The things I can change (Zoe, Cai, Liz, Peter! Thomas!)

[lightningseed.insanejournal.com]

“I had an idea,” Cai said, walking with Zoe between classes. “I was trying to work out why focusing on the vision we had at the pool wasn’t working, but when you focused on your own past we were both able to see the same thing.”

“I’ve been thinking about that too.” Zoe said, her voice quiet in case of walls with ears. He raised his brows, letting her speak first. “I am guessing,” she said, “that sharing a memory is a lot easier than sharing a vision, since the memory has already happened, and the vision is more… transient.” She waved her hand, as if transient wasn’t quite the word she was looking for.

“Yes!” Cai said with emphasis. “You read my mind. Hey, well maybe you did,” he gave her a smile to go with his joke. “So that’s probably why we keep aiming for it and missing. I thought that we could go round to the church after school and I could show you around. Maybe being in the physical space where the vision took place will help us?”

Zoe felt a smile creeping across her face. “It can’t hurt,” she said, trying to keep the buckets of hope welling inside her from coming out in her voice. She didn’t want to seem too hopeful, it would only make it worse if it didn’t work. “And, you don’t mind the risks?”

They’d been talking about the risks a lot, last week while Danny was away, and online after school. Cai had told her that he suspected she’d jumped him up, she'd opened a door - he had a few metaphors up his sleeve - either way she'd made him more sensitive to visions till he figured out he could centre himself.

He’d talked it over with Nonnie, as well. Last Monday he took the day off school, because even though he was feeling better he didn’t want to risk throwing himself back into those crowded corridors. Nonnie got him to breathe deep, gather his strength, and when he was ready she reached over and took his hand.

He thought - Hail Mary, full of grace, and nothing had happened.

Cai had one hand wrapped around Nonnie’s, the other wrapped around his mother’s silver cross, which he had been wearing more lately, for emotional support. He opened his eyes and looked at Nonnie as he slowly took his second hand off the cross and laid it over Nonnie’s. Her skin was warm and dry and almost papery over her strong hands. But he was touching her and only seeing the present.

“Now,” said Nonnie, putting her second hand into the mix as well. “Try to see something. Try to read me.”

“You sure, Nonnie?” he asked, which was a silly question because Nonnie didn’t mess around with offers she didn’t mean.

So Cai closed his eyes and breathed in deep and tried to aim for that connection he’d felt in the past. That rope that got looped round him and dragged him out of his own reality and into someone else’s.

Cai felt it hitch him away, a jolt of something like vertigo.

He saw a small girl running up the path to her house, a house in a village high in unfamiliar mountains. He saw other kids racing behind her, shouting at her in Spanish to wait for them.

She beat them all, the swiftest girl in town.

Cai pulled himself back, opening his eyes to look at Nonnie. “Did it work?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Cai, glad he was sitting down. He felt like… he felt like spaceships looked when they came out of warp speed. “Did you see anything?”

“I only saw my grandson, swaying in front of me,” Nonnie said. “But I felt... free.”

“Like you were a kid again?” Cai wondered. “I think I saw you racing kids, maybe back in Chile?”

Nonnie smiled deeply, patting his hands with pride.

“You keep working on that will of yours,” she said. “You’ll be just fine.”

Will, Cai had thought, many times in this last week. I will will myself not to have visions. I will will myself to have visions when I need to. I will.

“Yeah,” he answered Zoe. “I don’t mind the risks. I have this power for a reason, right? I should try and do some good with it.”

Zoe said, with great feeling. “Thank you.”

So after school on Tuesday, Cai borrowed the car from his folks and he and Zoe drove to church.

Zoe stood outside in the soft drizzle, absent-mindedly rubbing her hand up and down the length of her arm. She was waiting to recognise her surroundings, but the outside of the church was unfamiliar. St Mary’s was a lovely building, very well kept. Tidy gardens and a nice reception hall off to one side, beyond the roses. The steps leading to the front doors were long and wide, made of grey stone. A ramp for wheelchair access had been added alongside, and the handrail was painted a fresh coat of red.

“What do you think?” Cai asked, stepping beside her. He’d been going to this church for so long it was almost a second home, he knew every crack in the step, ever patch of lichen. He’d pruned the rosebushes and pulled the weeds and mowed the church yard and helped to paint the reception hall last year. Dom and Nonnie had met in that hall, had been married in the church. He’d been baptised here, as had his mother. He met Alex here, at youth group. This church was in his blood.

It was like bringing someone home to meet your folks, standing here next to Zoe. He found himself uncommonly anxious about what she thought of the place.

“I don’t recognise it yet,” Zoe said. “But the vision was inside, so it makes sense that I don’t. Can we go in?”

“Sure,” Cai said, leading the way up the steps. He watched Zoe carefully as she followed him into the foyer, he watched as a grim expression spread over her face as she turned in a slow circle, taking in the room. She came to a stop with her eyes resting on the large vase that would, one day, crash to the ground and shatter.

