#travis blake

Lumen was trying. She was trying to keep her head down, her nose out of trouble. She was trying to be relaxed and be content with that relaxation. There was no thrill in that, no excitement or exhilaration. Her “energy,” she felt had diminished, and while she tried to be okay with it, to accept it as safe and that safe was good, it wasn’t working. “I didn’t think you’d ever settle,” Alec had told several days ago. She didn’t either as she paced her way to her bike. Hiding felt stifling. There was no more pursuit of a dangerous goal, no risky tasks to complete. The blonde had successfully integrated herself into a normal, acceptable life where the riskiest thing she did on a regular basis was work at a somewhat popular bar. Taking the job at the Mehanata had been an attempt to ease her into a life where she didn’t have to run or seek out danger to resolve. Much more, of course, had been gained, but its initial purpose was served. 

It wasn’t enough anymore. Two fires, a fight with a rogue teleporter.. The breaking up of fights, protecting people.. It had a certain feeling, a willing obligation to do what she could because she had the capability. I must because I can, the blonde remembered telling herself once. Riding her motorcycle as fast as she could on long stretches of empty road didn’t fill that rush or resurrect that same feeling. It was normal, on a personal good day, to handle a dispute at the bar. It was only a challenge when trying to de-ruffle feathers disturbed by therapy, but even then it wasn’t the same energy that spontaneously erupted clear down to her fingertips. Just a different obligation then. The buildings seemed to blur together slowly, pedestrians and vehicles alike slipping into the background of thought as she rode home from a grocery store. People were fragile things, easily damaged, physically and otherwise. Any one of them could hurt another, intentionally, accidentally.. Nothing and no one could protect them all the time. They had to fend for themselves. She had to fend for herself. But she had an advantage that so many didn’t. Her mutation was versatile and useful, but was relegated to simple daily tasks like showers, turning sinks on or off, occasionally cleaning when she could get away with it.  Mundane, and boring. A waste of effort. Complacent. She could be saving people, defending them.  Risk exposing herself, putting herself in danger, maybe even being targeted. Vigilantism wasn’t exactly legal.  When had that ever stopped her in the past? And Travis would be proud... But she was supposed to behave, keep her head down... Maybe she just needed to stretch her power a bit, do drills on a grander scale. Maybe that would placate the urge to go out and use her strengths in dangerous ways. 

The tap, tap, tapping on her gas tank as she waited at a red light impatiently told her otherwise. But it was try it, or do something dumb that could put her in a poor position. 

Meditatively, she sat, legs crossed, fingers and thumbs pressed together over the intersection of her legs. Her mind wandered and drifted and then cleared. Foggy hazes were lifted, indecisions removed as she pondered slowly what to do with this newfound, albeit temporary, power. It would not do to mess with time as she wanted, to fix things, go back to Xavier’s as though she’d never left. It would not do to refuse the job and alter her current life so significantly, one she’d only just begun to settle into, one where she had the footing she needed to truly begin to work on bettering herself. A life with freedom.

It would not do to alter history. Time was fickle and not to be toyed with. Balances, systems, paths.. So much could be destroyed with a single mistake or unfortunate choice.

But.. just once.. One little thing.. One tiny thing could bring such peace.

December, before Family Day. Weeks before she gave up and abandoned schooling. Weeks before she made the decision that set her on her path for the next several years, there had been pain. More pain than she was willing or able to handle. Grief and sorrow and bitterness had been swallowed and buried deeply, akin to a pill of razors, gutting her. This moment in time stood out more clearly to Lumen than anything else. It was also, perhaps, the only one over the entirety of her life that she could safely tamper with.

Her brother had been pronounced dead at the scene by the time EMS had arrived. The other involved in her brother’s accident had not been so fortunate and had suffered extensive brain damage from the impact. Fitting, given the drunkenly impaired state that man had been in whilst driving. This is what she had been told in part. The rest had been discovered some time later after much research on the accident as a whole, as it had made local Seattle-area news. The wreckage itself had been awful, her sibling’s car charred and burned, his body thoroughly torched.

