AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't own The Librarians nor any of the characters herein. I'm just borrowing them for a little while.
CONTINUITY NOTE: This is a first for me - there's no specific continuity involved, except that this story takes place after 1x10 ("The Loom of Fate"), and presumably before any subsequent episodes that might be made.
Jake had been required to read Caesar when he studied Latin - one of his teachers had called Caesar the Latin Hemingway - but where Caesar's clear style and clean prose had made learning Latin easier, that same style applied to a description of Celtic artwork made reading Ars Gallico - thought lost, but he'd found a copy on the Library's shelves - sheer pleasure. Jake hesitated to attribute conscious awareness and intelligence to the Library itself, but the glass of sweet tea, just like his mama made, that seemed to be always full and at the perfect temperature on the table beside his chair suggested the Library itself took satisfaction in his pleasure.
Of course it couldn't last.
"Stone?"
Colonel Baird's voice jarred him from ancient Britain, and with a silent sigh, he straightened just as she came around the last shelf that concealed his corner.
"What's up, Colonel?" Jake asked. "New assignment?"
"No, nothing like that." For the first time since he'd met her in a bar in Oklahoma, the colonel seemed at a complete loss for words.
"No world-threatening crisis?"
"No." Then she grimaced. "None that require the Librarians. There's always a crisis somewhere."
"Yeah, there is." So why are you interrupting me? Jake's mama would tan his hide if he were rude enough to ask the question aloud, so he simply sat, the book closed over his forefinger to hold his place, and waited for Eve to speak again.
Eve hesitated, but finally straightened and squared her shoulders to near military perfection - no surprise, Jake thought, given her counter-terrorism background at NATO. The impression that she was reporting to a superior officer was only reinforced when she very carefully stared at a point above his left eyebrow while she spoke.
"I was very rude to you, and I owe you an apology."
Of all the things Eve Baird might have said, that would've been somewhere near the bottom of the list of things he would've expected. Jake barely registered the meaning of her words through his shock. Finally, he recovered enough to say, "I don't remember you being rude. Y'don't owe me an apology."
A memory of their first meeting flashed in his mind, and he quirked his mouth into a grin. "Y'might owe me a hat, though."
"It wasn't you," Eve said. "Not really. It was the you I met in a different timeline."
Understanding flooded through him. "The Loom."
"Dulaque cut the tapestry of Fate, and the backlash sent me and Flynn into alternate timelines."
Her and Flynn. Of course. Jake swallowed back the sudden distaste at the back of his mouth and nodded, encouraging her to continue. She went on in a matter-of-fact tone.
"In the first alternate timeline, you'd been the Librarian for ten years."
"Ten years?" Jake frowned. He'd gotten an envelope back then, and he'd ignored it. The alternate him apparently hadn't. "I guess the family business wasn't as important to the alternate me. He sounds like an ass."
"He said the same thing about you."
"Why'd he think I'm an ass?"
What little amusement had lit Eve's expression faded. "That's tied in to what I need to apologize to you - him - for."
"You're makin' it sound bad," Jake pointed out. "Real bad."
"It is - I mean, it's not. Not really. It's just -" she glanced down. "Embarrassing."
"Well, hell, Eve." The exclamation burst from him before he realized he was going to say it. "It's not like I ain't got embarrassing things in my past. Some of 'em not that far back, either."
"When we met," Eve was staring at that spot above his left eyebrow again, "the first thing he did was kiss me."
Can't blame him for that. The thought cut through Jake's surprise. He shoved it aside, focused on Eve. "Couldn't he see you were with Flynn? Thinkin' I'm right, and he's the ass."
"It wasn't Flynn," Eve said. "Or it was, but not the Flynn we know. It was that universe's Flynn. He wasn't a Librarian."
"What was he, then?"
"A professor on an expedition into the middle of a war-torn country." Eve frowned. "I never did find out which one."
"And you're embarrassed because I - he - kissed you?" Jake asked, not sure why he was setting himself up for the pain of her confirmation.
"Because I reacted - badly."
"Lay him out flat, did you? He deserved it."
"No, I didn't."
"Then what?"
"I walked away from him." Now the expression in her eyes was haunted.
"And that's bad?"
"It was insulting."
"Him kissing you like that was insulting, too. I don't think you need to apologize."
For the briefest of moments, her rigid impassiveness crumbled. "I feel like I do."
"Pull up a chair," Jake said, noting that the Library had already manifested one on the other side of the table where his iced tea rested, along with the notepad he'd brought to make notes for another journal article. Being a Librarian was a kick and a half, but researching and writing articles was its own form of relaxation, and he'd found himself turning to it more and more since he'd become a Librarian.
Eve sat, slowly, still straight, and Jake searched for some way to ease her stiffness. "I'd offer you a beer," he said finally, "but I don't think the Library keeps alcohol around. You can have some tea, if you want."
He slid his glass across the table, and Eve looked at him oddly for a moment before taking a sip. Then she grimaced. "It's sweet."
"It's a southern thing," Jake said. "Sweet tea."
Eve looked dubious, but took another sip. "It's good, just not something I'm used to."
They sat in relatively comfortable silence for a moment. Jake savored it, even as he envied his alternate self, who'd apparently summoned the guts to go after what Jake wanted, but he'd hesitated and he'd lost to Flynn.