“This is where your vision started?” she asked him, turning to face him again.

“Yes,” he said, and moved around the room to illustrate his demonstration. “This is where I was, and this is where you were, and Rachel too, you were holding hands. You were near the vase. I didn’t see what happened, but after it shattered, Rachel took off out that door, and you followed her.”

“And you didn’t see Danny?” Zoe asked, following his finger to look out the door again. It led out the way they’d come in, down into the church yard, ringed by the rosebushes. The main road on the other side of the grass, protected by a fence large enough to stop small children running onto the road.

“No,” said Cai. “But why would Danny’s funeral be at this church? If that’s what you’re thinking.”

Zoe shook her head; she didn’t know but wasn’t ruling out anything. Danny was the person they had in common. “This place is Catholic, right?”

“Yup.”

“Do they have any issues hosting funerals for suicides?”

“Zoe,” said Cai sadly. Zoe looked at him, and Cai thought he’d never seen anyone their age look so old. She looked like one of those cops, the one-day-from-retirement cops called in for one last grizzly case. Jaded enough to expect the worst. “Are you worried that Danny might kill himself, because-”

“I’m just considering the options,” Zoe said sharply.

Cai pushed his hands deep into his pockets. He breathed in the familiar smell of this place, let it centre him. “We’ve had funerals for suicides before, yeah. Do you think he’s in trouble?” Danny had said, on Friday, that his cuts were only surface deep, that they were not dangerous or anything. But Zoe knew Danny better than Cai did, at least recently.

“I don’t know if I think he’s in trouble or not,” Zoe said, and there - there was a hint of how young she was, breaking through the hardness she’d set up. There was her uncertainty, her fear. “He’s been through a lot, and last week – last week wasn’t easy on him.”

“I know,” said Cai.

“You saw it,” Zoe said. The hardness was back. “Doesn’t mean you know.”

Cai bit his lips together. He reminded himself to go easy on her; she didn’t know he and Danny had had a pretty good talk about cutting, about asking for help. “Do you want a tour of the rest of the church?”

Zoe rubbed her arm again, her hand firm on her skin. “Yes,” she said.

The rest of the tour didn’t trigger anything in Zoe but she hadn’t been expecting it to. What she wanted to do was get a really good feel for the layout of the place, so when it happened there would be no surprises. They went outside again, and Cai hung back as Zoe ran the length of her vision out on the street.

He would have run with her, but she was a lot faster than he was, and he tended to get shooting pains in his chest if he overexerted himself. Besides, he rather thought she needed a bit of space.

“Nothing,” Zoe said, slowing from a run to a walk as she came back towards him.

“Sorry,” said Cai.

“Can we…” Zoe asked, holding out her bare hands. Cai looked at them for a moment and nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “So long as you’re okay that I might not be able to drive afterwards. Sometimes I get pretty weird.”

Zoe nodded, and Cai led her over to a park bench near the roses, overlooking the front door, and the road down which Rachel and Zoe would run. He pulled off his gloves, which was such a relief to free his hands into the fresh spring air. Zoe sat down beside him, one leg curled up underneath her as she turned to face him. When you’re ready, her body language seemed to say.

Cai settled himself. Here they were, before the church. Come on Jesus, he thought. Or, prayed, really. Lend a guy a hand.

This time, they were in luck. In luck or blessed or had a better idea what they were doing. Cai felt Zoe’s hands tighten hard around his own as she tensed up, and for a second they hurt but then he was there too.

This time, Zoe saw it from the beginning: Herself and Rachel, dressed for a funeral, Cai a little further off. Did she know these people? She didn’t get a chance to make out faces before the vision pulled her along, chasing after Rachel.

This time, Zoe noticed the shoes they were wearing. The black ones with the stripes, blue for Rachel, red for Zoe. The shoes they’d bought on Sunday.

But Rachel was still upset by something. And someone was still chasing them.

She came out of it, her head banging. Her shoulders hurt from the tension, and it felt like she almost had to break her fingers to get herself to release Cai’s hands. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we did it.”

“Ow,” said Cai, his head banging too. There was, however, much less of the returning-from-warp-speed sensation, as if returning with Zoe made it that much easier.

“Our shoes had changed,” Zoe said, shaking her hands out. “I can’t remember what shoes we were wearing in the first vision, but this time, we were wearing new shoes.”

“Is that good?”

“It means I changed something,” Zoe said, her eyes bright. He couldn’t quite describe her expression as happy or hopeful, but - victorious, yes, that was the word. “And if we can change one thing we can change the rest.”

Dinnertime was quickly approaching, and Zoe had invited Cai back to her place again. She felt lighter, better than she’d felt in ages. She felt like she was finally starting to get a real handle on her life.

She had a family who accepted her, even when she was a horrible snarky person. She had friends who believed her. She had a psychic ally who she was working with to change the future.

She was eighteen. She was doing alright.

Zoe was smiling as she opened her front door, embraced by the smell of cooking. "Moooms!" she called through the hall. "I'm hooome."