Endgame -

If he hadn't know before, he sure knew now. The pragmatic side of himself accepted Kiera's exiting this wrinkle in time was all she wanted. He had grown to love her so very much. What she obsessed over he had become good at working around it. She did not belong here, never had, never would. Though he'd promised to support her, appear all for her getting back, deep down, that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted more than what he'd ever considered having with a woman. He nursed his shot of bourbon as he sat on his saggy couch with his feet up, licking his wounds. As it turned out, he'd nearly fractured at least two ribs in the knock-down, drag-out fight with Travis. That Liber8 diehard had many a lethal move he'd been fortunate enough to duck, just barely. If he had been any less agile, he'd be dead right now. Carlos was on a first name basis with the personnel at the local ER ever since Kiera had blown into town. He grinned ruefully, thinking how he'd delivered a number of good shots to Travis, but couldn't help but conclude that taking over for Dillon had slowed him down, had made him flat. There was no perhaps about it; he'd better resume working-out, get back in better shape. Give up drinking so much. Staring into the amber liquid on ice, refracting light in the glass, Carlos half-smiled. Hitting the bottle harder these days, he was. He could stop filling his handy flask with whiskey. Replace liquor with some sports drink? He used to fill the hidden container with rum. Kiera had a real liking for rum; Kiera would make it a contest, keeping him guessing whether she wanted some, or not.

Usually, she wanted. That wasn't the only thing she kept him guessing about. Did he really matter to her at all? His lip curled. Stuck in this stinky emotional sinkhole, Carlos writhed as he took stock.

It was a fact of his life now, never to be denied. His hadn't been the same since Kiera had come into it. He wasn't fooling himself. Though the Kiera he now knew wasn't the one he'd first met, she was still the same Kiera, only from the reworked future. She still had a kid there, blond, sweet, inquisitive, as she'd described him. He was still hers, the boy she'd abandoned all this time. The longer the separation, the harder her waif-like son tugged on her heartstrings. Laid-back, Carlos swirled the bourbon around in the glass some more before swilling it down. Wrapping his head around the steady stream of paradoxes had never been easy. As time had gone on, it wasn't any easier. Just the mention of the word 'time' made him shiver involuntarily. If he wanted to know what time it was these days, he'd consult his smartphone. There were no timekeeping devices in his apartment since he'd sworn off of them.

It was only a matter of time before she'd be telling him goodbye, looking him straight in the eye as she flashed out of sight. Would she have any regrets? He weighed the conjecture, running his hand sloppily through his hair. Perhaps, but nothing that would prevent her from leaving him behind.

Didn't she see, every time their eyes locked, that she had become more than just a homesick time traveler to him?

"Maybe genius boy won't," Carlos yearned aloud, looking about himself as though he weren't alone. "Won't send her on her way…if I ask Alec not to because I can't have her go. Not now. Not ever." He smiled, sardonic. "I don't want doing this job without her. Don't want to want missing her as much as I will." She could stay with him to right wrongs she already knew about before they insidiously got their start. He nodded, absent-mindedly setting his empty glass down by the whiskey bottle that was three-fourths full. "He should understand. He's in love too. He'd feel the same if Emily said she was leaving." As he clumsily went for the bottle, keen on finishing the rest of the liquor straight from it, the door buzzer interrupted. It was going on midnight he saw, checking. The beating of his heart was all over the place, thumping wildly. He had an idea, about to be validated, who it was. She called at the oddest hours, the later the better. The door wasn't open, but feeling cocky, he boomed an invitation anyway. "Come on in, it's open." Not, his mind huffed while his chest heaved, seeing the doorknob turn. He raised the lip of the bottle to his mouth and polished off the bourbon. He wasn't drunk, but she would accuse him of it. Just like old times.

"It's locked," her voice rattled.

"Yeah. I know it is." He hadn't budged from the couch, but he'd swung his legs off the glass reproduction rondo low table. "Do your thing." Seeing her pass through solid barriers wasn't new. At least he told himself that he'd seen her do it before, in the tangle of a frenzied battle, when structures exploded. The fact was, she could detect heat signatures through solid objects. Passing through solid obstacles wasn't in her repertorie. For someone cemented in the present, assuming that she could wasn't a stretch. Carlos worked with a phantom, one who had become larger than life.

"Then why did you tell me it's open?" She was not amused, though detecting the play in his voice. "Funny." Her hearing sensitive, she heard him groaning and moaning his way to the door. She hadn't witnessed the war Carlos had waged with Travis, only the aftermath. Carlos was a Protector without tech-heavy gear. She felt his pain, no stranger to epic butt-whuppings either. "Take your time," she susurrated through lips that were pressed practically flush with the door. She heard his gripes, peppered with words mothers would cover the ears of their young children for.

Carlos, his hand shoring up his wrapped, injured middle, winced and opened the door. Seeing Kiera poised before him, toting an unopened bottle made him forget, at least for a moment, his aches. As she waltzed in, he remarked, "What brings you here?" Under his slightly-inebriated breath he razzed, "Two gorgeous legs…"

Briskly, she tossed over her shoulder, "A feeling that you needed checking up on." Inches from him, she smiled, seeing that although he wasn't saying so, he was glad to see her. His eyes always gave him away. She was glad to see him too. She held up the unopened bottle of schnapps, a particular favorite of his, which had just happened to have been on hand at Alec's casual get-together. A gathering which Carlos had been excluded from, the figuring having been that the people in attendance were ones he would rather break their heads rather than sit down to break bread with them.

"You didn't seem too concerned earlier," Carlos aired, having no qualms about making the grievance known.

Kiera, her eyes riveted to his, simply stated, "I had some very loose ends to tie up."

"Of course you did," he mildly reproached, his tone flat, as he relieved Kiera of the peppermint schnapps. While limping his way back to the couch, he queried, "You staying?"

"You'll need some help with that bottle."

Carlos, still in the throes of making the addled, aggravating trip back to the couch replied, "Think so?" Irritation trickled from him, cynicism too, his smile touchy around the edges.

Kiera ignored what she heard, on her way to his gleaming kitchen, its order and tidiness impressive for a bachelor. She sensed his frustration, owning its cause. His being thrown to wolves was, as per normal, nothing new. Her deserting him with her usual dispatch was par for the course. Her constant venting, her never-ending insistence that she must return home wasn't a recent consideration, but its over-emphasis never helped, adding fuel to the combustion. They were still a team, but the distance existing between them was measurable, like two people on separate islands who communicated by two cans and a string. Extracting a pair of Collins glass tumblers from the overhead cabinet where he kept them, she brought them in, setting them down. She made herself comfortable on the couch, sitting nearer to him than was customary, he noted, but kept that observation to himself. He already had the green, crude lip bottle open. He'd been pounded; now he was tender, sore, not an invalid.

"Okay, you didn't."

His eyes glinted dully. "Right on both scores. I'm battered and bruised, but raring to crack this open. And, if you merely stopped by to drop this off…" He smiled at her, his audacity rife. He was quite capable of pouring unassisted as well.

"Do I look as if I'm going anywhere?" The look on her face backed up what she was leaving unsaid. He needed to share what she'd brought.

"Nope." The 'pop' at the end of that word had been a glowing imitation of celebratory cork popping. "I'd have no trouble polishing this off by myself." Carlos finished topping off her glass for which she thanked him and he wanted to know, "What's the occasion?"

"Occasion?"

"You show up here like this, at this hour, bearing this tasty gift. Not like you've never done something like this before, but I'm a little curious. And..." He sipped some of his present with deliberate sophistication. "Inquisitive. What's the story? Worried about my current state of poor health?"

Laboring under a delusion that Carlos liked when she turned up on his doorstep, Kiera stared a long time at her glass of libation. Before saying a word, she studied him, possessed of a verve to tell him what she was up against. The real reason she'd come here was convoluted and costly. She despaired, uncertain of the future and the repercussions of this night's events. "Alec has lost Emily."

Carlos rained down astonishment, his bearing explosive. "What? She's dead?" He raised his voice louder, fully shouting, anger blistering in his voice. "That sucks! Who did it? Kellog? The Freelancers?"

"She did." Kiera recoiled, squeezed her eyes shut, then opened her eyes, calming. The room had stopped tilting and righted itself.

"Suicide!" Carlos downed the entire contents of his glass, quickly followed that up by pouring himself another. "You'd better explain," he tightly suggested. The redhaired wisp of a girl was dead, for real this time?

"She left him, after what happened. He went looking for her. Found her and tried rescuing her all by himself. She won't stand for his risking himself for her. Being hurt, or killed. As long as she's with him, he's vulnerable. Alec is inconsolable. Doesn't want to be without her. Will follow her if he has to. Told me to understand, he's lost without her, would risk everything just to be with her."

The glumness Carlos wallowed in panned out as he saw how affected Kiera was by Emily's decision and Alec's reaction to it. Might put a crimp in your exodus, he thought, strict with himself to avoid saying something flippant like that out loud. "I know the feeling," he sympathized, his weird, barren smile reappearing, his voice a shadow of its rich baritone self. When Kiera reached for his hand, the smile disappeared. A chill stole over him. He set his glass on the low table, seeing that Kiera needed both his hands to ground her in this reality. Quicksand had more stability. "I know how I'll feel, and why, when you leave." He inched her hand, pacing himself, to his mouth so his lips could shower the back of it with attention. "Lost…" He dared to hope that she might understand, that he wasn't in this sifting arena of broken illusions alone.

Though her pulse quickened and her head spun, her face sagged and she shuddered. When she spoke, the steadiness of her voice faltered, "And just a little relieved that the insanity I've brought goes with me?"

"Uh-ah. Not a chance. I'll feel like he's feeling now."

Their eyes embraced and Kiera murmured, "I know. I know." She took deep breaths, trying to be strong. Yet, pining, she said through a sigh, "I wish—"

Cut off by Carlos' forceful arms trapping her, he took charge, dotting her scalp with carefully-placed kisses steeped in adoration. His voice soft and low, he whispered, "I wish you wanted to stay, because of me." He was asking the impossible; he knew that. Have her choose between her son and him? How selfish was he?

A surge of emotions interwoven riffled through Kiera as she hopelessly breathed, "It's because of you I…want this too…" In the intimacy provided by the column of Carlos' warm neck, Kiera beckoned, inviting him to inhabit her pipe dream. "Come with me then…"

"Me? Come...with you?" This amazing woman was a trove of surprises. Carlos forgot all about his physical pangs. For the gentlest and evanescent of moments, as he pressed his lips firmly against her throbbing temple, he joined as a willing partner, abetting her fantasy. Insistent impulses provoked him, incited him and he blurted, "If you want me, you got me. Okay. Sure." And he closed his eyes, and opened his mind, seeing himself with Kiera, tackling his new reality, together. Softly, very softly, he put to her, "You sure about this?"

"Yes," she hissed.

"Well, okay then..."