Disclaimer: It's not mine.

Chapter 10 – Showdowns of All Kinds: Six weeks later, the Trust cell's plan had taken shape. Jenny was relieved that it didn't seem to be something that was likely to get anyone hurt. The plan was to break into the DESI field office at night and steal the pieces of alien technology stored there. Ryan's distractions were meant for the security guards. Of course, what the team didn't know was that the guards were forewarned, and that the distraction would do nothing, or that Paula was also inside, waiting for the Trust to arrive.

Jenny followed Nash as he picked the lock and walked in through a side entrance. In the background they could hear the booms as Ryan got to work. She remembered that Greer had ordered Paula to be the one who took out Hadley. She just hoped the other woman could do it. Her own job was to stop Nash before they could meet up with David, and she had just the way to do that.

She drew her gun from its concealed holster and pressed the barrel lightly against Nash's neck. "NCIS. Don't move."

Paula ran down the hall in the direction of the bangs, knowing she'd find Ryan there. She didn't know why she hadn't fought this; maybe it was the look in Greer's eyes when he gave the order, a look that told her he expected refusal, and would be using it against her later. Or maybe it was the feeling that Ryan had been her friend once, and that because of that, it was her responsibility to stop him.

She saw him, running down the hall and away from the fiery aftermath of his bombs. The hall was dark, and his face was shadowed with the flames at his back, but she still knew him. And she could feel the flames' light on her face, and she knew that he recognized her. She'd done away with the glamour for tonight; she didn't need it now.

The two old friends stared at each other for a long moment, and Paula was ready when Ryan's hand snapped out, and more flames shot down the hall towards her. She twisted, and they missed by mere inches. "Ryan, I don't want to hurt you!"

"Well, isn't that too bad, Paula," he said, his Southern drawl bringing back years of memories, made all the more painful now by the scorn in his tone. They stared at each other, gray eyes boring into gold, and suddenly Paula recalled how they'd been rivals at school, always trying to outdo each other in each class. It had been part of their friendship, part of what forged their bond, and yet… Now it seemed appropriate somehow, because Paula knew something. Whatever happened, only one of them would walk away from this.

The two guards were a pair of women even younger than Paula, only nineteen years old. Technically, they weren't even full-fledged agents, but the Mayfair family had been tied to DESI since its creation – a Mayfair had been the first director – and Kristina and Danielle Mayfair had been raised to understand that there would never be anything more for them. So, although what they really ought to be doing was sitting in lecture halls somewhere – not that they didn't do that; after all, they still had to be trained properly, and education was key to that – or backpacking through Europe, considering it was summer break, instead they were helping take down a cell of a terrorist group.

Dani glanced at her sister, her eyes finding a face identical to her own. The only difference was that Kris' eyes were eager, ready for this chance to prove herself, and her hair was curly as opposed to straight. Kris still wanted to make their family proud by doing all she could for the good of the agency; Dani had already lost that, the day she realized that what her family had really done in pushing them into this world was take away all of their choices. Kris still thought it was intriguing; Dani just felt trapped.

But right now that wasn't important. As much as she might resent being here, Dani was enough of a Mayfair to understand her duty. And right now, that meant catching the huge Hispanic man and the dark-haired woman who, while certainly less physically imposing than her partner, seemed somehow to be the greater threat. She couldn't have said how she knew that; it was just something in the body language. The big guy's stronger, but the woman will kill you faster, Dani thought. She gave Kris a look, and knew without a word that her sister agreed. Kris' head tilted fractionally in a gesture that said, Your move.

So fine, all right. Greer wanted them alive, so no guns. Tranquilizer rifles, on the other hand… Dani bit her lip as she looked through the scope, focusing all her energy on her first target. She was aiming for the woman – Helen, if she remembered Shepard's talk correctly –, and she knew without looking that Kris would be aiming at the man, Juan.

But while the sisters were perfectly in tune with each other's thoughts and intentions, they weren't evenly matched in everything. There was a reason Kris was so very determined to prove herself in the field; she wasn't as good at it as Dani was. So Kris made her shot too early, and while it did reach its mark, it also alerted Helen, who turned and saw them – and then took off down the hall.

"Kris, just stay," Dani said, dropping the rifle and pulling out her handgun – to Hell with Greer – before chasing off after Helen. She rounded a corner and fired a shot at the fleeing woman, aiming for her leg, but missed by an inch. Helen glanced back and fired a shot of her own, forcing Dani to flatten herself against the wall to avoid it.

