THIRD PERSON POV
As they walked their way across the desolate, snowy landscape, Heather Rand, Danny's mother, finally resumed her barrage of questions. Her voice, though still a little breathless from the exertion, held a renewed tenacity.
"So, Ryan, how old are you?" she asked, her gaze fixed on the young boy beside her.
"I'm ten and a half years old, born on July 7th, 1997," Ryan answered, his tone even, already accustomed to the strange rhythm of her inquiries.
"Did you save me from those wolves?" she pressed, a flicker of raw terror in her eyes as the memory surfaced.
"Yes," Ryan confirmed, his voice calm.
"What about my injuries? How did you heal them so completely?" Heather continued, her gaze dropping to her miraculously unblemished arms, then back to him, a profound wonder mixing with her disbelief. "How is that even possible?"
Ryan paused, weighing his words. "I used a special experimental medicine made by my parents," he explained, simplifying the complex truth.
"What kind of medicine?" she asked, her eyebrows shooting up, clearly expecting a more elaborate answer.
Really, you want to do this right now? Ryan thought, a wave of exhaustion washing over him. Explaining his parents' cutting-edge bio-alchemy was definitely not a conversation he was prepared for while trekking through the mountains.
"I don't know, you'll have to ask my parents about it," he replied, trying to sound as dismissive as possible. He hoped to deflect the topic, to get her to move on.
"Where are they?" she persisted, her questions relentless.
Ryan sighed, a long, weary sound lost to the wind. There was no stopping her, he realized. Heather Rand was a force of nature when she wanted answers. So, instead of trying to evade, he decided to embrace honesty, knowing this was going to be a very, very long walk.
"At our home in New York, probably reporting my disappearance to the police," Ryan answered, the words escaping before he could fully consider their implication.
Heather Rand stopped abruptly, her steps faltering in the snow. Her eyes, wide with sudden realization, locked onto his. "So, you're here alone?" she asked, the question barely a whisper, laced with incredulity and dawning alarm.
"Yes," Ryan confirmed, meeting her gaze steadily.
"You saved me from the wolves by yourself?" she pressed, her voice rising with disbelief. The image of a ten-year-old fighting off a pack of snarling beasts was impossible to reconcile.
"Yes," he confirmed again, a slight weariness in his tone.
"Are you all right?" she asked, her gaze sweeping over his small frame, searching for any hidden injuries. A frantic wave of concern washed over her.
"There were some injuries, but I used the same medicine I gave you, so I'm all right now," Ryan said, demonstrating by moving his arms and legs, a fluid, unhindered motion that clearly impressed her.
Thank god! Heather thought, a profound wave of relief washing over her.
"So, who piloted the helicopter?" she asked, the question hanging in the cold air.
"It was me, of course," Ryan replied, a hint of his usual nonchalance in his voice.
Are all ten-year-olds so monstrously capable these days? Heather thought, her mind reeling. She already knew the answer; this boy was clearly not normal, not by any stretch of the imagination.
"So what are you doing here?" she finally asked the question that had been burning inside her since she woke up. "And how do you know Danny? Is he alright?" Her voice cracked with the last question, the maternal fear for her son overriding everything else.
"To explain that, I'll have to start from the beginning," Ryan said after a moment of thoughtful consideration, knowing this was the moment of truth.
"You see, the Danny that you know and the one that I know are not exactly the same," he began, watching her reaction closely.
"What do you mean?" Heather couldn't help but question, her confusion deepening. His statement was baffling.
"Mrs. Rand, have you ever heard of time travel?" Ryan asked, his eyes serious.
Heather looked at him, perplexed by his question. Time travel? The concept struck her, making her pause in the middle of the snowy path. A few moments later, her face drained of color, and she stopped completely, looking at him in utter shock as the implications of his words slammed into her.
"No way!!" she gasped, the words choked out, barely audible above the wind.
"Looks like you realized," Ryan said, a faint, almost grim, smile touching his lips, confirming her wildest suspicions. "Yes, I am from the future. Not physically, but my future self transmitted his memories to me back in time."
"What does it have to do with Danny?" Heather asked, her voice trembling, her thoughts racing to comprehend this impossible revelation and how it connected to her son.
"In the memories of my future self, Danny and I were close friends, more like siblings, actually," Ryan explained, his gaze distant for a moment, lost in the echoes of another time. "We both trained under the same martial arts teacher for years."
"Because of some reasons, I knew I might have a chance to change the past, to alter a crucial event," Ryan continued, his voice taking on a serious, almost ancient tone. "So Danny and I made a promise that if I ever got the chance, I would do my best to save his parents, to prevent what happened to them in my timeline."
"Unfortunately," he added, a note of regret in his voice, "when I received those memories, your plane had already left New York, already crashed. So the best I could do was try to save you. Danny had shown me the suspension bridge where you separated with him—that was the place I aimed to find you." Ryan finished his story, watching her face for her reaction.
"What happens to my Danny now?" Heather asked, her voice raw with concern, her focus immediately snapping back to her son. The larger implications of time travel were momentarily forgotten in her maternal anxiety.
"Don't worry about him," Ryan said, a subtle, almost imperceptible smirk touching his lips as he corrected himself. "That lucky bas— cough, boy will live and will be saved by some monks and taken to K'un-Lun, where your husband was taking you."
"That's great," Heather said, a wave of profound relief washing over her, easing the heavy knot of fear in her chest.
She vaguely registered him trying to call her son a "lucky bastard," but the overwhelming relief overshadowed any real offense. She just clutched her coat tighter, her heart lighter than ever it had been since she woke up.