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“Hey Allie.”
Allison spun around in her lab. There was no way that was possible. Nathan was dead and had been for years. But that was his voice. And that was him standing there. Even wearing the suit he had the day he had died saving the world from a break in the timestream.
“Nathan,” she said, starting forward.
Before she had taken a full step he was gone.
She really needed more sleep.
“Carter.”
Jack spilled his coffee all over his uniform, jumping out of his desk chair.
A ghost stood in the middle of the sheriff’s office. Nathan Stark. A man who had been dead for a long time. Just as Jack remembered him. Just as he was as he vanished into nothing, not losing eye contact with Jack for even a moment.
“Stark,” Jack said, none of the venom he had ever had before in his voice.
Then he was gone.
“Oh no not again.”
Allison was convinced she was going crazy. Over and over she kept hearing Nathan’s voice. Seeing him standing there. But for only a second at a time. A moment here, a moment there. It had been going on for days. Nathan was everywhere and nowhere. But only ever while she was alone. It had to be something wrong with her. She couldn’t imagine why it was happening then. Everything was fine. They were finally happy and settled into their lives together.
So why was Nathan showing up and taunting her?
She didn’t feel guilty about moving on. He wouldn’t have wanted her to mourn him forever and never have love again.
“Allison.”
She stared at the image of her dead fiance and couldn’t even respond. Just watch as he disappeared again.
Allison could tell there was something wrong with him. There was no other explanation for why she was acting so strange and distant from him. She had to know Jack was keeping a secret. Which he was. That he was seeing Stark everywhere again. Her fiance that he had watched sacrifice himself for the fate of the world.
A man that Jack had secretly fallen in love with as well. Allison knew he had fallen for her while she was with Stark. But she didn’t know that he had also fallen in love with him. He had no idea how to tell her. The guilt of the secret must be eating him alive if he was seeing him so often.
“I can hear you thinking from here.”
Stark spoke and was gone before Jack could say a single thing. Just like all but that first time.
Just like him to always have to get the final word.
Allison looked up from her desk in the medical lab. Fargo was standing there and she had made him wait while she finished her test. It had to be done perfectly and he said no one was dying. She liked the small moments where she was still able to tell him what to do.
But he was fidgeting. A lot. And he looked nervous. More than normal for Fargo even when he did something wrong.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Well,” he started and trailed off, suddenly unable to say what he had been waiting to say.
“Fargo,” she said sternly.
“So, I was just alone in my office,” he started.
Never a good sign.
“And you see, if anyone was going to get in I should have heard them. So imagine my surprise when I heard a voice,” he continued.
“Get to the point, Fargo,” she said.
Allison was not in the mood to deal with his nonsense. She was dealing with her own shit and did not need to deal with him being himself.
“I think I hallucinated Mr. Stark in my office,” he said very quickly.
Allison froze. Fargo had seen Nathan too? Her seeing him wasn’t alone if this was true. Which meant it wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her.
Or they were all sharing a group hallucination. It was Eureka after all.
“We may have a bigger problem,” she said.
Jack rushed into the Global Dynamic building. Allison had called him in a panic saying she and Fargo had learned something that had been happening due to one of Zane’s experiments. She was so distraught by what was happening that he couldn’t even understand what was happening from her explanation.
He was almost running toward the medical lab. He needed to know what was happening. He needed to know if she was okay.
Jack skidded to a halt when he got there and Allison was outside the medical lab waiting. She stood hugging herself and he could see that she had been crying. There were so many things wrong with that image. Why had she been banished to outside? Why had she been crying? Had something happened to one of the kids?
“Allison,” he said, putting his hand gently on her elbow. “What happened?”
“He’s not dead. And I thought he was just a hallucination,” she said.
She was almost crying again. Jack knew what she sounded like when she was close. He pulled her into a hug.
And he didn’t want to be looking her in the eyes when she said what he knew was coming.
“Nathan. He’s not dead. He’s back and I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me.”
Nathan. He was there. He was in the medical lab and Jack knew what he would see if he looked through the window.
Nathan watched through the window as another person in the endless stream of medical professionals poked and prodded at him. Allison had been standing there alone and near tears. Once she had managed to hide the ones that had fallen from her face.
He couldn’t blame her. He couldn’t blame any of the emotions those who had been close to him were feeling. Especially Allie. He knew how many times he appeared in front of her. And he knew that she blamed herself for not realizing what was happening. He couldn’t though. Nathan had only appeared for a few seconds at most.
He watched as Carter joined her. The other person he had been appearing in front of most. He watched as Carter comforted her. He knew that they would have gotten together eventually after his disappearance. There was no other option. Part of him was glad that they had been there for each other. That Allie had someone in her midst to lean on.
That didn’t mean all of him was happy. There was a pang of jealousy that he couldn’t ignore.
They had something that he hadn’t been around for. That only came to be because he was dead in their eyes. That he had missed being a part of them.
“They’re done with the testing, Mr. Stark,” Fargo said.
Good old Fargo. Who without him had become head of GD. Which was both impressive and mildly worrying.
“Does that mean I can finally leave?” he asked.
“Well yes-,” Fargo started.
Nathan didn’t wait to let him finish. He stood and left the room to go where Allison and Carter stood. He saw mirrored looks of sadness, joy, hope, and fear in both their faces. He knew that mix of feelings all too well. They were the same as the ones going through his own head.
The sadness of missing so much time with them. Years of it. The joy of being back. The hope that maybe, just maybe, he still had a chance to be a part of them, like they had talked about just days before his sacrifice. The fear that they had moved on without him and he no longer had that place.
He didn’t speak. He knew he should but something overcame him.
Nathan pulled Allison into a short kiss. Nothing more than a chaste peck on the lips. Just to feel her again. There was something soft in her eyes when he let go.
But before he examined that he turned to Carter and ignoring the look on his face Nathan pulled him into another kiss. This one just a smidge longer and deeper than the one he shared with Allison. He hadn’t gotten the chance before and he wasn’t going to miss it again.
He pulled away and back again. Only to see complete shock on both of their faces. Ones that said they had never imagined he would do that. Which didn’t make sense to him. They had agreed to try and be something before.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t do that?” he asked.
Allison got over her shock at that.
“No I didn’t,” she said to him before looking at Carter. “Are you okay?”
“Better than okay,” Carter said.
And pulled Nathan back into another kiss and he could hear Allison laugh in the background.
“Well I guess that solves the problem of what we are going to do going forward,” she said.
Nathan would have to ask why they were acting like that. But it could wait until Carter was no longer kissing him.