His Own Humanity: Consummate Timing

It started with a feeling out of nowhere that she should omit the green onions, and she laughed at the unexpected strength of the impression as she removed the vegetables from the thin produce-section bag and set them on the cutting board. She liked green onions, and part of the reason she’d even decided to try this recipe was the anticipated combination of these with chicken broth and soy. And yet, as she reached for a knife to begin chopping and raise the crisp smell, she was struck yet again with the bizarrely strong thought that she would like this concoction better without green onions.

She tended to prefer trying recipes as they were written, and deviate the next time only if she’d found some element specifically inhibiting her enjoyment of the finished product. There was no reason to strike green onions from this lineup her first time through; it would be silly and slapdash. But now with each crunching contact between knife and cutting board, the idea reiterated itself more emphatically and with more detail. Green onions were a bad addition to this recipe. She wouldn’t like their texture here. They wouldn’t keep well if she wanted to freeze some of this for work lunches. Better to save these ones she was chopping for the enchiladas.

Finally her hands stilled, and she let out another laugh more puzzled than the previous. What was this, chef’s intuition or something? Had her subconscious decided she was an expert master of the kitchen all of a sudden, for it to be throwing these baseless ideas at her? Well, if she was so determined, on some level or other, not to have green onions in this soup, who was she to argue with herself? With a shrug she finished chopping them and then swept them into a Tupperware container for enchilada use later.

In the next room, Goldie started barking. Cathy turned down her cooking music a trifle and went to see what that was about. Before she had traversed even the short distance from the kitchen to the living room, however, the answer came to her: Goldie had seen a rabbit out the window and lost her head.

Cathy paused. She’d managed to curb her pomeranian’s urge to bark at every single thing in the world, but rabbits, for some reason (perhaps because they were just Goldie’s size) were more than the dog could tolerate in silence. Therefore, that Goldie was currently protesting the presence of a rabbit minding its own business out in the bushes in front of the apartment was not only a perfectly natural assumption, but really the only assumption. But Cathy hadn’t assumed. She knew Goldie was reacting to a rabbit as surely as if she’d already seen it; in fact, much in the style of a memory, she felt as if she had seen it: white tail, ragged grey-brown body, round at rest and scrawny in motion…

With a bemused smile, she went to fetch her dog off the back of the sofa. “Come on, Golden Crust, time to shut up.” The glance she cast toward the night-dark outdoors revealed no lagomorphic invaders, but it didn’t really matter.

Goldie twisted in Cathy’s arms to try to keep looking out the window, but she’d stopped barking as soon as she’d been lifted from her perch. Cathy filled the absence of yapping by singing along with the song that was playing in the kitchen, into which she carried her pet. There, she distracted Goldie with some little bits of chicken before leaving her on the floor under the table, turning the music back up so she could sing louder herself, and getting back to her recipe.

Her vocalization faded, however, in the middle of what would otherwise have been a particularly satisfying held note, when she knew that Celine Dion’s The Reason, one of her favorite pieces to accompany by one of her favorite artists to imitate, would be playing next.

Now she was frowning. She turned from her barely resumed cooking endeavors to stare up at the iPod docking station on top of her refrigerator. All conjured visual details aside, knowing about the rabbit was one, fairly explicable thing. But this? The mix was on shuffle, as usual, so there was no way she could know what would play next. The chances of guessing were one in about six hundred — worse than that, really, since she didn’t even remember everything on there.

For the full minute and a half or so that remained of the current song she stared, motionless, at the red iPod that looked disproportionately small between its accessory speakers, while Goldie hindlegged up toward her knee to request more chicken. Only when the strings, piano, and synthy-sounding brass thing that started next had turned center stage over to the pensive voice of Celine Dion did Cathy turn her own pensive attention to her dog.

“Goldie,” she said, “how did I know that?” She bent and lifted the pomeranian to face level and repeated, as her nose was licked, “How did I know that, Goldie Gold Rush?” After kissing the top of the little head, she replaced the dog on the floor. “No more chicken right now, baby.”

