Dylan was in the field when it happened. Images flooded her mind, playing back behind closed eyes. Voices, familiar yet not, in her ears; the noise near deafening. Emotions raced through her veins intoxicating and confusing.
All of it together was enough to knock her back, almost as if she had been physically assaulted. Enough to chase the air from her lungs. She stumbled backward and a strange man, one she'd never seen before—or had she—caught her before she could hit the ground as she tried to catch her breath.
"What is it?" he hissed quietly, so as not to startle the animal they were tracking.
She had a million questions and, strangely enough, a million answers that her brain was trying to sort through.
Where was Evan? What happened to them? Where was she? Who was she with? Why wasn't she back where they started?
She remembered going through the anomaly clearly. Evan was worried they'd changed something and the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach seemed to confirm it, as the other anomalies started closing around them. She hadn't needed any direction as instinct had taken over and they had both booked it to their gateway, praying they'd reach it in time.
But when she stepped through... nothing.
"You're freaking me out, Weir. What's up?" the man with her persisted as he guided her to the ground and spoke swiftly into his radio, asking for backup.
She sat in stunned silence, the forest alive around her, as her mind spun through countless scenarios. It was like a door had opened and suddenly there was a whole new set of memories behind it. Of people and places she'd never been to or met before. Contradictory pathways arguing with each other in her brain. She knew who she used to be and she knew who was.
For example, the man she didn't recognize not even a full minute prior now had a name and it seemed they suddenly had a shared past.
"I'm fine, Miller. Stop being a baby, we've got a job to do," she brushed him off and stood up as the memory of their first meeting flashed through her mind.
He'd joined the department after Drake's funeral and had been her partner ever since. She had memories of him giving her a hard time. Of sharing war stories. He had even saved her life once. But another part of her screamed out that all of that was wrong. She'd joined Evan and his band of misfits after Drake's death. She'd spent the better part of a year relocating prehistoric animals not responding to calls about wandering wildlife.
The pieces finally all started to shift into place, and the longer she thought about it the clearer things became. When they'd come back through to their time, things had changed... in unexpected ways. They hadn't simply stepped back through the anomaly, they had stepped back into new lives. She was still with Predator Control, in this time line she had never met Evan Cross. Never known about anomalies or the prehistoric creatures that crossed through them. Never caught what had killed Drake. Never crossed over into other times. There had been a few suspicious cases, but higher powers had always seemed to step in and classify them, bringing their own task force to apprehend animals that never seemed to match the evidence left behind.
Her alternate self had been driven to solve Drake's murder, but without any resources had ultimately been left with nothing. Even now as the answers she knew filtered through her brain part of her filled with anger at the people who had kept her from the truth, and another with awe at the idea of time traveling dinosaurs.
Yet somehow a sense of peace and a knowledge that she had been fixing things and saving other people from the same fate permeated it all. Feelings, she was sure stemmed from that other life. The one she had only minutes before, where she certainly hadn't been in the field with a new partner. One where she had been with Evan, trying to put things back where they belonged. One where she had left her job to join up with a group of people who had quickly become her friends. A job that had swallowed her life and become who she was.
It was as if she were two people and she supposed it made sense, the last six years of her life were different. Subtle changes at first, but in the last few months her life had taken a nosedive in an entirely different direction.
"Are you sure you're alright?" her partner questioned as she shook her head to focus on the task at hand and she started forward again.
No, but she had to do her job so she could find Evan. She had to find out if he was alright, if he remembered and just what they were going to do now.
She had to find out if he made it through or if she was alone.
"Yeah, let's just get this over with."
Evan was sitting in a meeting with a new client when everything he thought he knew flipped upside down. He smiled politely and let Ange keep talking as he zoned out and let the memories rush through him.
He'd been waiting for this to happen for six years.
They'd had all kinds of ideas how it would happen. Theories on whether or not there would be two separate versions of himself or if the memories from the old time line would just come to him one day when they finally caught up. It made more sense that it happened this way, in this reality he never made it to the anomaly, so he shouldn't have been able to end up there upon reentering his world. And he was grateful there weren't two of him, the problems that would have caused were not something that they had wanted to deal with.
