As a time traveler, you're used to having things happen in a weird order, in a wrong order, completely out of order. I'd had the dream where Connor said he loved me. I could only imagine he was referring to that same dream, since he had mentioned a dream with him and me and my parents in my home back in the 22nd century. Yet despite all of that, I had not been even remotely prepared to hear those words come from his mouth. Granted, he was still referring to the dream, and there was a pretty significant if involved, but I was still, in a way, hearing "I love you" live and in person from someone I barely knew, from someone I had still seen more in my dreams than in reality.
"That's crazy," I said in response.
He shook his head. "I know it is," he said. "But so is you being a time traveler, and I've come to believe that. It is really that much of a stretch to think that in some weird other dimension or whatever these dreams are that the two of us are in love?"
"That's putting an awful lot of stock in dreams," I said.
He shrugged. "Well," he said, "dreams were what led me to believe you were telling the truth about being a time traveler."
"But those dreams were verifiable, more or less."
"More or less," he agreed.
"How are you supposed to verify a dream that says we're in love when we barely know each other."
"Get to know each other a little better?" he suggested.
I looked at him for what must have been a minute, not sure what to say. I had come back in time to save him. That had been my goal all along. I never thought about being with him, like actually spending time with him, getting to know him. I had imagined we might be on the run together, but I had never considered the possibility that this might happen by choice. I always assumed it would be out of necessity.
"How would you propose we do that?" I asked.
He smiled. "Go on a date," he said. Then he added, "another date."
I laughed. "Oh, because the first one went so well?"
"I think it's okay now," he said.
I eyed him carefully. I just couldn't get past this feeling there was more to this than what he was saying, than what I knew. It was still so weird to me that he did trust me. I had wanted him to trust me, but now that he did, I was starting to trust whether I could trust him because it just seemed so weird for him to trust me.
"What are you thinking?" he finally asked.
I shook my head. "That this is all just really weird," I said.
"Maybe we should forget the whole time traveler, future memory dream nonsense," he said, "and just try to be friends."
I nodded. "I would like that, actually," I said. "I could use a friend in this time anyway, since I can never go back home."
"You said that before," he observed, "that you can never go home. You really think they'd kill you for not killing me?"
I nodded. "Yes, without a doubt," I said. "But aren't we supposed to forget about all this time travel stuff?"
He smiled. "Yes, you're right," he agreed. He set down the fork he had been holding this whole time and held out his hand to me. "Hello," he said, "I'm Connor. I'm pleased to meet you."
I laughed. "Anna," I said. "You know, I don't think I've ever met someone for the first time who was already inside my own home."
He shrugged. "Well, I guess there's a first time for everything. Shall we finish our breakfast?"
I nodded. "Let's do that."
It was a little awkward spending time with Connor over those next few weeks, but it was immensely rewarding as well. We had said we weren't going to talk about the time travel stuff, but still I found myself, from time to time, commenting on something that was different from my time or some thing that I missed. Connor didn't seem to mind. He was happy to talk with me.
It was so weird talking to someone other than my parents or another academy member about what I did, or rather, about what I used to do. What I was doing was extremely forbidden. If anyone ever found out, Connor would have his memory wiped. Well, that's what they would do if he was meant to live. Since they had sent me here to kill him anyway, they probably would just shoot him. Each day, I remained grateful that no one else had appeared to finish that part of my mission. I could no longer complete it myself even if I wanted to. I had gotten rid of the sniper rifle they sent me back with and trying to acquire a weapon in this time would have been far too risky. I had put any lingering thoughts of the mission far behind. I was focused on Connor. I was focused on me. I was focused on us.
That "us" did start out rather friendly, trying to ignore and certainly not mentioning the love that the strange dreams had indicated we were supposed to have for one another. I think in some ways, I resisted any romantic feelings I may have had for him for fear that they would just be a result of the memory of those dreams. I tried to push the dreams aside, and just to focus on the present, on the now, on what was immediately ahead of me. As a time traveler who had been trained basically my whole life to think about ripple effects and how things in the future could be shaped and how to ensure the proper things happened, focusing on the present was exceptionally hard, especially for someone whose present was really their past, but Connor made it just a little bit easier.
Connor was great. I often got the sense he would have done just fine in my time, had taking him there been a viable option. As I thought about that, I wondered why the academy hadn't suggested that, why I hadn't suggested that. Well, I knew I hadn't suggested it because a time traveler does not question their orders. But still, wouldn't that have been so much better than leaving him dead in the past? I could have saved him and the world that way. If only they had let me. As it was now, I had to stay here with Connor, protect him from any would-be assassins, and still hope, when I was falling off the wagon and thinking about the future, that he would no longer have that grandkid who would push the button that would destroy two major world cities. These were the things I thought about when I wasn't focused on the present. When I wasn't fully focused on me and Connor.
I think I did do a pretty good job of adapting and living my life. I assumed this because my dreams about Connor went away almost entirely. It was as if that vague dream version of him that I had was being replaced by his real self. And I liked it a lot better that way. The real Connor was smart and funny and kind, you know all the high level typical boyfriend type stuff. But he was also good with the kids he taught, smart about how to connect with them, but not always perfect at doing so. Sometimes he would tell me about issues he had with kids and I would bring up theories of psychology I had learned and he would say something like "That's bizarre and brilliant." I would shrug as I thought about how such thinking was commonplace in my time. Even though the human brain hadn't changed a whole lot in 100 years, we knew a bit more about it by the time I had been in college.
