- XXV -

* * * * *
         "Hey . . . did you hear?"
         "Mm, what . . . hear what? I've just been sitting here trying to have some coffee, I don't have any time for anyone. Certainly not sitting around listening to you people gossiping. What, are Alan and Ben having a spat again? Please, that kind of stuff I can do without at two in the morning."
         "No, God, would I bother you with stuff like that . . ."
         "Frankly, yes, I think you would, now just leave me in my lonely little bubble with my coffee. Where nobody can bother me."
         "Come on, seriously, everyone's been talking about the kid they just brought in, it's the weirdest thing, I can't believe you haven't heard anything about it."
         "Listen, when I'm having my coffee, I don't care about anyone else, I don't care if someone is trying to burn down the goddamn hospital or if the Martians are invading. I had to go out before and deal with a woman in early labor, two near homicides, and a car accident that they're still trying to put out. I come here to forget about all the crap going on out there."
         "So, you're telling me you don't want to hear-"
         "You know, if it gets you out of here faster, tell me. You've obviously bursting with the desire. So. Please. Expunge the story from your soul, if you will."
         "Believe me, this is damn strange. They got this call, apparently of some weird stuff happening at the dorm apartments down the road, okay, I mean like, weird, people are screaming about hearing explosions and seeing strange lights, front page tabloid stuff, really . . . and our boys are thinking, oh it's just some prank, some people are just screwing around for kicks, nobody's expecting anything . . ."
         "So what did they find?"
         "I thought you weren't interested."
         "Interest and casual curiosity are two different things, my friend. Now, you've made me put my morning coffee down, you'd better finish."
         "All right, geez, don't get all cranky, I mean, okay, they're expecting to find absolutely nada, right? Except that right in the middle of the parking lot they find this guy totally shot to hell . . ."
         "Passed out? That's not so uncommon, we're talking dorms here, there's not a single person there without alcohol in their veins. Most of them deserve to go face down in their own vomit."
         "I didn't say passed out, did I? I said, shot to hell, like someone took a truck and hit him with it. Multiple fractures, lacerations, bruises, I mean, I saw the write up, it was terrible stuff."
         "Jesus . . . what the hell blew up with this guy in it?"
         "All right now, that's . . . that's the funny part, there was nothing out of the ordinary at all anywhere around. Just some scattered glass and small debris. But that's it. We're talking no explanation whatsoever."
         "But you said people heard stuff . . ."
         "Yeah, the police interviewed a bunch of people nearby and some of them said they thought they heard like a muffled sort of explosion . . . but a lot of people heard nothing at all-"
         "Probably couldn't hear it over that crap they blast so goddamn loud, ever drive past and here it at night? So it doesn't surprise me. Not at all. What about the funny lights?"
         "Nothing. I'm telling you, there's really no explanation whatsoever, forensics went over the area until it was cleaner than those rooms at NASA, they can't find any explanation that sticks."
         "Ah . . . did anyone ever think about the simple ones? Like, maybe he was hit somewhere else and someone dumped him there."
         "Why the hell would someone do that?"
         "I didn't say it was rational, did I? Just logical."
         "You've got a sick mind, you know that?"
         "Perhaps I do. But I'm often right as well."
         "I don't know about this one . . ."
         "No? Okay, well then look at it this way, he was unconscious when he was brought in, right?"
         "God, I hope so, I don't think I'd want to be feeling half of what I'm sure he was feeling . . . if he was then they've got him doped into la-la land now."
         "Now, chances are he's not going to stay unconscious."
         "We hope."
         "We do. But if and when he wakes up, then and only then will you have your answers."
         "Yeah, I guess . . ."
         "Now, do me a favor and let me get back to my coffee, okay? It's probably cold already."
         "Hey, aren't you at least a little bit curious?"
         "Curiosity can wait until after this. And besides, whatever did that to him sure as hell isn't something I want to go anywhere near."
         "Ah, well, I'll let you know if I hear anything else, okay?"
         "You do that. But as of right now, you and the rest of the world have ceased to exist for me. Which is just the way I like it."
         "Buddy, you're a strange, strange man."
         "All I hear is a faint buzz."

* * * * *
         Brown's standing in the doorway, his hands each braced on one side, almost like he's trying to prevent himself from falling through. In that position he died one time, trapped on a starship they tried to vent him from the airlock and he grabbed on just like that as they exposed him to space. For Brown, the pain was only momentary, fingernails scraped across his vision, red lines clawing out his eyes, a feeling that his face was turning to crystal and the terrifyingly suffocating sensation of trying to draw a breath in and your eager lungs finding only vacuum.
         Then blackness. Like drawing the sheet over the corpse.
         All the other stuff they used to talk about in the old movies, the eyeballs exploding, blood vessels rupturing like so much overcooked popcorn, the frozen expressions of boundless and eternal agony, watching your blood form glistening red orbs around you, none of that he ever experienced. It might have just as well been fairy tales for him. There just wasn't any time. Brown can't even remember what his last thoughts were, no doubt they were justifiably profane, death is like suddenly and painfully being put to sleep, only normal people don't get the chance to wake up and reflect upon the circumstances. Most people don't get a chance to wake up tense, ready to suck in vacuum daggers with their next attempt to breathe, but Brown did. He got a second chance and a third chance and if his luck holds out he'll keep getting chances for as long as he can stomach it.
         Second chances.
         Yet here he is, in that same position, defying something other than death this time, and opening his mouth only to find he's once again breathing in a vacuum.
         Jina's not looking at him. Head bowed, visibly trembling, she looks absolutely lost, a girl who's been fighting longer than she or anyone else expected her to and rounding the corner only to find that the road still rips into the horizon. Brown glances at her, wondering if she can feel his eyes settling on her, wondering if she even cares. Even without speaking, she's telling him everything, there's a slackness to her limbs testifying to a weariness that's more than physical, a pale cast to her face, each small movement and twitch of her body seeming to suggest a great amount of effort going into avoiding wasting what little energy remains.
         He takes a step deeper into the room, feeling that he's entering a lair. She's the maiden and the dragon is just lurking in the thickened shadows waiting to strike, waiting to reduce him to nothing more than charred bones. But Brown's no white knight, drenched all in gleaming armor, righting wrongs with a self important distrust of consequences. Not the one with the sword and the squires. That man is elsewhere right now but Brown finds himself wishing very much that he was here. Because it's far more complicated than it looks, Jina's the dragon and the victim, binding herself while keeping everyone else away. Her first volley nearly got Brown, it's taken him this much effort to stalk this far through soot encrusted air, his heart pounding, bracing himself for the seemingly inevitable second blast.
         But no. Instead there's a glittering rain of fractured glass constantly falling around her, the jagged edges catching the light like teeth grinning in the dark. In his mind they follow him as he moves, never taking their transparent eyes off of him. There's no angles to cover, no backway in. The only way is forward, even if it cuts him to ribbons and leaves his blood streaking the floor. And he has to try. If he has even an ounce of compassion simmering inside of his heart, he'll cover his head with his arms, grit his teeth and take that first step forward, inwardly waiting for the first flicker of darting pain to crease his cheek. The first of many. Until he's a pretend tiger smeared with stripes of his own liquid.
         And still he has to press on. Because if he doesn't, then everything he's ever believed about himself was nothing more than hollow lies, falling apart like the scarecrows they are when held up against even the weakest of breezes.
         "Jina," he implores as gently as he can, the voice he uses to usher dying boys into their first death, trying to console them, hoping that their fading hearing catches his words, saying that it's going to be okay, that they'll be back, "you should talk to someone-"
         "I heard you the first time," she snaps back but there's no power in her words, the anger and the ammunition are present but the resolve and the will are fading. There's only so much trauma a person can take before they don't want to take it anymore, before they just put their heavy arms down and cry enough, and let it all come down on them. Jina's nearly reached that point and Brown doesn't know if he's the man who can bring her back.
         She doesn't even glance at him as her words ricochet around the room. Brown shivers as he feels something whisper past his neck. The wall around her becomes denser, a multifaceted cage where light and sound won't penetrate. In that dark bastion, you might consider yourself safe from the world. But the world goes on.
