Archive of Our Own ^beta

Status: Chronon-Active

Jack blinks down at the screen, those two words encompassing a world as he stares down at them, processes them.

It's such a little thing. It's just a bunch of particles swarming within him, the ambient chronons in the atmosphere attracted to his own frequency like lead files to a magnet - or at least, that was how Will had explained it to him, once he'd gotten around he first ten minutes of egg metaphors and stuttering.

It's such a little thing, to affect his life like it has.

"I should be in Bangkok," he says out loud, testing the words as they leave his mouth. "I should be...anywhere but here."

Never look back, those had been Paul's words, all those years ago, the night that had once taken the trophy as the worst of Jack's life, when the man who had, at that point in time, still been his best friend had helped him to get out of the country. Since that day, he'd been living those words; Jack Joyce's personal mantra, three little, simple words that got him through each day. Never look back.

Ironic, then, wasn't it? That all he'd done since those two little, simple words had changed his life as surely as the three had, was look back.

Was think, what if?

He should be in Bangkok. He should be anywhere but here.

But...

Two little words. They rule his life now, and he can't afford to not look back.

Chronon-Active.

He takes a deep breath, shifts in his seat. Sighs, feels the tension in the air once more settle around him. It feels like he's letting go of the last piece of Paul he has left - and it is Paul, Paul he'd be letting go of - not Serene, not Monarch Actual, not the man who tried to kill his brother, killed Beth, and had become so embittered by the end that he could not accept that there was even a chance beyond his own Lifeboat Protocol.

Chronon-Active. It really is such a simple, little thing.

But simultaneously, it isn't.

...He really needs to talk to Will.

|-X-|

Beth Wilder is eight years old when her life changes forever.

She is walking around the cul-de-sac she lives in with her parents, balancing along the curb by the gutter as the wind, chill and gusting, picks up browning leaves as it moves by her.

"Bethany," says Mrs. Palandine, the old woman that lives three houses down, standing with arms crossed at her open front door, peering down her hawkish nose at Beth with glaring eyes. "Don't play in the gutters, girl."

My name isn't Bethany, Beth thinks, but doesn't say. She's been Bethany to the people of the cul-de-sac for years, and it just doesn't stick when she corrects them.

"Not in the gutter, Mrs. Palandine," she says instead, making sure not to screw up her face at the older woman. The last time she did that, her mum found out, and she wasn't allowed to talk or play with Erica for a week. "I'm on the curb."

"You'll twist your ankle," Mrs. Palandine warns. "Or worse, even. You shouldn't test your luck, Bethany."

"Beth'll be fine," an unfamiliar voice interjects. "I'll walk her home, yeah, Mrs. Palandine?"

Beth whirls, because no-one on the cul-de-sac calls her by name proper except her parents, and the older woman (still younger than her mum, and definitely younger than Mrs. Palandine, though) does not live on the cul-de-sac.

Her hair is like Beth's, a weird brown-red that the other kids teased her for, except darker and shinier with oil, like her mum's gets when it hasn't been washed for a few days. Her skin is pale, and her cheekbones are sharp in her face, every plane of it shown with her hair pulled back completely in a high and tight ponytail.

"Ah, Toto," Mrs. Palandine says. "I think I've seen you helping Adam around his garden. Is that you?"

The woman - Toto - gives a sharp nod, hands fluttering by her sides, clenching and unclenching. "Come on, Beth," she says. "I'll get you home before it gets any later."

There are a million and one reasons as to why Beth should not follow this woman. She's a stranger. She looks weird and she keeps twitching. Her house is literally a few meters away.

But Mrs. Palandine knows her, and is watching the two closely. So Beth nods, and skips off the curb onto the pavement, keeping the gutter between her and Toto, who walks along the road, giving a short smile and a wave to Mrs. Palandine as they leave.

"How do you know my name?" Beth asks suspiciously, and the woman gives her a soft smile.

"Just do," she answers her. "Besides, no kid wants to be called Bethany." She grimaces, as if she knows this for a fact, and Beth likes her a little bit more, now. She can't be that bad if she dislikes the name Bethany.

They've reached Beth's house now - of course they have, only three doors down and neither of them was walking particularly slowly - and Beth hesitates, not wanting to invite Toto in or talk to her any longer, really, but also not just wanting to leave the woman on her driveway.

"Here," Toto says, digging her hand into a satchel Beth hadn't noticed before, hidden away beneath Toto's jacket. It's a battered notebook she pulls out, and she offers it to Beth, who stares, making no move to take it.

"Why?" Beth asks, tilting her head.

Toto crouches down, and meets Beth's gaze evenly with her own. They're of equal height now, eye to eye, and Beth can almost feel the world tremble on a precipice. "Because this is important," she said. "And you need to have it, Beth."

Reaching forward, Toto pushes the book into Beth's hands, curling the younger girls fingers around it's soft edges as she stands.

"I'm sorry," Toto says to her as she backs down the driveway, the shortest and weirdest meeting Beth has ever experienced in her life. "But you'll understand, one day."

 I can't really explain the End of Time...not in words you'd understand. Not in words anyone would understand, at least, not anyone who hadn't been there.

Jack might've understood. Probably would have at least pretended to, would have listened. He's good at that, when it counts - listening. He sucks at following orders, but when it comes down to it, when its important, he'll listen. And he'll hear.

When the time comes, trust him. He might be the only chance to prevent the End of Time. And you want to prevent the end of time.

You're young. I know. This doesn't make any sense to you. Even as you get older, it probably won't, not until it's too late.

But you need to listen to me, like I told you that Jack would. And I need you to hear.

Inside this journal is knowledge of the future. Some little and not so little things, to prove I'm telling the truth. And then, once you believe me, what you need to know, to prevent the End of Time.

And, when it comes down to it, and you're scared and alone and losing hope, remember this:

You're Beth Wilder.

And you're more than strong enough to survive anything.

It is December of 1998, and at the age of ten, Jack knows that he’s dead. His dad is literally going to kill him. The garage is a mess, bolts and tools and various knick-knacks scattered across the freezing gray of the concrete floor, Anthony Joyce’s private area invaded by his youngest son and summarily destroyed.

Jack winces as he gazes down at the destruction. He messed up.

The door creaks open, but Jack makes no move to run or hide. He simply tenses, screwing up his eyes, and awaits the fallout.

"Jack?" It’s Will, not dad like he thought – his older brother, back home for the holidays.

This might actually be worse. Slowly, Jack turns so he’s facing his brother, his elder by ten years, who’s gazing out at the localised destruction that Hurricane Jack had caused, eyes wide and whistling low.

"Jesus, Jack," Will mutters. "What were you doing in here?"

Jack shrugs. "Stuff."

If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have gotten away with such a vague answer. Not his mother, not dad, not Paul. But Will, even if he was distant and weird and a nerd, was still his brother and clearly didn’t believe it was his place to discipline his little brother, or force him to tell the truth. Instead, Will just sighs, and bends down to crouch on the ground, scooping up loose bolts scattered about in his hands.

"Come on, Jack," he says. "If you help me we can get this done before mum and dad get back."

Their parents have vanished for the afternoon, likely taking advantage of Will’s ‘responsible, adult’ (yeah, right) presence in the house to get in some last minute Christmas shopping without Jack poking his nose in. Will is right, of course, but Jack can’t help but wonder why he cares as he starts to straighten out the shelves he’d all but destroys.

Will flicks a glance his way. "It’s Christmas, Jack," he says. "No point in getting you into too much trouble."

Jack realises he’s said that last bit out loud, and flushes. It’s a bad habit of his, talking out loud, picked up from how his father mutters when he’s working on the car, how Will finds it easier to talk to inanimate objects than actual people, how Paul will use him as a ‘screening board’ (Paul’s words, not his own) when the mood or an idea hits him. He’s surrounded by chatterbox introverts at almost all hours, and now he’s becoming one of them. Is it any wonder he spends most of his time at home around his mother?

"You don’t normally care," he points out, because he’s on a roll now, and short of biting his tongue off he doesn’t think he could have stopped himself from blurting that out.

Because it’s true. And it hurts.

Because Will is his brother, his older brother, and Jack loves and looks up to him, but he’s never there.

"It’s just school, Jack," Will sighs. "Well, not just school. There’s some other stuff, too. I’ve reached a turning point in my research, and I really need to focus on it right now. I’m close to a breakthrough, I can feel it." He smiles briefly at his younger brother. "Just a little bit longer, I swear, Jack."

"How much longer, though?" Jack isn’t pouting, no matter what Will laughingly will claim to their parents later. "You’ve already been doing your ‘research’ for years." He places down the box of screw he was holding onto a still crooked piece of shelving to form quotes with his fingers.

"By next Christmas, probably," Will says. "The majority of it, at least, for the bulk work, the heavy stuff. Then I’ll be around a lot more."

"Promise?" Jack asks, staring Will straight in the eyes. Will is a lousy liar. If he wasn’t telling the truth, he’d blink. Twitch.

But Will is steady as he leans forward. "Promise," he says solemnly.

For the next few minutes, the garage is quiet, almost peaceful, the only sound the clinking and clanking as they rearrange the space back into a tidy and working order.

"So, you’re really not going to tell me what you were doing in here?"

"No."

"I could ask Paul. I bet Paul would know."

"Don’t you dare, you traitor."

"Come on, Jack. You can tell me."

"…"

"Jack?"

"Maybe one day."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. In like a million years."

 There are some things you cannot prevent. Some things that are, simply, inevitable.

I know that seems like a contradiction. I know that saying ‘the past is the past, and cannot be changed,’ makes it seem like this entire thing is pointless. But you’ll learn along the way that sometimes hope is all you have to cling to, and that there is always, always, a chance.

Just hold tight and hang on, Beth. You can weather the storms.

For now, here’s what you need to know: December 22^{nd, 1999.}

That’s the date of Anthony and Katheryn Joyce’s death. You know them, Beth. Katheryn is that nice doctor that works at Riverport General in the ER. When you twisted your ankle last year, she was the one that checked you out. She gave you a lollipop, remember?

And Anthony Joyce – you’ve never met him, Beth, but you’ve heard of him. He’s a mechanic now, but a while back, he was serving overseas. There was a big chatter all around town when he finally came home, though you wouldn't know that - you weren't even born yet. They still talk about him a lot, though. Riverport’s very own war hero. He doesn’t do much these days beyond fixing peoples cars, but I’m pretty sure you know who I’m talking about.

And they’re going to die on this date. You can try to find a way to prevent it – I know I will – but you must know that whatever happens, it is not your fault.

"It'll be done by next Christmas, Jack," Jack mutters sarcastically under his breath. "I promise."

Next to him, standing still in the snow in piles along the streets whereas Jack is kicking through it, Paul sends him a look that makes it painfully obvious his friend is having a hard time controlling the urge to roll his eyes.

But because Paul is the best, he just says, "Will?" In a tone that shows he already understands, and is willing to let Jack rant for a while. In exchange, he'll probably have to put up with one of Paul's harebrained schemes later (no matter what everyone else thought, it was always Paul's ideas that got them into trouble, not his), but that's nothing he wouldn't do anyway, so Jack thinks that's fair.

"He's never at home," Jack says, frowns down at the snow that's seeping, cold and biting, through the woolen material of his gloves where he'd scooped up some to throw at Paul earlier. "I mean, that's kind of how he always is, but he's home for the holidays."

"Usually," Paul interjects.

"Usually," Jack agrees. "But he called home this morning, and...I don't know, exactly, but mum and dad were yelling and they said Will won't be coming home for Christmas."

"Hmm," Paul tilts his head back to gaze up at the sky, and Jack stares at him for a minute - his parents had dressed him up entirely in black; black trousers, black jumper and jackets, black shoes - the only colour on him the bright blue of the beanie Jack's mother had knitted for him two years earlier. "You could just go visit him," Paul suggests. "Riverport isn't a very big city, and he's just in one of the warehouses in the drydocks, right? We could walk there right now, even."