Goldie did a jumping wiggle dance in a full circle around Cathy, then ran out into the living room again. Cathy, meanwhile, threw another glance at her iPod — and the aural equivalent of a glance at Celine Dion — before trying to focus once more on her late dinner preparations. “Baby, you know what I mean,” she sang along experimentally, and then fell silent, frowning again.

How had she known what song would play next? How had she known what Goldie was freaking out about? How had she known not to put green onions in her soup? Why was she suddenly knowing things without having to go through the usual steps of finding out?

The intense scrutiny she’d been giving the recipe since turning back to it had led nowhere, as the decision on how to alter the preparation steps to accommodate the lack of green onions had been put off by her wondering how she knew what she knew. Now the decision was further postponed when a jumbled set of information, like a handful of colorful beads that hadn’t necessarily all broken from the same necklace, came to her just as the previous knowledge had. In this instance, however, she believed — no, she knew that the idea — if such an incohesive collection of thoughts could be called that — had arrived specifically in answer to her question.

“What is all this?” she wondered pensively as she went about her mental examination. Individually, the little bits were fairly understandable; some, like the rabbit, were precise enough to call up or even provide a visual in her head. In brief vignettes that faded in and then out she saw faces, and with each came a concise encapsulation of how she felt about the person (though for the last it was merely the awareness that she didn’t know him). And they, in combination, had somehow prompted or led to this thing that was happening. So far, so clear.

This clarity provided little assistance, however. What exactly did her elderly next-door neighbor, her co-workers, her newly discovered relative, and some spiky-haired guy she’d never met have to do with this odd experience she was suddenly having? She couldn’t think of anything in common among the five of them.

“Emily, Heero, Dorothy, Trowa, some guy I’ve never met,” she said contemplatively, then repeated it twice more in a sing-song chant of curiosity as she started giving specific thought to each.

Emily was a funny old lady that lived in #9 with her chihuahua. The latter liked to play with (and to some extent bully) Goldie when their humans met at or on the way to the nearby dog park, but accepted his mistress’s fond remonstrances about his overbearing behavior, worded as if to another human, with surprising obedience. Always having been fond of Emily, Cathy sometimes took her dinner or lent a hand with her chores.

Heero was a decent guy that generally just wanted to be left alone and do his job, an attitude Cathy respected even if she did prefer a touch more social interaction than he seemed to. He’d had a difficult time lately, what with the unpleasant behavior of one of his few friends and the sales team’s seeming obsession with the matter. So far there had been very little Cathy could do to help, other than try to put a damper on any gossipy conversation she happened to have any influence over at work so as to spare both Heero and Duo the discomfort of hearing Quatre endlessly speculated about.

Dorothy was not a bad manager, despite sometimes coming across a little like a puppeteer entertaining herself rather than an audience by trying to whip up the most interesting possible interactions among those under her charge — which was the reason, as Cathy had overheard Heero speculating just yesterday, she was considering having Duo train with Wufei. Dorothy was somewhat strange, even without taking those eyebrows into account, and always had an air about her of knowing more than she was saying. Perhaps she too, then, sometimes knew things she had no rational way of knowing.

And Trowa… Trowa was, for all practical purposes, still a stranger. He and Cathy had determined their relationship, at that chance first meeting in Quatre’s office, by tracing their lines back to shared great-great grandparents Sinead Barton and her common-law husband Walter Young, and there was very little rhyme or reason to the closeness Cathy seemed to feel with such a distant relation she’d talked to for a few hours at most. Ever since she’d met him, she’d had this somewhat inexplicable desire to help and comfort him, almost as if he were one of her actual brothers rather than a previously unknown cousin to the fourth degree. Maybe this unprecedented sense of family had something to do with this unprecedented trickle of improbable knowledge… though she couldn’t imagine what.

