Callie had woken up with the urge to go out and find something to photograph for the newspaper. That, in and of itself, was not strange. She really enjoyed her part time job here in Atlantis, submitting photographs for publication in the newspaper, of the Quidditch matches, the Atlantis festivals and anything else that she thought looked beautiful or interesting. What was strange, however, was the overwhelming urge she felt to write an article to go along with her photograph - an incredible shot of one of the chefs at Cinders flambéing a piece of catfish. She was interested in journalism and she wasn’t a half bad writer but had sensed that there was some Atlantis magic at work when she’d been suddenly compelled to start furiously typing up an article about frying fish (trying not to feel bad for Flounder with every tap of her fingers on her device) in the middle of the restaurant, much to the dismay of the flustered waiters.
She’d managed to retreat to a bench outside where she could sit safely to type and, now that she was coming to the end of the piece, she’d noticed that a lot of the compulsion had worn off. Clearly she’d satisfied whatever magic it was that controlled things here in Atlantis. She finished her final sentence, adding the caveat, ‘Photograph to follow’, before sending the document over to Atlantis News. She breathed a little sigh of relief and let her device fall into her lap. Her fingers felt quite numb and she could use a coffee after all that brain power.
Gathering up her things, which seemed to have spread out across most of the bench while she’d been occupied, she stood up, planning to go to Snoozle and see if Em was feeling generous.
For a new arrival, Paul had settled in quickly. Much of that could be chalked up to his ability to see his path. He had known what he was there for before he had gotten there, seen the path he would go down if he made the choice to pick up the coin. Most of his decision making was influenced by his being able to mentally exist throughout all of spacetime, but there were still some things that he did that were wholly spontaneous, still events that he stumbled into that he had not seen.
One of them had been his conscious choice to go to the party. Paul had never been to an event that was simply for fun with no underlying political motives and he wanted to have the experience as long as he was in Atlantis - a land of plenty - before he had to go back to his desert homeworld of Arrakis. Paul had wanted nothing more than to be normal for a day. He had woken up the following morning with very clear memories of drinking something and kissing someone directly after each refill that he had. It was so unlike him that he knew there had to be something in the drinks.
Days later, he was still thinking about it. His mental powers could be a curse in that way. He could never forget a single thing.
He was on lunch break and had just procured a cup of coffee for himself and had been heading to find a place where he could sit and enjoy it when he stopped short at the sight of her. She was one of the people haunting his memories. One of the people he had kissed. He felt the heat rising to his cheeks as they flushed red. Unsure what to say, he stood there as if struck dumb.
Callie glanced up on her way along the road and caught sight of someone stopped still in the middle of the pavement. She was about to make her apologies (she was English; it was second nature to apologise, even when she hadn’t done anything wrong) and sidestep around the person when a fuzzy memory from the recent Solstice party popped into her head. She stopped in her tracks. This man… had she kissed him? She could feel her own cheeks colouring to match his as she tried to remember the details.
The whole night was a bit of a blur - a happy blur - but she definitely remembered someone who looked a lot like this guy grabbing her and kissing her out of the blue. It had been a surprise but she’d sampled enough of the Atlantis “specials” herself that night to know the effect the magic tended to have. Seeing the man again now, though, in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, without the music and the alcohol and the party atmosphere giving her inhibitions a night off, she couldn’t help but feel rather shy.
“Hi,” she said with a little, nervous laugh.
At first, Paul thought that she didn’t recognize him. Given the various states of inebriation that the partygoers had been in that night, it might not be too off base to assume that she didn’t remember him. The city’s magic seemed fickle, with no pattern that he could detect. It was possible that she had been drinking something different, also infused with magic but with different results.
He was overthinking things, as usual. In a space of time that felt like an eternity to him, he could see a spark of recognition from her followed by a blush. So she did remember. He hadn’t been shy about the kiss. No light peck on the lips to get it over and done with as quickly as possible. The magic had compelled him to kiss her deeply.