Jack hesitates. "But...what if he doesn't want to see me?"

Paul squints at Jack, like he's not entirely sure of who he's looking at. "Of course he'll want to see you," he reassures. "He's your brother."

"Doesn't act like it," Jack scowls, and Paul shrugs.

"Will's always been like that, though. Doesn't mean he doesn't love you."

Jack's scowl deepens, because he can't refute Paul's claim, not in total honesty. It's probably the most annoying thing about Paul (and, trust Jack, there are a lot of annoying things) - the way he can just stop an arguement, a conversation, cold; with just a few words all the attention is on him, like the gravitational pull that the earth and moon share.

'Our little genius,' Paul's parents call him, but Jack doesn't think that's right, exactly. Paul is smart, sure, but not Will smart, not genius smart, barely getting grades that much higher than Jack's. No, Paul is people smart. It's simultaneously awesome and scary to Jack, how well Paul can talk to others; not just in conversation, but with his smile. With a head tilt. Paul knows just how to communicate with people, and it's not even like that one annoying 'cousin' Jack has that's all sweet around the adults at Thanksgiving and then a total brat with the kids. It's all genuine, all the time.

Jack can't imagine being so nice and social, himself. He isn't as...obtuse, as Will could be, but social awkwardness runs long and true throughout the men of the Joyce family, and even his own mum's 'bedside manner' isn't proof that she can communicate with other people, not really.

So, when Paul says something like this, says 'your brother does love you, you know,' Jack listens, because Paul can pick up on things like this way better than he ever will.

"So," Paul says. "Do you want to start walking?"

Jack shakes his head, squinting up at the sky. "It's getting pretty late; it'll be dark soon," he says. "And those clouds look like more snows going to hit."

"My house is closer," Paul says. "We can call your parents to come get you, watch a movie while we wait?"

"Yeah, sure," Jack agrees, tugging the red band of his own beanie down tighter around his head as a particularly chill wind picks up. "So long as your parents won't mind."

"Jack," Paul grins, slinging an arm awkwardly around Jack's shoulders, the - well, the poofiness, there's really no other way to put it - of the coat he wears restricting his movement. "My parents love you."

-x-

"You're going somewhere?"

There's no mistaking the surprise in Will's voice as he squints at Beth, then out of the partially boarded up windows of the Bradbury Swimming Hall.

"Uh, yeah," she says, sends him a smile, tries not to broadcast 'I'm going to try and prevent the death of your parents without much hope for the outcome,' too loudly as she fidgets.

"Now?" He asks again, still squinting at the window from his seat on the floor, various pages filled with equations and schematics Beth could not for the life of her understand surrounding him.

The problem with Will is he isn't as...blank, as the Monarch dossiers of 2016 made him out to be. Jack hadn't said much of his brother, beyond that they hadn't spoken for a few years and that the incident at the University had been the first time they had seen eachother in over half a decade; Beth hadn't wanted to question him much further than that, didn't want to press through the dark emotions of guilt and anger and grief that Jack had so successfully hidden from everyone, including himself - at least not until after the Fracture had been fixed and they could afford to deal with the fallout.

Will has his moments, to be sure. And he'll quite frequently start doing one thing, only to go off on tangents and not come back to himself for around ten hours. He'll forget to eat, forget that the human body needs sleep and water to function at bare minimum. He'll forget it's nearly Christmas until someone (her) reminds him, because he never checks calenders, only watches (since his experiments haven't fully progressed beyond minutes, yet, even after Beth had assured him that the time machine did work, evidently), and he'll have his family home number written in big, block letters of permanent marker on some surface where he could see it easily otherwise it would be lost and forgotten amongst the constant stream of numbers that daily make their home in Will's head.

Will is awkward, and disconnected, and may not ever really be able to keep up a proper conversation with anyone considering the fact that he'll quite often just bury himself within his own mind for hours at a time with no warning - but he's smart, he's observant about the most bizarre of things, and he is a big brother. That means something.

It means that Will is constantly worried about Jack. It means that there are little post-it notes scattered around with reminders for things like Jack's birthday, or Paul's, since otherwise Will would just forget and those days are important to Jack; it means that there are boxes of photos packed away, photos of Jack as he grows that Will keeps 'just in case,' means that Will is right now feeling very guilty for saying he wasn't going home for Christmas because he knows Jack will be upset.

"I have to work on the countermeasure," Will had said stubbornly. "If what you say is true, then we don't have time to waste on the holiday season, because Monarch sure won't."

But he'd winced as he said it, and wouldn't meet her eyes. Beth wasn't stupid, and she knew what Will wouldn't say.

He didn't want her to spend Christmas alone.

It was sweet, and surprisingly thoughtful, but ultimately useless. Because if she succeeded tonight, and Anthony and Katheryn Joyce lived, he'd be spending Christmas with his family even if it meant Beth had to risk being spotted by Paul Serene or any of his fledgling Monarch goons as they began their slow takeover of Riverport, just so she could kick Will's ass all the way to his family home.

And if she failed tonight...

Well. He'd be a bit too busy, then, with other things.

"I won't be gone long," she reassures with a smile that feels too tight, too wide, too false on her face, and she slips on her jacket as she exits the Hall.

|-x-|

Jack's mother was panicking, and he didn't know why.

"Jesus," his father muttered, standing next to him in the hall as they watched Katheryn Joyce run about frantically, shoving things into a bag. "Jesus, Katheryn, it's two a.m!"

She paused, eyes settling on the two, her husband and son, who stood watching her, confused.

"Jack?" She said, her voice high pitched and her eyesscarily bright. "Could you go and get some of Will's clothes, please? A jumper...or a warm shirt - just something, please."

Exchanging a look with his father that claerly said what the heck is wrong with mum, Jack Joyce, approaching his eleventh year, slowly made his way out of the hall and up the stairs, to where Will's room was, even if it was empty pretty much all year round, now.

Once he had gone up the stairs far enough that his parents wouldn't be able to see him, Jack paused, and crouched down, listening hard to the frantic whispers of his parents.

"I just a call from the hospital - oh god, Anthony, he's been shot, he's being taken in for surgery now-"

"What?"

"Someone - some hooligan - they, I don't know, broke into Will's workshop and they had a gun and they shot our son. We need to get there, now."

"No, no, Kath - I'll go."

"What?"

"Well, do you want to take Jack to see his older brother lying shot in a hospital bed? He's ten years old, for crying out loud!"

Ragged breathing. A deep sigh, catching around a sob.

"So, what?" Mum's voice was thick and wavering, and if Jack could think around his own confusion and rising fear and panic in response to what his parents were saying, he'd be horrified by the knowledge that his mother, quite literally the strongest person in the house (and maybe the world) was crying. "I just sit here, while our baby gets a bullet dug out of him, trying to reassure our other son that everything will be fine?" Her voice rose almost to a shout, some sort of hysterical anger taking over her. "No, Anthony! I'm not going through that, not again, never again. When you came back - when they sent you back from Afghanistan, I was terrified. All I knew was that you'd been in a firefight and injured badly enough that they were sending you home. I just - I just had to sit here, waiting for you to come back, clutching Will to me and telling myself that everything would be fine. That you would be fine. I'm not going to just sit here again, holding Jack to me like some sort of reassurance! I need - I need to see my son, Anthony. I need to know that he'll be okay."

"Okay - you know what, fine. You go to the hospital, Katheryn, I'll stay with Jack."

"Are you - are you mad at me?"

"Of course not - Jack! Have you got your brother's clothes, yet?"

Jack, still and silent as a statue, stiff and frozen on the stairs, jumped as his father's voice startled him. "Um," he called down. "Not yet!"

"Well, could you hurry a bit? Your mum wants to get going ASAP."

Running into Will's room, Jack flung open the closet doors and yanked out the first things his hands fell on - a pair of trackpants Jack knew for a fact Will had never used and one of those ugly Christmas jumpers, the itching kind.

It would do.

He hurried down the stairs, thrust his bundle at his mother with a breathless "Here," and she gave him a distracted pat to the head and a kiss to the cheek as she ran out to the garage, where they kept the car in the winter.

Standing together in the entrance to the house as the headlamps of the car faded away down the street, Jack and his dad were silent.

"Will's going to be fine, Jack," Dad said, his gentle voice brekaing some sort of barrier in Jack's mind, because that's when the fear and panic welled up in the form of tears, and he started crying.

"Oh, Jack," Dad sighed, but it wasn't a disapointed sigh; it was a comforting one. Bending down, Dad scooped him up, and held him close and tight. "Want to make hot chocolate and watch a movie by the fireplace?"

Keeping his head pressed against his father's shoulder, Jack nodded.

Dad's arms tightened around him for a moment. "Okay then," he said. "Just you and me for tonight, bud."

|-x-|

Beth Wilder took in a deep breath as she rose a fist to knock on the door. The notebook Toto had given her months earlier was tucked into one of the pockets of the inner lining of her bright red coat, new for this winter and buttoned up to her chin.

She didn't know if she believed what the notebook said or not. She was eight, not stupid, and she wasn't really looking forward to being the victim of someone's weird prank, laughed at and ridiculed over once school got back from winter break.

But at the same time, if Toto was telling the truth, if the notebook really did have knowledge of the future - than this -

- This would be the day that Katheryn and Anthony Joyce die.

She swallows, bring her fist down on the wood of the door, hears the knock echo as she grips the edge of the notebook for strength.

There's no answer.

"What are you doing, sweetie?" The question comes from across the road, a shout from a woman shoveling snow off of her driveway. "None of the Joyce's are home right now."

"Um," Beth says, turning to face the woman as her mind blanks. Being questioned wasn't part of the plan, not that there really was one.

Thankfully, the woman gives her an out. Squinting at her, she yells across. "Are you one of Jack's friends?"

Beth nods yes frantically. She has no idea who Jack is, but she doesn't want to get in trouble for being somewhere she really shouldn't.

"Well, he's usually with Paul Serene if you're looking for him, so they might be at his house. Do you need to call your parents to come pick you up? You can come use my phone, if you want."

But Beth is already running, running as fast as she can on the frozen sidewalk, shouting a thanks to the woman. Because she might not know who Jack is, but everyone knows Paul Serene.

He's a few years older than her, but they still go to the same school. He's popular, and his parents fund a lot of school events - like the bake sale they had that one time, that was held on the front lawn of the Serene estate.

Beth's knows where she's going. She just has to think up a plan along the way.

-x-

When she'd first arrived in the past, many things had been on Beth Wilder's mind.

The peace of a place not frozen and warped and twisted by the End of Time. The way Paul Serene existed twice in this place, and she could kill neither of them to prevent to danger she knew was coming.

Hope that Jack would come after her. Despair that she knew he wouldn't. Determination to do all she could to prevent and minimise damage for her future/present/past self.

There was also the desperate need not to slip up with knowledge of the future - big things, like the September 11 attacks, Google, Obama; but also little things, like mentioning DVD's and USB sticks when currently it was all about VHS and floppy disks. She didn't want to change anything.

Well, no. That wasn't entirely true, there were some thing she was very eager to change.

But none of that would matter if she didn't succeed here.

Her breath puffed out in front of her as she walked, white like the snow on the ground, sparkling and pristine, still falling down. Katheryn and Anthony Joyce had been the goal she had set herself when she had landed in 1999 months earlier - if she could prevent that from happening, she stopped a ripple effect that led to so much more.

If she couldn't stop it from happening...well. She remembered, being eight years old, jogging frantically through the snow to speak to a boy she didn't know to try and prevent something she didn't know how. By the time her little legs had pushed their way to Paul Serene's street, emergency services had already flooded in, and she had known she was too late.

