A/N: Omg it's been so long. I can't believe it. I don't know if any of my readers are still out there but if you are I hope you're doing well and so sorry about not updating.

Before I go on, let me just say that I was re-reading everything and there are so many mistakes! Not just grammar but plot holes and everything. I think later sometime I will clean up the story and re-upload everything but for now let me just say PROOFREAD. Lol.

So, time has gone by and now there is nowhere to re-watch the show anymore. At least I can't find anything. So, somethings I just can't remember. Like what is Project Utopia? I really one of you all to remind me for future plots and chapters.

I've missed everyone. Enjoy.

Present

Jane could hear the fire crackling in the hearth before she even entered the library. She loved that sound, usually, but tonight her nerves were too frought with tension to pay it much heed. Taking a deep breath, she crept into the room. HG sat in a chair by the fire pouring over books and papers and notes and whatever else he could get his hands on about … she wasn't sure and she didn't care right now.

"HG?"

He looked up and smiled at her, though it wasn't the kind of smile she had grown used to. The tightness in her chest warned her to stop but she couldn't. She walked over and sat next to him, curving a piece of hair behind her ear.

"Miss Walker, what can I do for you this evening?"

She could only stare at him, searching his face for any sort of hidden desire or feelings for her that maybe he'd buried in this timeline. "I wanted to talk to you. I haven't been able to since I've been back." In fact, her stab wound that past-John had reopened hurt more than ever. She'd have to get someone to look at it later.

HG put his papers and things aside and gave her his full attention. His eyes looked over her in concern. "Are you feeling well, Miss Walker? You are a little flushed."

She swallowed and stared at him, tears beginning to prick her eyes. "No. No, HG, I'm not feeling well. I feel terrible," she whispered, her voice failing her. "I was kidnapped and tortured. For days. By a sociopath. Then I was sent back in time where I was kidnapped and tortured by a sociopath. Through it all, the one thought I had to keep me going was that you would find me and rescue me. Because you loved me." Her voice cracked on the last word.

HG's face grew more and more concerned and uncomfortable. She could tell he felt so sorry for her, but that's not what she wanted from him. He opened his mouth to speak but she interrupted.

"And then you do come for me and save me and bring me back home … only to tell me that you don't love me. That you only feel friendship for me. That I can never mean as much to you as you do to me because I'm in a new timeline where nothing I remember ever happened. So no, HG, I'm not feeling well." She gave a short, bitter laugh and wiped the tears from her face. It didn't help.

"Miss Walker, please-"

"My name is Jane," she snapped. "God, you've called me Jane a hundred times."

"Alright, Jane, please, you must try to stop upsetting yourself. I am so sorry that all that happened to you, I truly am. This is all my fault and I'm trying to fix it, I promise." His hand clutched her shoulder. "I am leaving soon and I hope you can put all this behind you. I will do whatever I can to aid you in your recovery."

Suddenly, Jane had an idea. She would make him remember her. Before he could really know what was happening, she caught his face between her hands and kissed him. This time she put all her love and hurt and yearning into it, thoroughly kissing him until she couldn't breathe anymore.

He responded too. Her heart leapt in excitement as he started kissing her back.

"I knew it," she whispered against his lips, "I knew you'd remember me. That you'd still love me."

That seemed to jar him back to reality. HG sprang up and pushed her away. "Miss Walker, please accept my apologies. You are not yourself and I took advantage of you. I must retire to my room," he said stiffly, "and I suggest you do the same."

"HG, please."

But he was gone.

XXXXX

John Stevenson leaned against the wall and swallowed his urge to jam a knife in his best friend's back as HG quickly walked out of the library and darted upstairs. The only thing that stopped him was the sound of Jane sniffling inside the room.

He swallowed and leaned his head back, closing his eyes. What was he to do? He hated that she was so miserable. That she was a stranger here. How could he fix it? Was he strong enough to let her go?

No.

No, he wasn't. He refused to let the only good thing in his life go simply because she didn't remember that she loved him.

Pushing away from the wall, he slunk inside the room, not allowing her to hear him coming. He was a professional slinker, if he did say so himself. Jane was sitting on the floor against the chaise, staring at the fire. He could not see most of her face.

When she became aware of him and briefly turned her head, he could see her red, swollen eyes and puffy face. She was so beautiful, even when distraught. She looked away quickly, back at the fire, and didn't say anything.

John moved around the sofa and sat down in the middle, directly in front of the fire. What could he say to make her feel better? Empathize, he pictured her saying. If you were me, what would you want?

A good stiff drink and a bloody corpse.

That wouldn't do and he was really was attempting to change for Jane's sake. He hadn't killed anyone in … so long.