Even in the midst of wondering about tonight’s strange business, she still managed to hope Trowa was doing all right. If Heero was having a hard time with Quatre’s predicament, Quatre’s boyfriend must be even more unhappy — especially since Quatre’s problems seemed to date back to that fight Trowa had mentioned they’d had the day she’d first met him. She wondered how Trowa was handling the disappearance.

In answer — once again, she knew it was in answer to her concerned curiosity — she got a sense of Trowa that took her breath away. Without knowing how she could possibly be so certain, she was aware all of a sudden that Trowa, this very moment, was suffering deeply. She could almost see his pale, freckled face, half shadowed by its concealing fall of hair in the darkness of some dimly lit place, concentrated in despair and helplessness. No, there was no ‘almost;’ she did see it, briefly but clearly. Trowa was at a park somewhere, beside a grove of trees, standing stone-still and hurting.

Cathy made a mournful sound as she tried to reorient herself to the things around her, remind herself where she still was. “Sorry, but you’re distracting,” she said to the iPod as she moved to turn off the music above the refrigerator entirely. Then, just as sluggishly, she started to put away the soup components. She wouldn’t be finishing this tonight; it was a little late, thanks to the shopping she’d done immediately after work, for dinner anyway, and suddenly she was peculiarly devoid of appetite.

She still had no idea why she was knowing and seeing what she was. Something strange had started, for some reason, had entered her life without warning, and thus far she seemed to have little or no control over it. Would it continue?

Yes, it would.

Would it improve?

Yes, the beginning was always the most grotesque and difficult to deal with, the time when manifestations were unbidden and unbiddable.

“Well, that’s good to know!” she said with a nod.

Possibly, though, none of this mattered at the moment. After all, if it was going to continue and it was going to get better, she had time and optimism on her side. Others might not have such happy resources.

Continuing her tidying efforts one-handed, she pulled out her phone and called Trowa.

After two rings she guessed, “His phone is off;” after three, “He doesn’t have it with him;” and after four, “He doesn’t want to talk to anyone;” but when Trowa actually answered, with the deadest-sounding greeting she’d ever heard, she said in facetious triumph, “Ah! There you are!”

He made no reply, so she went on. “Since you aren’t willing to call your cousin when you need cheering up, your cousin has to bring the cheering up to you.”

“Cathy. That’s so kind of you.” He didn’t ask how she’d known he needed cheering up. It was probably a pretty consistent need lately. “Today has been… bad.” There was in his voice, immediately under the dullness and lack of energy, a sound of something agitated and miserable pent up and building.

“On top of everything else lately?” she commiserated. “I’m sorry!”

“Just now I had to overhear an argument that led to romance, and I couldn’t stand it. They didn’t remind me at all of myself and Quatre, but romance two doors down was too much for me; I couldn’t stay to hear any more of it.”

“Of course you couldn’t.”

“It was foolish of me to come here, though.” He said it more to himself than to her. “Quatre and I came to this park the first night I met him, for a few minutes, and… I haven’t seen him in a week.” His volume rose slightly. “I believe most people could easily last a week, but I…”

“You miss him and you’re worried,” Cathy supplied. It felt as if Trowa needed to confide in someone, needed to pour out in full whatever was weighing him down. Would he have sought anyone to hold this therapeutic conversation with if she hadn’t called?

No, absolutely not.

Well, it was a damn good thing this silly knowing-things thing had started tonight rather than tomorrow, then.

“Quatre is one of the most important parts of my life,” was Trowa’s quiet response. “Before I met him, I was… for so long… for so many years…”

He was only about Cathy’s age; how many years could he possibly have spent in the state he was beginning to describe?

The answer was no exact number, but it was very distinctly a startlingly larger span of years than Cathy had been expecting (and she was getting to the point where she was beginning to expect these answers to some, at least, of her questions). Breathless, she continued listening as the anticipated outpouring seemed to build momentum:

“I did something terrible once, something that separated me from the rest of the world and put me into a world of my own where the only thing I could do was work to make amends. There was nothing else in my life. Nothing else existed to me. Just trying to fix what I had done wrong.”

