Was this the part where I turn around and run as fast as I possibly could out of here?

I didn't want to though because the person standing in front of me was the older version of the man that had all of my trust. Besides, he looked like he knew what was going on and why I was suddenly jumping through various timelines.

Hold on, so L.C. really did mean Leon Colten. Then what the hell did A.B.C. stand for?

"Take a seat for now," he offered, gesturing to one of the lounge chairs, "Do you want something to drink?"

This was so weird, no matter what angle I looked at.

"No thank you, sir," I rejected his offer while slowly lowering myself down on the seat.

"Sir?" his eyebrows raised and this was accompanied by a small chuckle, "Call me what you usually call me."

There was no way in hell that I was going to call him 'my angel' thank you very much.

But anyways, he was well aware that I knew who he was. While he was taking his sweet time just waiting for me settle in, my mind was a jumbled mess. Right outside that door was the Leon that I loved, waiting in agony for me to return to him.

And here I was talking to another Leon who felt like a stranger to me.

He might as well be a stranger considering I knew nothing about him.

"Whenever you're ready," he hummed, occupying the chair opposite from mine.

What did he want me to do?

I guess the most obvious answer here – ask the questions. Uncover the mystery, find the answers to why I found myself in the past, then a future, then a farther future.

Why did he send his younger self the whistles to save me?

In the simplest words that I can find, I shot one question, "What's going on?"

He expected this and so, he nodded calmly, "You're in the future."

Yes, I figured that all on my own, thank you very much.

I shot him an extremely dry look, causing him to release another chuckle before finally giving me a better explanation, "This cottage is unaffected by time travel provided by the whistle because it runs on its own scheme. Just like you, I'm not from this timeline."

If he thought that cleared up all of my confusion then he was gravely mistaken. The only thing I got was the part that he wasn't for this timeline as well. That kind of made sense since this timeline's Leon was apparently married to the me of this timeline.

I've said the word timeline too many times, okay.

"Then why are you here?" I fired, "Why are we having this conversation? And why is my Leon outside?"

"First, having two version of the same person see each other could be extremely dangerous, I just don't want to risk that," he explained, answering the part of why only I was allowed to go in, "And I'm here because you managed to trigger the correct chain of events."

Excuse me?

"Chain of events?"

He pushed himself up to his feet and walked over to his giant wall of clocks. They weren't just any ordinary clocks, they each had a date under it of differing years. My hunch was that those clocks showed different timelines.

"By some miracle, Leon managed to give you one of the two whistles," he first said and it was kind of freaky that he was talking about his own self in third person but I guess that was what we were dealing with, "When he went back to the past, you came with him and retained your memories."

Alright, that was already explained to me beforehand.

"And for some miracle, you two kissed while wearing the whistles," he told me.

It was then I realized that he didn't actually know everything that transpired. He just figured out that we kissed, but he didn't know that Leon and I started dating – that we fell in love with each other.

"That triggered your return to the timeline before the two whistles worked together for the first time."

Which meant we came back to when Leon gave me the whistle. All the time travels he had done before, only one whistle was being used – which was the one he wore. The first time both were used together was the day that Pat broke up with me.

That explained how we managed to return to the original timeline.

"I would assume that one of you blew on the whistle again, which prompted your adventure to here," he said and he was a hundred percent correct. Leon and I thought that blowing on the whistle would actually put us back to the past where we were a couple, but it made us go nine years forward instead, "I created an ultimatum and planned that you would only meet me if you two were married, because only then I was sure that he has successfully saved you."

I instinctively went to feel the two rings on my finger. While there were still some parts that were unclear, he managed to tell me why we went back and forth multiple timelines.

But he also said something so glaring – Leon had successfully saved me.

Between the time where we got together in high school and our marriage nine years later, I was still in danger of killing myself.

Dear god.

"So who created the whistles?" I managed to ask.

And to my complete surprise, he shrugged, "I'm not really sure."

Here I was thinking that he orchestrated this whole thing. Well, the workshop gave me that type of vibe. Now he was telling me that he also had no idea where this time travel extravaganza started?

"The whistles just found themselves to me and I did a great amount of experimenting to learn its mechanics," he told me, then gesturing to the whole room. The wall of clocks, the worktables, the whiteboard with a copious amount of drawings and calculations on it, everything showed the amount of dedication he put into this, "And then I gave it to my sixteen year old self because at the end of everything, all I wanted was to save this girl named Avery Barber."

All this trouble, this headache, and hard work was all because he wanted to save me. Me, a girl that probably said goodbye to the world when they were sixteen. Those years that manifested itself in his aged physical appearance was all for me. This Leon Colten never forgot about the Avery Barber that died.

Two words: holy shit.

It was a good thing that I was sitting down because that information was enough to knock me off of my feet. How could I possibly wrap my head around that Leon cared that much for me, even before we started to get along?

"Then why did you have to give it to your sixteen year old self? Why not do it yourself?"

And then he smiled softly towards me, all traces of amusement gone from his face. He truly was Leon, because that gentle soul could only belong to him, "I think I've seen too much, things that even I want to forget. Besides, I believe that it's creepy for me, an old man, to live again amongst the teenagers and pretend I was one of them."

