Chapter 80: Lonely Together (1/2)

He found Livia standing on the piers, facing the sea with a terrible look on her face.

Ryan parked his not-so-suspicious black minivan near the old harbor, and quickly looked around for any Killer Seven member. If Livia had brought bodyguards, they hid well; the courier suspected Mortimer lingered nearby, buried below ground. “Don’t tell me you came on foot?” the courier told the mafia princess, as he joined her in his full presidential costume. “We’re a long way from Mount Augustus.”

“But we’re close to Optimates Tower,” Livia replied with a sad smile. Not only did she look grim with the black circles around her eyes, but she also dressed the part. Her dark coat and austere clothes reminded Ryan of a young widow. “And I could only lose Mathias this way.”

So Mr. See-Through stalked her too? The glass-manipulator had made increasingly frequent forays into Rust Town lately, though he never stayed long due to the Land’s interferences.

Livia examined Ryan’s new costume from head to toe. “I love the suit,” she said, though she frowned at the hole in his bowler hat. “Did someone attack you?”

“I had to put down a robot rebellion.” Ryan shrugged. “I have a back-up bowler hat in my car, but I’ll wait for tomorrow before putting it on. I only wear that one for war.”

She chuckled, though her heart wasn’t in it.

The courier glanced at Augustus’ daughter, noticing the red marks near her eyelids. She had wiped off tears not so long ago. “He told you, didn’t he?” Ryan guessed. “Kitten. He told you the truth, about how he felt.”

Her face strained, telling him he had hit the mark. “Can we sit for a while, Ryan?”

“Sure.” They sat along the pier’s edge, their feet dangling above the sea. Ryan said nothing, knowing Augustus’ heir wanted an ear to listen to. One that wasn’t part of the ‘Family’. Not even Fortuna.

Livia put her hands on her lap, facing the distant sun. A faint breeze flowed from the west onto her face. She didn’t say a word for a while, as she tried to express her feelings into words. “I went straight to Dynamis. Something I never dared to do, because it increases tensions between my family and the Manadas in my predictions. If I didn’t know this wouldn’t matter in the long-term, I would never have dared.”

“Story of my life,” Ryan replied.

“I refused to leave until Felix would talk to me,” Livia continued her tale. “My bodyguards and the security were within minutes of starting a firefight when he finally came down. He wasn’t happy that I forced his hand, but he agreed to sit down and have a real talk.”

Ryan listened in respectful silence.

“I… I can see up to six futures at once, and I can switch them. My ability is always on, and sometimes it reacts to my emotional state. It shows me options based on what I want.” Livia looked away, her eyes wandering to Dynamis and Il Migliore’s twin towers. “I couldn’t convince Felix to get back together with me willingly in any alternate world I saw. There were many where I could force him, yes. But none where he would return out of his own free-will.”

She glanced back at the calm, peaceful sea, and the shadow of Ischia Island in the distance. “It’s… it’s not that we’re over, Ryan. There was nothing between us in the first place. It was… it was just decorum, and my own feelings blinding me to the truth. Whatever bond we shared, it’s gone, and I can’t get it back.”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan said with a sigh. “I know it sounds cliché, but I understand.”

“You’ve been there too.” She looked at the courier sorrowfully. “I can feel it in your voice.”

“Yeah.” Ryan slowly removed his mask and hat, putting them at his side. The warm breeze on his face felt good. “I’ve spent centuries looking for Len, because… because I loved her. And now that she remembers… while we still share a close bond… the intimacy we had is gone.”

“What happened?”

“Her father happened,” Ryan replied. Just like Livia’s ruined every chance she might have had with Felix. “Nostalgia led me to New Rome. I longed for a simpler past, and...”

He took a deep breath. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have a friend back. But it’s not the ending I’d hoped for.”

Livia gave him a glance full of compassion. “Love is a sweet poison, isn’t it?”

“I don’t regret tasting it though,” Ryan replied with a genuine smile. “All I wished for was someone to remember me. Someone with whom I could share my joys and burdens. Shortie agreed to help me carry some of the load, and… I’m fine with that. Better than fine.”

