History_

Written by_
AmericanLyokoTeam_

Thanks for a brilliant world to play with:_
Moonscoop_

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their_
respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author_
is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No_
copyright infringement is intended_

***

A curtain of light, the visible element of a fold in space/time expanded through the house and suddenly the five of them were sitting in Aelita’s room in the old house again an hour earlier.
“Everybody remembers everything, right?” Jeremie asked with a hint of worry.
“Yeah, it worked” Ulrich answered, prompting Jeremie to sigh relief.
“I’ve gotta go get that envelope again” Odd exclaimed. “Give me a few.”
“I need some air, while he’s at it” Ulrich excused himself, ambling outside.
“What did it say?” Aelita asked, “I hadn’t quite caught up.”
“All I saw was the labeling reading “Project Carthage.” Jeremie shrugged. “I don’t know if it’ll even have anything new or useful.”

Odd returned waving the envelope and threw it on the de-legged tabletop sitting in the center of the room. “Crack it open Einstein, let’s see what’s in there.”
Jeremie broke the seal on the large envelope and a large yellowed folder and several faded pictures slid out. He immediately opened it up and spread the material out on the worn legless coffee table.
“Yeesh, no documents of any kind, just old pictures.” He sighed.
“There were names on the back, but they’ve faded off.” Aelita frowned, pointing to smearing on the back of a picture of a group of scientists.
“Unfortunately Franz never recorded much about Carthage in his diary. Just that he later wanted to destroy it.” Jeremie explained, “I was hoping maybe to get some insight into what happened.”
“I see Franz in several of these” Odd pointed. “Do we know any of the rest of these people?”
“Not a clue” Jeremie shrugged, sorting through the pile.
He came across a different photograph, not a group picture or an official looking personnel photo, but a single portrait.
“Franz again, but” Jeremie started.
Odd whistled, impressed, and they all leaned in to have a look. “She’s quite the looker. Is that?”
Aelita mouthed the words, but had suddenly lost her voice.
“Aelita’s mother.” Yumi voiced.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
“Aelita are you all right?” Jeremie finally asked, with concern.
“No.” She answered, still looking stunned, “I mean, I’m- I’d forgotten about her in the rush to get papa back. I can’t even remember all that clearly.”
“Where is she?” Yumi asked, trying to impart calm.
“Gone. She left when I was still very young, I don’t remember asking and papa never answered anyway.”
“Did she… die?” Jeremie asked.
“Jeremie, don’t say such horrible things!” Yumi admonished him.
Aelita shot him a terrible look, but rather than even trying to explain she just got up and ran away.
“And Einstein botches another one” Odd rolled his eyes.
“Should I… Should I go after her?”
“Might be a good idea” Odd offered, sarcasm heavy on his voice.
Jeremie, surprised and stunned himself now, got up and stumbled out the door.
Odd continued to flip the photographs, but something caught his eye.
“Hey Yumi, this one with the investors in the project, this guy, doesn’t he look a little… familiar?”
Yumi too was taken with the face. It stood out even in the two rows of businessmen in sharp suits. “If I didn’t know better I would swear that was-”

Aelita sped past Ulrich who was standing out front admiring the sun setting.
“Whoa, princess, where you running to in such a hurry?” he called out.
She stopped briefly to give a haunted look back at him.
“You’ll be back in an hour either way, you know.” Ulrich offered.
Aelita continued to make her way into the woods.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t listen to me either.” Ulrich sighed.
Jeremie came out the door a moment later looking little better.
“Did Aelita pass this way?”
Ulrich gestured off toward the woods. “You must have done something bad, she looked terrible.”
“Somehow I keep saying the wrong thing. It’s amazing she forgives me.”
“Yeah, I think so too, but then you’ve already proven you’re capable of apologizing pretty well. Give her a little time and go to it.”
“Thanks, Ulrich.” Jeremie waved, setting off.
Ulrich put his hands in his pockets and looked to the setting sun again.
“Wasn’t it her idea to come out here to reduce worry and stress?”
It was only moments before Odd and Yumi were in the doorway shouting for his attention.
“Hey Ulrich, come here, you gotta see this! Maybe you can settle this for us.”

