Epilogue:
The Aftermath of Dark Revelations

The world spun around Adam and Emma as they plummeted through the blind eternities of time.
Tumbling and twisting, like clothes in a dryer, both felt their true present rushing forward to meet them. Gradually, the chaos of time travel gave way to the ordered perfection of reality. After no more than seven relative seconds, Adam was thrown out of a swirling gateway. He struck the hard, packed ground and rolled for a meter or two, coming to rest face up beside some rocks.
Next, Emma crashed down beside him, jamming her leg painfully into Adam's side. Behind and above them, collapsing in on itself in a disturbing image of abstraction that would have driven Picasso mad, the temporal Hindsight gateway rapidly dissolved away. Reality seemed to fold and twist inward, energy pulsed and sparked at the edges, and then it was gone, leaving no trace of itself save Adam and Emma.

Coughing and rubbing his side, Adam sat up and surveyed the area, orienting himself to their new place in time and space. To assure himself that she was there, he reached out and lightly touched Emma's arm. "Are you okay?" His voice sounded slightly hoarse but it wasn't the pain filled groan he'd made when they'd first entered the black future.

Emma turned toward him, a hesitant smile on her face. "I'm fine. A little surprised about that but. . . ." She shrugged and started looking around. The area seemed familiar. Rough terrain made up of parched dirt packed hard, enormous skeleton trees, chunks of rock standing about like tombstones on an alien world, and off in the distance a construction project of some sort.
She sniffed the air, catching a whiff of something noxious. Her nose wrinkled at the stench.
"Ugh, smells like sewage."

"The battle." Adam muttered. He turned to Emma, a look of surprise on his face. "This is near the area where we were battling Portia Klein and Darius Monaco!"

"We're back in our own time then. We're home." Emma felt exhilarated to be breathing the free air of a world that had yet to be taken over by a madman. A grin sprang into being, brightening her face as she turned it toward the sun. She sighed and felt tension leaving her body. It was over. They'd made it back together. Everything was going to be alright now.

Adam was lurching to his feet. The pain he felt was minimal and expected after such a rough landing. His muscles were working properly and nothing felt overly taxed. A stray thought started repeating in his brain. 'Why did it hurt so much to travel into the future?' For the moment, Adam dismissed the thought and lent Emma a hand. She took it and he gently pulled her up.

As Emma rose, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Adam. Contact brought each of them a feeling of deep comfort. Embraced, both knew that their lives were forever changed. They could pretend, for a time, that they were still the same as they'd been before they'd gone forward, still alone in the world. In the end, that pretension would fall away and reveal the truth. It would reveal that they were in love and heaven help the fool who tried to come between them. Emma looked up at Adam's handsome face, her features radiating devotion. He leaned down and kissed her, which made her smile even harder.

"We're home. Now, let's go find the others." Emma whispered happily. She stepped away from Adam, looked around, and felt a burst of emotion coming from a nearby grove of dead trees. "Over there!" Her voice pitched high with relief. Even though everything seemed to be going perfectly, there was always a chance for something to go wrong.

Trust Adam, of all people, to find that one opportunity.

"Wait!" Adam called out, stopping Emma as she started running. "We need to be careful. If I'm right, judging by the sun, we're here before we left. Do you understand what that means?" He walked over to her and took her hand. "If we interfered with the events that sent us to that future. . . ." Adam let Emma fill in the blanks with her own mind.

"We can't do that." She said simply and turned to go.

"Emma, what about that future? What about all the things Eckhart did? We have to make sure that they don't happen. If we stopped ourselves from being sent to the future, then there wouldn't be any chance of that nightmare coming to pass." Adam turned her back to face him,
desperation in his voice. Every fiber of his being was screaming at him to change what had happened, to change the course of events that sent them into Eckhart's Empire. At the same time, his heart and soul desperately commanded that he let the battle happen just as he remembered it. He wanted to be with Emma. He couldn't imagine his life without her in it. Not anymore.

