Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1908 – London, England

Dr. John H. Watson lived quietly now as quietly as a man could after sharing years with Sherlock Holmes.

Gone were the breathless chases through fog-choked alleys, the gunshots echoing off brick walls, and the coded telegrams that arrived in the dead of night. The thrill of deduction and danger had faded into memory. Holmes had retired to the Sussex Downs to tend to his bees, leaving Watson behind to write the tales that would outlive them both.

He spent his days at his modest townhouse in Kensington, his nights beneath the warm glow of a reading lamp, pen scratching against paper as he immortalized each case. Some of the stories had been waiting for years to be told, ones Holmes had insisted be “saved for the right time.”
Watson had never fully understood what his old friend meant by that. But Holmes was never one to explain himself, only to smile that sly, knowing smile as though the future itself was another puzzle he’d already solved.

Now age had crept upon him quietly. His hair had turned the color of winter frost, and his hands trembled when he wrote. Yet sometimes, when the house was still, he could almost hear the faint strains of a violin drifting through the corridors, or the sharp click of Holmes’ boots upon the floorboards.
Those were extraordinary days, and he carried them in his heart like precious relics.

A year after their final meeting, a small box arrived at his doorstep. The return address was blank. Inside, resting on black velvet, lay a silver pocket watch, elegant, worn, utterly unremarkable. No letter accompanied it.
For weeks, Watson puzzled over it, examining every curve and hinge beneath the lamplight. It ticked perfectly, unfaltering. But there was nothing, no engraving, no hidden compartment, no sign of significance.

Until a fortnight later, when a letter arrived.

The handwriting was unmistakable, Holmes’: clean, deliberate, the script of a man who missed nothing. The message contained only a single line:

“May this fall into the hands of those with great will.”

That was all.
No greeting. No signature.
Typical Holmes.

Watson didn’t know what to make of it. But something in him, some deep instinct sharpened by years beside the detective, told him to keep it safe. And so, the watch found its home in the top drawer of his writing desk, locked away, yet always within reach.

Years unfolded like brittle pages. Watson married, lost his beloved Mary, and raised a family. His son grew, had children of his own, and the house that once echoed with laughter grew quiet again. The London fog thickened, his joints stiffened, and his walks grew shorter. Yet when the holidays came, the halls filled once more with the light and laughter of youth.

That winter was particularly bitter. Snow crowned the rooftops and whispered against the windows. The fire burned steadily, casting golden light across the drawing room. Watson sat in his old armchair, wrapped in a tartan blanket, a cup of steaming tea in hand.
Three grandchildren darted about the room, their joy warming the chill from the air, but it was Amelia, the middle child, who stayed closest.

At ten years old, she was a curious creature: bright-eyed, sharp-tongued, endlessly inquisitive. There was something in her gaze that reminded Watson of Holmes himself, that same fierce hunger to understand.

She would sit at his feet as he told stories of their adventures.
“Grandpapa,” she would say in her clear, careful voice, “did Mr. Holmes truly disguise himself as a beggar? And did you not know it was him all the while?”
And Watson would laugh softly, answering as best he could while she leaned forward, hanging on every word.

Once, he’d even found her conducting an “investigation” of her own, examining crumbs on the table and droplets of milk upon the floor to deduce which sibling had stolen the last biscuit. Her methods were charmingly flawed, but her spirit was unmistakable.

One afternoon, as snow drifted silently past the window, Amelia sat beside him again, listening intently as he recounted a long-forgotten case. Midway through his tale, he paused and frowned.
“Ah, Amelia, would you be so kind as to fetch my spectacles? I believe I left them on the table in my bedroom.”

She beamed. “Of course, Grandpapa!”
And off she went, her small slippers pattering down the hall.

Minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen.

Watson’s brow furrowed. “Amelia?” he called.
No answer.

He set aside his teacup and rose carefully, leaning on his cane. The corridor stretched before him, dimly lit, the old floorboards creaking beneath his steps.
He passed the guest room, the study, and the bathroom with the loose tile that had never been fixed. At last, he reached his own bedroom, the door slightly ajar, light spilling out onto the floor.

“Amelia?” His voice was soft now, uncertain.

He pushed the door open.

Someone was standing by his writing desk, a young woman, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, with golden hair that fell in soft curls. For a moment, Watson thought a stranger had broken in. But then she turned, and his heart stopped.

Those eyes. He knew those eyes.
They were Amelia’s, the same wide, intelligent eyes that once looked up at him with childish wonder.

Only now, they brimmed with something else: grief, awe, and an understanding no child should possess.

“Amelia…” he whispered.

Her lip quivered. She clutched the silver pocket watch tightly in her hand.

“Hey… Grandpa Watson,” she said.
Her voice, older, steadier, carried a strange rhythm, unfamiliar to his ear. Her accent had shifted, her tone quicker, freer.
No Victorian propriety now, just the warmth and cadence of some future age.
She sounded as though she came from another world entirely.

His breath trembled. “My dear girl… what-what has happened to you?”

Her eyes glistened. “I… I don’t have time to explain,” she said, her words spilling out faster than his old mind could process. “Just... trust me, okay? You were right. About everything.”

He stared, the air thick with disbelief, and yet, deep down, he felt no fear. Only that quiet certainty that had guided him all his life beside Holmes.

He smiled faintly. “I see. Then it seems Mr. Holmes’ legacy continues.”
His voice wavered, but his eyes shone with pride. “Do good with it, Amelia.”

A tear escaped down her cheek. She nodded quickly. “I will, Grandpa. I promise. I’ll make you proud.”

She looked at him, really looked, as if she were memorizing his face. Then, with trembling fingers, she pressed the small button on the side of the watch.

A bright silver light filled the room.
The air shimmered, and for a single heartbeat, Watson felt warmth brush his face, as though the future itself had reached back to touch him.

And then she was gone.
Vanished without a sound.

Watson stood there in the hush that followed, his cane trembling in his grasp. He waited for grief, for confusion, but neither came. Only a faint smile curved his lips, and he felt, impossibly, that this was not an ending at all.

A faint scent of tobacco drifted through the still air, though his pipe lay cold.
And in that moment, he could almost hear Holmes whispering from some distant place:

“The game is afoot… again.”

Chapter Text

??? The Last Battlefield

Pain.

That was the first thing Amelia Watson felt.
Not the screaming wind that carried the stench of smoke and metal.
Not the thunder of collapsing buildings.
Just pain, sharp, electric, searing through every inch of her body until thought itself broke apart.

Her leg was twisted beneath her, bone grinding against bone. Her hands pressed instinctively to her side, and warm blood spilled between her fingers, thick, hot, and endless. For a moment, she couldn’t even breathe; the world came in flashes of red, grey, red again. Her heartbeat pulsed like a drum inside her skull.

