It was after midnight, but Cutter couldn't sleep. He kept thinking about seeing Claudia Brown, seeing the woman he so greatly liked and may have loved, with someone else. Another man that looked exactly like him. It was confusing, baffling. Infuriating, almost, because he didn't know what to do now. He leant back into the overstuffed chair in front of the fireplace, staring at the low-burning flames that licked along the charred firewood. The others were asleep, though. Connor was still on the couch with head and shoulders in Abby's lap; Stephen was stretched out on the floor; Jenny was curled up on the settee. Jamie was asleep in the spare room because she was the youngest of the lot and because Thomas had refused to argue on the point.

"Can't sleep?" asked a soft voice, nearly making him leap out of the chair in surprise.

"Jesus Christ, boy, don't do that," he hissed, turning in his chair to see young Thomas lingering nearby, staring at him with dark eyes reflecting the firelight like polished obsidian. "Don't you sleep?"

"Do you?" The teen silently padded over on bare feet, easing around the sleeping form of Stephen to stand beside the armchair, peering into the fire as if it somehow held the secrets of the universe. He looked over at Cutter, tilting his head to the side like a puzzled dog or bird. "What's bothering you so much?"

"Nothing."

"Liar."

Cutter's hands tightened on the arms of the chair, eyes narrowed at the young man, but Thomas didn't blink or look away. He huffed in irritation. "Look, I…it isn't easy to explain," he said at last, not wanting to talk about this. He was much more content with just sitting here and stewing on his thoughts in silence, but that didn't mean the kid was content with that answer. Thomas scooted closer and looked at him expectantly. Finally, Cutter started talking, and once he got started, he found that he couldn't quite stop talking either, everything about Claudia Brown and Jenny Lewis and the events of the day spilling out of his mouth until he'd vented everything. With a deep breath, he finally slumped back in the armchair.

Thomas was just staring at him silently, not moving, not speaking, and Cutter shifted slightly in the chair, uncomfortable with the intensity of the boy's stare. It seemed that the young Forsythe didn't need to blink as often as normal people, and the peculiar look in his eyes was unnerving. "Magnets," he said at last, and Cutter frowned in confusion. "Professor, some people in the world are like magnets. They're drawn to each other, one invariably seeking the other out, to one another; north pole to south pole, magnet to metal. No matter the setting or the circumstance, magnets are always going to be attracted to each other. When you vanished from the timeline, it repaired on its own, adjusting and rewriting its own history to fix itself. It remade Connor into me and remade Abby into Jamie, but even as different people, we still ended up together, much as they have." He nodded towards the sleeping forms of Abby and Connor on the couch; the blond had one hand on Connor's dark hair, the other resting on his chest, slowly rising and falling with his breathing. "Stephen was rewritten as Talbot and Helen as my mum, their lives still entwined with the rest of ours. And Jenny Lewis and Nick Cutter have been rewritten as Claudia Brown and Alex Berenson."

Cutter's head snapped up. "Y-you know him?" he asked, stunned to hear the young man give his lookalike a name.

Thomas gave him a small, amazingly knowing smile. "Yes. Alex is Jamie's uncle. Do you see, Professor? You are magnets. You and your people are drawn to each other. You are always connected. Look at us," he said. "We are not time-travellers or dinosaur-wranglers. It's just us. College students, a police officer, a drug addict, government workers. Normal. But we are still combined as one, linked to one another even indirectly. You and Claudia…the timeline has been rewritten so that what you had is gone and will never be again. I'm sorry. But that does not mean that you are not without hope. Your other magnet is still here." Thomas's dark gaze flicked sideways.

Cutter turned slightly in his chair to see what the young man was looking to: Jenny, asleep on the settee. Something in him softened at the sight of her, looking so peaceful, so at ease. And he felt an odd urge to reach out and pass a hand over her dark hair, see how soft it felt, and his hand twitched slightly. "I can't," he whispered raggedly. "She thinks I only care about her because she looks like Claudia Brown."

Thomas Forsythe's voice was as low and soft as velvet rubbed the wrong way. "Do you?"

"No," he murmured. "I-I did once, but now…I know she isn't Claudia. She's Jenny. She's herself, an entirely different woman, and—" Cutter paused, his breath hitching slightly. He swallowed hard and continued in a hushed voice. "I love her for it, but I don't want to lose her."

Thomas tilted his head slightly. "How do you know you'd lose her?"

"She hates me."

"Does she?"

Cutter was starting to get pissed with the constant questioning of every word he said, but at the same time, he kept looking at Jenny, reevaluating. These past several weeks, even before this happened, she had started becoming more...not truly affectionate, but warmer, friendlier. She'd smile and laugh more around him, and occasionally, when she thought he didn't notice, she would look at him with this softness in her eyes. "I don't know."

For several long minutes, there was nothing but the sound of the fire's faint crackling and the soft breathing of the other people in the room. "You are a protector," said the boy suddenly.

"What?" Cutter repeated oh-so-brilliantly.

"You. You're a protector. You've got true balance that draws others to you. You look out for those that look up to you. You are their shelter," the young man replied with a small nod. "That gives you wisdom, but Professor, you are not always the wisest. Goodnight." Thomas stood up and disappeared up the stairs, leaving Cutter sitting in the chair by himself.

A/N: I didn't really mean to take an entire chapter for this conversation, but let's face it, Cutter seriously needed someone to talk some sense into him (thick git).