---

Aelita stumbled out from the rough woods to the familiar trail running through the territory, where it shifted more from wilderness to a park. She kept her mind a blank, focused everything on an animal desire to avoid remembering her history. Familiar footfalls carried her toward a hint of civilization, with buildings and homes visible through the edge of the wooded lands. It wasn’t far from there back to Kadic, and she snuck on to the grounds just as the sun’s last band was falling over the horizon. Not until she was seated back behind a building on an obscure new bench did she stop to try and recall her youth. She could only pull obscure snapshots from her mind, pictures of her mother’s face and a peaceful time with the whole family. As if overnight her mother dropped from her life, and as she turned her thoughts to the more recent years before her ill-fated journey to Lyoko, she hardly remembered thinking on the subject. Shock finally turned to frustration and then simply to sadness and shed tears. The exacts were a mystery, but she knew she was even less likely to ever find her mother than her father. She was caught by surprise when a voice from behind snapped her back to attention.
“Miss Einstein? What’s wrong with you?” a bossy tone demanded.
Aelita took a deep breath and tried her best to avoid looking like she wanted to cry more. “Oh, Sissi. Just go away.”
Sissi sat next to her on the bench despite the request, but softened in tone considerably “No, I thought I was having a bad day, but then you’re out alone crying. Couldn’t even turn to your boyfriend, huh?”
Aelita really didn’t want to discuss it with anybody, but Sissi refused to go even after a minute of silence. “He doesn’t understand what’s wrong about what he says sometimes. He can’t help it.”
“Slow down, start from the beginning”
Aelita held her temples trying to think of how to explain the situation. “We found… an old photograph of my mother. She left when I was very young and I never found out what happened. He couldn’t understand that I wanted at least the hope she was still out there somewhere. It’s unfair, he couldn’t know how it feels.”
Sissi looked at her shoes. “You’d be surprised who could.”
“I – what?” Aelita asked, taken aback.
“This week is bad for me too, you see. When I was barely in school my mother died. Something genetic. Every time the anniversary comes around I can’t help but feel it’s unfair.” Sissi looked up, and thought better. “You don’t share that with anyone, you hear me?” she said, getting demanding again.
“Of course.”
Satisfied, Sissi turned and strode off around the corner, into the lamplight and back toward the main building. Truthfully, Aelita did feel better, just knowing that even the most unexpected person could understand her for a moment. Jeremie from the direction of the fence, stopping breathlessly next to her perch, winded for a moment, he looked down, but when he did gaze up, his face was already a mask of apology. He started to open his mouth to say something when Aelita shook her head with a smile, and began running away, back toward the woods. They beat the expanding light of the return trip back by only a few moments, and watch as it enveloped through the door and took the rest of the house.

---

Ulrich looked to Aelita, trying to sagely judge her mood, and decided it was all right to comment. “Told you you’d be back. Or do you even remember?”
“When did you get all snarky anyway?” Odd looked at him quizzically “You’re stepping on my territory here.”
“We made it back. I’m fine, thank you, by the way” Aelita responded to Ulrich, a little indignation creeping into her quavering voice.
Ulrich gave a little half salute “Would have kept my mouth shut if I needed to. I have to go retrieve Odd’s envelope for a third time anyway. I think they were on to something.”
Yumi was alert and awake enough to catch his ‘come on’ gesture, and Odd followed at the mention of his name, leaving Aelita and Jeremie again.
“Help me, Aelita, help me see what was wrong with what I said?”
She had stopped crying before the return trip, but the emotion still sat heavily in her lungs, ready to continue. “You’re an idiot sometimes, you know that.” She fumed in a still quavering voice
“I know that. I’m not always good with people- I’m rarely good with people. I am good enough to know to really and truly ask and listen to what’s wrong.”
She took a deep breathe, “If you had a parent die, but didn’t know it, would you want to be sure even if it meant the worst?”
“I would. To me knowledge is my strength.”
“But?”
“But that leaves no hope.” Jeremie answered, wheels turning in his brain.
“Hope is my strength.”
“And if hope is your strength.” Jeremie landed at the conclusion easily with her help. Somehow Aelita always made understanding human behavior like any other equation of nature to him. He’d be lost without her sometimes.
“You’re an idiot.”
“I know. Can you forgive me?”
“For being an idiot?”
“For taking your hope. Both actually.”
“Today was supposed to be about.” She paused, clearing her head and heaving another sigh, “About renewing hope. I think I helped the others.”
“I only posed a question, by the way. Could your mother possibly still be out there?”
“No. When you asked, you forced me to think through it. She probably had a stroke, or got cancer. The only reason I could think for her to disappear from memory like that would be if she spent all her time in hospitals and I was never taken to see her. Papa always did tend to shelter me.” Jeremie thought her reasoning needlessly dark, but the only things that came to mind for him to explain a similar disappearance were even worse, and he decided to avoid sharing.
“So what made it ok so fast?”
“It’s not ok, you’re an idiot, but I will live. I was granted to chance to see that I’m not the only one who ever had this happen just before you caught up.”
By now they were back to both sitting on the couch. Still on opposite ends, but talking and in no danger of either party leaving or running away. Aelita’s last words were too cryptic for Jeremie, and he could not answer them, instead waiting for her to start again.
“Yes.” She finally said after a long silence.
“Uh?”
“Yes I can eventually forgive you for loss of a little hope. You’ve given me enough in return, and I would have had to face facts eventually.”
“Thank you” Jeremie answered humbly.
“You’ll always be an idiot though.” She said, more out of a need to vent than meaning it. He was smart enough to pick up on that.
“I know.”

