Chapter Thirty-Eight – "All Good Things"
Previously: Thrown into separate realities in which they cannot remember their life together, Zach and Kendall met in dreams and slowly realized that somewhere the other really existed. Zendall found each other and, aided by a Time Traveler, set off on a journey through alternate Pine Valleys, searching for their original reality. At long last they found it. Or maybe not…
--
"Um, Lily, Ethan is alive and you never heard of a Myrtle Fargate?" the Doctor asked Lily as they watched Derek and several stalwart members of the Pine Valley Police drag a seriously screaming Alex, Sr. out of the Condo and out of their lives.
"Somebody tell me how the Uzi disappeared from my arms!" Alex Sr. was heard to demand.
"Shut up, you maniac," Derek explained.
"Of course Ethan is alive," Lily told the Doctor. "Why wouldn't he be?"
"Zach, I can't listen to any more of this garbage!" Kendall cried out, running into the Condo from the Courtyard.
"Kendall, listen!" a completely distraught Zach nevertheless begged, catching up to her.
"Listen to WHAT?" she demanded hoarsely, really wanting to know. "To more unhinged babble about you not being human? I'm supposed believe you're one of Them? YOU? So what does that make me? The star of 'I Married a Soap Opera Monster from Outer Space'? What does that make our babies?"
Spike hiccupped and Kendall's Tiny Passenger kicked.
"What's Kendall talking about?" Lily inquired of Doctor Who and Zarf/Zoe.
"It's a long convoluted story," Zarf/Zoe quoted Doctor Who from a previous chapter. "To sum it up, Zach just came out to her."
Lily nodded, not understanding at all. But then again, neither did Kendall.
"What are you feeling?" Zach asked her hopelessly, afraid to take her in his arms, certain she'd resist his embrace. And if that happened, if that ever happened, how could he go on living? "What are you feeling, Lovely?"
Kendall took a deep breath. Good question. What was she feeling?
"KENDALL, WAKE UP! YOU'RE HAVING A NIGHTMARE!"
That thought, that conviction came to her suddenly and with such force that she found herself leaning against Zach for support.
"I feel like I'm in a nightmare," she rephrased slightly.
And that was before the roof fell in.
--
The roof probably wouldn't have fallen in, at least not literally, had the Tardis (Doctor Who's space ship/time machine) not chanced to be parked directly on top of it. But of course that had not been so much due to chance as to the unsure parking skills of the Doctor's new Companion, who had badly misjudged the structural integrity of the Condo's roof, forgetting completely that the Condo was nothing but a stage set.
"Oops!" came a shaky voice from within the craft, which had crashed through the ceiling and landed in the living room, directly in front of its stunned inhabitants.
"Is anybody hurt?" Zach called out, waving away the plaster and dust that suddenly filled the air around them. "Is Spike okay, Lily?"
"Uh-huh," Spike answered for himself.
"Kendall, are you okay?"
"Yes!" his wife and a voice from within the Tardis said as one. "I'm okay, I think!" The two voices were identical.
"What the hell?" the Kendall closest to Zach, in all respects, gasped.
By this time, the Doctor had made his way through the rubble that was once the Slater's living room to the Tardis, which, predictably enough, had sustained no apparent damage. But was its driver similarly unscathed?
"Kendall!" the Doctor cried out, although nobody could understand why.
The door to the ship slowly opened, and another Kendall emerged.
"I'm okay," she repeated, embracing the Doctor. "Really. I'm just sorry I made such a mess!"
Mrs. Zach Slater blinked a few times, as if that would erase the scene before her. "Like I said. A nightmare."
But Mr. Zach Slater had a different theory. "I think that's the Kendall I met in New York," he said, squinting. "You remember. When I was trying to find a real you in my waking life."
She remembered. But she didn't care.
"The important thing is that I'm only dreaming that you're not human," she told Zach, rapidly refocusing. "What are you anyway? Martian?"
"Galioscian," he answered, overcoming his fear of rejection and taking her into his arms.
"Galioscian," she repeated, pushing him away. "Well, what the hell? None of this is real anyway."
"Kendall, what you talking about?" Zarf/Zoe asked for them all.
"I've told you already. This is a nightmare. I'm probably still aboard the real Tardis or in Las Vegas or in that sanitarium in the Pine Valley where I was married to JR."