"If you don't have any more questions for me, Ange can take care of the rest of the paperwork," he said standing and making his way to the door. Ange gave him a strange look but he brushed it off with a smile and shrug, he could tell she was trying not to roll her eyes in front of their new contract.
Six years ago, a man he didn't know stepped through time and saved his life. A man he suddenly had a history with, a history that went beyond the last six years. A man who claimed that they had changed things when he survived an attack from the dinosaur that killed Evan's wife.
Mac had told him about all of this, about how one day he'd know all of it was true, and at first he had been too torn up over Brooke's death to want to listen, but eventually he had, and ever since he'd been more than eager to catch up with himself. Originally, it had been because he wanted revenge for Brooke's death. But working with Mac, and then Toby, had changed that for him. Somewhere along the way he had come to terms with what had happened and his quest had shifted to stopping it from happening to other people.
Mac had been there to help but ultimately he hadn't had any of the answers they'd needed.
As his mind filled with memories of a time line that this world forgot, Evan remembered. Now he had those answers they'd been searching for. Now they had a way to fix things.
He rushed down to the Special Projects department and burst through the door.
"Toby! Mac!" he called out as he made his way to a terminal and pulled up the designs, plugging in numbers and missing information; solving those problems that had haunted them for almost six years. Without Mac's device, trying to put together a detection system had been nearly impossible. There had been entirely too many casualties as a result. Drake. Natalie. Mac had still lost Sam when an anomaly had opened up and spit out some overgrown bug on an airstrip near where she had been spending a weekend away.
With no way to track the anomalies, there had been no way to stop any of it. It seemed that although they opened to similar points in time, when they opened varied from the previous time line. And although they were working on recreating a detection device, they had been years away from a working model. The best they could do was listen for reports of strange animals or 'strange glowing portals through time.' It hadn't been near enough.
"It happened?" Toby questioned as she rushed over to stand next to him, watching over his shoulder. Mac came around the corner at a more leisurely pace and Evan looked up and grinned.
"It's good to see you again," Evan smirked. "Even if you are a pain in the ass, I'm kind of glad you didn't die."
"Yeah, well that's probably your fault. I take it from your enthusiastic greeting you finally caught up." Mac paused leaning against the counter across from them, then asked. "You figure it out?"
"Yes. It's all here. How come you never told me about Ange?" Evan asked a moment later, as memories their short lived fling among other things filled his mind.
"Not my business."
No, he supposed it wasn't. Not that any of it would have mattered, Ange had met someone shortly after Brooke's death, the two of them had been married for three years. And while part of him felt the personal loss, another part of him had seen how happy she was. She hadn't been the same crutch in this time line, he hadn't needed her to hold him together in the same ways. Maybe knowing how things had been before, having Mac and Toby as well as Ange, had changed him too.
It wasn't really surprising then that Mac hadn't said anything. Besides Evan had always had this theory that Mac preferred Dylan over Ange.
Dylan.
She'd only ever been a name to him before this. It had been easy to keep her out of all of it that way. If things had really gone like Mac said they did, which now he had confirmation of for himself, then he hadn't wanted to involve anyone else. They had needed Toby, and Mac had let the cat out of the bag before Evan could stop him, but Dylan...
He worried about what happened to her. If she was at this very moment trying to come to terms with her new set of memories. It was weird enough for him, and he had known it was a possibility. For her it would have been completely unexpected. It was a point Mac had argued long and hard about. A point, he might have been right about.
As much as Evan had pretended to understand, he had no clue until now. Dylan would find them. She would be angry when she found how he had known all along. It had been hard enough not to approach her at Drake's funeral., the only time he had ever crossed her path in this time line, and then he hadn't known her like he knew her now.
He wasn't sorry. He thought he had been making the right choice. What good would it have done her to know that Drake was going to die? It was hard enough not to stop his wife's death, and he still lived with that every day, or would live with it every day now, he didn't wish that kind of guilt on anyone let alone her. Even if she had been a complete stranger at the time.
She wouldn't have believed a word out of his mouth anyway.
But now...
His fingers hesitated over the keys.
"So, are you ready to revisit the Dylan topic?" Mac was the one to bring it up. "Since I expect she'll be knocking down your door at any moment now."
"We made the right choice," he had to believe it. "...for the time being."