---

“This is the coolest coincidence ever, pretty much since you got me thrown into Lyoko trying to shanghai my dog, Ulrich.” Odd answered, eyes wide.
“I’m still not one hundred percent sure, but it sure looks exactly like…” He trailed off.
Yumi smiled with encouragement; glad she had caught such a small detail when it was first laid in front of her. A shell was no way to react to the world, when little things like this might pass by she reasoned, and resolved to thank Aelita in any way possible for this evening.
“So we basically have to show this to Einstein and the Princess.” Odd said, still looking on, “Well, technically, they’ve seen in, but-”
Ulrich curbed his enthusiasm, “We know Odd, let them be until the next return trip. They need the time like all the rest of us.”
“How many more are we going to run through?” Odd asked, something suddenly coming to the front of his mind.
“Two or three. We’re not getting any sleep, and the shock of waking up at the business end of a return to the past is, well you know, it’s not much fun. We have to stop and get a real night of sleep eventually.” Yumi answered for him
“Fine by me.” Odd answered, pacing a bit.
Ulrich didn’t want to let a beat go by, and kept the conversation going, “We should make this a ritual. A weekly thing maybe.”
“Up to Aelita, but I’d be for it. It’s time to catch up with everybody that nobody else can interfere with.” Yumi answered him, not telling that she’d been thinking the same thing. “No other time for that, as I’m going to get straight A’s if it kills me.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, you know” Ulrich answered, a grin helplessly coming to his face. He did his best to look away.
Odd rolled his eyes, but never had the chance to deliver his sarcasm as the return trip wave hit him.

---

“Told you you’d be back.” Ulrich said without hesitation.
“No, we did that one already” Odd laughed. “Nobody move, I’ll go get it.” he continued, already racing out of the door to the old top floor sitting room and toward the attic.
“Seriously, are you all right?” Yumi asked, turning a glance to Aelita, who had moved to sitting across the couch from Jeremie.
“She’ll forgive me.” Jeremie said with a small smile and a pleasant tone. Yumi was relived when Aelita didn’t correct him, and knew things would be ok between them again soon.
“All right, then you two have got to see this.”
Odd was already racing back into the room, fumbling with the metal brad seal on the folder “We don’t know for sure because of the lack of names, but Ulrich said-” He tripped, but with grace and aplomb managed to throw the folder and land it on the broken table several feat in front of him.
“Bet you can’t do that one again” Ulrich laughed.
Odd pried himself up rubbing his forehead. “We’ll see about that in about an hour, explain it to them.”
“Ok, look at this photograph. It’s a complete staff for Project Carthage. Not just the scientists, but also the government and military liaisons, and especially the private investors. See this man? The one with the stiff haircut, German suit.”
“Looks like I imagine you-” Jeremie commented, but cut himself short. “Ulrich, that’s not-”
“I can’t be sure, but god help me, it’s every picture of my father I’ve ever seen.”