Three Kinds
Summary: One year ago, it was so clear. Carlos was her partner, Alec was her friend, and Kiera just wanted to go back home. OneShot- Kiera Cameron. Three kinds of emptiness. Post-ep to s03ep11.
Warning: Drabble-esque, fractured, introspection.
Set: post-ep to s03ep11 – Three Minutes to Midnight. Veering off into AU.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
There is an emptiness filling up her life these days.
The night skyline of Vancouver Kiera can see from her apartment is beautiful. High-rise buildings, skyscrapers, blinking lights of neon red and green and white. The sky is the opposite. An absence of color: black, impenetrable, merciless – and the glow of the city layers around her like a dome of light. It separates the human world from the world beyond, ethereal and incomprehensible. It is beautiful: all these lights, all these human beings alive in the city Kiera Cameron has always called her home. She can imagine parents putting their children to sleep with a laugh on their lips, couples smiling at each other over a glass of wine, even singles, curled up on their comfortable couch contentedly just like she was a few minutes ago. It makes her smile, the thought, and at the same time it gently brushes away the last thin tatters of her own mental blind-fold. And she can see it clearly.
-the expression on Alec's face when he realizes she is leaving him with the Freelancers, the other Alec, so much younger despite being of the same age as his counterpart, the smile disappearing from his face and the hurt that flashes in his eyes. Carlos' empty gaze, the tight grip of his hand on her shoulder. Sam, the morning of the day she took him to the daycare for the first time, how he played with the other children, laughing. And yet, when she turned to leave, he ran after her and clung to her knees, Don't leave, Mama-
Some time ago, it was easy.
One and a half years ago Kiera was working for the VPD and hunting down Liber8. One and a half years ago, Carlos was her partner, Alec was her friend and Kiera just wanted to go home. Travis, Sonja and the rest were her enemies and the life in 2013's Vancouver was different, so very different, not only because so many of the technical advances she was used to weren't invented yet but because life itself was different. One and a half years ago, when she had realized what had happened and that there was no way back, Kiera had promised herself something. So here she was, still alive and kicking while everything around her fell into pieces, and she wasn't even sure if she still was the same person that had left the apartment to attend a mass execution that fateful day in 2067. Now, one and a half years – almost two – later and fifty years earlier, she wonders whether it could have been avoided.
Somehow. Someway. Anyway.
People grow with their quests, they say, but Matthew Kellog will always, first and foremost, grow with the amount of importance he (feels he) possesses. Kiera always has gained a certain amount of satisfaction from the routine of their encounters: he picks a fancy place, she turns up late. He flatters her, she gets to the point, he pretends to be hurt, she pretends to be unfazed. If their meetings are as unpleasant to Kellog as they are to her, well, then, she figures, he's an even better actor than she gave him credit for.
"Kiera. What a pleasure."
She does not even pretend to care, just sits down and folds her hands on the table top.
"You have to try the salad here. The dressing is heavenly."
He expects an acerbic reply from her that is in no way connected to her choice of lunch, but nothing comes. Kellog is unsettled by her change of routine, she can see it in the way his left eye brow twitches in the ghost of a frown. He carefully dabs at his lips with his napkin. "This usually is the moment when you get right to the point."
She remains quiet for another few minutes, relishing in the slight shift of his shoulders that betrays his anxiety.
"How does it feel?"
"Huh?"
She caught him by surprise. Satisfaction tastes like sweetly-scented wine on her lips. "To get everything you ever dreamed of."
"I take it you are referring to a future in which I am "one of several Clan leaders", as your flatmate called it." They stop talking and he nods to the waiter who re-fills his glass. Kellog picks up the glass and watches the blood-red liquid slosh in the wide-brimmed wine glass. "I must confess. As I'm sure you already know I do like the idea of hard work being rewarded one day."
"You disgust me." Kiera wonders how her voice can be so calm when, inwardly, she is shaking with rage. "I hope you're happy, Kellog. I hope you choke on it one day."
"On happiness?" He pretends to be hurt, as per screen play. "And don't you think that's rather harsh-"
And Kiera cannot stand to be in the same room as him for a second longer. She gets up. "Remember, Matthew. The future cannot be tailored to your personal liking, no matter how advanced the techniques and the equipment. One day, you'll realize that."
The bullpen of the Vancouver Police Department once had been a place Kiera liked to be in. It had a certain level of background noise, constantly rang with the sound of telephones and telephone calls being made, with voices, laughter and the steady tapping of fingers on keyboards. When she first started working with Carlos, Kiera had found the atmosphere at VPD very soothing. The fact that she just had to turn in her chair to talk to her partner, the fact that she had a partner she could rely on… It was gratifying. Because Carlos had been someone who trusted her, in the beginning, and later someone who knew the truth and still trusted her. Someone she could turn to without reservation. With a Carlos who didn't trust her, who looked at her like she had betrayed him, the bullpen seemed empty even though he was present. Colder, somehow, foreign. And there was nothing she could do. With an effort, she pushed the thoughts back. Betty's absence, too, was a gaping hole invisible and yet obvious in the network in which it had been her job to fill in her colleagues with detailed descriptions, digital gibberish and a contagious smile.
