Chapter Text
Perhaps it was quite unwise of you to allow your oldest, Huckleberry, and your middle child, Henri, investigate and experiment the strange and faintly cracked mirror that the insufferable Widow Douglas and her sister gave to Huckleberry for his 15th birthday. They mentioned they got it at an audition in East Coast and you still had no idea why they thought a 15 year old boy wanted a mirror. A broken one at that, but you didn’t say anything since you don’t want to upset Widow Douglas anymore than you have since the adoption battle of Huckleberry that took place three years ago.
No, it wasn’t because they would break it more than it already was. Huckleberry was rather good at fixing things, especially since your husband, Michael, died almost a year ago, and was able to handle fragile things with a grace of an aged handyman. Meanwhile, Henri, although an explorer of four years old, is more of explorer of a distance and talks to the people than touching unknown objects.
It more because when you put those two together, things happens. For example, they managed to burn water, and created homemade firecrackers and almost burning down the house to name a few. With this, you worry that your youngest, Genny- Genesis-, will follow suit when she is older and is out of her wanting be around you only phase that been happening since she turned two a couple months ago.
Regardless, the mirror in your living room was never supposed to be anything more than a decoration. It leaned slightly to the left. The glass had a faint ripple to it, like water pretending to be solid. Your oldest two children insisted it “did something weird” when no one was looking.
You blamed imagination.
Until it wasn’t.
The room dims—not like a power outage, but like the world forgets its brightness setting for a moment.
The mirror opens.
Not as a door.
As a mistake.
A man stumbles through it and hits the hardwood floor hard enough that your youngest screams. He pushes himself up immediately, instinctively, like falling is a luxury he refuses to accept.
He is dressed in a uniform you recognize only because history has drilled it into your memory. But here, in your home, it looks less like an icon and more like clothing worn by someone who has been traveling far too long without rest.
He is injured.
Not critically, but enough to matter—bruising along his ribs, a shallow cut at his temple, blood darkening the edge of his sleeve. His breathing is controlled, but uneven, like he is negotiating with pain rather than surrendering to it.
He looks around once.
Only once.
Then fixes his attention on you.
“I mean no intrusion,” he says carefully. “I require assistance.”
Your children go silent behind you.
One of them whispers, barely audible:
“That’s George Washington.”
George Washington! This George Washington was different from what your textbooks and history books had pictured him. Yes, he was tall, but younger with having greying reddish hair, less wrinkles, and what you imagine having more his actual teeth than his infamous painting had.
The man flinches at his own name—as if hearing it from the wrong century is another kind of wound.
“I am not certain what name you have given me,” he replies, voice steady but tired. “But I assure you, I am no myth and I’m unsure of how good of a leader and general I am since the incident.”
Then, quieter:
“I lost my wife a month ago. Since then… I have not been certain where I am meant to stand in the world.”
That lands heavier than the injury.
Because it explains the look in his eyes: not confusion, but displacement. Like grief loosened his place in time and something took advantage of the opening.
Behind him, the mirror flickers again.
Wrong. Unstable.
As if it regrets what it just did.
He notices it too.
“I came through that,” he says slowly.
The glass pulses once more.
And then—
A sharp fracture sound.
The mirror cracks down the center.
Not shattering outward.
Breaking inward, like something sealed itself away on the other side.
Silence fills the room.
The portal is gone.
He exhales once, controlled.
“So,” he says quietly, “I am not returning immediately.”