“Hello,” he replied, blue eyes fixed on her. His eyes were otherworldly, the entire eye different shades of blue with no whites at all as a result of his ingestion of the spice found on Arrakis. It had been difficult to avoid, in everything he ate and drank while on that desert planet. The substance turned a person’s eyes bluer the longer they ate it until the whites disappeared completely. “I don’t think I introduced myself,” he continued awkwardly. “My name is Paul.”
Callie took a few steps closer, trying to ignore the kaleidoscope of butterflies that had taken flight in her stomach. She wasn’t sure whether it was the memories of the kiss, which were slowly but surely returning to her in glorious technicolour, or the way he looked at her with those incredible, piercing blue eyes but she was suddenly feeling abnormally self-conscious and ridiculously giggly. With a supreme effort, she tried to get ahold of herself.
“No, you didn’t. But we were both otherwise occupied, as I recall,” Callie joked in confirmation, finding a strand of her dark hair to fiddle with, to keep her hands occupied.
“Callie,” she added, after a moment, realising she actually needed to talk and not just stare at this strange, handsome man, whom she’d never met before he’d kissed at the Solstice party. “I’m Callie. Spinnet.”
Paul stayed where he was as she came closer as if she was a rare creature that he didn’t want to frighten with a sudden movement. His posture gave away that he was a military man. There was no slouching, not even in the casual environment with a coffee cup in his hand. He stood like he was ready for anything, whether it was to rush into combat or to kiss her again.
She did remind him of someone - a lighter, softer version of the Fremen woman who had managed to teach him about love and bear his child. His son was dead, killed in a raid, and Chani was in an entirely different placetime. Another star system, in another time.
“We were.” A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. He didn’t apologize for what he had done. Paul liked to put meaning behind his words and he found that he wasn’t sorry.
“Spinnet. The name sounds familiar.” His posture relaxed just enough to allow him to tilt his head slightly like a curious dog as his mind searched for where he had heard it before. Paul looked like a slender, reed-thin youth in his early twenties, but his eyes gave away the old soul inside, the head full of the memories of his ancestors, his own memories, the path of his future. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Callie.”
Callie’s own smile grew wider in reaction to Paul’s, her fingers nervously twisting the strand of hair until it was taught. She was entirely glad that the memory of kissing her brought a smile to his lips.
“There are a few of us Spinnets here,” she told him, feeling strangely exposed under his curious gaze. She shuffled her feet slightly and let go of her hair long enough to hoist the strap of her camera case a little higher on her shoulder. She glanced up at him with a smile and was once again struck by the intensity of his eyes. It gave her goosebumps.
With a new wave of butterflies taking wing in her stomach, her eyes flickered away to the coffee cup in Paul’s hand. It gave her an idea.
Before she was able to talk herself out of it, she motioned to his cup and said, “I was actually just on my way to get coffee too. Would you like to come with me? We could... go for a walk somewhere.” She paused, slightly astounded at her own forwardness, but excited by it at the same time.
Paul had a knack for watching body language and gathering information based off of it, but anyone would be able to tell that Callie was nervous. He watched as she wound a strand of hair around her finger and shifted about on her feet. All of that nervous energy looking for somewhere to go. What he wasn’t sure of was the why. He didn’t know if it was his obvious foreignness now that they weren’t inebriated or if it was the memory of their kiss or if it was something else entirely. Normally, he would be able to glean the information he needed easily but this was no military matter or question of survival. He was out of his depth with such comparably normal things.
“You have family here? It must be nice.” He glanced at her camera. It was old fashioned to him, but so was most other basic technology on Atlantis. Before he could say anything about it, she was asking him to come with her to get coffee. It was a first and he had absolutely nothing to lose. Such normal and pleasant things were what he had always craved back on Arrakis.
“I would like that.” He turned himself around so that he was side by side with her instead of face to face, heading in the direction of the coffee shop. “Were you taking photographs?”
Callie realised she’d been holding a breath while she waited for Paul’s answer and, when he agreed, she let it out with a glad, little laugh.