That was the first time she had believed, truly believed, what had been written down in that journal. She'd been guilty for weeks after that, searched for Toto every chance she could to ask her why? Why her, why not someone else, why not an adult that could actually do things, instead of a useless child like herself?

Irony was such a bitter pill to swallow down.

She wasn't sure what had caused the accident - as a child, she hadn't cared beyond her own failure, and as an adult she hadn't researched it, hadn't paid any attention to the news article on the crash beyond what it might mean for Jack Joyce's psyche to have lost his parents so young when it became evident they were going to have to work together - it could have been a sharp corner taken to fast, they could have hit some ice slightly wrong, their brakes could have locked up. Beth just didn't know.

But if she got them to pull over, even for just a little while, she might have changed something enough to prevent it.

-o-

"Ugh, the weather's getting so much worse. I really don't like the idea of William in that warehouse of his in this cold. Maybe after we've got Jack we could go pick him up, too?"

"Will's a grown man, Kath. If he wants to come home he'll come home, if he wants to catch cold he'll live in that warehouse, and we'll see him in the hospital for some Christmas pneumonia."

"You're not nearly as funny as you think you are, Anthony."

"Still pretty hilarious, though."

"Well, you're lucky your sense of humour isn't why I married you."

"Oh? What did you marry me for then, my darling?"

"That leather jacket of yours, of course. Your shoulders look just heavenly in it - Anthony, look out!"

-o-

Beth is panting, breath hard and fast, and the world is cause and effect stop motion now, and every second is just another domino, another piece in the giant, fucked up Rube Goldberg machine that is life.

Jack had mentioned, in 2016, that Paul had said that when he'd first arrived in this time he'd tried to stop a man's suicide that they had witnessed when they were younger. Instead, he'd caused the man to fall to his death.

The weather had been steadily getting worse, she'd noticed hours ago, and that taken in hand with the setting sun hidden behind grey clouds led to some very poor visibilty.

In trying to prevent the deaths of Anthony and Katheryn Joyce, she'd actively caused them.

She's not just panting now, she's gasping, sobs ripping through her throat as the inevitability of everythings crashes down on her all at once, she just orphaned an eleven year old boy, the man she had become friends with, grown close to in 2016, the man who would fix the future, who would spend Christmas with her in 1999 - driven a wedge between two brothers she cared for deeply; and it's real, it's happenning, the Fracture cannot be avoided, the past cannot be changed, she had given up her life in the pursuit of nothing but failure.

Time was one big loop, and they were just puppets on strings, trapped within the cycle.

Across the road from her, from where she was sprawled in the fresh fallen powder, was the flipped car of Anthony Joyce, he and his wife burning with it.

There was no point trying to pull them out of the wreckage. If there was one thing she remembered about that small memorial article, it was that they were dead upon impact, their necks snapping as the car flipped.

Beth heaved herself to her feet. Serene would have known about this too, could be stalking the area for her for all she knew. She couldn't risk being caught, not now.

And so she fled, leaving behind her a trail of footsteps quickly covered up by the still falling snow, and a trail of tears.

-x-

It surprises Jack that the funeral wasn't the worst thing.

Held on December 24th, the most depressing Christmas Eve Jack has ever had, the sky dawns blue and cloudless for once, the snow on the ground sparkling like frosted diamond powder under the light of the pre-noon sun.

Dressed in black, formal clothes, provided by Paul's parents (who had stood just behind him and Will as the coffins were lowered into the lot in the cemetery grounds; Paul had stood next to him and let him cling to his arms when he felt like he couldn't support his own weight anymore) Jack had simply stared silent and blank throughout the funeral, no longer truly caring about anything. Afterwards, when the few people that had gathered to pay their respects that weren't 'close friends or family' had begun to leave, Jack took a deep breath, shoved Paul's arm away from him, and says, "I need to be alone for a while."

For a moment, Paul looks ready to protest, but his parents lay a hand each on his shoulders, holding him in place. Paul sends a pleadin look Will's way, but Will isn't paying any attention. He's been all but catatonic since the authorities had managed to track him down after the...accident; hasn't spoken a single word, at least not to Jack.

Not. A. Word.

And Jack loves Paul, he really does, and it feels good to know that there's someone there for him since his brother is so absolutely useless, but right now he really wants to be alone. Maybe scream a bit.

So, he wanders down and through the cemetery, winding his way past various headstones and tombs, not really seeing anything.

At least, not until a little red-headed girl comes bowling right into him.

As they straighten from their near tumble and back away from eachother, Jack realises she isn't actually that little, just kind of short. He thinks he recognises her a bit from one of the grades below his, maybe he saw her at a sports carnival or something.

She squeaks as she sees him, and her eyes flick between the space behind him he knows is the lot his parents have been buried in, and Jack himself, standing directly in front of her.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she tells him solemnly, and Jack just blinks at her, dressed in all black and respectful; her tone completely serious as though she is personally pained by the loss of his parents, rather than reciting from Hallmark card.

Jack doesn't want to talk to anyone, doesn't want stock geeric condolences no matter how sincere. But he also doesn't want to hurt a girls feelings by spewing the venom he can feel building up, doesn't want to disapoint his father and mother who always taught him to be kind and polite.

So instead he grunts, and gently shoulders his way past her, feeling her eyes track him, boring into the back of his head until he is well and truly out of sight.

No, the funeral isn't the worst part. It's the aftermath, and knowing that he's alone now.

-x-

Beth blinks as he walks away, hands fisting in her dark skirts to feel the hard outline of Toto's notebook, it's presence reassuring her like her Padmington Bear used to.

Jack, she thinks and stares down at the ground, caught halfway between melt-moist and still frozen. She wonders, kind of morbidly, just how hard it was to dig into the frozen ground to bury the coffins.

She's determined, now, to do all she can to stop and fix what Toto has warned her of. She still hasn't figured out why her, and she doesn't even know what she's doing now, really - when she'd told her mother she'd wanted to come to the cemetery today to pay her respects to the Joyce family she'd been stared at like she'd hit her head getting out of bed that morning.

'But you don't even know them,' her mother had put up a token protest, before letting out a grumbling sigh and telling her to get into her darkest Sunday best.

But Anthony and Katheryn Joyce's deaths were far from the worst thing Toto's journal had predicted. After those first few pages, personal writing, with messages meant to keep her upbeat, she thinks, the rest of the notebook is filled with facts, what her mother would call 'hard data' for her to work with. Dates, times, how pages on large corporations and investments that would be wise to make as she got older. It's her life, plotted out on a page, if she wants it.

And she does. She does want it, even though she's only eight and hasn't even finished school yet. She wants to help people, has only ever wanted to help people, and this notebook could be her way to help lots.

There are still people gathered around the fresh graves of the Joyce couple - Paul Serene she recognises, but the others she doesn't. She'd come to say sorry, but after how Jack had been acting, maybe it would be best if she just left alone.

-x-

Will takes in a deep breath, and holds it, feeling the pressure build in his lungs but refusing to break. A painful twinge resonates from his shoulder, where the bullet the man from the future Beth had simply reffered to as 'Monarch,' refusing to reveal his identity (which Will had understood, no need to pollute the timeline more than they already had), had shot him almost a year earlier, now.

That period of recovery, a fortnight spent under the careful and forceful watch of his mother, was probably not only the longest time he had spent with his family in the past few years; it was quite possibly the last time he'd interacted with his family as a whole.

Jack was upstairs now, crying in his room. Will knew because he'd gone up earlier to see if Jack was hungry yet (the neighbourhood had made sure they had a fridge stocked with a veritable platoon of casseroles), and had then lost the heart to do so and had simply backed away downstairs as all he heard from the firmly shut door was broken sobs, hitching, uneven and partially muffled by both door and what Will was presuming was either a blanket or a pillow.

It wasn't like he could blame him. Jack was only eleven years old, and he, a full grown adult, very much wanted to start crying right now.

"I'm sorry."

The voice comes from behind him, soft and low so as not to carry through the house, but Will still jumps about a mile in the air, and it is pure luck that he doesn't automatically let out a shout of surprise as he whirls around to face the speaker.

Beth Wilder stands in the shadows, leaning against the wall with her arms rossed over her chest. "Merry Christmas," she smiles weakly, her face set, like she knows what's coming.

"You knew," Will says, his voice as quiet as he could possibly make it, not wanting to disturb Jack. "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you? That's why you left that night."

Beth hesitates, body twitching as she makes a quickly aborted move to step towards him. "I tried to prevent it," she says. "I failed. I'm sorry."

Will shakes his head. "Don't - just don't be. I've been studying the chronon field for the past - nearly three years now, I think? - and the past has already happened. You knowing the future just gives you a different perspective, it doesn't mean you can prevent things that have already happened." He looks at her; seriously, consideringly, and wonders what she sees in his eyes. Are they red? Do they show the tears he hasn't let fall yet? "If you can't accept that, life will be very difficult for you here, Beth," he finishes quietly.

Beth swallows. "I'll be fine. What about you? Are you okay, right now?"

"I will be," Will says with a certainty he doesn't truly feel. "I'd be more worried about Jack, honestly."

Beth jerks, her entire body twitching. "Jack," she says slowly, as if sounding out the name as her shoulders hunch.

Beth has never met his little brother, as far as Will knows; can't recall really talking about him even - but something about her in that seond makes him want to ask a question logic tells him is ridiculous even as it's simultaneously not.

'Do you know my brother, in that future you come from?'

But as a knock sounds from the front door, pulling them both from the moment of time they had found themselves suspended in together, Will knows he can't ask that, not now, when grief is still raw and it honestly doesn't matter.

Beth, behind him, is tense and half-crouching low, hands brusing against the walls as she slowly begins to back up the stairway. She's being paranoid, more than likely, because why would the man she refers to simply as 'Monarch,' refusing to tell him so much as the name of the man from her future who had shot him, be knocking at his door right now?

(Granted, he did seem to want access to the time machine, the reason he had listened to Beth and relocated all his research to a location unknown to anyone else as fast as humanly possible, considering the bullet wound in his shoulder and the panicking mother watching over him, but Will still doubted a polite knock would be how he introduced himself.)

But he can't talk her out of her paranoia, and he can't wait much longer, the knocking growing louder and more frequent. He simply hopes that the noise doesn't reach Jack, at least not enough to make him come downstairs and see the woman crouching on their stairs with a gun looped through her belt, and walks to the end of the entrance hall and pulls open the door.

A gust of frigid winter air blows in, swirling around the shivering Paul Serene that stands there.

'What do you want,' is the first thing that pops into Will's mind, before a voice that sounds suspiciously like his mother's whispers back 'that's rude.'

And besides, even to Will, completely oblivious in most situations involving things other than quantum physics, it's obvious what the young, dark haired boy shivering on his front porch wants.

"Jack's upstairs,"Will says as he pull the door open wider, letting Paul in as he hopes Beth has made herself scarce from the stairway.

Paul nods as he makes his way down the hall. He and Will have never really got along - not that they were hostile to eachother, more that Will didn't have the time and Paul was almost frostily neutral towards him, when he wasn't being, quite frankly, creepy. Kids just a year older than his younger brother shouldn't have eyes like that, or smiles like that. The Serene's are a large and important family, especially to Riverport, whose main income source is export and shipping; industrial careers - and Paul has been in the limelight since he was born. He wears that smile like Will does an old pair of mismatched socks - far too comfortably.

"I'll make sure he gets something to eat," Paul says, smiling at Will over his shoulder as he begins to climb up the - thankfully empty - stairs, and continues, "I don't know if you were really listening at the funeral - Jack wasn't - but if you think you'll have issues, my parents are happy to help. Jack's like family."

