Through time II ; Flames of time

Worlds colliding

*Lily*

The coffee is terrible. I make it too strong on purpose, measuring the granules with the focus I usually reserve for drawing up saline, and the ritual of it, kettle, mug, the soft clink of the spoon against ceramic, keeps my hands busy while my mind scrambles for footing. Heathcliff winds between Leo's ankles, a slow figure eight of fur and contentment, utterly indifferent to the fact that the man standing in my kitchen has apparently unstitched the seventeenth century.

Leo accepts the mug I push across the counter. His left hand is still blistered, the skin raised and shiny in the fluorescent light, and I notice he holds the mug with his right, cradling the injured one against his chest like a broken wing. He has not sat down. I am not sure I have invited him to.

“You said two histories are bleeding into each other,“ I say. The words feel absurd in my mouth, the kind of thing you hear in a lecture hall after too little sleep and too much caffeine. “What does that actually mean?“

He looks at me over the rim of the mug. The soot is still streaked across his cheekbone, and up close I can see the exhaustion carved into him, the particular hollow around his eyes that speaks to days without rest. Three days chasing the correct threshold, he had said. I do the arithmetic without meaning to. Three days in 1666, plus however long it took to reach me.

“It means,“ he says, and then stops. He sets the mug down on the counter with a care that suggests he is afraid of breaking it. “It means that when I stopped the fire, I did not simply alter one event. I removed a fulcrum. The Great Fire was not merely a catastrophe. It was a point around which the city organised itself. Building codes, street widths, the very shape of the parishes. When I erased it, I erased everything that depended on it.“

I think of the pneumatic tubes I saw on the news last week, the chrome cylinders hissing through transparent pipes beneath the pavement. I think of the steam vans parked outside the hospital, their brass fittings gleaming in the October drizzle. I had told myself I was imagining things. I had been very convincing.

“So the things I have been seeing,“ I say. “The anachronisms. They are not random.“

“No.“ He rubs his thumb along the edge of the counter, a small, repetitive motion. “They are the other history asserting itself. The history that should have happened. Your London, the one with electric lights and combustion engines and whatever that thing is.“ He gestures vaguely toward my mobile phone, which lies face down on the counter. “That London is the correct one. The one I come from, the one I created by my interference, it is the aberration. And the two are now in competition.“

Heathcliff has abandoned Leo's ankles and jumped onto the counter, where he sits with his tail wrapped around his paws, watching us both with the detached interest of a small furry monarch. Darcy has joined him. I reach out and scratch behind an ear, and the familiar texture of fur is so ordinary, so reliably itself, that I feel something in my chest loosen by a fraction.

“You said the timeline is collapsing,“ I say. “What happens if we do nothing?“

Leo is quiet for a moment. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, a sound I have learned to ignore but which now seems impossibly loud. “Both versions cease to exist,“ he says. “The paradox cannot sustain itself indefinitely. The fracture widens until neither history can maintain coherence. Everything that depended on the fire, and everything that depended on its absence, simply… unravels.“

“Unravels.“

“Yes.“

I pick up my own mug and take a mouthful of coffee. It is bitter and grainy and exactly what I need. “So you need to go back and let it burn.“

He flinches. It is a small thing, a tightening around his mouth, but I see it. “I need to go back and ensure it burns as it originally did. But that is no longer the extent of the problem.“

I wait. Darcy yawns, showing a pink tongue and a set of needle teeth, and then settles into a loaf on the counter, his eyes half closed.

“When I was in 1666,“ Leo says, “I was not the only person working against the established order of events. There was someone else. Someone who knew what I was attempting and who took steps to ensure I succeeded.“

“Someone else from your time?“

“I do not know. I never saw him clearly. But I saw the results of his interference.“ He shifts his weight, and the floorboard creaks beneath him. “He did not simply help me stop the fire. He used the chaos as cover for other alterations. Smaller ones, at first. A firebreak moved here, a water barrel emptied there. But the pattern was deliberate. He was not trying to save the city. He was trying to reshape it.“

I set my mug down. The counter is cold against my palms. “A time travelling killer,“ I say, and the phrase is so ridiculous that I almost laugh, except that Leo's expression does not change.

“Yes,“ he says. “That is precisely what he is. He has been moving through history, making changes, each one designed to compound the chaos I created. He is not merely opportunistic. He is methodical. And he is still out there.“

The fluorescent light buzzes again. I become aware of my own breathing, the steady rise and fall of my ribcage, the way the air feels slightly too thin. I focus on that. In, out. The mechanics of it.

“So it is not just the fire,“ I say.

“No.“

“You need to find him. Stop him.“

“We need to find him.“ He looks at me directly for the first time since he finished his coffee, and the weight of his gaze is a physical thing, a pressure against my sternum. “Your perspective is the only reliable anchor I have. You were born in the correct timeline. You know what the world is supposed to look like. When we travel back, when we examine the points of interference, you will be able to see what I cannot. The discrepancies. The things that should not be there.“

I think about the revision notes on my bedside table. The exam in three weeks. The life I have been building, the careful architecture of shifts and study sessions and Friday nights at the pub with Emily, the whole ordinary scaffolding of a future I had planned down to the month. I think about St Paul's, its dome rising above the City, and the fact that in Leo's world it was never rebuilt because it never burned.

“You want me to come with you,“ I say. “Back to 1666.“