She had fallen.

And this time, there would be no getting back up.

The battlefield around her screamed with life and death intertwined.
Once it had been a street of cobblestone, she thought dimly, but now it was a broken graveyard of molten steel and fire. The air burned her lungs, thick with smoke and the acrid tang of ozone. Shattered signs hung from twisted iron poles, swaying in the wind. The ruins of vehicles, mechanical and monstrous, hissed and sparked where they had fallen, their dying circuits crackling like a swarm of angry insects.

Screams echoed in the distance, human and not.
Somewhere, someone was still fighting.
Somewhere, someone was still dying.

She couldn’t tell whose side anymore. Maybe there weren’t sides left.

Her body trembled as she tried to move. Pain tore through her nerves, bright and merciless. Her mouth filled with the taste of copper. She coughed, and blood flecked her lips.

Failure pressed against her like the weight of the sky.

Everything she’d built, the alliances, the plans, the endless jumps through fractured timelines, had fallen apart in a single instant. One betrayal. One miscalculation.
She’d thought she could change the future.
She’d thought she could win.

She had underestimated her.

The Warden.

Amelia squeezed her eyes shut, forcing her fogged vision to focus. Shapes blurred and wavered in the choking haze until there, a faint glint amid the ash and ruin. Silver. Round. Familiar.

The pocket watch.

Her grandfather’s watch. Her burden. Her only escape.

It lay just a few feet away, half-buried in soot, its glass reflecting the chaos.

So close.
So impossibly far.

She reached out, her fingers trembling, but her arm gave way beneath its own weight. She collapsed onto her side with a hoarse cry, the impact sending a white-hot spike through her broken leg. The world tilted, blurred, bled color and sound into one nauseating whirl.

No.
Not yet.
She couldn’t die here.

She dragged herself forward, an inch at a time. Each movement was agony, a dull roar in her ears, a scream caught in her throat. The dirt bit into her palms. Her nails cracked, her skin tore. Her breaths came shallow, each one a knife. The wind howled, carrying with it the echoes of the dying, panicked voices, collapsing walls, and the mechanical shriek of something tearing itself apart.

Her vision stuttered, past and present overlapping.
Her grandfather’s voice whispered in her memory.

“Amelia, clever girl… always watching, always learning.”

She remembered the warmth of the hearth, the smell of old books, the way his hands trembled when he wound the watch for her.
He’d smiled when he said it.
She never realized it was a farewell.

The irony burned her chest now.
All her brilliance, her planning, wasted.
She was crawling through the rubble of her own hubris.

A distant boom ripped through the air, shaking the ground beneath her. The remains of a nearby tower folded in on itself with a groaning roar, the shockwave scattering ash like snow. Fire flared across the horizon, orange light against a blackened sky.

And through it came the clicking of heels.

High, clear, cruel.

Amelia froze, blood turning to ice.
She didn’t need to look.

“You know I’ll just find you wherever you go, right?”

The voice slid through the air like a blade, smooth, confident, soaked in satisfaction.

The Warden.

Amelia’s fingers dug into the dirt. She forced herself to move again, dragging, scraping, crawling. Each inch brought her closer to the watch. Her muscles screamed. The wound in her side gushed anew. Her vision swam, but she didn’t stop.

Not yet. Not when it mattered.

“You look awful, Amelia,” the Warden called, her tone almost gentle, mocking in its softness.
A silhouette stepped from the firelight, tall and straight, her perfect-esque figure, gleaming like oil beneath the falling ash. Her blue eyes lacked any compassion, only the cold and merciless.

“Just give me the watch,” she continued. “End this before it gets… messy.”

Amelia laughed, a dry, broken sound that rattled in her throat. “Messy?” she rasped. “It’s already hell.”

The Warden took another step forward, boots crunching over glass and bone. “Your influence on time ends today.”

Time.
Her oldest ally.
Her most ruthless enemy.

It had saved her. Broken her. Shaped her into something unrecognizable.
And now, it was slipping through her fingers like sand.

Her hand brushed against something cold.
Metal.

She blinked through the blur, tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt on her face. The pocket watch lay there, gleaming faintly in the smoke.

She reached out, trembling, bleeding, and wrapped her fingers around it.
The weight was heavier than she remembered, as if it carried all her mistakes inside.

Her chest heaved.
She coughed, blood bubbling between her lips.

“We…” she whispered, voice raw. “We could’ve been… good friends, you and I.”

The Warden tilted her head slightly, almost pitying. “You should’ve stayed in your time, Amelia.”

Tears welled in Amelia’s eyes, hot, angry, relentless.
“Maybe I should’ve,” she murmured. “But you know us Watsons… we never quite learn.”

Her thumb found the small button on the side of the watch.
It clicked beneath her touch.

Light burst outward, not fire, not flame, but pure distortion, golden and blinding. The air rippled, screaming with the sound of splitting time. The world folded inward. Everything, the fire, the ruins, the Warden’s cold stare,  shattered into spiraling fragments of light.

And Amelia was gone.

The Warden stood amidst the wreckage, her eyes flickering with a scowl.
The wind screamed. The fires raged.

Somewhere far away, a clock began to tick.

The hunt, it seemed… was not yet over.

Chapter Text

Consciousness came to her in fragments, faint, fluttering things that did not seem quite real.

At first, there was only darkness and a faint ticking sound, regular and soft, as though some clock were marking the seconds of a life that might no longer exist. Then warmth began to press against her skin, the slow, even warmth of a hearth, not the searing heat of collapsing cities.

Her lungs expanded cautiously. No smoke. No blood. No screams.
For the first time in years, she slept without flinching.

When Amelia Watson finally stirred, her lashes trembled open like reluctant curtains unveiling a half-forgotten play. The world swam into being, blurred, pale, and unfamiliar, as if painted with trembling watercolors.

She exhaled softly.
Then the pain came.

A sharp cry tore from her throat before she could silence it.
Her body flared alive with agony, a thousand points of it: ribs, side, leg. Every breath seemed a rebellion against her own survival. Her hand drifted toward her abdomen and found bandages, thick, coarse linen wrapped with a surgeon’s precision.

Her leg, too, was immobilized, cocooned in splints and gauze.

For a long while, she could only lie there, listening to the strange quiet of the room. Somewhere beyond the door, a dull hum vibrated, not quite machinery, not quite silence.

Then came the smell.
Antiseptic. Sharp, sterile. The scent of clean metal and crushed herbs.
Hospitals never smelled like this in her time.

