Work Text:
The only indication Mileva Einstein had that time had stopped was the wind. The moment it stopped blowing, she knew. He was here.
"Tete," she whispered. "No need to hide behind your tricks. Come and bid your mother goodbye."
Her son appeared, looking no older than the last time she saw him as an adult, five decades ago.
"Hey, there, Mi-mother," Tete said. The word mother seemed somehow wrong, as if spoken by a stranger rather than her flesh and blood. It made sense, though, as he had been raised several millennia away from her, in a time and place she could never visit. A lifetime and a thousand years apart.
A moment of silence passed between them. Mileva broke the tense quiet by croaking, "You have something to say."
Tete attempted to protest, but she lifted a shaking finger. "You would not have gone through the effort of coming to me in my dying moments if you didn't. Speak up, son, God is waiting."
Tete swallowed. "Eh, tacit." Mileva noted that he was using future terminology. He began, "When I learned what you had done with Jonah's Elucidator, I was... I don't know. Confused. Angry. Betrayed. I was the professional, the one that sent the Missing to live out their lives. Suddenly, I was one of them."
Tete shook his head, giving a rueful laugh. "I reacted pretty badly to that revelation, to be honest. Before, returning kids to the past was utterly clinical. Send the kid back and he sooner or later dies. Suddenly it became personal.
"I suppose I was lucky. You were leagues more careful than-" here he paused, as if unsure how to proceed. "Than some other people I know. I didn't even need to re-live a single day of Tete's life."
Mileva muttered, "You are Tete." Her throat was dry and scratchy, and she felt all her years of age weighing down on her. If there was one thing she was grateful for, it was that she would die before having to lose her memories. Those were the only things left to her.
Tete regarded her for a long moment, and she realized that he wasn't her son anymore. He had made a life for himself, out in the future. He had a different purpose, he had people he cared about, like those children, Jonah and Katherine. He was JB. Time-travelling, awkward with emotions, illegally stopping time for her JB.
And she was so happy for him. All she had ever wanted was for him to live a good life, and here he was, doing things she could only imagine.
"Mileva, mother, I am unbelievably amazed at the amount of care went into your plan. I can assure you that in the future, you will become even more famous than Albert... Not that that was what you were going for, of course. I'm...proud, to be your son." He squeezed her hand.
Meliva smiled. "That's all I ever wanted. I managed to give you a life. I may not have been there with you, in the future, but I've fulfilled my duty to you as your mother. It was hard, at times, lurking in the shadows and wondering about you, but I bore it all knowing you would be safe and healthy. I love you, JB."
JB swallowed, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Goodbye, mother.” Then he was gone, and the winds roared back to life outside.