Ending 1, Part 3 (or Part 65)

Maria watched Michael as they crossed the lobby and he punched the button to call the elevator. He was agitated and it was showing through clearly in his disposition and the way he was stalking around. They stepped into the elevator and he pushed the button for the third floor as he leaned back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest as he scowled at the doors until they started to close.

"Hey, hold that elevator!" a voice shouted and a moment later a hand reached in to prevent the doors from closing.

Michael straightened up and took two steps forward, hands braced on either side of the doors as he met the man's surprised expression. "Take the next one," he bit out.

"Back off, man, I don't have time for this – "

"Put one foot on this elevator and I'll break your fuckin' leg."

The other man opened his mouth to argue but after a fleeting moment of reckless stupidity he took a step back and held his hands up. "Anyone ever told you you're a total dick?"

His temper was riding on the razor's edge and the little prick's comment pushed it just enough to send him into the red zone. He grabbed a handful of the man's shirt and jerked him into the elevator, hitting the button to close the door with his elbow. He shoved him into the corner next to the row of unlit buttons, holding him there by wrapping his hand around his throat. "You should really be a little more cautious about who you insult," he muttered. "I could easily snap your – "

"Michael," Maria called, hoping he would listen. He was messing with the guy because he was pissed off at her.

The man's eyes were wide as he stared at the stranger pinning him to the wall and his heart pounded when the guy raised his free hand, curling his fingers into a fist. "Look, man, just let me off," he begged. "I can take the stairs."

Michael let his fist hover several inches in front of the guy's face, wishing like hell he was enjoying the threat a lot more than he was. "I'll be here for several days, shit for brains; I'd suggest you make sure to use the stairs until I'm gone." He hit the button with his elbow again and released the man as soon as the doors slid open.

"That was completely uncalled for!" Maria yelled at him as soon as the man had made his escape and the elevator began to ascend to the third floor.

Michael leaned back and studied his hand. "Huh, I think that dickhead might've actually gotten the point," he mused carelessly. He intentionally ignored her as they rode the rest of the way up to their floor and he made a show of looking for his key card when they reached his room.

"I think I'll – "

"You'll get your ass in here," he snapped, grabbing her arm when she attempted to walk past him to go to her own room.

"Don't manhandle me," she shouted when he walked inside, half-dragging her with him as he kicked the door shut after them. "I know why you're pissed, Michael, but that does not give you the right to treat me like this!"

He pushed her down on the bed and he stalked around the room, anger rolling off him in waves. "You know why I'm pissed?" he yelled. "Why, Maria? I'm out here tryin' to talk to some smartass piece of alien technology and bein' insulted by it all because of you! This whole thing, it's all about you getting back to him… nothin' else even fuckin' matters to you! You've screwed up my entire life, dragged me into this ridiculous roller coaster ride that doesn't even have anything to do with me! I don't need all this bullshit in my life… I never needed it, and now you've fucked it all up!"

Maria let him rant, waiting for him to begin to wind down before she even tried to speak because she knew he would only interrupt her if he wasn't finished. "That's not true – "

"Not true?" he repeated incredulously. "Not true that you didn't do all of this just to get back to him? Not true that you've fucked my life up in the process? Not true that you made love to me – ME – and then turned around and threw it in my face that it was nothin' more than a fuckin' betrayal of HIM?! All you had to do was say no, and damn it, woman, you sure as fuck know that word better than anyone else I've ever known in my life! One word, that's all you needed to say, and you know I would've stopped!"

She choked back the tears that were clogging her throat as she shook her head. "I didn't want to stop, Michael," she admitted finally.

"Then you must have some seriously masochistic tendencies because you didn't appear to be all that happy the next mornin'."

"I can explain that, Michael, but you'll need to listen to me."

"Well?" he snapped after several minutes. "Are you gonna open your mouth and talk?"

Maria watched him as he stood on the opposite side of the room, arms crossed over his chest, scowling, and radiating tension and anger. "Michael… that night… it wasn't just us having sex, we made love. Even you made that distinction just a few minutes ago! You didn't call it sex or screwing or fucking… you called it making love and that's exactly what it was. The thing is you can't make love like that if you aren't in love."

He shook his head in confusion. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means I'm in love with you! It means that in spite of my best intentions you got through to something inside of me that belonged to him. I fell asleep in your arms after making love with you – and it doesn't take a genius to know that you've never spent the night with any other woman, so the magnitude of that action wasn't lost on me – and I looked down at you and it just hit me."

"And that's a bad thing?" he asked uncertainly.

"Yes! No! That's what I'm talking about, Michael. My first reaction is to push you away because falling in love with you is the ultimate betrayal to him." She sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

"Worse than makin' love with me?" He didn't understand how that could be the worse betrayal of the two.

"Yes!"

He shook his head. "I don't understand that."

"My heart belonged to him exclusively – "

"So did your body," he interrupted. "By your own admission you had never been with anyone but him."

She stood and crossed the room to stand in front of him, reaching up to frame his face in her hands. "For me to make love with you, to willingly give myself to you like I did that night, my heart had to be involved. Yes, I came here hoping to find my way home so I could fix what went wrong in my universe, to undo an accident that was stupid and senseless, but as time has passed it's become more than that. I won't lie to you and tell you that I'll ever stop loving him because I can't imagine that ever happening."

He backed away from her and walked over to the balcony doors, staring outside as he considered his next words. "He told you he'd never leave you… his last words as he was dying were a promise that he wouldn't leave you alone."

"Yeah," she said slowly.