         "Then you should say something," and there's a pleading in his voice he can't deny. He didn't come so far to see these people, only to see them fall away one by one from him again. Five years ago he walked away because he thought life here held nothing for him. Five years ago a young man named Joseph Brown vanished completely, leaving his friends confused and ever so slightly diminished. And that young man went and saw sights that his friends could barely even imagine, saw things that changed him, even as he tried to convince himself that was the same person who left. He's not. He feels life more acutely now, his nerves are fiery things, delight is doubled but so is pain. And the pain of the girl sitting in the room near him is a crippling burning behind his eyes, sending red waves through his vision. A reminder. An accusation. Telling him that for all the people he's helped, all the places he's saved and all the lives gained because he was there to stop the chaos, there's not a damn thing he's done for the people who should have came first. His friends back home. When do they count?
         Brown might as well be standing in a canyon, shouting his words to the uncaring sheer stone walls, feeling his echo bending and rebounding, the air throwing his own words back at him. A mockery. She's not even moving, she's hoping that if she doesn't say anything, if she just keeps quiet, he'll get the message or his feelings will be hurt and he'll go away again and never come back. Simple reasoning, almost childish but everyone has been hurt so much that they're reacting like children, pulling your fingers away from the burning stove, finding out the basic facts for the first time all over again.
         "Holding it inside," he stabs out again, trying to pierce the barriers with lancelike phrases, "won't do a damn bit of good. And you know that. You know that," grinding his words like he's trying ram them into her skull through brute force, "because you've seen Tristian. You saw what it did to him, when he held it all inside."
         Underneath the curtains of hair shielding her face, Brown thinks he sees a cheek twitch. Flinching. A mosquito prick perhaps but still even those draw blood. He managed to penetrate, even if he's not proud of his tactics. The old war gambits coming back to him, desperate plans scrawled in dirt while cowering in the trenches. Skills honed in firefights. This isn't war but it's something he has to win. By any means necessary.
         "You remember Tristian," he continues, his voice abruptly casual. Brown slips his hands into his pockets, a professor giving a lecture. Brown imagines himself two hundred years hence, giving a talk about old friends long relegated to dust and history, trying to convey their sheer presence, half forgotten words and actions trying to bring back the day. To him now, it's all too real and possible. His boots make soft scuffling noises as he paces slowly. "How he became withdrawn . . . how he tried to pull himself away from everyone he knew, you remember that. And you also remember how you guys wouldn't let him go, you kept on his case, you kept him involved, pulled him up when he wanted to go under . . ." he shakes his head a little and smiles, stopping inches from the wall and starting to pivot on heel to go into the other direction, "hell you might have saved his life for all we know." Starting to cross back over, he glances at Jina but she's very still, not even seeming to breathe, a rabbit hiding in the tall grass, blending in with the decor, any second now Brown expects her to erupt. Erupt or do nothing. It could go either way. "You guys did a damn good thing for him, even when he didn't seem to want help, you offered it, insisted on it anyway. That's courage, Jina, courage and perseverance." His voice has a hollow quality in the silent room, like he's speaking through layers of Time, a thousand pillows pressed over his face. Suddenly he can see himself standing at a funeral, watching as they bury one of Jina's grandchildren. He's been to so many he almost knows what the goddamn soil smells like. Nearly losing a step in his pacing, he tries to keep a sudden tremor out of his voice, "And now, now you want me to leave, to get out of here and never come back when all I want to do is help." He reaches the point directly in front of her and smartly ceases his movements, bringing his heels neatly together, a half salute that Jina can't see. "You can't deny me this, Jina, I'm sorry, I won't let you. You deserve the same chance Tristian had, don't shut me out. Don't shut the world out."
         Something akin to a sigh slithers from her, the kind of noise people make when they don't plan on inhaling air ever again. His body poised nearly rigid, Brown stares at her, seeing again how small she is, how disheveled and rumpled and battered. Like a refugee. Jina looks just like a refugee, trying to get over the loss of everything she's ever known.
         He waits a second, praying for some kind of response, level anger, helpless sobbing, violent screaming, something, anything to let him know that she's still there, that she's still connected to the world on some conscious level. The bindings are tenuous now, unraveling even as he stands there. The night can't end like this, the winding path they've been traveling shouldn't fork here, taking them on forever separate paths, his meandering and endlessly streaking skyward, hers unknown but its demise no less ordained. Inside, Brown denies whatever forces that are working here their victory, they might have taken these people to their pinnacles before trying to smother them into the darkness, but Brown won't let himself be taken down. He'll shake his fist and rail at the wind before that happens and if he does go down, it'll be with the memories of this night clutched to his chest, embers simmering with a fire all their own, a beacon to relight the way for those who went before.
         Jina sits silently, dormant. Her hands are clasped lightly together, one nail absently scratching at one of the lines crossing her palm. Brown watches the motion intently, hoping that it's some kind of message. But like so many actions in this world, it has no meaning other than what it openly stands for. We look for layers of symbolism and metaphors of creation when it's all surface gloss. The only deeper meaning that exists is the one we manufacture for ourselves. Everything else is just street theatre.
         "I see," Brown remarks after a moment, looking down at his feet briefly. To his own ears, his voice is a defeated thing. But did he really think it would be this easy? The fire that he had seen burning in her eyes in the parking lot had been flaring for all the wrong reasons and the quick glimpse he got just before makes him wonder if it's all just ashes in her brain.
         "Jina, I . . . I really don't know what to tell you," he finally states softly, turning around to face the doorway. "You're upset, it's . . . you've had a lot of shocks tonight, more than most people have to withstand in their entire lives. You want to know when the nightmare is going to end, when everything is going to be the way it was." He takes both hands out of his pockets and runs them through his hair, lacing his fingers behind his head, bending his neck a little and massaging it. "So many extremes in one night, one end to the other," he says, his voice reflective. He gives one small laugh, not even that audible, more a shifting facial expression than anything else. "Life is weird like that, I've been through wars and I'm not still used to how fast things can change. It leaves you cold, Jina, you've barely regained your feet from the last blow before the rest start coming."
         Stepping closer to the door, he leans his shoulder against the doorway, poking his head out a little. Left and right, the corridor is empty, only the soft night hospital sounds filtering down the hallway, curling like invisible winds. "So many things," he murmurs, wondering if his voice is even carrying. But there's nobody around to hear. Nobody before him and it might as well be an empty room behind him. "Lena and Tristian and Tristian's friends and Carl and . . ." the corner of his lip twitches sardonically, "and then there's me. Soldier boy." Bowing his head a little, he says to the ground and whoever else might be listening, "I can't do a damn thing about most of those, Jina, I wish to hell I could but I've done all I can, both of us have. Whether we like it or not, it's out of our hands now." A rippling silence remains a stark coda to his words. It frustrates him for some reason, makes him want to grit his teeth and strain against the world that's doing this to them. Did Atlas ever get tired, did the earthquakes and the storms happen because his muscles got too fatigued from the constant stress? When he first learned about the myth, Brown's first question was what the hell was the man standing on. In the end, he decided it was nothing. In the end that's all the world gives you to hold yourself up, nothing. It's up to you, to the people around you to hold each other upright, to be a form of support because that's all we have, in the end. Each other.
         "God dammit, Jina," Brown breathes, his voice a clenched fist held trembling into the void, "I know you're mad at me, I saw your face when I told you . . ." his voice falters, fights to regain strength, "told you the truth. Believe me, that wasn't the way it was supposed to come out. And I know . . . I know it means I lied to you, to a lot of people but . . . I saw what Tristian's life did to all of you and I wanted to spare you guys that, I wanted to keep those two parts of my life separate." He swallows roughly, leans his head briefly against the doorframe. "I thought I could do it. But apparently my life isn't as clear cut as I had hoped. Sometimes life goes and make those kind of choices for you."
