Chapter Text
The corkboard stares back at you, presenting the same information it did the last ten times you looked at it. The pictures you've stuck on it, the lines connecting faces and places of people you know. It almost feels like it's mocking you for even trying to guess at the underlying causes of what your reality will become.
There is one thing you are certain of, however. One particular constant that you can count on, which might be your key to figuring this whole mess out. It is, for all intents and purposes, a bad thing. Maybe the worst thing. But you're going to have to get around it if you want to avoid the terrible outcome that you have so far failed at averting.
Your name is JUNE EGBERT, and you are dying. You are unsure what the exact cause of it is, and you're too afraid to talk to your friends about this for fear of undoing everything you've been working so hard for. You do know, however, how to measure how closer you are to your death.
You have had sporadic coughing fits for the past four months or so, and they have been slowly getting worse. At first, it was easy to ignore them. You could laugh it off and get back to whatever you were doing before your lungs were struck by invisible, choking fire. But lately, they have started to leave behind aftereffects.
Your lungs will be weakened for a few dozen minutes to half an hour after an attack now, and sometimes you feel sick, like you ate something that didn't agree with you. It only became clear a few days ago that the reason for that was the blood that came out of your throat usually drained to your stomach, instead of being expelled onto the ground.
Their frequency has been increasing as well. It used to barely be a weekly occurrence, and now there is scarcely a day that goes by where you don't have a coughing fit interrupt you. Worse though, a few of your friends have started to notice. How could they not? You're near them all the time now. You've made it a mission of yours to learn everything about them that might lead to the future you're trying to avoid.
It's gone ok so far. You've mostly succeeded at getting as close to everyone in the last four months as you possibly could. You've been trying hard to spend more time with Jane, Jake, and Dirk, though it's not easy with how busy the three of them are.
In reality, you haven't been spending the same amount of time with everyone, but nobody has been left out. You have all your bases covered as much as they can be. You know you're not great at multitasking, so you can only ever get two or three people together at the same place at a time, but it's been enough. You've been making good headway in regards to your friendships. In fact, your progress has been so great that you genuinely enjoy talking to Dirk now, even if it's only a little. The guy took a while to open up a bit.
The first few parts of your long-term plan have been a success, but you've been stuck on part four of the plan. Detection and prevention has not gone well so far. You know everyone's interests, you haven't neglected to spend time with anyone, and you've learned so much more about your friends and family in the past few months than you did for the past few years before your coming out party.
And you still have no idea where it all goes wrong.
You don't know if you're just missing something that's right in front of you, or if someone has been secretly evil the entire time, or what. But nothing seems to add up to the destruction that you saw in the future.
There's just nothing! Every single problem that could possibly cause conflict, however small, you have dealt with or helped the problems reach a point where you're positive they would have no impact whatsoever. And yet, when you would zap into the future at the end of every month, it would be the same, every single time. Craters, bombshells, blasted fields, destroyed homes, and not a single sign of anyone you care about.
You could be able to live with that, though. If the only thing you had to deal with was an impending collapse of the idyllic world you and your friends created, you think you'd be able to stick with it, for as long as you had to.
But you do not have forever. It won't happen for quite a while yet, you're pretty sure, but you are operating under a time limit, and you don't think you'll be around long enough to stop whatever disaster is on the distant horizon. Your death is only a matter of time. What you have to do now is make good use of whatever time you have left, so tragedy won't befall the people you love after you're gone.
That's right, you think to yourself as you look at your corkboard, it's not over yet. You can still pull something out of your ass. You just need to make sure all your work means something, and you don't die with any regrets.
No pressure.