So here it is, the final chapter. This is probably one of my favorite fics I've ever written. I got to write nearly everything I'd planned to. It's the first time I've stuck so faithfully to a plan. I wish I could've written more of Carl and Katie's story, but at the same time, this felt like a suitable length...

It was a pretty emotional story to write, especially this last chapter. I hope you guys enjoy it.

In other news... For those of you that have also read the first two parts of my Claire trilogy, I just wanted to get it out there that I am still working on the final installment and I do plan to have it posted one of these days. Like this fic, it's very dear to me and I'd like to see it to the end. :)

Thank you so much, to all the readers and reviewers out there.

x x x

Chapter eight

The last time Carl had gone to the clinic was for stitches. He'd sliced his finger with a knife while working in the kitchen, and it had been a foolish, amateur mistake. It wasn't the first time he'd done such a thing, and it barely even hurt, but there had been so much blood. It stained the cuff of his favorite shirt, he remembered.

There wasn't a scar, but he found himself stroking the place where he'd cut himself, running his right thumb along the side of his left index, fidgeting. Because that's what you did in waiting rooms. You jiggled your knee and wrung your hands and you dreaded.

He went over what Ronald told him again, even though he knew it wouldn't make any more sense in his head then it did when he'd heard it spoken out loud less than an hour ago, when Ronald had shown up at the café that morning instead of Katie.

She'd gone to the ocean. Last night, when he dropped Katie off at her house, she hadn't gone to bed. Or she had, but then she'd woken up. Early, around four in the morning. Ronald had heard her leave and followed her. Followed her all the way to the ocean, where she'd started screaming. He'd tried to stop her, Ronald said.

"But it was that damn time machine. She was having another one of her fits and she was looking for it, said it was at the bottom of the lake. I can only figure she meant the lake next to the café her grandpa owned, back in Sugar Valley. It's a big lake, and maybe in that moment the ocean reminded her of it, so much so that she…

"She flung herself into the water and started swimming. But she was crying so hard, and it was still dark out, and the undercurrent… Katie was never a bad swimmer, but the waves were too strong for her. I saw her head go under and it didn't come back up. My heart nearly stopped."

Carl pictured it all in his head as Ronald told the story, and he felt a tightness in his chest at the very thought of it. He couldn't imagine what he would have done, could have done, if he'd seen it himself. He was sure the fear would've paralyzed him. But Ronald had reacted right away. He waded into the water after her, and he pulled her out and dragged her onto the beach. Ray (the only thing Carl knew about him was the two times he'd come to the café, where he ordered a corn muffin and a coffee), who'd gotten up early that morning to fish, was passing by and saw the two figures at the shoreline. He knew CPR, and he'd saved Katie's life.

Carl didn't like to think about what would've happened had Ray not come along.

Ronald came back out into the waiting area then, followed by Dr. Alex. They were talking in quiet voices, but stopped when Carl jumped to his feet.

"How is she…? Is she…?" Carl struggled to find the words to ask the questions he wanted. Fear stopped him from finishing.

"She's doing fine. Some bruises where she hit the rocks underwater, but that's all. She's conscious now, and she's talking."

"Can I see her?" There was no hesitation for that question.

Ronald laughed, though it wasn't his regular full belly laugh. He clapped Carl on the shoulder. "She's all yours."

x x x

Katie looked too small for her bed, and Carl thought of the story from his childhood, Goldilocks. This porridge is too hot. This bed is too small. He pushed the odd stray thought from his mind.

She was smiling, and that helped. "Hey, you. I guess you know all about my little late night swim."

He approached her bedside and tentatively reached out a hand to touch her face. A dark mark blossomed on her cheek—one of her bruises. Next he saw the tubes running from IV bags down into the flesh of her wrist and it made his stomach squirm a little.

"More like early morning, from what I hear."

She laughed, but hers wasn't a normal laugh either. "I'm…I'm okay now." He noticed how her voice had a rasp to it, and he felt that chest tightness again. Her auburn head swallowed up by waves, water filling her lungs, her lips blue as she lay limp on the beach. He felt the floor shift beneath him and he gripped the railing of her bed to steady himself.

Suddenly her face crumpled. "I really thought I'd find it this time," she whispered, her wretchedness choking every word.

