Rachel, Lorent, Klezmi, Silva, and a few others in minor roles are mine.
Rated PG : language; sexuality; violence; some mature concepts.
Once again, this is an AU, several details are quite different from the series.
Please review, I live for feedback.
I couldn't believe it. After a year, Jen was coming home. A year of waiting, and worrying, not knowing if I would ever see her again. A year that she had spent thinking I was dead. The memory of Rachel, that night, came back to me. Guiltily I pushed it away, determined that Jen would never be hurt by knowing of my weakness, my infidelity. It was followed by the uneasy thought of Wes Collins, my double in the past, of how she must have felt, working with him every day.
We had sent an empty ship for them, on autopilot. Now we watched as it swept in for a landing at the Time Force timeship field, outside the main ship hangar. I thought I could detect Lucas's piloting skill as it settled down. It landed, and sat quietly for a few moments.
I was part of a welcoming committee, along with Logan, a few other Time Force command officers and scientists, and Katie's, Trip's, and Lucas's parents. Rachel was there too, staying as far away from me as possible, her eyes avoiding mine. All of us approached the ship, taking up our places, Logan and me standing in front of the door as it began to open.
Lucas was first out, jumping to the ground with a big grin on his face. For a moment I thought he was going to hug me, but he only shook my hand enthusiastically and then moved on to Logan. Trip was next, and then Katie. He shook my hand also, and she hugged me, her strength squeezing my breath out. Then she was running and hurling herself into her parents' arms, almost knocking them over. A buzz of excited conversation rose as a crowd converged on the three of them.
I watched the doorway as Jen finally appeared. Everyone and everything else seemed to fade away as our eyes met. She smiled, a little hesitation in her expression, and stepped closer. We faced each other, just looking and smiling, until I swept her into a hug. She returned the embrace, but stepped back before I could kiss her. I thought she was just shy in front of all those people.
Then we were both swallowed up in the crowd, Logan taking Jen's hand and then hugging her, questions flying, Lucas and Trip grinning, Katie starting to cry. I saw Rachel say hello to Jen, shaking her hand, nothing in her face betraying her inner feelings. Again I felt that strange twinge of regret, that feeling that I had lost something important.
We began to walk, moving back toward the main HQ building. Logan took over, leading the way to his office. At the door he ushered Jen, Lucas, Trip, Katie, and me in. The others left. This initial debriefing would be kept small, out of consideration for the ordeal our team had been through. Time Force command would view the recording we would make of it, and ask any further questions they felt to be necessary later.
When we were all seated, Logan began. "First of all, let me congratulate all of you again. You restored the timeline. Saved our reality. Time Force offers its official gratitude." He grinned. "You all did a hell of a job, under very difficult conditions. Promotions will be coming soon."
"Thank you, sir," Jen said.
"Man, we're glad to be back," Lucas said.
"Yeah. But kind of sad, too." Trip's voice was less enthusiastic.
"Why, what's wrong?" Logan asked.
"We were in 2001 for a year," Katie said softly, her eyes on first Trip and then Jen. "We got pretty attached. We're going to miss it."
"I understand you had friends there."
"Yeah. Friends," Trip said. His eyes went to Jen, too.
Logan watched them for a moment and then continued briskly. "Now, let's move on to the debriefing. Why don't you just tell us what happened, in your own words."
"Yes, sir." Jen took a breath. The others simply looked to her, obviously they had agreed that she would speak for all of them.
"The trip to 2001 was rough," she started. "The timestream was already disrupted, as you remember. We barely made it in one piece. Passed out and crash-landed. I still don't know how Lucas got us down alive." She exchanged a smile with him.
"The ship was starting to burn when we came to. We just grabbed whatever we could and got out. Ran. The engines exploded." A shadow passed over her face at the memory. "We found a little equipment we could use in the wreckage. But basically all we had at first was the morphers, the vectorcycles, our medical unit, some of Trip's instruments, and Circuit -- Trip's computer. Our long-range scanner and our teleportation home unit were gone. The chrono-communicator was badly damaged and took a few months to repair."
"That's why we couldn't get in touch with you."
