Gabe's Truth

If I could say one thing about Gabe that I admired, it would be that completely unfaltering cool temper of his. Of course, it must be hard for him to keep it all inside and stay level-headed, even in times of crisis, even when – and you know this – I am at my wits end with grief. Sometimes it’s this calm that brings him down.

This was not one of these times.

I don’t remember exactly the events leading up to what I discovered about Gabe, but the aftermath is probably a hell of a lot more interesting. About a month after the episode of him moving in with me, we were still awaiting a job. The Society likes to keep things very restricted, so Gabe was undergoing rigorous tests and filling in reams of paperwork which I often helped him with. And I didn’t really mind, seeing as the more I saw him the more attached I became, and we had really become close friends within that short space of time. I think part of it was to do with the fact that I saved his life, another part the fact we genuinely got on, and then the fact that we didn’t really have a choice.

We had woken up early that morning. The sun shone weakly through the huge window overlooking the gigantic wall that held us in and the grounds, where I could hear Level Six having their routine work-out. The only thing I couldn’t hear was Gabe. He’s an early riser, so this puzzled me a little. After all, we knew almost everything about each other now, and he never left without an explanation.

There was an explanation. I slowly got out of bed, frowning to myself, and peered through the door into his room.

“Gabe?”

His room was spotless, as always, and his bathroom door shut. On his pillow was a tiny piece of paper, which I curiously walked towards and picked up.

It was all in his beautiful extravagant writing, and addressed to me.

Jessica,
I shall not be returning to the flat until late this evening – I have to undergo yet another dire medical and this will take a very long time. I hope this is the last of my tortures and that soon we shall be on our first job together.
Gabe

I shrugged nonchalantly (to myself, of course, there was nobody else there to see) and gave a small sigh. Well, I had got used to long dragging days without him before then. It was just another one of those days.

The thing is, when you spend so much time with someone you tend to miss them an awful lot, even when they’re still in the same building. I found myself missing the most trivial things about him, like the sound of his Tudor voice and the way he stared into space as he thought, and the smell of his aftershave, and the way he gave these tiny little laughs… Maybe I had become obsessive by then. That’s never occurred to me before. Maybe I already knew I loved him then. But whenever that thought crosses my mind I think, forget it, you can’t have loved him then, you knew nothing about him. But he had already become a part of my life, the way I functioned, and after about an hour I felt completely lost and without any motivation to do anything.

I was bored. So I did what most women do when they’re bored – I went to see another woman.

Chrissie was preparing for the first job. She was in the Main Hall at her desk, tapping away frantically at buttons like she was trying to stop a nuclear missile destroying the earth.

“Morning Chrissie.”

“Oh, hey Jess!” she said brightly, looking up briefly and then returning to her very pressing tasks on the computer. “Where’s Gabe?”

“At medical number five billion,” I sighed, sitting on the edge of the desk. “When are we meant to be doing this job?”

“Tomorrow, if all goes – “

“Tomorrow?” I cried in excitement. My stomach swelled happily inside me and I felt quite giddy. “Seriously, Chrissie, tomorrow?”

She nodded, eyes reflecting the glow of the screen. “Yeah, tomorrow. That’s why I’ve been given your co-ordinates to co-ordinate, as it were,” she said with a small smile. “Harder than it looks…”

That put the bounce back in me. “Oh, thank you Chrissie!” I said gleefully and hugged her gently. She laughed.

“Hey, thank Marco, he thinks Gabe is almost ready, not me.”

I returned to the flat in a dizzy state of euphoria. After all of my months of training and hard work, it was finally going to pay off in less than twenty-four hours, and I would be doing it with one of the most wonderful men in the Society, and everything was fine.

I, of course, wasn’t to know that I only knew one side of Gabe’s story. And I was about to find out.

*

Gabe returned late from his medical, so late I was already in bed. He crept past into his own room and shut the door gently, and I didn’t bother him as I was half asleep and I knew he would want to be alone for a while now. I mean, I would if I’d had to have so many medicals with Dr. Franks – she’s a scary woman.

The next day dawned bright and hopeful. And the first time I saw Gabe he was holding a tube with a red cap and had the biggest grin on his face. I sat up straight in bed and stared at the tube.

