"Aunt Zoe's in the car," the girl continued. "She's really wowed to see you, but the baby was fussy, and she didn't want to leave him alone."
"Um, who are you?" Jo asked, stepping forward.
Zane knew even before the girl said, "Ooh, yeah, sorry," and turned the flashlight on her face. "Forgot you couldn't see me. I'm Amy, hi." The dark hair and slightly olive skin could have belonged to anyone, but her eyes were his blue, shaped and set like Jo's, and the cheekbones were pure Jo.
"Holy…" Jo breathed the word out on a gasp. "Are you…?"
"Yep. Hi, Mom." Amy grinned at Jo and her grin, lit by the flashlight, was one-hundred percent Donovan.
Zane couldn't hold back his own grin at the sight. He had a kid. A cute kid. Maybe more than one if the Jaime who was grounded for life belonged to him and Jo, too.
He'd never really thought about kids – oh, sure, the thought had crossed his mind in some abstract, maybe, far off future kind of way. But he would have said that he'd never met the woman who could keep him interested that long. Who knew that she'd been right there all along?
"Oh, my god, I think I'm going to…" Jo's voice was faint, but Zane's hand came up, sliding smoothly up her back and capturing her neck, as he interrupted.
"Lead the way, Amy, let's not keep Zoe waiting."
"Sure thing."
Amy turned her grin on him, and he felt an unexpected warmth filling him. His kid. As she turned, moving away through the woods, he whispered fiercely to Jo, "Do not let our teenage daughter know that you are anything but delighted by her existence. This isn't her fault. She doesn't deserve that."
"Right, yes, right. I should have thought of that." Jo glanced up at him, her eyes wide, pupils dilated, face pale. She looked as if she might actually be sick. "But Zane, this isn't – you don't – we aren't…We don't exist. So how did we-?"
"We went forward, not backward, JoJo. Nothing we do here can damage the timeline, and we've obviously had at least fifteen or sixteen years to figure out how to send us back. It's going to be fine."
"Fifteen or sixteen? Make that more like twenty. No way are we having a kid next week!" Jo snapped at him, and Zane couldn't help but chuckle as he looked down at the Enforcer. There had been moments in the past few months when he'd thought Lupo might be human, but they were moments. Fleeting and brief. And there'd been that kiss, but still….babies? Yeah, not on his agenda any time soon either.
"Jaime and Zander turn twenty-one next week," Amy called back over her shoulder, before turning all the way around and dimpling at them. "I have excellent hearing. But don't worry, Dad, this used to be my favorite bedtime story. I totally know how it goes."
"That makes one of us," said Jo, finally shaking free of Zane's hand on her neck and striding forward to walk side-by-side with Amy. "What can you tell me?" Her voice was solid military, the soldier in her finally taking over. Intell, planning, operation. It made sense that Jo would try to turn the situation into something she understood, something she could control.
"Oooh," Amy squealed and jumped up and down. "Yay, I love this part." Adopting a solemn expression, she said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but all information is on a need to know basis."
It was a full-fledged laugh that broke free this time. As he guffawed, Jo turned and glared at him.
"You prepped her," she said, voice deadly.
"To be a pain in the ass," he agreed. "Holy cow, I'm gonna love being a dad."
"And you're a great one," Amy generously acknowledged, continuing to lead the way through the dark forest, the light from her flashlight skimming over the ground in front of her.
"Does he let you stay up all night and eat sugary snacks?" Jo wasn't nearly as amused.
Zane almost wanted to warn Amy, to say, "Hey, kid, if you want a chance of being conceived, don't mess this up!" but his concern was unnecessary as Amy said, not without regret, "Nah, he's pretty strict on health stuff. And dating." She turned to Zane and sniffed, indignantly. "You're practically retro. You could loosen up a bit on that, ya' know."
Yeah, right. Zane remembered being a teenage boy. Actually, he remembered being a twenty-something boy all too well, too. Amy could date when she was 35.
"Although I'm glad to know that," Jo said, glancing at Zane, "I'd also like to know what's going on right now. I thought we'd been transported back to 1947, but obviously I was wrong. What year is this?"
"Oh, I actually was serious about the need-to-know thing," Amy apologized. "I know everybody's really worried about possible timeline contamination. I'm not supposed to tell you anything, just take you to S.A.R.A.H."
