All the Time in the World
It's that first night Tim is with her, and it's frightening and uncomfortable and kind of embarrassing to be alone and so...exposed. It's not like they haven't slept in the same room before or seen each other in their underwear (they lead weird lives, don't judge), but somehow this seems more intimate, because they're married and they're supposed to be doing this and it's—too—different.
They lay side-by-side in the bed, with a perfect four inches of empty space between them, and he's staring at the canopy and wondering if he should say something or do something or initiate something—
He feels guilty, somehow, like he always does when something goes wrong. Because this was his idea, the whole marriage thing, and he wants to look after her and take care of her and be there for her the way people should have been (and no one was). He wants to love her, but he's afraid of messing it up, of being a failure, of doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing and making her feel more of an outsider than she already does. He's just so lost when it comes to these things, and he can't help but wonder if maybe they should have waited (he's only nineteen, what is he thinking—he can't be a husband, he can't be a lover, he's barely a good friend—)
And she does the perfect thing: reaches over and takes his hand and squeezes it once, gently, her fingers interlacing with his tense ones. Her skin seems so soft, despite the calluses and scars, and it's warm and comforting and oh-so-very-intimate without being scary at all. It's her way of saying, I understand and I know how you feel and I love you, all at once.
He relaxes, squeezes back, just once, and whispers into the darkness. I love you, too.
And it's not so frightening anymore, because they're together and they're a team and they will figure this out.
After all, they've got all the time in the world.
It's one year since the day and it's the best and worst day of Tim's life. He's going to be a father (already is one, judging from that little squiggle squirming on the screen), and his wife, his beautiful, clever, talented wife, is crying in his arms. She's afraid, so afraid, of being the kind of mother that her own was, and he's ready to cry, too, from joy because he's a father they're a family this is beyond anything he'd ever hoped for and from grief because his parents weren't the best, either, and he doesn't know how to help her be a good one, because their father (his adopted, her biological) hasn't been a model father, and her mother was (is) a terrorist, and there's just too much they don't know how to do, what to say, when to say it.
So he holds her, and he lets her cry, and he tells her that they will do better than their parents, they will love this child the way they never were, and they will protect it from the terrors that haunt their world.
And he cries, too, for the joy and the longing and the grief and the fear.
It's five years since the day and Tim's world has been turned upside down because the dead are returning to life and the world is inexplicably full of people more powerful than is humanly possible and his brother is back from the dead.
Her brother, her baby brother, who died five years ago and was mourned for five years and suddenly he's alive and he's back and he's so tall and strong and beautiful, just like her, and where has he been all this time?
It's not that returning from the dead is that big of a deal (their older brother, the rebel, he did once when he was young); it's that the dead one says he's been in another world, and that is somehow more shocking than one of Tim's friends unexpectedly developing super-powers or a monstrous beast rampaging out of the ocean or the realization that they are not alone in the universe.
Because apparently they aren't the only universe, either.
It's eight years to the day when Tim comes home to find his wife standing in their kitchen, covered in blood and holding a knife to her own throat. He almost freezes, almost turns around and walks out, because this is not what he expected when he slammed his way out of the house this morning after their usual argument. But he can't leave, because he said he would take care of her, he gave her his word, he promised—and he can't back down. He talks to her, like he always does, and gets her to put the knife on the floor and wash her hands in the sink (it has a weird calming effect he still hasn't figured out), and then he takes her to the bathroom and has her undress and examines the blood and breathes a sigh of relief that it's animal and not human, he would never forgive himself if she killed someone while she was in this state.
They sit on the bed and they talk and she cries and he almost does but doesn't because someone has to be the strong one, and what happened wasn't his fault anyway (it's not hers, either, not her fault for what they did to her when she was a child). Eventually they fall asleep in each others arms and he can't help but feel that he's dodged another bullet yet again, because one day her past is going to kill them both.
And it's killing him, inside, to know that he may not be able to help her. He's a doctor, he's supposed to fix broken people, make them better. They just need a little more time, that's all.
They just need all the time in the world.
It's ten years to the day and they've finally adopted a child. They have their two boys, precious little bundles of joy that Tim and his wife can't help but love, despite all their fears. But adoption runs in the blood of her family, and now in his, and so they take in a little girl who has no home and no hope without them.