Thing that even I want to forget.

What kind of trauma did he have to go through?

Again, this was for me.

All of this was for someone who thought he hated her. If I didn't retain my memories, Leon and I would have been nothing more but acquaintances at most. And yet, instead of moving on with life after my death, he went through all of this trouble.

Did he carry these same feelings no matter what lifetime he was in?

Besides, he was so sure and positive that his sixteen year old self was willing to go through all of this just so I could be saved.

Oh Leon Colten, I love you.

Then I looked at the man in front of me and just how worn down he was. The bags underneath his eyes and his stature screamed stress. In the simplest words, he was tired.

"What did your world look like?" I found the courage to ask even though I was terrified of his answer, "You know, the world where I was gone."

Did life move on just the same like I expected it to?

Though from the way he clicked his tongue and shook his head told me otherwise, causing dread to overcome my whole body.

"Your mom moved away a week after your funeral, I haven't heard what happened to her since," he told me and I already knew the rest would be too painful for me to handle.

My mom, who had done her best to make sure I was okay, to be there whenever I had problems, probably didn't know what to do anymore. Just a few years after you lost the love of your life, your daughter follows him and goes away from you too.

I couldn't fathom how hard that must have been for her.

"Sasha and Mia went off to college, both got married and have stable jobs," he explained, "But after what happened to you, they never acted the same. They isolated themselves and the whole school had no idea what to do. They were a mess without you, Avery."

So I was half right. The world does move on even without me, but that doesn't mean the people I've left did not suffer.

"Zoey eventually graduated college and got married to Christian," he said and I had to dig into my memory to remember this Christian person. Oh right, the guy she had a crush on and Lauren's brother, "They divorced two years later because he was having an affair. She eventually learned that he had been cheating on her way before they were even engaged, and she stopped being friends with Lauren. To cut it short, she wasn't okay. Not only did she lose her best friend when she was in high school, but also she lost her other best friend because of her failed marriage."

I also left my Zoey.

If you told me that I had to live a world without Zoey, I wouldn't know how to function. She was by my side before I even knew what right and left was, we were literally inseparable since the day we met.

And yet I was the one to say goodbye to her. I was the one who made her see a life without her best friend with her.

Finally, he ended with one last person. Perhaps one that I knew would be gravely affected as well, "Then Pat remained single, but he does have a child that he has shared custody of. Although, even until adulthood he had carried the guilt for what happened to you."

Of course, I did it right after he broke up with me. He would think that this was all of his doing.

But it wasn't. Even when I was contemplating on jumping off the building, I didn't blame him. He was fault free inside my head since my biggest enemy was myself.

And yet, he had never forgiven himself for something he did not cause.

Maybe Leon hasn't realized yet that I wasn't the only one he was saving. The truth was, he was saving all of us from this horrible domino effect. If one thing toppled over, the rest would crash.

Sometimes, being there in the moment, the only thing one could think of the end to the misery. To stop the thoughts from invading their head. Guilt tripping was never an appropriate thing to do when talking to someone else about this kind of problem and I would never condone taking that route in order to stop someone else from committing the same thing that the Avery Barber from another timeline did.

But it was something to think about.

Yes, life will move on. But the people you have met, those lives that you have touched, might probably never fully recover. They will carry a weight, the guilt of not doing enough to stop you.

When one dies, who was the one who truly suffers? It would be the people left behind to live in a world without that person.

"Live, Avery. Please, just live," he said after a long silence. I was sitting there, tears freely streaming down my face but I didn't even make an audible sound – no sobs, no whimpers, no anything.

I had no idea what to do with myself except to cry. The people that I loved, those that I hated being a burden to, ended up going through the agony because of me.

Mr. Leon left out one important individual – himself. He, who spent years just to comprehend a way stop me from doing something permanent. He probably wasted away a normal life – the marriage, the kids, the whole shebang.

Instead, he was standing right in front of me. Watching my sixteen year old self stuck in a twenty-five year old body break down into tears.

Years of exertion all led up to this one moment and the only thing he asked of me was to live.

Live the life he worked so hard for me to have. No other favors, no paybacks.

How could he remain so calm saying all of this to me?

"I will," I muttered in a quiet whisper, "I promise I will."

He nodded lightly, tearing his gaze away from then back to the wall of clocks. This man must have plotted a whole agenda because he was already ready to move on to the next topic at hand.

The again, who knows how long he planned this event to happen?

"Now about your return..." he trailed off, causing my ears to perk up.

Wait, I can still go back?

He lifted his two hands and have one finger each point to two specific clocks. Those two were identical, even to the very second, "This is your whistle and this Leon's."

Again, still weirded out by the third person mentioning.

"I'll give you three options," he then turned to me again, "Either you stay here, you go back to the time before you got the whistle, or you return to the timeline where you and Leon kissed."

