The Time Between

Olivia sat in her bedroom, watching the digital clock tick closer to midnight. In three minutes, she would turn eighteen, and like everyone else, she would receive her Vision. Her death, played out in perfect clarity, would unfold before her eyes whether she wanted it or not.
Her phone buzzed with a text from her best friend, Marcus: "Almost time. You okay?"
She wasn't okay. Nobody was truly okay on their Vision night, but Olivia had more reason to worry than most. Her older brother James had received his Vision two years ago and hadn't spoken a word since. He spent his days painting the same scene over and over: a stretch of highway at sunset, rendered in violent oranges and reds.
"I'm fine," she texted back. "Talk tomorrow?"
The clock struck midnight, and the world dissolved.

The Vision came like a wave of warm water, immersing her completely. She found herself standing in a garden she didn't recognize, surrounded by roses in full bloom. The air was thick with their perfume, and she could feel autumn sunshine on her skin. Her hands were wrinkled, spotted with age, and she was wearing a ring she'd never seen before.

A young girl's voice called out, "Grandma! The roses need water!"
Olivia felt herself smile, felt her lips move to respond, "Coming, sweet pea!" Then her heart seized in her chest, a sharp, sudden pain that took her breath away. As she fell among the roses, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a garden gaiter – her face was elderly but peaceful, her white hair caught up in a loose bun.

The Vision released her, and she was back in her bedroom, gasping for air.
Old age. She would die of a heart attack in her seventies or eighties, surrounded by roses and loved ones. Relief flooded through her, followed immediately by guilt. Not everyone was so fortunate.

In the morning, her parents were waiting at the breakfast table, trying too hard to act normal. Her mother's hands shook as she poured coffee.
"How was it?" her father asked quietly.
"Peaceful," Olivia answered. "I was old. In a garden."

Her mother burst into tears of relief, and her father closed his eyes in silent gratitude. James, sitting at the far end of the table, continued mechanically spreading jam on his toast, his eyes fixed on nothing.

At school, the atmosphere was electric. Five other students had turned eighteen overnight, and everyone was trying to guess who had received good Visions and who hadn't. You could usually tell – the lucky ones walked taller, smiled easier, while the others moved like sleepwalkers, haunted by futures they couldn't escape.
Marcus was waiting by her locker. "Well?"
"Garden. Old age. Roses everywhere."
He pulled her into a tight hug. "Thank god. I've been worried sick."
"Your turn next week," she reminded him. "Are you ready?"
"Nobody's ever ready," he said, but his voice was steady. Marcus had always been the brave one.

In Psychology class, Dr. Harrison was discussing the societal impact of the Visions, which had started appearing worldwide exactly fifty years ago.
"The human relationship with death changed fundamentally," she explained. "Some argue that knowing has made us more cautious, while others believe it's made us more reckless. The suicide rate dropped initially – people realized that their deaths were fixed points, impossible to accelerate – but depression rates soared."

Olivia raised her hand. "What about people who try to change their Vision?"
"Ah, the Defiers." Dr. Harrison nodded. "Despite countless attempts, no one has ever succeeded in avoiding their predicted death. The Visions appear to be absolute."
After school, Olivia visited James in his studio – really just the converted garage where he spent most of his time painting. The walls were covered with variations of the same scene: that endless highway at sunset. In some versions, there were cars. In others, just empty road stretching to the horizon.

"I had my Vision," she told him, though she knew he wouldn't respond. "It was peaceful, James. I wish... I wish yours had been too."

He paused in his painting, brush hovering over the canvas. For a moment, she thought he might speak, but he just dipped the brush in more red paint and continued working.

The week crawled by. Olivia found herself studying her classmates differently now, wondering about their Visions. Sarah Chen, who used to be captain of the debate team, hadn't spoken in class since her birthday three months ago. But Michael Rodriguez, who'd gotten his Vision just last month, had suddenly joined every sports team and club he could, as if racing to fill his remaining time with as much life as possible.

The night before Marcus's birthday, they sat on his roof, sharing a packet of cookies and watching the stars.
"What if it's bad?" he whispered. "What if I end up like James?"
"Then I'll be here," Olivia said firmly. "No matter what you see, I'll be here."
He took her hand, and they sat in silence until midnight approached.
"Promise me something," he said suddenly. "Promise you'll tell me what you really saw. The whole truth."

She hesitated. "Why?"
"Because I think people who share their Visions have a better chance of staying sane. Look at James – he's kept his locked inside until it poisoned him."
Olivia squeezed his hand. "I promise. But you have to promise too."
"Deal."

At midnight, she watched his eyes go distant as the Vision took him. His hand tightened painfully around hers, and tears began rolling down his cheeks. When he came back to himself, he was shaking.
"Marcus?"

"I was trying to save someone," he said hoarsely. "There was a fire in an apartment building. I was carrying a child down the stairs when the ceiling collapsed. I was... I was twenty-six."
Olivia pulled him close as he broke down sobbing. "Eight years," he choked out. "I only get eight more years."

"But you die a hero," she whispered. "You die saving a child."
He laughed bitterly. "Is that supposed to make it better?"
"No. Nothing makes it better. But it means something, doesn't it? That even knowing how it ends, you'll still run into that building?"

The next day, Marcus didn't come to school. Or the next. When he finally returned, something had changed in him. He walked with a new purpose, joined the volunteer fire department's youth program, started taking EMT classes after school.

"I'm not going to waste the time I have left," he told Olivia. "And maybe... maybe if I learn enough, train enough, I can save more than just one child before the end."

Months passed. Their classmates all turned eighteen, one by one receiving their Visions. Some celebrated, some withdrew, some changed completely. Sarah Chen finally spoke again, joining drama club and throwing herself into performance with desperate intensity. Olivia wondered what she had seen that made pretending to be someone else so appealing.
James continued painting his highway, but sometimes now Olivia caught him watching her work in the garden, as she planted rose after rose, preparing for a future she knew she would have.
One evening, as she pruned the first blooms of spring, he brought her a painting. Not of the highway, but of her – elderly, white-haired, surrounded by roses. He'd captured perfectly the peace she'd seen in her Vision.
"You saw it too?" she asked, startled.

He shook his head and spoke for the first time in two years, his voice rusty with disuse. "Just imagined it. Needed to paint something beautiful for a change."

Olivia hung the painting in her room, a reminder that not all futures were dark ones. Sometimes, when Marcus came over after his EMT training, exhausted and haunted by the weight of his numbered days, she would catch him staring at it.

"Promise me something else," he said once. "Promise you'll plant roses for me too. After."
"I promise," she said. "The climbing kind, right by that highway you'll never see."
He smiled, a real smile that reached his eyes. "Perfect."

Years later, when Olivia's granddaughter would ask about the unusual rose garden, with its section of climbers growing wild beside a painted highway scene, she would tell her about Vision nights, and promises kept, and the different ways people face their futures. About her brother who finally learned to paint something besides his death, and her best friend who used his numbered days to save others, and how knowing the end of your story doesn't make the chapters between any less worth living.

And when her time came, just as she'd seen, she would fall among the roses knowing that she had lived every moment between then and now as fully as she could, tending both the gardens of life and memory with equal care.

Her last thought, as her heart stuttered to a stop, would be that the Vision had gotten one thing wrong – it hadn't shown her how beautiful the roses would smell, or how the love of those she left behind would linger in the air like perfume, making even death feel like something blooming.