"She's in shock," Doctor Who diagnosed. "I apologize. I should have told you two that Kendall, I mean my Kendall, is my new Companion."
His Kendall smiled and blushed when he called her "my Kendall", while Lily sighed deeply.
"Is this true?" Lily asked, blinking back tears. "Doctor, is she your new Companion?"
"Sorry, Lily," the Doctor said, biting his lip. "I didn't mean for you to find out this way. Someday I hope you'll understand."
She understood all right. He hadn't told her something vitally important. In other words, he lied to her.
"Another one bites the dust," she thought sadly. "I gotta get out of this town." Silently, she vowed to send off her application to M.I.T. that very afternoon.
Zach also understood what Doctor Who had done. "You couldn't get my wife, so you went for a reasonable facsimile. That's quite a tribute to you, Lovely."
"I don't mind being a reasonable facsimile," the Reasonable Facsimile said quickly, lest the Doctor think that she did mind, which she didn't. "I was in such a rut, I was grateful to get away! I mean, I had a fabulous job in a fabulous City. But I always wanted something more, you know?"
Kendall Hart Slater had stopped listening several sentences ago.
"I actually planned on redecorating," she said idly, looking around the wreck that used to be her living room. "I'm so happy none of this is really happening."
"I love you," Zach said, trying to get through to her. "Always only you."
"Whatever," she sighed, doing her best to wake up.
"Zach, there's a problem," the Doctor chose that moment to announce.
"Smart as a whip," Zach remarked to Kendall.
"No, not the Tardis crashing through your roof," the Doctor said hurriedly. "The problem is that somehow, and despite almost all appearances to the contrary, we've landed in another wrong Pine Valley."
Now it was Zach's turn to believe he was in a nightmare.
"But how? Everybody we know and love is here! Spike is here! We've been missing for months and impersonated by Them. I confronted Them when time stopped, and Them confessed! It all fits! How can this not be our original reality?"
"There's no Myrtle here," Doctor Who revealed. "Lily mentioned that while you two were out in the courtyard having a heart-to-hart. And there's one other difference I just learned about."
"Spill it," both Kendalls said, neither one much liking overly dramatic buildups.
"Ethan is alive in this Pine Valley," the Doctor told Zach.
Zach did not take that news lightly.
"Then we have to stay here!" he concluded when his heart had begun beating normally. "I won't walk out on my son again!"
"Yadda, yadda, yadda," Guess Which Kendall replied.
"Is Ethan a Galioscian as well?" the other Kendall inquired, having been brought up to speed on Zach's true nature by the Doctor.
"I dunno," Zach realized. "I don't suppose he is. He was conceived years before I took over Zach Slater's life. I guess he's not really my son then."
"I told you, Handsome," the only Kendall who would ever matter to him said. "This is a nightmare!"
"KENDALL, WAKE UP! YOU'RE HAVING A NIGHTMARE!"
There was that thought that was more than a thought again. That voice inside her head, so strangely familiar, so insanely insistent that she almost heard it. Actually, there was no "almost" about it.
"I did hear it," she mused. "Twice. Outside my head. I heard a voice telling me that I'm having a nightmare." She looked around the room. Why was she the only one in the room who seemed to have heard it? And whose voice was it?
"KENDALL, WAKE UP! YOU'RE HAVING A NIGHTMARE!"
"Oh," she thought, recognizing the voice.
"Ryan? Ryan, where are you?"
Zach was looking at her as if she had lost her mind. They all were looking at her that way, including her Double from Another Reality.
Something wasn't right. Something was the polar opposite of right. Ryan's voice shouldn't be telling her anything, considering that Ryan was nowhere in sight. She fell into Zach's arms and clung desperately to him.
"I don't care that you're a monster from outer space. I love you, I've always loved you, I'll always love you. Always only you." The words couldn't come fast enough. It was as if she had to tell him before – before what? "Spike!" she cried, reaching for her baby. "Spike, listen to me, baby! Mama loves you! And Mama loves Dada! Nothing can ever keep the three of us apart!" She glanced back at her best beloved whose face showed a concern bordering on panic. "And if something ever happens to me --"
She was lying in bed next to Ryan in their Condo.
"It wasn't a nightmare," she told Ryan, trying not to sound as annoyed as she felt. "Whatever it was, it wasn't a nightmare." She took a breath, cleared her throat, and asked the obvious question. "Where the hell am I?
"You're awake," he laughed. "Groggy, but awake."
She began breathing harder, her heart in her throat. "RYAN, WHERE AM I?"
He moved toward her and gathered her up in his arms, aware that she had stiffened perceptively at his touch. "You're home, Kendall," he answered softly. "With me. Home. Where you belong."
She sat bolt upright. "I'm not! I can't be! This isn't happening!"
He held her as she began to cry, her sobs deep and wild.
"You had a dream, Kendall. A bad dream. That's all!"
"No! That wasn't all! That can't be all! There was 'Casablanca' and 'Titanic' and 'West Side Story'! He was Heathcliff and Rhett! He was Cary Grant saving Ingrid Bergman! And I was Ingrid Bergman! How could it all have been nothing but a dream? Ryan, I was Scarlett O'Hara and Snow White!"
Ryan chuckled, kissed her on the nose and turned off the lights.
"Go back to sleep, Kendall. It will all fade away in the morning. You'll see!"
She lay awake staring at the ceiling. It will all fade away in the morning. Gone. Lost. All of it. The one man she was created for and their baby were no more. No more Zach. No more Spike. No more -- She sat bolt upright again.
"Ryan, am I pregnant?" she breathed, remembering the Tiny Passenger she had been carrying in the Pine Valley she just awoke from.
"Not now, Kendall!" Ryan groaned. "We can continue our fight about having children in the morning! I've gotta get some sleep!"
Our fight about having children? "Oh, that's right," she thought dully, as it all came back to her. "The Ryan of this reality doesn't want children, so I can't be pregnant." She was instantly engulfed by a new grief. "My baby! I'll never hold you!" She reminded herself that undoubtedly there were still pregnant Kendalls in other Pine Valleys, including the one she had just awoken from, so her Tiny Passenger would still live. Only not with her.
She frowned. "And if I'm not pregnant, Doctor Who said that Them will be able to track me." She throught that through. "Oh, but even if I were having Ryan's baby, I'd still be in danger! To be safe, I need to be having Zach's baby! Because Zach is really a Them and Thems can't track each other for some reason." For an instant she felt incredibly vulnerable. Them could find her in this reality!
Shivering, she lay back down and pulled the covers over her. Dark thoughts bombarded her like bullets. Them could find her here. And then what? She stifled a cry of terror. What could she do? Wake up Ryan? Beg him to protect her somehow? Hide her? Help her? No. She tried to steady her breathing. No. She couldn't tell Ryan anything about the unimaginable trouble she was in. He already thought she was nuts.
"And he isn't the only one who thinks that," she realized, her terror somehow abating. "Kendall, listen to yourself! Alternate Pine Valleys. Time Travelers. Monsters from Outer Space. Did any of that really happen?"
A feeling of utter and complete loss swept through her then. Her babies. Her Zach. All the realities that seemed more real to her than the one into which she had awoken were no more. Was Ryan right? Had all of it been nothing but a dream?
She couldn't think about that now. She would go crazy if she did. She'd think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow was another –
"How have you been Ryan?" she heard herself whispering so that her mind would stop quoting from 'Gone with the Wind'. "Anything new and exciting in your life?"
"Well, I met a real live Princess," he answered at once. 'Cousin of Dimitri's. Gillean Andrassy. I don't know if you'd like her. I don't know if I like her."
"You like her," Kendall said, remembering the reality in which Ryan and Gillean had been soul-mates. "Anything else?"
"I've been thinking of taking some ballroom dancing lessons," he revealed. "You never know when knowing how to dance could come in handy."
But Kendall was no longer listening to Ryan. Her eyes had been drawn to the window, where in the dim light she could see an incredibly handsome man standing outside, looking in at her. There was an adorable toddler in his arms.
"Good-night, Kendall," Ryan was saying. "Sweet dreams."
"Good-night," Kendall said, her eyes never leaving the two whom she loved better than her own life.
Zach was saying something she couldn't hear but somehow understood.
"Go to sleep, Lovely" he was saying. "We'll meet you in your dreams!"
She smiled at them with all her heart and blew a kiss. Spike was waving as they disappeared.
"See you in our dreams!" Kendall murmured happily. "I wonder what happens next!"
THE END??