Disclaimer: I don't own Eureka, any of the characters, nor am I making money off of writing this.

A/N: I wasn't going to continue this, after the finale... but I figured I might as well work on it now & then. :) This takes place right after the finale.

"So you're telling me you can fix it?"

Sheriff Carter stood in front of Zane, arms crossed and a scowl etched onto his face. Zane looked up, distractedly. "The Bridge Device? Sure. I'm going to have to cannibalize the D.E.D., but no big loss there, right?"

"We only just got that back. Don't you guys need it?"

"Not anymore." Quick, steady strides took Joe Lupo down the steps into Zane's lab, data pad in hand. "Fargo just got off the phone with the General. After the incident with Beverly, he's ordering it decommissioned. We will need to have the parts and blueprints available in case we ever need to reactivate the program, but as of now it's scrap."

"Hey Lupo," Zane said with a fake leer, which was quickly replaced with an actual smile when he saw how she blushed.

She looked momentarily caught off-guard by his greeting, but she turned crisply to Carter. "Dr. Blake said you were late for the blood work you volunteered for."

"The blood work? ... Oh right. She asked if I would help out with something she's testing. I should have been listening better." Carter looked like he wanted to yell at Zane again, but instead he sighed, "Yup," and hopped up the stairs and out the door.

Zane looked up from his notes and focused in on Jo. "I'm not going to break it."

"Right, sorry. I just came in to give you the news." Jo looked away, and Zane immediately he felt bad. He kept forgetting this Jo was not the one he was used to, the one without feelings.

"No, it's ... I'm just a little tired. I've been working on it for a week straight. We're going to fix this, okay?" She gave him one of her sad, closed lip smiles and nodded.

After she left, Zane worked with only half of his attention focused on the machine in front of him. He just did not know how to act around Jo any more. There was this intense sadness she carried just below the surface, and he was afraid anything he did or said would slice a little too deep and dip into that. He wanted to comfort her, but that was the other Zane, not him. He was not sure exactly what he was supposed to do, so instead he had just avoided her since the night he found out what was going on.

He wanted to ask her out. He had reached that conclusion that morning, but he almost felt like he would be poaching someone else's woman. While he never had qualms about that before, he would be stealing his own woman, and that was a little weird for him.

So instead he let her walk out of the room in awkward silence.

For being a genius, sometimes he was an idiot.

Jo was striding by Grace's lab when the older woman called out a greeting.

"Hey Grace," Jo replied, stopping and turning. She had about four different places to be at that very moment, but truthfully she did not want to be anywhere near them. What she needed was a relaxing vacation.

Grace came out and linked her arm through Jo's stiff one, and set a much slower pace than Jo was used to. "How are things going?"

Jo started maneuvering them to the small atrium next to the cafeteria. It was too early for lunch, and everyone who came in for breakfast or coffee had already left. When there was only the two of them, Jo finally responded. "Now that we have permission to break down the D.E.D. device, Zane has a lot more parts to work with."

They sat down on a stone bench next to one of the tall hydroponically grown orange trees, Grace's hand still resting on Jo's arm. It felt almost comforting, and Jo resisted the impulse to brush her off.

Grace shook her head. "I didn't mean about the device, I meant with you and Zane."

"Oh." Jo looked down briefly, then back up, composed. "Fine. Really. He's working, I'm working. We're really not... talking much."

"It's a good thing we told him, Jo. Zane is tenacious when there's something he wants to know. He could have made it a lot worse if he had to dig to find out what he wanted to know."

Jo had recently been questioning the decision to tell Zane. She had wanted to tell him, but that had been based on emotional reasons. Her military training had taught her to reveal as little as possible when cornered, and now that she had gained some distance it was all she could think about.

"I can't help thinking that what I did was selfish, Grace. That I endangered all of us because I was letting my emotions get in the way."

"You can't think like that. What you did was to protect us. Zane was going to find out, and this way we were able to control it."

Jo sighed, wrestling inside with her decision. Upon reaching no sort of conclusion at all, she asked something else that had been on her mind. "Did we get along before, you and I? You know, the other Jo?"

Grace raised one shoulder in a half shrug. "You were very focused on your job. I think you approached with an eye towards achievement and carving out a place for yourself."

"A place for one," Jo whispered. Before it had been blown up, her home here had been nicely furnished, but devoid of pictures of friends. The other Jo had built the perfect life for one.

"Enough of that," Grace said, finally disentangling herself from Jo. As she stood, Jo looked over and saw Henry moving towards them.

"Hey Henry," Jo called.

"Hey Jo," he replied, then moved to kiss his wife. "Anything wrong?"

Jo shook her head. "No. Just... talking."

"Then you won't mind if I steal my wife, do you? I have a specific problem I need her help on."

"No, go right ahead."

Grace looked back at Jo with a sad smile. Alone again, Jo was momentarily swamped by self-pity. A clang from someone in the cafeteria brought her back a little, and she looked around her in frustration. Jo Lupo never pouted... and she hated the fact she was on the verge of it now.

The end of the day could not come soon enough for Zane. He wanted to track down Jo and talk to her. He had spent all morning convincing himself to ask her out again, and then all afternoon figuring out he would say it that would not end with her tasering him. There was a good chance she would taser him no matter what. This was, after all, still Jo Lupo.

He swing by Central Security, and was not surprised to find her absent. He was surprised that one of the guys on duty told him that she had left for the day.

"Tell me about it," the guard chuckled at Zane's obviously shocked expression. "The last time Chief Lupo left early was after the explosion in section 2 that broke her arm."

"She had a broken arm because of that?" Zane recalled the commotion; they had evacuated GD and been sent home for two days.

"Sure. But she still came in the next day. She's made of all balls."

Zane drove around town, going no where in particular, pondering the mystery that was the similar but different Jo. Where in the other universe that the split began? He could still see that tough Jo, the one who fought through the pain and had enough courage - and balls - to stand up to anyone. Where along the timeline had she started to grow into a human being?

While sitting at a stop sign, the intriguing focus of Zane's musings jogged in front of his car in sweatpants and a frown. She did not notice him at first, nor when he opened his car door and started yelling at her. It was only after the cars behind Zane's started honking with impatience did she look back and see what, or rather who, had caused the commotion.