Bode blinked as the world shifted again, his body feeling light as air, then suddenly heavy, grounded, as reality solidified around him. His mind was still buzzing from the chaos of the previous life—the addiction, the overdose, Diego's worried face. But as he focused on his surroundings, he quickly realized things were different. Very different.
The smell of smoke filled his nostrils, but this was a familiar smell, the comforting scent of firewood and sweat, the hum of a station, not the acrid stench of street fires or burning wreckage. He was at Cal Fire Station 42. Bode looked down and saw he was wearing the uniform of a captain. His chest tightened. This wasn't some strange version of his life where things had gone wrong; this felt... right.
For the first time in what felt like forever, Bode smiled.
A flash of movement caught his eye, and he turned to see his younger sister, Riley, running toward him. His heart lurched. Riley—alive. In this reality, she wasn't just a memory or a lingering regret—she was real, and she was here.
"Bode! Get your head in the game, Cap," Riley teased, tossing a helmet at him. "We've got training exercises to run today. I'm not letting you go easy on us just because you're the big boss now."
He caught the helmet with a grin, but his heart was pounding in his chest. Riley's voice, her presence—it was overwhelming. He couldn't stop staring at her, taking in her long blonde hair, the sparkle in her eyes. She was alive, full of life, and in this world, she was a firefighter, just like him.
"Riley, I... I missed you," he said softly, his voice thick with emotion.
She gave him a strange look. "Dude, I just saw you at breakfast. What's gotten into you?"
Bode chuckled awkwardly, shaking off the intensity of his feelings. This version of reality seemed almost perfect. He hadn't fallen into addiction, he was healthy, his sister was alive, and he was a respected captain at Cal Fire.
As the day went on, Bode slipped into the rhythm of station life, running drills, cracking jokes with the crew, and relishing the sense of purpose and stability. It felt like the life he had always dreamed of, the life he could've had if not for that baseball injury in college, the injury that had led him down the path of addiction to painkillers and eventually street drugs. But in this reality, that injury had been treated differently. No Oxycontin. No pills. No addiction. His relationship with his parents was strong, and for the first time in a long while, Bode felt like he was home.
But as the days passed, cracks began to appear in the seemingly perfect world.
It started small—over dinner with Riley, she casually mentioned something about their dad, Vince, that made Bode's stomach twist.
"Dad... is gone?" Bode asked, his voice tentative.
Riley's face fell, and she looked down at her plate. "Yeah," she said quietly. "It's been two years now, Bode. I thought you'd come to terms with it by now."
He swallowed hard. "How did he...?"
"Heart attack," Riley said softly, her voice thick with sadness. "It was at that big campaign fire down in Shasta County, the Lazarus fire. He was leading a strike team, but his heart gave out. By the time the medics got to him, it was too late."
Bode felt a pang in his chest. He remembered that fire. In his real life, he had been there. He had been the one to notice something was wrong with Vince, to pull him out in time and rush him to the medics. But in this life—this perfect life—Bode wasn't there. And his father had died because of it.
He was still reeling from the shock of his dad's death when he overheard a conversation between two of the rookies about Jake.
"I can't believe we lost Jake in the Buckeye fire," one of them said. "He had such a bright future ahead of him."
Bode froze, his blood running cold. Jake—his best friend, and the man who had stepped into Bode's life and his family when he'd disappeared in his original timeline. In his mind, Bode saw the Buckeye fire, the moment Jake had been trapped. He had saved him, as an inmate at Three Rock. But in this life, he had never been at Three Rock. Bode wasn't there to save him.
Bode's hands trembled as the reality of this world started to unravel. His father—gone. Jake—dead. And as for Gabriella...
She wasn't here. She had never stayed in Edgewater. In this life, she had gone back to diving, competing in the Paris Olympics, where she placed 12th. Bode saw glimpses of news articles and watched a replay of one of her dives online, feeling an emptiness as he saw her face. She was still Gabriella, still beautiful, but distant. He hadn't been a part of her life at all. He knew Manny, but just barely. He was still the Captain at Three Rock, but their paths crossed only at work.
Bode stared at Riley, the weight of this reality sinking in. He had thought avoiding addiction would fix everything. He had thought this version of his life, without the drugs, without the prison sentence, would be better. And in some ways, it was. But it had come at a steep cost—the lives of the people he cared about most.
As he sat alone in his office at the firehouse, Bode's mind drifted back to Ruby, the psychic, and the question she had asked him.
If you could change one decision, just one—what would it be?
His chest tightened as the pieces of this life fell into place. He had wished to avoid the addiction, to avoid the spiral that had torn him from his family. But in doing so, he had lost them in a different way.
"I wish..." Bode whispered, his voice shaky. "I wish I could've saved them."
But even as the words left his lips, he knew it wasn't that simple. Life wasn't about fixing one mistake or changing one decision. Each choice rippled outward, affecting everything in ways he couldn't predict.
As the familiar sensation of the world shifting began to envelop him, Bode closed his eyes, bracing himself for whatever came next.
