Set, again, in a condensed Clock Wise!Verse AU, but doesn't tie in with the bigger fic directly. Or indirectly really. All you need to know: Family Time hasn't happened yet despite other S1 and 2 events, Alec is 23 because it made more mathematical and character sense. Kiera has been in the past for almost a year.
I have about a 1/3-1/2 of this written already, and I'm working steadily. I expect this will be about 4 parts.
Three weeks went by between new years and when Alec moved into the house share. In that time he was so busy with ferrying boxes and job hunting that he barely had time to do his usual support work for kiera let alone make sure that she was still comfortable with the new elements of their relationship. It wasn't like it had been a long time since their last more personal talk, but all the same he worried about the feeling of awkwardness that was creeping upon them. It was palpable even over the comm line, the unsettling tick of nerves setting in.
He didn't plan to push it though. When Kiera was panicked and digging in her heels she was just as likely to shut down completely, or else do something impulsive and extreme. He wasn't interested in seeing the status of their relationship, whatever that would turn out to be, become a point of contention or even an argument. That would sour everything comfortable between them before they even had a chance. He would be patient, he would be present, he would follow Kiera's lead.
Only once he was moved into the big front bedroom at Ricky's, and all his tech squared away and up and running, there remained a prolonged silence. Not that he and Kiera never spoke. Of course there was still investigative work and a foreshortened quantity of the usual banter, at times unthinking and carefree, and at times self conscious and taut with a new, knowing undercurrent. Other than that, though, was a careful avoidance. Alec tried at first, to make plans, to reach out, but Kiera was skittish and hesitant. Then he ended up avoiding her right back, for uncomfortable reasons of his own.
Kellogg had been around to see him a few different times, and every time he compared the ominous message from his future self and his current employment situation against each other, the more obvious it was that he would end up signing on with Kellogg eventually. Probably a lot sooner than eventually. It wasn't a move he wanted to keep from Kiera, not if he wanted to keep her trust, but he didn't look forward to facing her judgement on it either. The thought of disappointing her left a sick feeling in his gut, but there was so much he could do with Kellogg's wealth, it was like a pathway opening before him in the impenetrable blankness that had seemed to stand between him and his ambitions. He had to take the chance.
But first he had to tell Kiera. And to do that he had to ignore his mandate of patience and go to see her.
The winter so far had been dry, clear, and bitterly cold and Kiera was getting intensely tired of it. It was frigid going for her morning run. It was icy wandering the city in the course of investigations, especially when she needed to call on her suit for it's camouflage capabilities. It was even persistently chilly holed up in her hotel room in the evenings, the building's heating being tepid at best. It wasn't like the relatively more mild and wet winters she knew from her home time with it's altered climate, and it left her worn and tense.
Although of course it wasn't only the weather leaving her wound and unsettled. The lingering silence between her and Alec had stretched now for long enough that she felt like she was going stir crazy within it, the sensation of claustrophobia creeping up on her.
At last, after the deal was all but done with Matthew Kellogg, and the security code to the Lab had been set to his specifications, Alec reached out to Kiera and arranged to meet. It had to be said in person, he knew, or he would put it off again. He knew she would be hurt. He knew she would see it as taking the side of her enemy over hers. Her world view was so stark at times, frustratingly bare of nuance. And yet, he did know deep down that it was a betrayal in a way, to both of them and their ideals - it was a compromise that stung. And even if wasn't a betrayal in itself, keeping such a secret from Kiera of all people, who gave him so much trust, who made herself so vulnerable to him, that was a wrong thing. That was a betrayal. He was resolved, and he'd come clean just before the final papers were signed.
Kiera was wary when he talked to her, she seemed sure that something was wrong. He wondered how they'd wandered so far so quickly from simple, giddy nerves after a few new years kisses and the mutual realization that there was something more to their relationship to explore. He wondered if she thought he'd had regrets, or that his feelings had shifted once acknowledged. He wanted to reassure her, except that that seemed presumption itself with the question of the future looming thus, grim and with every appearance of greed. They had to weather this inevitable conflict before he could begin to hope that they could rekindle that closeness.
They met up outside a coffee shop just about midway between Ricky's and her hotel, and realizing that their conversation was better not overheard Alec had brought their drinks already when Kiera showed up and he herded them back in the direction of his new lab. It wasn't finished, awaiting contracts and final specifications, but he wanted her to see it in person so that she would at least know what it was and what it wasn't. They walked along through the brightly misty February day, voices pitched sharp but quiet through habit learned from arguing over the comline. Of course, once Alec had broached the subject of with whom he was going into business, that strained quiet had been replaced by bald outrage.
"Kellogg," she repeated again in flat disbelief.
"Yes."
"Matthew Kellogg."
"Yes."
"Matthew Kellogg, as in terrorist sympathizer and conspirator, entrepreneur with the morals approximate to pond scum, that Kellogg?"