"But why – " Jo started and then stopped, seeming confused but apparently reluctant to possibly insult Amy.
"Why me?" Amy asked cheerfully, understand the question that Jo hadn't asked. "S.A.R.A.H. ran the numbers and I came up as the person you'd be most likely to talk to instead of knocking out. Or, you know, rendering unconscious, which is how you'd say it. Anyway, woo-hoo! Yay, me! Isabel was so powed – she said it's 'cause I got Dad's eyes, which, you know, probably true, it's the kind of thing that S.A.R.A.H. would throw into her calculations, but still, not my fault the genetic dice ran blue. S.A.R.A.H. really picked Caiti first, but you said she was too young to be out in the forest by herself at night, which so totally fried her, she hates being the youngest, and she tried to pull that BS about her IQ being the highest ever measured, which, okay, true, but everyone knows those tests are flawed, and that even with the revised Stanford-Binet 7, it's all just memory games. I think if Zander gets the Nobel this year, which he might, Caiti's gonna have to step up her game if she wants to keep bragging rights. I mean Zander'd be the youngest winner ever and that tops any stupid score on an IQ test. Potential only matters when it's matched by achievement, right?"
"Which one?" Zane asked. Amy might not be supposed to tell them anything, but she was a regular Chatty Cathy*, and everything she said was revealing. Jaime, Zander, Isabel, Caiti – he and Jo had at least five kids in this timeline. Five kids! One who might win a Nobel, one with the highest IQ ever measured – yeah, being a dad was going to be amazing.
"Which what?" Amy asked, looking confused.
"Which Nobel? Physics, chemistry?" Zane asked. He hoped it wasn't economics.
"Well, physics, of course. Ever since you got your second…but, oh, maybe I'm not supposed to say that. But you always said the first one didn't count 'cause you had to share it with Uncle Doug."
Two Nobels? Okay, that was…nice. Maybe not totally unexpected, he'd always thought he'd get one someday. But one that he shared with a Doug? That had to be Fargo, right? What could he and Fargo have worked on together?
Amy sounded distressed as she added, "But maybe I wasn't supposed to tell you that. You told me to watch what I said, I just didn't…"
"It's okay, honey," Jo said firmly. "You haven't told us anything that will change the future."
"I think it's the past I'm supposed to be worried about," Amy said doubtfully.
"Your past, our future," Jo said. "Either way, it's not exactly a surprise that your dad won a Nobel. Or two."
Wow. That…Jo had just complimented him. Like, really complimented him. That was maybe even nicer than knowing that he'd win a Nobel some day – after all, he'd always thought that was possible but Jo usually treated him like the town screw-up that he was.
As they finally broke free from the trees, Zane was trying to identify the physical sensations that he was experiencing: the tugging in his cheeks as if he wanted to be wearing a goofy smile, the lightness in his shoulders, the warmth in his chest. Oh, right. Happiness. That's what he was feeling.
But the middle-aged, dark-haired woman standing by the car on the side of the road didn't look happy. Mostly, she looked worried and tired. But still an awful lot like the Zoe of at least twenty years earlier.
*This is a joke that only people who follow Niall Matter on Twitter have the slightest hope of getting, but if you care, back in March or so, he tweeted to Erica, "Oh, no…I just realized I'm heading into 5 months of filming with my Chatty Cathy love interest. At least you're beautiful." It amused me enough that I remembered it, and yay, they're love interests through Season 5! (And apologies if that feels like a spoiler!)
A/N: A couple minor things - I'm having fun in this story trying to get back to the original Jo/Zane, the ones immediately post "I'll Be Seeing You", especially after writing so many other versions of them over the past several months. But I just wanted to clarify that that's who they are: this isn't any of my other previous universes, despite the kids' names.
Also, my remarkable productivity of yesterday (most of this chapter was written then) is largely because I took the day off from visiting the hospice. You'd think that one could write a lot at a hospice - it's a lovely, quiet, peaceful environment mostly - but actually, not so much. Or at least I can't. I spend a lot of time staring into space instead, and playing obsessive quantities of computer solitaire. Anyway, I'm back to visiting the hospice this morning, so the story is likely to slow down again, but thanks for continuing to read anyway, and many thanks to the folks who reviewed. And maybe it'll get faster now that I've realized super-fluffy and science is still easier for me to write than dark and emotional.