Wondering what Trowa could have done that was bad enough to be described in such terms, Cathy got the feeling Duo had been involved somehow — and that it had, indeed, been very bad.

“It’s over now. The problem is solved, though I didn’t have much to do with its solution. And Quatre is… I can hardly describe it… he was the first part of the real world to come into my world — my little, miserable world that was all about penance and had no room in it for anything that would make me happy — and try to pull me out, now that I can come out. He’s not just someone I love because of his personality; he is the entire world to me. He represents everything that exists outside of those 87 years and all the unhappiness and the person I was for all that time.”

There it was. 87 years. Trowa probably hadn’t meant to mention that exact, mind-boggling number, but, lost now in his cathartic monologue, might have forgotten whom he was talking to.

“He wouldn’t want to hear me say that I can’t live without him, but I can’t live without him. I don’t mean that I’ll die if he doesn’t come home or if we can’t find him; I mean that what people consider ‘really living’ is impossible for me as I am now without him. Even with the curse broken, I would still be trapped in that other little world, I would still be that other, miserable half person if Quatre hadn’t pulled me out.”

A broken curse, was it? ‘Magic,’ then, Cathy supposed, was the word she wanted to describe this night, utterly incredible as that seemed. And actually she was accepting it remarkable calmly — maybe with this improbable knowledge thing that seemed to be her share in the supernatural came a heightened ability to accept the things she improbably knew.

“And every day he’s not here, I feel like I’m slipping back, losing ground. I’ve been working on becoming more my own person and an active part of the real world, but I’m not strong enough to stand on my own. I’ve made resolutions, and I’m trying just as Quatre wants me to, but I’m not there yet. I need him. I don’t want to depend on him, I don’t want to be a burden on him, and I think, with his help, someday I’ll be beyond needing him — but I’ll never be beyond wanting him around or loving him. And right now I do still need him, and I miss him for that and every other reason.”

Sounds like you could do with some psychiatric help, cousin, she didn’t say aloud. He was probably well enough aware of that.

“And listening to these people tonight talking about their relationship and how it should be changed by one of them being in love with the other… I said it didn’t remind me at all of Quatre and myself, but in some ways it did — just the fact that it was two people connecting like that, and talking about the ways they work together, and what their future should be. It made me miss Quatre so much… it was just such bad timing…”

And then, after he’d further tormented himself by leaving for a place that would only remind him more of Quatre, the state of the night’s timing had somehow reversed when Catharine had called at precisely the right moment to trigger this outpouring of thoughts and feelings that would probably otherwise have remained unproductively dammed up behind Trowa’s habitually tight lips. And that had only taken place because her weird knowing-things power (was it a power? Yes) had only started to manifest, in some kind of unexpected awakening, at precisely the right moment to prompt her to think about Trowa and sense his needy despair.

Was some supernatural hand guiding this process? God? Fate? Some magical overlord? Or had Trowa’s plight, perhaps, spurred his cousin’s new spiritual development? Or was it all, including the miraculous moment at which it had happened, merely an unthinkable coincidence?

To these questions, unfortunately, there came no answer.

Meanwhile, Trowa continued to pour out his heart. “Because it wouldn’t even have been so disturbing to overhear if, earlier today, just today, I hadn’t found out that Quatre may be in danger. We thought he was hiding; we thought it was simple. He’s the kindest person in the world, so of course we believed he doesn’t want to face anyone while he’s possessed and acting so unkindly to everyone — it was horrible to think of him going through that alone, but it made sense.”

Possessed?? To a list that included living for 87 years and still looking 25, knowing things with no way of knowing them, and invoking and breaking curses, Cathy added demonic influence. No wonder their projected completion date kept getting pushed out!

“But earlier I discovered that he sent a dangerous email that may have gotten him kidnapped. I know he’s not dead, but I haven’t been able to find out anything more than that yet — not where he is or how he’s doing or what kind of trouble he might be in. I was never very good at divination, but I’m unforgivably bad at it since my drop in power.”