But anyway, Connor was open to ideas, even when he acted like he wasn't. I realized that this explained a lot about our initial interactions and how he was so ready to accept I was a time traveler after freaking out previously. He just needed time to process, to come to his own conclusions, and to reconcile those conclusions with what others were saying. He was really a very rational man. But he was clever about it, too. Sometimes he would say things just to test what you really thought. He did that to me sometimes, would say something that seemed odd and then agree with me when I disagreed with him. At first, I found it a bit annoying, but then I came to appreciate it for what it was, especially when he didn't use it on me.
On top of all of this, he really cared about people, especially the kids he taught. He wanted their lives to become better. He sometimes asked me if I knew any of them as famous people from the future. Sadly, I would always have to tell him no, but then he would just smile and say that not all greatness makes a great name for itself. I really liked that, especially since I figured he and I would not go down in history at all. We could still be great. We could be great together.
It was around the time that Connor's school let out for the summer, I think one week after, that all this build up, this hype about love reduced then to friendship and built back up, resulted in our first kiss. We were over at my apartment. I was drinking a beer, which was so different from the alcohol of my day, by the way. We were watching an old movie, like a really old movie from 1960-something. It was so weird. The colors were all strange, the action basically non-existent, but the dialog both cheesy and profound. It was so weird and so unlike any media I was used to. I felt compelled to point this out, since this was the oldest movie I had ever watched, and so I did so.
"That is such a futurist thing to say," Connor said, looking at me with a smile.
"Futurist?" I asked laughing. "Is that like racist but about eras or something?"
He shrugged. "I guess so."
"What ever happened to not talking about the fact that I'm a time traveler?" I asked, even though we actually mentioned this fact quite often despite our little agreement to try to ignore it.
"It's hard not to talk about something that's such an integral part of who you are."
"But it's not all I am," I pointed out.
He looked at me and smiled. He glanced down at the remote just long enough to find the button to pause the movie and then he shifted on the couch to face me. "No, it's not all you are," he agreed. "In fact, I know I would care about you even if you were just an ordinary girl."
"I would care about you if you were just an ordinary guy," I said. And that was when he leaned forward and kissed me. I didn't fight it. I didn't want to fight it. It felt right now. As I kissed him, I realized that in all those dreams I used to have about him, even the one where he said he loved me, this had never happened. This kiss, this was just for us, and this was real.
That night he slept over for the first time since that night he had slept on the couch. This time, he didn't sleep alone. We fell asleep in one another's arms, cuddled up in a way that felt so natural and right.
Unfortunately, the feeling of naturalness and rightness didn't last long. I hadn't dreamed about Connor for a long time at this point. It seemed like I didn't dream at all. But that night, I dreamed again, and not about the man who was there to comfort me, the man who once had haunted me. That night, I dreamed about Maria.
In this dream, I was running alone, through darkness, constantly looking over my shoulder, when suddenly I ran into something, into someone. I looked up and it was Maria, dark and menacing, standing before me. She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me a bit, and then said, "What you feel now, this will be taken from you. You disobeyed me and you both will perish."
I bolted up in bed, awakened by this terror, and found myself in a cold sweat. I glanced over and was surprised to see Connor sitting up next to me in a similar state. "I had a terrible dream," I told him.
He nodded. "Me, too," he agreed.
"Maria was in mine," I said.
"She threatened to kill me, to kill us," he said.
"Same."
"What on earth is going on?"
"I don't know," I said, "but I'm afraid its the thing that's been going on all along."
"What do you mean?" he asked, his heavy breathing slowly returning to normal.
"I'm starting to really wonder what this is really all about," I said. "All the strange missions, the seeming coincidence with me and you, all these weird dreams. I don't trust the people I once worked for. I had planned to just get away from them, to stay safe, but now, now I feel like they're really up to no good and its not enough just to save you from them."
He gave a little sly grin. "Oh so you saved me, did you?" he asked.
I looked him up and down. "I'm working on it," I said. "But seriously... this dream... I can't help but feel like there is something bad that's going to happen."
"But nothing has yet," Connor pointed out. "Why would it now?"
I sighed. "Maybe because we're in the wrong time?"
"What would be the right time?" he asked.
My voice got softer and probably trembled a bit as I responded. "The time I said I could never go back to," I said. "The future. My future. Where I know I can find Maria and put an end to whatever messed up plan she's really up to."
"Well there's no way you're going alone," Connor said.
I smiled. "I know," I said. "As much as I was focused on saving you, on keeping you safe, I think this is something we have to do together, especially since we had the same dream."
"What if she knows we're coming?" Connor asked. "You've told me there's all kinds of weird tech in the future, stuff you don't even know about, plus you've always been afraid she'd send another traveler back to kill us. What if she just sent one back to spy on us?"
"That's possible," I conceded, "but I don't think I can stand to just live out my days in relative peace, wondering what will happen in the future and trying not to wonder."
Connor nodded. "I agree," he said. Then he smiled. "Besides," he said, "I am kind-of excited to try out that time traveling hand cream, find out once and for all that you haven't been playing me this whole time."
"That a concern of yours?" I asked, playfully.
He shrugged. "Not a major one," he said. And he leaned over and kissed me again.
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