“Why are you still in New Rome, Ryan?” she asked him. “You came to this city to reconnect with your friend, and you did. Adam perished, and you could bury the bunker for good. Leave all of this mess behind.”

“It wouldn’t be the best ending, princess.”

“It would be a good one. For you, at least.”

“Would it be good for Felix? For Jamie, for Jasmine, for Yuki?” Ryan marked a short pause. “For you?”

The heiress looked somewhat embarrassed. “Don’t worry about me Ryan,” she said, “I will make things right.”

A blatant lie. He could see it in her eyes. Livia expected to face more trouble down the line, and to carry the burden alone.

“Well, you’re part of my Christmas list whether you like it or not,” Ryan joked. “And I’ll ask you the same question. Why are you still in New Rome?”

“Same reason as you,” Livia replied, her eyes focusing on Ischia Island. “Too many lives depend on it. If I leave, the throne will probably go to Bacchus or Mars, and nothing will change. It will just be more of the same.”

“How far can you see into a simulation?”

Livia joined her hands, as if hesitating to reveal that secret. Eventually, she did though. “A month or so if I truly focus. The predictions get increasingly unreliable the farther into the future I look.” Her expression transformed into a grim scowl. “Not far enough that I could learn about my father’s cancer before it was too late.”

So she had seen how the world would turn out in the future. While the butterfly effect probably whisked possibilities away, seeing a world with Bacchus in charge of the Augusti must have scared her straight.

“Can I confess something, Ryan?”

“You don’t have to ask. I won’t judge you.”

Livia’s fingers fidgeted, as she mustered her courage. He could tell that she was about to admit something she never dared to confess to anyone else before. “I… I don’t really feel comfortable around others. Even Fortuna, or my family. I love them but… how to explain…”

“You know them, but they don’t know you,” Ryan guessed her problem.

She confirmed with a slow nod. “You have the same problem?”

“I lived lifetimes with some people across loops, only for them to barely know my name in the last one.”

“I can process the realities I see at an accelerated rate, and I can’t turn my power off. I’ve seen all the ways my loved ones can react to a stimulus, what they plan to do. I know everything about them, but I feel like an outside observer in my own life. The events I see happened to other ‘mes’. I didn’t live these moments, I… I only watched them.”

Their respective powers built walls with others. “Is that why you’re telling me this?” Ryan asked. “Because you can’t watch me, that our moments feel genuine?”

She chuckled. “It plays into it, I believe.”

“I feel the same,” Ryan admitted. “Honestly, I kinda hated you at first. I’ve grown so used to controlling every aspect of a loop, that a foreign force like you messing up with my plans… It felt maddening. But, well, I had forgotten that I liked surprises.”

It felt nice to talk with someone who understood the loneliness Ryan had suffered through all these years. While their powers might have been wildly different, they did face similar problems.

Livia looked at him with an amused smile. “If I piggyback on your power as you suggested in your messages, you will have even less mastery over what happens.”

“Yes, but you said it yourself. Neither of us is getting what we want without cooperating with the other.” The courier crossed his arms. “So, if we gave you a map of your memories and a back-up of Len’s, would you go along with it?”

Livia’s smile turned into a scowl. “I don’t think that will work, Ryan. I know myself. I will never accept having my thoughts overwritten voluntarily, especially not by Dynamis-made tech. From my old self’s point of view, I can only rely on notes rather than personal experience. I will expect foul play.”

“Can’t you write a fifteen-page long warning you won’t read anyway, like search engines?”

“I’m more likely to assume someone tampered with my notes. I will find it more likely that you are a manipulative Blue capable of interfering with my ability. I’m already very wary of people like Bacchus.” Livia considered the matter thoughtfully. “How much does the Underdiver trust you?”

“I see where this is going,” Ryan said. “We send your consciousness back in time, you keep a copy of Shortie’s memories, and then I convince her past self to have her own overwritten.”

