Chapter Text
Loop Repetition #30
“Hey, Julius?” Barbie asked absently, not really taking her attention off the bee she had been watching for the past half hour or so. Julius hummed, sounding about as distracted as her, though his focus was not on anything as simple as a bee, of course.
It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, birds were chirping and everything just seemed brighter somehow, so Barbie and Julius had decided (well Barbie had and forcibly dragged him along) to spread a picnic blanket under an old tree just outside the Berkeley physics department to enjoy the weather. Barbie by sunbathing and people (or bee) watching and Julius by steadily working his way through some book in what Barbie guessed was probably Hindi. But despite the wonderful weather something was bothering her, something that had been on her mind for a while now.
It was late spring 1942. General Groves would recruit Julius for the Manhattan Project in no more than a few weeks.
“Theoretically,” Barbie said and abandoned the bee in order to carefully watch for any change in Julius’ expression, “what would I have to do to be allowed to come to Los Alamos?” He hummed again and still made no move to divert his attention from the book.
"Be my wife,” he answered absently, “or a nuclear physicist, I suppose, though I can’t really imagine that for you. You’d have to have a pretty impressive resumé and–” He finally looked up from his book and instantly his expression turned from neutral to apprehensive. The reason was obvious enough. Barbie had broken into a grin so wide it hurt.
“Why are you smiling like that, Barbara?" he asked very hesitantly. Barbie’s grin somehow got wider. Suddenly understanding lit up his face, promptly replaced by a sullen frown.
“No, absolutely not!” he said, snapping his book shut without even taking note of the page number. “You are far too you for me!”
"Oh tosh,” Barbie instantly objected, “you're what? Like thirty?"
"Thirty-eight! Nearly forty!” he exclaimed. “And I already have a wife!"
“You haven't married Kittie in ages!” Barbie pointed out and sat up. “And I was older than you when all this started.” It was true. She might look perpetually twenty-something unless she spent a lot of time here after her transformation, but technically she’d been made in nineteen-fifty-nine, making her sixty-four in twenty-twenty-three. He had only been fifty-nine when his loop reset in sixty-three.
“Well, you don’t look it,” he said snippishly. Barbie just gave him her brightest smile.
“Come on, it'll be fun!"
They went to the courthouse the following week. Barbie would never admit how relieved she was to not have to leave him alone for another three or so years. Sure, it was only a day and a half for her if she wanted it to be but… She could always read the loneliness of those years and the anguish of his choices in the lines around his eyes when she saw him again. She knew she couldn’t do all too much about his involvement with the development of the atom bomb but maybe her being there for him would help. Even if she made him laugh just once it would be worth it.
Repetition #4
Julius barely made it to the sink in time for his breakfast to make a reappearance. It took a while for him to stop throwing up and even longer for him to stop dry heaving over the disgusting mess that was his own sick. When he finally figured nothing more would come up, slid down the cool white tile of the bathroom in his home in Los Alamos.
The images he had seen on the television just minutes prior kept flashing before his eyes while the echo of ‘It’s my fault’ played in his mind over and over again.
The images weren’t dissimilar to those he had often seen of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only this time it was a much more familiar place that had been razed to the ground. He had been born there, after all. To think he had been so proud of finally succeeding in his delay of the development of the bomb. And for what? He wanted to prevent senseless death. Now the Germans had dropped a bomb of their own. New York city was far more densely populated than Hiroshima and Nagasaki ever had been. How many people had died instantly? How many more would fall to the radiation sickness in the following weeks? How many more would die in the war that was now certain to not stop any time soon?
Acid rose in Julius’ throat once more.
It was his fault. He had killed those people. He was responsible for the death of his own countrymen. People he knew had most definitely perished in the blast. Their blood was on his hands. They paid because he selfishly wished to absolve himself of his sins.
There was nothing more in his stomach to come up. He still spent more than an hour heaving on his bathroom floor until sweet unconsciousness finally took his mind. The echo of ‘It’s my fault’ followed him into the darkness.