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The dim, smog-filled streets of Future London feel like a dream that obscures Luke’s usually sharp sense of direction. As a city boy, he possesses a specific kind of nose for knowing what goes where, and being his playground, the maps of London and its rail network are deeply imprinted on his brain. Here, however, he’s turned around. No matter how homely the place feels – he’s certain this is London – he just can’t quite get a handle on what is where, and where things once used to be.
With that in mind, he makes a brave attempt to stop himself from latching onto Luke’s arm – the Luke from the future, that is. Big Luke, as he’s coming to be known, but in Little Luke’s mind, he’s bitterly thought of as simply Future Luke. After all, he’s not that little if he’s destined to be Future Luke anyway, right? His logic had gone over the professor’s head when he’d declared it so, but that’s fine. As long as they’re on their own, investigating the streets of Future London for clues to help unravel this predicament, the towering boy beside him will be known as Future Luke. No big or little about the situation, but it does prompt a question…
With his youthful, shining eyes, the obvious question that falls from his lips sounds even more thoughtless. “How old are you, again? They call you Big Luke, but you’re not much bigger than me, are you?”
A small, pursed smile appears on Future Luke’s face, and he makes a reactionary step back at Luke’s rather accusatory tone. Hey, he’s not the one who came up with the nickname, so what’s the kid getting so worked up over? He looks down at the boy with a brief pause, finger idling against his chin.
“Well, it’s...a little obvious, isn’t it? Come on, use your head. We’re ten years into the future, here.”
Luke looks blank for a moment, before erupting in a silent gesticulation of realisation. Of course, it is a bit of a dense question when he thinks about it. Ten years on from now, that would make Future Luke…
“Huh,” Luke hums, looking the other boy, or he supposes man, up and down with sceptical intrigue. “That would make you twenty-three…? But you certainly don’t look that old!”
If Future Luke wasn’t offended before, then he definitely is now. His eyes flatten humourlessly, but the low, easygoing smile on his face doesn’t fade. He tugs his hat further over his head as he allows the unpleasant answer to steep in the conversation just a little bit more. That’s awfully cheeky coming from such an eager boy like him. Then again, he does seem encouraged to speak his mind more often than not with the professor around.
“You’ll find as you get older,” Future Luke tells him softly, “that you’ll always feel quite young. I suppose it warps your perspective of maturity. Thirteen years old seems rather old to any child, but at my age, you seem far younger than thirteen should be, if that makes any sense at all.”
Luke pouts, because all he’d really gleaned from that was that thirteen is akin to being a toddler. He folds his arms, hoping there will be a swift rectification on that front, and says, "Thirteen is perfectly old enough! Gosh, you make it sound like I’m just a baby. I’m a teenager! So, I’m a ways off adulthood yet, but I’m hardly incapable.”
Future Luke chuckles, stifling an offensive amount of mirth into his hand. “And I thought the very same thing when I was your age, but now I’m older, and I still feel young compared to many of my peers, and I realise looking back at you how young I really was. It’s bizarre, isn’t it? That’s not to say you’re incompetent – I think it’d be rather rude of me to say that about my own younger self – but what you see in yourself and what I see in you are very different things.”
“Oh, really?” Luke says, charged and almost aggressive in tone, as if begging for a rebuttal. This just draws a greater laugh from Future Luke, who tries to look at Luke fondly rather than patronisingly.
“I think what I mean to say is that when you reach twenty-three, you’ll see how young you are in the grand scheme of things. So, by that point, thirteen will seem positively tiny by comparison. The time will fly by, though. Ten years seems like a long time, but it isn’t.”
Luke neatly sidesteps an oncoming passer-by, and loops around to meet Future Luke on his other side, which wedges him between Future Luke and a shop window full of stuffed toys, where he drops his pace to gaze at it. “I suppose you’re right. I hear it from the professor all the time – where did all the time go? But it doesn’t seem so quick to me.”
“Don’t forget, ten years ago for you, you were only three years old! And I’ll bet the professor remembers you in those ten years quite well. So, just another one of those, and then you’ll be me. Erm, I suppose it is a bit daunting to think about, isn’t it?”
Luke runs a palm over his face, and takes a moment to brush a few stray locks of hair back under his hat. “Cor, it is, isn’t it? Almost like a puzzle. It’s awfully strange to hear what you think of me now. Alright, so you might be a bit taller, but it doesn’t look like I’ve changed that much! I thought we were rather alike, you know.”
Future Luke briefly emits a noise of uncertainty before he’s forced to reply with a grimace, “Well, that’s...it doesn’t seem like it, but the ten year stretch between thirteen and twenty-three is...definitely pivotal. If you think thirteen is bringing you all kinds of changes, just you wait.”
“That sounds...pessimistic.”
“Hey, I’m just telling you the truth,” Future Luke grins. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Luke tilts his head, and curtly, mischievously, asks, “What year was the worst?”
Future Luke unexpectedly replies, “What, for me?” as if Luke could’ve been asking a very different person. He stews over the question whilst they wait to cross the road, where the traffic lights shine faintly through the orange, brick-dust smoke that ripples from the nearby roadworks. Luke watches him keenly in order to gauge his answer before Future Luke can even give it, but from this angle, all Future Luke has to do is turn the other way, and his face is perfectly obscured.
Eventually, he says, “Thirteen.”
Luke blinks. “But...that’s this year.”