I was not choosing the second one, I will tell you that. Even though I did treasure it, because it was the time that Pat and I actually dated, I didn't want to go back there. I couldn't get Zoey's face of complete misery out of my head, the hurt Pat displayed when he saw Leon and I being close, and the tears of Sasha and Mia after seeing my laugh again for months.

That was a horrible time and even if I made amends and gotten closure from everyone, it was far from what I desired.

It was a battle between now and the other past.

If I were to stay, it would be easy, wouldn't it? Leon and I have already graduated, according to his parents we had good jobs, and we were actually married. We skipped the messy parts of growing up and while we still had a long way to go, we were more or less stable.

No uncertainty of what would come after high school, no pressures of choosing a good college, no stress of trying to find a new home and a work place. Everything was already done and set for us.

But what good of all of that if I never experienced it?

I wanted my relationship with Leon, messy bits and all. I want the fights, I want the petty arguments, I want the giddiness of senior prom, I want the excitement of throwing my graduation cap in the air, I want the head scratching decision of what university I should to attend. I want to feel the joy of having Leon propose to me, the intense happiness of getting married to him. I want the house hunting, the job searching, and all that went with it.

Because I want what Leon asked me to do – I want to live. I want to experience life with its ups and downs, all that it has to offer.

So the decision came to me far easier than I expected.

"The past where I kissed Leon, please."

He flashed me a soft smile, as if he was expecting the answer, "Good choice."

Walking over to one of the workbenches, he grabbed the same thing he was holding when I arrived. As he showed it to me, I realized that it was another whistle.

"Same instructions. Blow on this three times, go to sleep, and the two of you will wake up to where you want to be," he explained, "But be warned, you can only do it once. It will disappear when you wake up, but the ones that you already have will remain. However, just like all the other times you time traveled with it, there is no guarantee what timeline you will end up in so I suggest you don't risk it."

That was the only time I stood up. I was amazed that I never left that seat this whole conversation because knowing me, I was infamous for being finicky.

He carefully handed it to my awaiting palm, letting me observe it first. The engravings were different and when I turned it back, it had new initials. The combination of the originals ones, L.C. & A.B.C.

"What does A.B.C. stands for?" I asked since I already cracked the code on the first initials.

He laughed softly, pointing towards me, "Avery Barber-Colten."

Oh.

Even I couldn't stop myself from being flustered with that. Heck, I knew we were married at this point in time, but I couldn't help the blush from crawling up my face. From the first time I wore this whistle, my future was already set that I was going to be his wife.

And Leon had no idea, he was in the dark as well about the initials.

Older him did mention that the only reason why I was in this cottage was because I got married to Leon.

"Well, I guess it's time you go," he sighed, taking a step back from me, "Unless you have any other questions."

Again, how can he be so calm and composed?

I took one good look at him again. Worn down and tired, but he still had Leon's signature gentle smile that he always showed me.

He was the reason why I was still standing here.

"I do have one," I spoke, gripping the whistle hard, "Can I hug you?"

For once, I managed to catch him off-guard. He had been so collected this whole time that this was the first time I've seen him surprised.

One hug couldn't make up for all that he had done for me, but I wanted to thank him in any way I can.

"Okay," he murmured and before he could take it back, I lunged towards him and wrapped my arms around him.

He wasn't my Leon, but he perhaps he looked at me as his Avery. I just wanted to show him that all his efforts weren't futile, that even though one version of Avery Barber left him, I was still here and he succeeded.

"I'll see you in another future," he whispered, returning the embrace with so much tenderness.

A future that was better for the both of us.

"That's a promise," I spoke back.

He loosened his grip and we both released each other. There were still tears in my eyes but the sadness has left. All I felt was hope and I knew that he did too.

"Good bye, Avery."

It was time for me to go back to my own Leon Colten.

"Good bye, Leon," I shot back, addressing him using hi name for the first time. His face brightened and he smiled, giving me my last reward.

With the new whistle in my hand, I turned to the door and opened it. I glanced over my shoulder one more time and he sent me an encouraging nod.

Even right now, he was all the assurance I needed.

I stepped outside and the door closed behind me by itself, causing me to jump in surprise. I didn't have to open it again to know that he was gone.

And when I spun around, I saw my Leon standing there. There was so much relief radiating from his body and I could only imagine how worried he might have been the whole time I was in there.

Without a second thought, I started running. I sprinted as fast as my legs could take me, making my way to him because I knew that was where I belonged. I jumped into his arms, feeling his warmth when he caught me and brought his lips to mine.

"I love you," I murmured between each kiss, "I love you, I love you, I love you."

"I love you," he said back with the same gusto.

I wanted to live a life with him.

--------------------------------

I am about to become BFFs with my internet service provider's customer service because of the amount of times I've had to contact them. I hate being that person who has to pester customer service, but we haven't had internet for a whole and it's so freaking difficult to do online classes without it. Plus, I have my midterms exam next week so I'm far from being a happy camper!

Question: Who made the whistles?

So here we go, most of the mysteries surrounding the time travel was answered, now we just have to wait and see if Avery would be able to tie up all of her loose ends because we're nearing the end.

Vote, comment, and follow! Love you guys and I'll see you next chapter.