“Great,” she said, starting to walk with him across the square. Footstep Bakery was just on the other side and, although they weren’t Atlantis’ best place to get coffee, or even second best for that matter, that was where she was heading. She was far more interested in spending time with Paul than the drink itself; the coffee just gave her a good reason to keep talking to him and Footstep’s nearness and convenience trumped the taste of its drinks. Besides, although she’d been planning to go to Snoozle, she wasn’t sure she fancied explaining to Em who Paul was, how they’d met and why she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off him. Even as he walked beside her she couldn’t help stealing little glances at him.
“Yes,” she said brightly in reply to Paul’s comment about her camera. “But I always have this with me, even when I’m not.” She patted the case fondly, absentmindedly. “I’m a photographer,” she explained, glad to have a subject to talk about that she felt confident with.
Paul wasn’t picky. On his first day in Atlantis, he had been so tempted by the water spouting from a fountain that he had gorged himself on it. He had been starved for fresh liquids for years. Bad coffee, good coffee, he had yet to discover the difference. It all tasted divine to him. He stayed in step beside her, unsure where they were going but happy to tag along.
During his time in training, he was serious and hyperfocused, but on his off time, he was trying to allow himself the opportunity to smile, to have fun. They were luxuries he didn’t have on Arrakis. He let himself smile when he caught her looking over at him. Whatever had been in that drink, he couldn’t say that he wasn’t grateful for it. Being as socially stunted as he was, getting that boost had clearly made a difference.
“A photographer. Art is a beautiful thing. I have not seen much of it for a long time.” He sighed, his thoughts turning back to his childhood on Caladan. “I come from a different planet called Arrakis. A desert planet so unforgiving that we all had to think of basic survival before everything else.”
Callie nodded at his assessment; she thought so too. There was something incredibly moving about capturing and preserving a true reflection of something, whether it be a person or a place. She sometimes took hours trying to perfect her technique, wanting to capture something on camera exactly as she saw it in life. It wasn’t easy but it was certainly rewarding when she managed it.
“I’m sorry,” she replied, her brow furrowing as she listened to him talk about his home. “That doesn’t sound like much fun at all.” Her own life had its trials and tribulations but, thanks to the war that had been fought in the years before her birth, she never really had to worry too hard about surviving.
“If you have time now,” she said as they came to a halt outside the bakery. “I can show you one of my favourite places to take photos of the island…”
Paul wished that he had time to develop hobbies. He had schooling and training and his mother taught him the Bene Gesserit way. None of it gave him much opportunity to figure out any outside interests. Until he had seen the coin, he didn’t think he ever would. It would be all business for Paul Muad’Dib.
He didn’t have much to talk to her about. It was another thing he found himself wishing - that he had something to offer to the conversation. “It is nothing to be sorry for. My destiny was to free Arrakis. I have done so, but it is far from over.” Was this a small diversion on his roadmap and once it was over, he would be returned to Arrakis? Or was the length of time he would be in Atlantis deceptively long? He felt the sudden urge to meditate but it would have to wait until nightfall and the end of the day’s duties.
“I have time. I’m on lunch. Lunch break. I think that is what you call it. They give a generous amount of time.” He trained his eyes on the establishment they had just arrived at. “Your coffee first? Or you can have mine. I did not drink from it yet.”
Callie smiled bashfully when Paul offered her his drink. It was very sweet of him.
“No, it’s alright,” she said. “I’ll just be a moment. Wait for me?”
She pushed open the bakery door and quickly made her way across to the counter, placing her order. After a couple of minutes, she walked back out again, a paper cup in hand.
“All done.”
She stopped in front of Paul. While she’d been waiting for her coffee, she’d been thinking about the best way to get them where she wanted to go and back again, all within his lunch break. There was only one way.
“I’m going to need to Apparate us,” she said, sounding a little hesitant. She was good at Apparition - she’d passed her test first try, the week after her seventeenth birthday - but she had never tried to Apparate two people, a camera and two cups of coffee before. It was going to be an experiment.
“Apparition’s a mode of travel in my world,” she added quickly, remembering that not everyone was familiar with the nuances of her world.