“Give it me, now!” I said excitedly. He threw himself onto my bed and passed me the tube. My hands were shaking and my heart was thumping hard as I prised the cap off the tube and pulled out the paper inside.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Shush!” I said urgently, reading. Then my face lit up. “Our first job!” I cried, looking at him. He was so happy he was positively glowing. “This is it, Gabe, your time to shine!”

“You’re the one who’s worked so hard for it,” he reminded me, leaping off the bed and hurrying back into his room to get changed.

“Yeah, but you’re the one people have doubts about,” I replied, grabbing my clothes as I rolled off my bed in a very Mission Impossible way and ended up in my bathroom.

Chrissie had been almost as excited as we were. She was sitting at her desk with a big beaming smile on her face. “Ready?” she asked us happily. I looked up at Gabe; he nodded confidently, looking so smart in his new clothes and so ready it was unbelievable.

“Yeah. We’re ready,” I smiled.

“All right, get in that Capsule and prepare for lift-off.”

A Time Capsule is not a nice way to time travel. It’s scary and mechanical and rocks like a buoy on a turbulent sea. I’ll try to explain how it works a little, but it’s complicated stuff.

First off the Capsule is held by the Society in a tunnel that they can instantly fill with the time stream (don’t ask how, they just do – something to do with a huge natural gap that has become particularly useful) and then release the Capsule into once the time and place has been determined. And, when we can go, generally when the time stream is going at a steady and safe speed and strength, we get shot out into the stream and land somewhere in the middle of time and space. My watch is only useful for hopping tiny gaps, otherwise it’s not safe, and for getting back to the Society by reversing the co-ordinates.

As I said, complicated stuff. But, oddly, it just looks like a lift on the outside, with two purple strips on either side and a hole in the roof inside, like a watching eye.

Gabe hates the Capsules. No wonder – after using a diamond to hop around for so long it must seem like unnecessary stress, worry and far too regulated. Gabe and I stand in those Capsules and as I hold him I can feel him tensing and shaking slightly before we get spat out.

The first time he almost crushed me. As we were jerked out he jumped, and I had to grab hold of his arms so tightly that I was scared I was hurting him. He didn’t land well either. In fact, he fell flat on his face. It was quite funny, really, but I don’t think he saw that side.

I reached down to help him up, brushed down his jacket and looked at his face; he looked disgruntled and a little anxious, so I smiled. “It’s going to be fine,” I said, “honestly. Come on.”

I turned on my headset and looked around. We were in a little village that looked relatively modern – I think it was 2004 – and time was moving along at its normal pace. And we didn’t look too weird, so we could stroll around, find the hole and leave.

“Okay,” said Chrissie’s voice in my ear, “the church to your left.” I looked; there was a little church with an ancient spire and a comfortable-looking graveyard.

“Yeah?”

“In the graveyard behind the church. It’s only tiny, but it’s causing a few problems. And then you’re coming home.”

I nodded and looked up at Gabe. “Graveyard,” I said.

“Imaginative,” he said with a tiny smile.

It was easy. Very easy. But it was a nice way to ease us into our new jobs, and it got progressively harder, as you heard with the Felix episode. There’s one more big adventure we had concerning the Summoner himself, but I’ll save that for later.

We came home feeling victorious. I know we hadn’t done much, but it was enough – our first job had been a success and Gabe had proved himself. When we returned to the flat I told him I was going to order us a huge lunch to celebrate before he returned from his room looking a little disappointed.

My heart fell. I almost knew what was coming, but my mind passed extravagant thoughts over my head like he was going to be fired. “What?” I asked wearily.

“Medical,” he replied. I groaned and sat on my bed, annoyed.

“Haven’t they poked and prodded you enough?” I asked irritably. He pulled a face and shifted uncomfortably.

“I suppose it’s to do with the mission,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

And he left. And I was bored.

So I did a really stupid thing.

Absent-minded as I was while he was gone, I started thinking about how I could get to know a little more about Gabe. After all, I still didn’t know what he had been convicted for or what his previous crimes were to get him classed as a Level Six Time Crawler. And I knew one place I could get that info from.

I picked up one of the mail tubes, wrote a tiny note inside, shoved a blue cap on the top and sent it flying down the chute. A few minutes later came my prize – Gabe’s records.

Of course, they hadn’t been updated since he had joined the Society, but that wasn’t what I was interested in. I was interested in the Crawler side, the dark side that I hadn’t seen. Sometimes I wish I had never done it; sometimes I’m glad that my curiosity let me see him as a whole person and that it allowed me not to be completely biased. But I still think Gabe would have preferred it if I had never seen the records.