         A throbbing pain is forming behind his eyes, too much action and too little sleep forming a cyst within his head, an obscene child growing ready to break free. No goddesses to emerge from his shattered skull, alas. Rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers, Brown talks, now more to here his own thoughts than anything else. "I'm not sorry that I kept it from you, from everyone. That was my choice and I'd do it again, because I think it was the right thing. But . . . now that it's out . . ." and he finds himself wincing as he swallows, his throat suddenly dry and tight, "out in the open, I can't throw it back in the box. I have to deal with it. We have to deal with it. And, Jina," Brown implores, not even sure if she's in the room anymore, "this isn't the way to do it, not silence and this distance . . . oh God," he gives a shaky laugh, bracing his back against the doorframe, rubbing his face and then letting the hand drop limply to his side, tipping his head back until it touches the door, "what are you thinking, Jina, that's all I want to know. Do you hate me, fear me, think I'm pathetic, nuts, the biggest pathological liar on the planet . . ." acting on sudden impulse he whirls, his boots nearly squeaking on the tiled floor, "what is it?"
         There.
         Jina's in the same position as before, not meeting his gaze, an unwilling puppet who at least found that the recently cut strings gave her mobility and a perverse kind of freedom. But Brown can swear that he saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye just as he was turning around. A wave of hair, nothing more, maybe she was only stretching her neck, but Brown wants to hope for more. Wearing gloves you find sensation is deadened but there's always reassuring pressure and that's what Brown is shooting for right now, just the contact, the touch. Physical or not, it has to be there, or they've both lost.
         "I . . . I made you an offer," Brown begins, his voice more hesitant than he's used to, nervously folding and unfolding his hands as he speaks, "back in the parking lot, I don't . . . you might not remember it, things being fairly tense and all," he's not sure if he's trying to make a feeble joke, "but back then I said, I told you that if there's anything you want to say to me, if you want to hit me, scream in my face, anything, please, go ahead and do it. Because this, the way things are right now," and his hand slices the air sideways, a gesture that has meaning only to him, "the two of us, we deserve better. Jina, a long time ago, we . . . we were close friends and tonight, I think we regained that closeness again and it . . ." Brown wipes at his face and is surprised to find his eyes stinging a little, the world getting blurry a little. Like he's talking to save a life and he's never been more unsure of the outcome. "It was a wonderful thing, you know, but I think, I think I'm owed some honesty here, even if you hate my goddamn guts and never want to see my face again, I deserve to know that much at least. Because definitely up until a few hours ago, we were friends, Jina and in the memory of that, if that meant anything to you, then I should know."
         Speech finished, he paces around in a small circle, letting his arms swing freely, loosely. He's not sure what else to say, there aren't words left in him to fire out, he's laid himself bare, made his case, done all he could. And it still doesn't feel enough, but what else can he do? Take her home, bend her mind with the sights he's seen, that wouldn't work, Brown is straddling two worlds that aren't compatible with each other. Every time they cross, chaos and anarchy erupt. Opposites, they cancel each other out, the simplistic logic of the one clashing with the grey tones and free wheeling dynamics of the other. Brown's been trying to do a balancing act, trying twice as hard after watching Tristian nearly fall but it's not that easy, the wire keeps trying to throw you off and even hanging on by your fingernails only runs the risks of shaving your hands to ribbons. Brown'll gladly take that risk but in the end the ultimate fate of the act may be decided by factors he can't control.
         "Joe . . ."
         The voice, ragged and hoarse, coming from a tongue not used to speaking, almost relearning the lost art, still causes him to nearly throw his back out whirling to face the source.
         Jina, her eyes red and rimmed, is staring at him, her hair framing her face like a matted frame, her hands resting heavily on her knees, the knuckles pale with the pressure.
         Her eyes have sparkles of flint in them and she wets her lips before speaking again, her voice held steady only through the taut tatters of will that remain, "How can you expect me to be honest . . . with you, if you were never . . . honest with me . . ." her eyes narrow dangerously and Brown feels something cold penetrate his chest, "if everything you've told me is just a . . . lie?"
         And that was it. Brown takes a second to close his eyes, exhaling slightly, her words running in circles in his head, digging ruts as they gallop. This isn't what he wanted, but it's what he expected at least. He's more sure now. He has something to latch onto.
         "Did our friendship mean that little," Jina continues, her voice threatening to fall apart at any second, steam pouring from the cracks in the metal, "that you couldn't tell me, trust me?"
         "There's nothing to tell," Brown sighs, feeling wearier than he'd thought, this discussion is taking more out of him than he's comfortable with. This night still has hours to go and he won't be able to sleep until all the players are accounted for. Mother Hen syndrome perhaps, but it's the way he is. "What I am, what I do," he stresses, staring right into her disbelieving eyes, "is just a job, the same as yours. Nothing more. I'm not Tristian, the craziness is his life, for me, it's a part of life that I devote a portion of every day to, but that's it." He leans against the wall, hands behind his back, palms against the wall, still looking at Jina. "And just like any job, some days it drives me crazy, but there are a lot of days when I love what I'm doing. And I do love it, Jina, you'll probably never understand what's out there but . . ." and the entire room seems to blur and fade, a sky full of stars painting itself onto the ceiling, grafting the world to his pupils, "I can't even imagine myself doing anything else."
         "Stop talking like that," Jina suddenly snaps, her voice more afraid than anything else, like he's drifting away from her in space, mouth silently moving, his last words nothing more than vacuum drenched nonsense. But it's not Brown who's drifting, it's her, she gave herself that first shove and now inertia is taking over. And if she doesn't do anything to correct her flight, not a damn thing in the world can ever bring her back. "Just . . . just stop."
         "What kind of honesty do you want, Jina?" Brown asks piercingly, but as gently as he can. The things she's saying, it's not her fault, events are dictating her speech, forcing her along a road she'd rather not go down but can't ignore all the same. "I can't sugarcoat honesty, it just doesn't work that way. I've tried that and look where we are now, worse off than before. You can't have it both ways, I can't tell you the things you want to hear and call myself honest, but if honesty is going to make me lose your friendship, then . . ." he sighs again, glances down, "it scares me. Because, because this step might be necessary but . . . it'll change everything. It'll change the both of us and if we can't . . . can't make that connection anymore because of . . . because . . ." Brown finds his throat growing oddly tight and realizes that he can't force the words out, no matter how hard he tries. His breathing becoming suddenly sharper, he manages to choke out, "I don't have many regrets in my life, Jina. I don't want to start having them now."
         "Joe, I . . ." and now Jina sounds choked as well. How appropriate would that be, Brown thinks distantly, the two of them sobbing here in the waiting room for reasons totally unrelated to the real reason they're here. Just one more twist in a night already rife with surprises. "I don't even know you anymore, that's what it feels like . . ."
         "There's no change in me," Brown notes with a wan smile, lightly crossing his arms over his chest. "Not where it counts, not where you're concerned. What I do doesn't dictate who I am, it can't, I became the man I am a long time ago, before I started to do what I do now." He finds himself thinking about his best friend suddenly and without knowing why, adds, "Tristian . . . he was born to his role, he's always been this way, he just never realized it and now . . . now he's trying to assimilate it. He didn't choose his life, but I chose mine." He can't resist adding a grin even as the devil resurges in him. "Making me the well adjusted man you see standing before you today, of course."
         That elicits a small smile from Jina, who ducks her head quickly to hide it. "God, you sound like you . . ." she murmurs, pushing her hair back behind her shoulders with one hand, "but . . ." and now she's looking at him again, more questions in her eyes, fear lurking just behind, prodding the questions forward with pitchforks and brimstone, "it knew you." And there's no question about who the it is that she's talking about. Brown can still see its face, his best friend's visage molded with alien clay, speaking dubbed words to a torn soundtrack.
         "And I knew it," Brown replies simply. "If I hadn't said anything to it, it would have started talking to me anyway . . . there were things more important than worrying about hiding my life from people. Lives could have been at stake, for me that's never a choice, Jina. I'm sorry you had to see it, but I would do it again, knowing that the two of us would wind up here . . . talking . . ." and he just trails off, leaving it at that, not wanting to state the implications of this conversation. The words are starting to slide into the funnel, sink into the drain, there's only one way this can end, she'll insist and that'll be that. If she asks, he won't be able to deny her, he knows that already.
