Chapter Text
The first time Cavendish dies, Vinnie can’t even reach the body.
They’re standing on the edge of a cliff, Cav leaning over it to peer down at the pistachio plant clinging to life a dozen feet below. There’s some subpar rappelling equipment in the car, so they can fetch the plant and relocate it to somewhere more conducive to it surviving.
“This is ridiculous, look at it!” Cav blusters, putting his hands on his knees. “One little tree clinging to a cliff in the middle of nowhere—”
Vinnie’s not watching, it’s the only time he’s not watching. There’s the sound of crumbling earth and a panicked yell, and by the time he turns around Cav is just gone. A gurgled noise escapes Vinnie as he throws himself forward onto his stomach to peer over the cliff, barely caring if it gives underneath him as well. There’s clouds of disturbed earth drifting up from the canyon below, thousands upon thousands of feet down to the bottom. Vinnie’s glasses slip on the bridge of his nose as he stares down into the abyss, the gentle afternoon breeze ruffling his hair and tugging away the dust Cav has knocked free in his fall to his death.
Vinnie feels sick, his head is spinning, all he can see is red earth drifting in the air and the dark smear at the bottom of the canyon that was once his partner.
“God, oh God, Cav,” Vinnie gasps, brain starting to run at a million miles an hour. He could get the time machine, pop down there immediately as Cav hit the ground, get him to a hospital—
But Cavendish isn’t hurt, he’s dead , there’s no way he survived that fall, and it’s on the very first page of The Time Traveller’s Guidebook in the glove compartment of the time vehicle.
Your own deaths are not to be interfered with.
But staring over the edge of the cliff, realizing he’s never going to see Cav again, never going to hear his voice, never—
He’s in the time machine before he knows it, fingers fumbling at the keys still in the ignition. It sputters and chokes before he gets it revving, and the silence in the machine is deafening as he yanks it into the time stream and goes back to a few minutes before.
If he ever tells the story of this first time, he might say he hesitated, but that would be a lie. He parks the time machine right next to the first version of it and climbs out. He can see himself and Cavendish by the cliff, only seconds before disaster.
His past self is looking in his direction but hasn’t seen him yet, so Vinnie waves wildly until the past-Vinnie sees him. His eyes widen and Vinnie points desperately at Cavendish, who is leaning down to put his hands on his knees, leaning over the cliff.
Past-Vinnie grabs Cav by the back of his coat and hauls him away from the edge as it crumbles, saving him. They scramble away from the unstable cliff edge, coughing at the dust they’ve stirred up. Vinnie nearly melts with relief, and the first time machine fizzles out of existence as time heals around it from the change he’s made.
He, nor Past-Vinnie do anything similar though, and he grimaces. Damn, he isn’t sure what to do about that. “I nearly fell! Did you see that? Dakota, did you—” Cavendish is sputtering as Past-Vinnie hauls him to his feet and they start dusting themselves off while Vinnie watches from his hiding place crouched behind the time machine.
“I saw,” Past-Vinnie says, glancing back at Vinnie by the car. Both versions of him know that he’s just violated the first and most important time law, but Vinnie doesn’t care. It was Cavendish, what was he supposed to do, just let him die?
Everything he’s ever learned about time travel screams yes, but that feels so fundamentally wrong, the idea of existing without Cavendish…he could never do that.
Vinnie swallows the urge to cough as he crawls into the back of the time machine, Past-Vinnie distracting Cav until he's hidden. They are the same person, and if Vinnie thinks it would be best to resolve there being two of himself right now at a later time, so does the double.
“That landslide completely destroyed the pistachio plant,” Cavendish gripes as he and Past-Vinnie climb into the front of the time machine to head back to the office in early 21st century Swamp City, and Vinnie hears himself carry on a conversation with Cav on the drive back. It’s eerie, every response he thinks of being voiced aloud, in his voice, but not quite him. A him whose Cavendish died. A him who shouldn’t exist, but still does.
Your own deaths are not to be interfered with.
He knows it's to prevent people from trying to live forever (for the most part), but it’s also to stop situations like this from happening. You can’t go splitting the timestream all willy-nilly like this, it’s how alternate dimensions come into being, and those always seem to twist into some sort of alien world, or post-apocalyptic horror show.
It’s irresponsible and dangerous and has consequences Vinnie can’t predict or control, but he can’t bring himself to care.
“I want curly fries,” he hears Cavendish say as they pop out of the timestream and he smiles.
The time machine comes to a halt as he hears Past-Vinnie say, “Go upstairs, I’ll run and grab us food.”
“Don’t eat it all before you get back,” Cavendish grumbles and Past-Vinnie gives him a sarcastic laugh as he climbs out of the car.
There’s silence as Vinnie sits up from where he was hiding behind the backseat, leaning on the headrest with one arm, watching Cav walk up the stairs to their office on the second floor.
“What happened?” Past-Vinnie asks after a minute, and Vinnie laughs hollowly at the memory of what he’d prevented.
“You can’t guess?”
“Well, yeah, but…” Past-Vinnie pauses, and Vinnie knows he’s thinking about the first law. It’s what Vinnie’s thinking about.