She blinked away the fog clouding her thoughts. The walls were whitewashed, though aged and cracked in places. Beside her, a narrow table lay in gentle disarray, rolls of gauze, scissors, a chipped teacup, and a dented box stamped with a red cross. Not standard issue. Not government property. Improvised.

Her old clothes hung neatly from a hook by the far wall, torn, burnt at the edges, stained a deep rust brown. Someone had taken great care to clean what could be saved. Over her was a heavy cloak, wool, too large for her small frame. Its edges smelled faintly of rain and engine oil.

Her throat was parched when she whispered, “Where… am I?”
The sound came out hoarse, dry, as if her voice had traveled through decades to reach her lips.

No answer came. Only the hum. Only the clock that ticked somewhere unseen.

Amelia swallowed and tried to sit up. The effort stole her breath. White pain flashed behind her eyes. She sank back, gasping softly through her teeth.

And then a voice, cool, steady, far too casual, answered from the shadowed corner.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.”

Her pulse surged. She turned sharply, too sharply, and the world spun.

A man sat there, half reclined, as though watching over her had been a pastime of mild inconvenience. In one hand, he turned a wrench over his fingers, metal glinting in the lamplight. His face was hidden behind a boar mask, adorned with rings and scars.

Only his mouth was visible, unhurried, faintly amused.

For a heartbeat, she wondered if he were some fever-born apparition, another trick of fractured time.

“Who-” she began, voice breaking. “Who are you?”

He ignored the question entirely. “Try not to move,” he said. “You’re more bones than person right now.”

Something about his tone, faintly mocking, faintly kind, pricked her temper. “Forgive me,” she said, her accent sharpening into its old London formality, “but I’ve endured rather worse company than yours. Now, if you’d be so good as to tell me where-”

He tilted his head, the mask catching light. “Still with the manners. That’s new. Or old, depending on how you count it.”

“Pardon?”

He chuckled under his breath and returned to his tinkering. “I thought this wasn’t the first time we’ve met.”

She froze.
“What-?”

Before she could press further, the door burst open.

“Old man! Where the hell are you? I need help with this-”

The voice faltered mid-sentence. Paper scattered across the floor.

Amelia turned, startled, and met her own eyes.

Another Amelia stood in the doorway, several years older, clothed in tight, practical armor streaked with soot. Her hair was tied back. Her expression, sharp, weary, intelligent, might have been carved from a mirror warped by time.

For a suspended moment, neither moved. Then the older Amelia’s eyes widened.

“What?!” she blurted, rushing forward. “When did this happen?”

She rounded on the masked man. “Explain.”

He lifted the wrench lazily, pointing it at the wounded Amelia. “You tell me. You’re the one running the place.”

The older version exhaled hard, muttering a string of very modern profanities. “Fine. Fine.” She spun toward the bed.

“ID code. Date. Visitation purpose. Dimension origin.” The words came fast, mechanical, the rhythm of someone who had repeated them a thousand times before.

The younger Amelia stared blankly. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, bloody hell,” her counterpart groaned, grabbing a small silver device from the nearby table. “Never mind. I’ll scan you myself.”

She raised it, and a narrow green beam swept over Amelia’s body. The air hummed faintly as the device blinked once, then twice, then flared red.

The older Amelia’s voice cracked. “No ID?”
A pause. Then, louder: “No ID?”

Her expression twisted in disbelief. “Oh, oh-holy hell!”

She staggered backward, hand over her mouth. “She’s the first! The original!”

Before Amelia could even form a question, the older version bolted from the room, shouting down the corridor: “She’s here! She’s really here!”

The younger Amelia sat frozen. Her mind, still fogged with pain, tried and failed to reconcile the impossible sight.

Her heartbeat thundered. Her breath came shallow. The world, this strange, bright, humming world, tilted dangerously.

The masked man sighed, setting his wrench aside. “Well,” he murmured, as though watching some long-awaited theatre act unfold, “so this is where it all begins.”

His voice carried no awe, only a wry fascination. “One hell of a way to meet yourself, eh?”

Footsteps returned, several this time, swift and sure.

The older Amelia reappeared first, eyes darting to the bandages, the machines, the broken body on the bed. Behind her came another, a woman with the same face, yet softened by years and wisdom, her hands burdened with thick books and the scent of ink. A pair of glasses rested atop her head.

This one moved with the quiet confidence of a scholar. When she spoke, her tone was gentle, melodic even.

“You are in the Left-Side Medical Wing, Miss Watson. The central hub of multiversal navigation.”

She set her books on the table with a soft thump. “You’re quite safe here. For the time being.”

Amelia swallowed. “Safe from what?”

The woman’s gaze darkened. “From her. The First Warden. Time’s keeper. Your hunter.”

The words struck like cold iron.

The masked man leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. “And for the record,” he added, “this place doesn’t exist on a linear timeline. She can’t reach you here. Not unless she’s invited.”

He gestured lazily toward the books. “Your counterparts have written some notes. Rules. Hierarchies. It’s a lot to digest.”

The scholar smiled faintly, a touch of pity in her eyes. “You’ll have time to learn. More or less.”

Amelia’s gaze flicked between them, between herself and herself and herself. Three lives, three reflections. All impossibly real.

Her throat tightened. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

The boar-masked man straightened, one hand on the door. His presence filled the small room.

“Welcome to the start of everything, Amelia,” he said, voice low and final.

The door creaked shut behind him.

And in the stillness that followed, the only sound was the faint, impossible ticking of a broken watch, somewhere, somehow, still keeping time.

Consciousness, once again, came to her not as a mercy but as a burden.

Everything hurt, not only her body, but her being. Her sense of time, of self, of the delicate order between cause and effect, all seemed to fray like an over-worn rope tugged at both ends by invisible hands.

She tried to breathe.

Once.

Twice.

Each inhale was shallow, stung by the bruising along her ribs, but it was real, achingly so.
That, she decided, was proof enough of life.

She should not have been alive.

She remembered, oh, she remembered, the moment when her blood cooled upon the broken stones, the Warden’s voice echoing through collapsing hours, the watch in her grasp splintering into silence.
There had been pain, and light, and then… nothing.

And now, this.

A bed, a room, a body bound in bandages.
And voices.

At first, she thought them a fever’s trick, echoes, perhaps, from the border of death. But as she stirred, the sounds grew clearer. Footsteps. Laughter. The murmur of speech in tones she knew far too well.

Because they were her own.

Not reflections, not ghosts, not dream-born shades of delirium.

Herself.

Dozens, perhaps more, moved just beyond the open door. Their steps crossed tiled floors; their voices rippled through the air like overlapping radio signals. The door stood ajar, and from her low vantage on the bed she could see glimpses of them, impossible, kaleidoscopic glimpses.