"She's been a ghost in this room for almost six years now. I, for one, am glad to finally get to meet her," Toby chirped as she knocked Evan out of the way and took over at the keyboard.
A ghost the other Evan hadn't ever met. A ghost he now couldn't imagine doing this without.
His excitement over finally having the information they needed to continue faded as the meaning of what had been before finally started to settle in. As Dylan's memory started to wind itself around his heart and a rush of emotions washed over him in a heavy waves almost drowning him.
It was the oddest sensation. Not knowing someone five minutes ago, then suddenly knowing so much about them it felt wrong not to have them around all the time. Trusting them with some of your darkest secrets. Knowing they'd do anything for you.
He had to find her. He had to be the one to find her first. He owed it to her. He couldn't imagine the confusion and fear she must be experiencing but he wanted to be there with her to help. No, he needed to be there with her. She would have done the same for him.
He turned toward the door and started out.
"Yeah, probably best you find her first. She might forgive you that way," Mac called after him.
"You're leaving now?" Toby questioned in disbelief.
"I got this. Go get Dylan," Mac called out to Evan's back as Evan started jogging toward the door.
He didn't question the urgent need to confirm Dylan's safety, or his sudden shift in priorities as he made his way through Cross Photonics. All he knew was that he couldn't lose anyone else in this messed up game with time and that he needed her to make things right again. And as he ran the old Evan burned away, consumed by the realities and connections made in a time line that had been erased.
He was waiting for her leaning one shoulder causally against side of her van when she made her way back to where she'd parked it on her way to investigate the mountain lion sighting. A few news crews were still milling around the park interviewing people. Her partner was busy helping load the now tranquilized animal into a cage for transport while she was supposed to be changing out of the clothing their heavily sedated friend had marked in the process of taking him down. Which was probably her least favorite part of the job.
"Part of me thinks I should be mad at you," she grumbled as she brushed past him, her shoulder knocking his playfully. "Though I'm not entirely sure why that is." He used the momentum from her impact to turn around and place the offended shoulder against the van watching her as she opened the back door and placed her tranq gun inside.
He was relieved she recognized him.
"Part of me thinks you deserve to be," he answered back his eyes following her as she climbed up into the back of the van. He walked around behind the van and watched as she peeled her jacket off and dropped it by her feet. Her shirt followed but she tossed it in the corner before grabbing a new one from a gym bag. He didn't comment as a new jacket also appeared beside the shirt. When she pulled the new shirt on and he caught a glimpse of the pale skin of her lower back, he bit his tongue.
There was nothing overtly sexual about the movement, to the contrary it was quick and efficient and she was wearing an undershirt the entire time, but something in him appreciated the way the fabric swept against her side and her hair fell carelessly down her back as she let it drop after pulling it out from under the new shirt. She pulled on the jacket and something new stirred, as the part of him who had never really met her took in the flair of her hips and the way her Predator Control jacket hugged her chest.
To put it lightly, it was weird. Sure he'd noticed before that Dylan was a young attractive woman, but she'd always been... off limits? Maybe there had been a time when he'd entertained the possibilities for a moment, but he'd never really let it go anywhere. They were colleagues, friends, there was no room for anything of a more sexual nature between them, yet something was clearly different.
If she noticed it she didn't comment on it, instead she stood above him, her hands on the ceiling of the van, and grinned.
"You come to offer me a job?" she asked and he answered her with a smile.
"You're gonna have to do better than that. I mean I love my job with Predator Control. What do you have to offer me?" she teased.
His fingers itched to touch her. To wrap themselves around her slim waist and pull her down to eye level. To brush the hair from where it stuck to the cut on her cheek.
The cut she'd gotten in another lifetime. He was surprised it hadn't healed, or more accurately that it existed at all.
"Your cheek..." he pointed and she rolled her eyes as she lowered herself to sit on the edge of the van, legs hanging down next to him. Her thigh brushing against his lightly as she leaned back and grabbed a first aid kit.
"You know how hard it was to explain the sudden appearance of an injury like this. I had to convince my partner that I walked into a tree branch. I'm never gonna live that down."
"It's still probably easier than explaining it's an injury from another time line and that you've just stepped into another person's consciousness through a glowing portal in time."
"Well, I guess when you put it that way. Clumsy is probably better than crazy."
"Don't sell yourself short."