They’re wearing Victorian clothing, yes, but that doesn’t make them a vampire. The person in Crocs next to them could be, though.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Foreign Songs
Current Date: February 18, 2024

Character: David Dwayne Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 31
Current residence: London, England
 

---

How are the boys already twelve, going on thirteen? It still feels like yesterday that they were brought into the house, little ones so young. I remember almost every outing with them though I’m sure I might be forgetting some. I remember the bigger ones and while I am not the boys’ father, there are times when it feels as though my role is not that far off. Not that I would take credit for them being as they are now. While there are certain days when they are not perfectly well-behaved, I still think that they are as good as kids can be at their age.

There have been on-and-off issues at school but that was until the decision was made for them to be home-schooled. Even the most prestigious school out there wasn’t good enough—on a few different points—for them to stay there. Between the lack of proper security—there were other kids who had guards following them around and that just felt awkward too—and the fact that there was a whole lot of bullying happening, it was just better for them to be home-schooled.

That just meant that we had more time to spend with them since they needed outings to ensure they didn’t go crazy and think they were being kept locked inside. Both of them were—and still are—good sports about this. When they were younger, one of their fathers—or both—would accompany the kids with us there, on those outings, but now that they’re old enough, their fathers only come once in a blue moon, and we just tail the boys as necessary.

One recent outing took us near an area where a gathering of sorts was happening. A convention, I believe is the word I’m supposed to use about this particular thing. It was as new for me as it was for the boys. We stopped and looked at people in costumes coming in and out of the main buildings and the boys made a bit of a game trying to make up stories for some of those people. It wasn’t a bad way to spend the time and we were early to our destination, so I didn’t mind stopping for a few minutes.

Especially when a person—female by the clothing but could have been male—walked right on by us and headed for the building. I heard Ezra inhale a little sharply and mumble something about them being a vampire. This has been a new sort of discovery for him, and I don’t know that it’s been doing him a lot of good. The boy’s had nightmares recently about vampires and monsters of the likes he hadn’t had in years.

I did what I could in that situation. I pointed out that it wasn’t because that person was wearing Victorian clothing that it made them a vampire. The person that was walking with them wearing the Crocs, though, now that one was likely a vampire. It made him giggle and I took that as a bit of a victory. I don’t understand the function of Crocs. They’re unsightly, they don’t keep the foot warm, they’re not comfortable. That’s just my own opinion on the matter, though.

After watching just a few more people come and go, some in elaborate costumes, others seeming to not be dressed up at all, we kept walking. It had been a nice day and while we could have taken the car further along our route, the boys had wanted some fresh air, so after ensuring that our surroundings were safe and sound, we walked. It only took us five more minutes before we were at the destination and the trip back was just as uneventful as the trip there.

I’m really not against outings like these, I feel as though they do good for the boys. While I believe, in some way, that compromises could have been made as far as their schooling is concerned, it’s not my final say, in the end, and I’m fine with that, we make the best of what we can, and their safety comes first. Theirs, their father’s own, Neji’s and his group’s own, ours. With safety in mind, we do our tasks to the best of our abilities, and we work around everything else.

I might have to talk to his fathers about this slight obsession with all things vampire, though, it’s not been good for him or his sleep at this point and while I know that he’ll manage fine for a while more, I’d rather not find him sleeping somewhere in a nook because he was too tired to make it back to his bed. It’s one of those things with having cameras everywhere—except the bedrooms. We do have them just outside the bedroom doors and we still pick up sounds from inside, especially the type of sound that comes from waking up with a yell from a nightmare.

So, I’ll bring that up soon.

Final Word Count: 834

I can tell when you’re mad at me. Do I get to know why, so I can fix it?

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New London
Current Date: September 9, 3083

Character: David Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 37
Current residence: New London, England
 

---

The silence has been going on so long that the young woman on the other side of the desk has been fidgeting. To David, it hasn’t been all that long. A few minutes at most, really. It is rare that he turns to the silent treatment but if there is one thing he’s learned about this particular woman, is that it’s the only way to get through to her.