She couldn’t save him, she knew. Saving him could disrupt everything and alter time in such ways she couldn’t begin to predict.. But maybe.. Maybe she could say goodbye.

The ticking clock began to slow as she fixated on that moment in time, mentally trying to picture everything she knew while still holding on to her present, the clock on the wall opposite her.

Tickticktick tick - tick

… Tick.

Silence.

There were no other cars, she noted. No other drivers for a good ways on this stretch of road. Beneath the sound of fire there was the audible wind, whipping at her hair and her face. The blonde would have to pry the passenger door open somehow. Even with the excitement and energy, she didn’t have her ability or her strength to do it on her own. Not without leverage. A quick pulse check told her the man was still alive, if unconscious, and found a boon in the rear drivers’ side door being crumpled, but open. He always kept a crowbar and a tire iron under the seat. He’d even taught her to change a tire before she had learned to drive with the same jack she held now, noting the cool metal and biting her lip to bottle the surge of emotions clawing at her throat. The chink in the metal that, according to her brother, gave it character. “Factory defect,” she muttered with a pained half smile.

The crowbar and iron both were rather wrecked by the time she managed to work the  passenger side door open, sweating heavily and moderately exhausted from the sheer effort exerted. Dragging the lanky, battered, bleeding man from the car was even more draining, but in a different way. His left arm was undeniably broken, and she had little doubt of shattered ribs and other damage she couldn’t see. Even if the EMS managed to show up in the next five minutes, he probably wouldn’t make it. At least the ground, while cold and coated in snow, was softer than the wreckage he had been in, and her lap was warm and maybe he would be comfortable, body resting between her legs, head propped up on one arm. Lumen was trying to push his bloodied hair back into the long, grown out fauxhawk he’d probably sported before when he seemed to stir, and wake.

“Lu?” Travis croaked, his forehead bloody, breath rattling in ways she knew it shouldn’t. He was in pain if adrenaline hadn’t blocked it out already. He was going to die of shock, the blonde figured, grey eyes roaming his straining face. “Hey Trav, you dork,” she murmured with a pained smile. She rested a hand on his cheek for a moment before moving to try and stem some of the bleeding from the gaping head wound. “S’that all you got for me, li’l sister? Why aren’t you in school, eh? --You doin’ here?”

She hadn’t thought that far. “I graduated, a few years ago.. There was an accident in New York City--” “But- But you just left-” she shushed him with a finger and he tried to breathe a little too deeply, pain wracking the grown man’s body as his sister tried to hold him from moving too much. “Easy, Trav. I’m gettin’ there. I live in New York City now, and.. there was an accident.. And some people ended up with switched powers, or no powers. They’re tryin’a fix shit. In the meantime.. Heh.” She chuckled, noting with a pained fondness the large, worn hand that rested on her forearm- something she would never feel again. He was used to her strange, seemingly senseless tangents. “Funny word, time.. I can pass through it, control time, for now at least. Go where, when..” He wouldn’t live to tell anyone. This one thing wouldn’t cause any harm anywhere later. “Lu.. that’s- that’s dangerous shit, kiddo--” “I know.”

If he started coughing, his lungs were probably collapsing, she noted. His ribs were in no condition to protect anything, and it was probable one had been punctured. Even if that wasn’t the case, he was likely bleeding internally. “I know it’s dangerous. But I needed- need-” It hurt in a way she hadn’t hurt in a long time, the choking, heavy sorrow bringing back the razor-cut sensation in her stomach. She dropped to a gravelled whisper. “I needed to be here.” The grip on her arm prompted her to find his hand, holding it in the way she used to when she was little. Her hands were still rather small in comparison, Travis noted. Even if she’d grown up into the strong woman looking down at him, swallowing back the tears and pain.. A certain proudness coursed through him as he managed a smile. “Always stubborn, and-” he seized briefly, a strained cough wracking him and bringing to his attention the physical agony he was in, never mind the cold seeping into his extremities. “-strong,” he managed to continue.