"Yes, Kiera, yes, I believe we've established that already."
"Have you gone insane? He's using you!"
"Yes, he is. But I'm also using him. He has the startup capital. He knows how to make the business connections. He knows the market. Hell, he knows the future just as well as you. I'm not saying he's a good guy, and I don't trust his judgement, but I'm the controlling partner. The way I see it, if we're both in it to screw the other guy, neither of us will get away with very much. Think of it like checks and balances."
"You don't know what he's like, Alec. He's no less dangerous than Travis and Garza and the rest. He went along with the bombings, the murders, the sabotage. He's as guilty as they are. How can you go into business with someone like that?"
"I'm not going into business with him, he's going into business with me. Theoretically." he sighed deeply and paced away from her before turning back. "Look, what do you want me to say? I know this is the stupidest thing I've ever done, at least so far in this timeline. But who else is going to back me? Who else is going to understand the plainly absurd depth and breadth of the situation here? The people who know the truth about all this are you, me, Kellogg, Liberate and Jason… and possibly, apparently your Mr. Escher but we have no idea who he is. That doesn't leave me with a lot of options here."
"But in my timeline, you must have gotten started without Kellogg's help. You hadn't sent him back yet. There must be another way. If it came out who you were working with… Alec, this could go so badly for you."
"In that timeline, yes, as far as I know, that's true. But… you've seen the message Kiera. You told me yourself about the how soon everything starts to change in the world. Don't you understand the kind of pressure that puts on me? If I don't get off the ground and build something now, if we don't get established then it's the Eschers and the Kelloggs of the world who are going to end up with all the power."
"If you're working with him, he's already getting that power," she insisted, sounding pained, "Alec, how can you be okay with this?"
"I'm not okay with it. But I'm not willing to turn down an opportunity like this just because I'm uncomfortable. I get final day in all projects. I get resources to help you go on pretending to be section six, which is not fantastically legal either, by the way. And best case scenario, I figure out how to get rid of Kellogg before he gets too established."
"You know that's not likely, right?"
"Well. Nothing about this is more likely or unlikely than the rest of it, so…" he shrugged, feeling defeated but knowing that he'd taken the only course open to him even if it was an morally unsettling one.
"So this is why you've been avoiding me," said Kiera.
"Yes. I know that it was cowardly, but I didn't want to tell you because I thought you'd be mad. And, just look how wrong I was about that, huh?"
"Sarcasm is not the move you want to make right now, believe me."
"Well sorry, but I find it kind of frustrating that you can't see just how good this could be for me, for both of us, if we're careful. You could try trusting my judgement about this, you know. This is a huge step forward in my life."
"It's a step, that's for sure. Damn it, Alec, how could you do something like this… and then not even tell me about it! I thought we... I thought you trusted me."
"If I'd told you, you would have tried to talk me out of it," he said, and shook his head, realizing that line of thought was pointless, not to mention redundant, "I'm telling you now, Kiera."
They were nearing his new lab, and he offered to show her around, show her it wasn't that big and scary but also that it would give them a fantastic home base, and Kiera had reluctantly agreed. But then, as they approached the street-level door with the security keypad, she got a call from Carlos about a case he needed her input on, and she'd hurried away.
"We're already here," he urged, his patience starting to slip at last, "It would just take a minute, and then you can see that this whole thing might not be so bad."
"I'm sorry, Alec. I have to go," she said, already heading back the way they'd come.
He watched her go, frustrated with her avoidance and also feeling that betrayed her in ways that he didn't know how to fix, by agreeing to work with her enemy and by hiding that alliance from her for weeks. Kiera's moral code was eccentric, but inflexible when it came to the things she saw as absolutes. While he agreed that Kellogg was dangerous, he'd thought it through from every direction he could and didn't see any other options, not with the timeline he'd been given from his future self. Four years until the first stages of political dissolution, ten until climate change really began to build momentum, 20 until the first global food shortages, all unless something was done to stop it.
It wasn't the life he'd pictured for himself, and he already felt the phenomenal burden of it. He also, in a private, petty way, resented that much of his innovation, many of the things he would be presenting to the world as his alone would not be. True enough, they belonged to a version of him, that old bastard with such skewed compassion that he would try to save the world by condemning Kiera and the two other protectors who hadn't made it through, and liberate as well, to the strange purgatory of repeating history. That was him, his action and inventions, in a way. Intellectually he knew that. But still, he received these ideas ready formed and detailed, lacking only the methods of retrofitting them to the current technology. None of it would feel like a triumph, but instead it felt at best like a life preserver, something slung out from above, to cling to in the times ahead and hope to survive, and at worst like outright theft. It would be unconscionable to turn away these gifts from the future on such petty grounds, so all he could do was be pragmatic and keep moving forward.
He didn't know how to say it so that Kiera would understand. He couldn't see why she would so easily trust him with her friendship, her own safety, her own life, but couldn't find her way to trusting him with his.