Author: Rachel Sievers

Rothwell had done everything she could to break free, or at the very least change the holding space, but she now knew it was useless. She was stuck in this moment of time and might be forever. It was her torture and her pence for playing with time travel, for bending the rules of the universe.
The woman in front of her had been her lover and partner but they had ended things in a way that Rothwell always regretted, and so when she found a way to bend time she headed straight for this moment.
Rothwell loved Virginia, even if her words and actions did always portray that. The two had ended their relationship because of this moment and now Rothwell was stuck in it for eternity. She was held here like a buffering song, never moving forward, never moving backward, stuck here in this moment.
Too bad she hadn’t been stuck in one of their moments of happiness, that would have been more bearable for eternity, but Rothwell had been desperate to change the past and have a future with Virginia in it.
“All you care about is your research!” Virginia screamed at Rothwell.
Rothwell still remembered what she had said in the first version of their fight, “that’s not fair. You know what I am doing is big, so much bigger than you could ever understand.” But now she said nothing, just sitting on the couch, wordless and tired.
Virginia would reply regardless of what Rothwell said, “I’m done! I can’t take being second to science anymore.” Virginia would take the bag she had packed and walk out the door.
Rothwell, since being stuck in this loop, had tried four hundred and thirty-six different things to say but the result was always the same. So now she sat on the faded brown couch and just looked at Virginia and memorized her beautiful face. She looked at the small scar that clipped the edge of her eye. The scar was from a fall on her bike when she was six. Virginia had said one night in bed, “I look a little like Scar from the Lion King, but that’s fine because he really wasn’t too bad of a lion, people just didn’t give him a real chance. His parents named him Taka which means garbage for shit sake.”
Rothwell said nothing as Virginia walked out the door of the house they had shared for eight years. As the door shut and Rothwell put her head back on the couch and the world shook and moved and she knew she was being shuffled back through time and would be living the moment again.
Tears edged her eyes but not tears of sadness. She had spent night and day working on her research for time travel so she could go back and fix her time with Virginia. She had failed but at least she was back with her, at least she could look at her again, even if she still left.
A voice called from the kitchen, “all you care about is your research!”