"Yes. We received your recorded message. But after that -- nothing. I think it was because reality shifted several times while we were in the past. We weren't in the same timeline as you for most of the time we were there."
"So -- what did you do?" I asked. "How did you survive, with no ship? How did you unlock the morphers?"
"Trip was able to modify the red Morpher to accept someone genetically similar to you," Jen said, her expression becoming slightly uncomfortable.
"Wes Collins."
"Yes." She was quiet for a moment, biting her lip. "We found him by accident. Needed him to use the red morpher the first time we used ours. He helped us find a place to live and a way to make money, wanted to keep on being a Ranger..."
"He was great, Alex. A great Ranger. We couldn't have done it without him," Trip said. All of them nodded, their eyes not quite meeting mine. I thought it was because they had given him my morpher, and left it with him. In light of their help -- and their importance -- both Wes and Eric had been allowed to keep their morphers permanently.
"We captured Steelix with his help," Jen went on. "And then... then the Quantum morpher showed up. Brickneck tried to take it."
"But Eric Myers got it. How?" Logan asked.
They all smiled. "Actually, he stole it. He was there, with the Silver Guardians, when we were fighting Brickneck for it, and he took it and used it. Captured Brickneck."
"You were lucky he turned out to be on your side. It could easily have fallen into the wrong hands."
Another smile from all of them. "We thought it had fallen into the wrong hands, at first," Jen said. "Eric's an -- interesting person. We weren't at all sure which side he was on for a while, but he also captured Conwing, and helped us fight Frax's battle machine. We couldn't have done it without his help, either."
"Go on," Logan said. "Tell us about the two big attacks on Silver Hills, by Frax's machine."
"All right." Jen's eyes seemed to become distant as she spoke. "The Dragon. That's what we called it. It was a flying fortress, made to look like a dragon. It attacked, apparently just trying to destroy as much as possible. I think Frax had gone insane by then..."
She looked directly at me. "That's when you showed up."
"What? Me?"
She smiled. "Yes. You, but from an alternate reality. Your instruments have picked up traces of it, it's the one in which there was a long war with the mutants, but humans were winning. At a cost." The smile faded. "You were... different. Harder, grimmer. From a harder and grimmer world, that was created when Wes died but Eric lived." She hesitated, looking at my face. "We assumed you're descended from Wes. We wondered how you could exist in a timeline in which Wes died without children."
For some reason discussing my relationship to Wes made me uncomfortable. "We don't know that I was directly descended from him. Or he could have had a child already when you were there, that you didn't know about, maybe that he didn't know about."
Trip spoke up unexpectedly. "Temporal theory predicts that the same people will tend to exist in similar timelines. Alex in our reality could be Wes's direct descendant, but Alex in another reality could be descended from someone else related to Wes, a cousin or something. Same person, from different ancestors."
"So he -- I -- came back to 2001. What did I do?"
"You took the red morpher from Wes. But... it didn't work out. You gave it back. You saved Wes's father's life. Then you left. Went home."
I was silent, both from the realization that all of it seemed vaguely familiar, and because I had the distinct impression there were several things she wasn't telling me. I didn't want to press. Not now.
"With Wes and Eric's help, we destroyed the Dragon. Frax disappeared. Ransik and Nadira were quiet for a while. Then -- they attacked again, with a new machine. You called us, by communicator. Warned us that we would all die in the fight. Wanted us to come back. Sent a ship for us."
"And?" Logan prompted when she was silent.
"We didn't want to go. Didn't want to leave Wes and Eric to fight our battle. But Wes tricked us into the ship, sent us back."
"You mean... you came back to our time? Before now?"
"Yes, but not this timeline." She looked up. "It was terrible. So many people dead. All the mutants either dead or locked up in detention camps. They were going to send Trip and Katie to a camp.
"But it turned out that by removing us from 2001, Alex had changed history again. Reality was reverting to the one with most of the people on Earth dead. They had to send us back again, but they gave us a new ship, new weapons. That made the difference. We beat Frax, saved Wes and Eric. Restored our own world. All of us owe him a debt, too, that other Alex.