Will wants to protest, wants to insist that he can take care of his brother perfectly fine, thanks - but this is a twelve year old boy simply offering something to help his best friend, not one of the social workers Will has been arguing with for the past two days about his ability to look after an eleven year old boy, trying to seperate him from his brother.

And really, he can't do this alone, not really. He barely knows how to look after himself, let alone someone not even old enough to drive yet. And he and Jack are both grieving, stuck in this awkward space of not really acknowledging eachother because it just hurts so much, and Will needs to keep working on the countermeasure. He hasn't gotten a solid equation yet, but even once he does it will take literal years to complete. He might not have the time to watch over Jack, not with the impending Fracture hanging over his head.

So, he smiles tightly at Paul and gestures him upstairs. "I'll call you parents later," he promises. "Once things have settled down a bit."

Paul smiles brightly at him, blue eyes shining, and all but runs up the stairs.

Huh. Maybe the enthusiasm will be good for Jack to spend some time around. It probably wouldn't hurt, at the very least.

"So that's Paul Serene, huh?" Beth's voice comes from behind him, once again, and this time Will can't hold back the startled cry of 'Jesus,' that breaks from his throat.

Beth sends him an apologetic smile as she slinks out of the kitchen via the hall doorway leading to it, her gaze and attention still mostly focused on the ceiling above them - upstairs.

"Uh - yeah," Will says, hand pressed to his chest in an instinctual attempt to calm his racing heart. It hits him then, blinking at her, just how weird that question is. "Do you - uh, do you - know him?"

Beth straightens, scowls briefly before blanking her face, an expression similar to a grimace flitting across as she shakes her head. "Jack did. And I sort of recognise him from childhood - he was a few grades above me, but we went to the same school." She casts a pensive gaze upwards. "He's...different," she says finally, something grudging in her tone.

"Different?" Will asks, blinks at the roof. "That's how Paul's always been."

Beth exhales a soft 'huh,' before shrugging her shoulders. "People change, I guess," she says. "It's how time works."

"I think it's more that perspective shifts," Will confides. "The core of who you are doesn't change, even with time."

Beth's gaze is heavy and unreadable as she meets his, eye to eye. "Well," she says slowly. "I sincerely hope you're wrong."

Curiosity burns within him, briefly melting away some of the frozen numbness that has invaded his body for the past two days as his own scientific mind sense a debate, a discussion and shoves aside the grief for a moment, but Beth has become closed off now, shifting uncomfortably as she clearly prepares to leave.

"I'll see you after the new year, Will," she says as she pushes past him towards the front door.

Will goes to protest - the countermeasure can't wait, not even for a week - but Beth whirls around and stabs a finger directly into his face, the expression on hers reminding him painfully that this woman was always armed with at least one gun. "If you leave Jack alone right now," she says slowly, carefully, enunciating each word like his mum used to when she wanted to make sure there was absolutly no chance he could claim no to have understood her, "I will shove my gun up your ass and empty the clip into it."

Will gulps, automatically raises his hands to his chest in a gesture of surrender. Beth's face softens, slightly, and she lets her hand fall back to her side. "You shouldn't be alone right now, either," she says. "The two of you need eachother right now. You're..." her face saddens, a shadows crossing her eyes. "You're all the other has left."

And then she's gone, eyes flicking behind him as noises originating from the upstairs grow louder, closer, the front door swinging shut behind her as she exits, the cold air filling the hall the only proof Will wasn't just visited by a ghost.

"Was someone here?"

It's Paul's voice, and he's coming down the stairs, his hand reaching behind him to loop with one of Jack's, pulled out from the blanket that he has wrapped around him, hiding his face.

"Just one of the neighbours," Will says, blinking at the sight before him. "Condolences." Paul nods like this makes perfect sense (which it kind of does - normally Will can't lie with any degree of success, so even with something as basic as this, it's an accomplishment) as he gently tugs Jack towards the kitchen, somehow achieving in five minutes what Will hadn't managed in two days, with the exception of the funeral - which had mostly been Mrs. Serene, to be completely truthful.

He follows the two younger boys into the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe as Paul gives Jack a gentle shove towards the dining chairs and table, and turns towards the fridge packed full pyrex dishes covered in alfoil.

"Is this lasagne?" Paul mutters to himself, pulling the corner of one of the covers up as he browses the fridge. "Hey, Jack, feel like lasagne?"

An indestinguishable grumble comes from the blanketed cocoon that is Will's younger brother, slumped against the heavy, chipped oak of the table, followed by two words croaked out in a voice hoarse from crying. "Not hungry."

Paul nods to himself. "So, lasagne," he says cheerfully, pulling the dish out and pulling the foil off. "I'll put extra cheese on it for you and everything. Um..." he sends and uncertain look Will's way. 'What do I do now?' his expression screams.

'You're asking me?' He thinks incredulously. How should he know?

Then again, Paul is only twelve years old. If there's one person out of the three currently gathered in Katheryn Jocye's cottage styled kitchen that would know how to reheat a casserole properly, it really should be the legal adult.

"Those dishes are good for the oven," Will says. "And the foil on top will be fine - it's not like a micorwave; that's radiation, which is why - ah. Just crank it to 200 for fifteen minutes, should be fine."

Paul nods seriously, and begins busying himself around the kitchen, pulling out a block of cheese and a grater. Feeling slightly useless and out of place in his own home, Will walks over to the old gas stove his mother had always been fiercly adamant about, refusing the electric one their father had wanted so badly after one large gas bill too many had been delivered to the Joyce household, turning it on to pre-heat as he closes the oven door back up.

Twenty minutes later, the three of them are sitting around the table - Jack, still huddled and silent under his blankets, the only sign of his existence the hand and fork that slowly scoop up mouthful after mouthful, before pulling the food back under the blanket; Paul, watching Jack like a hawk, only eating when Jack hesitates too long to take another bite; and Will, not hungry but eating anyway, observing the two preteens completely ignoring him at the other end of the table.

He has until the new year - until the new millenium, and after that he has to go back to working on the countermeasure. He can't just put it off, not for any reason.

Jack is hunched and small and so much younger than his eleven years make him seem right now, and Will only has one real week left with his brother, because time and the world is more important than a grieving and broken family of two.

"I'm an awful human being," Will muses out loud, taking another bite of lasagne as he settles deeper into his seat, very much not paying attention to how Jack startles, the lump of blanket Will thinks covers his head turning in his direction; ignoring how Paul stills, glancing at him aside in a way that clearly questions his mental stability.

Will can't help it. He laughs. It's bitter and it's pained and it's somewhat hysterical, but he laughs.

-x-

On Christmas morning Jack wakes up both numb and cold.

He's on the couch, sprawled out over Will's lap and elbows, with Paul in turn curled into him on top of his back. Blinking, he pushes himself up to see the blanket he had been wrapped in the night before had fallen to the floor at some point, and as he attempts to wriggle out of the mess of elbows and knees he had been buried in, he recalls that they had been watching some move the night before - he hadn't been paying much attention, and must have fallen asleep.

As he finally manages to crawl to an even colder freedom, the air in the house frigid (none of them had remembered to keep the fire stoked that night), Paul makes a grumbling sound as his rest is disturbed, but remains sleeping, falling down with Jack no longer there to support him, face planted in the cushion of the couch just by Will's knee.

Neither of them look very comfortable, Jack muses, and wonders what had woken him.

The answer to his question comes immediately, in the form of a knock at the door. Shivering, still chilled and numb both inside and out, Jack makes his way to the front door and pulls it open.

Standing there, wrapped in warm brown wools and a bright red silk scarf, is Ada Serene. Her dark hair is a mess of wind and snowflakes, her cheeks bright red from the cold, but she still smiles brilliantly at Jack, her blue eyes gentle as she looks over him.

"What do you think you're doing, dressed like that in this weather?" she scolds as she walks inside, pulling the door shut behind her. She tugs off her jacket and scarf, but instead of placing them on the coatrack behind her, positioned next to the doorway, she wraps them both around Jack, firmly buttoning the jacket up to his chin with a nod. "It's freezing in here," she continues, "do you boys want to get sick? Now, you go wake those lazybones up, and I'll make us some hot chocolate." She reaches out to ruffle his hair. "Merry Christmas, Jack."

-x-

"How's the fire going?"

Crouched down by the stone fireplace his father had always refused to replace with an electrical or gas heating system, Will turns his head, looking back over his shoulder to see Ada Serene leaning against the lounge doorway. Behind her, from down the hall in the kitchen, he can hear sounds of voices - of laughter - as Paul and Jack compete to see how many marshmallows they can melt into their hot chocolate.

"It's, uh - it's going," Will says, brushing off his hands on his jeans as he stands, accepting the mug of hot chocolate she offers him with a nod of thanks. "Should warm up in here a bit faster now," his voice filled with chagrin, he blushes. "I was, ah - distracted, last night."

Ada waves him off, a smile on her face as she takes another sip of her drink, humming around the lip of the mug. "It's okay, Will," she tells him. "It's understandable, and no-one expects you to be perfect." She steps further into the room, placing her drink down on the coffee table as she sits on the couch Will had been asleep on not even fifteen minutes earlier (and his aching back does not thank him for it). "You should come over to our house," she says. "No-one should be alone for Christmas - and just listen to them. Has Jack been this happy for days?"

No. He hasn't - not since their parents died has Jack been this happy. It seems that all Jack needs right now isn't a brother, family, to remind him of what has been lost - but a friend, someone to distract him from thoughts and feelings and fill an ever-growing void that lies within him, now.

Will isn't petty enough to feel jealous - maybe just relief. Even if he can't help his little brother, can barely help himself...well. At least someone can.

"Christmas," Will mutters out loud, the realization hitting him. He tilts his head back as he, too, slumps into the couch, tries to bury himself with the cushions, and presses the heels of his palms hard into his eyes.

"What is it?"

"Our presents are upstairs," Will says blankly. "From our parents."

"Oh." Ada's voice is a whisper, unreadable. "Do you think we should tell Jack? Or do you want to wait a while?"

Will shrugs helplessly, swallows tightly and tries not to cry as Ada places a comforting hand on his shoulder. There's not that much of an age difference between them, barely ten years (the same age gap between him and Jack) - but in that moment, she reminds him so strongly of his mother that it's physically painful. He doesn't know what he wants, what he thinks they should do - but if he isn't ready, then how could Jack be?

(a voice in the back of his mind whispers that they are very, very different people, but he pays no attention to it. He isn't ready.)

"Maybe...just leave it, for now? I feel like it would be too soon, just at this moment." His gaze searches Ada's for guidance, and she gives him a small, soft smile.

"If that's what you think, Will," she says. "Then you should trust in it. You're his older brother, after all."

Will nods, and tries not to show how frightened those words make him. Once, big brother meant things like helping Jack clean up his messes before their parents found out, and helping Jack struggle through algebra when he was home. Now, it means legal guardian. Now, it means responsibility and liability and the overwhelming fear that he is going to fuck it up, a tidal wave reaching a crescendo, a breaking point, before crashing down on him and washing him out to sea with no lifeboat.

He's only twenty-one years old. He can't raise his brother alone. Especially not with the countermeasure and the oncoming Fracture in time looming over his head.

'2016,' Beth had told him. October of 2016 was when the Fracture would hit. Objectively, almost seventeen years seemed like a long time. In reality, far from it, and Will wasn't even close to being able to so much as start building a prototype of the damn thing. He couldn't balance both Jack and the countermeasure, at least not alone.

So, he straightens in his seat a little, rotating his shoulders in an attempt to ease the aching running through his spine. "Thank you," he says to Ada. "Dinner at yours sounds great."

