Counterclockwise

Simon figures it's best to leave Noel alone for now. He fucked up first impressions, and maybe he can try and walk that back later, or maybe he'll get a better picture from a place of authority. Unfortunately, the way time travel works doesn't let you undo actions. If it did, they could just prevent the Rift, but nothing is ever, ever, ever simple.

So he goes and sorts the papers, and that's an easy task, relaxing, taking his mind off of the stressful situation of being seventy years in the past and worrying about fucking up the timeline. What if pissing Noel off means he does burn down 10 Downing Street on purpose, and then the Rift never opens? Maybe that's better, but does that split a timeline and solve nothing, does it change the timeline and mean he never went back and then paradox, and if it's a paradox, what does that mean? Does he disappear from existence? Is time broken? Is the world over? Will timelines collapse in on themselves in a blaze of dark matter and cold inferno?

It was made clear that it's a distinct possibility.

"Hey. Sorry about my brother."

The voice that breaks him out of his own anxious time loop is soft. He looks up, and there's Lee, leaning against the doorway. Simon's surprised that Noel doesn't listen more to his brother, considering that Lee is easily giving off what Simon would read as cool, especially with a musical voice like that.

Simon sits up straighter. "No, it's fine. I should apologise for coming out swinging like that."

Lee shakes his head. "I wish people came out swinging against him more often."

Lee comes into the room and sits across from Simon; Simon was sitting on the floor, arranging papers in piles on every side of himself, but Lee sits on the couch, leaning down to make eye contact on the same level. "So you're Mum's new assistant?"

There's an edge of nervousness in the way that Simon's hands shake so slightly that he's the only person who might notice. "I forgot to say that, but I suppose it's not hard to work out."

"And I suppose part of your job is working miracles, then?" When Simon looks at him, raises an eyebrow, Lee smiles. "As in, trying to keep Noel out of trouble."

"That bad, huh? Your mother did seem pretty exasperated about the whole situation."

"Yeah. He's, um," Lee says with a bitten lip, "well, he probably needs a therapist more than anything."

Simon sees frost, white mist rising from a gash in the earth. The Rift will have only a hundred or so known victims; most people will have plenty of time to evacuate, since it's only going to be getting about a few metres larger every year. The problem is that its rate of growth will be ever increasing, not slowing down, and the only hope they'll have to stop it is- well, Simon, getting back alive with an in-depth report of how the power that created it works.

If only he was allowed to change the past. How simple it might have been: just one therapist.

"Is that a thing you've tried?" Simon asks, careful- because as much as it would be horrible to learn that the Rift could've been prevented that simply, giving Lee the idea is potentially far worse.

"Oh, yeah." So scratch that. "He gets too angry, and he comes back acting like they haven't listened to him."

"Right." Simon nods slowly. "That's a tough one, I suppose." Despite anything he might want to say, it's important that he be relatively boring, providing no ideas and leaving no impressions. He cannot leave a mark on history. Leon Spencer may sit across from him, looking into his eyes and exchanging real words with him, but he will die in the Rift. Simon cannot save him, cannot warn him, cannot change what happens.