Chapter Six: The Shape of Staying (Thomas)

I have never trusted quiet.

Not the gentle kind that follows rain, when the world smells rinsed and birds act like they’ve personally negotiated the ceasefire. I mean the quiet that comes after violence, when people pretend the silence belongs to them and not to whatever is simply waiting for permission to return.

The village wore that kind of quiet like borrowed clothing.

Morning arrived cleanly, which should have been my first warning. Smoke rose from chimneys in disciplined lines. Someone swept a doorstep that did not need sweeping. A rooster announced the day as if routine itself might scare trouble away.

It almost worked.

Then I heard the clock.

The tavern’s wall clock ticked with exaggerated confidence, the sound too loud in a room full of people pretending not to listen. I watched the second hand make its circuit, marking time like it had something to prove.

It stopped.

Not long. Not enough to draw notice. Just a hesitation, a brief loss of nerve.

Then it resumed.

I looked at Mercy Hale.

She was already watching it too.

Eliza stood near the window, arms folded tight across herself, staring out at the road like it might lunge at her if she let her guard down. She had slept, technically, but the kind of sleep that feels more like a pause than rest.

“You’re awake early,” I said, stepping beside her.

“I never stopped,” she replied.

That answer settled badly.

The light through the window caught her face at an angle that made her look both younger and older than she should have been. Someone caught between definitions. Someone braced against motion.

“You’re safe here,” I said, because the words wanted out.

She glanced at me, lips pressing into something like a smile. “For how long.”

I didn’t answer. Soldiers don’t promise durations. We promise directions and hope the road cooperates.

Behind us, Mercy set her cup down untouched. “Time is circling,” she said conversationally.

Eliza’s shoulders tightened.

I turned. “Circling what.”

Mercy did not look at me. “Opportunity.”

That was the moment I stopped pretending this was metaphor.

We went out into the village because staying still felt worse. People nodded at us politely, eyes skimming past Eliza a fraction too quickly, like their instincts had flagged her as weather rather than woman.

She noticed.

She always noticed.

We walked the edge of town where the road widened and the trees pulled back. The air felt thinner there, like the village had been holding its breath and finally exhaled us.

“You don’t belong to moments,” Eliza said suddenly.

I frowned. “I belong to plenty.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You belong to through.”

I didn’t understand that. But I felt the weight of it settle anyway.

Mercy crouched suddenly, pressing her palm to the dirt. Her fingers moved with intent, tracing something I could not see.

“What are you doing,” I asked.

“Listening,” she said.

“To what.”

“To the argument,” she replied. “Between what happened and what insists on happening anyway.”

Eliza inhaled sharply. “Is it near.”

Mercy stood, brushing soil from her hand. “It’s always near. It’s attentive now.”

That word lodged in my chest.

Attentive meant noticed.

I looked at Eliza, really looked at her, and saw the tension beneath her stillness. She was holding herself together the way you hold something cracked, aware that any pressure might finish the job.

“You’re afraid,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied immediately.

“Of what.”

“Of misplacement,” she said. “Of being just a little too early or too late and paying for it forever.”

I understood fear of timing. Every soldier does.

“You’re here,” I said carefully.

“And if I blink,” she asked.

I met her eyes. “I’ll still be here.”

Her breath caught, just slightly.

“You can’t promise that,” she whispered.

“I can promise me,” I said. “That’s all I’ve ever trusted.”

Mercy straightened sharply. “That’s enough.”

She turned to me then, eyes sharp and assessing. “You need to understand something.”

I waited.

“Eliza did not walk into this war,” Mercy said. “She fell through it.”

The words landed like a dropped plate.

“Explain,” I said.

“She slipped through a fracture,” Mercy continued. “Time misbehaved. She noticed. That’s all it takes.”

I looked at Eliza. She didn’t deny it.

“And me,” I said slowly.

Mercy’s gaze sharpened. “You are a knot.”

I barked a laugh. “I don’t—”

“You are consistent,” she interrupted. “Stubbornly. Time moves. You don’t. It has difficulty accounting for people like you.”

The clock hand stopping replayed in my mind.

The battlefield. The shot that should have killed me.

Eliza stepped closer, voice barely steady. “When I touched you, the pressure eased,” she said. “The moment held.”

I remembered it. The way the world had steadied around us, like something exhaling.

“You saved me,” I said.

She flinched. “I chose you.”

Mercy muttered, “Worse.”

I turned back to Mercy. “Why not tell me sooner.”

“Because you would decide,” she said. “And time would notice.”

I looked down at Eliza’s hands, clenched tightly at her sides.

“You’re saying staying costs,” I said.

“Yes,” Mercy replied. “Always.”

I reached for Eliza without thinking.

The instant my fingers closed around her wrist, the air softened. The pressure eased, subtle but undeniable.

We both felt it.

Eliza’s eyes widened. “There.”

Mercy’s expression darkened. “Don’t.”

I didn’t let go.

Because in that moment, everything else made sense.

I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t chosen. I wasn’t special.

I was simply difficult to move.

Time doesn’t mind heroes.

It hates obstacles.

“If I let go,” I said quietly, “she might disappear.”

Mercy didn’t contradict me.

“And if I stay,” I continued, “time will take interest.”

“Yes.”

I looked at Eliza. Fear and hope warred openly on her face.

“You don’t have to,” she whispered.

I thought of all the ways men leave. Quietly. Conveniently. Like they were never there.

I had always despised that.

“I’m not staying because I don’t know how to leave,” I said. “I’m staying because I decide to.”

Time shifted.

Not violently. Not yet.

But enough that I felt it, like a weight redistributing itself in the ledger of the world.

Mercy closed her eyes.

Eliza’s grip tightened in mine.

And in that moment, before punishment, before collection, before loss made itself inevitable, I understood something with terrifying clarity.

Staying is not an act of courage.

It is an act of refusal.

And time never forgets those.