For the longest time, there was silence between them. Then, very suddenly, Emma pulled Adam to her and just held him tightly. She brought his ear close to her mouth and whispered to him.
"That future won't exist now that we're back here. It's dead. All the people we meet and all the things we saw, they're just memories now. If we stopped Portia from sending us into the future,
those memories would be gone. They deserve to be remembered Adam. And more than that," Emma squeezed Adam's hand, touched his cheek with her delicate fingers, "if we stopped ourselves from going into the darkness, our love would be lost too. Just gone without a trace. It never would have happened. We never would have realized our feelings, never would have accepted them." She felt a tear slide down her face. "As long as we're alive, we'll stop Eckhart and people like him. That doesn't mean we have sacrifice our happiness, does it?"

Adam buried his face in the crook of Emma's neck, breathing deep the scent of her hair. "No.
We shouldn't have to suffer." He moved back and reached out, brushed away the bead of sorrow from her cheek, and let himself hope. "Emma. All of my life, I've made choices that I regret. I've done things that in the end have hurt people." He raised her hand to his lips and gently kissed the back. Eyes filled with an odd mix of happiness and sadness, Adam sighed.
"I've made a lot mistakes. I'm not going to make this one. You're right. We're not going to try and change the battle. When Mutant X beats Portia and Darius, we'll just walk over and tell them about the future and what happened there."

"What about us? Are we going to tell them about us?" Emma asked, worry softening her voice into a whisper.

"No. We'll wait as long as you want."

She sighed with great relief. "Thank you. I know I'm worrying about nothing, but there's a part of me that just won't stop believing that they're going to hate us."

"Don't worry about that for right now Emma. Let's just go and watch the fight. We'll worry about the rest later."

Together, they walked toward the grove of dead trees. Together, they hid and watched as the battle that brought them into a nightmare was fought. It was bizarre, watching themselves and their friends. It felt wrong to not try and change the course of events. Still, as they held hands,
they felt in the depths of their souls that it wasn't half as wrong as letting this love between them die. Their love could conquer anything, even the future.

Standing in the middle of a clearing in the skeleton tree forest, Darius Monaco raised his hands and generated a misty cloud of greenish toxic gas. Without hesitation, he used his mutant talents to propel it forward at the Mutant X team. The cloud seemed to consciously streak toward Brennan Mulwray, who was busy trading lightening bolts with Portia Klein, Darius's fiancé.
Before it could strike Brennan, Shalimar Fox dove into him, knocking him out of harm's way just as the cloud streaked by.

"Darius, watch where you spray!" Portia yelled as she accelerated her molecules and dashed out of the cloud's path. She slowed and had to take a breath. "Unless that was your special way to show me I'm loved, in which case I really prefer flowers." Portia laughed as she dodged an attack by Brennan, who still hadn't managed to hit his target once. The woman let her red hair swirl in the mid morning sunlight as she danced out of range, putting her childhood ballet training to use. With practiced ease, she loosed a bolt of energy that almost hit Shalimar. The stasis effect instead froze a snake that was unfortunate enough to be slithering across the sand.

"I'll remember that for Valentine's Day babe!" Darius called back as he met a punch from Jesse Kilmartin with a hard thrust of his own fist. He countered every move then delivered a powerful blow like a pile driver, bruising two of his enemy's ribs. In an instant, Jesse was down on the ground holding his chest. He coughed and a thin line of blood trickled from his lips.

Standing over him like a gladiator of the old age, Darius raised his hands over Jesse's face.
"Time for you to take your medicine boy!" He began to generate another glob of chemicals but didn't get a chance to use it. A psi-blast struck him just as he was about to kill Jesse.