Future Luke pulls a face of discomfort, but says nothing, momentarily grabbing Luke’s hand to steer him out of the way of some construction workers passing by with their wheelbarrows.
Hawkish in his stare, Luke testily clarifies, “You said that the ten year stretch between now and twenty-three is—”
“Every year seems like the worst year until you’re old enough to make that decision retroactively,” Future Luke cuts him off smoothly, looking down on Luke with a faint glimmer of humour in his eyes. “It’ll certainly seem bad when you’re going through it, but from my perspective, thirteen is...definitely my worst year.”
Luke doesn’t pull away from Future Luke’s grip, instead shuffling closer towards him to allow even more people free use of the pavement beside him. Watching his shoes kick up dust as they round a street corner and slip off down a narrower street, he chews his lip in thought. It’s both a relief to hear that the hardest part will be over and done with before the year is out, but that leaves him with the glaringly obvious concern of what will make this so memorable. Of course, he can already foretell the reason why. After all, it’s been on his mind all this time, stonily peering over the shoulder of his usual thoughts.
“So, it’s...going to be difficult,” he says in a tone so hushed that were they still walking down the busy main street they were a few moments ago, Future Luke surely would’ve missed it.
Disembodied when Luke doesn’t look up, Future Luke replies rather hollowly, “I’m afraid so. Well, from where I’m standing, it is. Perhaps you’ll...change your mind when you’re even older than me.”
Luke doesn’t comment on the twinge of hopefulness he could swear he’d heard in those words, and keeps his gaze firmly fixed to the cobblestone paving beneath him. “So, to you, what...what was it like? What was it like to be thirteen?”
Without missing a beat, Future Luke answers, “Lonely.” Then, as if to correct himself, he clears his throat and gives Luke a gentle nudge on the shoulder, “But it wasn’t for very long. Well, I...I’m not really sure how to explain it. I suppose at the time I felt despairingly lonely, but when I look back on it, I think...I had more than I thought I did.”
“I see,” Luke says reservedly. “So, it’s like one of those things where it feels terrible in the moment, but when you look back you realise it wasn’t quite so bad.”
Future Luke opens his mouth to reply, but words fail him. He stammers over a response for quite a while, enough to draw them both to a stop, where Luke finally lets go of his hand. Eventually, after taking a moment to quieten himself, Future Luke says, “I don’t think I have the answer you’re looking for here, Luke.”
Luke isn’t one to be stopped when he’s looking for something in particular, so paying no mind to Future Luke’s hesitance, he barges on and eagerly asks, “Did you...did you wish that the professor would come back to you?”
Though he pauses, Future Luke’s answer is intensely resolute when he says, “Yes.”
Luke nods soberly, feet shifting nervously against the stones beneath him. He’s old enough to recognise the muted despondency on Future Luke’s face, but too young to ascertain why that could be – and in Future Luke’s eyes, far too removed from the truth to ever figure it out on his own.
That’s why it takes him by some surprise when Luke takes his hand once more, placidly this time, and edges closer towards him. They way he cranes his neck to look directly upwards at him suggests some kind of reverence, but his smile is bouncy and carefree despite how anxious he seems to be.
“S’alright,” he assures. “Since I’m you, and you’re me, I know just what will cheer us both up! There’s a good sandwich shop right round the corner from here – or there is in my time. Do you think it’s still there now?”
Future Luke blinks as if blinking the very misery out of his eyes, and his face blooms into contentment. “I daresay it is, and good as it always was. Ha ha, what would I do if that place shut down? Well, I suppose there’s always Paillard.”
“And Anita! Those baguettes are nothing to sneeze at.”
Future Luke laughs, albeit quietly, and his grip on Luke’s little hand tightens. “Don’t you sound like a regular? You’re fitting right in already.”
They continue walking further down the path, soles of their shoes scraping the moss from the cobblestones with every step, and for the time being, all thought of work has been replaced by the solace of food – and if Luke had to guess, he’d suspect it’s a sorely-needed respite.
“Me? Psh. London will always be my home, whether that’s ten, twenty or thirty years into the future! I don’t think there could be a London that I wouldn’t fit into. Not even if it were just a pile of burning rubble!”
Against his innocence, and the joyous, soothing thought of a full stomach, Luke doesn’t suspect the narrowing of eyes from the person beside him. Their grip is tentative, but not unwanted by either of them, and though Future Luke feels it disingenuous to reply for the sake of his younger counterpart, he hopes maybe it’ll take the edge off what he knows will be a very tough year. After all, thirteen is widely regarded as the unluckiest number – that much he’s seen for himself. Away from Luke’s attention, he manages one very sombre smile.
“I’m...glad you can still feel at home in the wreckage of what things were. Not many people can manage that, Luke.”
Luke thinks about it for a moment. What he wants to say is that slabs of broken concrete and flames don’t compare to losing flesh and blood, and that he’d always be happy in the remains of a broken home so long as he still had his family to share it with, but just thinking about it intensifies the unfortunate truth that his home is moving, and to a place where one person cannot follow. With that in mind, how much of a home can it really be?
He’s too distracted to make that point, though. In one part because the gorgeous smell of savoury sandwiches beckons him from across the way, and in another because he can’t quite shake the rather impersonal feeling he gets when being referred to by name.
Why, when Future Luke says it like that, it really is like they’re completely different people.