Again, she fidgets in her seat and David knows that she’d be pacing if it wouldn’t have been something he rather frowns upon. Especially in his office. The room is large, and the view is lovely in the warmer seasons, but he’s made it abundantly clear to anyone that steps into his office that pacing is out of the question. It’s just about the only thing that he asks of his visitors. Even he doesn’t pace in his office, no matter how tempting it might be.

The woman huffs and he looks up to her, away from the paperwork he’d been looking over. Paperwork that has nothing to do with her. She stepped into his office unannounced, her first mistake. David isn’t sure how she got past Niklaus but that’s all right. Knowing her, she kept track of his breaks and slipped in when she saw an opportunity.

Another reason for him to currently be rather unhappy with her.

When Niklaus had opened the door for something and spotted the woman, he’d wisely eased the door shut again. David knew that his partner would check in once the woman stepped out of his office. There was no point in trying to do anything about it beforehand.

Finally, she opens her mouth, and David merely gives her a quiet look as he quirks a brow. She shuts her mouth so fast that he hears her teeth click together. Looking back down, he finishes putting his signature and initials in a few steps and sets them aside before finally turning his gaze properly to her. There are no more papers in front of him, his desk is as spotless as it might ever be, and his attention is now on her.

“You’re mad at me. Why?” Her words lack in a few ways, as far as he’s concerned. She could have asked differently. There are days when he figures that she seems to forget that he’s her boss. He’s actually about three levels above her in the hierarchy of the office but he knows that she acts this way with everyone. One day, maybe, she’ll learn her place.

He’s still quiet as he studies her, and it makes her fidget some more. He has no issues with the quality of her work. That’s not the point. The point is that she constantly talks back to her team leader. She talks back to the team leader’s manager and then some. She argued and talked back to him last time he had to speak to her about something and, well, she’d been in the wrong.

And she’d been in his personal space. Thankfully, Niklaus had come just at the right time to save him from that one. It is her lack of respect that bothers him, in the end.

“Well, Marie, I suppose that there might be a few different reasons. The more blatant one is that you barged right into my office without warning, without being called in, and made sure to do so when the one person who would have let you in, was gone from his desk. If you had just asked him, he would have checked with me on my availability, and we would have found a short stretch of time that would have worked for both of us. As is, in less than ten minutes, I’m expecting visitors.”

The words are calm but perhaps a little curt. He’s tired of her behaviour and he knows that she only has the spot she does in the office due to a family connection. He never would have hired her otherwise and, at this point, the whole thing is turning out to be a mistake. Good work results or otherwise, her issues with authorities make her a problem, in the end.

After a mere moment, she opens her mouth and David knows that the words that are going to come out of her mouth are going to be high-pitched and shrill. He knows how little she appreciates the kind of thing he’s just laid out in front of her, so to speak. He shakes his head and gives her a quiet long. “This is your second warning, Marie. I will talk with your direct supervisor about the consequences. Please step out of the office and go back to your desk.”

The look she throws his way is scathing but David has seen worse before, this hardly bothers him. Still, she stands and stalks right out the door. He’s sure that she has a snarky comment for Nik on the way out, but he’ll deal with that as it happens. He knows that Nik will be in his office in a moment, after all.

Final Word Count: 849

Does anyone else think me being the leader is… oh, I don’t know… a really bad idea?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New London
Characters: David Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 36
Current residence: New London, England
Final Word Count: 809 words
 

---

I wasn’t sold on the idea when it first was being discussed that I would end up being at the top of every single group. Though, in a way, I know that this is an exaggeration on my part, it isn’t so much that I am the leader of everything, but I am at the top of the governmental ladder and that so-called pedestal gets to review nearly everything that goes on in New London.

In a way, I’d been helping with that rebellion from the near get-go. I wasn’t at the top back then, I was near the top, but the very top spot was a secret spot. Most knew him as the star and that was the extent of what they knew of him, but he was the one leading everything. Even I took my cues from him and ran everything through to him.

In the end, I know that I ended up with the job I have now because I became a more visible player during the rebellion and even when the revolution settled. Simon settled even deeper into the shadows—I couldn’t blame him for it—but I became all the more visible. I already was someone that others knew. Someone that they knew they could trust, someone whose presence was well known. So, when the power shifted, it seemed to make sense for them to elect me to my new role.