From his place in the battle, Adam Kane spun around, and practically roared with pride. Emma DeLauro was coming into the fight, running from a car hastily parked in the middle of a small roadway. She headed straight for Darius, delivering a spinning kick to his head. Adam had been on the sidelines, trying to repair a tranquilizer gun that Portia had damaged by placing the barrel alone in stasis. The weapon had almost blown apart when the dart was forced backwards into the firing mechanism along with the explosive force that had propelled it.

A part of him wondered why she was there. That morning, he'd sent her on a solo mission to help a new mutant in the underground. Her fellow Psionic, a child named Regina Valmont, had recently undergone an incredible growth in power that had almost revocably shattered her mind.
The poor girl had needed immediate attention and Emma had been the natural choice.

Now, watching her fight with Darius Monaco, he felt a sense of relief at her appearance. Ever since Mutant X had intervened to foil Portia and Darius's seventh bank robbery, they'd been on the defensive. The couple were lethal, coordinating attacks without any signals between them and fighting ruthlessly, fearlessly, and aggressively. They moved like assassins despite their simple backgrounds. Before turning to a life of crime, Darius had worked at a factory and Portia had been an unsuccessful artist. According to the information Adam had compiled on them, their criminal enterprises had begun immediately after they met. The money from the first three bank robberies had gone into buying a house. The next two paid off all their debts. The sixth bought rings, a booking at a nice chapel, and other things necessary for a nice wedding. This robbery was apparently meant to finance the reception that would follow their wedding.

Despite the psi-blast and Emma's well-aimed kick to the head, Darius recovered with frightening ease. When the battle begun, he'd employed his mutant gift to generate high levels of adrenaline in his own system, boosting his strength and endurance. Apparently, he'd also taken in something that protected him from psionic attacks. He struck back hard, backhanding Emma with such power Adam could hear the blow from ten meters away. By some incredible stroke of luck, she was able to block him in such a way that most of the energy was diverted. Still, she staggered under the counterattack.

Portia Klein, however, wasn't doing as well as her lover. A lucky stasis blast had temporarily frozen Brennan, but now she faced Shalimar in hand-to-hand. Fighting a Feral wasn't easy,
even for a person like her who had trained to face anyone. The redhead realized how outclassed she was when Shalimar faked an opening in her defenses. Portia went for the kill,
driving her fist straight at her enemy's face, hoping to slam the cartilage of the nose into her blonde brain. As her fist came forward, Shalimar suddenly dropped to the ground, pulled back her legs against her chest, and drove them forward with tremendous speed and power.

The blow threw Portia back and left the redhead gasping for breath. "Darius! Help!" She called weakly out as Shalimar appeared over her, ready to deliver a knockout.

"Portia!" Darius roared in fear and rage at the sight of his fiancé on the ground, at the mercy of their enemy. He spun away from a clever attack by Emma, slammed a foot into her back to send her sprawling, and quickly formed a dose of industrial strength tranquilizer. Even as he let the cloud of sleeping gas fly, Darius was dropping down deftly to smash his fist into Jesse's skull.

Having just managed to recover from the last blow he'd taken, Jesse wasn't about to let Darius do anymore damage to him. He took a deep breath and massed out, his body becoming rock hard. Unable to arrest his punch, Darius felt his hand breaking as it struck Jesse's face. A half second later, he was knocked back by a massed out fist.

Adam reloaded the tranquilizer gun he'd brought with them. Against a mutant like Portia Klein,
it seemed the only useful weapon. She was standing over Shalimar's unconscious body,
preparing to crush her throat under a boot heel. "Portia!" Adam yelled, startling her as he took aim and fired. A tiny dart zipped across the battlefield and bit into her arm just as she began to accelerate her molecules. The effect was interesting. Since she'd been using her ability to manipulate the speed of molecules, the tranquilizer filled her body rapidly. In fact, it disbursed through her system so quickly that it didn't have time to really affect her. Instead, she became woozy and a little giddy, as if she'd been drinking too much. "Damn." Adam started to reload.

