eyes – she misses you. Quietly, Timeslip snapped and she mouthed to Sean, I’m sorry. She couldn’t have said for what.

His eyes widened, and she saw his mouth open – and that hesitation. But she would never know if he would have warned them, because the bailiff, a happy Utopian, was reaching for her.

They’d moxed her, and she’d never said it wasn’t working. They had already disrupted her cross-time powers, just to be safe, but that was just her best-known temporal travel ability. When she heard that familiar squeak, Timeslip reached out, and stepped outside of time. The courtroom froze around her, the world becoming completely static. The reporter’s dropped – and illegal – recorder paused in mid-fall; the world was instantly and eerily quiet without the sounds of life that normally filled the background of the world.

Timeslip ducked under the table, skirting her lawyer’s rock-solid skirt. Moving through people like a fish swimming between rocks, Timeslip made her way to the side entry. She had heard it correctly; the hinge had squeaked as it always did when open. There were two of the Elites trying to get in, and Timeslip crawled between their legs to get out. She spent ten horrible minutes finding a open door to the outside, and then she was free. With a broad, unseen grin she shot into the air, heading for the sky. Soon, the disruption would pass, and she could go home, to Yokiko. “Hang on baby, I’m coming,” Timeslip whispered, picking a random direction and flying into the future.

* * *

Sean slumped back into his seat, filled with conflicted emotions. He’d come to see the verdict, already sure what it would be. Finally, he laughed softly. “A bitch to the end,” he chuckled as his phone began to buzz, calling him to the search. “And I never should have expected anything different.”