I didn’t care for it, not at first. I truly thought that my being a post-revolution leader was a bad idea. I was tired of having to handle everything, I was tired of the gloves being constantly worn, though even now that things have settled the gloves are still worn, I don’t have a choice. I don’t know where this strange so-called gift of mine came from, it’s been part of my life for as long as I’ve been alive, and I’ve learned to live with it.

It was, however, one of the reasons why I didn’t really want to become the public face of power, even though I essentially already had been.

I remember half-heartedly arguing the point with Simon in private and then arguing it with the other members of the team that was being built around the powers being put back together again. I was outnumbered and the pros of my being elected to the role far outweighed the cons.

It took time for me to begin even just accepting that this was my new reality. Without my partner at my side, I think I would have given up a long time ago. It might seem like I have all of my shit together and that I know exactly what I’m doing at every hour of every day, but it really just isn’t the case. I don’t always know what I’m doing, I’m not always ready to deal with everything and the job is exhausting.

Thankfully, of course, I don’t work alone. I don’t have to carry the weight of everything on my shoulders on my own. Simon still checks in every so often, but he’s truly stepped down from dealing with any of it. Still, his input is useful now and again, but I try not to bother him too often, it wouldn’t be right. He’s given so much to the cause, we all have, but some really have given so much more than others.

One of the things that I’ve had to learn, all over again, is that I need to schedule my time off. I often need to have someone to remind me that my day is done and that I get to go home. This is one of the things that I have actually worried about, as far as this job is concerned. I was this way before; I learned to be this way when they swept me right off my feet so I could learn the ways of what so-called gift I have.

I need to have alarms set either on my phone or on my computer, to remind me that my day is gone. I might have been working on something and it might only have a few pages left, but those pages will have to wait until the following day. If that following day is a weekend away, then so be it. The only times when I don’t adhere to this strict alarm schedule is if the work in front of me is urgent but, to be honest, that is rarely ever the case anymore and I don’t see the need to think about it much, either.

It has been a challenge, learning to manage my time this way, especially now that I do truly have someone at my side who matters just as much as every single breath I take. But I wouldn’t change that particular part of my experience for anything.

Who put me in charge? Don’t they know I actively look for ways not to be put into these positions?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Foreign Songs
Characters: David Dwayne Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 29
Current residence: London, England
Final Word Count: 797 words
 

---

Now and again, we’ll be opening up a spot to try and draw in new security detail. As it currently stands, it usually is just Nik and me, but there are times, especially with the boys growing up, that we need an extra set of hands or two. When we’re really needing someone and it’s only temporarily—gatherings, for the most part—we look through agencies that we know we can trust but that is uncommon.

Over the last few years, especially since the boys had started school, we’d been trying to hire people to come work here. Most balked at the idea of actually living on site and, more often than not, we reminded them that they didn’t need to. That we lived on-site out of choice. If they wanted to keep living off site, that was their decision though there were a few night shifts to cover—again, rarely so. We had the security system in place, and it did exactly what it was supposed to. So, overnights were more common if there were guests in the house.

Of the people we interviewed, there were all types. People who seemed like a good fit until we put them through a bit of a situational setup, trying to see how they would handle certain things and, usually so, it was through that point that people failed. Not all of them, but most. Some with first-time jitters just completely froze, despite that the little game, if you would, we were trying with them was just that, not real. A game. A make-believe something.

For some others, while that part went well, they would then tell us how childish it felt to go through that and just, that sort of sealed the deal as far as not taking them. While not part of the job description, we’ve both spent time with the boys as they might want and when our schedule allows. It gives them a chance to know us better since we’re long-term residents with them and trusting one another is important.

So, over the years, we’ve had to play games with them that, certainly, were on the childish side of things but they are children. Ten at this point, growing up strong and wonderful as time goes by and learning a little about keeping themselves safe every so often because that, too, is important to us.

One of our most recent attempts at getting someone new on the team—as someone else had walked out of the rota we kept turned into something of a farce. Even thinking about it now, I can do little more than shake my head as I try to understand where this woman—not a first for us—had come from. Women hires are rare due to certain circumstances but we’re still open to giving them a chance.

