ethan baltimore goes a lot of places (thoroughfare) wrote in superbabies, @ 2013-02-10 22:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | ethan baltimore |
narrative! The conclusion, of course. Ethan is back in the present time now and has quite a few changes coming up.
Time ripped him back, pulled him away from Gale. Days had passed and he had set the boy up with the gypsies, showed him a few fighting moves and what tendons in the ankles to cut (he would thank his own teachers for that later) and had, in general, grown quite accustomed to the boy. He enjoyed teaching him.
They had finished a day of amusing crowds (well, Ethan had, they used Gale’s big blue eyes to beg people into giving them coin) and were settling down to a rabbit at the fire when he felt it, the weird tugging sensation. Ethan immediately recognized it from when he landed into the 13th century. It meant, simply, that time was up.
And so he left Gale behind. Not by choice, though he wanted to go back and tried, laying on his back in a Vietnamese hospital, thinking of the time and trying to pinpoint it. He had been there for three days, they said, found in the jungle with a concussion. No one knew him, of course, he had zero identification on hand and was summing him up to be a lost cause. John Doe.
The doctors and staff, through an interpreter, explained everything and wanted to know why he had been alone out there. ‘Because’ didn’t fly.
Within a few hours of waking, however, it became shockingly apparent to Ethan that he wasn’t the same. No faded cotton loincloth adorned him or grizzled old man beard, no. What changed was his mind. Gone was the telempathy; everyone was a normal slate, though his mind still operated in colors and shapes when he heard things, listened to tones, but it was also much... more open. Wider.
In fact, the white zone was inside his head; he accessed it at any moment, could see it in front of him without being there. Cracks of time now ran through it and windows of eras long gone opened as he looked around. When he first noticed it, he laughed, beyond amused that his mind had taken on the cut-scenes from Assassin's Creed. Of course it had; that’s how he had always explained limbo, wasn’t it? An area he could run through to get from A to B, miraculously appearing where he needed to be and still could be; he didn’t wait for discharge papers and instead vanished, walking into the bathroom and right back to his campsite. He wore a hospital gown that was quickly changed for the spare clothing.
Nothing but wild dogs and birds had touched his camp and he had it cleaned quickly. Ethan knew the day, the time, and the year. He had spent little under a week with Gale but he couldn’t go back. In fact, try as he could, Ethan couldn’t find him, either, but he could see everyone else. He saw Sheri now and ten minutes prior.
But mostly, he remembered what he had seen take place. Apex, Bex, the snowmageddon, Josh, the changing of head master hands. He even saw things he didn’t want to see, leading back to his leaving two weeks ago.
With a sigh, he packed his items up, slung his pack on and walked out of the forest. There would be explaining to do, discussions, probably some reprimanding, but things were different. He was different.