Cold sweat clung to Ben's week old dirty clothes to his skin. He shot up, clawing at his body in a panic. What the fuck did he just experience? A dream? It was way too realistic for it to be solely that. His entire self couldn't stop shaking at the thought. The feeling of being ripped apart from the inside wasn't an easy one to remember. Even though he experienced it, he wasn't even sure if that's what happened.

He turned to the rest of the room that had been completely knocked out. Last that he remembered, Time had taken over Cielo's body and approached him. Then pain had taken over.

Jennifer. The name that haunted him as far back as he remembered. She was in the dream. She killed him in the dream. But it was an accident. One too fast for him to comprehend. But it was a fact. He had experienced death too real to brush off as just a dream.

"Do you want to know how you died?" Time had asked him this right before it all went down. His chest hurt just thinking back to how she said it. It said it.

Yet there the body laid with the rest of them. On the floor without any machines needed to keep her alive. His dad briefly mentioned that she didn't have to be attached to any life support to keep going. While they were all trying their best to keep living, she was doing it with the help of cosmic forces behind her. The same ones trying to kill them all. Not if he could help it.

Moving slowly, still shaky from the nightmare, he dragged his feet towards her. His legs stepped over her. He sat with his knees bent on both sides. She didn't react as his hands wrapped around her neck. All of his body weight pushing onto that small muscle within his hold.

To his surprise, when her eyes snapped open it was displaying fear. Hands immediately going to his, only making his hold tighter. Her legs kicked aimlessly underneath his body. Weak fingers barely scratching his until she realized who he was. Her hands falling back down to her sides as his hold got stronger.

Cielo didn't try to stop him. She let out a small squeak as a natural response but she just let Ben continue. Ben had seen that look in her eyes before. She didn't care what happened to herself. If this was how he wanted to express his anger, she'll let it happen. This wasn't Time that he was strangling. It was Cielo.

He gritted his teeth then released her. Getting up with a final push to her to stay down. "You and I need to have a talk."

She grasped at her neck. Trying not to cough loudly enough to wake up the others. Stumbling up to her feet to follow him practically running out of the room. "Ho-Horror."

She wheezed out before coughing drastically. Grabbing at the wall to gain any support for her weak legs. He hesitated to help her. Deciding not to being the better choice for his own sake. She tripped over the first stair. The staircase's rising steps almost hitting her jaw if her arm didn't break her fall. Taking a second to properly catch her breath she couldn't find the strength to walk up more steps. Instead using the moment to straighten her mind of everything that was flooding through.

"Who are you? Right now?" Ben spoke from a higher stair.

She coughed a few times. "Right now? I'm Cielo. But that doesn't mean the one you met before isn't listening in right now."

"And that thing earlier, it was... what?" From how she was acting Ben could tell that she wasn't the thing from earlier. Seeing her hold her neck made him sit down. She didn't have any strength to fight him off like before. Her body was just lying there like a dead fish. To think he was intimidated by her.

"As it said. Time. When I was younger, in my sleep, I had a machine insert another version of myself's memories into me. This is a bit embarrassing as I haven't even told Five or Copycat this part but in the process, Time slipped into mind as well. It's complicated. I don't fully understand it myself. But the fact remains that I know too much. It's beyond anything that a human can maintain that it doesn't control me that often. But there are a few situations where I am drawn by something unknown."

"Like me?"

"All of you, yes. It's honestly hard to differentiate where my memories end and a separate timeline starts." She rubbed the spot where her watch would normally be.

"So were you using us?" He thought it was strange that she was so insistent on helping them. Now it was starting to make sense.

"It's actually the opposite. I was supposed to kill you all." She barely raised her hands in defence when he snapped back to look at her. "I didn't! I mean you're all still alive so that's proof. Besides, how would I have even done that when you guys actually still had your powers? I wouldn't have succeeded even if I tried."

"But you tried to kill us!"

"And you tried to kill me just a few moments ago!"

He looked down at his hands. "Why didn't I start suffocating when I strangled you?"

She puffed out and crossed her arms over her chest. "Because you haven't bloomed. Right now, your Marigold isn't that much different than the average human. You're not really a threat to Time nor Space."

"And let me guess, I have to fall in love to get my powers back?"

"Not fall in love. Experience love. How you interpret that is up to you."

