By the time he got to the 80s, he was fairly use to the routine. New life. Discover past lives. Try to escape. Fail. Die. Repeat.

It was getting redundant to say the least. Charley (because that's what is name was in this life time -- or was it James something?) had half a mind to just give up.

Let Savage (that's what Hath-Set had started calling himself now) find him. Let him kill him. He was going to do it anyways, so who cared?

It simply didn't matter anymore. Things always turned out the same exact way, and they always would. They were doomed until the end of time.

The only reason he even bothered pushing forward was because of her -- his wife Sharon. (Or was her name Shelly in this life?) At least they had managed to find each other again before the inevitable. Gods only know what he'd do if he had to go through this alone. (Actually, he had already done it alone many times, and he was not too eager to do it again, as selfish as that may seem.)

But he was growing weary of it all. It was exhausting trying to keep up with all the memories in his head, all the lives he'd lived. Was it Hannibal or Landon who had lived on the ranch? Did Hank the yogo instructor live in the fifties or the seventies? Over a hundred -- maybe two hundred -- lives. It was far too many to keep in order. He couldn't even remember what any of them actually did for a living or even if they'd lived long enough to have a career (he was pretty sure Landon was just a teenager when he was killed, or maybe that had been Luca?) He didn't particularly care to try either. It always hurt his head when he did.

Recalling past hobbies was a chore in of itself. Remembering any likes or dislikes? Nope. Just forget it. Not worth the headache. It didn't matter much anyway, those lives were over. Those people he once was, they were gone; and as far as the world knew that was the end of them. Those people would never cross anyone's minds ever again.

The apathy had been building for quite some time, and he did his best to hide it from Sharon... But of course she was beginning to sense something wasn't quite right. She was too smart for her own good.

She was always the smartest person in the room somehow. And it was excruciating, trying to keep his true feelings about their situation from her. He'd never kept anything from her before, not in this life time anyway. They'd struck an agreement, after that whole fiasco in which Charley had accidentally-on-purpose joined the mafia to help pay their rent. (Times are hard, running from immortal tyrants!) But Charley was having trouble finding motivation to bring it up.

What was the point anyways? They both already knew how this story ended -- with Hath-Set, or Savage (whatever his stupid name is now) finding them, ending them. It always happened. The ending of their story was not going to be rewritten any time soon. She could feel it too, the hopelessness. He could tell. It was in the way she held herself, how she looked over her shoulders every now and again, checking that no one was following them. It was in the way she never really slept through the night, not without waking up in a cold sweat, certain she's heard something down stairs. So, it wasn't as if she could scold him for feeling this way, as weak as it was.

Charley was just sick of it. Why should they have to put up with it? Running around all the time, hiding, living in fear. It wasn't fair. He was tired of fighting, and he was beyond exhausted from all the running. He wanted to settle down, wanted to marry Sharon. Maybe they'd have kids or grandkids or even great grand kids! He wanted to grow old with her, and move out to the country where the two of them could spend the rest of their days together. Peacefully. He wanted his life to end -- without starting all over again. He wanted it to be a good one too, not this twisted, tangled, ugly mess he was living now. (Was he even living at this point? It was hard to tell.)

But what could he do? It wasn't like Hath-Set would one day just wake up and miraculously realize the error of his ways. He wasn't going to just stop chasing them, killing them over and over. He was never, ever going to stop taking Chay-Ara away from him. It was only a matter of time before he got to them in this life time too, so what was the point? Why bother even trying to escape any more?

I'll just lay here and wait for my demise, he thought.

{~}

Anita and Daren followed Barry for hours, but either he was very good at hiding his secret hero identity or he just wasn't the Flash. Anita didn't really care, she only wanted him to lead her to Cisco Ramon. Sure, the guy would be a lot younger than the future version she was actually searching for, but she figured the young Ramon would be a start... At least, she hoped he'd be clever enough to help her figure out how to talk to Oculus again since he had clearly left her in the dust after the whole King Shark thing. (A real jerk move, but she was trying hard not to be bitter about it.) 

But the longer they stuck with him, the longer Anita was beginning to think that Barry Allen was just a normal boring guy. Daren was starting to get bored too, if his incessant whining was anything to go by.  They were almost caught once, when they stalked Barry to Jitters. That was when Anita decided to pull them out of there. They couldn't risk it.