One strode past in a sharp-cut coat, its tails flaring behind her as she barked orders to a mercenary version, the latter armed to the teeth and swearing in an accent Amelia did not recognize.
Another walked briskly by in a lab coat smudged with oil and soot, adjusting goggles with the habitual precision of an engineer. A third, clipboard in hand, sandwich in mouth, trailed after her, muttering about energy calibrations.
Two younger variants sat at a circular table not far off, giggling over some shared joke, one of them with garish pink streaks in her hair.
And against a pillar leaned a taller, battle-worn woman whose face was carved by old burns and the unmistakable tilt of defiance; she flipped a coin over her fingers with idle grace.

Amelia watched, struck dumb.

Every tilt of the head, every flicker of irritation or thought, hers, and yet not hers. Each face bore the same blueprint, each gaze the same storm-blue hue, refracted through the prism of a thousand unchosen lives.

Seeing them was like watching mirrors shatter and reform into alien constellations.

Her throat tightened.
“What… what is this place?” she whispered, her voice dry as dust.

The older Amelia, the one who had first scanned her, stood near the wall, arms crossed, her boot tapping a rhythm of impatience that could have been mistaken for thought. She looked like a soldier stripped of sleep and sentiment both.

“The Hub,” another voice replied, gentler, carrying the precise calm of academia. It belonged to a woman entering the room with a weighty armful of books pressed to her chest. Her eyes behind round spectacles gleamed with quiet intellect. “The full designation is considerably longer, but everyone simply calls it the Hub. It is the convergence point between multiversal threads, the crossroads of every Amelia Watson who survived.”

Amelia blinked at her.
“The… the what now?”

The scholar smiled faintly, setting the books upon the bedside table with reverence. “You would not know, not yet. None of us did, before the breaking. Some of us came to our end in our own way. Our worlds collapsed, our times ran out. And at that moment-” she nodded toward Amelia’s wrist “-the Watch responded.”

Amelia turned her gaze downward.
The pocket watch, her constant, her curse, lay upon her wrist. The glass was fractured, the hands frozen mid-tick as though arrested by dread itself.

“It’s dead,” she murmured. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

“It will,” said the soldier-Amelia, her tone softening despite herself. “They call you First Ame. You’re the origin, the spark that began the entire chain.”

“I wasn’t trying to begin anything,” Amelia said, her accent sharpening, the old London iron cutting through exhaustion. “I was trying not to die.”

The two older versions exchanged a look, the kind that carried more pity than they wished to admit.

“That’s how it starts for some of us,” the soldier replied quietly. “Survival. Desperation. That’s the first fracture, the first jump. Once the line splits, the Watch chooses. And the world… changes.”

She gestured toward the corridor where countless others moved like fragments of a single thought. “Some versions of you became heroes. Others became tyrants. A few… never rose again. The Hub gathers what remains; it stabilizes us. Keeps the Warden’s reach at bay.”

Amelia stared at the frozen watch, then at the dozens of selves drifting beyond the doorway, laughing, arguing, existing.
The sight made her dizzy.
“I’m not ready for this,” she whispered.

“No one is,” said the scholar. “Not when they first arrive.”

A sudden clang echoed through the corridor, the metallic shriek of something heavy striking the floor, followed by a chorus of furious swearing in what sounded like three dialects at once. A half-mechanical version of herself sprinted by, sparks trailing from her prosthetic leg, pursued by a buzzing drone that shrieked in binary. A moment later, another Amelia, this one robed like a stage magician, floated past muttering incantations that smelled faintly of ozone and nonsense.

Amelia pressed a hand to her temple.
“This is a dream,” she muttered. “A coma, a hallucination, my brain staging its final performance before the curtain falls.”

A new voice, dry and amused, intruded from the doorway.
“Ah, the ‘coma hypothesis.’ Classic stage two. Right on schedule.”

The boar-masked man had returned, a steaming mug in hand, as though the apocalypse and its aftermath required only caffeine and sarcasm. He leaned against the frame, at once relaxed and watchful.

Amelia glared. “Who are you?”

He shrugged, the motion lazy but deliberate. “Depends who’s asking. Some call me your curator. Others, less politely, your jailor. Personally, I prefer mechanics of miracles, but that never quite caught on.”

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

“It means,” the scholar interjected gently, “that you should rest. Explanations can wait until your mind is steadier. Time moves strangely here, sometimes forward, sometimes sideways. There is no hurry.”

The man chuckled. “Said like someone who’s never missed a deadline.”

He crossed to the bed, setting the mug aside. Then, almost carelessly, he tossed a folded cloth onto her lap. Within it lay a small device, triangular, faintly humming, warm against her palm. It pulsed with a rhythm eerily reminiscent of a heartbeat.

“Just in case,” he said.

Her brows knitted. “In case of what?”

For a heartbeat too long, silence ruled the room.
Even the laughter and footsteps beyond seemed to hush.

Then the soldier-Amelia answered, her voice low and grave:
“In case the Warden finds a way in.”

The words hung in the air like a shadow with shape.

Amelia’s fingers tightened around the humming device.
Outside, the clockless corridors of the Hub stretched into unknowable distance, a cathedral of fractured time, filled with echoes of herself.

She had escaped death.
But not pursuit.

And somewhere, beyond the walls of this impossible sanctuary, Time itself was looking for her.

“How... old is the oldest Amelia here?”

It was a simple question, almost absurd in its simplicity, yet it trembled in her throat as if the very act of asking it risked pulling down the ceiling of this impossible place. She stood beside the window, one hand on the sill for balance, the other ghosting over the bandages that laced her ribs like white scars of memory.

Beyond the glass, countless iterations of herself drifted by, some hurrying, others dawdling, and though the light was strange and colorless, she could read their faces as clearly as her own reflection. Each one was a life she had never lived. A breath she had never taken. A choice she had not made.

The man in the boar’s mask tilted his head as if listening to a tune from very far away. The gesture was thoughtful, almost mournful.

“I lost count, honestly,” he said at last. His voice was quieter now, more human for once. “She stopped measuring it herself after a while. We only know she’s still alive because her watch still pings the network.”

Amelia felt something cold and hollow open in her chest.

Still alive.
Still out there.
Endlessly wandering through worlds and centuries, through loops and echoes and dust.

For what?
To run?
To fight?
To exist?

Her mind staggered beneath the weight of it, the idea that she, or rather another her, could have lived so long that even time had stopped keeping count. She had not yet caught her breath from dying, and already there were whispers of destiny, of Wardens, of worlds devouring themselves.

