“YOU. . . WHAT?”

FOR a long moment, Takako didn’t elaborate. She simply reached for her own cup of tea and stared deep into the depths of it, face lined with too many conflicted emotions for Jo to count. Then, as if finally finding her resolve, she set it back down with a heavy thud.

“I admit, when you joined the Society and I realized you were American—or, from what had been America at least, I felt. . . a bit guilty,” Takako explained, not that it made her previous confession any less nonsensical. “I guess you could say I took your country away from you. I destroyed what could have been, so to speak.”

“What are you talking about?” Jo tried to smile, but it felt a bit disjointed, her confusion overwhelming her features. Took away her country? How? She’d lived in it for nineteen years.

Whether in attempts to explain, or simply to get the words out, Takako ignored her question for a moment, shaking her head. “I must have seemed standoffish at first, and for that I apologize, but I simply didn’t know what to say, not knowing what I know. But I still wanted you to feel welcome. And, I suppose, I wanted to make it up to you somehow. Everyone else was so much better at it than I. . . But I guess they’ve had more practice.”

The gifts, the kindness. That had been Takako’s attempt at assuaging guilt?

Jo frowned, looking from Takako’s face to her own cup. Despite the comfortably warm feel of the ceramic beneath her fingers, the tea still steamed, as if the cup should be much hotter to her touch. Jo wondered if it should be burning her, if it actually was, and the day had merely numbed all senses.

“I don’t. . .” Jo shook her head, confused. She wanted to understand what Takako was saying, but she didn’t know how to ask for clarification. She didn’t doubt the genuineness of Takako’s kindness, regardless of the underlying intention, but her reasoning still felt beyond Jo’s reach. Her country had been just fine, hadn’t it? The Lone Star Republic continued on throught Jo’s short lifetime as it had always done. Not that she paid much attention to politics beyond her connections with the nation’s dark underbelly. What wish could Takako possibly have made?

Jo’s frustration must have become obvious, because eventually, Takako sighed, raking her hands through her hair and tugging on it.

“In 2010, our countries were at war,” she began, and when Jo met her gaze, there was a despondency there that she was unfamiliar with when it came to the kind, but stoic, woman.

Jo remembered reading about World War III. History wasn’t exactly her favorite subject, but the war had only ended in 2015, just forty-two years before Jo joined the Society (a narrow enough piece of time that the veterans never let anyone forget), so it was hard not to know about the war. A rising tide of nationalism had pulled the former United States in on itself, retreating from its allies and making stronger enemies of old nemeses that ultimately formed the “Commonwealth Powers.”

“The war started in 2007, right?” Jo asked, more for her own confirmation, whilst trying to remember exactly when Takako said she’d been born.

Takako nodded. “It did. Japan was emboldened when the U.S. lent its support toward militarization—the de facto ‘Warden of the East.’ It was a potent blend with the determined drive forward on building the nation as a military power.”

“And then there was the China-Japan war.”

“In which, the use of Japanese force had the U.S.A. positioning itself against my country, and Japan siding with Russia.” The way she spoke was clinical, void of emotion or any real investment. Takako spoke like she was the one reading a textbook, espousing facts and nothing more. Until her voice began to waver. “I. . . I was a soldier, and I was afraid.” Her hand balled into a fist; Takako hung her head.

Suddenly, the woman’s skill with a gun made a lot more sense. Jo reached out, taking her hand, and startling Takako into meeting her gaze. “That’s okay. I can’t imagine how terrifying it was. . .” She had never seen war. When Jo had grown up, the world was at peace. Well, minus the odd squabbles in North America’s Midwest, where no one could seem to decide what was a territory of what, who ruled themselves, and which regions were allied.

“You don’t understand. I thought—that is to say, there were rumors. . . That the U.S. would unleash biological warfare.”

Jo didn’t remember reading anything about that, one way or another. So she kept her mouth shut and just listened.

“That was when I made my wish.”

In the silence that followed the barely-there confession, Jo found herself mulling over Takako’s words. It had been long enough since Jo’d taken her last sip that her tea should have gotten cold. Instead, it was still the perfect temperature. She gave thanks to the small comforts magic could give.

“Japan was losing—or you thought Japan would lose—in your timeline, so you wished for Japan to win the war. And that’s the world I was born into,” Jo clarified, thinking of the odd events leading up to the Commonwealth Powers’ victory: a series of tactical errors, miscommunications and weather phenomena that resulted in the USA’s western fleet being condensed and subsequently decimated. That was followed almost immediately by a decisive and unforeseen strike on the eastern seaboard, which resulted in enemy boots on the ground.

It was too many unfortunate events to happen merely by chance. Takako nodded, as if reading her mind.