He didn't need to ask her what she meant. "Shh, it's okay. You don't have to talk about it." He didn't want her to talk about it, in fact. He'd never wanted to admit it, but it scared him, this side of her, and he didn't like the feeling. He'd come so close to losing her because of it—he wasn't about to risk riling her up again. He needed her to stay with him.

But the tears were already there. He watched them slide to meet her ears since she was lying down. "I know you don't believe me, but it's there. It's there, I'm telling you, it's there…oh, you should've let me…you should've let me look…"

"Please don't say that," he pleaded softly. Her eyes were shut tightly and she gave no sign that she heard him. She murmured to herself instead, words that Carl couldn't catch. "You could've drowned, Katie," he continued, louder this time. "I don't know what I'd do if you ever—if you were to—"

Dr. Alex pulled back the curtain then and Carl stepped back from the bed, feeling like he'd been caught in the middle of a wrongdoing. Katie still didn't open her eyes but instead pressed her lips together until her mouth formed a straight line.

"I'm sorry, Carl, but there's something I need to discuss with Katie. Would you mind coming back later?"

"Sure, but um…I think she might've gone to sleep or something."

Her eyes sprung open then and she stared alertly at the doctor, making a liar out of him. Carl smiled, small and weary—so she was well enough to spite him.

He said goodbye to Katie, who didn't answer, and then stepped out, pulling the curtain behind him. He was going to walk away, had no intention of lingering, but for some reason his feet stayed rooted to the floor and he stayed and he listened. He listened to Dr. Alex very closely until he couldn't bear it any longer, and then he ran.

x x x

He pounded on Ronald's door with his fists, over and over, until Ronald answered it. He lowered his hands to his sides but they remained clenched, tense like every other part of him.

"What's wrong? Is it Katie?" His bushy eyebrows were drawn so closely together in worry they nearly touched. "Did her condition change? Is she getting worse?"

It took what felt like ages for Carl to push out the words, but when he did they fell hard and cold, like pebbles dropped deliberately. No, not pebbles. Boulders. "How long has Katie had cancer?"

"Ah." It was one word, a sigh of a word, a resignation. And to Carl, it signaled the dismantling of his world, the beginning of the end.

x x x

"She told you?" Ronald asked as he brought out the cups of coffee he'd insisted on making before they talked. Carl sat at his dining room table now, his hands still balled into fists resting on his lap.

"No. I overheard." He kept his gaze on Ronald, steady and unflinching. A steaming mug was set before him wordlessly. "I was talking to Katie and then Dr. Alex came in and asked me to leave. I was outside when I heard them say it…"

"Do you take any sugar? Cream?" The interjection sounded so out of place that for a moment, Carl barely understood what Ronald was talking about. "For your coffee."

"…Right. Yes. Cream."

Ronald pushed a little pitcher of cream towards him and sat back in his chair. "So you were saying."

"Dr. Alex said something about her brain scans. About how the tumor had grown, and that the cancer was spreading." That word—cancer—felt fuzzy on his tongue. It sounded like a faraway place, something only known in pictures and stories told by other people. Something he could distance himself from, until he was far enough away that the nausea subsided and he could breathe again.

Ronald sighed deeply and his head sagged forward slightly. "I was afraid of that. But we were warned that it could happen. That it would happen."

"How long? You didn't answer me before. How long has she had it?"

"She was diagnosed about six months ago. It started with headaches. Then hallucinations, though they were so very rare. The serious symptoms didn't begin until Wally died. Her grandfather. She became very…confused. She couldn't separate the past from the present anymore."

"And so she escaped into the future," Carl muttered, thinking of Katie's words on the first day they met. I'm not supposed to be here, she'd told him. I'm from the future. "To be honest, when I first met her, I thought she was schizophrenic, or had some other mental illness." His mouth twisted into a grimacing smile. "Funny thing is, now I realize that would be so much better. Instead I find out she's dying." His voice broke on the word, the two syllables cleaved in half by his cracked and trembling tone.

Ronald's face stayed somber and creased. "She exhibits the signs of a schizophrenic, but it's the tumor in her brain that makes her act the way she does."

"Why didn't you tell me? You—you let me believe that she was just delusional. Not that she had…cancer."

