When I fell asleep, I made sure that I was prepared to wake up to another timeline. I had my whistle secured around my neck and I said a silent prayer before closing my eyes.

And when I opened them again, it wasn't my room. I was a hundred percent sure that I definitely woke up somewhere else, judging from the fancy ass light fixture on the ceiling that I definitely could not have afforded.

At least when I flip flopped back and forth between the present and the future, I woke up in the same room and in the same bed. Now, I had no idea where I was.

So I sat up, looking around to find any hints of what I woke up to. And let me tell you, the familiarity of it almost made me suffer a heart attack.

I knew where I was.

Sure, it was half empty and looked rather different from when I was last here but my memories from here was so vivid that I couldn't be mistaken.

The secrets that were revealed in here were something that couldn't be easily forgotten so this was stamped in my memory.

Then there were movements next time, causing my whole body to stiffen. I've already deduced where I was so I had a pretty good idea what caused the movements.

Or rather, who.

Ever so slowly, I turned my head to the side and watched as the man next to me slowly opened his eyes. He blinked a few times, trying to register the situation with his sleep-filled brain and when he finally did, he had a more drastic reaction than I did.

"Avery?!" Leon gasped, almost falling off his huge ass bed.

I looked under the covers and thanked the heavens we were both dressed. While this situation was already weird on its own, having zero clothes would have turned the awkwardness to a hundred.

Well, we were definitely awake now.

"What timeline are we in?" I groaned, trying to shake off the remnants of sleep. Asking him what was happening was futile since I knew we were both in the dark.

He sat up, scratching his head, and reached out to his phone. Now that I had a better look at him, it was only now that I realized that he appeared a tad older. I then turned to myself and my eyes widened when I ran my fingers through my hair and felt that it was far shorter than what I remembered.

Alright, unless I gave myself a haircut in my sleep, this was a severely drastic jump.

"Holy shit!" he exclaimed and I thought of the worse when I snapped my attention back to him. The device he was holding in his right hand must have been an advanced version of his phone but that was not what prompted him to curse.

Instead, he was staring at his left hand in disbelief. I was a little bit confused until I saw that he was laser focused on the gold band on his ring finger.

Hold up!

I also lifted my left hand and my jaw fell when I saw the two rings settled on my own ring finger.

Does this mean...

"Leon, Avery," I heard the familiar voice of his mother, "Time for breakfast."

Calm down, Avery. We have been in far worse situations, let's not panic just yet.

"Be down in a minute," I managed to yell back and we heard her footsteps walk away from the door.

Now, Leon finally opened his phone and when he did, he almost threw it across the room when he saw the date. With a gulp, he finally dropped the bomb, "We're nine years into the future."

"What?!" I screeched, throwing the blankets off of my body and standing up to my feet, "Nine years!"

"I've never jumped this far into the future," he told me, also getting up, "It's usually a few months at most."

Oh my fucking gosh, what the were we going to do now?

Hold on, shall we first figure out what happened between us within nine years?

We were in bed together, wearing these comfy matching silk pajamas, with rings on our fingers. Everything pointed to one conclusion.

Would it be completely inappropriate given the current situation if I would celebrate?

"Either way, let's go downstairs and maybe we'll figure something out," he told me, trying to act calm but it was pretty obvious he was an inch away from losing it. Before we thought using the whistle again might bring us back to where we wanted to be, but now we weren't so sure.

If we blew on the whistle again, who knows where we would end up?

I've realized that all of our clothes were in suitcases and that the closet Leon had in here didn't contain much except for some hoodies and varsity shirts from high school and what I presumed was his future college.

The house didn't change much, it was just Leon's room that looked different.

"Well, you two took your sweet time," his mother laughed, gesturing to the two empty seats that already had plates set up in front of them, "And here you were saying yesterday that you wanted to wake up early."

Just like Leon and I, they aged.

"But we're really glad you two decided to visit," his father chuckled, taking a sip of his morning wine, "We haven't seen you two in months, but we understand how busy work can be."

Months. So that meant we didn't live anywhere near them.

I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Leon and I were way advanced in our relationship right now.

Though from the looks of Leon, he was just as dumbfounded and lost as I was. He wasn't even responding to his parents, he had this permanent shocked expression on his face and it was a miracle that they haven't commented on it yet.

"Sir, a letter arrived for Leon," one of the maids spoke as she entered the room, the said letter in her hands.

His mother clicked her tongue, "I thought that you already changed all of your mailing address to your new house."

"I t-thought so too," he stammered, probably because he had no idea how to respond. He still took the envelope, nodding in thanks to the maid that handed it to him.