Tentatively, she held out her hand to him. It was crazy that this simple gesture could feel so intimate, especially after the passion of the kiss they’d shared at the party, but it did.
Paul had always been as generous as he could be given his circumstances. He would have freely given his water to anyone in his Fremen tribe. Offering coffee seemed no different from that but he understood the desire to have one’s own.
He nodded. “I will be here,” he reassured her, another smile making its way to his lips, turning them upward. It felt like he was exercising a different set of muscles. He was so used to having his mouth set in a thin line of deep concentration. Sipping his own coffee while he waited, he savored the taste of it, warm and flavorful, flowing over his parched tongue. Oh, how good it felt. He could understand why his father had liked the beverage so much.
When she rejoined him, he readied himself to walk to their destination, whatever it was, turning away from the bakery until he was stopped in his tracks by her words. “Apparate?” He wasn’t familiar with the term, but when she clarified for him that it was a mode of travel, he could guess what it was. “Teleportation? Or something like it?”
He wasn’t going to die from it. That much he did know, having already seen parts of the future - parts that were past the point he was living now. Even if he wasn’t reassured of his survival, he wanted to trust her. He did want to be able to trust someone. There had been so few that he could give that to in his life.
With his free hand, he reached for hers, his fingers wrapping around it and squeezing, the pressure somewhere between gentle and firm as if he didn’t want to hurt her and he didn’t want to lose her all at once.
“Yes, I’ve heard people describe it like that before,” Callie said with a nod. She wasn’t exactly sure about how the magic that made Apparition work compared to the technology behind teleportation but she’d gathered that they worked in similar ways: one moment you were here, the next you were there.
Callie took a breath when she felt Paul’s hand in hers. The contact felt nice. Really nice. She bit her lip against a smile.
“Try not to squeeze your cup too hard,” she warned, giving him an excited come nervous grin. “And don’t worry if you feel a bit sick. That’s normal.”
Stepping closer to him, she held her own coffee close to her chest, making sure her arm was clamped tightly over her camera case strap. Closing her eyes, she tried to clear her mind and focus firmly on where she wanted to take them both, reaching out with her mind to make sure she was taking all of him with her. There was a moment of stillness before a loud crack filled the square, echoing out from the spot where Callie and Paul had been standing just a second before.
Apparition was never a pleasant sensation and, if she hadn’t been focusing so hard on the three D’s, Callie might have found herself panicking that it was going to be too much for her, transporting Paul and their belongings with her. Still, she knew that there was no faster way to end up with a splinching than to lose concentration mid-Apparition. Instead, she forced herself to stay calm and held tightly onto Paul’s hand as she felt the magic pushing and pulling them, stretching and squeezing them until, eventually, they popped into existence again.
They had appeared exactly where she’d intended, high up on a ledge at the edge of Atlantis mountain range. The view was spectacular, out across the sea and the coves and inlets which wound their way along to the sparkling white sand of Atlantis Beach. Still, Callie wasn’t looking at the scenery. She was too busy checking Paul over for any missing bits.
“How do you feel?” she asked, sounding concerned. “Are you in one piece?”
Paul hadn’t been sure what to expect. It was like teleportation but it wasn’t teleportation. He didn’t want to look inside himself to see what would happen. That would require disappearing inside of himself, taking himself far away from her even as he would be standing directly in front of her.
He took her advice, holding his cup in the same way that he was holding her hand and stilled himself, stilled his nerves. The Litany Against Fear echoed around in his mind until he was interrupted by the alarming sensation of being stretched and squeezed at the same time. His mind reached out and he caught a brief flash of their destination before they got there. Mountains.
Then mountains for real.
He was still holding her hand, blue eyes wide. The sick feeling was there, but it was nothing he couldn’t push away with mastery of nerve endings. “I’m okay.” Paul took a deep breath. The air was fresh, easing away any lingering pain and anxiety. “I’m all here,” he reassured her. “Even this.” He lifted his cup, continuing to ignore the scenery in favor of her. “That was impressive. You did that with your mind?”