Darius stumbled toward his love. "Portia? What did he do to you?" He asked as he came closer. Suddenly, before she could answer, Emma slammed her fist into his back. Falling forward, he twisted and kicked back, knocking her away. "Damn little pest, why don't you take a little rest! Portia, put her in stasis!" Darius turned over on the ground and grabbed Portia's bare ankle, injecting adrenaline and several other chemicals into her body to boost her powers.

"Thanks for the hand my love." Portia said with a warm grin. She raised her hands and gathered her strength for a full powered stasis attack. At the same moment, Brennan came out from the stasis field he'd been trapped in and saw Shalimar lying on the ground unconscious.
His heart seared with rage. Hands raised, he circled them, electricity arcing from his fingertips.
At the moment Portia began to release her attack, Brennan struck both her and Darius with his own. Electrical power flowed into the stasis field, warping it and empowering it further.

Simultaneously, as Elemental and Molecular attacks merged into one powerful beam, Adam abandoned his tranquilizer gun. He dove forward to try and block the blast, shielding Emma.
As the energy washed over them, it twisted and curled, bent and shattered. The stasis effect started but then seemed to change, accelerating molecules around the two teammates. In an instant, a blinding flash of light bloomed before all who watched. Power engulfed first Adam and then Emma. An eye blink later, they were gone, leaving no trace of themselves save a patch of ground that had been frozen and sped up at the same time, resulting in molecular instability.

Everyone was stunned by the disappearances. Portia Klein stared blankly down at her own hands. Brennan Mulwray's mouth dropped open in shock. Jesse Kilmartin whispered a prayer.
Darius Monaco shook his head and muttered something that sounded like "I didn't see that, no way, no how." As for Shalimar, she was still unconscious, but her nose did twitch like a kitten's at the odd scent on the breeze. A scent like ancient tombs but also like a newborn's skin. The smell of past and future combined, arrested motion and forward progression.

The first to recover from his astonishment was Jesse. He ran forward, took a deep breath, and slammed his fist into Darius Monaco's face, knocking the man down. Brennan saw this, drew another arch of electricity into his hands, and hit Portia again. This time, with no outlet for the power, the lightening kicked her off her feet. She collapsed beside her lover.

"What the hell happened Jesse?" Brennan asked desperately as he dropped down to Shalimar's side. He quickly checked her pulse and breathed a sigh of relief at the strength of it. "Where are Adam and Emma? Are they in stasis or. . . or something else?" He had almost let himself think that it were possible for them to be dead. Brennan closed his eyes and refused to believe such a thing might be.

Jesse slowly approached the area where they'd been standing. "If they were in stasis, we'd be able to see them." Cautiously, he placed his hand through the air where they'd been. He felt nothing. Cool morning air that was rapidly warming in the summer sun, a gentle breeze, maybe the slightest tingle of static electricity, but nothing that might help him to figure out what had happened to his teammates. "Is Shalimar okay?"

Brennan nodded. "She's fine. What about them?"

Before Jesse could come up with an answer or even attempt a speculation, two figures emerged from the nearby grove of skeleton trees. They rose from behind a rock and, at first, Jesse had the craziest thought that they were traveling wizard pranksters coming out to say "gotcha!"

Actually, they were Adam and Emma. As they walked up to Jesse, Brennan, and the still unconscious Shalimar, expressions of matching uncertainty on their faces, it was obvious that something momentous had occurred. Each looked different than when they'd disappeared just a few seconds ago. Their eyes seemed filled with wonder and they walked as if a terrible burden had only recently been taken from them. Adam's clothes were heavily wrinkled and looked as if he'd been wearing them for several long days. There were a few tears and some stains that hadn't been there before they'd disappeared. Some looked like blood. Emma was dressed in a different outfit entirely than she'd been wearing less than a minute ago. Yet, it too appeared to be well-worn and had obvious blood stains and what might have been damage from a knife in several places.