“Just so you know,” the man added, perhaps sensing the unraveling threads in her gaze, “if you meet any Wardens here in the Hub, they’re likely the cooperative kind. Some even defected. They can be reasoned with.”

He paused. The porcelain cup in his gloved hand trembled slightly as he tightened his grip.

“But if you see her, the First Warden of Time-” his tone darkened, each word deliberate “- you run. No debate. No mercy. She’s been hunting all of you the longest.”

“All of me?” Amelia echoed, her voice a brittle whisper that cracked under its own uncertainty.

Her scholarly self, the one with the ink-stained fingers and the grave calm of someone who had read the end of too many stories, stepped forward. The books she carried seemed impossibly old, the bindings leathered with use and grief.

“She’s not alone,” she said. “She’s rallying the others, the ancient ones. The other Four Pillars.”

Amelia straightened a little, her pulse quickening. “Pillars?”

“Mother of Nature. Speaker of Space. Guardian of Civilization. Reincarnation of Chaos.”

Each name struck her like the tolling of an unseen bell, deep, distant, and terrifyingly familiar.

Not myths, then. Not stories whispered in crumbling libraries or told to frighten children before sleep.
They were real.
And they were gathering.

“She’s building something,” the scholar went on, voice lowering to a near whisper. “An inversion of balance, we think. The Warden believes time should be singular, pure, linear, unfractured. That all multiverses are a sickness, a disease born of choice.”

Amelia blinked. “And you think... I can stop her?” she said, the words leaving her lips like a confession.

The older Amelia, the one who stood by the table, arms folded across her chest, looked at her then. Truly looked. Her eyes were steady and tired, carrying the weight of a hundred lives, yet in them burned a faint and fragile hope.

“You’ll have to,” she said softly. “We’ve searched thousands of worlds, ruins, remnants, fragments, and every path circles back to you. The original.”

Amelia’s breath caught. “But, why not one of you? You’ve seen more, you know more. I just... I just ran. I made mistakes. I barely survived. I-”

The boar-masked man stepped forward before she could finish, his voice cutting through the air like a quiet command.

“Because all the other Amelias,” he said, “are not you.”

The silence that followed was not empty; it pulsed, alive with the sound of distant machines and murmuring echoes of herself beyond the door.

He took a few slow steps closer. The light caught the edge of his mask, casting a distorted shadow on the polished floor that stretched long and thin, like time itself bending.

“The longer an Amelia travels,” he said, “the more she bends. Some forget who they were. Others... lose themselves to ambition, to grief, to power. The multiverse doesn’t come free, and the toll is always memory. The farther they go, the less of themselves remains.”

Amelia’s eyes drifted again to the others, laughing, arguing, some carrying weapons or scrolls, others repairing strange devices. Each one was her and not her, every smile tainted by something she could not name.

“And me?” she asked quietly.

He regarded her for a long time before answering. When he spoke, it was almost reverent.

“They say you’re the only one who remembers what truly matters,” he said. “That you are the one who refuses to let go of who you are. If there’s any chance of restoring balance... it must come from the one untouched by the rot of too many paths.”

Amelia looked down at her trembling hands, then to the cracked watch that lay cold and silent on her wrist. The silence pressed against her ears until she heard her own heartbeat.
One.
Two.
Three.

“No pressure, then,” she murmured, half to herself, her accent thickening with bitter humor. The others smiled faintly, pity, admiration, or simple exhaustion, she couldn’t tell.

She hesitated, then asked the question that had been clawing at her since the moment he entered the room.

“Who are you, really?”

The man froze mid-step. He seemed to weigh her question in the hollow between heartbeats before setting his cup down on the nearby console with deliberate care.

“I’ve been here longer than any of the Amelias still walking,” he said. “I saw the first rip. I watched the Watch awaken. I felt the walls between worlds thinning until the air itself started humming with echoes.”

She tilted her head, studying him. “You were the first, then?”

He shook his head once. “No. Never an Amelia.”

A spark of dry amusement coloured his tone, as if the very idea carried both irony and sorrow.

“I was left behind,” he said, after a pause that lingered too long. “When my world collapsed, I stayed. Somehow, the Hub pulled me in, or perhaps it pitied me. I can’t leave, not anymore. But I’ve long stopped needing a reason to stay.”

He turned then, the faint mechanical hum of the hall casting ripples of gold light across his mask. When he spoke again, his words carried something close to warmth.

“I’ve made it my purpose to help you, all of you, because if even one of you makes it to the end and comes back whole, then maybe everything we’ve lost... will mean something.”

And with that, he turned and left, no dramatic flourish, no parting words. Just the fading rhythm of his steps was swallowed by the hum of the Hub and the overlapping murmurs of variant selves beyond the door.

Amelia watched him vanish into the light until the last echo of him was gone. Then she looked down at her fractured watch.

It remained dead.

But something deep within its mechanism, a faint pulse, a breath, a whisper, seemed to stir.
It was not broken.
Merely sleeping.

And somewhere in that stillness, she felt time itself turn its gaze upon her.

Chapter Text

The boar-masked man excused himself with a half-bow that was far too theatrical for the solemnity of the room.
“Materials to order, gears to polish, reality to mend, the usual,” he said, his voice fading as he sauntered out.

The Librarian, a kind-eyed woman with a softness that felt almost maternal, despite the faint aura of authority that clung to her every motion, adjusted her spectacles and gave Amelia’s hand a light squeeze before departing as well.
“Rest, dear. Truly rest this time. Paperwork awaits me, volumes of it. You’ve quite shaken the indexing protocols by arriving alive.”

Then she too was gone, her footsteps melting into the mechanical hum of the corridor.

That left only one.

The last Amelia, older, sterner, her every movement calculated and deliberate, stood by the foot of the bed. Her uniform was immaculate: pressed coat, neatly bound hair, insignia gleaming faintly under the sterile lights.
Even her silence felt orderly.

“The first step would be to repair your watch,” she said, her tone calm, clipped, but not unkind. “It will take time. Scouts are already en route to gather what’s needed.”

Amelia blinked, her gaze unfocused, as though the words had to wade through fog to reach her.
Scouts. Ingredients. Restoration.
It all sounded so... mechanical. Detached.

To fix time as though it were a cracked lens or a frayed wire.

A flicker of movement caught her eye, the faint gleam of her reflection in the polished cabinet beside the bed.
For a moment, she didn’t recognize the woman staring back: pale skin marred by bruises, bandages wrapped tight across her ribs, eyes hollowed by exhaustion.

Her reflection looked like a stranger wearing her face.

“In the meantime,” the Captain continued, stepping closer, “you’ll need to eat. Bathe. Dress for the council meeting. You’ll be briefed on the search for the Pillars’ counterparts once you’re steady enough to listen.”