Callie felt herself relax once he’d reassured her that he was alright. She even felt a little glow of pride in herself that she’d managed to pull it off. She’d never tried such an ambitious Apparition before. It was a confidence boost to know that she could do it.
“Thank you,” she replied, her mouth spreading into a smile. She glanced down at their hands as she did so and realised that they were still clasped together. She gave a soft laugh and extricated her fingers from his, lifting her hand to tuck her dark hair behind her ear in an attempt to keep it from whipping across her face.
“It’s magic,” she explained, not wanting to take all the credit for something that wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary, even if it wasn’t easy. “I’m a witch,” she added. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her wand to show him before swishing it through the air and conjuring a shower of tiny, blue cornflowers. She returned her gaze to Paul, only to realise that the flowers she’d conjured were the exact shade of his eyes. She gulped, smiled and put her wand away again quickly.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” she went on, turning away from Paul and motioning towards the incredible view. She was glad of the breathing space the action gave her. She felt as though her heart had been speeding at ten to the dozen ever since she’d run into Paul in the street.
“I like coming up here to photograph the sunrise,” she told him. “It comes up over there…” She pointed to a spot on the horizon. “And it turns the sea the most incredible shade of red. It always reminds me of blood oranges.” She laughed and shook her head, feeling a little silly.
Paul offered her a smile in return. “You’re welcome,” he said politely, dropping his hand to his side once she released it. It was breezy up there but he made no attempt at keeping his unruly curls out of his eyes. He was used to it, the brown hair sticking out in every direction with no rhyme or reason. There was no taming it.
“A witch?” He had heard the word before. It was often used as a derogatory word for the Bene Gesserit women. Paul was the first male one. They didn’t have wands, though, and he couldn’t keep an expression of amusement from sliding onto his face, wide eyes, mouth dropping open slightly as the blue flowers floated to the ground. He reached out, catching one in the palm of his free hand and folding his fingers over it before it had a chance to blow away.
Lifting his hand to his face, he peered between his fingers at it. It was real and it had come out of nowhere. Knowing that it would never keep in his pocket, he let it flutter down with the rest. “My mother was called witch. We don’t have magic like that. Our power is mental.”
Finally, he allowed his attention to be diverted away from Callie. Turning to face the view, he took it in, memorizing it, committing that moment to his own bank of memories that might be accessed at a later time by one of his own children and their children, on and on. “I would like to see that. The sunrise.” He drank his coffee, which still seemed to be coffee, with nothing left behind. “This is a beautiful place. I’m grateful to you for showing me.”
Callie smiled and watched as he looked out across the foothills of the mountain towards the sea. “You’re welcome,” she replied softly. After a moment, she lowered herself down to sit on the rocky ground, placing her camera gently down beside her and resting her coffee cup on her raised knees.
“Will you tell me about your powers?” Callie asked, peering up at Paul. The way he’d said that his mother was “called” a witch gave her the sense that his connotations of the word weren’t entirely positive.
Paul stayed standing for a few moments more, making sure that he had it all crystal clear in his lengthy memory. He wanted his descendants to see the scenes in his memories that they would inherit because he knew that all they were likely to know was the harsh world of Arrakis, where nothing like this could ever exist without a long and arduous terraformation process. Once he was satisfied, he sat down beside her, crossing his lanky legs underneath himself.
“It’s a long story, but I will try to make it short. My mother is a Bene Gesserit, which is a female sisterhood. Turns out they had some kind of breeding program all along. They were trying to produce a male Bene Gesserit. The Kwisatz Haderach, they call it. The one who can be two places simultaneously. It turned out to be me.” A generation early - his mother was supposed to produce another daughter for the sisterhood but she defied orders out of love for his father, who had greatly desired a son. “The powers…” he trailed off, looking over at her. “I have clairvoyance across time and space. I can see future events and I know the memories of all of the ancestors. When I noticed the coin, I knew where it was going to take me before I got here. I could see a flash of where you were going to take me before we got here too.” He did want to clarify one thing, though. “But I don’t see everything. I didn’t know I was going to see you today.” And he hadn’t known about the kiss.
