fandomhigh | So You Just Met Your Relative From The Future, Friday

"Welcome back, everyone," Ben said with an easy grin. "Hopefully your weeks were less eventful than the weekend, though my daughter certainly enjoyed streaking around our room." Ben paused. "She's a year old, so it wasn't weird."

Obi-Wan repressed a smile. "The most straightforward unexpected family event you may suffer on Fandom is the appearance of a relative at the Welcome Picnic," he said. "If you are lucky - or depending on the circumstances, not so - it will be the relative you know, from the same time that you came in on, and the same place."

Ben nodded. "If you're not so lucky--and trust me on this one because it happened to me--you meet one who doesn't know the trauma they're going to hit a few months or years down the road."

"How does one deal with that?" Obi-Wan said. "Say, you know a relative will perish within the next two years - and there they are, alive and well, unknowing of what fate might befall them. Or perhaps they'll fall ill, or have some terrible brush with danger. Do you tell them? How?"

"And how do you deal with it if nothing changes, either if you tell them or keep it to yourself?" Ben added. "You know, the easy questions."

"It is best to be prepared, just in case," Obi-Wan said. "We would like you to discuss this in the hypothetical, and consider if there is anyone you know who might put you in such a situation."

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So, you meet a relative who's a few years behind you, and you know something terrible's going to happen to them in the future. What do you do?

Velma was starting to think that this class might have been a mistake. It assumed she liked her family. Or had a lot of it. She'd signed up thinking it was a cutesy title for a class around alternate realities, but...

What was she supposed to say? Abeulo, wear pants when you watch TV in your comfy chair so when you have your heart attack at sixty, you're found in more than a tank top and tighty-whiteys? It was easier when she substituted old teammates in for family; she'd lost more than her fair share of those. Hell, she'd lost six within the first two years of joining the Junior Super Patriots, WCD. That had still been a tragedy, even the ones she didn't like.

"I guess I'd ask if they wanted to know," she said with a shrug. "Go from there."

"Most people react to such a question with curiosity," Obi-Wan noted, "Regardless of whether they genuinely wanted to know. And even if they refuse, the existence of that knowledge will then be hanging over their head."

"Yeah, but all the people I'd tell went to the same classes as I did on alternate realities and stuff," Velma said. "So they'd know to take my comments with a grain of salt, because it might not be real for them. And besides, why wouldn't you want to know? Or tell someone? Knowing crap is coming means they can prepare?"

"I'd tell them," Cosima shrugged. "I mean, I wouldn't blurt it out right after I said hi, but how can you not? I don't believe in destiny. Maybe they can somehow change what's going to happen."

"Maybe," Ben agreed. "I've had it go both ways. I mean, my future mom is running around here as a junior but I haven't told her yet because that seems really weird to mention, you know?"

"Tell them," Rey said. "How could you not?"

"Fear for their state of mind?" Obi-Wan suggested. "Feelings about the inevitability of fate? Or perhaps they wouldn't believe you."

He hadn't really experienced this himself, first-hand, but he could think of a few ~~besides being generally disinclined to tell people things straight-up in the first place~~.

So You Just Met Your Relative From The Future, Friday

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