Once we got to the mock role-playing portion of the interview, her first answer to the whole thing was completely out there and I feel as though she’d managed to somehow keep us blind to her nature up until that point. We’d barely managed to finish setting the scene up that she just started giggling away, it felt so surreal. She told us that she didn’t know who had decided to put her in charge of handling the situation we’d set up for her. She then claimed that she had told us she was the type to actively look for ways to not be put into these leading positions because she couldn’t handle them.

I will deny this for as long as it takes. Not once during the interview process did she mention struggling with decision-making. She actually told us that she’d been a team leader at the last place she had worked. So, for her to suddenly balk at the idea of one potentially stressful decision made the final say on her application easy to figure out.

I’m not a fan of people who try to upsell themselves but, when put into a situation, even if it is just a make-believe situation, and completely go against everything they had told us at this point, it makes me mad. I get trying to upsell yourself. I get trying to make yourself shine so that you’ll be hired for a position. But if you go too far out of your way and upsell yourself as someone you just aren’t, the moment your employers will find that out will not lead to a good time. It just won’t.

So yeah, we didn’t hire her, and she pretty much ended up in our lists of people to not bother with ever again. I mean, some candidates show promise, they just need a little something more and we’ll welcome them back in as might be, really.

Do I get a prize for being right? It feels like I should be getting a prize.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New London
Characters: David Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 35
Final Word Count: 731 words
 

---

Not all who are hired to be on the police force are fit to work there and this is a lesson that is learned as it happens. Yes, the interviewing process is thorough though I’m no longer the one handling it, but at times, even with a thorough interviewing process, you can’t be prepared for what will come out of the mouth of your new officers once they’re out there and handling calls.

Such was, is I suppose, the case of one Officer Martinez, Renaldo being his name.

Now, I was around when they interviewed Martinez, he seemed like an all-around good guy. He was work-minded, understood the laws and seemed to be willing to face all sorts of adventures. I suppose that his use of that particular term should have been the first red flag but others had used the term before and they’d been and still were good workers and officers.

It wasn’t so bad at first, at least, that’s what was reported to me. That’s what was in the files and all in all, the training was going well.

When he was finally placed with another officer on duty to work the streets, though, things changed. Though it wasn’t so much while he was roaming the streets and keeping an out eye on things that things got awkward, it was while he and Officer Trail that it happened.

I’ve made sure to offer just enough funds into the force so that every officer has a small shoulder-mounted camera. It helps more than I can put into words for us to have archived proof of behaviour, good or bad. It’s how we found out that he wasn’t quite fit for the job.

Every time a call would come by and they would respond to it, Martinez would make fictional bets that X or Y thing or person would be the reason behind the call. Now, all things relating to placing bets on anything is illegal, which is why I state that his bets were fictional to a point and Trail never stepped into the game. However, when they would get to the location and whenever Martinez turned out to be ‘right’ about his fictional bets, he would get all giddy and state that he should have been getting prizes for being right.

All in all, it is—and was—poor behaviour for anyone on the force. Being out there and taking care of the population isn’t about making bets and trying to figure out who is to blame or who did what. This isn’t a game, it’s a real-life job and, at times, that job is a life or death thing. We try to make sure to keep those happenings are rare an occurrence as possible though they still come to be every so often. When they happen, we outfit the personnel as best as we can to keep them alive.

Martinez was met by his superior officer and that didn’t really lead much of anywhere. As it is written in the reports, Martinez dismissed the claims and said that it was all in good fun.

It isn’t all in good fun. His dossier has been sitting on my desk for a day at this point and I know I’m going to have to deal with it. I didn’t expect that I would end up having to handle things like these when I first decided to help the police force get back up on its feet in a proper sense of the world and not as something run by the government. It technically still is, but the way the officers’ work has changed in a way that is somewhat drastic.

I still handle the job I had before all of this, that hasn’t really changed, it just is added work to deal with things like these when they land on my desk and it is a long way to climb up to get there. I can see how many people have met with him about his behaviour and if it is now in my hands, it means that all meetings ended up being quite moot. At that point, I simply would have told them to let him go but we need all the hands we can get, so I suppose that I’ll just have to deal with this myself.

I’m not looking forward to it.