"And what good would it have done if you had known sooner? It's how Katie wants it. She was never one for being pitied. There's nothing we can do but let her live for as long and as happily as she can."

"What about treatment? Earlier, when I overheard Dr. Alex—he said something about chemo. He said it wasn't too late yet, but she was running out of time. Why hasn't she ever done it?"

Ronald rubbed the stubble on his cheeks and looked off to the side. "Because she doesn't want it," he answered simply.

Carl narrowed his eyes. "What does that mean? Why wouldn't she?"

"She told me when she was first diagnosed that she didn't want to do it. Wally was on chemo at the time, for liver cancer, and it made him very sick. And it wasn't working for him. She told me she didn't want to have to live like that. To die like that. In a hospital bed, alone, away from the café. She said no matter what, she didn't want to go through with it. She made me promise. It was her decision."

"She's got a fucking brain tumor!" The words exploded out of him in a flare of rage. He heard a bang and felt a throbbing on the side of his hand, and he realized he'd struck the table with his fist. "She's nuts! How can you listen to someone like that? She doesn't know what's best for her!"

"She made the choice when she was still fully lucid, and I respect that. She'd turned eighteen by then. It wasn't up to me or Wally."

"And what about when she started losing it? When she started thinking she was a time traveler? Was it still up to her then?"

"I made a promise."

"Then break your promise!" Carl roared, on his feet now and breathing heavily. "I don't give a shit about a promise! She's dying and you could save her and you won't do a damn thing about it! You're letting her die right in front of you!" His eyes burned now and blurred his surroundings into one great mess of color and anguish. He wanted to cry for so many reasons. For this anger welling up in him. For Katie and the mind that was taken from her. Even for Ronald, who must've gone through the same agony Carl felt now, carried with him this misery.

"She's eighteen. She's an adult. And as long as she still has lucid moments, I don't have a say in what she does with her body. I may have appointed myself as her guardian, but I'm powerless." He stopped talking and the two stared at each other in silence. Carl felt his breathing slow and his fury fade, wearing itself out against Ronald's sturdy calm. "And even if I could do something…I don't know that I would. I watched Wally waste away with her. I was there when he finally passed. It wasn't a pretty sight. The treatments made him so sick and weak, I…I don't know if I could do that to Katie. Not if she didn't want it."

Carl dropped back into his seat again and put his hands over his eyes. "But she's dying."

"Don't think that I haven't struggled with this. Katie—she's been like a daughter to me. I've known her since she was a little girl. I couldn't stand it if anything happened to her. But there isn't a damn thing any of us can do."

Carl raised his head and drew in a shaky breath. "How long? How long does she have? What's the prognosis?"

"The first doctor we went to, the one that diagnosed her, thought she wouldn't make it past the first month, but she's still here and she's still fighting six months later. Every doctor will tell you something different, you know."

He knew what Ronald was trying to do, but he didn't want to be sheltered anymore. He kept his eyes on the coffee gone cold in front of him. "What does Dr. Alex tell you?"

Ronald coughed into his fist, delaying the inevitable. "When we first moved here, he thought a year from her original diagnosis. Six months. But when I spoke with him today... They took brain scans after she was brought in this morning, and, like you heard, the tumor has grown. Which means less than six months, he says. He thinks. But he doesn't know anything else beyond that. None of us can."

x x x

Less than six months. What could you do in less than six months? What good were they?

The words had inspired an instinctual reaction of dread at first, but he tried to twist that into some semblance of optimism. Doctors weren't always right. Ronald had even said himself that Katie had outlived her first prognosis. Who's to say she couldn't do it again?

But no. He wasn't fooling himself. Carl remembered how Dr. Alex sounded when he'd stood outside the curtain listening. His flimsily constructed positive thinking paled in the shadow of the gravity of Dr. Alex's words.

"You're so quiet," Katie said, offering an outstretched hand for him to hold. "Is this about earlier today? I'm sorry about that. I feel better now. You were right, we shouldn't talk about it…"

Carl took her hand and squeezed it, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything. He couldn't think of anything to say other than what was on his mind. It didn't even cheer him that Katie really did look better; she was sitting upright now, and she had some color in her face. It didn't matter, because she still had brain cancer. She was still dying.