Kiera's apartment was empty, as well. Years and years she had lived there with her family, her mother and her sister. It didn't quite look the same yet – for various reasons. She didn't want to know what would happen if the next tenants found the rooms exactly as they would have furnished them themselves. Later, it had been the apartment she had shared with her husband and Sam. She had quickly learned children rarely were silent. There always was sound somewhere: toys clanking, soft singing, laughter, weeping. Even sleeping, Sam's soft breathing had filled her ears, his face relaxed and angelic, his small hands clenched in his favorite blanket. Now, the only thing she heard in the darkness was her own heartbeat. Even Brad had left for the night, albeit he had send a warm glance in her direction before disappearing without any explanation. Nobody was left. It was only Kiera and her own mind, clamoring in the confined space of her head.
And her mind. Oh, her mind. Kiera's mind was empty without Alec's soft voice, without the distant echo of his thoughts in her own. He was so young when she met him first, so trusting. So eager to help her. Did he grow up? She couldn't say. She wasn't even sure she still knew him. Maybe he really was trying, maybe he'd even succeed in making the world a better place. Maybe he would still build up SadTech and the future she knew so well. Maybe, though, it was Brad's future they were building right now, with this Alec's corporation spear-heading the beginning of the end. So she had blocked her CMR from his access and yet he was present wherever she went. His honest gaze, his blind, child-like belief in his project: too naïve and inexperienced to plan for the losses that came with the leadership of an international company. At the same time, he was learning that honesty was not the one thing needed to lead a Global Player. Before the thing with her other self's CMR he never had lied to her, wouldn't have thought of it. Not on that scale.
The elevator doors open and Kiera finds herself face to face with a tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered man. A weight drops from her shoulders.
"Oh, good, Carlos, I was looking for you. We-"
"Kiera," he says, simultaneously, surprise crossing his face like a shadow, replaced by resolve. "We-"
Concerted: "… need to talk."
She just wants to ask him what he said when her brain rewinds and understanding sets in. And despite the tension in her shoulders, her hands and her mind, she smiles. "Up for a coffee break?"
Carlos casts a weary look across the bullpen. Dillon, behind the transparent windows of his office, is talking on the phone. When he sees them he frowns and turns his back to them. Kiera follows her partner's glance.
"Come on." He puts a hand on her arm, tugs her into the elevator carefully, mindful of her injury. "Let's go somewhere else."
Coffee is a thing she had to get used to. Kiera likes it with milk and sugar, enough sugar to make Carlos grimace. "You're going to get hyper if you drink that."
She smiles, because this feels like a conversation they had before.
"I like it that way."
His smile tells her he thinks so, too.
She sips her coffee and looks at her partner on the other side of the small table. The café's chairs are almost uncomfortably soft and cushioned. Carlos looks tired, and also a good span of years older than when they met for the first time.
Kiera wonders how they will start this. Whether they will ever start anything. Because now that she's there with him she isn't sure-
"I'm sorry I behaved… the way I did." The words rush from his mouth, unchecked, he almost stumbles over them. His eyes search for hers and lock and hold. "It was too much… Too much to take in. You… she… you died. I still…" He takes a shaking breath, shakes his head slowly. "I still don't know how to feel about that. About you. I mean, my partner – the woman I worked with – she's gone. And here you are, looking exactly like her. But you're not her." His eyes burn into hers. "Aren't you?"
He's good. A good detective, a good man. Always able to find the questions. Kiera drops her head, shame-faced. "I don't know. Would… the Kiera you know… Would she make the same decisions I did?" She cannot ask for more, because more seems like too much to ask for. But oh, how she wishes-
Carlos takes a sip of his coffee, his eyes never leaving her face. "I think you're very much like her."
It is like he knows. Like this is everything he can give her, and Kiera is thankful, so very, very thankful. Because she knows what it must cost him to look at her and remind himself that she is not the one he thinks she is. And maybe Carlos, too, had been looking for similarities. Maybe he found them, but would it have made this easier or more difficult?
"Thank you," she whispers. "I'm sorry."
"I said it before," he says, abruptly. "I'm glad you're here. I still want to work with you, you know. I know it's been difficult for the past weeks, and God knows it wasn't you who was to blame. Or, not only you. But maybe we can be better again. A bit like we were… you know. Before."
The but both of us will have to make an effort hangs in the air between them, unspoken.
Kiera looks up, and she cannot help but smile. Otherwise, she would cry. Because she wants to try. She wants the two of them to be better again, she really, really wants it. "I would like that."
Her partner leans back, one arm over the back of his chair, his other hand idly playing with his paper cup. "So what did you want to talk about?"
"I wanted to tell you what exactly happened." She can see the tiny frown appearing on his forehead, the one that says he's all ears. Start somewhere. "You know the basics. But so much has happened, and I figured… I really want to tell you. You deserve to know the truth. And there have been… new developments."
"Ah." Carlos glances down at his cup. "About strange men with amnesia who only remember your name, and why a kid stole your tech, and why you haven't mentioned Liber8 even once in two days, not since you walked out of a warehouse with a hole in your left foot?"