[-X-]

"So, what do you think, Will?" Anthony Joyce's green eyes lit up with amusement as he gazed down at his ten-year-old son. "Is your little sibling going to be a bear man, or a penguin man?" He shakes the stuffed animals he holds as he says this; the fluffy blue penguin in his left hand staring at Will soullessly as the brown bear in his right dangles limp and helpless.

Will shakes his head silently, pushing past his father to peruse the wide wall of stuffed animal himself. Mum had sent them on a mission, and he would complete it properly.

Chuckling quietly, shaking his head in blatant amusement at the serious expression on his eldest child's face, Anthony placed down the stuffed animals he had picked up, and steps in to stand next to his son.

"I think he'll like an animal from a faraway place," Will says.

"Hmm," Anthony hums, considering. "Penguins are from a faraway place." The flat look Will gives him is adorable. "You don't agree?" He asks.

"We're not getting him the penguin," Will says. "Something warmer."

Anthony's eyes skip over row upon row of rainbow coloured horses, to rest upon a section of plush and quilted safari animal. "Hey," he says, and crouches down to point. "How about that?"

Will zeroes in on the target his father has pointed out almost immediately, and stalks over to inspect it. Lifting it from its place on the shelf, Will pokes at it, squeezes it, shakes it hard, as if testing its resilience and Anthony is trying his hardest not to break down in hysterical laughter. "Well, Inspector Joyce?" He asks, suppressed mirth in his voice. "Does it pass muster?"

Nodding seriously, Will holds the stuffed giraffe to his chest tightly. "I think Jack will like it," he says.

-x-

His hands are shaking, Paul realizes.

It's been happening more frequently, lately - these strange fits of utter stillness coming over him, followed by an uncontrollable, unfeeling twitch throughout his entire body.

Nerves? He wonders. Stress, or something worse? Something chronon related?

He can't be sure - and the only person in this time period who would probably have even the slightest clue is also the man he had shot months earlier, someone he couldn't come into contact with - wouldn't come into contact with, not without polluting the timeline.

But of course, polluting the timeline was a physical impossibility. What had happened, had happened. Even if he was currently living in this current temporal plane of 1999, his own temporal existence was that of 2016, and always would be. Thus, the plane he lived in would always be the past to him, and as long as someone from another temporal plane existed within the Meyer-Joyce field of one that was past to them, the world was locked on course for the future, their present.

The fact that Monarch Solutions had existed in the 2016 Paul had come from meant that this was always meant to happen. It was going to happen.

Paul couldn't prevent the End of Time. For all his new strengths, that was far from within his power - it would take someone or something capable of rewriting the laws of the universe on a metaphysical level to do that, to wind back the clock ticking to then inevitable breakdown of the Meyer-Joyce field.

It would take a god - and Paul had never deluded himself to such a level, never would.

But he can prepare for the End of Time, gather the most brilliant minds and bodies of the field and get them to study the field, the chronons; prepare tech and housing that would protect them from that hell on earth Paul had spent months trapped in, not living, merely surviving.

His hands still as he fists them by his sides, walking down crowded streets with a light snow falling, dressed in a pale gray wool suit that matches the palette of the afternoon sky.

Riverport had changed, he muses, and he had forgotten just how much, over the years. As a child it had been more of a large town, less of a city, the industrial area - the company workshop and warehouses - the only truly large places of employment, and with no big tourist attractions to pull in new people, the population barely numbered one-thousand. They didn't even have a subway, like most cities did - just an aboveground train-track service that ran through the city, made for goods and cargo but would also carry people around for the right price.

It hadn't been until Monarch had arrived in the early 2000s that Riverport had boomed, a new wave of technology and influence ahead of the curve opening up thousands of new jobs. The city had expanded almost overnight, all but tripling in size.

He was the one that was going to do that, Paul thought. He was the one that was going to change the small town-trying-to-be-a-city he had grown up in into one of America's most profitable locales.

He smiled.

Maybe working against the End of Time won't be so bad after all.

-x-

"Your father is sorry, you know," Beth's mother raises an eyebrow at her daughter from across the table. "If he could have made it, he would, but since he hasn't can you please stop playing with your food and just eat it?"

Beth frowns moodily, but doesn't huff like she wants to. Her mother will not shy away from making her eat soap for dinner if she thinks she's being given cheek. "It's Christmas," she mutters. "Any other day of the year is fine, but he's supposed to be home for Christmas."

Her mother smiles sadly. "He wants to be here, with us," she reassures. "But you get double-weekend, overtime pay and a bonus if you work through the Christmas period, and-"

"-and we need the money, I know," Beth grumbles, swinging her feet in a series of fast kicks under the table.

"Next Christmas," Her mother says reaching across to nudge at her until she takes a forkful of turkey, a reluctant smile spreading across her face as she begins to giggle quietly. "I promise, we'll all be together next Christmas, okay?"

Beth, who has been very subdued for the past few days, stills suddenly with her eyes wide, and her mother can't know this - has no way to know this - but Beth is seeing the flashing red-and-blue of sirens and lights; the metallic scent of gasoline on twisted, burning metal.

But the little girl nods, and they link their pinkies together.

It is a promise.

-x-

The sound of the pump chugging as it empties the pool is nothing but a source of tension for Beth.

Since the last time she had seen William, several days earlier on Christmas Eve, she had been half-expecting him to come into the swimming hall despite her orders to the contrary, because Will was a man who would rather bury himself in his work then feel what he saw as problematic, or 'difficult to understand.'

(for a man with a scientific mind, he sure could have a narrow view.)

But he hadn't, to her pleasant surprise, meaning that even if it was at worst awkward, at least the two brothers were spending some time together. God knew they wouldn't be over the years to come.

(She hadn't seen Jack yet, had been deliberately avoiding it - part of it was the guilt she felt over Anthony and Katheryn, but even before that, it was the simple fact that in 2016 she had been attracted enough to Jack Joyce as an adult, a man older than her, that seeing him now, as a child, was simply too bizarre for her mind to comprehend. And even more than that, for however short a time they had actually known each other, that time had been...intense, to say the least, and they had grown close, fairly quickly. For Beth, having spent most of her life from her teen years on without much in the way of human contact, instead focusing on training and rising the ranks within Monarch, Jack Joyce had been one of the few people in existence that she had chosen to label as friend, her own words written in the journal she had been given as a child convincing her that he could be trusted. Knowing this, feeling this, Beth didn't know if she could stand seeing those eyes - in however young a face - staring at her without recognition.)

She's alone in the swimming hall, for now, but that doesn't mean it will remain that way for long. It's New Year’s Eve, 1999, and the clock is slowly, inexorably, ticking towards midnight and the new millennium.

"Ha," she chuckles as she settles in what had been some sort of administrative office when the hall had functioned as a business. "Happy Y2K to me."

The pump is still chugging away in the background, the pool half empty, now - she'll scrub it out tomorrow, before refilling it and giving herself a nice, rewarding, 'you made it to 2000,' swim. After the End of Time, she hasn't had much chance to relax, spending most of her time on edge and paranoid. She deserves a swim.

She flicks the small T.V. Will had given her on, laughing internally as she always did at the aerial positioned above it. It's almost as funny as the phones and internet of this time, and as Buffy the Vampire Slayer begins to play on her screen, still only a series of reruns as she would watch in her own time rather than new episodes airing, which is comforting, a little piece of her 2016 New Year’s traditions she can bring into the past with her.

Tomorrow, it will be back to work. Will will begin work on the countermeasure, moving back into his warehouse on the dry-docks on her recommendation so as to not lead Paul Serene, the man he knows as 'Monarch,' here when he inevitably begins the search for him and his time machine. For now, Paul has left them mostly alone, too concerned with gathering influence and money to himself to waste time searching for them - but within the next year, that will all change. 2001 was the first real big 'boom,' for Monarch - and once Serene has men under his command, he could have them trawling through the city at all hours, taking shifts, looking for her, for the machine.

Bradbury Swimming Hall has no connection to Will whatsoever. Not on paper, and perhaps even better - not in sentimentality. Paul Serene knew Will, after all - had known the man his whole life, almost. And if he could never remember Will mentioning such a place, even in passing, it would be given no more than a cursory look.

Beth just thanks her lucky stars that they managed to get the machine and all of Will's research notes moved before Serene started bribing people around town to spy for him. Those stars have been mostly useless all throughout her life, after all, and it's about damn time she caught a break.

-x-

It is in June of 2000 that Will comes home, properly home, for the first time in months. Burying himself in his work again, Jack had been lucky if he had managed to catch so much as a glimpse of his brother more than once a week.

Well. It’s not every day that your younger brother turns twelve, Jack muses.

Over the past few months, Jack has spent probably an equal amount of time at their family house as Will, all but living at the Serene house, sharing a room with Paul.

There is an awkward silence between the two brothers as they stand in the cold and dusty lounge room, observing each other and all the ways they have changed.

Jack is taller, his hair longer – the longest it has been since his early childhood. Without their mother cutting it, he has let it grow out. There are the hints of pimples on his cheeks, and during his greeting, his voice had cracked. It is with no small thrill of terror (and a little sadness) that Will realizes puberty has hit his younger brother. Jack is growing up.

Will is older (well, of course) – but the thing is, he looks it, too. Jack stares at the lines that have creased their way across his brother’s face, takes in the worn clothes, messy hair and tired eyes. Just what has Will been doing, to age himself like this?

It’s Will who makes the first move to break the awkward silence that had been building, to Jack’s surprise. “Ah – here,” he says, shoving out his arms towards Jack, holding in them a plain box. “Happy birthday.”

Feeling mild disbelief that Will had actually remembered to get him a present, Jack cautiously reached out for the box, and tugged it down to the floor, where dust poofed up into the air as it impacted with the shag carpet.

“Mum would kill us if she could see this house now,” Jack mutters under his breath, but he must’ve been louder than he thought, because William hears him and hums in agreement.

“We’ve really let it fall into disrepair, haven’t we?” he asks, gazing up at the ceiling where mold has begun to spread.

“Ha, yeah,” Jack lets out a quiet laugh. “Maybe we should try and fix it up a bit today, while we’re both here.”

Will raises an eyebrow as he lowers himself to sit on the ground by his brother and the box, reclining on his elbows and completely ignoring the dust that marks streaks on his clothes. “You want to clean,” he says in disbelief, “You, on your birthday.”

Jack shrugs. “Nothing better to do.”

“What about Paul?” Will asks. “Or any of your other friends from school? If you wanted to go to lunch, or have them over and order a pizza or something, I don’t mind paying. It’s your birthday, Jack.”

“I’ll hang with Paul later, anyway,” Jack dismisses. “And if I were to invite anyone over, we’d still have to clean first.” He sends Will a teasing smile. “You can’t fool me,” he says. “I know you just want to get out of scrubbing the bathroom.”

“You’ve got me,” Will admits, laughing. “But, hey – wait. Why am I doing the bathroom?”

“Because it’s my birthday.”

Will sighs. “Of course,” he says, and squints at Jack. “You going to open your present?”

Jack reaches out for the box, dragging it into his lap as it leaves a grooving trail in the dust soaked carpet. “What is it?” he asks, picking at the plain brown packing tape keeping the cardboard shut.

“I’m not going to tell you,” Will says. “Open it, and find out.”

“Fine. Give me your keys,” Jack demands.

“You can’t open it yourself?”

“Just give me the keys, Will.”

Sighing in a put upon way, Will reaches one arm around to dig through his pockets, and pulls out a ring of keys that jingled as he shook them. “Here,” he says, passing them to Jack, who pokes at them.

“What are all of these for?” He asks, frowning at the keys.

“Storage lockers, mostly,” Will says. “Crime is pretty common at the dry-docks, so I have to keep everything locked up pretty much all the time.”

“Huh,” Jack says, and stabs the key that he knows is for the house into the groove down the center of the strip of brown tape, cutting through it with ease. He pulls open the flaps of the box, and stills. “Is this…” he trails off quietly halfway through the question, and pulls out the brown leather jacket with shaking hands.