         "Just seeing the . . . the two of you," Jina is saying, her eyes unfocused, the flames of the parking lot reflected there, burning holes in her memory, "it was so . . . bizarre, unreal. Like . . . I had stepped into a movie, right in the middle and . . . and nothing made any sense because I hadn't seen the beginning, like it had been going all the whole time and I hadn't . . . I . . ." she pauses, her eyes shifting back into the present, fixing on Brown, the muted pain he sees there tearing holes in him every moment they lock gazes, "Is that your life, Joe?" and the aching innocence of the question is so bright that it takes all of his will not to flinch away from it. "Is that what I walked into? What is your life?"
         It's the question he expected eventually but hearing it still delivers chills straight to his spine. Like dreaming about your own death and finding it to be coming true right before your eyes. There is no chance, there is no fate, only the ripples we create have any sort of significance.
         "Jina . . . I told you, I told you all you need to know," he tries to divert her, one last attempt that he knows is going to fail. "I did," he finishes, lamely.
         "No, you didn't," she says suddenly, strangely firm in her insistence. "All those things . . . the . . ." her lips mouth the words first, as if testing them out, "Time Patrol, that and . . . everything you said. Your life." Her eyes are burning into him, peeling him away as he stands there. The pain is intense and he can't move. Seared to the spot. Scared motionless, waiting for the bullet to enter your head. "I want to know, Joe."
         "Ah, Jina . . ." he tears his gaze away, looking sharply to the side, "you don't know what you're asking. You don't. None of it's important. Nothing. Please. Believe me."
         "Joe," is all she says but all the insistence is gone, it's more a sad exhalation of breath, she's surrendering to the same forces he's already a slave to, both of them carried down rivers with no outlet and no branches, unable to control anything, still insanely curious to see where they're ultimately going to end up. But the roaring around the bend and the spray in their faces, tumbling through frothy water, none of it stands as a good portent for the swiftly approaching future.
         Brown shudders a little at hearing his own name spoken so. Touching his hands flat together, his fingertips brushing the bridge of his nose, partially covering his face, he says softly and with more finality than he wants to feel, "Okay." He finds himself squeezing his eyes shut, like he's trying to find some tears to ease his way. None are forthcoming but he's come too far for tears now. That kind of thing isn't welcome here anymore, not for him.
         He drops his hands to his sides abruptly, straightening his back and squaring his shoulders. It all feels like a prelude when this is actually an end. A coda. They reached the climax a long time ago and nobody ever stopped to take it in. That's the problem with life, you never realize the most important moments, the peaks, until long after the fact, when there's nothing you can do about it.
         "Okay," he says again, trying not to meet Jina's eyes. At the last second he's hoping for some sort of reprieve but both of them have come too far to backtrack now, they're both going over the falls but the two of them are going together. Not touching but plunging nonetheless.
         "The truth, then," he states flatly, trying to erase all inflection from his voice. Pressing himself against the wall, trying to blend into it, he leans his head back until it's touching, staring at a point above Jina, where the wall and the ceiling meet, a neutral space he can go when he's getting too close, when he finds that he can't take it anymore. Anything to avoid her face. Anything to avoid seeing emotions written plainly across her face.
         "My name," and he has to smile a little as he says this, since the simplest of beginnings are the ones that lead to the most complicated results, "is Joseph Brown. My friends call me Joe," a brief laugh at that, maybe echoed by Jina but he's not looking so he can't be sure. Then his face almost becomes blank and deadly serious. "The people I live and work with call me Commander, second in command only to the General," and his own voice sounds robotic, like he can't even believe his own story. Has he ever stepped back to look at his life, at how surreal it all is? No, of course not, when you're neck deep in it, you don't see anything wrong it's all perfectly natural.
         "We're all part of the . . . Time Patrol," he thinks he hears Jina give a sharp intake of breath at that phrase, but he has to continue, someone has bombed the dam and all the water is leaking out, "an ancient military organization, headquartered in a pocket dimension called Legoflas . . ." his face turns inward with memory, "it's a beautiful city, built at the beginning of time, set on platforms over an endless ocean, I wish I could take you there, it's . . ." he stops suddenly, rubs his oddly slick forehead, mumbling, "Excuse me," before taking a breath and continuing.
         "I . . . I was recruited five years ago, when . . . after my father died, the General came to me and offered me the chance to join, I . . . I always wondered what he would have done if I had said no, but . . . I've found since that the General never takes chances like that, he knew the outcome before he even asked me."
         Brown wipes sweaty hands on his pants, still not daring to bring himself to look at Jina. She's been silent so far, probably think he's gone out of his mind, hanging around Tristian too long and your mind turns to mush, start seeing aliens wherever you go. His story sounds crazy to his own ears and yet he's lived it, no one can take those years and those events away from him.
         "Since then it's been . . . I've worked my way up to where I am now and . . ." he swallows, coughing a little, God he feels so awkward doing this, like giving a presentation before the roughest crowd ever, "I've travelled in time, Jina, that I've done, I've visited other worlds, the . . . the things I've seen . . . I could go on all night, tell you stories of a million different worlds, some as mundane as here, some brutal and harsh, and some that are so beautiful they could reduce battle hardened men to tears on the spot. I've killed people, from a distance, up close, I've done it . . . but I've also saved a lot of lives and I think . . . if there's some sort of scale measuring us, weighing out good and evil, I think, I hope in the end, I'll do all right for myself." He takes a deep breath, so deep that it almost hurts, like he's trying to draw the story back into his lungs, take it all back so she won't remember it. But he can't have it both ways. The one law of the Universe nobody ever remembers. "But that's my life, Jina, no different than anyone else's . . . I get up in the morning, put my clothes on, go to work, on weekends have a beer with the boys . . . people tend to concentrate on the odd, the stranger aspects but to us, it's not . . . it's not strange." A nagging spore is growing in his stomach, poking and prodding at him. He's missing something, that's what it's telling him. He's leaving something out. Trying to ignore the buzzing spreading through his body, he continues, "It's just the way we live, the same as you or anyone else . . ."
         He stops, blinking, feeling a vague sense of disgust with himself. The puzzle is incomplete. A piece missing from the most important part of his body. The whole story hasn't been told. "Oh hell, who am I kidding," he spits out suddenly, with bitter venom, "it's not all the same." Glancing over to her end of the room, but without really seeing her, he says, "There's a difference, Jina, I'd be fooling myself to claim otherwise. There's a hell of a difference, that . . . that I need to tell you."
         Jina's eyes are wide, milky orbs awash in a pale face, her face registering disbelief and shock and the sure knowledge that what she's being told is the truth. Despite the fantastic trappings, the unreality of his words, underneath it all is the soul of confession, the unwavering adherence to the facts and the truth that she knows is a part of Brown. Crawling forward even when the storm has shoved your face into the dirt. He can read that in her face, but that still tells him nothing. But she remains deathly silent, her lips drawn in a tight line, a shallow slit drawn sideways across the bottom of her features.
         Now Brown's digging into his pocket for something, a charm to further the demonstration. "Jina, all night you've been saying to me, you've been wondering . . ." and his fingers close around the small object, which feels uncomfortably warm in the close confines of the space, "joking even, how I was able to drink so much and not feel the effects of it . . ." and he pulls the penknife out, unlatching the blade in one smooth motion, letting the light play reindeer games on the polished surface. A mirror world where all life is the opposite. But there wouldn't be life there at all. Because the opposite of life is death. One feeds off the other. If nothing was ever alive we could never define its absence. We wouldn't be around to define anything.
         "Tonight, Jina," Brown continues, fixing his eyes on the blade, running his thumb along the edge, feeling it press down on the skin, try to part the cells, lay his tissue open to the air, "I was drugged, the same thing that Lena got," and now her face is shining with true shock, now he's speaking fantasy that hits home. The tales of robots and time soldiers and elevated ocean platforms makes for good storytelling but there's no way for her to grasp it, there's nothing to make it real. Just words. Words and the insistent tone of a man who could be more than crazy but less than sane.