"You're still as cryptic I see. So what's the difference between falling in love and experiencing it?"

"I'm not the person to be answering that." She started to comb a hand through her hair. Stopping to look at the absence of her watch. "Unrequited love does exist. Love for someone that you've never met also exists. That's what the Phantom that killed your other self went through."

It was obvious to tell that she was referring to Jennifer. Cielo really was still as creepy as he first found her.

He held his hands together, glaring at her trying to appear innocent. If that dream, or whatever, was real then what killed him was love. Technically it was her love for another version of him. "Jennifer. Who was she?"

"She was the first Marigold child. To put simply."

"And I died- or the other me died trying to save her from some sort of imprisonment that my dad kept her in?"

"As a Marigold child she does possess powers like your families did. Monocle took the necessary precautions to make sure she was kept safe in his overbearing ways. Since she had limited interactions when you entered her life and offered her a chance to escape, she couldn't process her feelings leading to her activating her powers. Accidentally killing you in the process."

"But that's not me! I never met that girl in my life and clearly I'm still alive. So why am I getting memories of her?"

"It's hard to pinpoint an exact reason. How your- I assume soul or Marigold- is able to retain information about a past life is nothing less of a speculation. But it's weird. You reacted to her name faster than any of the Umbrellas. You knew her name even though the one that died was the Umbrella version. Almost like you knew her before today. This wasn't a reset thing that the Rumour tried to make you like her Horror. Almost like you already had a memory of her. But that can't be the case, right? How long have you known the Phantom?"

He aggressively scratched his head in frustration. "For a know it all, you sure don't know shit."

"Frustrating, isn't it? Sometimes the answer is just on the tip of our tongues."

There wasn't really an event or moment that caused to become aware of the existence of Jennifer. In moments of silence, when Ben was tired, sad, lost, and more, he thought of someone. A faceless name that took up so many sketchbooks. There was something in the simple name that he found comfort in. Sometimes he wondered if he was crazy for imagining a woman's name. Now it was confirmed. To the other Ben she was real a timeline ago. And so she was real to him.

"Can we find her in this timeline?" She bit her lip. "Why aren't you answering?"

"I suppose that means that your nap only showed what the Umbrella Horror knew."

"What does that mean?"

"Horror, I need you to listen to me very closely. The situation is very complicated and I don't want you to overreact. Firstly, in your timeline did you ever meet the Phantom?"

He thought about it more. Something in him saying that if he did meet her, he would know it. That never came. She really was like a ghost in his mind. "I already told you that I didn't."

"Okay, so secondly why do you think that you survived in your Sparrow timeline but not the Umbrella?"

"Because the Sparrows are better than those wannabes and my other self was a pussy?" She raised an eyebrow. Asking him to be more serious. He rolled his eyes in return but complied. "Because of Jennifer? Because I never met her in my timeline?"

"Not entirely wrong. When Monocle met the Umbrellas in 1963, he became aware of the existence that in the future he would form an academy with children that he picked out. And he found out that one had passed. More than any of the children, he kept an eye on the one that had chosen the same name as the one that died. He needed seven Marigolds. A death would put everything to the trash. The most dangerous mission of them all was in Phantom's relocation. One that you weren't assigned to for your safety and for his use. Without ever interacting with you, Phantom was able to grow to full age without realizing her powers. She grew to be an adult."

He waited as there was no way her explanation ended there. Cielo watched him carefully. This is why she hated knowing all that she did. This kind of information wasn't something he should have to be exposed to. Jennifer hardly existed to him. This wasn't the worst that she could be telling him but there were definitely better people that could be breaking this kind of history to him.

"Phantom's mother was weak at the time of delivery. The process killed her mother before she could even hold her. But a thought was formed. If Phantom could grow strong enough, her body could be used as a substitute for her mother. To artificially bring her back. As an adult, she was murdered by her father and her mother's brain was put into her body. The reset fixed everything that needed with health complications and fully merged their bodies so that her mother could be healthy. For as long as they desired, the couple would live."

So she was not only dead, but an organ baby. Not only a single part of her but everything. Heart and all. Even before she died, she had her life restricted and controlled down to the tiniest detail. The moment she was given a glimpse at freedom, her life was sealed. His timeline while he lived carefree and as free as anyone could, she was still stuck in that white, empty box. Why did he feel guilty for something he never did? Perhaps because he never did save her when another version of him did, it made him feel beneath his other self.