“It’s Dad’s, yeah,” Will answers, his voice subdued. “I found it in their room after Christmas. Thought it would be a good present for you.”

Jack, silent, shakes his head. “You should have it,” he argues. “You’re older.”

“If only that argument worked for me all the time,” Will sighs, turning his gaze heavenward as he slumps down to lie, back flat, on the floor. “I got my body from Mum’s side,” he says. “I’ve seen photos of Dad when he was younger – you’ll grow into that jacket pretty well, Jack.”

“I thought…” Jack hesitates. “I thought he was wearing this when they came to pick me up.”

Will shrugs. “I would’ve, too, if I hadn’t found the jacket,” he says. “Dad never went anywhere without wearing that. Mum must’ve forced him to wear a warmer coat or something.”

Jack’s hands fist around the leather of the jacket his father had worn for literally longer than he could remember. It’s cold right now, fresh from the box Will has kept it in for months, now – but even old and worn, the leather is supple, flexible, and will suck in body warmth as quickly as a good blanket. Jack had always loved this jacket – it was synonymous with home and safety and Dad, and Jack can feel the beginning heat of tears starting to prick at his eyes as his throat tightens, a lump forming.

It’s been – not easy, not really, but he can’t think of a better term – to just not think of the fact that his parents are gone, that his family is halved. It’s gotten easier over the months since Christmas (though he’s certain he’ll always hate the holiday) to think about them, to not have the grief he still feels so strongly be a crashing wave, a dragging weight that drowns him in darkness alone. But – now. Looking at the jacket, his father’s jacket, feeling the leather twist as his grip tightens and hearing it creak – for the first time since Christmas, something of those numb walls Jack has put up breaks, and he starts to cry.

Will is making alarmed noises in the background as he sits up to reach for Jack, spilling out frantic questions as Jack slams himself into his brother and cries into his chest.

Will stills, before slowly wrapping arms around his younger brother. “Are you okay, Jack?” he asks.

“They’re gone,” Jack says blankly, voice muffled with his face still pressed into Will’s shirt. “And they’re really not coming back.”

For a second, Will is quiet. Then, “I’m sorry, Jack.”

Blinking, Jack disengages himself from his brother. “Why? It’s not like it’s your fault.” Jack sniffs, rubs a sleeve across his eyes.

Will shakes his head. “I should be around more often,” he said. “It’s just that work-”

“Its fine, Will,” Jack interjects. “If it bothered me, I’d let you know.”

But it bothers Will, bothers him that the two of them are growing further apart so soon after their parents are gone. It scares Will, because he knows some of what is coming, and he doesn’t want his brother to leave him behind, or get hurt from the fallout.

But he can’t say any of that, so instead he smiles weakly, stands and offers a hand to Jack, to pull him to his feet.

“So were you serious about that cleaning thing?” he asks. “Because if you want to go down to the bakery and spend a couple of hours picking out a cake, I would totally understand.”

Jack smiles, eyes still red from crying but crying no longer. “Cake later,” he says. “Clean now.”

-x-

After Jack's birthday, things grow more frantic. The clock is ticking down towards the Fracture, never stopping, never slowing, and though Will is close - so close he can feel the answer hovering just out of reach, frustratingly dim skirting the corners of his mind - he still isn't there yet. Worse, according to Beth, who has grown antsier and more paranoid by the day, completely cutting off contact with him except for the odd few times she jump scares him out of nowhere at his warehouse (he's no longer allowed inside the swimming hall), the man she calls Monarch has started to look for her, and 'watch over him.'

"He knows you're the only one that can come up with the countermeasure," Beth had said. "You need to make sure he has no reason to suspect you're already working on it as much as you are - he can't find so much as even your preliminary notes."

Another thing about Beth recently that had made Will break into a nervous sweat whenever they were in the same room was her insistence that he learn how to shoot a gun.

"You have your father's at home, don't you?" She'd asked. "I'll set up a range at the hall, and teach you how to handle at least a side-arm."

Walking into their parents room, still dusty even after his and Jack's thorough clean (neither of them had particularly wanted to spend much time in the empty room), pulling the locked case from under the bed and removing the various weapons (not just guns, but wickedly sharp knives, all sheathed but still utterly terrifying) and ammo from it, to sneak out to Beth - it had been, quite honestly, the most horrifying thing he had ever done, including lying curled on the cold ground of a dry-docks warehouse with a bullet lodged in his shoulder as strangers from the future battled it out around him. He'd kept expecting his father to show up and send a disapproving gaze his way, before barking out 'What have I told you idiots about touching my guns?'

At least Jack hadn't been home. He knew as well as Will did where their father had kept his firearms, and would likely recognize what Will was trying to smuggle out of the house.

Thankfully, after handing the guns off to Beth, he hadn't had to think of them much, though he did have a pistol kept ominously locked in a safe in his warehouse. And he was the one buying the bullets and what else that was needed for the function and upkeep of the weapons - which, since he wasn't actually buying the guns themselves, no-one questioned him, or asked him to produce a license he didn't have.

Beth had considered that Monarch - and when she mentioned that, it was always the man, not the company growing rapidly influence, power and size - may be able to guess Will was 'on to him' if he was seen buying packet after packet of bullets, but in the end the two had decided that they would just have to risk it - letting Beth be seen in public would be a move asking for far more trouble.

Will was living like a ghost - barely sleeping, barely eating, mind and life taken over by millions of equations revolving around the matter of chronons, of the Meyer-Joyce field, and how he could stabilize it once it began to break down.

The problem was, he had no idea how to do it. The field had always been stable, even constantly evolving as it had - and he had theories about that, too - it had never been significantly damaged, only changed, and naturally - like puberty, like the formation of an embryo as it grows into something else. He had no clue of how the field would act when unstable, how it would begin to break down - and thus, no honest clue on how to create something that would pull the field back together, whole and functioning once again.

If a burst of functionally active chronons - stable ones - were to be introduced to the failing field, it might just jumpstart it back into order, or at least hold the field together long enough for a more permanent solution to be found. But since the Meyer-Joyce field was one whole existence, chronons resonating off of one another; the vibrations that made up the fabric of time and space the way humans understood it - those chronons would need to come from somewhere else, something else, to be untainted by the chronons that made up the field.

Which was a physical impossibility. It would take - Will didn't know what to call it. A miracle, a paradox, a complete dead end. Any of those would fit, because without one of the first two, the third was the only option.

To fix the Meyer-Joyce field without that source of stable chronons would require rewriting the laws of the universe on a metaphysical level, making it so that time and memory and forward progression of the world and active life were not tied up intrinsically to the chronon particles, and no-one was capable of warping reality on such a level, short of maybe God.

Will sighs, staring down at the mess of scribbles that are his notes as he sighs. It's more frustrated ramblings then real trains of thought, now, and his hand is aching, covered and stained with lead and ballpoint ink. He throws the notebook down in annoyance as the pages blur, places his head in his hands as he slumps and runs a rough hand through his hair, gripping it tight from the roots as he resists the urge to scream out loud.

Goddammit, but he will figure this out. Why would Beth - a woman from the future, knowing of what would come - trust him to complete the countermeasure, if he hadn't already done it before? If he'd already figured it out once, he could do it again - no matter how long it took.

Will stares at the notebook, laying on the ground by his feet. Sighs. And picks it up.

"Materials that are conductive to chronon particles," he mutters as he begins to chew on his pencil. "Or...maybe reactive? Is there a way for me to test it..." he trails off into silence as his mind once more begins to whir back into action; a little more tiredly, a little less eagerly, but working all the same.

-x-

It is September of 2000 when Beth bursts into his warehouse, twitching and tense, and this is the first time Will has ever actually seen her use a door. He'd begun to wonder if she knew how to.

"Monarch isn't just watching you now; they're actively tracking you," she says agitatedly. "Or they're going to start, I don't know." She looks harried; frustrated and tired, and out of a habit ingrained in him by his mother, Will nearly trips over his own feet as he gets up to offer her the only chair in the warehouse - his.

She waves him off. "Can we solve this if we just - kick him back into the future?" Her voice is pleading, matching the expression on her face, but something in the tone tells Will she knows just as well as him that that won't work, even if she doesn't know precisely how.

Still, he shakes his head. "Do you know the working theory behind the Meyer-Joyce field?" He asks.

Beth blinks at him. "The field...I - no. I studied a bit about the machine, but the field itself...I have no clue."

Will nods to himself. "Beth," he says. "The future isn't real. It doesn't exist."

Beth stares at him.

"It's an abstract concept," he continues, beginning to pace as his hands cut through the air, voice rising in strength and volume. "Something humans made up, can comprehend because of higher reasoning. There is no such thing as the future."

"But I'm from the future," Beth points out dryly.

Will shakes his head in response. "No, not really," he says. “You’re from the present, a present; a present that relative to mine is the future - anything you tell me now may be knowledge of the future for me, but it's knowledge of the past for you. And it's not like you can continue to know things happening in your own time - you haven't somehow managed to magically keep in contact with 2016." He takes a breath, and walks over to the whiteboard he's been scribbling over for the past few days, different shapes wrapped round with equations overlapping one another in an inky black mess. "I've been trying to figure out what shapes would best retain pure chronon particles," he explains as he rubs the board clean. "Don't worry, it's not all that important."

Beth has followed him deeper into the warehouse, an expression of amused curiosity on her face.

"Nature doesn't really have a concept of the future, you know?" he says. "Doesn't really have a concept of the past, either. Most things just live for the now. But - the Meyer-Joyce field. It's an all-natural phenomenon, it's been around for as long as existence has, as near as I can figure - and it has a concept of the future. It acknowledges something beyond simply the now." He stares at her, trying to communicate the excitement he feels about this fact, how astounding it was when he and Elton had discovered it.

Unfortunately, disappointingly, Beth doesn't seem to feel the same. "Okay," she says, folding her arms across her chest as he uncaps as whiteboard marker. "Go on."

"Think of it like this," Will says. "The Meyer-Joyce field is a chicken."

Beth raises an eyebrow. "What?" she asks.

Will draws a line directly down the center of the board. "So, you have the field-chicken," he says, and on one side draws a large circle to represent it. "And on the other side, the eggs." Next to the large circle, but on the other side of the bisecting line, Will dabs a few small dots about. "The eggs are people, animals, life," he says. "Or rather, that's what the embryos are. The eggshells themselves are a small piece of the larger whole; they're the Meyer-Joyce field."

"You've lost me," Beth admits, staring at the board in abject confusion. Her gaze switches to Will. "So you've always used egg metaphors, huh? Why?"

Will blinks. "What?" He asks. "Ah - never mind. It's basically - time and memory are one and the same. We have a concept of memory because we have a concept of time. If we didn't realize moments were passing, why would we remember them and assign them to the little box labeled 'past' inside our minds? The Meyer-Joyce field is special in that it is the planet's memory."

With one hand, he wipes down the board before beginning to draw again, this time the double helix of a DNA strand. "This is the physical memory of a human," he says. "It's the course of evolution, writ into our bodies, and more than that it is a pattern, a map, that our biology follows. All living things have something like it - animals, plants, bacteria - they all have something in them that acts as a mechanism telling them how to grow and evolve - and the Meyer-Joyce field is no different." Next to the strand of DNA, he sketches a rough stick figure of a person, and a small globe. Encompassing each is a distinct border, connected by a dotted line. "Chronon particles are attracted to living beings more than anything else," Will says. "The higher the intelligence of the creature - the higher the cognitive reasoning - the more chronons flow around them. When humans are born, their relativity to the field is...kind of iffy," he grimaces. "But basically, whatever time you're born in, is imprinted on you by the chronons around you at that time. Humans, individually, resonate with the Meyer-Joyce field, like bouncing signals off of a radio tower."