"Do you want to play a game, Jane? I was thinking of that one you told me about. With that other me? In the other timeline?" Damn, why did he bring that up? "I Googled it and the rules are really quite simple." She did not turn her head to acknowledge his presence so he kept talking. "Shall I go first? Alright, truth or dare?"

Still no answer.

"Okay, I'll choose. Truth."

Still nothing.

"Let me see… what shall I tell you about myself that you do not already know? Well, my Jane, the other Jane before you, I mean, asked me a question once and I never answered her. In fact, I was pretty nasty about it, actually. I raised my voice to her, said horrible things," he murmured, remembering the white-hot anger that had coursed through him at her soft insistence at knowing.

A small snort from Jane told him he was getting through to her in at least some small way. He kept going.

"I didn't want to tell her what she wanted to know because … I have no idea the answer to her question. You see, Jane-my Jane-wanted to know about my parents. What they were like. Specifically … my father." He swallowed hard, hating the feelings of self-loathing and pain associated with the topic. "And I do not know what he was like, because I do not know him. I never knew him, actually. Not his name, not what he looked like, although from the way my mother would look at me sometimes I am very sure that I closely resemble him."

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw her head move toward him a fraction. She was listening. Good.

"You see, my mother was a prostitute. I can only assume my father was one of her clients and profilactics not being as common as they are nowadays … well, you can surmise how I was conceived."

Jane slid some of her dark hair behind one ear and he could see her profile better now. She still wouldn't look at him but it was a start.

"My very first memories are of cold. And hunger. We were always starving, always scraping by for every breath we took. My mother… Elizabeth … the name sounds so foreign to me now. I haven't spoken of her aloud in almost twenty years. She never loved me, as you have probably already guessed. She couldn't love me. There was only room for the constant hunger and cold. She sold me to a blacksmith when I was ten. I never knew pain until he came along. I thought the hunger was the worst it could get. I learned quickly that circumstances can always get worse."

"How did you escape?" Her voice was barely above a whisper and hoarse.

John didn't look at her. "I killed him when I was fourteen and ran and never looked back. A woman took me in. She became my lover and then my patroness. She taught me many things and shielded me from any lingering questions coppers might have about the blacksmith's untimely death."

"At fourteen? That's horrible."

"I was fifteen by then, actually. It wasn't so bad. She fed me, clothed me, taught me social etiquette, how to speak, eat, dress, and blend in with her wealthy friends. I changed everything about myself and when it was time she paid my way through medical school abroad."

Jane moved closer to him, leaning forward on her left hand. "What happened to your mother?"

He stared at the fire without speaking, the flames reflecting in his eyes.

He stood in the doorway, staring down at the woman who gave birth to him twenty-five years ago. Her blonde hair was limp with dirt and grease and age. Her face was grey and flecks of red spackled her mouth where her last good cough had done her in. Her blue eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling. He was too late. The knife he'd been holding clattered to the floor. Consumption had come for her before he had the chance.

No! It wasn't fair!

John looked over at Jane, no trace of mirth on his face now. He couldn't tell her anymore. The darkness howled away deep inside, begging to be released. He quickly drank the rest of HG's whiskey that had been poured earlier and left untouched. "I'm sorry, Jane, but rules are rules. Only one question at a time."

A brief smile curved her lips and she glanced away as if thinking about something. He noticed suddenly that her forehead was dotted with beads of sweat. It surely was not that warm inside the library, was it?

"Are you feeling well, Jane? Let me look at your wound."

Surprisingly, she acquiesced and leaned back to pull up her shirt. John knelt down beside her and paled.

"That's infected." He looked up and touched her face. She let him. That fact alone should have told him something was wrong.

"I don't feel good," she mumbled, her arms weakening. She laid down on her side and closed her eyes. A wave of nausea rolled over her. "John?"

He stood up and walked over to a wall-mounted electrical pad of sorts. He'd noticed Vanessa Anders using it to call security and other servants. He mashed a large red button and didn't even flinch when an alarm sounded throughout the mansion.

He went back to Jane and scooped her up, not knowing what else to do. Vanessa appeared in the doorway as he did so.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

"I need something to bring her fever down and surgical equipment. Her wound is infected and she's unconscious."

"John, she needs a doctor."

"I am a doctor," he snapped.

"She needs a modern doctor. I don't have surgical equipment but my men can get her to the hospital in ten minutes."

He grew frustrated, only trusting himself to cut into her, no one else. But as he looked down at her face, he realized that here in this time there was better training, better equipment, better medicine to treat her. And in his panic, he realized that he wanted her to live no matter what it cost his pride.

"Let us move quickly."

Oh boy, well, not too bad, is it?

Ok, so I found info on Utopia and its a serum that's supposed to aid human evolution by purging weakness. I guess.

Also, I kinda think in the next chapter thistimeline John needs a bit more something-something. Maybe a bit darker. He's a bit too lovey-dovey right now and I'm missing the edge.