Chapter Text
Introduction
He feels unreasonable sad, no not unreasonable but untypically. He hasn’t felt something like remorse for a long time, and he knows he hasn’t missed it, this low feeling in one’s stomach the ache that’s always present, pressing but not yet strong enough to be unbearable. It’s tiring and it’s painful and he likes neither and he notices how anger wells up inside of him anger because of his helplessness.
He sits on a small bench at high way resting stop, he’s clad in leather, his black bike still hot and parked only a few meters away. He is reasonable enough to take a break, though not reasonable at all for driving. Now he waits for his concentration to restore, hands on hips eyes unfocussed staring into the small forest.
He doesn’t notice the man until he taps him on his shoulder, so he jerks up startled and looks at the strangers face. He is in shock when he notices it isn’t a stranger’s face at all.
The eyes are blue, that’s a thing that almost makes him laugh, it looks ridiculous he thinks, blue, why of all colours he would chose blue? Maybe that alone is reason enough. The hair is a dark blonde a bit lighter than his natural colour, with a red tone, too, he guesses, but it isn’t oxygen blond and it isn’t spiked up, it looks natural enough. The real difference, he guesses, are the teeth. They look. . . he honestly doesn’t know the word he’s looking for. Plain? Normal? Small? They look like ordinary teeth, not like one’s out of a horse mouth and they change his whole face.
The stranger- because strange he still is- lights up and grins all over his face. It looks weird, though, without the big teeth.
“You know who I am,” the stranger says in his voice, and he nods.
“I guess I’m sleeping, have been driving too long anyway.”
“You know you aren’t,” and he understands now what people mean when they tell him how striking- how intense his smile is, because he is practically blinded by his counterpart.
“And I know, because you know. See. I have the clear advantage of having had this conversation before, and you don’t, so why don’t you lean back and let me tell you what you need to know.”
He raises his brow, but decides to follow the logical approach, basically not arguing with dreams.
“Tell me what you’ve got.”
The man nods and sits down next to him, lazily stretching his too long legs. He crosses his arms behind his head and leans back, his eyes carefully watching the small forest and evading his face.
“What I’ve got sounds nothing but absurd. But possibly no more absurd than meeting yourself. I too, don’t know any more than you, do, or will for that matter. And how could I not? I don’t have a clue how it got started, how it ends, if it ever ends, if it always follows the same pattern. I don’t know if you can get it right or wrong, or what that would be in any case. I’m you, or some kind of version of you, like they believed in all those comic books we used to read. Like you, I have sat on that bench, taking a break and talked to a stranger who I knew that was me. He told me the same things I am telling you now, the same what you are going to tell your younger self.
You don’t believe in second chances. But sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes you don’t have to believe to be given them. It’s all very fantastic and surreal and dream like except-“
And he hits him, suddenly, flat across his face and Jan wants to hit back but before his hand reaches his face it gets stopped in the middle of the way,
“I don’t want to fight with you, I just wanted to prove my point. See? It’s real, it hurts, it isn’t a dream.”
The stranger lets go of his arm and Jan carefully takes it back.
“When you return, because you have to drive back to Hamburg now, and when you do the year won’t be 2014, it will be 1994. Twenty years back into your past. Oh. . .”
And the strangers look got unfocussed again like he remembered something fondly and revisited those memories.
“There’s some unfinished business a lesson you have to learn and no one else who can teach you but yourself. After that, and you will know when it happened, you will just drive back head to this resting area have a little chat with yourself and then go back into your own future. As simple as that.”
“But- “ Jan interrupts, because he has read enough of those comic books and even if this is a dream it should at least be logical. “If this is a circle then I would remember someone being there, even if he were dressed up. But there wasn’t someone like you. Never.”
“No, there wasn’t, you’re right with that. . . I don’t know. Felse would probably be more suitable to explain this, but he isn’t there so it can’t be helped. I think you can see it like this: time is in flux- always changing, moving and becoming - shapeable like wax. There hadn’t been someone in my past and still, either and then there suddenly was. It is difficult. I can’t explain it Jan, and you won’t, either.
But when you return you’ll find yourself in the year 1994 and then you’ll have to believe. . .There is one more thing, though.”
“Of course,” Jan says sarcastically.
The other Jan smirked clearly liking this.
“You can change a lot of things, but no one can change things for you.”