His eyes were glassing, and the young woman witnessed the chill in his hands and the way he paled. “Not strong, Travis, just really good at compartmentalizing.” His head shook in disagreement, and she wiped a trail of blood from his forehead that was drifting towards his sky blue eyes. “Nah, strongest kid I know. I raised ya, after all,” he said with an attempted chuckle. There was more rattled breathing and a cough, and he tried to roll himself enough to spit without getting anything on his sister. “I’m grateful for that, you know? For everything you did for me. Standing up for me, helping me stand up for myself.. Hell, feeding me.. Watching over me while I slept-” It was too hard to continue as she fought back a sob, the tears coming anyway despite her attempt to fight them.

“I-I’m sorry-” “Sssshh, it’s okay. You don’t have-” more of that awful sound as he tried to breathe pierced the air as a car sped by, slowing down a long ways up the road to a complete stop. She had minutes, maybe, as that stranger probably called 911 before driving onward. One way highways prevented them from turning back, a blessing in this case. “You don’t have shit to apologize for, Lulu.” A spot of a giggle gurgled forth from Lumen. He was probably the only person who could get away with calling her that, even with all the shit she gave him for doing so growing up. The number of times she’d slugged him in the shoulder, or glared as he laughed played through her mind. “I won’t hit you for it, this time,” she murmured with a half smile that was returned by Travis. “Least I got to see you, like I planned. Fam day, yeah?” The temporary chronokinetic nodded meekly.

This would be the last time she would ever see him. And the clock was ticking. A fact she knew when she sat down that evening far in the future still hit her like a truck, a work-worn hand wiping a chilled tear she didn’t know she had shed, Travis’ good hand brushing her cheek. It seemed to take a great deal for that one little act, going by the way his arm seemed to flop back to where it had been, rather than retract with some semblance of grace or strength. His eyes were fading out of focus, and his breathing quality was declining. “I love-” Travis rasped, trying desperately. “I love you,” he finally managed before devolving into a fit of bloody, horribly wet coughs and attempts to breathe, drowning in his own blood, seeping in from the puncture wound that would later be determined to have killed him, rather than the fire now thoroughly engulfing his car. “I love you too, Trav.”

Lumen was slain, biting her lip with such force as to draw blood of her own, vision degrading significantly in the tears that followed. Death rattles were brutal on her own, but this was her brother, the only man in her life growing up she could trust to protect her when shit hit the fan. The one who would stand right with her, support her, care for her. The one who would take her to a burger joint every month for some ‘them’ time, to laugh and revel in the atmosphere with the 1950s tables and string lights hanging from the walls. The one who would hand her a box of paints one year for the birthday everyone else had forgotten and tell her to have fun. The one soul in all the world she knew she loved and loved her. He had been her world. She had been his world for as long as she needed him to be that involved.

It felt like hours before his body finally gave up, the last of the colour drifting from Travis’ cheeks and Lumen’s tears were catching on her sleeves or her hand as she tried to wrest herself out from under her brother, trying to calm herself enough to recognize that he would be gone, and not coming back. The sirens in the distance punctuated this line of thought as she swallowed another sob, dusting the melting snow from her legs and butt before kneeling, placing a soft kiss on his forehead and whispering softly, “Love you too, Trav.” It was then that she had the idea to fish his wallet out from his pocket, using the hem of her shirt and her jacket sleeves to mask her fingerprints. There was one photo of them together slipped behind his drivers license, which she then took for her own keeping.

The flashing lights in the distance told her it was time to go, and she willed herself to find a place of calm and to focus, to retreat into the open void of mental silence where the ocean waves used to seat themselves. Here, she found the stream of time, a blue bubble enveloping her body as she walked herself home, to her own time, where her brother had been dead for years, but his body had been pulled from the fires. Where she would soon be sobbing herself to sleep and find a peace she had not known, without the guilt of never having said goodbye or having told her brother she loved him, having missed that chance in their last phone call when they’d argued over something petty. Where she could finally begin to mourn all she had lost. 

Where the clock on the wall across from her now-seated body began to tick thunderingly in her ears.

Tick.

Tick…. tick... Tick.. Tick, tick..