They told me not to speak.
Not to touch.
Not to feel.
Just observe and return.
But the second I stepped into the chaos of the Forum, sweat clinging to my back under wool robes, I knew the mission was already unraveling. Rome in 49 BCE was everything—loud, filthy, beautiful, terrifying. The air smelled like ash, honey, and rot. And then she bumped into me.
She was carrying figs. One fell. I picked it up like an idiot. That alone was interference, technically.
“Gratias,” she said without looking me in the eye.
But I looked. And that was the problem.
Her name was Taisia. I only learned that after three illegal visits. The first time, I followed her down an alley. The second, I brought her wine. The third, she touched my hand—and my return capsule short-circuited.
Turns out the agency did build safeguards against emotional compromise. Fail-safes that trigger if a traveler grows too attached. I had ten hours before they yanked me back—ten hours before everything I did here would be reversed like I’d never existed.
Taisia told me her brother had been conscripted. That her father died in the riots. That she hated Caesar.
I didn’t correct her when she assumed I was from Gaul. She didn’t ask why I flinched when she lit the oil lamp. I didn’t ask why she cried when the sun set.
With two hours left, I broke the final rule: I told her the truth.
She didn’t believe me, not at first. But then she touched the capsule hidden in my satchel—just before it started to hum.
That’s when she whispered:
“Then take me with you.”
And I hesitated.
Just one second.
And the capsule blinked red.
I wasn’t going back alone.
We were still holding hands when the world folded in on itself.
There’s no real way to describe what traveling between time feels like. You’re weightless, but not floating. Your body is there, and not there. There’s pressure behind your eyes, like you’re remembering something you never lived.
When we landed—in a locked storage unit three levels under the agency’s Rome lab—Taisia dropped to her knees.
She was gasping. Disoriented. Eyes wide at the cold metal walls, blinking neon lights, and the buzz of electricity overhead. I reached for her shoulder, and she jerked away.
“This is… where are we?” she whispered.
“It’s still Rome,” I said. “Just… two thousand years later.”
She stared at me like I’d just killed someone.
Then she stood. Slowly. Holding onto the wall. And then, surprisingly, she didn’t scream. She didn’t faint. She just whispered, “What now?”
And honestly, I didn’t know.
I tried to report in. Tried to come clean. But the second I activated my clearance badge, I saw the alert: Unauthorized Biological Transfer Detected. Disciplinary Hearing Pending.
We had hours. Maybe less.
“Taisia, we can’t stay here. They’ll separate us. I broke protocol bringing you.”
“So you leave me?” she asked quietly.
“No. I just… we need to hide.”
She blinked slowly. “You don’t even know how to live in your own time, do you?”
She wasn’t wrong. Everything I’d ever learned about this century—my century—was through the lens of time travel theory and mission protocol. I wasn’t exactly street smart.
But Taisia was. She’d survived riots. Military patrols. She’d traded on back alleys and knew how to disappear when she had to.
So that’s what we did.
We made it to the surface just after midnight. Rome was quiet. The real Rome. Modern Rome. Streetlights lit up wet cobblestone and Taisia stared at cars like they were demons.
I told her not to speak at first. Her Latin was classical, and even though there were still bits of it in the language now, she would stand out.
We found a cheap hostel on the outskirts. I paid cash. Told the manager we were traveling cousins from Albania. Taisia didn’t ask what that meant.
She was too busy standing under the running tap in our tiny bathroom, letting water pour over her hands like it was a miracle.
“I used to carry jugs for kilometers,” she said softly. “And this… it just falls out of the wall.”
I nodded, sitting on the edge of the bed, wondering how badly I’d just ruined both our lives.
The agency sent a message the next morning.
Return for debrief within 24 hours. If the unauthorized individual is not presented, you will face permanent exile from the Temporal Corps.
They didn’t mention what would happen to her. But they didn’t have to.
We packed before they could find us.
For three weeks, we moved between towns in northern Italy.