"We captured Ransik and Nadira -- or rather, Nadira had a change of heart and Ransik gave himself up. Frax was destroyed." She hesitated, clasping her hands together. "Ransik and Nadira both changed when they found out what their interference with history had done. We think they're sincere. We're going to ask for leniency for Nadira, especially."
I could see Logan's surprise. "I'm sure Command will take it under advisement." When Jen was quiet, he went on. "Well. I'm sure all of you are tired. I'll let you go home, get some rest. You can go into more detail later, if we need it." Logan stood, and the rest of us followed his example. "Once again, welcome home."
"Thanks," Jen said again. She glanced at my face, and then away.
Jen and I walked out together, her hand in mine, not rejecting but unresponsive, as we started toward her apartment. I watched her face. She looked steadily ahead. Already my thoughts of a joyful reunion in bed were gone. I knew something was seriously wrong.
"Jen, what is it?" I asked.
At least she didn't try to deny it. She turned an unhappy face up to me. For the first time I noticed that her eyes were slightly reddened and puffy, as if she had been crying recently. "We have to talk," she said. "In private."
We arrived at her door in silence, and she silently opened it. We stepped inside. Jen stopped and just stared around her for a few seconds.
"It's good to be home," she said quietly. "Everything's so clean. I thought it would be all dusty."
"I had the place cleaned. And I changed your sheets and towels. Thought you shouldn't have to deal with a dirty apartment, after what you've been through."
"Oh, Alex…" she looked at me again, her face miserable now. To my alarm, she began to cry.
"What's wrong?"
"Alex…" She stared at me, eyes brimming, and then looked down and dug into a pocket of the twenty-first century outfit she was still wearing. Her hand came out with her engagement ring in it. I hadn't even noticed that it wasn't on her finger. She held it out to me.
"I'm so sorry," she said, her voice muffled and trembling.
"Jen… what's going on?" I just stared at her, not understanding.
"I can't marry you." She held out the ring again, her eyes downturned. When I made no move to take it she lifted my hand and pressed it into my palm.
"What do you mean? Why?" My first thought was that she somehow had found out about Rachel.
"I'm sorry, I really am. I didn't mean for it to happen, but we thought you were dead… and then you showed up, but you were so different, and it had already happened, and I didn't know if you'd even still be alive if we restored the original reality… I couldn't help it." She finally looked at my face again. "I fell in love with someone else. Wes Collins. I'm sorry."
I felt as if I had been punched in the gut. This was what I had waited a year for, this was why I had tortured myself with guilt over my mistake with Rachel. My Jen, my perfect Jen, had been more unfaithful than I could have dreamed of being. I don't even know how long it took before I could speak again.
"You fell in love," I said flatly.
"Yes. I'm sorry."
"You're sorry. Wes Collins? The one who looks like me?"
"Yes." It was almost a whimper.
I couldn't understand, or wouldn't. "But... how? How could you?"
"I thought you were dead, Alex!" She looked away. "I didn't plan this, I didn't want it, but it happened."
For some reason I latched onto the part that should have been least important. "But he's a native of 2001. You can't stay with him. He can't come here. You'll never see him again."
"I know." The way she said it, the heartbreak in her voice, told me how much she loved him more than all the declarations in the world.
It bit deep into my heart. For the first time in my life, I discovered just how ugly jealousy can be, how it can twist your mind, bend your soul, make you do things, say things… "So -- you're dumping me for a man you can't even have?" I glared at her. "I can't believe you'd do this! I've been waiting for you… imagining every kind of terrible thing that might be happening to you… and you were -- were screwing around with some guy -- someone in the past, for Christsake, do you even know what kind of temporal interference rules you were breaking?"
"I know…" She backed a step away, wrapping her arms around herself.
"I can't believe this! Did you -- did you do it with him? Sleep with him?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"Oh God, Jen…" I had unconsciously clenched my fists. The ring cut into my hand. I raised it, looked at the piece of jewelry that was supposed to symbolize our love. In that moment fury and jealousy took me over.
"Bitch!" I threw the ring at her. She winced as it bounced off her shoulder and fell to the floor. I turned away, blindly, ran out, got out of that building and as far away as I could get, afraid that if I stayed I would strike out with more than words.
