“I’m no seer, but I’m starting to guess there’s going to be a lot of pain and tooth loss in it very soon.”
“But I can see yours clear as the nose on your face,” he said, turning his back to me. Probably figured I wouldn’t hit him like that. He was probably right. Probably. “I know what’s going to happen to you now, what’s going to happen next—don’t get me wrong, it branches, but there are some definite, external events in your future that … well, they push you back on a defined track in spite of all the uncertainty that comes between.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “And this, Sienna … is one of those events.”
I scoffed at him. “Your fortune telling sucks, Harry. If you knew so much about my damned future at a distance, why didn’t I see your ass in Scotland? Seems to me that whole thing must have caught you by surpr—”
I stopped when I saw the look on his face, because it was unlike anything I’d quite seen from the freewheeling Harry Graves … ever before.
It was guilt.
“You knew,” I said, little chills running down the back of my neck. “You read me before, either in Chicago or when we were fighting Harmon. You … you knew what was going to happen to me in Scotland.” I took a step closer to him, and he stayed still, looking out at the sky, refusing to look at me.
I saw it anyway. Guilt was a unique expression to Harry Graves; I guessed he didn’t wear it often.
“Reed said he tried to get ahold of you, through Veronika,” I said, blinking at him. “You knew what I was walking into in Scotland, you knew about—”
“Rose,” Harry said, a little hoarsely, and it sounded like agreement. “Yes. I knew about Rose. Sort of.”
“And you let me walk into—into that—anyway?” My voice went low, raspy, too, and I was suddenly anchored to the spot. I wanted to leap forward, to grab him by the throat—sincerely, this time—and shake him until he answered.
“Yes,” he said softly.
I took a staggering, unplanned step back instead. “… Why?” I felt weak, dazed, like Rose had just clobbered me over the head. Which was ridiculous; I’d shredded her brains with a bullet and we’d burned her body to ash. Her days of hitting me, touching me—of ripping me apart—were done.
“I don’t know if I could properly explain to you the shape of the future,” Harry said, blinking, “but I’ll try. I saw Rose coming, yes, much like I saw Mr. Shadowpuncher—”
“I really prefer, ‘Mr. Waffle-Interruptus’ or ‘the Terminator,’ if you must.”
“I don’t think the ‘Waffle-Interruptus’ one is going to catch on,” Harry said, “but yes … I saw Rose coming like I saw him coming.” He took a couple steps away from me, and I couldn’t decide if he was sad-pacing or just stepping out of my punching range. “And messing with someone’s future beyond a few seconds … it gets complicated. You remember in Chicago, I told you—”
“The world of metahumans was going to end,” I said.
He nodded. “That anytime I saw someone like us … it was like a doomsday clock hanging over their head. Don’t get me wrong, I see those every day, because people die every day. But in this case..” He shrugged. “Let’s just say, I saw that … for everyone … coming from Scotland. In the not too distant future. The probability was rising before you went over there. Now …” He shrugged. “It’s gone. That doom is over.”
I turned my head so as not to look at him. “My … souls … told me before they … died,” That was a hard word to say, “… that Rose wouldn’t stop with me.” I clenched my eyes shut. “I guess they were right.”
“They were right,” Harry said. “Let’s say I tipped you off earlier? Warned you about trouble in Edinburgh?” He shook his head. “Every single instance I looked at … you would have died if you interrupted her game before she was ready to play with you. She would have killed you and just been done with it.”
“Proving once again that supervillains shouldn’t play with their food,” I said quietly. “The Scott Evil approach is best.”
“I don’t really know what that means, and I’m totally fine with you not explaining—oh, movie reference, got it,” he said. “Never heard of Austin Powers before, hm.” He shook his head. “This is the danger with warning about the future, with messing with time.” He walked a little closer to me, and his eyes were sincere and intense and bright. Striking.
Kinda maybe a little … pretty.
“… every action has consequences,” Harry said, grave as his surname might suggest but which in practice he seldom was. “I can read the probabilities, but I can’t tell you the definites because the moment I do—they stop being definite because time and choice are slippery things. If I’d sent you off to Scotland with Rose’s name and the danger she posed the moment I saw her in your future—saw what she was going to do to you—your survival odds went to zero. Believe that. Just the same as if I took us any other road but this one, on this trip, trying to avoid this so-called ‘Terminator’ you just ran across.”
I pushed my hands against my forehead. “Dammit, Harry,” I said, putting pressure on my scalp. “I hate this. I hate—”
“You hate the fact that my mere existence makes you feel even less in control of your life than usual, lately,” Harry said, and here his smile turned … comforting. “I don’t blame you for that.”
“Good, because I get to throw the blame right now. It’s my damned turn after getting my ass kicked.”
“I’m just asking you to trust me,” he said.
“I thought you were coming because you needed my help?” I stared him down.
“I do need your help,” he said. “I have a unique problem and you are the only one that’s going to be able to solve it.”
I just stared at him, feeling a little ragged. “And that is …?”
“Not yet,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “Besides, you have a little more steam to let out at me.”
I paused; I’d been about to tear into him again for not being a little more forthcoming on at least what kind of help he expected from me, but that took me aback. “Dammit, Harry,” I said, because he’d totally caught me off guard and pre-empted my assault.
He grinned. “I know. But I don’t like being yelled by you any more than—well, anyone. I don’t thrive on it, see, so I avoid it when possible. Your ire, I mean.”
“You’re doing a pretty shitty job of it so far.”
“I’ll work on improving my game as time goes by,” Harry said, looking out over the green, sloping hills where the park led down to endless trees. “But … about what you were going to say to me …” He glanced sideways at me. “You know you’re not yourself lately.”
I rolled my eyes. “Duh.”
“You know you’re not going to beat the bad guys like this. In your current frame of mind.”
“Oh, are you my fight coach now?” I asked, now irritable once more.
“You could do worse.” He grinned again.
I threw a punch, he dodged it. Another, he dodged it. Three more, a kick, then a spin kick—wobbly, because my balance was pretty crap after months of no practice.