Would you look at that smile? Beautiful. I hope to see it more often.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Foreign Songs
Characters: David Dwayne Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 28
Final Word Count: 714 words
 

---

I never know how to handle the people that flirt. Ask Nik. I’m a confused mess as far as that is concerned. It’s not that I’ve never been around people that might have flirted with me, but so much of my younger years were spent working with my mother on her wedding business that I didn’t have time to think about others. I didn’t have time to think about how my potential hormones might need me to handle myself at some point or how, somehow, other people would find me attractive and want to flirt with me.

Looking at you, Nik. I still think you’re very possibly blind and all but I can’t complain. It’s been eight beautiful years and I’ve loved every second of them. I still love every moment that ticks on by. The point remains that I don’t know what to do when people actually flirt with me. I don’t think my brain registers it as flirting, is the thing.

Like, we were downtown after having made sure that the house was safe and secured, I think we were possibly just updating our wardrobes a bit and in this one shop, the woman behind the counter kept on checking in on us as though we needed any help and I recall how Nik would tell her we were fine because I was too busy ignoring her and trying to find something that wasn’t black to wear. Contrary to popular belief, I do like having a hint of colour in my wardrobe.

Eventually, we’d found a few things and we were back at the register when she just turned to me and just, she breathed this weird little sigh that Nik later told me sounded like she was enamoured with me and then told me that my smile was beautiful and she hoped to see it more often. I might have turned a rather deadpan look her way because Nik snickered next to me and we left after paying for our things.

I was just ignoring the whole thing at that point and I waited until we were back at the house to ask him about the whole thing and I might or might not have facepalmed. There was this woman, seemingly to be openly flirting with me and I just ignored her completely. Not out of desire to, though I would have ignored her one way or another had I realized, but because I didn’t know she was flirting with me.

At this point in my life—or at any other point, really—I’m not interested in being flirted with by people whose names don’t start with ‘Nik’ and end with ‘laus’. It’s a very tricky balance of things and, anyway, even then, I’m so oblivious to the whole thing that I tend to not notice and I just naturally soak in all the sweet vibes.

It took me a pretty long time to make it to where I am, emotionally. After finding my—dying—father, after just barely getting to know him, after the incident after his death… I was pretty vulnerable but there was Nik all along and our connection is more than just on the surface. There is definitely a deeply emotional connection between us, something I’m almost tempted to claim as spiritual but I don’t know which definition of the word I would opt for if I were to take that particular road.

All of this random, wondering mindset because of one woman in a shop who thought I had a beautiful smile. Though I don’t know if she truly meant it or if she was just trying to get into my pants because I know that’s a thing too. I know that a fair few people will flirt with others if it gives them a chance to get into their pants and then further down the road into their beds. It’s not something I really pay a whole lot of attention to, I feel like I don’t need to. My job requires my attention in a way that makes it easier to ignore these things and when I’m off the job, it’s rare I leave the house much and, when I do, it is with Niklaus at my side, so I suppose it is all moot.

Why am I looking at five children? I thought there were only four.

 
Timeline/World: New London
Characters: David Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 34
Final Word Count: 666 words
 

---

Now and again, I’ll look in on the work of the police force because it makes sense. With the way our city now runs, things are different and some people still need to be kept a close eye on. There is one thing, however, that has not changed. This was one of those things that worked well—though now the screening is a bit more thorough—and changing it would have been foolish.

Anyone under eighteen without a parent or a caretaker is taken in by the system and set into a foster family. Our city has no orphanage, it has no homeless people, it might still have violence but it is at an all-time low and I can appreciate that.

I still keep a close eye on the fostering system. Before, kids who lost their parents and who weren’t eighteen yet were just dropped off to the next family who technically was on the list. These families usually had not been screened, they had not been given any okay, they were just the first family on the list who could take in extra kids. We’ve really changed that process, mostly because of my experience with what happened with Milo. I couldn’t let any other kids go through that so now, we have a list of families who are ready and willing to take kids in and these families are screened. We make sure the kids will be treated well.