Cathy filed away the very useful word ‘divination,’ which it would have taken her some time to come up with on her own, while pitying Trowa thoroughly for considering a lack of natural talent in some area ‘unforgivable’ simply because it would have been a useful skill in a certain situation. She just wanted to hug him. Feed him some chocolate, maybe.

“My computer was destroyed in the fire, so I have to sneak into Quatre’s room and use his just to access the internet. I’m more helpless than ever. I thought before that this is a little like all that time I spent trying to find Duo, but now it’s almost worse. I can barely divine anything, I have no computer, I’m not ready to trade favors yet, and the person I’ve been counting on to help me become effective and self-sufficient in some area other than surviving to see the curse broken is the person who’s possessed, missing, and possibly in serious trouble with a moon-worshiping cult that contains at least a fire commander and a brainwashing communicator.”

Even as she added brainwashing and the ability to command fire to the list she’d mentally headed ‘Magic That Exists,’ Cathy noted that this seemed to be the end of the rant. She hadn’t interjected at any point, wanting neither to break Trowa’s flow nor to remind him that he was talking to someone supposedly unfamiliar with the supernatural life he seemed to be so deeply entrenched in. Now she tried to think of something to say.

Before she could, however, he cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said in the placid tone she was more familiar with, though he also sounded somewhat embarrassed, as if he’d just come out of a deep reverie and remembered she was on the line. “I don’t know what made me go on like that.”

She did. She didn’t understand why it had started when it had started, but the consummate timing had been everything.

“Probably the majority of that made no sense,” he went on, “and you believe I’m crazy now, but…” There was no mistaking his sincerity as he finished, “thank you for listening.”

Listening had clearly been key. Useful as some of his statements had been to her, with what was happening to her tonight, he hadn’t really needed her to understand most of what he’d said. The mere opportunity to say it to a sympathetic listener seemed to have been invaluable to him.

“I’m happy to listen to my crazy cousin any time,” she answered lightly. “But Trowa…” Despite the greatest benefit having been drawn merely from her open ear presenting itself at just the right time, she felt that what she was about to say would form a capstone to that, and be of no little importance. “Please remember that you and Quatre both have other friends! Other people care about you and want to see you be the person you want to be, and other people care about Quatre and want to see him safe. You’re not alone, even without him around, and you’re not the only one who wants to save him! I think you’re stronger than you think you are. And even if you feel like you’re more helpless than ever, your friends will help. Don’t forget about us!”

After a deep breath he said slowly, “You’re right. I think sometimes I feel it’s not fair to rely on one of my friends the way I used to, after what I did to him, even if he has forgiven me. And I’m only just starting to think of another as a close friend. But you’re exactly right. I’ve even had strong proof of it lately, but tonight made me lose track for a while. I can count on them, and I shouldn’t forget it.” He’d stopped using names, she noticed; he’d recollected himself.

“And me too!” She voiced it facetiously, but she meant it. “I’m your cousin, aren’t I?”

No, she wasn’t; their precise relationship had some other name she wasn’t getting at the moment.

She did know she wasn’t his mother, though.

Trowa didn’t elaborate either; how much he realized she grasped now that he wasn’t quite as he’d originally presented himself, she couldn’t be sure. “Thank you so much, Cathy. You don’t know how much better I feel after talking to you.”

“Like I said, bringing the cheering up to you!”

“And you don’t know how much I needed cheering up after this awful day.”

“Actually, I think I figured that out.”

“I can’t say I’m happy, but… I’m less unhappy. I’ll survive.”

“Make sure you do! And also remember you can call me if you want to talk crazy at someone? You don’t have to wait for me to call!”

He gave a faint, sad-sounding laugh. “You’re right.” Then with a sigh he added, “I should check whether those two lovebirds at my house are done with their drama yet so I can get back to work.”

“They’re at your house?”

“Yes, one’s a guest and the other showed up looking for him so they could make a scene. I have no idea what they may have been doing in my absence.”

“You should kick them out,” Cathy advised. “That’s so rude of them!”