“I don’t quite remember what I said to Snow anymore.” Takako paused before Snow’s name, grinding it out. “My memory of making the wish is hazy, like trying to remember a dream, but I do know that I’d been thinking about my family. My mother and father, my sister. I wanted them to be safe. At the time, winning the war seemed like the only way to ensure that, and I was willing to do anything if it meant securing their safety. My family—” Takako paused, taking a deep breath she let out on another rough sigh. “My family is everything I have, even if they no longer remember who I am.” She buried her head in her hands. “It’s not fair, none of it.”

Instantly, with those words, Jo was brought back to the present.

She had never related more fiercely to another’s sentiment. Her mother’s blood still flowed through Jo’s veins, even if memories of Jo no longer flowed through her head. As one-sided as those memories were now, Jo would treasure them for a literal eternity. Even Lydia, a sibling Jo never had the opportunity to know and born in a timeline where she’d never lived, now held a small place in her heart—a sense of gratitude that her mother was not spending her life without the companionship of a daughter.

Takako held a similar, undying love for her family. And right now, though Jo did not know for sure, she would bet that they were currently in the path of Mt. Fuji’s fury. And Snow refused to let Takako even attempt to save them.

Another flash of anger sparked in Jo’s chest at the thought, but she smothered it, forcing herself to stay calm, focusing on Takako and the turmoil she could now see swirling behind her eyes. She couldn’t save Takako’s family for her. If Jo was honest with herself, Takako’s family likely couldn’t be saved at all—everything in the world was at the whim of wishers. But at this moment, for what it was worth, she could at least offer her an end to her guilt.

“Look, Takako,” she started, taking what she hoped looked like a casual sip of her tea. “I appreciate you telling me, your trust. But I honestly don’t care one way or another what America could’ve looked like versus what it did when I lived there. If it was one single nation, or split up as it is. . . None of it matters.”

As expected, Takako looked startled by the admission, and Jo couldn’t bite back the smirk that tugged at her own lips in response.

“If America had won, I’d be working for the mafia, probably some descendants of Wayne’s old friends. Take a moment and imagine how that would’ve been.” Even Takako smiled slightly at the remark. “Regardless, my life wouldn’t exactly have been different in a sovereign nation. I mean, maybe I worked with the Yakuza a bit more in the timeline you created? But hell, with the internet, I might have worked for them anyway.”

“You don’t know that. You might have been happier.”

Jo just shrugged. It was almost a little odd to feel nothing for her homeland, as if it had never really been her home to begin with. “No, I don’t know anything. But I highly doubt my family would have been well off either way, and I definitely would have been doing the exact same thing no matter what reality I’d grown up in. I know no different, and who my boss is never really mattered as long as the pay was right. Home, what’s really important about it, isn’t land or walls but the people who occupy them—it’s the people who matter, and I would’ve had those same people in any reality. So you’ll find no hard feelings about your wish here.”

Takako didn’t seem to know how to take that, so Jo added, “But if what you’re looking for is forgiveness, it’s yours.” Jo squeezed the woman’s hand lightly. “I don’t blame you, Takako. But I forgive you for whatever you think you need forgiveness for.”

For a long, drawn-out moment, Takako looked at their hands, not quite holding, but resting comfortably against each other. Then, Takako stretched her hand out beneath the touch and linked her fingers with Jo’s, gripping tightly for a moment before simply settling into the hold. It felt like a thank you, so Jo took it as one, rubbing her thumb gently over Takako’s.

Another, more comfortable length of silence passed before Takako spoke again.

“Megumi, my sister,” she whispered. “I’ve been watching her grow, following her life as best I can from here. She’s almost forty now. My niece and nephew just turned twelve last month. Twins, actually.”

As much as it pained her, Jo could tell where she was going with this, could hear the way each word had been wrought in barbed wire and caught all the way up Takako’s throat. She didn’t want to be right, but Jo knew the universe was not that kind.

“Two years ago, the family moved from our sleepy mountain town to Shizuoka for work.” When Jo looked up from their intertwined fingers to Takako’s eyes, she was unsurprised but heartbroken to find them shiny with unshed tears.

“There’s no way they’ll be able to evacuate in time, especially not now, and that’s if they’re not—”

This part, Takako couldn’t finish, but Jo didn’t need her to—didn’t want her to. Neither of them had seen the news since this morning. For all either of them knew, Takako’s family was already dead.

There was nothing Jo could say, she realized. Nothing of value she could offer as comfort or solace or distraction. All she had was her presence, the promise of her nearness, to combat the crushing weight of suffocating solitude. For a moment, Jo allowed herself to think of what it would feel like if her own family was in the path of the volcano’s wrath. What would she be feeling? Would she want to be alone?

The answer to the first question was too much to consider.

The answer to the second was no.

“Can I stay with you for a little while longer?” Jo asked, keeping her voice soft, letting every ounce of her own sorrow shine through. Takako didn’t hesitate, nodding her head and closing her eyes tight when the motion caused her tears to fall at last. As Takako gripped her hand, Jo witnessed the second of two seemingly immovable mountains tumble.

“Please.”