Pictures of you
by Pchefbeth

Post Season 4 Season finale, Jo still leaves Eureka, but I don't think that she left completely empty handed.

In a dingy motel room, states away from Eureka Jo Lupo lay in bed trying to relax enough to fall asleep, but her mind was filled with too many questions. She'd left the television on, hoping that the noise would help distract her, but it hadn't. A side glance at the bedside table showed how late it was, but it wasn't what captured her interest. She reached out and picked up the stack of pictures that lay in a small bundle on the nightstand, and began to flip through them. She hadn't taken very much with her on her journey of self discovery. But she had brought a few things that she felt that she couldn't live without; specifically her favorite pictures of family and friends. There was a picture of her and Fargo from the last holiday party standing next to the Christmas tree. Another one of Carter and Zoe hugging on the day that Zoe had left for Harvard and another of Allison with both kids that she had convinced Kevin to pose for. She'd kept a photo from Grace and Henry's vow renewal ceremony, and another picture that she'd managed to sneak of Vincent in his kitchen. But as she flipped to the last picture in the stack she stared sadly at the one that she hadn't taken.

She used to have hundreds of pictures of the two of them together. She loved catching him when he wasn't looking. Usually he would retaliate by grabbing the camera from her and insisting on getting a photo or two of her, or one of them together. One of her favorites was one that he'd taken as he'd kissed her, his arm outstretched with the camera to capture the moment. He'd managed to cut off part of their heads, but it was such a sweet moment that she'd kept a copy of it next to her bed, and had fallen asleep looking at it nearly every night. Until the time line change had taken all of those photos from her. Now the only images that she had of him were the ones in her head, and the single one in her hand.

She touched the edge of the photograph staring at the face that was so familiar and yet so foreign to her. She'd had no pictures of Zane in this reality. Theirs wasn't the sort of relationship where she felt she could have taken his photo without a lot of questions. She certainly couldn't have explained that she wanted to take it with her when she left. She wasn't even sure how or even if he'd react when she discovered that she was gone. A few weeks before when he'd been contemplating his own departure she wouldn't have thought that he would think enough to care, but their last conversation had her questioning everything in a new light.

She traced an absent finger over his face in the photo recalling with perfect clarity the moment that it showed. She'd routinely had to review security feed footage and often she had included photographs from the camera's in the reports, usually to document damage or equipment inventory, but when she'd been reviewing the footage from the P.A.L.S incident she'd decided to capture the image and keep it for herself. They had lain there on the floor, trying to catch their breaths, both smiling in relief as the computer voice told them that the core meltdown had been averted.

Staring at it as she had for weeks after the incident she was reminded exactly what she'd realized as he'd pulled her to safety; she wasn't getting him out of her system at all. In fact she was dangerously close to losing her heart to him all over again. The lines between this Zane and her Zane were all but gone.

She'd spent the first part of that day trying to convince herself that she was over him and that she wouldn't end up in his arms again no matter what happened. Then she'd spent the rest of the day worried that he was going to die and be taken from her. When the day had finally ended she was at war with her own feelings and didn't know what she wanted, which she admitted to herself was why she was in this mess.

So she'd done what she'd always done. Shut down, try to minimize emotional damage by maintaining her distance- again, and look where that had gotten her. Alone, and unable to shore up the walls anymore. She found herself wondering far too often what he was doing at that moment, and if, as he'd promised, he was thinking of her.

She propped the picture of Zane up against the base of the lamp on the nightstand, and turning onto her side, with the image still fresh in her mind she closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep.