So, here's Chapter 6. A bit late, sorry about that. Chapter 7 is about half written, so it shouldn't be so long a wait for the next one. Quick spoiler, this fic is using the "Take Canon out back and beat it" approach to writing fanfiction. Chapters 1-5 were the leading it out back. This is where we start beating Canon with a pipe. Just so you know.

Also, we're finally getting to a Zane POV! I was not planning on spending this much time in Tony's POV when I started this story, it just kind of happened like that.

Jo flitted between the counter and his kitchen table, pulling her hair into a ponytail while shoving a spoonful of her yogurt and granola into her mouth, washing it down with her coffee.

"Relax, you got time before you've got to be in. Take a minute, take a breath," Zane said as he reached out for her wrist, pulling her close to him. She smiled against his lips when she kissed him, and he couldn't help but return the smile and the kiss.

"Tell that to Larry and Allison. I've got inspections and meetings all day, if I want to get anything done I'm going to have to get there an hour early, and God knows when I'll get out."

"Can't you delegate some of this to Rochester? He's going to be handling this stuff when you're on Titan, he should probably get started now."

"Believe it or not, I am giving him more responsibility. I just don't want to stick him with the stuff that isn't his job, and he isn't getting paid to do. It's called being a fair boss."

"Yes JoJo, you are the epitome of fairness," he teased.

"Don't you forget it," she said, pulling away and smacking his chest lightly before resting her hand back on his shoulder. "Look, I'm going to have to grab lunch at the cafeteria, not going to have time to run back into town, but do you want to meet up then?"

Zane felt his grin widen at her suggestion and waggled his eyebrows, "Ooh, hooking up during lunch hour, love it."

"Not, what I meant."

"Yeah, yeah. Look I was going to hit the gym then, meet up after that?"

"Sounds good," a smile came back over her face, which disappeared as her PDA beeped. "And I'm already running behind schedule. Look, I gotta go, okay? Love you, bye," she said as she pressed a quick kiss to his lips and then froze, still on tiptoe, halfway back to the floor, panic clouding over her face. "Look, Zane, I-"

She doesn't mean it.

She'd said it automatically, the way she'd always reached for the same black and white striped mug his mom had sent him when he first came to Eureka, how she'd known where he kept extra toothbrushes, how she'd always leaned into his body, seeming to just melt into him. Responding on autopilot, because she'd spent over two years loving him that he didn't remember. She was bound to make a slip up between the two versions of himself.

And it was clearly a mistake on her part because she looked like she wanted nothing more than to run away from what she'd said, run away from him. To take it back.

God, Zane didn't want her to take it back.

"I, sorry, I didn't…" Jo was still stuttering without saying anything, and Zane just cut her off with a kiss before she could say anything else. He pulled back after a minute and saw her looking at him confused, her forehead wrinkled between her brows, mouth slightly agape.

"I'll see you later for lunch?" he asked.

"Uh, yeah. See you for lunch. Bye." She grabbed her keys and the travel mug he'd gotten in grad school that he'd already started to think of as being hers. For all he knew, it had been. She looked back at him as she reached the door, "Zane."

"Didn't you say you had a busy day JoJo?" he teased, keeping his tone light. "See you later," he kept the smile on his face as she walked out the door, feeling it slip away when he heard the heavy thud.

Love you.

But she didn't.

Love you. Why would she? The screw-up who couldn't even get this timeline's Jo to go on a date with him? She'd been ready to marry him before, and then she'd spent time with him. Spent months refusing to tell him what happened, even after he knew something had, even after she'd thrown that ring at him. Even when she'd started coming to his bed she had vehemently denied that they could work, insisted what they had would never be anything, all they were was a spark. Good in bed and nothing else.

And he hadn't pushed. Had let her keep her protests and guard up during the day while they spent their nights tangled together in sheets, hadn't made her acknowledge what they were doing until they got caught by Carter and Allison, until the whole town knew and her brother came to town. Even then, he was certain it was because boyfriend was less awkward to say to her big brother than fuckbuddy. He'd pretended like this was nothing to him like she'd insisted time and time again he was nothing to her, and now…

Now, what were they? Dating? Definitely not engaged, but did she even think they could get there? She'd thought it once upon a time, he remembered. Jo's face had been bright and open, and she'd been practically radiant when she'd come into the Sheriff's station, fresh from 1947. "I'm trying to say yes… Yes, I will marry you." He'd laughed at her then, thrown it back in her face.

What might have happened if he'd realized then something was wrong? That she wasn't the same woman he'd been alternating flirting and fighting with since he'd shown up in town and thrown into her cell for the first time. Maybe she would have told him sooner, and they could have figured this out months before. Or maybe they'd be in the exact same place. Wherever that was.

Zane looked from the punching bag over to the door when he heard it open, a smirk growing, but freezing before it met his eyes. The Lupo at the door was not the one he was expecting.

Tony grinned, his smile as wide as a shark's, "Hey, Jo got held up dealing with some inspections, I had some time, I figured we could chat. Get to know each other without you sticking your tongue down my sister's throat."

Zane just smiled and tried not to show the apprehension on his face, "Sounds like fun, anything in particular you wanted to chat about?"

"Oh, no, nothing in particular. Hey, don't stop me from your workout."

"Eh, I was almost done," he said as he started taking his gloves off and reaching for his water.

"Pity," Tony said. Zane looked up and knew that Tony would have loved an excuse to 'help him practice' boxing. Only, he didn't think it would look like Jo's help, with him holding the bag and correcting his form. Nope, Tony's help would probably end with Zane on the floor, bleeding. Zane didn't value his workout that much.

The lights overhead flickered with a slight buzz, and then went out for three seconds before the backup lights came on with a whir. Tony pulled out his PDA and tried to call Jo to find out what was going on, only to find that his call wouldn't go through. Zane tried to call Fargo, then Henry, just to get the same result.

"Phones are out."

Tony didn't look impressed with the obvious assessment, "Yeah, I can see that. We better find Dr. Blake and Jo, see if anyone knows what's going on." Tony and Zane left the otherwise empty gym and barely made it twenty feet before a tremor shook through the building, and the doors at the ends of the hallway shut automatically, sealing with a hiss that let them know it was airtight.

Zane rolled his eyes and leaned back against a wall, "Well that's great. Looks like we're stuck here."

"Joy," Tony said in a deadpan as he headed over to the doors at the far end of the hall and started inspecting the seal, running his fingertips down the crack.

"If you think you can pry those open, think again. Those are designed to seal out contaminants in case of any kind of leak and be impenetrable to intruders. Until their code tells them otherwise, they aren't moving."

"Do you have a better idea?"

Zane saw a blinking light from the corner in a panel in the wall, where steel met concrete. "Here, I think this where the panel for the emergency computer is."

"And you can use that to fix this" Tony motioned around them, "mess?"

"No, but I can establish contact with the rest of GD, and we can figure out what's going on. And then," Zane knocked on the steel along the edge and felt it loosen. He dug his temporarily useless PDA out of his pocket and opened it, jamming the thin keyboard between the gap and jerking to pull the steel panel away from the wall, pausing when he heard it creak, "we can fix this mess." He pulled the rest of the panel down to reveal a screen and started typing.

Tony walked over and peered over Zane's shoulder, raising an eyebrow when he saw what he was doing, and asked, "Are you supposed to have the codes to get into the emergency hall computers'?

"Probably not, but I wrote the security updates, so I get access," Zane said, focusing on the screen, "Huh."

"I really don't like it when you guys say 'huh' in that tone," Tony complained behind him, reminding Zane of Carter.

"Well, I started running a systems check to see what could be causing all of this," he gestured around them, "and I think I found the problem. See the coding here," he pointed. "It controls the systems that run GD. Filtration, lights, security, insulation, quarantine, cleaning, etc. GD and Eureka run on a system designed specifically for the town. Astraeus was designed and coded with something similar, but with some key differences. What I'm looking at, is the Astraeus program, trying to call the shots for GD."

"How did that happen?"

"Beats me. My guess is someone didn't isolate their computer from the GD mainframe before they went in to make adjustments to the program, and it got in. And then started taking over."

"Can you get it out?"

"I'm trying to isolate it, but the coding for the Astraeus programming is so similar to GD's, and it's hard to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Give me a minute."

The room shook, and the walls around them began to warp, with the pipes inside becoming defined and showing that they were twisting inside the walls. Tony stared at their surroundings in horror and fascination, "You sure we have a minute?"

Zane stared at the walls, unable to look away from the twisted walls, "Crap. I was afraid that could happen."

"What was it?"

"While the programming language is the same, and the systems are coded similarly, with similar signals, what they do and what they're made of is very different," at Tony's confused face, Zane elaborated. "So the Astraeus uses certain materials throughout the ship to maintain life support, oxygen, make sure that it's heated and we don't all freeze to death. GD has different ones, given that Earth and Titan are, you know, very different places. So when the Astraeus programming got into GD systems, it started trying to make GD systems match the Astraeus settings. However, since there are different settings, and they use different materials to perform the same task, that can lead to problems."

"Like the walls shifting and the power going out."

"Yeah. Like that," the walls creaked again, and Tony and Zane stepped closer to each other, away from the walls. "I'm betting that the heating and cooling systems are freaking out."

"Any particular reason?"

"Because in Oregon it's a balmy 70 degrees Fahrenheit outside and on Titan, it's -290! That's why," he snapped, feeling the heat rising in the room. "I think the program is also assuming its sensors are broken since they're getting readings that are so far off their baselines."

Tony's voice rose in alarm, "So it's going to raise the temperature 300 degrees?"

"Possibly. Also probably shutting down and sealing itself off so we don't lose oxygen, and I don't even want to know how it would respond to expecting a higher atmospheric density. Though luckily Titan's isn't too far off from Earth's, so I don't even think the Astraeus really has pressurizing equipment," Zane trailed off, wiping sweat off his brow.

"You want to focus on stopping it or you want to keep theorizing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" the room shook again and cracks appeared along the walls and support beams, pipes now jutting out at points instead of just warping inside the walls. "Why'd they have to set up the pipes like this?"

"You sure it's the pipes?"

"Well the walls of both GD and the Astraeus are reinforced with Tungsten, so I doubt that's the problem. It's got to be one of the systems that run throughout GD that's causing this, I just can't figure out which one."

"Well let me take a look," Tony nudged Zane over and pulled up a current schematic of GD on the screen, trying to see if there was anything to indicate the failures.

"That's not going to tell you anything- Tony, look out!" Zane saw one of the warped support beams disconnect from the ceiling and come crashing down behind Tony, right where he was standing. He pushed him out of the way but didn't move quickly enough, feeling pain explode across his head and back as he was pinned to the ground, though it faded quickly, along with the rest of the world.

When Zane came to, his head was swimming, feeling as though someone had dropped an anvil on it. Though based on the weight he felt covering his back, he might have preferred the anvil. That would have done less damage.

"Shit, man, you awake?" Zane heard faintly, though the urgency in the tone suggested that it was said louder than Zane heard it. Tony's face came in front of him, slightly obscured by something falling in his face, as his own head was jerked up by the hand on his chin, and he groaned in response to the pain and pressure put on his neck. "Good. If things still hurt, that's good."

"I must be fantastic then. You want to help stop the pain by getting this stuff off of me?" Zane panted, then tried to get his hands underneath himself to push himself up, ignoring Tony's protests for him to hold still. What he couldn't ignore was the blinding pain that shot through his left shoulder, down that arm, and throughout his chest. Or the fact that he could only move his left arm a few inches.

Zane closed his eyes, swallowed down the sour bile that rose in his throat, and reopened his eyes. He slowly turned his head to the left and stopped short. There, poking through his shoulder at an angle, pointing at the floor, was a piece of steel pipe from the wall, jutting out of the beam that had fallen on him. Stuffed around it between Zane and the floor were the remains of Tony's uniform jacket, the olive green stained brown close to the pipe protruding through his shoulder. He lowered his head to the floor, letting his forehead rest against the cool tungsten. "Shit."

"Yeah. That's why I told you not to move," Tony said quietly, tone oddly gentle and steady as he stood. "Look, I know this hurts right now, and the last thing you want to do is talk or think. But we need to get out of here. The openings for the doors are warped too, and they're not responding to normal commands, even from the computer. Messages from my PDA still aren't going through, any ideas on how to reach the others?"

Zane grit his teeth, lifted his head slowly, and propped his chin on the floor. He could still see the computer terminal out of the corner of his eye, and Tony standing in front of it, his uniform shirt and pants rumpled and dusty, blood spotting his hands and shirt. A flap of fabric that was covering part of one of Zane's eyes looked like it might have been Tony's missing tie, now tied around the gash on his head, part of it still hanging loose. Tony looked back at Zane, worry in his eyes, lit up in the pale blue light of the screen, the rest of his expression passive, awaiting orders like the soldier he was.

"Astraeus is going to handle intraship communications with satellite radios. Tiny built the satellite around Titan and already launched it into that atmosphere using the BCE she built there. The program," he paused, coughing, dust coating his mouth and throat, "probably locked onto our PDAs and the computer messaging system and reconfigured them for that satellite. Only Titan's too far away and none of the messages are getting to anyone. We can get into the program and switch the satellite back to a GD satellite that's orbiting Earth, and that should return communications," he said through gritted teeth, feeling the sweat and dust on his brow mix with the blood that had escaped Tony's attempt at a bandage, and was now dripping down his face, leaving a tacky trail.

"Okay. Where do I go for that?"

Zane guided him through a few steps when Tony paused. "Wait, does this use the same process as the Sat-Comms 500-D? I'm pretty sure that's GD tech."

"Uh, I think so, why?"

"Because we had them in Afghanistan, and I know how to switch the satellites for that. Give me a sec."

"Not like I can go anywhere," he groaned.

"Yeah, seriously, do not move before we get a medic here. Between the blood loss, the head trauma, and the fact that you have a piece of a wall on top of you that I can't move because part of it is in you," Tony broke off shaking his head. "Let's just say I'd prefer you were in better shape."

"Aw, Tony, you do care," he said, slipping a smile onto his face, trying to focus on Tony and what he was doing. He really didn't like how much effort it took to keep doing that, or how hard it was to keep his head upright.

"No, I do not care. I just need you to live long enough to tell people I didn't push you under the falling building, and that you actually jumped in its path."

"To push you out of the way. I might have saved your life," Zane pointed out.

"Yes, and if you die here, I might spend the rest of mine in prison for something I didn't even have the pleasure of doing," Tony retorted as he kept clacking at the keyboard. "I think I got it."

Zane fought to keep his eyes open, and tried to focus on Tony and what he was doing. Tony's face doubled for a moment, the two of him swimming in his vision before returning to his normal, singular, state. He swallowed bile down again, determined not to puke in front of Tony. Fargo seeing him hurl in the shuttle was bad enough, Zane didn't want or need a repeat here in GD. And definitely not in front of Jo's brother. He'd really never hear the end of it.

Just staring at him wasn't going to keep him awake, so he went with small talk. "When'd you learn to change the satellites? I'm pretty sure that feature was disabled in the military contract phones."

"Eh, we poked around the tech we got. One of the guys in my unit figured out how to enable the sat switch."

"You guys supposed to be poking around our tech?"

"It's good to know your gear. The last thing you want is something sticking, or intel not getting through, or your ride not coming to get you," Tony finished what he was doing and came back over to Zane, running his eyes over the fortified cement compound laying across Zane. "I sent a distress code out. I think I got all the PDAs on the right frequency. Someone should be here soon," Tony kneeled next to Zane's head and moved it gently to the side to get a better look at the wound. "I really want to clean that out, but I couldn't find a first aid kit, and the water bottles are back in the gym."

"S'fine," Zane slurred as he felt his eyelids droop. They'd sent the distress code out, couldn't he just take a nap until a doctor showed up?

Tony's hand started patting at his face urgently, "Man come on, stay awake. You probably have a concussion, you're supposed to stay awake."

Zane cracked open an eye to glare at him, "Did you get an M.D. while I was unconscious?"

That got him a glare in return, one that was very similar to Jo's. "No, I played football, served in the army, and grew up with two brothers and Jo. I know about concussions."

"Fine. Talk to me then. Why'd you really know how to switch the satellites?"

"I told you-"

Zane cut him off, "I know when a Lupo is lying to me. You told me why you learned it. Why'd you use it often enough you still remember?"

Tony was quiet for a moment before he spoke again, "The screens on the phones are pretty small. But if you hook it up to something bigger, or you and your buddies don't mind crowding around it, well… The movie selection on bases overseas was generally pretty shit." Zane processed that last sentence, then started shaking with laughter, groaning as pain shot out from the area around the pipe. "Dude, don't move!"

"It's just, however many millions, if not billions of dollars went into developing that tech, which includes firewalls and encryption layers so deep I wouldn't want to touch it, and you guys used it for movie nights?" he asked, incredulous.

"It's not like we broke it," Tony said, sounding more like a pouting toddler than a major in the Army.

"I think you just made my day. Though with how it's been going, that doesn't mean much," Zane said, grinning softly, since that was the only thing he could do without making everything worse. He took a deep breath, or at least tried to, but he couldn't seem to get air in. Was it the room, or him? Which option was better for his survival?

Their PDA's crackled with static, and a voice came over them. "This is Lupo, I'm receiving a priority one distress call from Section 3, subsection 8-C. Do you copy? Over."

Tony grabbed his PDA while continuing to apply pressure to the gash on Zane's head with his other hand. "Jo, this is Tony. I'm in 3.8-C with Zane. The building is warping around us, we need a medical team with a gurney stat, someone to cut us out and make sure it doesn't collapse further. Over."

The line was silent for a moment, and when Jo's voice returned it was shaking slightly, though that could have been static. "Got it. I'm right by you, I've got the cutter, and I'll grab Emergen-Beams and a medkit from a closet. Be there in two. Over." The line went dead and Tony dropped the PDA.

"You hear that, just a couple more minutes, and we'll get you out of here," Tony said, but Zane barely heard him. He just wanted Jo to come back on the phone, to hear her low, raspy voice again. He'd always liked her voice, even when she'd been in Enforcer mode, and most of the things he heard in it were threats to taze him, or her yelling at him over one of his stupid pranks. He liked it better now, when she laughed at his jokes, or teased him, or moaned in pleasure at his touch.

Or said that she loved him.

He wanted to hear her say it again.

He really wanted to hear her say it again.

And now, with his head swimming in a painful fog, pinned to the floor with part of a building going through his body, blood sticky and smelly against his skin and dripping onto the floor? Combine that with how she'd looked after she'd said it the first time, he doubted he'd get to hear it a second.

He thought he heard the sound of metal being cut, but he couldn't be sure of anything anymore. Tony started shouting, and he heard boots pounding across the floor, could feel their vibrations throughout his body. He saw black pants kneel by his face, and tilted his eyes up to see Jo, worry etched on her face. "Hey beautiful, come here often," he slurred, curling his lips into a grin at the welcome sight. He could feel blood drip from his forehead down the bridge of his nose and cheeks, into his mouth, tasting the salty tang on his tongue.

"You are impossible," she choked out, getting on the ground next to him to get a better look at where the wall was partially on him, and what was connected to the part in him. "Okay, I think I've got an angle, I can cut this off, and then Tony and I can get this off of you, okay?" She didn't wait for a reply from him before moving on to Tony, "hold it in place, make sure it doesn't slide, got it?"

"Got it."

Jo got to work with the small laser cutter, working quickly and efficiently, making sure not to nick Zane. She finally disconnected the pipe that was jutting out from the wall from the rest of it, and she helped Tony slide it off Zane. He groaned in both relief and pain, as the movement did involve jostling the pipe, and he felt shockwaves of pain rolling throughout his body, emanating from his shoulder.

Jo carefully cut away his shirt, and pulled away the pieces, and swore when she got a better look at the wound from the back. She poured something that stung on the skin around the pipe, and Zane hissed in response. Antiseptic. "I know, I know. Relax, okay, I've got you." He felt her fingers running through his hair, and leaned into the soft touch even though moving hurt the rest of his body, made pain explode behind his eyes. But for the feel of her hands in his hair, he'd put up with a lot worse.

She undid Tony's tie, gently maneuvering Zane's head to get a proper view, pouring more antiseptic on that before grabbing the gauze out of the first aid kit and pressing it to Zane's head, stemming the bleeding. More gauze was used to tie that to his head, and his head was gently lowered to Jo's lap while she and Tony returned their attention to his shoulder and back.

Zane didn't know when Jo had pulled a pain killer out of the kit, but at the moment, he wasn't complaining. It's not like his head could be much loopier. "Whatever you gave me, it's working," he told her.

Her hands paused in their work, "I didn't give you anything…" Jo's voice trailed off, confused.

Tony's voice cut through the haze, as sharp as the cord that was being tied around and digging into his shoulder, in between the pipe and his neck, "He's going into shock, we need to get him to a doctor, now."

"Where's my medic! Hey, listen to me, Zane. You are going to be fine, okay. Just hold on for me, you got that?" she cradled his face in her hands, and he felt her sticky fingertips patting his cheeks. He tilted his head to kiss her palm, hoping it would stop her from sounding so upset, getting a whiff of the floral scent of her perfume. He pulled back and frowned when he saw blood on her palm now, where his lips had been. Oh, that's right. I've got blood all over my face. I'm bleeding. He hadn't meant to get blood on her.

There was a faint metallic whirring buzz in the background that meant more things were being cut, but Zane could only focus on JoJo, her small but strong hands rolling him over onto his back, sharp pain cutting through the haze. Pieces of his shirt stuck to his front, tacky and warm in the overheated room, though he could feel the temperature starting to drop. Guess someone managed to fix the heating. He felt his eyes drift shut, even as hands slapped his face lightly. He whimpered and cracked his eyes open, wishing he could just get wheeled up to the infirmary already so Allison or one of her doctors could work their magic and end this. His head lolled over to the side, and he could see his blood pooling on the floor beneath him, could feel it soaking through his tattered clothes, warm and tacky and wet against his clammy skin. Oh, that's a lot of blood. A lot of blood.

"Hey, hey, Jo. It's okay. It's okay," he said, trying to force a smile to his face, knowing he was failing. "It's okay JoJo."

"Yeah, Zane, you're going to be fine. Soon as the medics can get the stretcher in here and get you to the infirmary, you're going to be fine," Jo said, but Zane knew she wasn't as sure her words were, could hear it in her tone, see it in the crease of her brow. He was staring at the evidence to the contrary. He could feel the evidence to the contrary. How much blood had he lost at this point? They were good here in Eureka, but they couldn't work miracles.

"Jo," Zane slurred.

"Just stay with me, okay babe?" she clung to his hand as other people swarmed around them, slipping a board under Zane, her fingers a vice-grip on his that as much as he tried, wasn't enough to keep him tethered to reality.

"'Kay. Love you, JoJo," he said as he lost consciousness. He couldn't see Jo's face, knew Tony and everyone else probably heard, but that didn't matter. I don't want to die without her knowing that. She's gotta know that.

Jo's hands shook under the water, watching Zane's blood swirl pink down the drain. Twenty minutes he'd been in surgery, and not a word from anyone. She'd gone to check her PDA when it beeped, and couldn't answer it because she'd smeared blood on the screen and buttons, leaving it tacky and darkened in the grooves. That probably wasn't going to ever get fully cleaned. She'd need to get a new one.

"Here." She looked into the mirror and saw her brother behind her in the reflection, holding something out to her. She turned and leaned to steady herself against the sink, and saw that he was holding clothes for the two of them along with a washcloth.

"Thanks." She started undoing the buttons of her shirt, barely noticing Tony tense, then relax as he saw her undershirt. The blood had seeped through in a few patches, dark brown against the white, but she ignored them for now. Jo dumped her button-up on the counter and grabbed the washcloth, wetting it in the sink before trying to clean her arms, water droplets splashing and dripping as her hands shook. God, why were her hands shaking?

Warm, calloused hands covered hers, and took the washcloth back, "Hey, I got it." Jo stood still as her brother took her right hand in his left, and gently began swiping the washcloth over her palm before turning his attention to her fingers, bending and straightening the digits to expose the creases in her knuckles and nails, making them easier to clean. Once both her hands were clean, Tony started working at her arms, his forehead creased in concentration, blood still flecked on his face that he was ignoring for now.

"I know you don't like him," Jo said, breaking the silence.

"Jo," Tony tried to cut her off, but Jo kept going.

"It's fine, just. I know you don't get us, that you don't understand why I'm with him, but Tony…"

"He shoved me out of the way of a falling beam and didn't even think about his own safety. Jo, I get it." He kept cleaning the traces of blood off of her collarbone, not saying anything about the hickeys he uncovered. Zane's blood, Zane's hickeys. God the bastard did love leaving a mark on her.

Tony rinsed the cloth off in the sink and moved on to her face, and Jo couldn't help but think about the time she'd fallen off a trail while she and her brothers were on a camping trip. She'd been fifteen, Tony and Rico had already started at West Point, they were home for a break, and the four of them had gone camping without their dad. She and Nicky had been arguing over something, she couldn't remember what anymore, and had started shoving each other. Rico had yelled at them to break it up, but they hadn't, not until Jo had tripped over a branch and slid down the side of the hill, ripping up her jeans, sticks, and rocks cutting up her face. She'd been fine, no broken bones or serious injuries, and when she climbed her way back up to the boys Rico had been tearing into Nicky. Tony though, Tony just took her arm gently, grabbed a clean bandana out of his pocket, and wet it from his canteen as he'd just wet the washcloth, and started cleaning her face, making sure to get the dirt out of the cuts. Jo had put up a fight about the fussing, insisting she could take care of herself, and he'd ignored her, just kept cleaning blood off her.

And now Jo didn't even know if he remembered this. Oh, sure, Henry said that most of the changes seemed contained to Eureka, that they hadn't affected the larger world when Grant had hitched a ride back with them, but she couldn't be sure. Not unless she asked him. But she couldn't do that. Not without risking everything, not without putting Tony and everyone else in danger. She couldn't do that. Not for her stupid curiosity about whether this was the first time he'd cleaned blood off her face.

The cloth was rough and stung against the scrapes, and eventually Tony stopped, handing her a dry towel. "Thanks," she muttered as she patted her face dry. She grabbed the change of clothes and went into a stall to change. She couldn't see it against the black, but she could feel where Zane's blood had escaped Tony's makeshift bandage and settled on her thighs after she'd laid his head in her lap, the fabric now dry and crusty in spots. Jo changed, ignoring where the blood had seeped through onto her legs.

She left the stall, seeing Tony in his undershirt and slacks, balling up his button-down to throw in the trash. "Give me that," she held her hand out for his shirt.

"I don't know if uh, this is going to get out, Jo."

"Callie's good at getting stains out, it'll be fine. Good as new."

"Okay, if you're sure," he handed her the folded-up shirt, and she added it to her pile that she'd drop off at the laundromat later. His arm came around her shoulder and pulled her into his side, letting Jo lean her head on his shoulder.

She wanted to take a minute to fall apart, to let everything she was feeling crash over her, to cry in her brother's arms. But she didn't have a minute. Fargo had been working on going through the GD code to wipe out the Astraeus programming that had leaked through, but even after that was fixed, there was still the structural damage to GD that was going to need fixing. She'd need to take stock of the damage, oversee damage control, and check-in with Carter about whether or not this had spread to anything in town. She didn't have time to be the worried girlfriend.

Jo took a deep breath, steeled herself, and walked out of the bathroom, leaving her brother behind.