"For a guy who works in the police department he's sure unobservant," Daren commented on their walk to the school. (They're now several hours late. [He also said that as he failed to observe the fact that both his shoes were untied].)

Anita shrugged. She would be lying if she said she wasn't disgruntled. She'd been hoping to have found a lead, that Oculus would come back. Maybe she was just itching to time travel again, or maybe she was just looking for an escape. "He's just the science guy, not an actual cop."

"Yeah, but he's the Flash too so..." Daren was flipping through those stupid pictures again.

Anita rolled her eyes, but she didn't say anything. She was sure, if she pointed out that Barry hadn't once done anything speedster like while they were stalking him, it'd only start something. She so did not have the energy to argue with him about it. So, they walked in silence.

She couldn't get the image of the temporal zone out her head -- all those colors swirling around. She had never felt so weightless before, so free. She missed sitting in front of the fire place with Patch at the Lodge, and Doc had grown on her over those short few weeks she'd spent with the little robot girl. She'd been such a good listener, and she didn't make nearly as many annoying noises as Daren did. And she never interrupted her in the middle of a sentence. She just listened. Anita wasn't sure if she actually understood anything she said to her, but still. It was nice. What's more, Anita found herself wanting to know more about her, too. Why was she hidden away? How was it that the little robo girl had a mother bot? And why was aforementioned mother bot stuck in that computer?  

And then there was the strange time travel dude himself. Oculus. She was dying to know what had happened to him. How had he lost his memories? What was his real name? Where did he come from? It was the only thing occupying her mind these days, actually.

"What was it like?" Daren asked suddenly. "Time traveling, I mean. Was it as cool as Doctor Who makes it seem?"

Of course. Here come the annoying questions. But strangely, Anita found that she really actually didn't mind talking about it. She actually wanted to brag a little. "It was even better!"

She went on telling him about her short travels with the Doctor Who-esque man. How he'd taken her to the future -- it hadn't changed much, but the few differences were very obvious. She explained to him how the time travel books worked and how Oculus had a whole library full of them. Daren listened intently for once, and for a moment Anita thought he might actually not ruin it for her.

And then the little runt disappeared on her. It was like a ghost from one of those spooky ghost-y stories -- his body flickered, and then he was just...gone. As if he had never even been there. It only lasted a moment, then he was back again; but it was enough to get Anita's heart racing. "Wha -- you just --"

"You just disappeared!"

Anita's stomach dropped to the ground. She eyed her brother, looking for any sign that he was pulling her leg; but his eyes were glassy, the way they always got when he was about to freak out. He was gripping the end of his shirt, wadding it up so it got all wrinkled. "Hey," Anita grabbed his hands so he wouldn't ruin his shirt. "It's fine. I'm right here. That was...I don't know. Probably nothing."

She wasn't sure how confident she was with that, but Daren seemed to calm the slightest bit. At least, he nodded slowly and stopped trying to strangle his clothes. He was still tensed up though. "Really?"

"Yeah," Anita nodded even though she was the furthest thing from sure. "Besides, if anything were wrong I'm sure the Flash would take care of it. He always does." Maybe she was trying to make herself feel better too. Whether Barry Allen was the Flash or not, the Scarlet Speedster would always be around to save the day, so there was nothing to worry about. But somehow, this felt different. She didn't even know what that was -- her and her brother both disappearing for a split second? What kind of meta human could do that?

Or maybe it wasn't even a meta human. Maybe something was wrong with time. She had no way of knowing since Oculus had all but abandoned her, and it didn't look like he was coming back for her either. If something was wrong with time, would he know? Would he care? Or was he too busy having fun skipping around history and worrying about his own problems?

She wasn't sure the Flash could fix it if time was broken. How would someone even detect that anyway? Sure, he worked with the employees of Star Labs, and they had some pretty nifty gadgets, but would that be enough? And what did all this mean for Anita and Daren? What was going to happen to them? Their parents? They'd be heart broken if anything ever happened to either Daren or her, even their mother who never seemed to care about anything and had run off in the middle of the night to get away from them.

Besides, Anita had a very important math test coming up, and she couldn't very well just disappear. She needed a decent grade to get into her college of choice! So, yes. They'd be fine, she'd be fine. They had to be. "The Flash always takes care of everything."