She's beautiful and clever and talented, like his wife, but so young, so fragile, unlike his wife. He doesn't know if they can do the right thing for the girl, but he hopes, and he plans, and he knows they will do their very best to make her part of the family.
The boys seem oddly repulsed by her. But he's not worried. They'll learn to love her. In time.
After all, they've only got all the time in the world.
It's twelve years to the day and he's so proud of his firstborn son, his namesake, his clever little bird. His son has just rescued a cloned hero, gained the loyalty of a speedster everyone else had given up on, and started his own team—all by himself. He's the pick of the litter, even in a family as talented and success-driven as this one, and Tim is nearly beside himself with excitement (or as excited as he gets these days). He can't wait for the world to see what his son, his son, can really do.
His wife is more reserved, more cautious. She doesn't trust people as readily as he does (not that either of them could be described as trusting), but she's willing to let their son, their first hatchling, take his first tumble from the nest. Birds are born to fly, after all, and their family firmly believes that the sky is the limit.
It's all right. They'll get used to it, in time. Little Timmy has all the time in the world.
It's fourteen years to the day and Tim's brother, his eldest brother, the light of all their lives, the one who held him that night at the circus and promised to fly just for him, is missing. They can't find him anywhere, his brother's wife, is frantic because even she, the one with a camera in every window and door, has lost all trace of him, and his own wife is—not even here anymore.
She's run off before, of course, when she had something important to do (important enough not to tell him, he reminds himself angrily), but this time, with his eldest brother, his acrobat brother, he knows it's more than just another mission. She loved his brother once, before he married her, before they bonded to each other. And love is a hard thing to deny.
He knows the truth of that all too well.
In the end, he finds his wife with his brother, both of them in a puddle of the kidnapper's blood, and it's the most horrible thing he has ever seen, because his brother, his brave, beautiful brother, the first person to give him a hug, the light of their lives—
Will never fly again.
And for Tim, it is the beginning of the end.
It's sixteen years to the day and his world is crumbling into the dust. His firstborn son, who was once so clever and sneaky and mischievous, is gone. Taken. Abducted. Stolen.
Tim knows who has the boy. The specter that haunts all their nightmares, the clown with the white-faced grin, has stolen his son and tortured him and made videos of it and showed them to the world.
He cannot handle this. He will not let his son die, he will not stand by while another child is ripped from this world. He leaves his remaining son and daughter with his wife's parents (her father, his father, a better man in his old age than he ever was when he wore a cowl, and her mother, who is different since her son returned but still oh-so-very-dangerous), and then he and his wife go to rescue their son.
It ends, as most things do, in blood and fire and the wreckage of a former life. They take their boy back, their little bird with his torn wings and bloodied breast, but the damage has already been done.
Because they killed the clown and now they have done the unthinkable.
And there is no time to explain, no time to comprehend what they have done.
Six months later, he leaves.
He breaks his promises, he breaks his sacred vows (before God, Tim, you swore before God!) and he leaves.
Everything.
His wife, his children, his father, his brothers, his home.
His world.
He's finally cracked the secret of inter-dimensional travel, finally figured out how the worlds will open
and close their doors as if on a timer set by the deity of Time, and he's done it.
Stepped outside his world and into another.
It's a nice place he goes to, a quiet place with few people and fewer crises and no pressure, no blood, no death that haunts his every waking moment. Here, he actually sleeps for once. It's like he's let go of a breath he didn't even know he was holding.
He tells himself he came to seek healing, to seek refuge from the horrors of the world he left behind. He tells himself he's broken, that he needs fixing, and that the place he once called home cannot provide that for him any longer.
But here, alone in the tranquil green, he has feels himself breaking a little more every day.
It's eighteen years to the day that she finds him. He wonders if she broke through the wall by force or timed it like he did. He wonders if she's finally been driven mad as well, the way he feared after their first kill together, when her hair and her face were streaked with the blood of the clown and her hands were digging into the ground, gouging up handfuls of crimson-clotted soil like she was digging her own grave.
He wonders if she will kill him, too, for breaking his promise.
She almost does. She comes so close to it, putting the sword to his neck, letting the edge wet itself on scarlet blood, tantalizing him with the image of death (and it looks so good now, doesn't it?)