Recently, one case worker—a good family man who always stays close to the kids he places into these families—came to me with a bit of a head-scratcher. All of our files and information—the bits we could get from the hospital as far as the births of the kids were concerned—were telling us that the mother had given birth to two sets of twins at about three years or so apart. Yet, when he went to pick up the kids after their father had passed on—their mother hadn’t survived the final birth—he was faced with five kids, not four. It was clear by their looks that they were all related but the oldest only being about five, it was hard to ask them about things.

There was the twinset who were five, a middle child who looked to be about four or so and, well, the second set of twins at two. He spent some hours with the five of them, just talking, playing and all around keeping them occupied while the proper transport to take them to their new family came. He’d made a few calls, let the family know that there was an extra member to their new family and they were even happier with the news.

As it turns out, what he seemed to have been able to get out of the oldest two, was that momma had a twin sister of her own and her twin sister had dropped her own child off not long after the little one’s birth. There were no papers, no registration, nothing. I don’t think that child existed in the eyes of the government at all and we had to rectify that.

From what I’m told, all five children are settling in just right into their new family and they’ve taken to their new parents easily enough. The pair who took them in had been trying to have children of their own for years but couldn’t conceive, so this was an alternate possibility for them.

It’s not quite adoption, since that’s a whole different process now that fostering is really what it should be, but it’s the first step and it keeps children from being lugged from one family to the other. I know for a fact that this would be a terrible way to grow up and I just want everyone to have the best life they can have. This city is still not perfect, it might not be for a while yet, but we’re doing out very best.

I have no qualms about removing a stranger from my seat. Move.

 
Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – London Lives
Characters: David Dwayne Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 27
Final Word Count: 634 words
 

---

Some like to believe that the more things change, the more they remain the same. I guess you could say I’m most likely in that group because I’ve seen it. Sure, there still are changes that are new and just couldn’t have existed before but on a more primal, a more basic level, things don’t really change.

I guess I’m mostly basing myself on my personal history but I went from working for my mother’s wedding business and more or less making sure everything went as it should be and everyone behaved to working for a pair of men—and their children—who are worth more than I could dream of ever seeing in my account by the time I’m on death’s door step. Which, considering how young my father was when he passed on, my life could be a lot shorter than most other people out there and that’s a little terrifying but the doc is keeping an eye on me.

Anyway.

When I still was working with—never for—my mother, I would be at her side to make sure that everything was going as it should. I would double-check the invites, I would round the tables, make sure everything was fine and I would also by the one who would make sure that people behaved. I’ve had to move people from their seats and plop them elsewhere because they were either in the wrong seat or they were causing trouble at the table they’d been sat at.

This activity is much less common here and now, that’s a given. It’s still about keeping people safe but it’s much more high profile and I’ve had to ask people to move seats before, not so much because they were in my own but just because they weren’t sitting where they were supposed to. It’s surprising how often people won’t look for the seats they’re assigned and take the first seat that looks to be open to them.

This has happened for aircraft and train rides. I don’t usually have to turn to violence; most of the time, I only have to ask these people to move seats because these were reserved and taken. Other times, I’ve had to square my shoulders and somewhat bully the people into moving and just the once, I’ve actually had to manhandle a teenager out of a seat because he starkly refused to move. I didn’t hurt him, not really. I just hauled him out of his seat and out into the hallway. That particular incident was for a train ride and little pod—I’ve never known what to call them—had been reserved and it had even been marked on the door. I guess some people just can’t read.

That might be why I think that the more people change the more they remain the same. People will claim that they’re perfectly able to do all things that are expected of them but one of the simpler tasks asked of these people in life is to take notice of what’s around them, it’s to read the signs, read the panels, read the bits of papers sitting right there in front of them.

Quite a few just don’t. That kid from the train ride, for one. There had been a large paper on the door marked ‘Reserved’ with the reservation ID on it. How he’d missed that at all is beyond me and he looked pissed when I hauled him out until he got a good look at me. He scrammed after that.

I don’t like harming people. It’s one of the last things I like doing and I avoid it as much as I can. It’s not always easy, of course not, at times it’s even a necessity but it’s not common and I’m thankful for that.

So much for you being there for me, huh?

Timeline/World: New London
Characters: David Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 32
Final Word Count: 515 words

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I’ve never allowed myself to count on many people in my life. With this gift—this curse?—I have and its unknown origins, I couldn’t let myself trust anyone, at least not with the truth. My circle of trusted folks was small and I liked it that way. At least, I liked it that way until I was swept away because I showed potential in school for something the government was looking for.