But here and now, in this universe, Eve had come to him. He couldn't refuse her, even when he didn't understand. "Why do you feel like you need to apologize?"
"Because I hurt him." Eve took a breath. "I didn't realize it at first, but then when Flynn and I were leaving, the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice when he told me he'd missed me … I hurt him."
"I don't -" Jake began, then stopped at the haunted expression in her eyes. She had more to say, and so he waited.
"I know. I didn't know him, so why should that matter? But in a way I did know him, because I know you." Eve took a shaky breath. "I feel like I hurt you, and I don't like that feeling."
"Eve." Instinctively, Jake reached across the table to cover her hand with his. Almost before he'd finished the movement, she'd turned her hand in his and clung to him.
Realization sparked through him. Colonel Eve Baird can be vulnerable. Bet it annoys the crap out of her.
Jake fought back a smile at that thought - Eve didn't need to be teased right now. She needed something else. Jake stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, asking the God he'd never quite believed in for help to find the words she did need.
Whether the words came from God or just his heart, Jake suddenly knew what to say.
"He'd forgive you. I know he would," Jake continued over Eve's half-started protest, "because I would, if it were me instead of him. Which I am. We are. Something like that."
The words made Eve smile, however briefly, and Jake took that as encouragement to continue.
"He'd forgive you because he loved you, even if it wasn't you. And he wouldn't want you to hurt like you are now. I don't want you to hurt like you are now."
That last was more open and honest than he'd wanted to be, and Jake looked away, struggling to conceal the emotions this conversation was bringing up.
L ~ L ~ L ~ L ~ L
"I don't want you to hurt like you are now."
Jake looked away almost as soon as he'd spoken the words, but not before Eve had seen the expression in his eyes. It wasn't the same emotion she'd seen in the other world's Jake, but similar.
Similar enough to set her heart pounding and dry her mouth.
"Jake," she began, but he yanked his attention back to her and spoke before she could continue.
"He didn't know you're with Flynn," Jake said. "If he'd known, he'd never have -"
It was her turn to cut him off. "Because you wouldn't have?"
"Yeah. Because I wouldn't."
This was the best chance she was going to get, Eve thought. If she didn't take advantage of it, she'd regret it the rest of her life. She took a deep breath looked at him directly. "What if I weren't?"
His startled gaze met hers. "What if you weren't - what?"
"What if I weren't with Flynn?"
He'd been sitting quietly, but now he went still down deep within. "I don't understand."
"It's not that hard a question," Eve said. She hadn't felt this nervous since she'd taken the oath to lay down her life for her country. "You said you wouldn't kiss me because I'm with Flynn. If I weren't … would you?"
"Hell yeah." The words came too quickly for them to be anything but reflexive, and her heart soared at the conviction in them. Jake hurried to continue, "But it's irrelevant, since you are."
"It's very relevant, because I'm not."
"I know, and it won't - what did you say?"
"I said I'm not. With Flynn," she added, just to be clear.
A multitude of emotions chased across his features - Eve could pick out joy and skepticism foremost among them.
"Sure seemed like you were before the Loom."
Eve winced. "I think I wanted to be, more than I actually was. Jenkins said that Librarians and their Guardians could be … close. He seemed to expect me and Flynn to be. And Flynn wanted to be."
Jake snorted. "Can't blame him for that." Then he regarded her seriously. "What about you, Eve?"
That was the crux of the matter, wasn't it? Jake deserved an honest answer, however painful it might be to say aloud.
"I haven't had time for a relationship," Eve said slowly, then she grimaced. "It's more accurate to say I didn't make time for a relationship, because of my work with NATO. It's stressful and demanding, and then there was always the chance that I might not come home from a mission. Then I met Flynn and became the Guardian. I thought I'd found someone who could handle all that, because he shared it."
Looking back at how starry-eyed she'd been then, Eve couldn't believe it had been less than a year since that fateful meeting in Berlin. Had she changed so much in so short a time, or had she just discovered parts of herself that had remained unexplored too long?
"And?" Jake's quiet prompt brought her back to the Library, and the reason she'd sought him out.
"And … maybe he could. I don't know, and I don't want to find out."
"Why not?" Jake's expression showed hope tempered with restraint. He wanted to believe her, she thought, just needed a little more persuasion.
"Because being with Flynn would drive me insane," Eve told him. "Absolutely, totally insane. He's got this laser focus but also this magpie brain, and you never know which side of him is going to be in control at any given time. He might be fun to be with, for a while, but long-term, he'd be impossible to live with."
Jake gave her a lopsided grin. "I might be impossible to live with, too."
Eve smiled in response. "I have it on good authority that you're not."
"Oh?"
"The other version of us had been together for ten years when I died."
"Ten years, huh?" Jake appeared to ponder that. "That's not much."
"Not much?" Eve couldn't help repeating, not even caring that the second word came out half an octave higher than the first.
"Nope," Jake said casually. "My grandparents were together fifty-nine years before Grandpa died. My folks have been together forty-some. Ten's not much at all."
"Oh." That was it, then. She'd tried and failed. Eve started to pull her hand away from where Jake still held it, to stand, to get away and let them both recover from this awkward conversation.
His fingers clamped tight around hers, and he tugged her back into her seat.
"If we're gonna have more than that, we've got some catchin' up to do."