But she doesn't. She lets him go with only a punch to the face that almost breaks his nose (again) and then sits down and stares at him until he drops his gaze, too ashamed and broken and numb to care whether she stays or leaves.
“Tim,” she says, her voice hollow with grief and cracked from exhaustion and so, so, sad. “Tim, we need you.”
“You never needed me,” he replies, his voice a mere echo of hers. “No one needs me.”
“I always have,” she tells him. “Even when I didn't know it. And you need me, Tim. Remember? Til death do us part was a promise, not a suggestion.” Her voice hardens, strengthens. “And we are not dead yet.”
He looks at her, at the lines on her once-flawless face, and the bags under her eyes, the short-crop of her formerly-luxuriant hair. And he remembers their first night, and their first kiss, and their first love, and all the other beautiful firsts and seconds and thirds that followed every moment they spent together.
And he wonders why he ever left this woman who refuses to let him go.
A month later, he's in a world he doesn't recognize anymore.
The waters have risen and the fires have descended and it seems the gates of Hell have been opened and its contents spilled forth. There are living heroes and dead heroes and some who are somewhere in the middle (only a little dead? he wonders), and the villains are stronger, faster, smarter.
And his family is—not the same.
His lovely daughter, the adopted one who was more like him than he ever realized, is no longer his. She lives with his rebellious older brother, who spends half his time estranged from the family, and treats the girl like a princess. He calls her Baby J, as if she's more him than her father, and it hurts. It aches, like an old bone reset long ago that cracks again along the edges.
The light of their lives, who never flew again, is once again missing, only this time his wife and children have gone with him, and there is a hole in the sky where the sun used to shine.
His dead brother, the one who came back, is gone as well, with his twin and his best friend (Tim's former best friend), and they cannot help this world anymore.
His adopted sister—well, no one knows where she is. No one ever knows. Maybe she died, too, like so many others.
His father, and his father's wife, are long gone. He's happy about that, actually, that they can heal together and finally be at peace.
And his sons—
Oh, his sons. His brave, precious little birds, his pride and joy, his Robins.
They are not his sons anymore. They are strangers, angry and bitter, and skilled in the art of death.
He doesn't blame his wife for what they have become. He has only himself, and his foolish, stupid selfishness to blame.
As for his friends, his colleagues and partners and allies, they are scattered. Some here, some there, some dead. He wonders if they were angry when he left, if they tried to bring him back. He wonders if they would care that he has returned.
He'd ask, but he doesn't see them. His wife is very specific in her instructions that no one know he's back. She brought him here to be a hero. God knows they need one.
Because the world is ending and there's no time left to fix anything anymore.
Eighteen and a half years of marriage, and that's all there will ever be.
He should be sad at the thought, but instead he feels...
Light.
Elated, almost.
The numbness is gone, and the pain is gone, and there is only the feel of his wife in his arms and her hair on his neck (where it should be), and her heart beating in tandem with his.
Their sons are gone, safe, with his daughter and her uncle, and there is nothing more to worry about, to grieve over. Nothing left to kill, nothing left to fix.
There is only them, together, the way it should be, the way it will be into eternity. Even death cannot separate them, if they die as one.
She steps back and takes his hand, and squeezes, and he squeezes back, once. Their little sign, all their own. I understand. I know how you feel. I love you.
He looks into her eyes, so blue, so clear, and for that brief second, as the ground shakes and the sky falls and the fire rushes toward them, he feels himself falling in love with her all over again. It's like that first day, when he woke up to her eyes fixed on him, her lips to his, her soul and his a single, brilliant star.
And then he feels something else, a shift in his bones (and it burns, and it thrills, and he knows he's felt this before).
He's drawn into her eyes, her sapphire-blue eyes, and the blue surrounds him and encompasses him and fills him with something he can't name, a feeling he's never felt before.
A hope for something he will never have.
And yet...
And yet...
“I don't think,” she says, breathless, “that we're going to die just yet.”
“No.” He bends down and kisses her, as the sky falls and the fire takes them and they do not burn, no, not with fire. The ground opens and the blue flings them forward, forward, into a world beyond that which they have known.
He is overcome with weariness, after his long day and the still longer night, and he rests in her arms, and she in his. And they are at peace.
The world is ending.
But we have all the time in the worlds.