The phrase council meeting struck Amelia as almost comical in its civility, considering the absurdity of everything else.

Captain Amelia glanced over her shoulder.
“You may call me Captain. Captain Amelia. My registry ID is CO-115,392-AW, ‘Captain of Order,’ the one hundred fifteen thousand, three hundred ninety-second Amelia to appear after the War.”

She said it like she was reciting a weather report, factual, unadorned, the rhythm of someone who had stopped being surprised by impossible numbers a long time ago.

“To explain the coding system would take time,” she added, softer now. “You’ll learn it by degrees.”

She turned and left briefly, returning with a wheelchair that glowed faintly along its rims, its design at once practical and faintly alien.
“Use this for now,” she said, rolling it beside the bed. “Your bones need time to knit. Do not overexert. Pain has a way of undoing even the best mending.”

Before departing once more, she pointed toward a small, narrow wardrobe near the wall.
“New attire. Functionally similar to your old garments but updated for Hub operations, reinforced lining, utility pouches, translingual pin, and navigational threads. And,” she added with a faint upward twitch of the lips, “a coat worthy of you.”

Then she left her with a quiet click of the door latch.

The silence that followed was suffocating, not oppressive, exactly, but too perfect. Even the hum of the air vents seemed polite.

Amelia lay still, listening to the phantom rhythm of her heartbeat against the sheets. Her breath came slow and uneven.

A thousand Amelias.
A thousand lives.
All her, but none of them her.

She pushed back the blanket and swung her legs gingerly over the edge of the bed. Pain greeted her like an old acquaintance, sharp, then dull, then sharp again. She hissed between her teeth and muttered, “Well done, me,” under her breath.

The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and dried herbs, the strange blend of science and old-world medicine that the Hub seemed to favor.

Her feet touched the cold floor. The tiles were smooth, slightly luminous, like moonlight petrified into stone. She looked down at her body, bandaged thighs, stitched ribs, bruises painted in shades of violet and ochre. She was a ruin stitched back together by someone else’s patience.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered.

The words came raw, stripped of composure.
And yet, even as she said them, she reached for the wheelchair, because the truth was, she was here. And she wasn’t dead. Not yet.

The chair’s frame was light, smooth, and unnervingly responsive. It glided as she turned it toward the wardrobe.

Her old coat still hung against the far wall, scorched and blood-stiffened. The cuffs were blackened, the buttons half-melted, a dark smear of dried crimson marking the hem. She stared at it for a long time.
It smelled of smoke, metal, and the ghost of fear.

That coat belonged to the woman who had crawled through fire to reach a dying watch, the one who had believed that salvation lay in the next second, the next breath, the next impossible jump.

But now, that same woman was expected to be the answer.

She opened the wardrobe.

Inside hung a new coat, black as stormwater, lined with deep violet stitching that shimmered faintly when the light struck it. Its design was familiar but altered: reinforced at the seams, subtle runes etched along the inner cuffs, compartments hidden behind folds of fabric.

Pinned at the collar was a silver emblem: the outline of her pocket watch split in two, joined again by a delicate infinity symbol.

She lifted it carefully. The fabric was cool against her fingertips, but heavier than it looked, not weighty with mass, but with meaning.

“They’re preparing me,” she murmured. “For something I don’t even understand yet.”

Her laugh came brittle. “A meeting. Pillars. Counterparts. Brilliant. I can’t even stand without wobbling.”

Her gaze strayed to the mirror above the sink.
The woman who met her eyes there was not the Amelia Watson she remembered. Her hair clung damply to her temples, bandages wrapping her forehead like a hasty crown. Her eyes, once bright with curiosity, looked older. Haunted.

She didn’t look like a hero.
She looked like the aftermath of one.

Still… the others believed in her. The First Amelia, they had called her. Untouched.
The one who hadn’t lost herself.

But for how long?

Would she truly remain herself after enough jumps? After enough choices?

Or would she become another reflection, smiling differently, walking differently, until she, too, forgot her own beginning?

She wheeled herself toward the washroom. The mirror there was smaller, mercifully cracked near one edge, distorting her face just enough to be unrecognizable. She turned the faucet.

The water gushed out clear and cold, with a faint metallic tang. She cupped her hands and splashed her face once, twice, each shock of cold a jolt of awareness. The sting of it reminded her she was still alive.

Again, she whispered to her reflection, “I can still be me.”

Her voice trembled, but she said it anyway.

Steam filled the room as she turned on the shower. The scent of crushed mint, lavender, and antiseptic herbs rose into the air. She peeled off the bandages, careful not to disturb the fresh stitches, and stepped beneath the cascade.

The warmth enveloped her, a baptism in silence.
The water traced lines through the bruises, washing away the crusted remnants of blood and dust, though not the memory.

In that quiet, with the hum of unseen machines beyond the wall and the steady rhythm of falling water, she let herself breathe for the first time.

Maybe this was the beginning.
Maybe the end had already passed, and this was what came after.
Either way, there would soon be a reckoning, a war between beings older than stars, between fractured selves and a Warden who believed chaos had a face.

But for now, there was warmth.
There was water.
There was the fragile peace before the next heartbeat of history.

And as the steam curled upward, she let her eyes close, not to sleep, but to listen.

Somewhere deep within her fractured watch, lying silent on the bedside table, a faint sound stirred.
Not a tick.
Not yet.
But the soft intake of breath before one.

Though her body still ached with every breath and each careful motion, Amelia managed, with the occasional hiss of pain, to dress herself. The act was laborious but deliberate, her fingers steady even when her joints protested. Every buckle fastened, every fold smoothed, felt like reclaiming a fragment of self.

The new garments fit her well, though they were clearly designed for a purpose rather than vanity. Reinforced seams traced her silhouette, sturdy yet flexible. Fine threadwork shimmered faintly when caught by light, not mere embroidery, but something arcane, humming with silent function. Hidden loops and pocketed seams promised tools and secrets she had yet to learn. The coat, heavier than she was accustomed to, felt like both shield and burden.

By the time she was done, her breathing had grown shallow. Still, she refused to call for help. The chair waited near the bedside, quiet and expectant, its polished metal inscribed with faintly glowing sigils. Amelia regarded it with the look one reserves for unwanted company, but she knew better than to test the limits of broken bones.

“Dignity above all,” she muttered under her breath. “Even if I look ridiculous doing it.”

With a determined grunt, she eased herself down into the chair. The wheels responded to her touch with a soft whirr, smoother than she expected, and she guided herself toward the door. Her reflection followed her briefly in the steel of the cabinet, pale and drawn, but alive. That, at least, was something.