I missed my parents like crazy, I missed my one and only friend, the only person who’d ever really known about my gift and when I came back, I felt like I’d failed everyone I ever had let into my life. My parents were dead, Nik was married and somewhat unhappily and just, it all hurt in ways it shouldn’t have but still did. I felt like I had left everyone down and that, in more than one way.

It took a long time to get over that, it did. I think my guilt is why I took Niklaus in, why I took his brother Nicodemus and the orphaned Milo in. Why I gave them all I could. I was making up for not being there for my parents, even though I knew it was, in no way, my fault. I had been taken away and when the government wants you, the government takes you.

At least, that’s how it was before.

Things have changed, not quite enough yet but it’s happening and the pace is steady. It isn’t a crawl but it isn’t far from. We’ve come a long way in the years since the rebellion and revolution happened and it makes me feel alive to help all those people who have suffered under a seriously tyrannical reign. It was. Who was the idiot who thought that giving the top-tiered people more food made sense? The bottom tiered people worked harder, needed more energy and yet, they were given the least food of all.

That was just one of those things that made me angry about the whole thing, that made me join the Star in his efforts to better the place we called our home. It wasn’t without casualties and I think about them often but all will likely say that it was for a good cause and in a way, it was. Their lives were not lost in vain and that, yes, that is the most important part of this all. That we continue working hard and moving forward with what we’re doing now so that the lives of those who perished are not forgotten, not left behind to be anything more than a name on a plaque, I refuse for that to happen.

I wasn’t there for my parents, I wasn’t there for Nik when they took me away but I’m going to be there for all those who need me now. Within limits, of course, I know the cost of stretching myself too thin and too far but I still will go out of my way to be useful to all those who will need it.

Don’t follow in my footsteps. I’m constantly struggling.

Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – London Lives
Characters: David Dwayne Rosenfeld
Race: Human
Age: 24
Final Word Count: 570 words

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When I think about my father, I feel a swell of pride that starts from deep within me. I didn’t know the man, not well. My mother had had a one night stand with him when she’d been preparing the wedding ceremony for the men he worked with, his employers, my employers now. She didn’t even know which man was my father in a string of one night stands; she seemed to have this habit of opening up her legs for the best man at most every wedding she planned.

As I was growing up, I would only just watch it happen, uncertain of whether or not it was supposed to be how women behaved, it didn’t seem right but who was I to say anything? I asked my mother about my father a few times, she would constantly give me shrugged answers about how she didn’t know.

When I turned eighteen, she set me loose with a list of potential men, their name, some basic information but no real addresses. I’d had to find those myself. The list had at least ten names, though maybe one or two less, it goes back a few years now and it’s not something I like thinking about often.

I made it through the list, one by one, I found the men in question best I could, and I travelled just about all over the world and landed here in London, in front of what looked like a castle to me. I was so sure I was at the wrong place that I just about turned around and left without ever asking.

I didn’t get to know Max very well, he was dying of some illness when I first did find him. Looking at him was like looking in a mirror with a few good years added but that was about it, down to the mismatched eyes. I don’t know what I expected him to tell me, I really don’t. One of those things he did tell me, however, had remained with me up until now and I still live by that every day. He told me not to follow in his footsteps, that he’d been struggling all of his life. For a bit, I thought he meant work-wise but he told me he meant emotionally. That if I could find someone I really wanted to be with, I had to let them know, not just let them slip away, no matter what.

If I hadn’t listened to that particular advice of him, I admit I wouldn’t be sharing my life with Nik right now, especially after what happened following Max’s death.

I miss my father, he was a man I didn’t get to know very long, it was all of just a few weeks from the time I found him to the time he passed on but I got to know him a little and I got to learn so many things. I was given a new chance at life here, doing what he’d done all of his life, something he’d been born into and I almost felt like that was the case for me as well.

My bosses are strict but open-minded and understanding. Their kids are a beautiful handful, it’s something to watch them grow up day by day. Nik is my anchor, my one, my everything. I don’t think I’d change a thing about my life just now.