“Would she accept? You knew each other for years, while we met days ago. She’s more likely to go along with this plan than my other self.”

“I don’t know.” Hopefully, Len would figure out a way to send more than one consciousness back in time and they wouldn’t have to find out. “I’ll… I’ll ask her permission first. It would feel a bit manipulative otherwise.”

“You use your foreknowledge to get others to move the way you want to all the time,” Livia argued.

Len was a special case. “We’ll see with her. What about the other thing?”

“Help you find a cure for the Psycho condition?” The oracle seemed a lot less enthusiastic about that part. “Ryan, these people tried to blow us all back to the stone age.”

“The ones who wanted to are gone, and the rest…” Ryan’s thoughts turned to Acid Rain, Mongrel, Frank, even Sarin. All these people were victims of their own powers. “The rest deserve a second chance.”

And besides the Meta, how many Psychos were people who made a costly mistake, or victims of circumstances? Bloodstream, Jean-Stéphanie, Adam, and their kind had colored his view of Psychos. But now that he had seen the other side of the fence, Ryan couldn’t call a world where Acid Rain would remain a demented killer a Perfect Run.

“I gave them hope, Livia,” the courier declared. “I don’t want to disappoint it.”

“You will take it away when you turn back time again,” Livia pointed out.

“I will make curing them part of my final loop,” Ryan argued back. “I will perfect the process through multiple loops, and make sure they get a better ending. Maybe they won’t remember my promise, but I will.”

Livia hesitated for a full minute, joining her hands as she considered the proposal. If Ryan wasn’t mistaken, she used her sight to try to see the possible consequences, and it seemed to mollify her resistance somewhat. “Alright,” she said. “But in return, I ask for two things. First, you will involve me in every step of the way. I don’t want to help create something I might regret.”

“That’s fair.”

“And second…” Her expression turned playful. “Why do they keep calling you Mr. President?”

Ryan couldn’t help but chuckle. “You want me to declassify that secret?”

“I’m curious,” she admitted. “I’m sure there’s an interesting anecdote behind it.”

Ryan explained to Livia the details of his coup d’etat, and her lips transformed into a grin. “You force them to sing The Star-Spangled Banner every morning?”

“Frank is a surprisingly good singer, but Mosquito…” Ryan shuddered, the infernal buzzing noise echoing in his mind. “If you didn’t want to slap him before he sings, you will afterward.”

“I wish I could do silly things like that,” Livia admitted. “Everyone around me walks on eggshells.”

“Can’t you force them to amuse you, jester-style?” Ryan asked. “What’s the point of having authority if you can’t abuse it now and then?”

“They fear displeasing me, but they dread my father’s attention even more,” Livia replied. “Although I admit Fortuna and I had some interesting adventures when we were younger.”

“Like what?”

“We made wishes upon a star, and Fortuna asked for the star itself,” Livia chuckled. “A small meteorite fell in the garden. My father was livid.”

“Her power is busted,” Ryan complained.

“I know,” Livia answered with a knowing smile, albeit somewhat nostalgic. “Things were so much easier when we were children.”

Ryan glanced at Ischia Island in the distance. “Before your parents started grooming you to take over?”

Livia answered with a sharp nod. “I would appreciate it if you destroyed that island on your way out of New Rome. Once the Bliss Factory goes down, I can finally start changing things for the better. Maybe even keep Narcinia away from Bacchus, if I play my cards right.”

“You understand she will always remain the sticking point with the Carnival?” Ryan pointed out the obvious. “And Bacchus is only part of the problem. Mars and Venus also push her into making more Bliss against her will.”

“Mars and Venus, I can manage,” Livia explained. “They’re… followers, so to say. Mars in particular chose to become my father’s subordinate early and never wavered in his loyalty. He will only take responsibility for the family’s empire if it is thrust upon his shoulders. If I inherit, these two will do as I say; even leave Narcinia and Fortuna alone to do as they wish. They won’t like it, mind you. But they will obey.”

“But not Bacchus?”