The second she was sure she could, she raced after the woman again, rounding one final corner just in time to see Helen disappear in a flash of fractured light. What the Hell is that? But it didn't matter; Helen was gone and they'd screwed up half their mission. At least they'd gotten one of them. But Dani couldn't shake the feeling that Helen's escape would come back to bite someone in the ass. She just wasn't sure who.

"Jessica, what are you doing?" Nash said, keeping his voice calm.

"My name isn't Jessica," Jenny informed him.

"What is it then?"

"You don't need to know. Now get on your knees, hands behind your back."

He shook his head. "I don't think you really want that. I think you know I'm right, and you'll let me go. You could come with me if you wanted, I can forgive this. They had me fooled once as well."

"'They'?"

"DESI, of course. Do you think I'm foolish enough to believe NCIS got enough intel to get you here without DESI? I imagine your 'sister' and your 'cousin' were two DESI agents."

"It doesn't matter. On your knees, now!"

"No." And he spun around, grabbing her arm and attempting to take the gun from her. She twisted away from him, but in the process, the gun flew from her hand and skittered across the floor. Oh shit, she thought as Nash leapt at her, his hands going around her throat. As his grip tightened and her vision went gray, she remembered the case file. He always strangled his victims, and then left them in a body of water somewhere.

She wasn't going to let that be her. She'd fought too long to get ahead to let one psycho stop her. So she managed to bring a leg up and knee him in the stomach. She was too oxygen-deprived for it to be a very hard hit, but it was enough to make him loosen his grip in surprise, giving her a chance to break away.

She dove for the gun and shot him in the kneecap. He collapsed with a scream, and still breathing hard, she cuffed him. "You bitch. I'll kill you for this, I swear!"

"I'm sure you'll want to," Jenny said quietly. "But I have a feeling you'll never be free again to have the chance." He just glared at her, eyes filled with poison.

Paula and Ryan kept staring at each other; it was like they couldn't look away to do what had to be done.

"Hey, Red, come take a look at this! Did you know there's a way to go to other realities with spells? I thought it was just on sci-fi shows!" Ryan waved a book in front of her face.

"God, Ry, how did you find that? Haunting the library shelves again?" Paula laughed.

"Like you don't do loads of that yourself."

"You're both weirdos," Caleb joked.

"Cal, be nice. Though I have to agree they're a bit unusual," Gwyn said in her lilting voice, green eyes sparkling with mirth.

"Oh, shut up," Ryan and Paula said at once, even as they bent over the aged text.

She didn't know if he was remembering the same thing, or if he was remembering anything at all. In the end, it didn't really matter. Not when the ground under her feet began to smoke, Ryan focusing on setting it ablaze. Greer had ordered her in secret to kill Ryan; they always killed enemy magic-handlers, their facilities were not designed to hold them. But he'd told her to kill him with her mind, to rip out his knowledge along with his life. But she couldn't do that. She would not force her mind into that of her old friend, even if that meant losing valuable knowledge for the agency. We can get it from the others.

A single shot rang out, and the firestarter was too engrossed in trying to burn his old friend alive that he never saw it coming. The bullet hole was a dark mark in his forehead, his face frozen in a look of deadly concentration. Paula stared down into the lifeless eyes and forced herself to stop shaking. She could not fall apart over this now. Not now, not when they didn't know if the rest of the cell had been captured. She couldn't think of Gwyn or Caleb, of what they'd say if they knew what had happened. And she couldn't think of the Doctor, who would act disapproving but would look at her with eyes that said he understood, and that she was lucky it hadn't been worse, because it could have been – had been, for him.

The curly-haired guard – Kris Mayfair, Jenny thought – took Nash into custody, her eyes wide. Apparently she'd never seen anyone shot before, or hadn't seen it often enough to control her reaction to it. What the Hell had Hasling been thinking, putting her in this situation? And where was her twin? Jenny asked as much.

"She went after Helen," Mayfair said in her soft, faintly Southern voice. "My fault, I'm the reason she got away."

"Relax, Mayfair, it happens to the best of us," said Paula as she walked towards them. "Ryan's dead."

"But you weren't – " Mayfair objected immediately.

"Do I look like I care?" Paula's eyes swept over the room. "David's not here?"

"No, he's in the lab. Nash and I were supposed to meet him," Jenny said. "I thought you could come with me instead."

"Thought you'd never ask."

