The Hours Between

Part III: The Choice 

Both perspectives converge - December 2024/2157 CE

The snow had been falling for three days when Claudia came to Oliver for what they both somehow knew would be the last time.

She arrived earlier than usual, just past midnight, materialising in his bedroom as the church bells finished tolling twelve. But this time was different. Instead of the gossamer dress that seemed woven from twilight, she wore practical clothes—dark trousers, a heavy jumper, boots that looked designed for walking long distances.

"Claudia?" Oliver sat up in bed, immediately alert. After months of her visits, he'd developed an instinct for her moods, and tonight felt charged with possibility and danger in equal measure.

"I need to tell you something," she said, settling beside him on the bed. Her hands were shaking—from cold or nerves, he couldn't tell. "Everything. The truth."

And so she did. She told him about New London with its bio-luminescent towers, about the Memory Archive where she catalogued the remains of vanished worlds. She explained conscious displacement, the way her mind could travel while her body remained safe in 2157. She told him about the temporal anomalies that had first drawn her attention to his cottage, about the months of research that had become obsession.

"I know how your story ends, Oliver," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "I know you die alone in February 2031. I've seen the records."

Oliver absorbed this quietly. He'd suspected something like this from their conversations, from the way she spoke of his cottage in the past tense, of his books as curiosities rather than tools.

"How long do I have?" he asked.

"Seven years. You develop heart problems in your late forties. It's... peaceful. You simply don't wake up one morning."

They sat in silence for a while, watching the snow fall past the casement windows. Finally, Oliver spoke.

"Is that why you came? Out of pity?"

"No." Claudia's voice was fierce now. "Never that. I came because reading about your life made me understand what I'd been missing in my own. All our advances, all our technology, all our extended lifespans—and we've lost the ability to live quietly, to find joy in small things, to care for objects and places with real love. You do all of that. You matter in ways my world has forgotten how to measure."

"And now?"

Claudia took a shaky breath. "Now I have to choose. My research authorisation ends tonight. I can return to my time, file my reports, and live with the memory of you. Or..."

"Or?"

"Or I can stay. The displacement technology is still experimental. If I refuse to return, if I force the field to collapse while I'm here, my consciousness would be trapped in this time permanently. My body would die in 2157, but I would be here, with you, for as long as your timeline lasts."

Oliver stared at her. "You'd give up everything? Your work, your world, your entire future?"

"What future?" Claudia's laugh held no humour. "A sterile apartment in a sterile tower in a sterile world? Cataloguing the remnants of lives actually lived? I've spent the past months experiencing more real joy, more real connection, than I've felt in thirty years of existence."

"But the consequences—"

"Would be mine to bear. The only question is whether you'd want me to. Whether seven years of... this... would be worth what it would cost."

Oliver was quiet for a long moment, studying her face in the lamplight. Outside, the snow continued to fall, blanketing the village in pristine silence.

"What would happen to you? I mean, practically speaking. You'd have no identity here, no history, no way to prove you exist."

Claudia smiled. "I'd be Claudia Ashford, researcher from London, who fell in love with a book restorer and decided to stay in Bramley End. People would talk, certainly, but villages like this have always attracted eccentrics. We'd manage."

"Seven years," Oliver murmured.

"Seven years of mornings together. Of showing you my world through stories while you show me yours through touch. Of growing old alongside each other instead of alone."

Oliver rose from the bed and walked to the window. The snow had transformed the village into something from a fairy tale—soft white curves where harsh edges had been, mystery where daylight usually revealed only familiar patterns.

"In my marriage," he said without turning around, "we loved each other, but we were afraid. Afraid of taking risks, of changing our plans, of doing anything that might disrupt our careful, sensible life together. We were so worried about making the wrong choice that we never made any real choices at all. In the end, we just drifted apart."

He turned back to Claudia, who was watching him with an expression of careful hope.

"I won't make that mistake again," he said. "If you're willing to risk everything for seven years with me, then I can hardly do less for seven years with you."

Claudia's face transformed, joy replacing the careful control she'd maintained. "Are you certain? Once I make this choice, there's no going back. For either of us."

"I'm certain," Oliver said, and found that he truly was. "Whatever comes after, whatever the cost—I'd rather have seven years of truth than a lifetime of wondering what might have been."

Claudia rose and went to stand beside him at the window. Outside, the snow continued to fall, covering the world in new possibilities.

"How do we do this?" Oliver asked.

"Simply." Claudia reached into her jacket and withdrew a small device that hummed with barely contained energy. "This is my displacement anchor. It maintains the connection to my time. All I have to do is disable it."

She looked at the device for a moment, then at Oliver. "No regrets?"

"None," he said, and kissed her.

Claudia smiled and crushed the device in her palm. There was a brief flare of light, a sound like distant thunder, and then nothing but the two of them in the lamplight and the soft whisper of snow against glass.

In the Memory Archive of 2157, alarms began to sound as Dr. MacLeod watched Claudia Ashford's life signs flatline. By morning, the official reports would list it as a displacement accident, a tragic reminder of the experimental technology's risks.

But in a cottage in Bramley End, as the first light of December crept across snow-covered fields, Oliver Whyborne woke to find Claudia Ashford solid and real and warm beside him, no longer a visitor from dreams but a woman who had chosen love over safety, presence over possibility, seven years of truth over a lifetime of regret.

They had breakfast together as the village woke around them—toast and tea and marmalade, sunlight streaming through windows that had seen centuries of similar mornings. Later, they would need to invent Claudia's history, create the documents and stories that would let her exist in Oliver's world. There would be questions to answer, bureaucracy to navigate, a thousand practical details to resolve.

But for now, there was simply this: two people who had found each other across the vast expanse of time, who had chosen to build something real in the space between what was and what might be.

Seven years, as it turned out, would be more than enough.

Author's Note: The cottage in Bramley End still stands, maintained now by the National Trust. Visitors often comment on the unusual warmth of the master bedroom, and the way the late afternoon light seems to linger there longer than in other parts of the house. The Trust's official history notes that the cottage's last private owners, Oliver and Claudia Whyborne, lived there together from 2024 until Oliver's death in 2031. Claudia remained for several months afterwards before disappearing entirely—some say she went back to London, others that she simply walked out into the Suffolk countryside one morning and never returned. The cottage was left to the Trust with a peculiar provision: that the master bedroom should always contain fresh flowers, and that the oil lamp on the bedside table should be kept filled and ready to light, should anyone ever have need of it