"At least it arrived on the day you were visiting," his father shrugged, "Talk about luck."

Sir, I was pretty sure that we were not lucky in any regard.

We managed to get through breakfast scathe free. We just kept nodding and agreeing to whatever they were saying, no matter how confused we were.

We picked up a few bits of information here and there – a little bit of college, how we lived in an apartment before moving to a house, and how they have hinted many time they wanted a grandchild. With the last one, I was a flustered mess with my face beet red.

I was fucking sixteen!

So while his father cooped himself up in his study and his mother was on the phone with one of her friends, Leon and I sat on the living room while he started to work his way with opening the letter. Meanwhile, I started to look around at the pictures on the mantle.

There were photographs of a young Leon, family portraits of the three of them, and then to my surprise, there were some that included me. And somewhere in the midst of all of them was something that made me stop on my tracks.

It was me in a white gown with a veil on top of my head and a bouquet of flowers in my hands as I stood next to Leon, who was dressed in a tuxedo.

We were both smiling ear to ear, happiness was absolutely radiating from the image. While I wouldn't deny that I was happy with him right now, it felt like we had an uphill battle to climb before we could reach that amount of joy.

It was our wedding picture.

Were we going to be able to experience that?

"Avery," he called out, making spin around and look at him. His eyes portrayed terror, his hands shaking as he gripped on the paper like a vice.

Now I was worried.

I rushed to his side and plopped onto the couch next to him, trying to see what got him to react like this. When I read the words written on the paper, I understood why and I mimicked his fright.

Come to the address on the next paper, but only Avery may enter.

- L.C.

The other paper he was talking about had a sketched out map. What was scary about all of this were the initials. It was the same as the first letter that Leon got, the same one engraved on his whistle.

Actually, the most disturbing part was the fact that it mentioned my name.

What were the odds that it came to us all by chance? We weren't fools, this was all deliberate. Leon mentioned that the whistle decided on its own where it has to go and we weren't allowed to decided which timeline it would bring us.

Someone was controlling this.

"Maybe we'll get answers on why we are here," I muttered, though I was almost breathless, "Or how the whistles worked."

Whoever this L.C. character was, I just hoped that he wasn't horrible. But then again, if he sent the whistles to Leon in order to save me, then my gut told me that he wasn't bad or evil.

But that didn't calm me down in the slightest.

"We need to go now," he told me and I nodded in agreement.

We did our best to convince his parents to let us go, even pulling out a lie that some work stuff came up. I was amazed we managed to finesse our way because we had no idea what our current selves actually did for a living.

As long as they believed it, we were good to go.

The maids helped us pack our suitcases and load it in the car – which we were grateful for since we had no idea which was our vehicle in the first place.

"Please visit more often," his mother said, kissing both of us on the cheek, "And maybe next time, you'll announce that you're going to have your own baby cub soon."

It took me a minute to get what she was implying and when I did, my face instantly turned red, "Oh my god!"

Ma'am, I was mentally still in high school.

"Mom!" Leon exclaimed, causing both of his parents to laugh at our expense.

"Your mother is just joking," his father chuckled, "We'll see you soon, okay."

We nodded, giving him a hug. Once we said our goodbyes, we hopped into the car and drove off.

The instructions on the letter were pretty straightforward, but what heightened our nerves was the fact that the location wasn't in the city. As we kept on going, we soon realized that we have legt the asphalt roads and were now in a path leading into the forest.

I have seen way too many horror movies to guess where this was going.

But neither of us wanted to turn back. We wanted answers, no matter how dreadful it may seem to be.

And I think I had more weight to this situation since the letter clearly stated that only I could go into this weird location he was talking about. Leon probably felt how nervous I was because he didn't let go of my hand the whole drive.

All I hoped was that I make out of this alive.

We have come full circle. Leon was sent to make sure that I did not want to die and now the same L.C. was making me pray to every deity out there that I would stay alive.

And then we saw it.

An extremely small and quaint cottage smacked in the middle of a clearing. Yup, straight out of a horror movie.

Leon turned off the engine and we just sat there in silence because neither of us wanted to move forward with this whole thing. No cars around the cottage, no furniture on the porch either, just literally a plain cottage. The windows were blocked with curtains so you couldn't peek inside even if you wanted to.

Great, my life turned into a weird ass teenage drama to a woodland thriller movie.

I wanted to beg him to go inside with me, but this whole thing was finicky. I was afraid that one wrong move and the space time continuum might rip into shreds and all of us will cease to exist.

Too much?

Either way, as much as I wanted him by my side when I enter, the letter made it perfectly clear that only I was allowed.

Leon released my hand and got out of the car, walking around and opening my door for me, "Here we are."

