Out Of Time (Part Two)

The first thing I did after finding Megan in a common area near the girl's dorms was hold a fresh cherry slushie in front of her and say nothing. She looked at it, then at me in complete confusion until she understood. Then she smiled, "You're so dumb."

Fair enough, "I figured opening with a stupid joke was a good way to show you that I'm not hurt," Also, who didn't want a slushie ever? When would someone not be in the mood for one? "I'm sorry I got kidnapped and forced to fight a deathmatch with a man from the future."

A very specific apology, but a heartfelt one as well. Those were the best ones, in my opinion.

Megan didn't seem to think that it was necessary, seeing as how I had smartened her up to the possibility of shenanigans before they actually happened. Besides, I'd texted her after I'd mopped the floor with Skip and sat down one the Blackbird so she'd know I was alright, "You told me you were expecting something to happen. Eddie said you had a plan in case it happened."

Having heard my voice, Hisako took that moment to head over and make sure that I was indeed alive and in one piece, "And that plan did not happen," She said, slapping me on the back with the back of her hand, "Look at you. You got beaten to a pulp again, didn't you?"

"I won, believe it or not."

"No, I believe it, seeing as how you'd be dead if you didn't," Hisako said, "That jerk was really clear on what he wanted from you – your head."

"Yeah? Well, all he got was the finger," I lifted a glowing digit for emphasis.

"You shot him through?" Hisako replied, a tad impressed with my decisive action, "Wow. That's... brutal. I thought you only did that to Ord because he made you spill you guts?"

True, but I hadn't killed Skip the way I'd been trying to kill Ord when I shot him, "Yeah, well let's just say I really wanted Skip to stop trying to kill me. It's even more messed up when you find out that he's my kid from the future."

Trying to casually slip that in there had been a mistake. The girls had sharp ears. Both of them caught it. Megan went red in the face and kind of looked away sipping at the drink I'd gotten her, Hisako was openly more vocal about her surprise.

My walking Japanese tank of a teammate stammered for a moment before she found her vocabulary, "B-Bel... you can't just drop something like that out of the blue! No setup at all!" She complained, "That guy was your son?"

Megan shook her head as she processed everything, "I don't even know what this 'Skip' person looks like!" She managed to squeak out, "I've never seen him!"

At that, Hisako got uncomfortably close to my face, followed by Megan, "I didn't put two-and-two together of him looking like Bel. Then again, when a guy kidnaps you, the first thing you start looking for isn't which one of your friends he most looks like."

I hadn't either, because Skip being related to me in some way had been the last thing on my mind when we'd been beating lumps out of each other. Even now, it was hard to think about. Then again, as far as attitude went, it wasn't a stretch. I was a dick, so it would stand to reason that my kid would be a dick. Learned attitudes, and all that.

It was at that point that my girlfriend brought up a point that I had neglected to consider, "Well… if he was your son, who was his mom?"

Dead silence. That had gone unsaid, what with Skip hurling insults and curses at me, and my relentless belittling of his efforts.

"Huh... didn't think to ask," I was too busy trying to emotionally obliterate him to inquire as to who I'd shacked up with to have him in the first place, "Probably should have before I went nuclear running my mouth."

"I mean, does it matter? You're not having a Skip," Hisako declared resolutely, "Over my dead body are you going to have the kid that goes back in time to try and kill you. You should have found out who the mother was, so you could spend the rest of your life avoiding whoever it is like the plague."

...Probably not the best thing to say with my girlfriend standing a foot away.

Either Megan was the mother in the future, and she would wind up having a child that hated me and wanted to kill me, or she wasn't the mother, which meant we'd break up somewhere down the line and not get back together. This was very likely, seeing as how we were goddamn high school students. OR, I had a kid with somebody else, meaning I two-timed future-Megan... or the opposite – I cheated on someone else with Megan. Every considerable possibility here was unpleasant in its own way to think about.

And if I came to that conclusion, it stood to reason that it would only be a matter of time before Megan and Hisako came to a similar one, if they hadn't already. These were relationship-poisoning thoughts, and I would not entertain them.

I made a hand-washing motion as I made to end the conversation, "Fuck that. I don't want to know," I said, "Chalk it up to one of those things like with Ruth. Just because she sees certain bad shit coming in the future, doesn't mean I have to know every painful detail. Same with this."

It seemed like Hisako could accept that much, "Whatever. It's your future," She said, trying to suddenly seem disinterested.

"No, it's not. I stopped it," I finished succinctly. I offered my arm to Megan as we started heading away, "Remember, even though it's Saturday, we've still got squad practice later."

Hisako scoffed and smirked at me with her hands on her hips, "Do you really think Mister Rasputin's going to let you practice today?"

Likely not, but then again, I didn't want to. I was beginning to crave sleep, but there were too many things to do during the day for me to just crash, "He's not gonna let me do any live training, no. But I can still do something. Anyway, I'll see you later."

With that, Megan and I parted from my teammate. She threw my arm around herself and leaned into my embrace as we headed back to one of the class buildings. I was mentally trying to move past everything that had happened in the last week, but it was clear a lot of it weighed on one of our minds – hers. She quietly sipped her slushie in thought before talking to me after enough time had passed.

"Are you okay?" Her fingertips drummed across the hard cast that still rested on one of my hands. It had been through some serious wear and tear, but the important part of it remained intact.

"I was slapped around a bit, but nothing really serious," I told her, trying to placate any of her fears.

My physical state of being wasn't what she'd been alluding to, "No, not that. If you weren't good to go, nobody would have let you go out," True. I'd have still been down in the medical wing, "I'm just saying, a LOT of stuff has happened. It's got to be a lot to deal with. Do you want to talk about it?"

Ah. She wanted to know where my head was at. It was something I wondered about a lot myself lately, "I don't really know what to say."

Not because I didn't have anything to say, but because I was afraid that maybe she was starting to catch on to some of the things I was wary about when it came to myself. I didn't think that my head was on straight, and showing the amount of detachment I had for Skip, my apparent seed from another timeline, probably put that front and center.

It was getting progressively harder to not be an asshole.