When she opened the door, a hiss of air escaped the seal, and the world revealed itself.

It struck her like a revelation.

The corridor unfolded into an expanse so vast and strange it defied the limits of geometry. A city, or perhaps a dream of one, sprawled before her, suspended in layers. Bridges of glass and brass crossed one another like the veins of an enormous clock. Towers spiraled upwards into what appeared to be sky, though its hue shifted subtly with the rhythm of time itself, sometimes indigo, sometimes gold.

There was motion everywhere.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of figures drifted, hurried, strode. And most of them were her.

Variants of Amelia moved through the luminous thoroughfares: tall and short, armored and robed, scarred and shining. Some bore mechanical augmentations, hands of brass and silver, eyes that flickered with circuitry. Others were wreathed in ethereal light or trailed faint distortions in their wake, as if reality bent around them. Each is a reflection, a possibility, an echo.

For a long moment, she could do nothing but stare.

Her hands gripped the arms of the chair until her knuckles whitened. The sight was beautiful, yes, but also profoundly unsettling, like watching her soul shattered and then paraded in infinite combinations.

The faint click of footsteps approached behind her.

“You’re going to wear yourself out before breakfast,” came a dry voice, sardonic, familiar.

Amelia turned her head and saw the boar-masked man striding down the corridor, hands tucked into his pockets with the insolence of a man who’d seen everything twice and judged it wanting.

“You could’ve helped sooner,” she said, arching a brow, her tone clipped but wry.

“You looked determined,” he replied with a shrug. “Didn’t want to rob you of your pride.”

“Considerate of you,” she muttered. “Truly, a gentleman.”

He chuckled, low and rasping, and without asking, took hold of the wheelchair’s handles. “You can call me Blade,” he said. “Or, if you prefer something less poetic, Old Man works fine. Everyone uses one or the other.”

“Charming pseudonym,” she remarked. “I assume it’s not for subtlety.”

He began to push her forward, his stride steady, almost lazy. “You’d be surprised. Subtlety’s what keeps me alive.”

They glided through the corridors, the smooth hum of the wheels blending with the distant resonance of machinery and voices. Above them, faint light filtered through enormous panes that seemed to mimic a living sky, dawn perpetually folding into dusk.

Amelia leaned slightly forward. “Where are we going?”

“Tavern,” he said. “Best food, cleanest water, strongest ale, and the loosest tongues this side of the continuum.”

“I’d settle for tea,” she murmured. “Though I won’t say no to gossip.”

They entered a grand marketplace, its ceiling a cathedral of glass and brass filigree. Stalls lined both sides of the suspended walkways, overflowing with objects that defied explanation: bottled lightning, crystalline orbs filled with flickering memories, limbs of polished titanium resting beside jars of preserved starlight. The air was thick with the scents of spice, ozone, and metal.

And everywhere, Amelia saw herself.

Some argued over trade, some bartered, and others laughed like old friends. One, impossibly regal, wore a crown of silver thorns.

She blinked. “Good heavens,” she whispered. “There are so many of me.”

Blade smirked beneath the mask. “The Hub has a way of collecting yous. You’ll get used to it.”

“I sincerely hope not.”

“The Hub,” he continued, steering her past a fountain that flowed with liquid light, “was built by the first explorers, not just Amelias. A refuge between worlds, outside the reach of time. It can’t be changed, rewritten, or undone. Neutral ground.”

“A sanctuary,” she murmured.

He nodded. “And the only place the Warden can’t touch. Unless someone invites her in.”

They passed from the clamor of the market into a park, lush, serene, the air perfumed by some hybrid flora glowing softly in the underlight. The sky above shimmered with the illusion of clouds. A pair of Amelias sparred by a pond, their blades glinting; another sat cross-legged beneath an enormous tree, reading from a tome whose pages turned themselves.

Amelia watched in silent awe. “What are the rules here?”

“Few but firm,” Blade said. “No fighting within Hub grounds unless sanctioned. No power displays; they distort the equilibrium. Trade is absolute, no reversals. And if anyone’s compromised...”

He trailed off.

Amelia glanced up at him. “Yes?”

“You’ll know,” he said quietly. “Their voice. Their eyes. You’ll feel it. It’s… wrong.”

She let the thought settle uneasily in her mind. “And yet, you all trust me? A stranger? An outsider?”

“Not a stranger,” Blade replied. “The First. The clean one. The one who hasn’t bent.”

A shadow crossed her face, brief, but real. “For how long, I wonder.”

They said nothing more until they reached the Tavern.

It stood at the heart of a circular plaza, its architecture blending the rustic charm of an old English public house with impossible geometry, archways that folded back on themselves, lamps that glowed with captured timefire. As the door opened, warmth and sound embraced her.

Laughter, music, voices layered in half a dozen accents, and all of them hers.

A bardic Amelia on the small stage played a glowing flute, weaving a melody between a violin and a drumline that seemed to echo from nowhere. Another Amelia with a mechanical arm served mugs of golden froth; one sat in the corner, sketching blueprints on a napkin. The air was thick with energy, both familiar and alien.

Blade guided her to a booth in the back, quiet, dimly lit by a floating lantern that pulsed like a heartbeat. He signaled to the bar in a language she didn’t recognize. Moments later, plates arrived, rice steamed to perfection, spiced vegetables, grilled protein of ambiguous origin, and a mug of frothy amber drink that smelled faintly of honey and citrus.

The first taste was heaven. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until that moment.

Blade watched her eat in silence for a while, the faintest trace of amusement behind his mask. When she finally looked up, wiping her lips, he leaned forward slightly.

“We’ll fix the watch,” he said. “You’ll meet the Council. You’ll learn where to go and what to face. But before all that-”

He tapped a finger gently against her chest.

“Don’t forget who you are. Not what you were. Not what they want you to become. Who you are now. That’s the only thing that’ll keep you safe in this place.”

Amelia met his gaze, steady and unflinching. The din of the Tavern faded around her, replaced by a quiet certainty that settled like a stone in her chest.

She nodded once, her voice soft but resolute.
“Understood. Though if I’m being honest, Mister Blade…” She gave a weary smile. “I’ve yet to decide who that truly is.”

He chuckled, the sound low and knowing. “Then I suppose that’s where your journey starts, Miss Watson.”

And for the first time since waking, Amelia let herself exhale.

The last morsel of food hovered near Amelia’s lips when the tavern door whispered open with a pneumatic hiss. A cool gust, tinged faintly with sterilized air and metallic undertones, swept inward from the corridor. The tavern’s low music faltered for a beat, not out of alarm, but in quiet deference, as a new figure crossed the threshold.