“They should eventually be useful. One of them has already been useful. And they had no idea what I’ve been through today and how their conversation would affect me.”

“But still, in somebody else’s house…!”

Again Trowa laughed softly, then said formally, “Thank you for your concern, and again for your call.”

Sensing that the latter would end now if she didn’t say anything to prevent its doing so, Cathy briefly considered bringing up the new magical ability that had set all of this in motion. Trowa obviously knew a fair bit about magic, and could probably explain what was happening to her tonight, what circumstances involving himself and a few others had set it in motion, and what she could expect in the future — if not necessarily whether God had had a hand in it.

But after only a moment’s thought she decided against this. She didn’t know whether magic had told her what advice to offer Trowa a little earlier, and she didn’t know whether magic was the impulse of her decision now, but she was sure it would only add to Trowa’s stress if she sought guidance and information from him tonight. The power she’d gained was odd and inscrutable so far, but not yet unpleasant or disruptive; she could get by without harassing her friend and relation about it for now.

“Of course!” she said. “Go boot some people out of your house.”

“Good night.”

“Bye!”

Cathy looked down at where her lap had been occupied by a yellow-orange, lion-shaved pomeranian ever since she’d wandered with her phone into the living room and sat down on the sofa. “Well, Goldie Bacon Pie,” she said contemplatively, “it seems like I’m an oracle, Trowa’s at least 87 years old, and Heero and Duo and Dorothy are probably all in on it. What do you think about all that, Goldie Goldmine?”

In reply, the dog gave Cathy that happy pomeranian grin, turned a circle on her lap, and jumped down off the couch.

“You think more chicken, I can tell.” Cathy shook a finger at her pet and stood. “You are not healthy, Goldie Glutton!” Though what, exactly, she wondered, was the caloric benefit or drawback of small bits of chicken to an also-small dog?

Nothing good, apparently.

How was she to go about getting more specific answers to things she wondered about? It seemed a fairly useless talent if all she could summon was a general sense and the occasional vague vision.

It would involve speaking aloud. These spontaneous answers to mental questions were a sign of her awakening talent, and wouldn’t last. Eventually she would have to do things properly.

“All right, universe,” she tried, “how about a more specific answer about poms and chicken?”

No reply.

On a whim she asked next, “Where is Quatre Winner?”

No reply.

She shrugged, unsurprised and undisappointed that this wasn’t working for her yet. If magic ran in families, it was even possible that her divination would be, like Trowa’s, unforgivably bad. And she wouldn’t be quitting Winner Plastics and setting up a crystal ball stand on a corner somewhere no matter what her unexpected talent turned out to be like.

She did think she might have a look on the internet to see if anyone else had ever experienced a sudden awakening of visionary ability, and how they’d dealt with it if they had. Other options might be to talk to Heero (though much the same restraining considerations applied to him as to Trowa), to Dorothy, or to Emily next door. Oh, and she never had given much thought to the unknown young man whose face she’d seen in connection with the beginning of this affair.

All of this might turn out to be a bit of a burden, really: an unknown, unexpected magical power, and she ethically barred from discussing it with the people that might be most helpful… a bundle of possibly confidential information having been laid on her shoulders during a friend’s moment of weakness… a desire to help and support that might be far more difficult than she’d originally imagined…

And yet dealing with burdens was something she secretly rather relished. She enjoyed a busy schedule full of responsibilities, doing her best at difficult tasks others shied from, pitting herself against challenges. She really feared very little in the world, and the positive stress induced by the importance of any given venture only honed her skills toward dealing with it.

A need for research on an obscure topic? A set of friends not what they seemed, possibly dangerous and in danger? An awareness of the existence of cults staffed by kidnappers and brainwashers, a world into which she might, if she pursued this, be dragged? A side of herself she’d never imagined?

Bring it on.

The title of this fic has an obvious meaning and two secondary meanings or references. The first person to guess what those two meanings or references are will win a ficlet from me on the topic of their choice.

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