From the ground, Shalimar groaned and opened her eyes. She sat up, Brennan dropping down to help her. "Oh, my head. Feels like someone's been tap dancing on my brains." She noticed the way Jesse and Brennan were staring at Adam and Emma. Her keen Feral senses took in the changes in their appearances and the subtle scents of a world that she'd never smelled before.
"What the hell did I miss?" She asked in pure perplexed puzzlement.

Emma glanced at Adam, her lower lip trembling slightly, then she turned to Jesse. "You're not going to have look for us this time. We're back and we're not leaving ever again." She smiled warmly.

"Definitely not." Adam echoed, his own face slowly warming to an expression of deep relief and happiness. He shared a look with Emma, one that neither Jesse nor Brennan nor even Shalimar quite understood, then turned back to them.

"We've got one hell of story to tell you."

Somewhere in the city, at the moment Adam and Emma began the story of the dark future, when the collective ears of Mutant X were just starting to take in that horror, another traveler arrived.
She tumbled out of a bastardized tunnel through history, an anachronistic soul with a will to survive beyond comprehension.

She fell from the opening and struck hard concrete. The impact dislocated her shoulder, made her wince with anguish as she rolled three meters, and finally brought a scream from her body when she struck a trash Dumpster. Tears of pain rolled down her face. Still, this woman rose from the ground in an instant, her good arm at the ready to punch or block, her legs ready to kick. Once certain of her solitude, she reset her shoulder by slamming it into the Dumpster at a precise angle. She bit her lip and tasted blood, the pain was terrible.

And that was wonderful. No matter how much her body ached, no matter the blood or anguish,
she was alive. She reached behind and felt the backpack that contained her supplies. Her other bag lay where she'd first struck the ground. Over the next few days, her plan was to acquire various secondary items necessary for her mind's keenly developed plan.

"History lesson number one: the future is right around the corner." Valerie Curio whispered, her cold voice filled with a strange calm. "Look out world, you thought Gabriel Ashlocke and Mason Eckhart were bad. Wait till you meet me." She smiled and hitched her pack up, bringing the weight more evenly onto her back. Her eyes surveyed the area, a dark and dank little alleyway, cut off from the sun by thick clouds of smog overhead and heavy metal fire escapes.
Valerie sniffed the air, letting the odor play through her senses, teaching her something important about this world, this time that she had chosen to embrace.

"No explosives in the wind. No ozone to indicate laser defenses. This place is utterly and completely unprepared for an all-out Neo-mutant revolution." Her face turned dark with a maniacal fanaticism, a thirst for conquest and domination. She reached into her long black coat and drew her pistol, which she had holstered in the bare instant before she'd dived into the Hindsight gateway. The weight indicated an empty clip, which was expected. Rapidly, she broke the weapon down and checked for any damage from her journey. One by one, her hands and eyes examined every piece of it, as they would later scrutinize her other resources.

With a practiced flair, she snapped the pistol back together and slammed a fresh clip in, loaded it, and calmly stepped out from the alleyway. As she entered the bright light of a morning, her body seized with pain. Valerie gasped and doubled over, grabbing her middle. Pain exploded behind her eyes, deep inside of her skull. Before she knew what was happening, she was lying on the concrete, staring up at a skyline that was rapidly dimming into a grey mist.

"That damn short-circuit took out the protective fields." Valerie gasped, grasping at the only possible explanation for her sudden physical collapse. Another surge of agony left her soundlessly screaming. The world dimmed and lost color, things shimmered out. Only one possible action could save her life, an immediate injection of Blue No. 2, but Valerie no longer possessed the capacity to move. Her entire body felt as if it were on fire. No, it felt like she was being frozen and burned all at the same time. In truth, there just weren't words to properly describe the sensation. Her organ functions became erratic, she felt her heart stuttering. Lungs failed to take in oxygen properly. Nerves no longer conducted vital messages from the brain to the extremities.