Every conversation stilled just long enough for recognition to ripple through the crowd.

Amelia looked up, and found herself staring once more into her own reflection.
Only this one had been reforged in steel and circuitry.

The newcomer moved with metronomic precision, her every step measured, deliberate, and silent save for the soft, rhythmic click of her boots upon the polished floor. A slender figure, tall, efficient, unbothered by the weight of eyes upon her.

Her left arm gleamed with polished chrome, each motion whispering with the smooth coordination of servo joints and carbon-alloy sinew. Her right eye glowed faintly, amber, unblinking, synchronized with the faint mechanical pulse near her jawline. The face was unmistakably Amelia’s, yet sharpened by a certain mechanical detachment, stripped of warmth, honed down to the pure geometry of utility.

“Meeting’s in fifteen,” said the Cyborg Amelia, her voice filtered through soft static, toneless but clear. “Finish your meal. I’ll escort you to the Citadel.”

Before the words had fully settled in the air, she had already turned away, positioning herself near the door like a statue cast in iron vigilance. She neither fidgeted nor blinked. Simply waited.

Amelia blinked twice, setting her fork down.
“Well,” she murmured, “that was abrupt.”

Across from her, Blade gave a low, amused chuckle, the sound vibrating through the grill of his boar mask.
“She’s one of the old models,” he said, leaning back lazily. “Doesn’t do small talk.”

“I gathered,” Amelia replied dryly. Her voice softened as she studied the motionless figure by the door. “How much of her do you suppose is still… me?”

Blade tilted his head, the candlelight catching the lenses of his mask. “Depends on what you think you are.”

“Mm. Philosophical before breakfast. Delightful.”

She tried to return to her food, but every mouthful turned to ash beneath the weight of her thoughts. Her appetite waned as her gaze kept wandering back to that distant silhouette, herself, and yet not herself, like a reflection in a clock face just before the glass shatters.

Then, a scrape of wood on wood, the unmistakable sound of a chair being dragged across the tavern floor.

“Well now,” came a drawling voice, half laughter and half challenge, “ain’t this a sight for sore eyes.”

Amelia turned her head and found herself staring at yet another version of herself.
This one sauntered toward the table with the easy grace of someone who feared neither god nor gravity.

She was dressed in a long, weatherworn duster coat the color of dust-stained amber, its edges frayed but lovingly mended. A copper-starred spur chimed faintly as she walked. A battered wide-brimmed hat shadowed her face, though not enough to hide the faint freckles across her nose and the roguish smirk tugging at her lips.

“Didn’t reckon the First would show up lookin’ like she got spit outta the business end of a cannon,” she said, tipping her hat. “You good, sugar?”

Amelia blinked once, twice, then a weary smile curved her mouth.
“Define good,” she replied in her clipped London tone, the words softened by exhaustion.

“Fair point,” the cowgirl said, sliding into the seat opposite her. “Name’s Dust. Amelia 39452-AW. I patrol the Lost Belts, wrangle paradox storms, and keep the timelines from eatin’ themselves alive.”

Amelia raised a brow. “A cowgirl who wrestles time itself. How very… poetic.”

Dust laughed, the sound bright and reckless. “You can take the girl outta Earth, but you can’t take the frontier outta her. Folks started callin’ me Dust after I dropped a planet-sized entropy loop into a black hole. ‘Dust to Dust.’ It stuck.”

“Dropped a planet…?” Amelia’s words trailed off. “That sounds, how do people say it nowadays, absolutely bloody insane.”

Dust grinned wider. “You’re not wrong. But I didn’t drop it myself. I just persuaded the Warden to do it for me.”

Amelia’s fork clattered lightly against her plate. “You worked with the Warden of Time?”

“One of ’em,” Dust said, leaning back and balancing her chair on two legs. “The Tenth variant. Not as vicious as your nemesis. Cold type, sure, but you could reason with her. She liked balance. Order. Hated messes. We met when an anomaly tore through three Belt-timelines. Whole universes unravelin’. I figured if she wanted to play executioner, I’d give her a worthier target.”

Amelia leaned forward, intrigued despite herself. “And it worked?”

Dust winked. “Worked well enough that the Belt’s still standin’. I even sent her a thank-you card and a bottle of Timewine. Never heard back, but the next loop I was in went untouched. I call that a win.”

Blade snorted into his mug. “You’re a menace, Dust.”

“Damn right,” Dust said, raising her glass. “But a useful one.”

For a while, the conversation drifted, the easy rhythm of war stories and strange laughter binding them in a fragile peace. Dust’s words painted entire worlds: a civilization built entirely on rhythm where silence was outlawed; a frozen timeline where the sun hung perpetually on the horizon; a dying realm held together by a single child’s heartbeat. Each tale was absurd, beautiful, and tinged with danger.

Amelia listened as though trying to memorize the texture of the multiverse through another’s eyes. She found herself laughing, truly laughing, for the first time since waking.

Yet, through it all, the Cyborg Amelia never moved. Not an inch. Her amber eye flickered occasionally, scanning the crowd, reading the invisible data of time, but her attention never truly left them. It was eerie and deeply sad, like watching one’s soul frozen mid-breath.

Dust noticed her, too, finally. She drained the last of her drink and stood, stretching languidly. “Welp. That’s your escort, I reckon. She’s frosty, but she’ll keep you alive.”

Amelia frowned faintly. “She seems... hollow.”

“Not hollow, sugar,” Dust said, her voice softening. “Just... stripped down. Too many years, too many upgrades. Her empathy chip burnt out around version forty. She ain’t cruel, she just forgot how to feel.”

Dust rested a hand on Amelia’s shoulder, firm, steady. “Keep your head on straight, First. And remember: the multiverse don’t need savin’. It needs someone who knows when to stop tryin’ to play god.”

Her tone shifted at the last line, less jest, more warning. Then she tipped her hat, turned, and vanished into the tavern crowd, the sound of her spurs fading like a heartbeat swallowed by distance.

For a moment, Amelia simply sat there, her mind a storm of wonder and unease.

Then the Cyborg Amelia spoke. Her voice, though synthetic, carried a faint echo of something human, perhaps a residue of what once was.

“Follow me,” she said.

The lights above the tavern flickered once as the door opened. The music resumed, quieter now.

Amelia rose with Blade’s help, steadying herself against the table before gripping the arms of her chair. Her reflection glimmered faintly in the Cyborg’s chrome, one living face mirrored in metal.

And for a fleeting instant, she thought she saw, within that cold amber glow, the faintest spark of recognition.

Then the moment passed.

And together, they left the warmth of the tavern and entered the corridor leading to the Citadel, where destiny, bureaucracy, and far older ghosts awaited.