"You asked me earlier about the dreamplane…" He shook his head and reached up to rub his eyes. "But first, I've experienced some things… and some of those things started before you and I met, before you arrived in my universe by my calculations. At the time that he was dyin' I think I could, I don't know… feel it."

Maria shook her head, denying what he was saying.

"Hear me out, Maria," he demanded. "I woke up with chest pains like I've never experienced; agonizing, burning, feeling like I was bein' torn apart. Physically, there was nothin' wrong with me, but I was practically paralyzed while that pain hit me. After that I would be out doin' the things I normally do and I'd suddenly get hit with pain or nausea and it wouldn't stop until I quit whatever I was doin'."

"I don't… what're you saying?"

"Do you remember when you first found me?" he asked. "You ran up to me and threw yourself into my arms, and if you'll recall my reaction wasn't favorable."

Maria made a face at that memory.

"What about that first night at the hotel? I had you pinned beneath me on the bed and even though I never would've carried out the threat I had implied… the threat was enough to kick that feelin' into overdrive."

"I don't understand, how is this connected to the dreamplane?"

"I met him there."

"Him… Michael?"

"Yeah. He's different than what I expected him to be." He shrugged. "That's not really what I wanted to talk about though. When he told you he'd never leave you he wasn't kiddin'. The pain I went through the day he died, that feelin' that's made me pull back from doin' things that I normally do… combine that with the fact that the connection you described a while back, the one between humans and their hybrids… I've felt that with you, Maria."

"Are you saying you think Michael is… what, inside you?" Maria asked, shocked to the core of her very being. That was just… it wasn't possible, just not possible!

"Look, I'm not that happy about it either," he snapped, irritated at the undertone of disbelief in her voice. "But, no, I'm not sayin' I think he's in me, I'm tellin' you that's what's goin' on. I didn't ask your hybrid to hijack my body, but that's exactly what he did and he seemed to be quite pleased with himself."

Maria stared at him as if she had never seen him before. No, it wasn't possible. Even if Michael had somehow been able to preserve his essence or his soul by projecting it across different universes and depositing it into another Michael Guerin… why would he have chosen this one?

"How else do you explain the Granolith sendin' you to my universe? If he was able to save that part of himself, to, I don't know, transfer that part of himself into another Michael Guerin, wouldn't that hunk of junk send you to whatever universe his… his soul or whatever had gone to?"

"I don't know," she murmured, still studying him. Sure, there had been moments when he had said or done things that had felt like things her Michael would've said or done, but… was it possible?

He could see the exhaustion and confusion fighting for dominance in her expression. "Look, this isn't somethin' we have to settle tonight. Maybe you should just sleep on it and we'll deal with it tomorrow. It's been a long day and we could both use the rest."

Maria looked at him, studying his tired features and nodding as she pointed at the door. "I'll just go over to my room then."

He moved to the door that connected their rooms and flipped the lock, pulling the door open and gesturing to the opening. "I'll leave it open in case you need anything."

They'd had connecting rooms on more than one occasion but it was the first time he had ever unlocked the door or offered to leave it open. She looked up at him one more time before going through to her own room. She glanced over her shoulder, watching as he pushed the door closer to the frame but stopped several inches before it could close.

She walked around her room for several minutes before deciding to go take a shower. It had been a trying day and her mind was just bursting with information; some that she had known on some level but hadn't yet acknowledged, and some that she was going to have to really think about in order to digest.

After starting the shower she gathered her clothes up and walked into the bathroom, disrobing and stepping under the hot spray. She tried to keep her mind clear, wanting to get out of the shower before thinking about the day but her thoughts wouldn't cooperate. She pushed the curtain aside and reached out to push the door closed when she felt her throat tightening up.

The Granolith had responded in a way that she had almost expected and now she had to ask herself if that was why she hadn't gone back to speak with it sooner. Even though she had been determined to change the past, to alter events and bring her Michael back in her own universe, there had been the smallest hint of uncertainty in the back of her mind from the beginning. The alien device had only confirmed what she had started to suspect the longer she was in this universe.

She had been sent to this universe to potentially change the past, present, and future. In this universe the present made sense because Michael had changed since she had first found him, and changing the future made sense for the same reason. It made sense for her universe as well if he chose to travel back there with her because it would alter the present and future of her universe too. She hadn't figured out how it changed the past in either universe though.

Her Michael was really gone; he wasn't coming back no matter how many universes she traveled to or how many times she tried to alter the past. Gone, she thought. He was gone. She reached out for the only solid thing nearby and her hand rested flat against the wall of the shower. According to the hybrid pacing in the other room her Michael… his essence or his soul, was now somehow residing inside of him.

She didn't know if she believed that or not. He certainly believed it, but in spite of those moments when the similarities between the two men had been glaringly obvious it seemed impossible. Could she just accept that explanation? So simple and yet so complicated at the same time… but was it possible?

She didn't know. The only thing she did know was that the Granolith in her universe had been adamant that it would not alter the past to save Michael from dying next to the river. She knew she could choose to stay in this universe with Michael. But if she ever wanted to go back home, to see her friends and maybe one day her mother, the man she had come to know and love in this universe was the only chance she had of keeping them alive.

Could she ask him to give up his life in this universe to go back with her? Was it right to even ask him, knowing that she didn't necessarily believe that her Michael was inside of him? But if she didn't ask him she was leaving her friends… her world, without the protection he could provide. Asking him to go back to her universe made the most sense under the circumstances, but how would she go about asking that of him?

She was no closer to an answer by the time she turned the lights out and slid under the covers, hoping to find at least a few hours of sleep.