(no subject)

[a_time_slip]

"Why didn't you stop her?"  asked Janie, late one night.  She sat at the kitchen table, eating ice cream in the dark, speaking only when Sara walked in to see what the noise was.

"What do you mean?"

"Ori.  Why didn't you-"

"Girl, that wasn't my job.  You were long gone."  said Sara, taking a seat across from her foster daughter.

"I warned you.  I went back and told you.  You could have talked to Ella, or made sure I couldn't go anywhere but you didn't.  Why didn't you listen?"

"I'm a human woman, poor, black, I only got control over my family.  How do you expect me to change the world?"

"It was making my life better!  Not changing the world."

"You told me all your adventures, all the things since you was a little girl, and making your life different would change everything else."

"Everything would be better!"

"You leave things the way they are."

"No.  I don't want-"

"You change that, you lose your family and friends."  Sara said firmly, cutting Janie off.

"They don't want me."  But she knew it was true.  Phoenix once told her how things would change if she changed the past, and she chose not to think of that.  She'd been incredibly selfish in the days before she cracked.

"Stop that!  It's not just about you.  You got a little girl that needs you now.  You got friends and family that needs you.  Thinking the way you are is what got you in trouble at first."

"I'm a time traveler.  I can change whatever I want in the world."

"What makes you think that child?"

"I have the ability."

"You got responsibility.  You got more than anyone would ever want, but it's yours.  You make sure everything you know of ends up on the right path, you fix what's going wrong.  You don't change it to what you like."

"THat's not my job!"

"Who else does it belong to?  You killed all of the others."

"They were going to kill me.  Kill Lynn..."

"It's yours, and if you mess up again, you mess it up for everyone."

"I don't want it."  Janie's defiant voice was beginning to crack.

"We don't get a choice in our fate, girl.  Do you think I wanted to be living in this apartment, worried that Franklin going to get mixed up with the crowd out here?"

"I saved you!  Our town burned to the ground."

"You ever think it was supposed to happen that way?"

"No.  That's too horrible to be a real thing. "

"Man do terrible things to each other, and learn lessons from it."

"Mama..."

"You think about all of that.  And you stop living on the couch.  No one here wants to see another talk show, or sassy judge, or soap opera again."

"It's my couch!"

"You don't own nothing until the Council gives it back to you."

"What.  No, I worked for my money."  Sara's words had hit Janie hard, and she was just beginning to realize how much trouble she'd gotten herself in.  The months in jail seemed like a nightmare she slowly disconnected herself from, but Sara's words were driving what she wanted to forget in deep.

"You better work to earn it back then, because as long as you're crazy they control you."

"I'm not crazy."

"Yes you are, child.  You ain't been right for near a year now."  With those words, Sara got up from the table, hoping she got through to Janie.