Valerie lost consciousness very suddenly. Her last thought before she fell into the abyss of darkness, the meaningless blank of comatose oblivion, was that someone had appeared standing over her. Someone tall with medium length dark hair. Someone powerful. She vaguely wondered who he was before drifting completely away from the world and thoughts of it.

Agent Valerie Curio was in a coma no more than two and three-quarter minutes after her entry into the time of Adam and Emma. Brennan of the future had stopped her after all.

The Double Helix landed easily inside of Sanctuary's hanger. As the Mutant X team stepped out, they each paused to consider what their home had looked like after the future bombing. It still gave them headaches to dwell on Adam and Emma's incredible story. It was all so insane.
Mason Eckhart ruling the world, a rebel movement led by Bo and Angel Longstreet, a Mutant X team that included a stranger named Evan Dane and their onetime enemy Charlotte Cook? It just didn't seem possible. Still, no one could argue with the emotion Adam and Emma had spoken with, especially when talking about the people they'd met.

Certain facts had been left out, of course, because both Adam and Emma felt it necessary to keep secrets. Emma didn't tell them about how Van Negus died. Adam neglected to mention the child Shalimar had lost or the question of paternity. Neither of them expressed their mutual love, though someone looking for signs would have seen plenty. The way they sat, their legs turned toward each other or how each gazed at the other while they spoke, an occasional touching of hands. No lies were told but secrets were born in that moment which would wither and turn to poison if they were not someday uncovered.

"I've got some work to do." Adam said as he walked away from the Double Helix. Turning back, he gave his team a friendly smile. "I'll be in the lab." His eyes lingered on Emma for a fraction longer than might be normal before he left.

Brennan and Shalimar were the next to walk away, talking together about the age that would never be, unconsciously drawing together and rebuilding a few of the links between them that had begun to weaken. Neither of them fully comprehended what they'd been told, but they believed. With that conviction came a level of dread that wasn't easy to shrug off. Only reassurances and loving hope could mitigate its effects.

Standing together but lost in separate paths of thought, Emma and Jesse stood in the hanger.
Once, had time been allowed to progress without Portia's interference, it was possible that love could have blossomed here. It would never have been as strong as the love between Adam and Emma, but it would have been something worth having. Never knowing that the chance was there, Emma and Jesse left each other's company, neither feeling a loss or a gain, just a simple feeling of the balanced now.

As Emma started to head for her room and a much needed nap, Jesse called out to her. "What?
I didn't hear you?" She said as she turned back.

"I said, why did Charlotte tell you to give this to me?" He held up a small leather bound book with gold script on the cover. It read simply "Hope" and bore no markings of publication or indication that it was printed for profit as there were no bar codes to scan. Jesse looked at the book again, felt the most peculiar sensation, like reverse deja vu. "What did Charlotte say about me?"

"I'm sorry. She never really told me why, just that she wanted you to have that book." Emma ran a hand through her dark hair and rubbed the back of her neck. The action brought a slight feeling of relaxation to the sore muscles in her shoulders. "The only thing I remember her saying was, 'Jesse gave me this book and I want him to have it again, even if he doesn't understand why.' I don't really know what that means. I guess you made an impression on her in that future." Emma turned to leave. "Goodnight Jesse."

"Night." He said with a shrug, mild confusion in his voice. Book in hand, he took a short walk around Sanctuary, being thankful that it was intact and undamaged. Eventually, he ended up in his room. There, he opened the book and started reading a short introduction on the cover page out loud.

"Hope is the balm of our souls. It gives us the strength to carry on in the darkness of life's despair, it touches the secret heart where we truly live, and kisses us goodnight like a childless mother to a friend's conception. We live only for Hope that we may love. Here reads the account of Hope in the journey of life. Here is to be found love and acceptance for all who hold such same faiths to heart. May these words guide your soul and rest your weary head."