“I was trained by my mother in the Bene Gesserit way so I can control people using different tones of voice and I can master every nerve and fight in the weirding way. It is all mental, at its core.” He took another sip of coffee. “What you can do is astonishing. I haven’t seen anything like that before. The physicality of it, the tangibility. Being a witch is a good thing in your world? In mine, they would call my mother witch because they feared her.”
Callie lifted her coffee cup to her lips, intermittently blowing through the little hole and taking small sips, while she listened to Paul, her eyes flickering across his face, reading each expression. His powers sounded like nothing she’d ever heard of before. She couldn’t even imagine the enormity or responsibility of being able to see across time and space. Suddenly his comment about having a destiny was beginning to slide into context. It made her wonder, for a fleeting second, why he was bothering to spend his time talking to her when he seemed to have spent his life doing, being so much more than she ever would.
“It’s just neutral,” she told him, lowering her cup so she could speak clearly. “Some people are witches and wizards, some aren’t. I suppose, if you asked a Muggle (someone non-magical), they might give you a different answer but, for me, it’s just normal. My whole family is magical. A lot of the time it’s genetic.” She paused for a moment. “I do have a few Muggle-born friends at school though. I think most of their families were excited to find out about their abilities but I have heard stories of families that weren’t supportive.” She shrugged. “I suppose it’s like anything; there will always be people who are determined to be prejudiced. I think that’s the same no matter what world you’re from.”
Callie fell silent, taking a sip of her coffee to buy herself a moment, before asking, in a quiet voice, “Did you see me? Before we met?”
Paul listened to her talk about her world, finding himself deeply fascinated by it. A world where entire families were magical. He would have liked to know it physically. To actually be present in it, not seeing it in his mind or experiencing it in mission training. “It is the same on Arrakis. Prejudices. People being unsettled by what they do not understand.” She was right, it was something he had seen across the ages, no matter what time or place that it was. There were a handful of things that never changed across his vision.
“Muggle. Would I be considered Muggle because I do not have a wand?” He was genuinely curious, his eyebrows raised, a questioning look in his blue eyes.
Callie shook her head. He was clearly no muggle; not a wizard but magical in his own way.
At her next questions, he shook his head quietly. He gulped down more coffee as he mulled over how to best respond. “I never did. You were a surprise. A welcome one. I do not mean offense when I say that I enjoy the normalcy of it. Back on my world, I am under a lot of pressure. The Fremen tribes see me as their Messiah. It is a heavy burden to bear. I didn’t want it to go that way but I had no choice. I saw it - my destiny. I’m still seeing it.” He sighed, casting a glance over at her. “I don’t have to be Muad’Dib here. It is different, but nice.”
Callie smiled softly. She was quite glad he hadn’t known about meeting her or kissing her before it had happened. It meant that they had started out on an even footing. As he explained about his destiny, about the way his own people looked up to him and revered him, it was reassuring to think that not everything was out of their control. Some things were entirely their own.
“You don’t have to be anything when you’re with me,” she murmured, inwardly cringing at how cheesy she sounded. “I mean, I have no expectations of you. I don’t even know what Muad’Dib means.”
Paul found himself hoping that he never got any flashes or clear pictures of Callie in the future. He wanted her to stay as she was, entirely locked into the present and past memories. Someone he couldn’t predict and someone he didn’t have a predetermined destiny with. The information would be there for him if he focused on it, but he didn’t want it either by choice or by unbidden flickers of days to come.
He didn’t register what she said as cheesy. Instead, it made him smile, wide and toothy, the corners of his eyes wrinkling “I can just be Paul.” A sense of relief flowed through him from top to bottom. “I always wanted this.” He looked back toward the view. “Muad’Dib is the name for a species of desert mouse on Arrakis. It’s a constellation of stars, too, visible from the planet. I took the name for myself when I began my journey.” He paused. “In case you wanted to know,” he finished awkwardly.