I don't think I can even describe how I felt that night. The dreams I had dreamed -- of the two of us together again, of holding her again, seeing her smile, kissing her and feeling her warmth -- all gone. For a selfish moment I even wished she had died back in the past, before she could betray me.
Then other thoughts came. Hadn't I done the same thing? I hadn't fallen in love. But I had been with another woman, and I couldn't say it hadn't meant anything. It had only been because I was afraid, and didn't want to be alone, and Jen had been gone. Jen had been alone, too, and afraid, she had thought I was dead -- could I blame her any more than I blamed myself?
Another twinge of guilt came. At least she had been honest enough to tell me. But I hadn't told because I didn't want to hurt her. I still didn't want her to know. The time with Rachel didn't have to make a difference, but Jen said she was in love with Wes -- enough to break our engagement, even when she couldn't be with him...
I tortured myself for most of the night, zigzagging between anger and guilt, but always with jealousy burning me up inside. Early morning found me, exhausted but sleepless, in the Time Force gymnasium, trying to lose myself in mindless exercise, maybe trying to tire myself out to the point where I would no longer be able to think.
Afterwards I started for home, and took a detour through the park between the residence buildings, the same lovely little park where Jen and I had first kissed. The unwelcome memory came that it was also the place where I had kissed Rachel. I felt little more than numbness. The anger, the guilt, even the jealousy had burned themselves out, leaving only misery.
Then I saw her. Jen was sitting on that same bench where we had kissed, that first time. She saw me at the same moment, her pale, drawn face telling me she felt as badly as I did. Suddenly all of it seemed unimportant, compared to the fact that we had been friends, and teammates, that we had loved each other. The love was still there, and always would be. I walked over to her, and sat down when she smiled at me tentatively. We looked at each other, then both turned to look out over the clearing in front of us.
"I'm glad you're home," I said. "No matter what."
"Thanks. I'm glad you're here. That you're all right."
"I -- I shouldn't have gotten so angry. After everything that's happened, I should have understood."
"No." She shook her head. "It was a natural reaction. I don't blame you at all."
"You could have just not told me. We could have just -- picked up our lives again."
"Wouldn't have been fair to you."
"Jen..." I turned to look at her profile. She looked like she hadn't slept at all either. "Do you still love me?" Even as I asked, I knew what I wanted. I still wanted to marry her. Wes wasn't here. Sooner or later she would forget him. We would have to wait -- I would have to be patient -- but we could still be together.
"I'll always love you, Alex." From her expression as she faced me, I could see that she had been thinking about this. "But I'm not sure if it's the same kind of love anymore. I'm not too sure of anything. I just know it wouldn't be fair for me to marry you."
"There's no rush. We have time." I smiled a little at the use of the word.
We sat in an almost companionable silence for awhile, looking out at the trees again as the breeze drifted a few falling leaves to the ground. Then Jen spoke softly.
"They say you can't go home again. Now I know what they mean. I'm back, everything's the same, but everything's different. I'm different. Too much has happened. Things will never be the same, I'll never see them the same way again." There was a sadness in her voice that was heartbreaking.
"This is still your home. You just need to adjust. A year in a different time -- of course you feel disoriented."
"I suppose." She sighed.
I forced myself to say the next thing. "You miss him, don't you?"
She glanced at me quickly. "Yes, I do." After a pause she added, "I said goodbye to him only yesterday. But it was two hundred years ago. He's -- he's dead now. Eric -- everyone we knew there is dead now."
I said something even more difficult. "Tell me about him."
"You don't want to hear it."
"Yes, I do. Maybe it'll help me understand." She stared at me, her face skeptical and questioning. "I want to understand, Jen," I went on. "I'm not angry anymore. We've been apart for a year -- my feelings have changed, too. I don't really know what I feel now, either."
"All right." She didn't look at me.
I smiled as Jen started to talk. She would tell me everything, what she had seen in Wes, why she had loved him, whether it was something he had, or did, that she hadn't found in me. There was no reason for me to give up. I could still win her back. I had always been able to do anything I set out to do, and this was no different.
"The first time I saw him, it was such a shock," she began. "I thought I was seeing things -- because I wanted to see you so much..."
TBC...