Jesse read until a few minutes turned to a couple of hours. When sleep finally claimed him, his pillow was the open pages of the book Hope. In his last moment of wakefulness before falling into a dreamless slumber, he thought that the Charlotte Cook of thirty years forward had understood exactly what he was feeling. She knew of his sadness and loneliness. Jesse's path was changed by the book. All of their paths had been changed by the future that would never be, but his most of all.

It would be many hours before he woke, finished the book, and discovered a simple grey envelope taped to the last page, a hastily written letter, just two pages, hidden inside.

Shalimar sat on the edge of her bed and sighed. "So what do you think about all of that?" Her voice trembled just slightly, revealing only a hint of the unease that plagued her like some unholy virus. A hand moved back and twisted stray hairs back into place behind one ear, the motions calming to both sides of Shalimar's soul, pure human and Feral enhancement. "Do you think Eckhart's out there somewhere? Plotting his revenge?"

"I think he's stuck in that damn pod where he belongs." Brennan said and then shuddered involuntarily. "God, just thinking about the fact that we were all in pods in that future. . . makes my skin crawl away and hide under a bed." A handsome grin formed on his face. "Preferably yours."

"Cute." There was an answering smile on Shalimar's face for just a second. It melted away though, replaced by a look of cold dread. "I can't imagine what it was like. Being captured,
tortured, thrown in pods." She shook her head, golden locks swirling around her head. "I can almost see it. Thorne sending that dagger into the control panel and you, me, and the rest of the team climbing out just in time to stop Catherine from killing Adam. Barely in time to save Emma's life."

An involuntary shiver stole her voice for a moment. "Brennan, what if Eckhart did get out? What if he's out there somewhere? Waiting for us, hunting us?"

Brennan closed his eyes and turned away. He thought about all the horrible things the Eckhart of the future had done. He thought about the millions that had died, the rebel movement, the other him and the other Shalimar, married and then imprisoned in pods. He thought about coming out of that dreaded stasis, blinking away years of slumber, and seeing a gun pointed at Adam's head, Emma's lifeless body cradled in his arms. Brennan thought about everything that had happened in that future and then considered the fate of Eckhart.

"If he's out there, we will stop him."

Alone in his lab, the night slowly passing into the cold and unfeeling river of time, Adam sat, his hands bound to work and his mind focused on problems at hand. His heart, however, was not easily chained by mundane research and ordinary intrigues. Deep inside, he could not escape Emma's beautiful smile or the way her eyes shined when light hit them. Every breath he took was perfumed by the memory of her skin, hair, and touch. A shiver ran down his spine and a sigh escaped his lips and all from a moment's indulgence in the memory.

"Whoever said love conquers all should have added a postscript about it making work very difficult." He muttered fondly, the memory of Emma's soft sighs against his neck holding his attention where science and reason could not.

"I'll second that. If you'll replace work with sleep."

Adam turned to find Emma standing in the doorway, an over length T-shirt serving as a nightgown. She was smiling sweetly, head slanted right, eyes fixed on the man before her. One arm drifted at her side, the other held the frame of the doorway, giving her the look of a model posed for a catalogue shoot. Her hair was fuzzy from tossing and turning. Dark smudges under her eyes marred the perfection of her face, though Adam found them but a minor flaw that helped to accentuate her natural splendor.

"I couldn't sleep. Everyone else is out like a light but not me." Emma whispered, her voice carrying in the empty and silent room, the only sounds the quick pulses of needful hearts and soft respiration. She looked down at her bare feet and let out a sigh that seemed to drain all the tension out of her body. When she looked up, her face was naked of pretension. "I can't sleep without you."

The declaration made Adam's heart skip a beat. "You're all I can think about. Nothing else can hold my attention for more than a minute." He rose from his utilitarian metal stool and started walking toward her, speaking as he did. Every word was devoid of any falsehood. "Every thought I have is about you. Every breath I take, the very beating of my heart, is for you. I've never loved anyone this much in my entire life. I need you so much that it hurts."