"Carl? What's wrong? You don't have to worry anymore, I told you I'm fine. It's okay." It's okay. The same words he'd always used with everyone sounded trivial and useless and wooden as children's building blocks.

"Katie. I need to talk to you about something."

She shifted in her bed, wiggled so that she was higher up on the pillows, made herself comfortable. How could she act so naturally when she knew what she knew? "Okay. What is it?"

"I want you to try chemotherapy."

She stared at him so blankly for so long, Carl feared she was about to have another one of her episodes. But then she spoke, and when she did, her voice was clear and sure. "How did you find out?"

"You're running out of time. This isn't something you can do at the last minute, you know?"

"How did you find out?"

"I knew a guy in high school. This kid in my physics class. His uncle had cancer, but he got chemo, and he got better, Katie. It works, if you just give it a chance. I really think you—"

"How. Did you. Find out." She was angry, but only her voice betrayed her. It tripped him up, stopped him short.

"I…I overheard Dr. Alex talking to you this morning. I know that sounds bad, but—"

"You were eavesdropping?" She ripped her hand away from his and clutched her sheets.

"I talked to Ronald about it, and he told me that you refused treatment. That you're still refusing treatment. Katie, I don't understand."

"So let me get this straight. You eavesdropped on a private conversation between me and my doctor, and then you went behind my back and talked to Ronald about my personal life? And now you're trying to understand me?"

"You hid it from me." He got a little mad now, even though he didn't want to be mad at her, not ever again. "How was I supposed to know? When was I going to find out? At the funeral?"

He knew he'd gone too far, and it made all his anger instantly dissipate. Her eyes dropped down, her gaze lost somewhere in the folds of her bed sheets.

"Shit. Katie, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I just…I hated not knowing something so important about you. When I found out, I was devastated to hear you were going through something so...I am still devastated. I care about you so much…"

She'd started crying, and at some point during his speech, he'd managed to awkwardly climb into the bed next to her, dodging IV tubes and monitors, until he'd settled in, curled up on his side so he could fit and thinking of Goldilocks again. This bed is too small. This moment hurts too much.

"I don't want chemo," she blubbered into his chest. "My grandpa had chemo. It was awful. It does terrible things to you."

"But it might help," he said, using his free arm to hold her close and stroke her hair. "There are people who try chemo and get rid of their cancer."

"Maybe I don't want to get rid of it…"

"What do you mean?"

"Grandpa. If I…if I get chemo, and they cure me, I…I might forget about him. I might forget I'm from the future, and that I need to go back and save him."

He tightened his hold, not wanting to hear this, not wanting her to go there. He needed her lucid. "Have you ever thought about trying to live here, in the present?"

She sniffled and pulled away a little. "What does that mean?"

"Would it be so bad, to forget about the future? You wouldn't forget about your grandfather, I promise. But you also wouldn't need to have to try to go and save him all the time. Because you can't, Katie. You can't change the past. Or the future. Not even if you're a time traveler. You have to just live."

She stared back at him, her lashes laced with tears and her nose running. The sight made his heart ache.

"You still have Ronald, and you have me. I'll stay with you through everything." His mind started spinning then, thinking of all that could happen. A little part of him got excited, and he started talking faster. "You'll probably have to travel to the city for treatments, but I'd go with you. Maybe we could even move there together."

Katie giggled half-heartedly at his enthusiasm. "You couldn't move to the city, Carl. You have the café to run here."

"I'll open another one," he answered, breezy but sincere. "Or I'll do something else. Don't you see, Katie? That's the point. There are so many possibilities. But we have to keep moving forward."

"But…"

"I love you."

Something changed in her face then. He saw her blush.

"But…but…when I do chemo—" He noticed she said when, not if, and he wanted to shout his jubilation straight to the moon, but he kept quiet and motionless as he waited for her to finish. "—I'll lose all my hair, you know. I'll be bald."

He chuckled and ran his fingers through the length of one of her curls. It was lovely, like everything about her, but they didn't need it. "I wouldn't care."

She touched her own hair, a tentative smile on her face. She then let go with a sigh and reached up to touch his hair. "I'm going to look strange when I go bald."

He kissed her forehead and answered with absolute certainty. "No, you're going to look beautiful."

end