         "And yet, I'm standing here right now, while Lena is suffering in a hospital bed," his sentences are unintended thorns and he sees Jina close her eyes tightly but briefly, her face tensing in an attempt to keep it all in. "And believe me, if we could have switched places, somehow, if there was some way, I'd do it." He lays the blade flat on the palm of his other hand. Exposed to the air, it feels cooler now, like it's trying to bond with his hand.
         "But I didn't get drugged and I don't get drunk, and there's a reason for that . . ."
         He closes his hand around the blade, the pointed object feeling like some foreign insect caught in the folds of his palm, tight and biting, trying to escape but at the same time nestled in a cozy fashion, like it was always supposed to be there.
         Brown takes a deep shuddering breath, gearing himself for what's to come. He risks a look at Jina, praying that he doesn't see something in her face that makes him stop, because this needs to be done, or else everything that follows will just be pantomime, no reality to back it up.
         Her face is expressionless, but her eyes are confused, uncertain of what he's talking about. The madman ranting on the corner, crying that the earth will end tonight. And if it doesn't end, how can you be sure? We'd go on sightless anyway, confident in the continuation of our existence. But that's enough. For Brown, that's enough to give him the nerve.
         Meeting her eyes one more time, he says clearly, his eyes twinkling with an amusement that won't touch his face, "You're not going to believe me, Jina, but I know what I'm doing."
         Sure I do.
         And before he can think too hard about what he's doing, he yanks the blade out of the crevice of his closed fist as hard as he can.
         "Ah!" he gasps, his jaw fusing shut even as all his breath abandons ships and ejects itself from his torso. His head goes light and his limbs threaten to give up on him all together.
         In slow motion, the blade is released by reflex from his suddenly numb hand and begins its long descent, end over end, to the floor.
         The pain arrives shortly after, slow and soft at first, as if the appropriate nerves are just waking up, roused from fitful sleep, ready to respond to any call, no matter what the cost or cause. Stabbing with fiery swords, the true pain starts soon enough.
         "Joe!" disconnected from any source, Brown hears the voice and sees Jina leap from her chair, two different stimuli coming from different angles. Nothing is working together. Her face is finally crossing back over into an expression he can catalog. That is what it took. This is what it took to make her see.
         With a clatter the blade hits the floor, bouncing a little.
         Flecks of crimson dot the shiny metal.
         Time shifts gears, dislodging itself from the hole it's struck, proceeds normally again.
         Head swimming, Brown holds his hand up to his face, trying to keep the blood in his arm, making sure that not everyone escapes. Plasma is a prisoner and they'll take any breach, any opportunity to make a break for it. Dots cluster in his vision, groupies attracted to any form of carnage, no matter how minor. Something liquid is gathering in his hand, hot and slick, collecting.
         Footsteps are coming closer. Someone is breathing heavily. It might be him. Spider like fingers of tainted electricity are making their way up his arm. His legs decide to give out, diverting necessary resources elsewhere, and he slides down the wall, friction making sure that he at least is denied the embarrassment of breaking his ass on the way down.
         "Joe, what the hell are you doing?" Jina cries out, nearly a shriek, they've both tumbled into unfamiliar territory, he her blind guide, she the unwilling traveller. Bending down near him, she gingerly touches his arm. Dazed, he glances at it, realizing that someone has painted the underside of his hand red. The same red framing his vision. God, he didn't expect it to hurt this much.
         "Showing you," he gasps out, someone managing to get himself into a crouch, holding his hand out between his bent knees. Red spots dot the floor, crop circles appearing on barren land. "Because you won't . . . understand . . . otherwise . . ."
         Fire roars down his arm but in a different direction this time, seeming to come from his shoulder, emergency trucks flying wantonly down the crowded streets, radiating right to the source. God damn this is painful, who's idea was this anyway? Was this the best thing he could come up with? That's him, Joseph Brown, master of strategy and tactics. Always thinking. Always with the plans.
         But now Jina is looking at him like he's totally lost his mind, as if hanging around with Tristian has impacted a kind of special madness on him, where he identifies so much with his exploits that he believes all the lies he tells himself. That there really is a Time Patrol. That he can do the things he does. And right now, Brown thinks that maybe he is a little crazy.
         Except for one thing.
         He's not bleeding anymore. He can feel it.
         And his hand is tingling, wires lacing the fabric, tissue bowing to a science that he can never understand, can never fail to marvel at.
         "I don't understand, Joe," Jina tells him, talking slowly like he's a simple man who can't follow sentences of more than five or six words. Simple man, simple ideas. None of that fancy stuff, you want to show the girl the truth, you just do the practical thing and slice your hand wide open. Guaranteed to work every time.
         "Then . . . watch," he says, taking a deep breath and blinking as if in a daze. Even after all this time, it's still the weirdest damn feeling he's ever experienced. Forcing his fingers to open is like prying a bent and corroded pipe back to its original form, they're locked in that position, as if feeding his palm the substances it needs to survive. But he does it. He has to, or else Jina won't see. And he'll have to do it all over again. God, he hopes not. There has to be a better way than this.
         It's a blood encrusted mouth slashed right across his palm, running the width of his hand. Jina tenses a little when she sees it, her hand tightens on his arm. His entire hand is dyed red, splatters of dried blood marking the story. The edges of the wound are jagged, tattered and raw.
         Signals overload his hand suddenly and he has to bite his lip to keep from crying out. It feels like something is growing, a tumor spreading all over his hand. Most of the time he's dead when this stuff is happening, he's forgotten that when you're conscious, it hurts like hell.
         "What's happening, I don't see . . ." Jina is saying but her voice trails off even before the sentence has time to fully take hold. Even without looking, Brown knows what she's seeing, it's a process that has become an intrinsic part of his life even if he's fairly sure he'll never get used to it. Deep down, it still freaks him out.
         His breathing is deep but rapid, causing his chest to ache, he can't seem to get enough air in. A swarm of locusts is clustering around his hand, six legged beasts with needles and thread, sewing the rift in his skin back together.
         Brown knows it's finally happening when he hears Jina's near wordless "Oh," followed by the sharp hiss of a breath drawn through closed teeth. Her fingers are steel cables wrapped around his wrist. The sight pins her to the spot, horrifying and fascinating her at the same time. The skin, knitting itself back together, growing outward to close the gap. An army marching across his palm. It itches, God it's almost maddening but he doesn't dare scratch it. He made that mistake once and had to go through the whole process all over again. The one good thing about his job is that it's cured him of most of his more immediate impulses. Most, but not all.
         When it's over, the tingling slowly fades, as if evaporating to the open air. Relaxing, he bows to weariness and hangs his head for a second, relishing the sudden peace. Jina's hand is still on his arm but only because she hasn't thought to remove it yet. Any second now he expects her to back away from him in honest terror, his own naked inhumaness reflected in her uncomprehending eyes, before she bolts from the room, no doubt to crawl somewhere and pretend the last five minutes never existed.
         "The word you're looking for," he comments tiredly, flexing and unflexing his hand, "is regeneration." His fingers feel stiff, rods nailed to his bones, but the skin on his hand is red and new. Dried blood coats his hand like an unfinished coat of varnish.
         It always drains him, causes his entire body to feel flushed and tingling, almost burning with internal heat. Some sort of metabolic effect, he's sure, but Brown doesn't think this is the time or the place to waste with useless theorizing. It works. That's all that really matters. When he needs it, it works. Simple as that. Even though right now he feels like he could go take a walk outside in the dry winter air minus all his clothes.
         A tentative probing sensation brushes against his hand and Brown opens eyes that he wasn't even aware he had closed to see Jina staring with pale expression at his hand, her fingers gently running along the former wound. The skin is still sensitive and her investigations cause him to flinch, almost closing his hand over hers.
         She jerks her own hand back, like his fingers might burn. The motion seems to remind her that there's someone attached to the hand and her eyes fix on him, questions tumbling in the cascades of a fallen symphony.
