Title: Undershot
Fandom: original
Rating: G
Length: 703 words
Notes: Time travel. Influenced by (but unrelated to) Sisyphus: The Myth. Follows on from Not this time. Much thanks to mergatrude for beta! <3 No archive warnings.
Summary: Elgin was still flicking their fingernail against the ball of their thumb when the time machine did its thing and they swooshed back to the past.


Elgin was still flicking their fingernail against the ball of their thumb when the time machine did its thing and they swooshed back to the past. They were also still in a sitting position, so they fell painfully on their arse when the seat effectively disappeared out from under them. Whose bright idea had the seat-and-harness arrangement been? Not anyone who’d ever travelled, that was for sure.

The floor they landed on was cold and hard like polished concrete, the room pitch dark, and there were bustling, clattering noises coming faintly through the wall.

“Grey?” Elgin’s voice sounded thin, nervous, bouncing back at them. Not a big room, then. “Hey, Grey!” Where the hell was he?

This whole mission had been Grey’s idea—go back, convince the scientists who started everything, and change the course of history before the apocalypse became inevitable. Frustration and panic rose up in Elgin’s throat in equal measure. The stakes were too high. The plan needed both of them. Grey was the fine details guy; Elgin was the improviser.

So, okay, improvise. Grey would catch up eventually. He had to. In the meantime, Elgin would gather intel and get things lined up. But without Grey, the mission felt doomed to failure. Grey had always just been there, quiet and gruff and 1000% reliable. Elgin took a deep breath and tried to think past their spiralling anxiety. Step one, escape from this room before they froze to death.

As they thought that, a door in the far wall opened, letting in a blaze of light, a burst of urgent voices and laughter and, mixed in, the sizzling, bubbling, rapid fire clatter of what Elgin instinctively guessed was pre-apocalyptic food preparation.

The light from the doorway gleamed off racks of metal shelves packed not with lab samples but with colourful healthy vegetables, jars and bottles, bits of dead animal stripped of their hide. Elgin scrambled back, shielding their eyes from the glare. Then overhead fluorescents blinked on, ten times more blinding, and attempting to hide, Elgin stumbled into a set of shelves and only just managed to steady a tower of cardboard egg trays before it spilled to the floor.

A figure called from out of the bright light, their voice muffled as if they were talking over their shoulder and ironically amused, “Hey, Sooz, we’ve got another one.”

Elgin froze. What?

“Don’t freak out,” said the person in the doorway, gently, facing Elgin again. “It’s the 13th of June, 2019.”

No. That couldn’t be right. It was supposed to be 2013. Was Grey in 2013 without them? Or some other time entirely? How had this happened?

“We won’t hurt you,” continued the person. “What’s your name? Are you hungry?”

Where Elgin was from, you’d never ask that last question. Everyone was hungry in the future. They swallowed, their throat dry and tight. “Yeah.”

“Well, you chose the right day to appear. We’re catering a wedding—you’re going to love the beef roulade. Come on, we’ll find you a jacket and get you sorted out. I’m Freddie.”

Elgin didn’t move, not when there was a still a chance Grey would appear. Speaking of which— “What did you mean, ‘another one’?”

“You’re the third time traveller to show up in our cold store this year. This used to be a science research facility before Sooz bought and re-outfitted the placed and opened the restaurant—maybe that’s why?” Freddie opened the door wider. They? She? was smiling.

But there were so many people out there, some of whom would definitely try to stop Elgin (and Grey, when he got here) from carrying out the plan, if they learned about it.

“Two of the others are working for us now,” continued Freddie, “training up as sous chefs. Sooz lets them sleep in the office. Come on, you’re letting the cold out.”

“2019?” Elgin took a deep breath. The smells wafting in were incredible. Maybe one of the others was Grey. Maybe he’d gone to 2013 and been here all along, waiting for Elgin to arrive. Maybe the plan was already successfully carried out. Whatever was going on, there was food out there, and Elgin couldn’t turn it down.

They stepped towards the door.