Beth raises a hand to rub at her eyes. "I think I sort of get what you're getting at," she says. "But - continue."

"The field itself has one frequency," Will says. "It's the planetary frequency; it doesn't change. But humans are individuals; even those born on the same day are unlikely to be born within the same second, same millisecond. This makes every personal chronon frequency stamped onto their existence unique, and the field recognizes that as the frequencies resonate."

"So, the chicken," Beth says, "and the egg."

Will nods, a smile lighting up his face. "The chicken - the field - never really changes, even if it keeps producing new existences. But the people - the eggs - are each unique, even if they come from the same whole." He grows somber, the excitement in his eyes dying down a bit. "But that's what I mean, when I say that the Meyer-Joyce field has a concept of the future, unlike most naturally occurring phenomena. The chronons stay with you throughout your life, growing, changing, adapting as you do. The imprint of the life you've led is written on them, a logbook kept by particles of the planets memory. You and Monarch came from 2016 - and beyond that, from the End of Time. Since arriving in 1999, your frequency has been constantly resonating with the field here - and now it has acknowledged your time as its future-present, whereas where we are now in the timeline is its past-present. It's following the map, the pattern, written in the chronon frequencies of the two of you to reach the future-present that has already happened, in order to make sure that it does happen."

Beth's face had grown bone-white pale. "So it's our fault," she whispers, hands trembling as she backs away from William and the rough sketches on the board, her eyes wide and unseeing, seemingly unaware of her movements as she hit the wall with a faint 'oof.'

"Not really," Will attempted to reassure her. "The fact that you're here, that Monarch exists in your time, means that this was always meant to happen." He swallows. "And it sounds slightly paradoxical for me to even say this - but I think the End of Time will happen because you saw it happen - and you only saw it happen because you saw it happen."

"I - what?"

"The field read its oncoming collapse from your frequency. Over the next few years it will weaken and fail, leading to the End of Time you saw," Will tells her.

She blinks, pushes off from the wall. "But, the Fracture-" she protests.

"Will speed up the process, yes," Will says impatiently. "But regardless, the End of Time will still come, whether we manage to either prevent the Fracture or repair it after the onset. I've been keeping a close eye on the field since you arrived, and the readings are clear - it's not obvious, not by much, and certainly not unless you were deliberately looking for it - but the field is weakening little by little each day. Chronon resonance rates are dropping, too - children born after your arrival in 1999 have a severe drop in their chronon levels, as far as I can see - " he shrugs. " - haven't exactly been able to confirm that one too much, most parents aren't happy to offer up their newborns for science, surprisingly."

"Let me get this straight," Beth says. "The end of the world is coming...because we saw it happen."

"Oh, absolutely," Will nods. "And that's why taking Monarch back to your time won't do you any good."

"Because the field never changes," Beth reasons out slowly. "In any time. So - wherever I would go, wherever I would take him..."

"The field would recognize you, resonate with your frequency, and still act according to the past-present you've lived through."

It's silent for a moment as Beth ponders this, and then: "That's not fair."

Will shrugs. "Fair is for people," he says. "It's just as abstract a concept as the future is - and just because the field can acknowledge something beyond the now, doesn't mean it can understand fairness or balance. It's an incredibly sophisticated natural phenomena, yes - but it’s not sentient, Beth, and it never will be. It's a machine, a computer, just following its coding. It can't do anything else."

"But we can?" she asks.

"We can try," he answers.

-x-

It's mid-August, and the chill of the evening air is starting to have a bit of a bite to it when Will finally comes home for more than five minutes and a sandwich.

"Have you seen my keys, Jack?" he asks, all but turning the house upside down in his agitation. Jack, sitting across from Paul at the dining table, doesn't look up from the spreadsheet both of the younger boys have their heads bent over.

"Check the key hook," Jack suggests, taking one of the chicken nuggets from the large plate he and Paul have placed between them - coincidentally, the same nugget Paul had been reaching for, slapping his friend hand away with a grin and ignoring the scowl sent his way.

"Share, Jack," Paul says.

"Sure, mum," Jack laughs back.

"I found them!" Will voice echoes throughout the house. "They were on the hook."

Jack rolls his eyes. "Right where you left them," he and Paul say in unison, stifling their giggles as Will enters the kitchen.

"Chicken nuggets for dinner?" He blinks. "I'm not going to get into trouble with your mum for that, am I?" he asks Paul, who shrugs.

"She's a big believer in the five veg a day thing," the thirteen year old says, smug as the cat that got the canary, "but I won't tell her if you won't."

Will barks out a short laugh, and this is almost the most normal life has been since Christmas, Jack thinks.

"So," Will claps his hands together. "You," he points at Jack, looking at the half-filled presentation they're still working on, "have to finish your homework; whereas I have to go meet up with someone really quick. When I get back, and you're done - movie night?"

Jack stills, startled by the offer to spend time with him, let alone with Paul, who he gets the feeling his brother doesn't really get along with, but Paul, the traitor, wastes no time in jumping on the opportunity.

"Sure," he smiles happily at Will, paying no attention to Jack's death glare, homing in somewhere around the hole being burnt through his neck. "But only if I get to pick the movie. You two both have awful taste."

Will raises an eyebrow at Jack from over Paul's shoulder, as if to say, is this okay with you? And honestly, it isn't. Paul is the one with awful taste in movies - but still, he shrugs. "I guess," he says. "As long as there's popcorn, I won't complain."

"Popcorn." Will grimaces. "I'll pick up some microwavable on the way home."

After Will has walked out the door, and the sound of the car's engine has faded down the street, Jack lunges across the table so he's nose to nose with Paul.

"Why, hello," Paul says. "Nice to see you here in my personal space, Jack - you don't visit as often as you used to."

"What are you up to?" Jack speaks over Paul, narrowing his eyes at his best friend. "You were smirking. You're always planning something when you're smirking."

Paul looks unfairly amused, and Jack backs up a bit, settles back into his own chair. "I do not," Paul protests, still smiling. "And I'm not planning anything 'nefarious,' Jack - you'd think I was plotting murder with the way you're glaring at me."

"You're trying to get us to hang out with Will," Jack says, suspicion far from abated. "Why."

Paul shrugs. "He's your brother, and he's always busy," he says. "I thought you'd like to spend some time with him while he was available."

Jack blinks. "That's - that's it?"

"That's it," Paul confirms. "What'd you think I was after?"

"I don't know," Jack says. "Something. World domination."

Paul raises an eyebrow. "Because world domination," he begins in a long suffering tone, "can be achieved through making two brothers spend some quality time together. Jack - take note, we'll need to know this for our future plans."

Jack grins. "I thought we were going to take over the world with something a bit more spectacular," he says.

"Well, if you can't even finish filling out the periodic table for a presentation without reference, then I'm not sure exactly what you mean by spectacular - obviously you're not the brightest star in the sky."

Frowning, Jack chucks a nugget at Paul's face. Annoyingly, he catches it between his teeth and swallows it whole, grinning, before retaliating by launching his sharpie at Jack's nose.

"This," Jack says solemnly, standing from his chair, "means war."

-x-

"Beth?" Will calls out into the swimming hall. "Be-"

"I'm here, Jesus, be quiet." The voice comes from behind him in a hiss, and he's nudged past the doorway into the entrance proper, the large double doors creaking shut behind him.

"Are you - are you sitting here in the dark?" Will hisses out, blinking his eyes in an attempt to adjust his vision to the sudden wave of pitch black that had assaulted it. "Why?"

"Because Monarch's started up a tech division," she whispers, stepping back closer to him and placing a hand on his back to guide him through the room. "Applied sciences, computing."

"Hackers?" Will asks, and she makes a noise of agreement.

"Here," she says. "Step a bit higher - there's some equipment in the way."

As they pause for a second to allow Will to step over the obstacle, his vision begins to adjust, pitch blacks softening and lightening into mixes of blacks and dark blues, the defining outlines of shapes visible in the low light.

"The grid," Will realizes. "They're watching it."

"Power surges would be common with your machine," Beth hums, "so of course Monarch would be keeping an eye out. And this pool is meant to be closed down. Best case, they think its squatters, and call the cops. Worst case..." she trails off.

"Worst case, they care enough to investigate why a closed down swimming hall falling into disrepair managed to get linked back into the active power grid and no-one has shut it down yet, and find the machine," Will says grimly.

"Bingo," Beth sighs. "This'll be the last time we meet in person, Will," she says. "I can't risk being seen - and you can't risk being seen with me." She pauses, lifts her hand from his back. "Okay, there aren't any windows here," she says. "I'll light some candles, just say still a sec."

She leaves, and this time Will can hear her footsteps as she moves around, the catch of the matches as she flicks them into burning.

Beth stares at him from across the room, the flickering light of the candles shadowing and illuminating the sharp planes and hollows of her face, making her seem both older and more vulnerable then she really is. "No more direct contact," she says lowly. "Not outside of emergencies."

"How, then?" Will asks. "E-mail?"

To his surprise, Beth nods. "For now, that will work." she sighs. "Give it a couple of years and we'd be able to IM anonymously in chat boxes on websites no-one goes to. It's how my friends and I used to communicate from classroom to classroom in high school."

Will blinks. "IM?"

"Not important," Beth says. "You'll need to set up an e-mail address only I know," she gestures for him to follow her, and lifts up the candle in its holder, cupping a hand around the front of the flame so it doesn't blow out. "There's a computer back here you can use," she tells him as they trek through the mostly empty rooms of the hall. "They're probably watching your home one, and using one on a public server is just asking for them to read through your 'private' correspondence." She leads him to a room with a computer set up and waiting, dial-up buzzing. "I can't wait for wireless," she mutter to herself, and Will squints at her.

"What?" he questions her, not sure if he was meant to hear that or not.

"Nothing," Beth says quickly, shoving him towards the computer. "Use a fake name," she advises, "make the address itself completely unrelated to you, and do the same for the password." She smiles wanly, face lit blue by the screen of the computer. "I'm not exactly sure of how hacking works, but I imagine it's something similar to a search engine - looking for keywords."

"Search engine?" Will asks distractedly as he begins to type.

"Yeah, they're not really big yet," Beth agrees. "But just give it a couple of years. I'll bet you anything Monarch tries to get some majority starter shares on Google - I know they've already got a good handful of stakes in Microsoft."

Will pauses. "Google?" he asks, more curious about Beth's apparent willingness to talk about the future she's been so closed mouthed about.

She shrugs. "Give it a few years," she repeats. "The world will become a different place, with less of - " she flicks at a floppy disk lying by the computer with a grimace of distaste. "- these. And less wires, too."

"Huh," Will says. "The future sounds different." He says it with some surprise, honestly not really having thought of it before - mostly just talking to Beth like she was any other person, since she didn't act like she'd come from another time.

But she had. She'd come from seventeen years into the future - and though Will would, eventually, know himself, firsthand, all the ways in which the world and society would change - Beth could tell him now.

She wouldn't, of course. Even if for some reason her lips were surprisingly loose tonight, she would never offer up anything important, anything 'game changing' beyond what he needed to know to build the countermeasure.

"No," she says, voice distant. "The future really isn't that different at all."

-x-

Will returns home an hour later, popcorn in hand, to the sight of Jack and Paul sitting bizarrely still on the couch, backs straight and feet firmly on the ground.

"Okay..." he says slowly. "What have you two done while I've been gone, exactly?"

Jack is the first to crack, which makes sense. Will's brother had always been open, unable to keep a secret, and completely useless at lying - in comparison to Paul's blank poker face. (Unfortunately for Paul, his face is a little too blank - Will can't tell from it what he has done, but can definitely tell he has done something.)