The one that died was the hero. A real hero. Unlike him that was the only survivor of his academy.

"Her mother is Monocle's wife." And that would do it. Ben's confusion turned to surprise, to anger, back to confusion, and finally sadness. His chance to meet her was long gone. That feeling of being lost was never going to be fulfilled.

"Is that why she reacted to hearing about my death?" Cielo tilted her head then remembered all that happened before they had passed out.

"The body sometimes knows more than the mind. Or more so that it knows different things. Phantom's memories live in the Wife. Mentioning the death of the person that Phantom held closest was probably an instinctive reaction. Again, Marigolds are complicated. I can only guess how they work and the intertwining of your's and her's is way beyond what I can predict with Time alone."

"Yet you can't bring that out of her? Like how you and Time are separate things and it can speak. She can't?"

She slowly pushed herself to sit up. Then onto her feet. "I'm sorry but there's nothing I can do to help you. A body can only act, it does not think or speak. If I separate the two, they will both cease. With the reset, she can only be considered one person. That was the main thing Monocle made sure was perfect in his calculations."

He slammed a fist into the wall. Now that she was standing up, they were at the same level. She looked at him with pity and regret. There had been a lot that she had seen. Unlike everyone else that saw the Jennifer incident from their own perspectives, Cielo had witnessed everything from start to finish and more. She couldn't help him in the way he wanted. She never could with them.

"If I can give some advice-"

"The last thing I need is your advice."

"I really think-"

"You need to shut up!" She closed her mouth. The silence allowing him a chance to actually think without everyone trying to shove an opinion down his throat.

If this was a regular day, he would be doing anything but chatting with a regular, creepy woman like Cielo. He would spend his days training for an enemy that never came. Nights swimming in the praises of those living in the cities he his millionaire's dad money on drinks for anyone that asked nicely. Fake or not, he was everyone's favourite. He could do anything he wanted and no one could rebel. Not even his siblings as they would just roll their eyes and go about their own day.

Ben was only here because the Umbrellas took him off the streets. From which he was perfectly fine as a matter of fact! Ben was alive because Allison, a woman too hung up on the idea of family, brought their world ending Marigolds into this merging timeline cesspool. He had enough of trying to fix all of their mess!

"You woke me up and now you don't even want my advice!" He nearly fell down his step in surprise of her suddenly appearing in front of him. "You don't want my advice but I'm going to give it to you because I feel bad for that pitiful look you've had since strangling me awake."

Cielo leaned out of his space to give him some room. Then pointed to the letters that she knew he kept hidden in his jacket pocket. "I can't revive the dead. It is that exact act of disregard for the rules that have caused our dilemma in the first place. Chatterbox knew those rules well. That's why he left a message while he could. You want to know the difference between falling in love and experiencing it? Your brother will know you better than I do. Siblings in law included as you have 3 currently listening in on us right now."

At the same time that the basement door creaked open with a shy Luther, Lila and Five stepped out from the head of the staircase. "When did you notice?"

"From the start? You two have gotten rusty if I can hear you two pushing each other to listen in. Not like either of you would like me to be alone with Horror." She smiled. Ben looked at it, knowing that she had been stressed just a second ago. "Spaceboy? Do you mind taking over this conversation with him? I think you're more suited to be in this position right now."

"Luther is?"

"Me?"

"Hold on, I still haven't gotten a single clear answer from you yet. You can't just leave mid conversation to have someone else do your hard work. That former monkey isn't talking shit with me!"

She pulled at his jacket. The letters falling out but before they could touch the ground Ben caught them all. Crumbing the papers harder than he would have liked. Cielo turned back to Luther as Ben tried to distract himself from thinking too much about the Sparrows. "Spaceboy, I have a grumpier brother of yours to deal with so please handle this one for me. You wanted this chance to speak with him, correct?"

He fully stepped out. The others were slightly confused on why Luther looked so confident. Or why he even needed to be. "Leave it to me Cielo."

Luther grabbed Ben's arm and before he could protest further, was thrown over Luther's shoulders and hulled off to a different part of the house. Cielo stared off in the direction that they went off to. If things worked in their favour they would be the ones to awaken each other's powers. That was predictable enough. And when that happened, she knew what she had to do next.

