"Actually, A-" Lightening quick correction. "Faith would be a really bad choice. She'll want to fix everything bad that ever happened, just like Dad and the rest. And I can't let that happen. Plus? I trust you. With my life and with the lives of everybody I know."
This was sucking far more severely than Ben had bargained for in the first minute of processing his predicament. It wasn't that he wasn't tough enough to deal with Ruby on a downswing – he wasn't a ten year old kid anymore – but he hated to see her like this. It made him think about a time he was a hell of a lot happier making very, very small in his memories – a time he was apparently now stuck in – including who Ruby had been at that time. It hadn't been a good place for her.
"Fuck," he swore on an exhalation, shoulders sagging a bit at the thought. "It must be really close to the middle of the year. What month is this?"
The later part of 2006 was a good place to start some epic future changes, when it came down to it. This was going to be such a bitch, especially as there were things he knew he couldn't tell Ruby. Not this one, not right now, or it would ruin her path even more than the world, but clearly she thought the future sucked, so he had to find something to tell her.
Something to help her see that things weren't always going to suck this hard.