Rachel 2020

By Alicia.

---

It wasn't uncomfortably warm, but the sun was beating down on us hard enough that I kind of wished I'd followed Mom's advice and let her pack me one of her floppy hats. Avoiding sunstroke was possibly slightly more important than looking good. Especially when it was just me and Dad, and the only person who cared about appearances less than Dad was Uncle Pete.

I tried not to be too obvious about keeping an eye on Dad as we walked up from where the boat was waiting for us. He didn't like it when I fussed. Claimed that it was a bad habit I'd picked up from Mom. But he'd been muttering and cursing under his breath about the hotel beds, so I knew his back was bothering him, and would have known even if the place in my mind where he was hadn't been fuzzy-edged and cranky.

"Stop fussing," he muttered at me, leaning on his cane as we followed what might have been a path, once upon a time.

"I didn't say anything," I said, blinking at him.

"You don't need to. I can feel you fussing." But he was smiling a bit as I sped up a little so that I was walking beside him instead of just behind. "The bed really did suck."

I giggled. "You're a big baby."

"Hush. I'm old, so I'm allowed."

I scowled at him, and it was a real scowl, not just for show. He didn't like it when I fussed, and I didn't like it when he called himself old. He wasn't that old. Besides, my parents were going to live forever. Everyone said so.

"So why are we here instead of Santorini?" I asked as we kept walking. Wherever this was, it was pretty empty. Didn't look like there had been people here ever, apart from what had been left of the dock down there. "I thought Mom was going to be arriving today?"

"She is, but she won't be there until tonight. I figured a detour couldn't hurt." Dad paused, looking around and rubbing at his jaw in the way he had when he wasn't quite sure of something. "I don't think I've ever come from this side of the island," he murmured. "Usually we fly in."

"'We'?"

He looked at me, still smiling, but the look in his eyes was strange and faraway, as if he was here and not here at the same time. You get used to that when your father's a precog, but this was different. "Various aunts and uncles of yours and I. We usually come once a year."

I opened my mouth - and then closed it again. "This is where you go in March," I said, realizing all at once. "Holy shit."

Dad nodded, and for once, didn't tell me not to swear. "Yeah, Ray," he said, his voice still softer than usual. "This is Youra."

"Oh." I blinked around at the island, folding my arms across my chest almost defensively. "It... um. It's pretty?" I bit my lip. "Why is it pretty?" I asked, and couldn't figure out why my voice quivered a little. Except that I hadn't expected to be here. Maybe someday, but not today, and not as a suprise. I thought I'd have a little more time to get in the right headspace. After all, I'd heard stories, or overheard them, rather, even when I was too young to really understand what my 'aunts' and 'uncles' were talking about.

It had been enough to make me kind of afraid of asking Dad about it. He hadn't made me ask, in the end; a couple of years ago, he'd sat me down and told me about Mistra. When I was old enough not to have nightmares, he'd said. He'd been almost right. There were times you learned embarassing secrets about your parents, and there were times what you learned was so... big that it was just as hard to wrap your mind around it.

"It's like all those battlefields you took me to in France," I said, when Dad didn't answer my question. It had been a rhetorical question, anyway. "Too hard to imagine terrible things happening someplace this peaceful."

"It's funny how that works, isn't it?" We reached the top of the rise, and Dad paused, squinting. This was one hell of a rocky place - I'd noticed that on the way up from the beach - and while there were trees here and there, there wasn't much that was green. More gray and brown than anything else. But from where we were standing, I could see buildings, or what was left of buildings at least.

That must have been the base. Where Tim and Mick had died. I hadn't ever known them, but between the memory crystal and all the people who'd shared other memories of them with me, they weren't really strangers. "No memorial or anything?" I asked hesitantly. There'd been memorials in France.

Dad shook his head. "The only memorial is back in the States, and you have to know where to look," he said, somehow managing to sound amused and resigned at the same time. "No one lives here, so it's not as if there'd be anyone to admire it. Archaeologists still come to look at the caves on the other side of the island from time to time, but they don't usually come too far inland."

"Huh." We started down towards the buildings, and I looked at Dad, trying to figure out what to say. "How come we're here now? I mean... I'd have come in March if you'd wanted me to." I'd actually been wondering if he'd ask me, this year, but he hadn't.

Dad put an arm around my shoulders, hugging me. "Maybe I wanted it to be just the two of us the first time," he said lightly, but he wasn't fooling me. "You know, when we left the mansion that morning to come here, I remember telling you to behave. I mean, you hadn't been born yet, but you were already a brat."

"Dad!" I protested, but didn't pull away from the hug. Not even when he started humming the Marseillaise. "You're such a goof," I said sternly.

"You come by it honestly." He didn't take his arm away, and I was perfectly okay with that. Seemed like he needed the hug more than I did. "Sometimes," he said, his voice more serious, "there are days that you can't get out of your head."

"You wouldn't really want to forget, though." That wasn't a real question, either. He would never have told me about it if he'd wanted it to be forgotten. He wouldn't have given me the memory crystal, either. We wouldn't be here.

"No, I guess I wouldn't." Dad gave me a funny sort of look. "Do you remember a song?" he asked. "I used to sing it to you sometimes when you were little. Only when your mother couldn't hear, though." I blinked at him, and he laughed. "Telepathically, sweetheart. I wasn't about to torment you with my actual singing voice."

"Oh, right." I stared down at the rocky ground beneath our feet for a moment. "I think I do," I said, and sang the first couple of lines uncertainly, my voice soft and cracking. "'The minstrel boy to the war has gone / in the ranks of death you'll find him...'" I trailed off, blushing, at the look he was giving me. "Not that one?"

"No, that's the one." He hugged me a little tighter as we walked. "There are parts of the story I never told you. Including the story behind that song. Want to hear them?"

I swallowed, and reminded myself that I was fifteen years old, and old enough to hear anything Dad wanted to tell me. "Yeah," I said. "I really do."

"It's a happier story than it used to be."

"How does that work?" He was so weird sometimes. The past didn't change. The future did - I'd heard all the stories about Askani, too - but not the past.

Dad just smiled. "The farther away you get from a victory that came with a price, the more clearly you see what you won, rather than what you lost."