"We cleaned it up!" Jack immediately bursts out. "Like, straight away."

"Cleaned it up?" Will asks, gaze flicking between the two.

"There were nuggets," Paul says serenely, a smile breaking through the mask on his face.

"Nuggets," Will repeats.

"Mmm, nuggets," Paul says. "And sharpies."

"And dish soap," Jack grumbles under his breath. Still smiling, Paul stomps down hard on one of his feet.

"And dish soap," Paul agrees.

"Which was really annoying," Jack interjects, holding the foot Paul had stomped in his lap. "It's soap, so it kept trying to clean the things we were trying to clean, and then there were bubbles everywhere."

"We fixed the mess," Paul says apologetically. "But the kitchen is still a bit of a slip zone."

"And..." Jack hesitates. "I, um, I didn't...er, didn't finish my homework."

Will sighs. The part of him that's now legal guardian to Jack says he should be grounding him, or restricting Paul's visitation rights, or something, but the larger part of him is simply just tired, and says 'they cleaned it up, so what's the problem?'

"Well, if it's such a slip zone," he says, making his way over to the couch and slumping down into it, closing his eyes and holding out the packet of popcorn, "then one of you can go and chuck this in the microwave, because I'm not risking it."

They scatter, and Will snorts to himself.

"So, what movie did you end up picking, Paul?" Will asks as the two younger boys enter the room once again, internally frowning as Jack groans, and Paul smiles.

"Titanic," Paul says. "It's one of my favourites."

Just behind and to the side of Paul, Jack is glaring at his friend hard enough that Paul has to feel it like lasers in his back, and Will laughs a little to himself.

"Okay, sure," he says, because it's not actually that bad a movie, and Jack's expression right now is nothing short of hilarious. "Just so long as you keep that popcorn away from me."

In response to Paul's wide eyes, Jack explains: "Will doesn't like popcorn, because of the kernel bits; but that's a good thing, because that means more for us." Demonstrating, Jack scoops up and handful and shoves them into his mouth, grinning widely around them.

"Christ, that's disgusting," Will mutters. "Close your mouth, Jack."

Jack pokes his tongue out at Will, and Paul rolls his eyes. "Real mature, Jack," he laughs. "Here, hold the bowl while I put the tape in."

"We're a bunch of girls," Jack commiserates as he sits down next to Will.

"If it's any consolation, Jack," Paul calls over his shoulder as he hooks up the VHS player and inserts the tape, "You're definitely the prettiest girl here."

As his little brother sputters in incoherent outrage, Will frowns at the static, then blue, that has filled the screen. "Who watched this last?" he asks, mostly to himself. "You're meant to rewind to the beginning once you've finished the movie; it's the rule."

Beside him, Jack stills. "Oh," he says, and he's staring wide-eyed at the television. "Hey, Will," he asks quietly, "wasn't this Mum's movie?"

"Oh," Will says. "Yeah, it was."

Jack smiles softly. "She never did remember to rewind the tapes when she was done with them."

"It's because she put them on as background noise, I think," Will says. "She worked weird hours, so the house was always either empty or sleeping when she was off. It was her way of making it seem like she had company, and then she'd fall asleep to the movie playing and forget all about it when she woke up."

"Um," Paul says, still hovering in a crouch by the television in the far corner of the room. "So, should I rewind this, or..."

"Hm? Oh, it's fine," Will tells him. "Mum didn't believe in owning something for sentimentalities sake - if you were keeping it, you'd better use it, she always used to say."

"That was just the excuse she came up with to keep that ugly vase that great-uncle left her," Jack laughs. "He was her favourite uncle, so as long as she kept it filled up with flowers, dad couldn't throw it away."

"What happened to that vase, anyway?" Will wonders as Paul comes to sit on the couch; video still rewinding but holding the remote in his hands. "I came home from the university one night and it was just gone from the entrance hall."

"Dad paid me fifteen dollars to smash and make it look like an accident," Jack admits. "I recruited Paul and we split the spoils."

"Mum probably knew, anyway," Will informs his brother in a whisper as Paul hits play and the movie starts.

"Yeah, probably," Jack agrees. "Sometimes, it seemed like she knew everything."

"That's because she probably did."

A laugh. "Yeah," Jack sighs, and then they are silent for a while as they watch the movie, Jack enjoying it more than he would ever admit.

(It's several hours later, towards the end of the film, and Jack is totally not crying - when they discover the real reason Paul had chosen to watch this movie.

"I'll never let go, Jack!" He exclaims dramatically, lunging for Jack and pushing him off the couch, wrestling him to the floor and whacking him repeatedly with a couch cushion. "I'll - never - let - go!" Each word punctuated with another hit from the cushion.

"Get off of me!" Jack yells out, voice muffled from the pillow, reaching up blindly with clawed hands in a valiant (but futile) attempt to murder the annoyance currently perched on top of him. "Will, help!"

"Shh," Will says. "It's nearly finished."

Paul laughs. "Aren't you glad we watched this movie?")

-x-

"Beth..." her mother sighs, staring her straight in the eyes. "What am I going to do with you?" she asks despairingly. Beth kind of wants to shrug, because she doesn't know - but she knows how to read her mother's moods, and right now, talking back could get her in a lot of trouble.

"Down the stairs," her mother is muttering, pacing around the room. "You pushed a boy, down a flight of stairs."

"He's a bully!" Beth protests, unable to help it.

"And two wrongs make a right, now, do they?" Her mother whirls around, shouts. "He broke his arm, Beth!"

Beth shrinks into her seat, fidgets, and wonders why Toto couldn't have warned her of this. "I said I was sorry," she whispers, staring down at the ground. "I didn't mean to."

Her mother sighs, slumps, and deflates all at once. "We're going to need to find you a new school," she says tiredly, "and hope the Stevenson's don't make a big deal out of this."

Beth winces. "I'm sorry," she repeats, and her mother sends her a wan smile.

"I know, sweetheart," she says. "I know."

-x-

"It's getting closer, huh?"

Jack stares at Paul sleepily from his position on the bedroom floor, too tired from helping Paul's mum around the house today to even think of moving. "What?" he asks.

"The anniversary," Paul's voice is a whispers, growing louder as he comes closer, crawling down from his bed to collapse next to Jack, the two of them staring at the ceiling still covered in glow-in-the-dark stick-on stars from their astronaut phase a couple of years ago. "It's close, now." He shifts, turns slightly so he's facing Jack. "Do you think you'll visit their graves?"

"Probably," Jack answers, slightly surprised at how little it hurts to talk about his parents like this, to think their graves and not have pain spear through his chest. Has he just...moved on?

That's too terrifying a thought for Jack to fully comprehend, so he shoves it deep into the corners of his mind, and refuses to acknowledge it. "I know Will wants to go on the twenty-second," Jack says, "and I'm going to go with him, but - do you think, would you want to come with me, on Christmas? I was thinking of going and - there's this angel we always put on top of the tree, this really cheap paper thing that I think Dad stole from some roadhouse before Will was even born - that's how they met, you know, Dad was hitch-hiking and Mum was driving to her parents’ house and after an hour in the car together they road tripped around the country - anyway, this angel is ugly as sin and old and crinkled and stained and torn around the edges; but it's always been our angel, you know?" he sighs. "I think they would appreciate it, to have a little bit of home with them."

"That's...that's really sweet, Jack," Paul tells him. "And of course I'll come with you, if you really want me to."

Jack smiles softly, eyes closing as he's already drifting off, half-asleep. "Thanks, Paul," he whispers.

-x-

"There are questions, Mr. Serene."

Paul turns to face the woman that has entered the room, larger than the rest, that has become his 'office.' The building they currently reside in is nothing life the giant monolith of a tower Monarch Solutions will hold as its home base later in life, simply a generic high rise in the more influential area of town, with a good view of the industrial area in the distance.

"Questions?" He asks as he realizes he has been staring for quite some time. "What do you mean..." he trails off, unable to place the name of the woman standing in front of him.

"Ogawa, Mr. Serene," she smiles patiently. "And newspapers, media outlets - they're all clamoring for news on the up and coming company on the tech front. They have questions, they want to know who it is that's heading things-"

"You're not one of the scientists, are you?" Paul interjects. "You're not one of public relations either - I picked all of them out by hand. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen you before," he narrows his eyes. "Who are you?"

She's still smiling. "I told you, Mr. Serene. My name is Ogawa."

He briefly - briefly - contemplates killing her. There is a gun in his desk, and since the disastrous incident with the university time machine that sent him straight to the End of Time, he has had - abilities, which he has learned to use. It would be easy - so easy - to freeze her and finish it. He doesn't recognize her, doesn’t know her, and her sleek pant-suit, plain black with no embellishment or brand, does not give away what department she is apparently from.

But - she knew his name. Is looking at him with knowing eyes, and even with this new thing that lives inside of him, that whispers of the future and shows small glimpses of things to come, the premonitions growing stronger and stronger each day - he isn't a killer. Or at least, he doesn't want to be.

He tenses, and then he's before her, hand gripping her neck, forcing her down, the chronons around him swirling and fracturing in the rays of light as they resettle from the sudden burst he had introduced to the atmosphere.

"Let's try this again," he says, squeezing harder, and his voice is a hiss. "Who are you?"

She isn't smiling anymore, and underneath his hand he feels her swallow. Her hands, still at her sides, are fisted tightly. "Ogawa," she gasps out in answer.

"Full name," Paul insists.

"Don't have one," she's struggling now, face going white, then red. "Before this, Kate. Now - my papers, they say - say Clarice."

He drops her, and she falls to all fours, one hand rising up shakily to clutch at her throat as she desperately sucks in air.

"Your papers?" Paul asks pointedly, and makes sure she can hear the click-shink of the pistol as he cocks it.

She stills as he places the barrel against the back of her head.

"I don't want to do this, Clarice," he says, completely honest. "And headshots aren't always instant kills, you know. Sometimes, you can take minutes to die, your last moments a paralyzed, silent, screaming agony." He pauses. "I don't want to do that to you."

"I'm special ops," she speaks quickly. "Not with the government - something more private, I can't give you names!" she shouts out the last part, shoulders hunching, as he presses the gun harder into her head. "We - my higher ups, they've heard things. About your company, about you, and how you earned your startup money." she chuckles, low. "You must have some luck, to win every bet you've ever placed."

"Not really," Paul snarls. "Just a good memory."

Clarice nods. "That's what they figured. After all - when you first arrived here, you didn't think of using a fake name. Looking up Paul Serene didn't turn up info on some guy approaching middle-age, but rather a twelve-year-old kid. It was...curious."

"Your 'higher ups,'" Paul quips. "They believe in time travel?"

"We're mercenaries," Clarice says. "We believe in a lot of things."

"So why are you here, Clarice."

"Orders." She shrugs, but the tension showing through her shoulders states she's not as relaxed as she's acting. "Like I said, we're mercenaries. We go where the money is."

"And you think it’s here?"

"All due respect, Mr. Serene, but you're actions are incredibly predictable," Clarice spoke fast and low. "I don't know how you traveled through time. I don't know how you moved so fast. But I do know just what you're doing, gathering people and money and influence to you like a shepherd draws a flock." Her head turns, locking eyes with him from over her shoulder. "You're building an empire," she says. "And I'm here because every empire needs an army."

Paul considers her for a second, before flicking the safety of the gun on, and pulling it from her head. "For the right price, huh?"

"Yes," she inclines her head in agreement, rising to her feet. "For the right price."

"Take a seat, Miss Ogawa," he finally says, flash-stepping to his desk as the words left his mouth, taking careful note of the way her eyes widened as reality, the very fabric of time and space, rippled around her. As he took his seat, he folded his hands across his lap, keeping them hidden beneath the desk where her eyes wouldn't be able to pick up the way they were shaking. "Let's talk business."