David was still in the lab, though he was looking nervous as hell. Jenny entered alone, forcing her features into a worried expression. "David, we've been compromised. I don't know… someone shot Rob."

"But not you?" he said, and his voice was suspicious. He was smarted than Nash had been, and like Helen, hadn't been completely happy with her inclusion on this job.

"No," she said, as blue lights materialized behind the man, dispersing to reveal Paula. She hadn't been kidding about the teleporting trick, apparently, though she'd called it something else – "orbing".

He spun around and saw her. "Shit!" he yelled, diving to the side in order to get out from between them. Paula made a grab for him but missed. Jenny tackled him, but not quickly enough, because he was able to press a button on one of the machines in the room, and suddenly everything went black.

She was standing outside, her head cocked slightly. "Our teams work together as well as we always did, don't they?"

"I guess so, Jen," Jethro said with a shrug. "Though I still don't trust… Haswari," he finally gave in and used the name her liaison officer preferred.

She smiled at him, knowing what that had cost him. "Fair enough. I can't say I don't trust Ziva, because I do, but you've ceased open hostilities, which is all I can ask for."

"Yeah. Well, I guess we should get out of here before the guys in monkey suits start whining." He turned to go, and suddenly she couldn't stand the thought of watching him walk away.

"Jethro?"

"Yeah?"

"I was wondering…"

Paula knew what he was going for, she'd seen one before, and she had tried to grab his hand, to stop him, but it was too late, and she tumbled into a world that didn't exist – or rather, that didn't exist here, but was real and true somewhere else entirely.

She stared at him, this strange man who felt so… wrong to her senses. There was a darkness in him she'd never felt before, and she didn't like that. Add to that Jack's seeming inability to return her calls and the growing unease that something very strange was happening, and she was not a happy camper.

The man – Shaidar, she thought, and even the name had her on edge – studied her with appraising green eyes, his cat-slit pupils oddly appropriate in his pale face. "Tell me, Paula, what do you want?"

Such a loaded question, but right now there was really only one thing she wanted above all else. "I want the truth. I want to know just what the hell is going on here, and your part in it." She met his gaze challengingly, wondering if he'd actually give her what she asked for. He narrowed his eyes, and she could tell he was looking for the right way to respond…

Dani was heading back to the rendezvous point when she heard a loud bang. Turning, she went in the direction of the noise instead. She came upon the lab, but none of the Trust guys were there. Shepard and Ravenwood were, though, both lying on the ground, their eyes glassy and blank. They weren't dead, though; she could see their chests rising and falling as they breathed.

She heard a faint whirring and noticed that one of the machines was on. She crossed the room and pressed the only button she could see. The whirring stopped, and the two women on the floor suddenly stirred, blinking and sitting up.

"What the hell was that?" Shepard demanded.

"Don't remember the name, but it shows – " Ravenwood began.

"The future?"

"No, it shows… the road not taken. Or one of them, anyway."

"What?"

"An alternate reality, I imagine," Dani interjected quietly. Ravenwood looked at her sharply.

"Yes, exactly. That stuff we saw, whatever it was… it's not going to happen here. But somewhere, it did. Or it will, or it could even be happening right now. Who knows?"

"I don't need this," Shepard muttered, dropping her head into her hands.

"Look on the bright side, Jenny. At least you didn't botch your orders," Ravenwood seemed to be trying to joke, but something in her eyes made it fall flat. And Dani didn't think it was shame for her disobedience. It looked more like grief of some kind, and she decided not to ask.

"Kris and I will be in for it as well, Helen got away."

"How?" Shepard and Ravenwood spoke together, something that was both alarming and amusing.

"I'm not sure. I was chasing her, and I turned the corner just in time for her to…" She gestured with her hands, shaking her head. "She just disappeared, into what looked like nothing more than fractured light. I can't explain it."

"I've never heard of a teleport like that," Ravenwood mused quietly.

"Maybe it was some kind of portal?" Dani suggested.

"Whatever it was," Shepard said, "I have a feeling she'll be back."

A/N: Of the two realities that Jenny and Paula see, the one Jenny saw is going to be relevant a few stories from now. Paula's is not my creation, nor is Shaidar. He belongs to my RL friend and fellow member, known here as Brona19. Check out his fic Gateways: The Coming of Shadows, a Babylon 5/Doctor Who crossover. The scene here was written with permission, and came out of discussion about how our characters would handle each other. As for the Mayfair twins... again, more relevant later. I'm setting up a series here.