         "You . . ." Jina breathes, starting to reach out to touch his hand again, but then drawing back with her fingers dangling inches away, thin air separating them again, "Joe, you cut yourself. I saw you . . ." her voice is sluggish, caught in a dream and she's not sure when the transition occurred. "There's blood, Joe, your hand is covered in blood . . ." he's told, and she sounds like they both should be finding this out at the same time. Jina doesn't appear to believe her own words. But she hasn't run away, any minute reality will kick in and she'll have no choice but to go. People can't face this, his friends aren't ready for this. But it had to be shown, Brown doesn't regret that for an instant. Better it come out now, when their minds are open and stunned, unable to reject new ideas. Forcefeeding paralyzed animals.
         "But there's . . . nothing there . . . anymore," Jina says, her voice oddly confused, now she sounds drugged, like she's been pushed to her mental limits and this is it, falling feet first into naked air, wind whistling in your ears as the ground raises a unyielding to catch you. She can accept stories, the wild tales he spins don't have any impact on her, belief depends on mood, but proof isn't what she asked for. Isn't what she wants. He can see it in her face. Like she keeps expecting Brown to blink out of existence any second now and reveal himself to be the distilled figment of her own weariness that she's believed him to be so far. But Brown very much feels real, dirt and a tired sort of resignation are caked on him in equal measure. Unreality would be a welcome bonus at this point, in his mind.
         "You . . . you really are . . ." Jina's struggling with words, her fair face screwed up in concentration, a head trauma victim denying any injury even when the blood runs down your face. In a slashed instant, she's on her feet, and Brown can only see her legs, which part of him can't help but notice aren't that bad. He lets the mental comment pass, he doesn't even have the strength to command his hormones.
         "What are you?" he hears her ask and the melted fear evident in her words sends a tightening pain across his forehead, like his brain is getting too big for his skull. Or he's shrinking while his organs are staying the same. Bulging out, alien eggs implanted in his system, ready to hatch.
         "I told you, Jina," Brown replies softly, letting his hands rest across his bent knees, "I'm Joseph Brown, the same guy you've always known . . . I'm too tired to go through it all again." A faint smile tightens his lips. "Please tell me you were paying attention at least, I wouldn't reveal all my secrets to just anyone."
         His feeble joke gets the expected reaction which is no reaction at all. Jina seems rooted to the spot, her feet shuffling a little but not going anywhere, a cartoon character unable to escape the looming shadow growing larger and larger even as their feet pedal empty air.
         "I know," he says after a moment, exhaling a breath and getting to his feet, only stopping for a second to scoop his discarded penknife off the floor, "it's hard to believe." With his thumbnail he scrapes some of the specks of blood off it, narrowing his eyes in time with the effort. He raises his eyes to Jina while replacing the item back into his pocket, trying to inject casual humor into his voice, "Almost impossible to believe, right? Even now that you've seen it for yourself, you still don't know what to believe." Her head almost imperceptibly nods in time to his questions, her eyes never leaving his face, or maybe she's still staring at his hand, waiting for the magic trick to wear off and blood to start running down his wrist again. All about misdirection, that's the thing. Bring out the cards and keep their eyes averted and you've got them hooked. No effort at all. Real magic requires no effort. That's what he hears.
         He knows that she's not going to answer, that her capacity for speech has been taken away for the moment, too many contradicting ideas, too many long held beliefs, about the world, about him, being reexamined and discarded, tossed out like so much trash. But you never want to part with the stuff you've had the longest, sentimental attachment will be the death of the human race yet. Somewhere deep down inside, Jina knows what she's just seen, believes and even accepts it, but she's not ready to admit that yet, doesn't want to cause a mutiny in her own head. Old thoughts are power hungry things, they get greedy and lazy, too used to their positions, they don't want to give up space to make room for the new blood and so we get stuck in our old patterns because we don't have the strength to evict the layabouts and the things that take advantage of our tolerance.
         "I barely believe it myself," Brown tells Jina, giving her what he hopes is a reassuring smile, "I'm used to it, but I have a hard time believing it some days." He shrugs helplessly, "Silly human nature, right? Never changes.
         "But why, that's not . . ." her voice is hushed, afraid to attract people, like anyone cares, "Joe, that's not natural, it's . . . I don't know what it is . . . oh . . ." and she covers her face with her hands, swaying a little on legs too weakened to hold her up anymore.
         "Oh, I can't take this," her small voice says, emerging from behind trembling hands, peeking out to make sure that the sun hasn't fallen from the sky yet. The worst disasters can happen on sunny days. Weather is impartial, possessing an objectivity we can only pray for.
         "You don't have to," Brown says, crossing the few steps to Jina and gently taking her shoulders, helping her over to a chair. She doesn't resist, but doesn't use him for a crutch either. He's proud of that, for some reason. Even when the world wants her to crack, she still tries to stay on her feet. "Not tonight. Not when there's far more important things for you to worry about."
         Perched in the chair, she slips away from his touch, evading his reach, leaving him with nothing other than a slightly empty feeling in his stomach. Her eyes regard him with guarded hesitation. Brown wants to claim that he isn't scared right now but that would be lying, because he's damn frightened, he's unloaded so much and there's precious little cargo left to convince her with. If he even wants to convince her. Jina's eyes aren't telling him anything, he keeps seeing the same questions, the ones he's apparently not answering. Questions that couldn't be answered even if he slit his own throat, slashed his wrist, turned himself into a model for mutilation, only to make her watch it all close up and heal, injury in reverse.
         As if cold, Jina hugs herself tightly, staring down at some spot in her lap. From that angle her voice comes to him muffled, buried. "I just don't understand any of this, Joe, I'm sorry . . . this is all . . . it's all more than I can take right now . . ." her voice starts to break at the end and it's a sound he never wants to hear again. He'd ram the knife into his chest like an ancient explorer claiming that territory for his domain if that would erase that strained tone from her forever.
         "Do you . . . do you want me to go, Jina?" Brown asks quietly, taking a step back, like the words are exhaust sending him spiralling away. But then maybe his words have been doing that all night, pushing him further and further away until she's just a still speck. Even the sun is just another star when you've gone far enough out.
         She draws in a shuddering, near sobbing breath, trying to hold it all in and failing. But only just barely. "I don't know," she responds, still not looking at him, her voice stamped down into the ground, buried under the patter of constant rain. The maiden has become the victim of her own dragon again, vanquished from the cave, it's circling around in the air, trying to block all the exits. "I don't want to be alone, I'm so scared for . . . for Lena and I don't want to be left alone but . . ."
         "And I don't want to go," Brown tells her simply, in maybe the first totally honest statement he's made the entire night. "But if the pain and confusion I'm causing is worse than any help I can give . . ." he stops, suddenly whirling on his feet, striding back toward the door, marking out the distance between them again. Measuring out the infinite steps he has to take to get back to how things used to be. The past is locked behind an impenetrable door, the ink already dry, even beginning to fade. Staring out into the hallway again, he muses, considering something different, this conversation hasn't gone the way he had expected or hoped and there are some things he needs to say. Beyond platitudes, beyond reassurances, it may not slay the dragon or open the shrouded path to her heart, but it's weighing on his own heart and it has to go. Else he'll damn himself for a fool forever.
         Part of him wonders if she would blame him if he went through the doorway and just kept on walking. He might still do just that. But it's not his first instinct, walking out would be tantamount to giving up, chucking it all in and admitting that he wasn't good enough, that his efforts were nothing more than a damn good try. Brown likes to think that he passed the point of good try a long time ago. Failure isn't a beast he'll just sit back and let devour him.
         "Let me . . . tell you some things, Jina," he begins, massaging the back of his neck, keeping his hands there and letting his elbows touch at his chest. "Joe's last confession of the night, I promise." The smile that was threatening to break out on his face slides off like loose jelly splashed onto his face. "But if . . . if we never speak again," an outcome all too likely by now, even by Brown's usually optimistic standards, "then I want to part knowing that I said this, that in the end I managed to get the important stuff out."
         No answer. Either she's fallen asleep or she's biding her time, waiting for his words before she decides on a final course of action. Brown stares at the uniformly dull paint job of the wall across from him and figures that's fair enough. After all he's put her through, in addition to what the night has already heaped upon her, he can't ask for more consideration than that. He doesn't have the right. In the end, the right just isn't his to ask.