"You sound like a Valentine's card." Emma said, looking away out of mild embarrassment. She shivered when Adam touched her chin and lifted her face. He leaned down and kissed her lips.
It was gentle and loving, almost chaste. "Adam, what are we going to do? We can't hide this from the others forever." Her arms went around his body, hands clasping his back and pulling him closer. Pressed together now, they hugged, wanting to feel the comforting love they shared.

"No, we can't. And Emma," Adam whispered directly into her ear while running a hand up and down her back, "I don't want to hide. I want to tell everyone how I feel about you. I want to show the world." He wanted to go on but stopped when he felt Emma pulling away from him.
There was a question aching to be asked but Adam restrained himself.

"I'm scared Adam. I don't know how Shalimar or Brennan or Jesse is going to react to you and me. We can't just come right out and tell them." Emma turned around and threw her hands in the air. "Damn it! Why do I even care what they think! You're the only man for me Adam, the only one I've ever loved this much." She swung herself into his arms and held him tightly,
burying her face in his chest.

He ran a hand through her fiery hair. She'd dyed it just after they'd returned from the dark future. Emma had been talking about it for a while. The red suited her, Adam thought, as he held her against his body and tried to protect her from herself. She was like a flame burning out of control. Her life had been filled with rejections and disappointments. Only a few friends and Mutant X could be trusted, but only so far. Emma constantly felt the need to be accepted by them. It was like an addiction, it grew worse when she wasn't doing something useful. Standing with her in the lab, arms holding her tight, Adam realized just how fragile she was and how delicate the balance of trust was for her. A year of familial closeness still hadn't erased her lingering doubts that Mutant X'd kick her out if she screwed up.

"It's alright Emma. We'll wait until we're sure. And then, I'm going to show everyone how much I love you."

She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes. "What are you going to do?" The question was filled with a longing that almost made Adam answer immediately. Only a desire for the moment to be perfect kept Adam from speaking.

"You'll see. For now though, we should go to bed." And without warning he swept Emma off her feet and into his arms. She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning in close to kiss his neck. Together, they left the lab for Adam's room. Everyone was asleep and no one heard Adam lay her upon his bed. No one heard the rustle of clothing being shed, of sheets being pulled around bodies. They were quiet and almost chaste as the night deepened.

They fell asleep, beautifully bound by their love. Night watched over them and smiled down as easy dreams of a brighter future kept nightmares at bay. Shadows played in their hair and dashed across their skin. The hour grew later and, in the stillness, they dreamed of a perfect future where they were happy and together forever. For this night, there were no fears that could break the magical spell their lovemaking had cast. In the darkness they felt loved and at peace. No matter what the morning would bring, they had this one moment of passion to carry them through it.

Emma twisted Adam's hair between her fingers, asleep and dreaming of him. Adam held her body against him, taking infinite comfort from the contact. Together, in dreaming, they recalled a line from a book they'd both read at Brennan's instance. It was a simple quote that summed up the gift of love and life, especially such a surprisingly deep love as their's.

Isn't it lucky?

END OF EPILOGUE

Author's Note:

For everyone who's been reading, I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did.
"Flashforward" may not be perfect, but I loved creating it. Those of you who left me reviews, I am thankful for them. They helped me to work time in for writing when I really didn't have any time at all. I've actually fallen behind on my work! It's worth it, make no mistake, as long as one person is reading and enjoying, I will continue.

"Flashforward" is not the end. I have a sequel story already in the works. Remember, this story took place just before the second season began. Now, the next part will begin shortly into the second year in this alternate universe I've concocted.

The first part of "The Price" will be posted soon. Hopefully, if I can catch up on some work, I'll be able to pound it out faster than "Flashforward." I think everyone will like what I've got in store for you.

Again, thank you all for reading and I am truly sorry about how long it's taken for some of these updates.