Taisia adapted fast. She learned modern Italian through YouTube and eavesdropping. She asked a million questions. About phones. About airplanes. About why people wore shoes indoors and why no one ever looked each other in the eye anymore.
At night, we’d lie in small rented rooms, whispering under thin blankets.
She’d ask me about the future. I’d ask her about the past.
She told me her mother had died in childbirth. That she’d once seen a lion tear a man’s arm off in the Colosseum.
I told her my mother worked two jobs and still couldn’t afford my college. That I joined the Corps to escape everything I didn’t want to fix.
And somehow, we fit. She made me feel… seen. Not just for the tech knowledge or my time travel rank—but as a person. She didn’t care where I was from. Only who I was becoming.
One morning in Florence, I woke up to find the bed empty.
The window was open. Her fig-colored shawl was gone.
Panic exploded in my chest.
I ran into the street barefoot, scanning crowds. I didn’t care how much I stood out. I just kept thinking: They found her. They took her. I lost her.
But she wasn’t gone.
She was across the street, crouching beside an old man whose bag had ripped open. Groceries scattered everywhere. She was helping him collect oranges from the gutter.
She looked up at me, smiling.
And in that moment, I realized something stupidly obvious.
She deserved to be here more than I did.
The next day, I turned myself in.
Alone.
They took me to a debrief cell—white walls, silver table, no windows. Agent Berris stood across from me, arms crossed.
“You brought her here,” he said without emotion.
“I did.”
“You know what happens next.”
“Actually,” I said, trying to steady my voice, “I have a deal to offer.”
That got his attention.
Two hours later, they agreed to my terms.
Taisia wouldn’t be deported. Wouldn’t be experimented on. Wouldn’t be imprisoned.
Instead, she’d be allowed to stay—as a cultural integration subject. Watched, yes. But free.
In exchange, I’d accept full disciplinary exile. No more time travel. No reinstatement. Permanent loss of rank and access.
A clean trade.
I never told Taisia what it cost.
We settled in Naples.
Taisia got a job helping at a cultural center for immigrant women. She spoke fluent Italian by then. People were drawn to her calmness, her clarity.
She had this way of making you feel like you belonged, no matter how strange you thought you were.
I started working in a second-hand bookstore.
No more missions. No more travel.
But for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I was running from anything.
It wasn’t a fairytale, though.
Taisia struggled with guilt. She missed the smell of smoke and thyme from her childhood courtyard. She missed the way Romans used to look up at the stars instead of burying their heads in glowing rectangles.
Sometimes I’d wake up to find her on the balcony, staring at the sky, murmuring prayers to gods no one believed in anymore.
But she never asked to go back.
And I never asked her to change.
One afternoon, maybe a year in, we were walking through an old flea market near the coast. Taisia paused at a table covered in antique jewelry.
She picked up a small bronze ring—weathered, but still holding shape.
I recognized the etching immediately.
It was Roman. First century. Maybe earlier.
She smiled and handed it to me.
“I think it found its way here,” she said. “Like me.”
I married her that fall.
Under olive trees. Barefoot. Small circle of friends. Nothing fancy.
Just promises.
And joy.
Years later, when we had a daughter—Liora—we told her bedtime stories about ancient Rome. About lions and figs and brave brothers who fought for freedom.
Taisia never told her the whole truth, not at first. But when Liora turned thirteen, she asked why her mother spoke Latin better than anyone in the world.
Taisia looked her in the eyes and said, “Because I came from a time where people had to fight for everything they loved.”
Looking back now, I realize I was never meant to be a perfect agent.
I wasn’t meant to follow orders blindly or exist like a ghost in other people’s centuries.
I was meant to break the rules—to save someone. And in doing that, I saved myself too.
Love, as it turns out, is the most powerful kind of time travel. It moves us into new versions of ourselves. It roots us in moments that matter.
And sometimes, it rewrites everything we thought we knew about the past and the future.
So yeah, I interfered.
But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
If life ever gives you the chance to change your entire future for someone who looks at you like that—don’t hesitate.
Just take their hand.
And jump.