"Alright then now that he's in good hands, Copycat, do me a favour? Head in there to check on the others? I may have said a few things that made Violinist's powers overwork itself. And while you're at it, try restraining Monocle?"

"What about Abigail?"

"I need her to be able to move."

"You have a plan?"

"You guys tried so hard to bring me back. I'll try to meet those expectations." Lila had to hold back the urge to slap that forced smile off her face. There was no plan. Just what Time had wanted. Something for Cielo to follow.

"Whatever you want, Miss Chairperson." Doing as requested, Lila disappeared back into the basement. Leaving just two.

Cielo turned to Five who had yet to say anything since making his presence known. Like with Ben, she braced herself for his anger. She had been keeping a lot from him. The death and upcoming death of his family was going to be because of her. But she came back to do her role. That was a fate she couldn't escape just like he couldn't his.

"Hi Five."

His eyes were so sharp. She had her fair share of standing face to face with killers. Five was no exception. He always had this exhaustion hidden in his fidgety body. From the reset, he should have gotten that taken away. Instead, because he was looking for her, he ran dry once more. Whatever consequences she had coming for her, it was her responsibility to own up to it. She owed him at least that.

She flinched, shutting her eyes tight. But instead of yelling or any other form of him exploding at her, he gently pulled at her hospital gown's sleeve. Cielo slowly opened her eyes when a cool metal touched her wrist. His fingers carefully moving to hold the straps without touching her skin. The green and gold watch with a cracked face was finally returned to its owner.

"I found you. I really found you." Not expecting the soft answer, Cielo's guard dropped.

"Why- why aren't you mad at me? I'm not- I can't save the world and I- I'm supposed to kill- I've- You should hate me!"

"I really should." He pulled her in closer, their foreheads just barely not touching. "But I still love you."

Her hands froze in place, not knowing what to do. She couldn't push him away. Not only because that could shut down his body's breathing but because she didn't want him to stop. Five found her. He was here for her. How could she look away when he held onto her sleeves so tightly? Every time she tried to leave him, he came back into her life.

Why couldn't this relationship be... normal? Why couldn't they be more normal?

"I... don't-" she couldn't. Not yet. Not ever. This was too much.

"Is that because-"

"I don't want to talk about this Five. Copycat is in there with the aliens and I need to-"

"Will you take a second to-"

"I will kill your family!" She pulled herself out of his grasp. Holding her watch close to her chest. She turned away from him, roughly rubbing her tears away. Facing the wall was easier than looking at him. "I'm not telling you where Oblivion is so you might as well give up here."

"So you do know where Oblivion is."

"Your smartass never liked to listen to other people. Oblivion is not a tool that was ever meant to be used. It is a place where the Time and Space are weakened. Did you see what's happening outside? Space is collapsing in on itself and Time is confused on what timeline it should be showing. And you want to temp that fate again with the exact Marigold that it's trying to kill? Do you hear where you sound absolutely insane?"

"I think you already know the answer to that question."

"Of course I do. Because I know everything about this universe. In one form or another." Her head rested against the wall. Years in a coma state and her head still screamed for a long nap.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"But still, it's true. I've been following you and your family for what I thought was good. I'm so stupid! I thought that by helping you, going to Commission, being co-chairperson, that I was doing some sort of good. And I am. But the price. I told you not to save me. Why did you have to find me?" The tremble in her voice only added to her shoulders refusing to stand strong.

"You don't want me to save you? Fine. But I don't have time to be playing what ifs when you're standing in front of me. Outside these doors is my apocalypse."

Five didn't talk too much about his time in his apocalypse. Cielo knew the bare minimum of his struggles. Everything was as she expected. Each day being a battle to find food, water, shelter, and even motivation. That didn't change that it was 40 years in that same scenario. Watching through ISB screens will never let her experience the same problems.

Still, Five lived. The idea of saving his family being his sole source of motivation. But there were times when it was harder than usual. When he laid on the bare ground, starving, hardly able to crawl to his tiny hut of sticks and hole filled tarps, he wondered if each day was worth it. His equations were never perfect. He didn't know the cause of the apocalypse in the first place to be saving them. The fear and desire to use his powers became dull as he barely had any energy to even jump most of the time.

