The Butterfly Effect: I Refuse This Ending

June woke up on a bed that was not hers.

She lay still and looked at the ceiling. Stone, high, arched. Not her apartment, not the studio, not anywhere she had been before in her life.

She sat up.

The room was large and well-furnished, sunlight pouring through a window that overlooked unfamiliar grounds. A dress she had never seen before hung over the chair beside the bed. On the bedside table sat a small portrait in a dark wood frame... a family of four, one of the children carrying the face that was now hers. She set the portrait down and got to her feet.

Her feet were further from the floor than they should have been.

She walked to the mirror against the far wall and looked at the face looking back at her.

Dark hair. Grey eyes. Good bone structure. A face that was real and specific and belonged to someone who was not her.

She stood there for a while.

Then she went back to the bed and sat on the edge of it and let herself think about the police station.

She had been the one who made Ren go. He had shown up at her door after the bench incident after the guild hall, after the pain that had dropped him onto the pavement while strangers walked around him without understanding what they were looking at and she had listened to everything he said before picking up her bag and telling him they were going to the police station. He had been too tired to argue.

He had been running on two days without sleep by that point. She had done most of the talking at the station because if she had left it to Ren the officer would have received the story out of order and probably walked away with the wrong conclusion.

They had walked out together afterward.

She remembered the door. The cold air outside. Turning to say something to him but she could not remember what, probably something ordinary, something about food because neither of them had eaten since morning and then the air had done what it had been doing for weeks. Thick, Pressing and Wrong.

And then nothing. .

And then this ceiling.

Ren had been standing right beside her when it happened.

Which meant either the same thing had happened to him or it had not, and and she was in an impossible situation with no way of knowing which.

She stood with it for as long as she needed to, then set it aside.

and got to her feet and went back to the mirror, because sitting on the bed was not going to tell her anything the mirror could not.

She was still looking at the face that was not hers when the voice arrived.

Not from outside the room. From inside her head. Present and clear and not happy about something.

Who are you.

June went still.

You are not supposed to be here. This is my body. Get out of it.

The voice was precise and controlled, like someone choosing not to lose their temper.

June looked at the hands at her sides, the hands that were not her hands and took a breath.

"I am going to need a moment before we continue this conversation," she said, out loud, to the room.

I am not giving you anything. I am telling you to leave.

"I would love to leave," June said. "Leaving has been my first preference since I woke up on that bed. The problem is that I have no idea how I got here and therefore no idea how to reverse it, and telling me to go is not going to get either of us what we want."

A pause. Longer than the one before it.

You can hear me clearly.

"Yes."

You are not panicking.

"I am panicking thoroughly on the inside," June said. "I spent three years working for people who thought screaming at staff was a management technique. Keeping it off my face is a skill I developed out of necessity."

Another pause. The anger was still there but it had moved to make room for something more functional.

My name is Elysia Valecrest, the voice said. This is my body and I have been in it for nineteen years and I want it back. I do not know what you are or how you ended up inside it but I want to be clear that this is not something I have accepted.

"Elysia." June tried the name. "My name is June. I was somewhere completely different and something happened that I did not choose or understand and I ended up here. I did not do this to you on purpose."

I know you did not do it on purpose, Elysia said. People do not generally choose to share a body with a stranger.

"Fair point." June looked at the mirror at Elysia’s face, at the grey eyes that were currently hers as well. "So we are both in here at the same time."

That appears to be the situation.

"And you want your body back."

Immediately and completely.

"And I want to go home."

Then we want the same thing, Elysia said. Which means we have a problem.

"What problem."

I do not know how to separate us, Elysia said. I have been trying to work that out since I realized what happened and I have not found an answer.

June looked at the mirror without speaking for a moment.

Elysia’s face looked back at her. Composed, refined, belonging to someone whose life had been considerably more structured than June’s had ever been.

"So neither of us knows how to fix this."

Not yet.

"And we are stuck with each other until we do."

Unless you have a better suggestion.

June did not have a better suggestion.

She looked at the window and the unfamiliar grounds beyond it and the sky above them was a shade of blue she had never seen before.

That boy, Elysia said. The one you were thinking about. Ren.

June looked at the mirror.

"You can hear that."

I can hear everything you think, Elysia said. I would prefer not to but I do not have a choice in the matter at the moment. He was with you when this happened.

"He was standing right beside me."

And you do not know what happened to him.

"No," June said. "I do not."

A pause.

I am sorry, Elysia said. Something underneath the precision had shifted slightly. That is a difficult thing to be sitting with.

June looked at the grey eyes in the mirror for a moment.

"Yes," she said. "It is."

She stood with it for as long as she needed to, then set it aside. There was nothing she could do about Ren from inside a body that was not hers, in a place she had never been and not being able to act had never stopped her from functioning before.

"Alright," she said. "Then we figure it out together. I am not going to pretend I am happy about this and I imagine you are not either, but being unhappy about it separately is not going to get either of us anywhere faster than being unhappy about it together."

The silence after that was not agreement.

It was not disagreement either.

You are very strange, Elysia said.

"I have been told that before," June said. "Usually by people who meant it as a criticism. I stopped taking it that way around my second year in animation."

Another silence.

Then, carefully, as though the word was being offered under protest:

Fine.

June nodded at the mirror.

"Fine," she agreed.