Kindred Fan Fiction

“I could feel the knife in my hand, still slippery with perspiration. A slave was a slave. Anything could be done to her. And Rufus was Rufus…” (Butler 260)

I would not allow him this. No matter the consequences, I needed to leave. I had escaped last time with my life, just barely. There was no telling whether I would be as lucky this time or not. But if I did stay, if I accepted Rufus as my lover, as my master what would I have left? My life, yes. But my autonomy, my freedom, my last shred of self I had managed to hang onto all this time in Rufus’ world – what would come of those?

I twisted away from him sharply, but he caught my side. The light breaking through the cracks in the attic wall glinted off my knife and reflected off the glassy surface of Rufus’ eyes. They turned to me and pleaded me not to. Not demanded, as a master would, but begged me, as a child. I brought the knife down anyway, plunging it into my side. I thought I knew where to aim well enough to avoid the major organs. I had seen a picture once that diagramed the abdomen. But it was home now, far away, hidden in one of the many books still waiting to be unpacked in my and Kevin’s apartment. The jab itself has been more or less a guess, my idea of where exactly I had stabbed myself as distant as the book back in 1976.

But the pain was present, and it was strong. Then suddenly the dizziness hit. I was aware of a searing pain in my gut, of Rufus’ hands clamped on my arms shaking me in anger. The darkness grew around me, the sounds of Rufus’ screams began to fade but the pressure of his hands around my body remained strong. He was not letting go. Why didn’t he let go?

            I awoke on the kitchen floor back in our apartment. Kevin was rifling through the cabinets muttering desperate obscenities. He had left the water running in the kitchen sink. My side suddenly erupted in pain and I let out a moan, reaching my hand down to the wound and finding thick ruby blood seeping onto my shirt.

            At that Kevin turned and brought a kitchen rag soaked in warm water to my wound.

            “What the hell were you thinking, Dana?”

            “I know, I know I swore I wouldn’t try again, but there was nothing else I could do, I couldn’t just…” My voice trailed off, as the pain in my abdomen overwhelmed my thoughts.

            “Not that,” Kevin said. “I, I understand. I mean, I can try to. But why would you bring him back?”

            My heart jumped, and then suddenly I remembered. The way Rufus had gripped my arms after I had plunged the knife into my side. The way he had shook me in anger, how his grip had only tightened as the darkness grew around us. I suddenly became aware of another presence in the room.

            “Help me up,” I said. Kevin finished bandaging my wound and then dragged me to the kitchen cabinet where I could be propped up and observe the rest of the apartment. There he was, face down on the living room floor, his red hair disheveled, looking as dead as he did the night I found him drunk in the puddle after the storm.

            “Is he…?”

            “No,” Kevin said, shaking his head. “I checked earlier, once I was sure you’d be okay. He was breathing fine. I think he’s passed out. The shock of the journey maybe? You didn't last long on your first trip either, remember?”

            I glanced at Rufus lying on our rug, just across the room from our television, and an electric lamp. Seeing him in his brown trousers and leather boots, in contrast with the room around him, I realized now how ridiculous I had looked in my men’s clothing to everyone back in Rufus’ time. When he slept I could almost forgive him, forget what he had done – or tried to do. Asleep, that red hair belonged to the little boy I once saved from the river, not the man who would grow to keep his own children from freedom, the man who would drive the woman he loved to take her own life, just to teach her a lesson. For a moment I forgot all this.

But this was wrong. Something was wrong. Rufus should not be here. Rufus, and everything he had done, all the evils that existed back in his time; they had no place in the present. Wasn’t that true?

I had gone back. That was how it had always worked. I had stomached the past because I knew how it ended, I knew that it would stay there, that I was safe here in my own time.

But had I been wrong? After all, the scabs the whip had left still itched my back and bled when I was not careful. My jaw still ached from where Tom Weylin’s boot had met my cheek. If the pain could follow me back, could cling onto me through time, why couldn’t the man who had caused it?

It felt so wrong to see him lying there. And yet there he was. Nothing had stopped him from following me to the present. The great distance that once separated my own life from Rufus’ had vanished. But had it ever really been there? Or was it always just a veil that separated the two, a veil so thin that all it took was Rufus’ touch to tear it. I had thought more had separated us. I had thought more had existed between the violence of his world and my own. But now I realized we had just never noticed how truly close we were. How little it took to bring back the past, no matter how long forgotten we thought it was.

I shuddered as Rufus stirred across the room. We would have to find a way to send him back. I was not sure how we would, if it was even possible. But somehow I knew, that even if we succeeded, even if we expelled him from the present, I would never be able to shake the memory of him lying on my living room floor. I would never be able to forget his presence here in my own apartment, a place I had once considered safe. Rufus was a part of my past, this I had always understood. But now, I saw, he was also a part of my present.

Authors Note:

In the novel, Dana engages frequently with the past, bringing back with her many battle wounds when she returns to the present. However, interaction rarely occurs the other way around - the past rarely engages with the future. At the end of the novel, Dana and Kevin struggle with the ephemerality of their memories. Even though Dana is physically maimed from her last journey back in time, she and Kevin still question whether or not the time travel had actually taken place and they seek physical proof within their own time to assure themselves that it had. 

Butler's end to the novel makes the past appear distant: it has the ability to scar, but not to linger. I wanted Dana to be confronted with a different reality - the idea that perhaps the past is not as far away as it seems, that the traces of the past might remain as more than scars, and actually have a physical presence in her world - and see how Dana would react to this notion.