Chapter Sixty-Two: Full Disclosure

Chapter Sixty-Two: Full Disclosure

Kentares IV, Draconis March, Federated Suns May 9th, 3013

"Natasha." I sat down on the couch next to her. "There's something I need to show you." I told her, struggling to keep my composure. Leading her to my library/study I moved to a safe that was hidden underneath my desk and entered a six digit code. Withdrawing the items I kept in there, I sat down on the sofa in said study and thought for a second.

"So, if we're going to truly be partners in every sense of the word, then there's some things that you need to know." She just looked at me strangely, like I was speaking a different language.

"Natasha, these are my most important possessions in the galaxy aside from you and our child." I started, and handed her my wallet with my ID's dating back to 2015.

She just flipped through everything silently, without any major facial expressions and simply waited for me to finish saying what I had to say. After handing her my ID's, I handed her my Iphone and Apple Watch and showed her how to open and navigate through them. I showed her the date that was saved, and everything that I had saved on my phone. Then, I waited for her to speak.

"Why are you showing me all of this?" She finally asked after several tense minutes of silence. "What even is all of this?"

"I somehow traveled from the year two thousand and twenty two to the year three thousand. I went from being a regular old security guard to someone who had to learn engineering, math, and science on a whole different level than I had ever even attempted before." I paused for breath. "I ended up stranded, in a world that was entirely different from my own. You see, tech like what I just showed you is the norm for people in my world. Battlemechs were a thing of Science fiction and all of the neo-feudalism is something that was never considered where I'm from." I expanded on the explanation and even gave a detailed description of what my life had been like.

I Just breathed for a bit and then continued. "All of the things I told you when I was in the hospital bed are true." I said, "I was just surviving at first, and now I feel like I'm beginning to thrive." I looked Natasha in the eyes. "I know it is a lot to take in Natasha, but I'm telling you all of this in the hope that you trust me, and what you do with all of this information is up to you."

"I'll let you think it over." I said. "But whatever you decide, whether it is to leave the Marksman, to leave me where I stand, whatever it is I will honor it." And I walked out of the study, leaving her with everything that I had left of the past.

After I had left the study, I leaned my back against the door and sank to my knees. I had already crossed that threshold that men have to hold back tears, and so I let them flow. Burying my head in my hands hoping that at the end of all of this I would still have someone to hold and walk beside me in this uncertain universe I had found myself in.

After I had released the decade of pent up emotions, I stood up, dusted myself off, and sat against the wall across from the study door. And then I went to sleep.

Natasha just sat, she had no frame of reference to comprehend what she had just been told and shown. She thought she had already known all of the mysteries that Mark Hull had, but it turns out he had one more secret, one that beat all of the others. Everyone who made it to Lieutenant in the Marksman had been told that Mark Hull was a time traveler, it was common knowledge even. But to know that he not only was a time traveler, but from a universe entirely unknown to her was hard to wrap her mind around.

Natasha had no idea how to even process her current emotions. She was a Trueborn Clan Wolf Mechwarrior after all and hadn't known what being free was truly like until she had joined up with the Marksman, and the one she usually relied on to help her understand and process emotions was the one who had just dropped this emotional bomb on her.

After a while of sitting there and thinking, she realized that she heard something. Standing up, and quietly walking over to the door she realized that she heard crying. Mark was sitting against the door weeping steadily. Easing herself down against the other side of the door, she rested her head against it and just listened.

Natasha still sat against the door long after the crying had ceased. Still trying to get a handle on both the unfamiliar emotions, and the pregnancy hormones raging through her system at the moment. Finally, after what seemed like hours had gone by, she made her decision.

Standing up, she opened the door and peered out to find that Mark was asleep against the wall. Leaving the door open, she went back over to the sofa and grabbed the strange communications device that he had shown her and navigated to the pictures of his previous family. He looked so different then, younger, and while he still had the same beard, there wasn't any of the wisdom that twinkled in his eye now or the hardness that showed sometimes when he had to get serious and deal with something that he didn't enjoy. He definitely looked soft, like someone who had only ever read about combat instead of experiencing it. And it was this that had finally helped her make up her mind.

While Mark Hull had once been this other man that she could clearly see on the screen, he was now someone different. Someone who had helped her become who she was today and the man that she had fallen in love with and had agreed to marry.

"It doesn't really matter that he came from somewhere different." She said to herself. "It's who he is now and who he will be in the future that matters." With her mind made up, she went to wake up her idiot of a man.

Author's note: YuffieK You replied to the thread almost exactly as I finished writing this. Not exactly the same, seeing as I did cover some emotional stuff there, but close enough to what I ended up with. Even if I did use a lot more words..