Callie found herself blushing at his wide smile and she lowered her head so a curtain of dark hair fell between Paul and her, keeping her own grin private. After a moment, she looked back up at him.
“I’m an asteroid,” she told him with a little laugh, tucking her hair back behind her ear. “I mean, it’s spelt differently but we’re both named after Calliope, the Greek muse of eloquence and epic poetry.” She realised that, in Paul’s world, that probably didn’t mean very much.
“I’m very rarely eloquent, though, so I don’t think the name really rubbed off,” she added, pulling a little oops face.
“Why did you choose a mouse?” she asked after a moment, thinking back on what he’d said. It seemed like a bit of an odd choice for someone who could see his own incredible destiny.
A flicker of recognition crossed Paul’s face when she mentioned Calliope. He didn’t know the asteroid, but he did vaguely remember the Greek Muse. “I know of the Greek. Those are memories from a long time ago. My world is in the distant future but we have roots on the planet where Greeks were.”
The face she made was amusing enough to him that he let out a short laugh. “Eloquence is so formal. In certain people, it is obnoxious.”
Paul remembered thumbing through a survival manual on his first night in the desert after he and his mother had escaped the attack on their family and House. The desert mouse had been in it, on a list of creatures that lived on Arrakis. He had seen the name: Muad’Dib. It was shortly afterwards that he had his first vision of his future. “There are only a small number of creatures that can naturally survive on my home planet. The Muad’Dib is greatly admired for its ability to survive in the open desert.” He ran a hand through his untameable hair. “I like to think it did rub off on me.”
Callie laughed and nodded. She could understand why he’d chosen such a namesake after having heard him explain it. He was a survivor. Everything he’d told her about his home gave her the impression that he had far from an easy life but he was here, he’d survived and, moreover, he hadn’t let it make him cold.
Perhaps he was different here than he was at home, now that he was away from his destiny, but Callie found him to be warm, funny and interesting. He was mysterious, yes, and otherworldly but she had enjoyed kissing him at the party and she was enjoying talking to him now. In fact, she could have spent all day talking to him; she got the impression she’d barely scratched the surface of learning who he was.
Still, the time was running away from them.
“We should probably get back,” she sighed regretfully, seeking out his azure gaze. “Your lunch break must almost be over.”
Paul had to be different when he was on his homeworld. He had to fill the role of Muad’Dib, he had to lead. Not long before he had found the coin, he had gained control over the entire planet, which was no small matter.
But here on Atlantis, he could be the Paul he wanted to be deep down. The normal boy who got to do normal things like meet people, drink as much water as he wanted, and have some semblance of a personal life. Here, he wasn’t a leader. That burden belonged to other people. As a new arrival, he found himself in the opposite position - low man on the totem pole - and he found he didn’t mind at all. It gave him the freedom to use his lunch break like he just had, escaping with Callie - at first a stranger he had kissed - now a woman he found himself wishing he could while away the rest of the day’s hours with.
He checked his watch and sighed, disappointed that she was right. “I can be in two places at once, but unfortunately that ability doesn’t extend to adding extra time to my lunch break.” Paul gulped down the rest of his coffee and reached for her hand. “I hope that we can do it again.”
Callie looked surprised when Paul said he could be in two places at once but she didn’t have time to dwell on it because he was reaching out to her again. She took his hand readily and rose to her feet so she was standing in front of him. He was taller than her (which wasn’t hard) but she lifted her chin to look up at him. It felt intimate, just the two of them, face to face on the deserted side of a mountain, hand in hand.
“Yeah, I’d like that,” she replied quietly.
Catching her surprised look, he decided he should quickly clarify what that meant. “I can be here physically but somewhere else entirely in my mind. There aren’t two Pauls.” At least not to his knowledge. He figured he would see it if there were.
Rising to his feet, he took one last look at their surroundings before focusing back in on her. “Thank you. I will remember this fondly for the rest of my life.”
Me too, Callie thought as she tightened her grip on his hand and closed her eyes so she could focus in on where it was she wanted to take them.