Dying and living, both were the same when he was the sole survivor in the world. That's what Five thought almost nearly every day. But he was always certain of one thing. If he could his life to protect someone he cared about, he would do it in a heartbeat.

"My family was never meant to see my apocalypse. Any apocalypse. But I can't change history like you can to erase that from their minds. We just have to keep living."

"You won't be once I get my hands on you."

"You can't kill. I know you."

"You don't know me. I don't even know me." She mumbled to herself.

"I don't know a lot. I don't know what you do in your free time. I don't know your favourite book, show, movie, I barely just learned about your favourite colour. But I know that you aren't a killer. Time and Space can't make you something that you're not and never be." He sighed. "Will you look at me?"

"I don't want to."

"You're being childish."

He could see her holding back from turning around to lash out at the statement. Never thought he would miss her insulting him. Not that he didn't understand why she was reluctant to be reunited with him. Since they discovered that she was alive, he wondered what he would say to her.

So what was important? Oblivion? His feelings? The idea that Time had been using her like a puppet? The fact that he and his siblings were destined for apocalypses? The most important thing was keeping everyone alive. Cielo can do that. He trusted her with the chance that everyone will make this out alive with her help.

Good thing that there were other ways to get her to talk. She could appear kept together and an all knowing being but she was a mess. The Cielo he knew was temperamental, quick to lash back, emotional in both a positive and negative way. If she didn't want to look at him, then he'll just have to make her have to.

"If you don't look at me, I'll grab your hand and start suffocating." She took a step down as a sign of wanting to get away from him. Suddenly the back of her gown was pulled at, making her step away from the wall.

Giving Five enough space to blink in front of her. She tried to run away but he hovered his hands over her wrists making her stop in her tracks. He smiled at her scowl. "Hi Cielo."

"You are such a brat."

"And you're the bad guy that is going to use my death to save them." She tried to turn her head away from his gaze. "But I trust you with my life. How you use my Marigold or Oblivion, I don't care. Because I know you'll do something that I would never have thought of. Because that's who you are. Neither of us, my Marigold or your Time infested brain is what it has to be. You taught me that. You could have killed me multiple times but it never crossed your mind even now. I know that about you."

She looked down at how close he was risking his life. His hand shaking over hers. "Cielo, I'm not asking you to save the world. I didn't come here to only make use of your brain. I came here to see you. I needed to see you breathing and smiling one last time. Now that I have, the least I can do is let you be a bit selfish to attack me."

The last time they had spoken, she was a ghost. He didn't look at her because he was too afraid to face her. But seeing her, even as mad as she was at his antics, he was happy that his last memory of her wasn't of her ghostly body protecting him.

Five didn't know if what he was saying was actually helping himself. Cielo looked on the brink of tears but refused to shed any while looking at him. This version of her trying to appear strong was new to him. Or that's what he thought on the outside. Cielo was always trying to protect them in ways he didn't realize. This was the same.

"I wanted so badly to stay at Spaceboy's wedding. You were all so happy in those final moments. None of you looked for me until it was too late. Each one of you are reawakening your powers in this timeline. You're having real conversations with one another. None of you needed me to discover this part of yourself. Not even you. I can't do anything to help you or your family."

"Of course not. You're a perfectly normal person." That was a first to hear from Five.

Five always tried to learn more about what made Cielo so special. How she appeared before him before his jump, how she became a Commission member further advancing to be the Co-chairperson and the sole survivor. He always looked at her like she was a puzzle waiting to have the final pieces put in its spot to unlocking the mystery.

People were telling him but he didn't listen until this moment. Cielo was a normal person. She wasn't a dangerous anomaly or a devious, master planner. Being told that she was normal when it's all that she wanted to protect, was the greatest compliment that she could hear from him. He knew that. She only wanted to be treated as a person. No one special and with basic respect.

"Give me some personal space. Then we can talk."

"You won't run?" She won't leave him again?

Cielo met with his eyes. Exhaustion and desperation meeting exhaustion and desperation. "I won't. I'll answer any questions you have for me. To the best of my abilities."

He took a step back to rest against the wall. Her doing the same. "The usual?"

She held back a chuckle at how stupid this all was. "It's an absolute pleasure to work with you but let's make this the last time."