         "First, I guess . . . I want to say that . . . the . . ." the stumbles, trying to find the words, wondering if the language ever bothered to truly name the concept, the other words are just ill fitting suits, stitched by blind tailors, "abilities I have now aren't just for when I cut myself slicing bread . . . I know you probably realize that but . . ."
         His mouth is suddenly dry. He hates this, the searching for phrases and words, he's trying to be poetically realistic but it's just not possible, there's no time, not enough time in the world. Brown's heard of telepaths out there, people who can transmit concepts with but a thought, mind to mind linkage. That's what he needs right now, that effortless sharing and mingling of thoughts. But he doesn't have that, he never will and for him, like everyone else, it's the hard way for him.
         "Jina, I've died," he blurts out, eschewing lengthy intros. The release of air behind him might be Jina trying to respond to yet one more ironbound concept aimed for her head or just the soft hiss of the air sifting in through climate control vents. He can't be sure.
         "Died," he says again, cementing the concept, making it true, trying to fashion some sort of sense from it. The word is past tense but the phrase I've died was never meant to be used, it's something we made up anyway just for the sake of completeness but it's not a first person term. You never talk about your own death, especially not after it happens. One of those wacky taboo subjects. Brown is glad he can think of this so clinically because what's going to follow will be anything but.
         "The first time it happened . . . ah, I didn't even realize it," Brown relates, realizing how silly that sounds. Whoever realizes that they've died, it's just switching off a light. Blink and the room is swathed in darkness. But someone always forgets to put the chairs up after they leave. Those of us behind always have to clean up after the joker who just departed. Like it's tradition or something. Pay his tab, clean his room, straighten his picture where it hangs on the wall and pretend that everything is going to be the same. Before going on with your life, waiting for the lights to go out again. "I was in a . . a fight and someone jumped in front of me and aimed a gun at me and I remember it being . . . warm and hard to breath . . . then it got dark, like sliding down a tunnel backwards," he swallows, exhaling loosely, "and the next thing I know I was waking up on the floor and people were standing over me.
         "At first I thought I had just been knocked out and I kept saying how, oh, that was close, and gee, I'd better be more careful next time . . ." in his head he can see his younger, foolish self, laughing and acting without care, reveling in the promise of a life where any direction would bring him somewhere better than where he had come from, "and some of the older guys started laughing and I . . . I couldn't understand why, maybe I was babbling or maybe . . ." he closes his eyes, memory painting a mural under his eyelids, "then I looked down at my chest. My uniform was almost totally blasted away, torn into shreds. My chest was bare and it felt all sore . . . I looked down to see the skin all charred and covered in soot. And blood, I was soaked in blood, all of it mine." He doesn't tell her that there's a distinctive smell to your own blood, that once you spill enough of it all over yourself, you start to become more attuned to it, to the point where you can fall unconscious and wake up and know just where your bleeding stops and someone else's begins. That's not something Jina needs to be told right now. "Right then, I knew . . . I hadn't been unconscious.
         "I had been dead."
         Jina is silent as she has been, maybe she's letting him speak, giving him a chance to finish before she lays down the verdict. Or more likely, she just doesn't know what to say. Really? Dead, you say? Can't say I have much experience with that, no sir. Please, tell me more.
         "Why am I telling you this?" he asks nobody in particular. To Jina this must be just another symptom of his growing insanity, this twisted delusion that he's crafted his world around, to the point where he's even got them all convinced, he's got Jina seeing things, wounds sewing themselves back together. Mad stuff. None of it real.
         "Because . . ." and suddenly it's very hard to speak, obstructions in the airways, "because I haven't thought about it in . . . in years and being back here, I haven't . . ." his words are sodden, a kind of mucus that he has to gag up, "I haven't been to this hospital since my parents died in it." Even that statement falls out of his mouth reeking of unreality, like it belongs to someone else and has been just nesting for the winter in his throat. Go back, little bird. There's danger saturating the air. Gods are walking the earth tonight.
         "My mother . . . actually died here, and my father they confirmed him dead here . . . God, this place even smells the same," he mutters harshly, rubbing his forehead, trying to ease the ache there. Some things regeneration can never fix, headaches are apparently beyond its power. Death is curable but headaches are eternal. Somewhere Brown could probably find irony in that but he's too tired now. "And I was always taught . . . that I'd be with them again some day, we'd all be together . . ." Brown doesn't mention that his father should have been sent to the warm place down below, it's not something he wants to believe in, if there is a God who judges, he wants to think that his parents would be with each other, not judged solely on the basis of one rash action. God's not that petty, he hopes. But you can never be sure of anything anymore. "And so, when I died, I immediately started to try and remember something from . . . you know, when I was dead . . ." he shakes his head, slowly, sadly, much like he did back then, when he had spent hours trying to write down all his impressions, when all he could do was barely fill up a single sentence on a sheet of paper, "but there was nothing. Just oblivion, blink and I'm gone, blink and I'm back." He raises his hand to snap his fingers for emphasis, thinks better of it and lets the hand drop.
         "That was it," he continues, "I had died and come back, with nothing to show for it other than the fact that I was still alive. Gained no knowledge, penetrated no mysteries, nothing. Back then, I had the nerve to be disappointed . . ." he flashes his faint younger self an indulgent grin. "Since then I've died a few times . . . but received no new revelations about it all, I'm sorry to say. I never asked what anyone else experiences, it seems to be one of those private things that nobody talks about . . . unspoken rule, I guess.
         "But one day, years later, I did ask one of Tristian's . . . friends, figuring that they would know. All I got for my trouble was a look and a nonanswer . . . so yeah, Jina they treat everyone that way, not just you guys," amusement flavors his voice but he's not sure if any filters over to Jina. This monologue would almost be therapeutic, it's certainly helping to clear his head, except that he's fighting for something that his fingertips are barely holding onto, one moment of faintest weakness and it's all for nothing. "So that told me nothing, maybe they know and aren't allowed to tell, or maybe they don't know but don't want to admit that . . . I can't say, really. All I know is what I feel and believe and . . ." clenching his previously wounded fist, the sensitive skin sending out alarms at the unnecessary pressure, "what I believe is that I'm going to see them again some day. If this Universe is even just a little bit fair, then some day it'll happen."
         Brown's throat tightens again and he finds that he's laughing, not hard and not with much feeling but with a hiccuping kind that he could easily turn into a sob if he was so inclined, "But you see, Jina, the thing is, I'm starting to realize that I'm not going to die maybe for a long, long time, longer than I can even imagine and . . . God, somedays I miss them so much. I do." I'm going to miss you guys too, when you're gone, he thinks but doesn't say that. He can't. It's implied in his words but he can't bring himself to say it, there's been too much damage done tonight for him to add to it. Driving a car through the wall after the bomb has hallowed out the inside. After a while they just don't seem to feel it, but it still piles on.
         "What are you saying?" It's a bare whisper, quivering ever so slightly, the kind of voice that deep down inside understands fully what Brown is trying to say but doesn't want to stare it square in the face. Have to avert your eyes. For the light is blinding. Brown is touching on truths that nobody is comfortable with, not even himself.
         Turning himself around to meet her eyes is more of an effort than he realized it would be, the ugly duckling executing the ballet turn underwater, where the sound is thicker, where the air is contained and hidden away. It's hard to breathe suddenly. Like the first night Brown woke up realizing that one day he was going to die. Like he could feel his heart slowing down, the timer attached to it counting down the beats in his chest. Every second is another second less. You become afraid to fall asleep, for fear of the blackness becoming unrelenting. But you have to get over it, eventually you have to or you won't be able to live, because you'll be obsessed with death. There's a time for both. Brown understands that better now, or so he thinks.