“He died,” Vinnie says, and it’s quiet and weak. “There was nothing—I wasn’t even looking, and then he was just—”
Silence again, pungent and painful.
“I’d ask if you think you made the right choice, but—” Past-Vinnie says, and then they both chorus, “it’s Cavendish, what else would I do?”
Vinnie sighs and puts his forehead on the back of the seat, wondering what the hell to do now. His chest feels tight with emotion, and he coughs trying to loosen the sensation of iron bands around his lungs. The space around his heart tingles, almost tickles, like he’s breathed in too much pollen even though he isn’t really allergic. He coughs again and its two hard bursts that leave his tongue tasting bitter and syrupy.
“So what now?” Past-Vinnie asks.
“We get curly fries,” Vinnie says, and they climb out of the time machine to head for the fast food joint across the street. The cashier barely blinks at the two identical men as they order, and as they wait, Vinnie sits in one of the tiny plastic booths with his double.
“Sooooo,” Past-Vinnie says with a sigh. “I shouldn’t exist.”
“Nope,” Vinnie says, taking a suck from the large soda they’d gotten with their order.
“But I do,” Past-Vinnie pushes his glasses up to rub at his right eye, and Vinnie fights down the urge to do the exact same thing, thinking about what this means.
“Can’t have two of us around, he’d know,” Vinnie says slowly, and Past-Vinnie nods.
“I could maybe find a place to go where he’d never find me?” Past-Vinnie says, pursing his lips. “Maybe find a cozy little island somewhere or something. Retire early.” Vinnie snorts a laugh. He can’t fool himself; it wouldn’t be much of a retirement, all by himself. Not only does he not plan that far ahead, but recent events have revealed that he wouldn’t find it a satisfying end to be without his partner.
“Send me a postcard,” Vinnie says as the cashier comes to the counter with the order, calling their number.
He gets a postcard a few weeks later, with a brochure, and a picture of an island shot from the deck of a boat on a clear day. There were also instructions to make copies and give them to himself whenever Cavendish dies and he ends up with a duplicate. His heart sinks to his feet as he realizes that there are more of him wherever his first duplicate went, and that this exception is no longer just one.
“I've checked the locker and the fertilizer’s there already, so we can go whenever,” Cavendish says, and Vinnie shoves the papers from the island of more-than-one-Dakota into the pocket inside his jacket, covering the rustle with a cough. His chest convulses and the fake cough he’d started with blooms into a sudden hacking fit that leaves him wheezing and trying to clear copper and a weird flowery sort of perfume aftertaste from his tongue.
“Are you alright, Dakota?” Cavendish asks, clapping him on the shoulder as he struggles to get his breath back. Vinnie nods weakly and gives him a thumbs up as he sucks in a relieving breath. Probably just choked on his own spit or something, that sounds like something he would do.
He has a stash of brochures for the Island Of More Than A Dozen Dakotas in the bottom drawer of his desk now, and he draws from the stack far more often than he’s comfortable with, but it’s not like he can really make it much worse. He’s already long blown past breaking the first law, and after that there isn’t much worse he can do. At least he’s getting a bit numb to watching Cav die. It’s still horrible in the instant, but it’s been awhile since he’s barfed at the sudden surge of memory of Cav floating face down in the water, or falling from a ledge, or tumbling down a hill, or…
Vinnie coughs as they slide out of the time machine to try and prevent the destruction of a cart of pistachios in downtown, and for a couple short heaves it’s fine and then suddenly it’s not. He leans against the front of the time machine, his gut feels tense and locked as his lungs shudder. He can’t seem to pull in a breath, just spit them out in a rough bark of air that makes his chest hurt.
“Dakota!” Cav pounds him on the back like he’s afraid Vinnie is choking and Vinnie manages to suck in a steadying breath from the shock. “Are you alright?” Cav demands and he nods, coughing in small weak bursts in an attempt to clear the thick, painful feeling high in his chest. It feels almost like pins and needles, a static-y sort of pain he shouldn’t be feeling, a sensation that is a little worrying in its wrongness.
“Maybe you should see a doctor for that,” Cavendish says hesitantly as Vinnie finally manages to get upright again, breath audibly rasping.
“Nah, I’m good,” Vinnie manages, and Cavendish frowns at him, but appears to let it go.
A red and white baggie of cough drops is sitting on his desk the next morning though, and Vinnie catches himself just staring at them and rubbing his thumb over the plastic as if he’s lost in thought. Except he’s not really thinking of anything at all, just looking at something Cav had done for him that he hadn’t had to and feeling… feelings about it.
He shoves a handful of the cough drops into his pocket and tucks a new brochure for the island in his jacket before joining Cavendish in the time machine parked outside.
They’re cherry flavored, and he’s almost constantly got one in his mouth for the next few weeks, still managing to have little fits of wheezing for breath or coughing so hard he has to stop and wait until it passes. A couple missions are failed because he can't breathe or keep up or coughs so hard he broke something and destroyed what they were supposed to be protecting. It upsets Cavendish most of the time, but as Vinnie’s cough persists, he stops complaining about it and instead just frowns at Vinnie really hard. It’s kind of cute.