Kiera smiles, embarrassed. "About that, yes."
"Well, I'm listening."
He does. Calm, quiet, objective and without interrupting her. His eyes never leave hers and when she is finished he is very quiet for a very long time. Kiera sits and tries not to fidget and counts down from two hundred and fifty to calm herself. Finally, when she reaches one hundred eighty seven, he shakes his head and breathes a sigh.
"What a bloody mess."
And they are so much like him – his expression, his hands, his voice, the way he summarizes a hopeless situation in a way it sounds less hopeless and more annoying – that she can do nothing but smile.
Maybe we can be better again.
Choose, a voice in her mind whispers.
Choose to save your own future. Choose to save yourself. And that is the way it happened: Kiera chose this time's Alec over the one that had betrayed her by jumping time to save the woman he loved, chose the one with the bright future over the one who only wanted to live in peace and in happiness. And why? Because he was the one (she thought) who would have brought the future she wanted to create. It was selfish, selfish, selfish, it was for her own sake and for what she wished for and for her own future only. She had chosen to follow her Alec, and it had brought her here. A first, she had thought it could mend things. For the sake of this choice Kiera left behind everything she had been, had betrayed the one who had been her first friend in this foreign world. And she had thought she would be able to decide later on, maybe reconcile with Alec, maybe meet her own Alec once more. Maybe set everything right. Now she finds that none of her choices really was hers to begin with.
Who is she? Nothing more than a pawn in a game too huge for her to fathom. She does not know who – what – to be anymore. Even that choice has been taken from her.
As if in response to her guilt, the tattooed microdots between her fingers burn.
Two pairs of identical eyes stare at her through the white-hot bars of a cage she only knows too well.
You lied to me.
You sold me out.
Maybe, maybe, maybe there is a difference. But if there is one she cannot see it anymore. The line is blurred, the dice have rolled and the person Kiera Cameron once was-
We trusted you, and you betrayed us.
And Gods. He is barely eighteen, just a teenager, still a kid looking for his own way. Both of them are. One is trying to help her in any ways possible, help her to save her world by disappearing. One is trying to save it by using the resources he has been given. And they are exactly the same, except when they aren't. She has made the difference between the two of them. Or maybe her sole existence has made the difference, made Kiera unknowingly influence the path of a boy that would be a great man one day. Great, yes. Not necessarily good.
Can't you see that I just want to live in peace?
Can't you see that I just want to help the world?
And she is so far past seeing that she feels blinded, deafened and muted by grief simultaneously. There is no way she can influence the future, so hers is lost. There is no way she can go home, since her home does not exist anymore. There is no way she can save both boys because in the grand scheme of things they have lost all the importance they once held. Kiera is not a hero, not a savior. There is no way she can save the world. She cannot even save the ones she loves. She is just one insignificant person, one weak woman. How had she ever been able to think she would could have made a difference?
This is an experimental, encrypted stream. How can you be talking to me?
I am sorry, Alec, she thinks. So sorry, so, so sorry. She cannot undo her past actions. She cannot change the future. She can only-
Why?
Because. Because she thought it was the right thing to do. In retrospect, it sounds pathetic. The future cannot be influenced. It is futile, all her attempts to save her timeline have been in vain. Liber8's attempt to change the future would have changed nothing. But the fact that Kiera was there, twice, had upset the balance. And not only Kiera.
Traitor.
Eyes stare at her, accusing and full of anger.
I helped you, I fought for you, I trusted you – and you repay me by delivering me to them.
And so God help her, that is what she has done. Only it isn't her Alec she sees now, even if the dark eyes, blond hair and pale skin are the same. He's still wearing the white dress-shirt and a tie, his hair is made carefully and he looks so ridiculously young.
I gave up so much of myself to become the Alec you wanted me to be. Tell me, when you look at me, can you see the Alec Sadler of your future?
She can. It is the worst thing she ever saw.
Her – Emily's – Alec watches her with sad, tired eyes, and Kiera cannot help herself: she turns away. She is only human. She has seen poverty, death, destruction and murder but she cannot face the consequences of her actions and decisions right now.
"I'll take you someplace safe," she says to the other Alec, trying to keep her voice steady. Surprisingly, he laughs.
"Give me one reason I should trust you. I'd probably be better off leaving you and making it on my own, now that you've come into the habit of delivering different versions of me to the Freelancers. You should take money, you'd be rich by now."
"You don't have to trust me," she snaps back. "It's not like you never tried to manipulate me before. I think, when it comes to that, we're pretty much even. By all means, stay here and join the exclusive club."
He's walking very slowly, like a man who's just learning to walk on his own again. He looks haggard, the frown fused to his expression now permanently, and his eyes are haunted.
"What will you do next, Kiera?"
She stops, right in the corridor. Voices behind her, then the sound of brisk steps. A voice calls out. "Protector?"
She turns, looks at Alec expectantly, and he sighs. "Lead the way. It's not like I have a better place to go."
So now, of the original characters living in this dimension, she thinks, Carlos is the only one of the three of them still free.
Ashes, ashes…
Three kinds of emptiness, and she is dying in each one of them.