         "What I'm saying, what I'm trying to say is that . . . life is so precious, Jina, it really is . . . now that I've been out there, I've seen, I realize . . . there's just not enough time, I have all the time in the world and it'll still never be enough." He licks his lips, feeling the pressure of her eyes on him like a physical thing, trying to sort through the words piling up against the roof of his mouth, trying to keep it all straight when there really isn't any time at all. The things he wants to say are nothing more than abridged, condensed versions, bastardized tales of the stories he wants to tell. If time had no meaning, he could make her understand but it's the most meaningful force in the Universe. And the clock is ticking, marking out the heartbeat of the world. "In the . . . Time Patrol, there are people who . . . they're hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old and when they get leave, it's for like fifty years, a whole lifetime . . . and . . . and some of them go out and marry someone and live a normal life until it's time to go back, and others . . . don't do a damn thing for, sometimes a hundred years, just sit in one place, I don't think they even breathe . . . because they don't like the reminder, the reminder that everything dies, they can't watch it . . . it's only the quick deaths they can stomach . . ." a bitter laugh tickles his mouth, "shoot someone through the chest, but when it comes to the tough stuff, watching someone grow old . . . they lose their nerve. They can't handle it."
         Jina's templed hands are covering her mouth, all he can see are her eyes, softly glistening in the ambient light. Vapid horror colors her face, Brown is speaking nonsense words that are plucking chords in her brain anyway. In a place that's a little deeper than memory, she knows it's all true. Her blinking is so slow, almost watery, deliberate. She seems about to speak, he can see the little muscles tensing up in her cheeks, small phrases burrowing under the skin, forcing their way blindly to the throat. A race. A race and the first one there gets the ultimate prize, to be the voice.
         But he has to finish. If he lets her talk, even just one word, he might not find the nerve to finish. So he holds up his hand and takes a step forward, his boots scraping across a line he chose to ignore a long time ago, bringing himself closer to her, a good two feet still separating them. But he's probably all Jina can see, he's blocking the door and his presence is filling her vision, an eclipse of the eternal man, his shadow flickering like water falling in and out of phase. For just a little while longer. There's the metaphor for you right there. It's all just a little while longer.
         "I could walk out," Brown says quietly, intensely, and the slight widening her of eyes suggests she hears the simple truth to that. "Turn around and walk out and never come back, leave all of this . . ." and he glances around the waiting room, like all the treasures of the world, all the art, the culture, the laughter and faceted conversations are clustered there, future ghosts sailing around, waiting their turn. "For more than five years . . . until there's nobody alive who even remembers who I am. I could do that. I'm sure some days I'm going to find that a tempting plan."
         Brown makes a sudden face, like he's swallowed something unpleasant, "But that's a crappy way to live a life. And . . . it's not life . . . life means people, friends and enemies, interactions, anything else is just . . . existence. Just existing. That's all."
         Jina's hands have dropped back down into her lap and he can see her whole face now. He remembers her from the days before he left, and she hasn't changed all that much, there's maturity in her face but it merely augments what's already there, the beauty she was born with, that she took and crafted for herself. And even though her face is a swirling and shifting storm of fear and confusion and anxiety, in some moments the clouds break and he can see it again. The old Jina, unfettered by the calamities of tonight that are trying to scar her face, cast iron claws and bubbling acid lunging with ruthless attack. There's no finesse but there doesn't need to be. One strike is all you need. But he knows that she'll be herself again. Soon. But first they have to get through this. All of them.
         "What am I saying . . ." Brown drops his gaze to his feet, pausing to try and collect thoughts that kept switching masks, swapping costumes, "when my parents died, it was a hole punched out in my life, a small one at first that I just worked wider and wider until it was almost bigger than me. And . . . the Time Patrol was a way out, something to fill the space, take me out of the things that were driving me crazy, the house we lived in, walking down the street and expecting to see my father's car coming past, it . . . it hurts, still. Some days."
         On impulse, he crouches down, bringing his face level with Jina's, her face too close to his. Her hands are inches from his own but he can't bring himself to close that gap, as much as he wants to, as much as he would hope that it would anchor both of them, give them something solid to grasp, to halt the fall. The crevice yawns, lazy and with all the time in the world and even his defiant shouts are just swallowed up and digested, becoming only light wind and billowing darkness. But he won't fall. He won't let either of them fall.
         "It's there now, diminished but aching still. But I don't mind it, because . . . because it reminds me," and he offers a smile, the ghost of the old grin, trying to surge back to life, inject her with its disease, "it's too easy to lose people as it is, we shouldn't make it easier by . . . by just walking away from each other."
         The two of them gaze at each other. Brown hears echoes of their conversation, his too impotent words and her eloquent silence, all over the hospital, in the murmurings of the nurses who clatter past their room, in the rushing squeak of gurneys racing against time, in the scratching of pens on clipboards, in tired jokes exchanged over coffee by tired people, in the fading wail of an ambulance, ready to bring one more person home to the nest. And maybe his words are travelling to a certain young woman fighting her worst battle alone in her cushioned prison, held down by wires and machines.
         He feels cold, but oddly content. Brown has said nearly everything he wants to say and in that he can at least take some pride. Even if nothing comes of it, at least he tried, at least he got to say what he felt. That counts, in a world that tries every day to reduce you to the primordial slime your ancestors crawled from, every completed effort has to count, no matter how minor.
         "I . . ." and he clasps his hands together, bowing his head and resting his forehead on his top knuckles, staring through the space revealed in his arms at the dusty floor, "I can't make you understand, Jina. Not even if you want to . . . all I can say is . . . is that . . ." he draws in a ragged breath, "we're all riding a train, all going toward the same destination and . . . you guys, you and Lena and Will and Brian and even Tristian are going to get off at your stops long before I have to, I can ride for as long as I want . . . and, no, it's not fair but it's the choice I got and the decision I made . . . I don't regret it, I really don't . . . but . . ."
         And he picks his head up to look at Jina, the surrounding waiting room becoming nothing more than a fractal abstract, defined by equations and variables, not real at all, "Let me share the ride with you, with all of you, for as long as I can, Jina. Don't make me sit in a different car. Because in the end, we'll only be hurting each other." He's trembling, his hands won't stop shaking, his mind feels run down, worn out, nothing more than an inert mass of cells, taking up space in his head because it's better than filling it with air. But he did it, he got it all out, ended it with the perhaps most inane metaphor he could ever conceive, but that doesn't matter.
         What matters is that Jina is still meeting his gaze, blinking faster than she was before, he can see her throat moving, like something is caught in there and trying to escape. Her mouth opens once, twice, barely, trying to find the force to speak.
         "You're . . . you're right, Joe," she tells him, hesitating with every breath, staring at a spot above him and then flickering back to his face, as if expecting to vanish if she dares glance away even for a second. "I . . . don't understand . . ."
         And suddenly her hand is squeezing his, the gentle pressure resonating through his nerves with a magnitude greater than any regeneration process ever could.
         "But I don't think . . . I want you to leave either . . ."
         And he's not sure who clasps who to whom, but the next thing he knows her hot breath is whispering against his neck and her arms are tight around his shoulders and he can't help but return the gesture, the two of them, alone in the barren waiting room, clinging to each other like they're the only force that has any real relevance to a world where the mundane insanity of existence, the random acts of brutality that make up our days, are nothing more than greytone activities, inseparable parts of our lives.
         Brown feels her shaking against him, the emotions all spilling out now, someone kicked the valve off the fire hydrant, finding outlet in his grasping compassion, something wet smearing all over his neck, his cheek, he can her hair rustling against his ear. Images of the last time they did this fill his head but it's different now, before it was the tentative renewal of a friendship left to languish for too long, while now it's no renewal but an affirmation. Life goes on, Brown notes somberly, but as long as there are people who care and he can care for, it won't be so bad. In the end, it'll be something he can learn to live with.
         "I want her to be okay," a soft voice trembles right next to his ear. "Please, God, let her be okay."
         And Brown has no answer for her other than the silent consolation his embrace can offer, but the question isn't being asked of him. Instead he's offering the impartial and detached air the same question, words he can't bring himself to say, for fear that the alternative might come true, bringing to life a situation he doesn't even want to contemplate attempting to bear.
         So he keeps quiet, as does Jina. And together, the two of them might discover an island of solace to cool their fevered trepidation and worry.
         Or they may not. Either way, Brown knows that they'll keep searching anyway, no matter how long it takes.
         Don't ask him why. He just knows.