I took them out of the tube and laid them flat on my desk. It was a manila cover with the words ‘Top Secret’ printed on in big, bold red letters. I opened it up.

The usual stuff. Things like his name, Gabriel Braithwaite, his age, which was unknown like his date of birth, how long he’d been a Crawler…

And his crimes.

And I saw the list and I felt horrified. It was massive; it spread like an inked disease all down the clean white paper, right to the bottom, blotching his soul and his heart and tainting the Gabe I knew. And the things he had done were horrible – murder, whole towns destroyed with a single movement, vortexes, assault, attempted murder… it went on and on and on. And as I read tears of disbelief rose in my eyes.

How could that be Gabe? Gentle, quiet, calm Gabe, with those deep eyes that had seen everything? But there it was, in black and white, staring me right in the face saying ‘Yeah, that’s life, and that’s him.’ So I kept reading, through the inquest reports and the files of the Society members who had perished under his will, and I felt…

Disappointed. And desperately gullible, and naïve, and hurt, and…

I don’t know how long I sat there for. It was a very long time. I stared at images of his destruction in monotone glory, and at pictures of the dead.

Eventually, I had seen enough, and I shut the file. Tears were creeping solidly down my face. My heart felt battered and bruised. My mind was reeling.

Gabe came in.

At first he didn’t seem to notice me. Then, when he heard me crying, I suppose, he turned and looked at me. “Jess, what’s wrong?” he asked quickly, coming towards me. And I couldn’t answer; I was choking at the thought of him. He reached out to comfort me.

“Don’t touch me!” I screamed. I don’t know where it came from, but it was so venomous and so appalled that Gabe instantly stepped back and stared at me in fear. I tried to catch my breath but I couldn’t. “Don’t even try to touch me, or comfort me, or whatever! Just leave me alone!”

Then his eyes caught the file, and his face went white. Anger, fear, shock – whatever it was, it drove his calm exterior to slowly crack and fall away before me, and what I was left with was the Gabe in the file.

“I can’t believe…” he started, and then was so appalled that he stared at me in pure disgust. “How could you?”

“How could you?” I retorted. “How could you do all this and then lead me to believe that you’re… you’re… a good person? You killed nine Society members, more civilians, didn’t you even care?”

I think the anger had been a protective movement of some sorts. Maybe shouting it had helped to make it hurt less, helped to make it sound less terrible, but suddenly his face creased and his eyes flamed, and the Gabe I knew was long gone.

“No I didn’t!” he shouted back. I gazed at him in wonder. “No, I did not care, not one bit, is that what you want to hear? It was me or them, Jess, and I was not going to stand aside and let them get rid of me! I had power, and I had a good life, and I loved it, and they – they! You! You and your wretched, poxy Society, you wanted to take it all from me and strip me down to some rotten core of a criminal and a murderer, and I wasn’t going to stand for it! Is that what you wanted to hear? Is it?”

His face was twisted with rage I have never seen in him since and had never seen before; his dark eyes blazed with an unknown furious fire inside. “When were you planning on sharing this with me?” I demanded.

“Never,” he hissed. “Never. I’m not a fool.”

He turned from me. And the shock barely registered in me, the fear I had of him at that moment.

“To me you’re a fool,” I said simply. He whirled to face me again.

“What would you have done?” he seethed. “I was cornered like an animal, what would you have done? And how could you go behind my back and do that? I thought you trusted me!”

“I did!”

“Well not anymore, it seems!” he bellowed. “What were you expecting, that I was some saint that was imprisoned under false terms? I was a Time Crawler! How could you be so naïve?”

That stopped me in my tracks. I was just crying now. He was right. I saw him as some… some perfect human being, soft and gentle and delicate, and refused to admit to his past. I forgot. I forgot he was here for a reason. I suppose sometimes now I still forget. But I don’t think he minds that so much.

His anger subsided. He just stood there, chest heaving like that of an angered beast, and looked at me blankly. I think I might have been hysterical by that point. And he came to me and took me in his arms, and whispered comforting thoughts to me, and I forgave him. And we forgot, both of us, in an unspoken vow, that that had ever happened between us. But sometimes I lie awake at night and I see the pure fury in his eyes, and I wonder how it must feel to be like him – cornered, caged and condemned, despite how free he seems.