I gulped audibly and stepped out, my eyes not leaving his face because I wanted it tattooed in my mind in case that something completely horrible happens.

I had no idea what to expect so my mind was completely blank. Could it be that this L.C. person is inside that cottage right at this moment?

I felt Leon's forehead on my shoulder, causing me to jump but when I heard his broken voice, my own heart ached for the both of us, "I don't want you to go."

Trust me, I didn't want to as well.

"For us," I murmured, though the way I said it made it pretty clear that I was scared shitless, "I have to do it for us."

He nodded, slowly raising his head before resting it on my forehead this time and placing his hands on my waist. We were silent for a while except for the small amount of birds chirping in the background and the wind rustling the leaves of the many trees that surrounded us.

I didn't mind that we were just there, holding each other.

So I closed my eyes, savoring his warmth and his touch. Since the beginning of time, he had been giving me nothing but comfort even until the very last second. By that, I meant before I walked into what could possibly be my doom.

My Leon, you have my whole heart.

In one lifetime, we got married. In one lifetime, we achieved our happily ever after. In one lifetime, our biggest problem was just having our parents pester us for a grandchild. In one lifetime we were, in the simplest of terms, happy.

And my dream, my hope, and my wish was to experience that lifetime with him.

After the longest while, he uttered three words that I never thought he would say at this moment, "I love you."

I was expecting it to come out within the next nine years, since we obviously got married, but I could have never predicted that he would say it right now.

My breath hitched and while I wanted to say it back, I was too immersed in shock.

Did I love Leon? To be honest, I found no other word to describe the intense feelings I had for him so that must be it.

But I wasn't like him who had multiple timelines to figure that out. I was sixteen and in my head, we just started liking each other several weeks ago. We just started dating literally two days before all of this.

So while I did think I was hopelessly in love with him, I didn't know if I could say the words back yet.

Thus, I did the next best thing. I placed my hands softly on his cheeks and captured his lips in mine. I tried to convey everything that I felt for him that way, to show him that even though I didn't say those same three words to him, I did feel the same.

That every single time my heartbeat became erratic, it was for him. That every blush of mine was reserved for him. That every day since I fell for him, there was no other guy I wanted to be with. That he held my affections and I would never give it to anybody else.

Because I did love him, I just wasn't comfortable saying it yet.

"Come back to me, okay?" he whispered once we stopped the kiss.

I nodded, "I promise."

I will, I was sure of it. Whoever was in charge of this had to know about destiny, that was how the whistle worked anyways – it was fueled by fate. And I truly believed that fate gave me Leon and that the universe wouldn't take me away from him.

With one more final kiss, he released me and I knew that it was time to go on. The longer we stalled, the more nerve wracking it was going to get.

I went to the wooden door, feeling Leon's gaze on my back. With a deep breath, as if I was going to dive right into water, I held it in and finally opened the door.

Again, I had no idea what I was expecting but it was definitely not this.

It looked like a workshop, several working benches and steels scattered around the place. However, the most prominent features was huge array of clocks displayed on one wall, each showing a different time from the others. Then there was a person, whose back was turned to me, and was busy working on something in his hands.

Nervously, I tried to get his attention, "E-excuse me."

"Close the door," he immediately instructed, making me let out a tiny yelp.

I did what I was told because my main goal was not to upset him. When it clocked close, his hands dropped the object he was working on, causing it to fall on the table with a light thud. It was soft, but it was enough to make me jump.

He started to turn around. It was so painfully slow or perhaps my brain was just playing the world in slow motion.

But once I did get a clear view of his face, shock was an understatement. At this point, I didn't know what do with myself except stand there gaping at him.

With his voice so gentle, far from what I had imagined, he greeted me, "Hello, Avery."

Standing in front of me was a man way older than me. Even with the twenty-five version of myself, he was old. With wrinkles on his face and his hair a wonderful mix of gray and dark brown, he smiled warmly at me with his hazel eyes sparkling. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't wipe the surprise away from my face.

Because standing in front of me was the older version of Leon Colten.

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Author's note is going to be about awareness.

My country has been hit by a disaster thanks to a typhoon and I already consider myself lucky that my area only went through a power outage for one night. I am also blessed that even though our internet had been severely slowed down, we still have it. I've been posting on my instagram stories on places where you can donate so if you have enough resources, please do. Or at least, please spread awareness because we literally have a crappy government who would rather see the people in my country die than to give money from our taxes to help them.

I love you guys and sorry if this was a little bit delayed again, I'll try my absolute best to have next chapter up on time. Please don't forget to vote, comment, and follow. See you next chapter!