Written based on a prompt from LJ's Fredbassett, who asked me for Stephen Hart/Tom Ryan + "Safe return." Consider this to be loosely related to last week's "Miles To Go Before I Sleep". (Don't worry, eventually you'll see where I'm going with this. *cackles evilly*)
~oOOo~
Looking back on it now, the first step hadn't been a hard one to take. The anomaly had appeared in front of Stephen like the burning bush before Moses. It scintillated and shivered brightly and it had taken no thought at all on Stephen's part walk through. With one broad step, he'd chosen a life unknown on the other side of a gateway through time rather than certain death at the hands of a pack of predators from eons past and future. It hadn't been a choice at all.
Now as he stood in wide-eyed wonder looking at the green rolling hills dotted with anomalies, he could not yet find it in himself to take the next step. Battered and bruised, adrenaline still coursing through his veins, he ran a shaking hand through dirty brown hair. He walked a few hundred meters from the anomaly through which he'd come and sat down in the grass. Moisture from the soil beneath soaked into the seat of his pants but Stephen couldn't find it in himself to care at this particular moment. Hopefully the various predators he'd left behind were more interested in holding the grudge match of the millennia than chasing after one measly human.
The last time Stephen had encountered the spaghetti junction of anomalies, Nick theorized that it was located sometime in the Permian era. As good a guess as any and it was unlikely that there should be more than one place in time like this one.
Thoughts of the last time he'd been here inevitably led Stephen to remember who'd been with him. Tom Ryan. With an ache inside his chest, he could almost see once again the look of awe on the taciturn soldier's face. Gun forgotten, the other man let his guard down to stare openly at what had to have been hundreds of anomalies.
When Tom turned his face back toward Stephen everything changed. For one brief moment, Stephen had seen desire and vulnerability lurking in the depths of the other man's eyes. It'd taken him a week after they'd gotten back to their own time, but he'd eventually cornered the SF captain and flatly asked him over for dinner.
Tom hadn't left Stephen's flat that night nor the following one.
Weeks later, Tom went through another anomaly and never came back. A small part of Stephen felt like it had died that day alongside his lover. There hadn't even been a body to bury, Nick having been insistent that they couldn't disturb the timelines. It'd been the beginning of a rift between them. One that Stephen, wounded and grieving, had done nothing to mend.
Now, as he sat here watching the shiver of anomalies change the quality of light for miles on end, Stephen wondered yet again which one of them had been right.
Did something as simple as bringing a dead body back to it's proper time change everything? Was it possible that each of these anomalies led to a different potential past, present, or future? Perhaps, if Nick's beloved Claudia Brown was out there somewhen, then so was Tom.
Slowly, Stephen stood and brushed ineffectually at the dirt and damp on his pants. One step, then another. One anomaly was as good as any other. Reverently, he murmured to himself as he stepped between the coruscating shards of light.
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference."