Find Me – Chapter 107

Steve laid in the bed of his basement apartment and simply stared.  He was numb.  The ache of hunger in his belly should have felt insistent enough to get him up by now, but it didn’t.  It didn’t feel bad either, though, because it didn’t feel like anything. 

The bitter emptiness of loss was now a day old on his body clock, but when Steve woke up it wasn’t the grief that hit him, it was the loneliness.  He was surprised, actually, at just how easy it was for him to go to sleep alone after he’d sent this destination’s Kayla home last night; he was so emotionally exhausted that he managed it quite easily.  Waking up alone was a lot harder, the life he’d come to know so contentedly now over.  The pain was so unbearable that his only real alternative was the numbness.

As a result, Steve had more sense in his head when he was overseas on a boat he hadn’t seen in 30 years and a Kayla that didn’t know him from Adam than he did right now in a year that should have been so much easier. 

Sending this Kayla home last night was really quite strange.  They were in love by now, and they were even a couple.  So before the harsh revelations he would have found a reason to stay with her, loiter near her, follow her, or otherwise be there when she came to.  But things were different now.  His love for her was the same, but his world had completely changed, and the stakes were now so much higher than he’d ever have imagined.  Their children and their unwritten future past March of 2009 hung in the balance. 

His sanity was at stake now, too, he’d proven that to himself last night when he’d laid himself bare to her, and he saw the chasm open up right in front of him just like he knew it would.  His bond to her was too strong to do anything but crave the comfort any version of her would willingly give him.  He could have more of her love and comfort right now if he asked her for it.  She’d question him up and down, but all he had to do was say the word, and she’d be there for him whether he explained himself to her or not, and she’d love him through his pain.  Instead he sent her away, positive that it was the right choice for his short term and their long-term survival.

But waking up without her was hard even beyond the emotional reasons.  You’d think a little solitude would feel good after having two and a half years of none.  But this wasn’t really solitude, which was mentally healthy when you knew you had someone to go home to.  This was aloneness, plain and simple, and it was, of course, by his own design.  He thought being the only awareness present would be an opportunity.  After all, this was not his Kayla, and she wasn’t missing anything.  He, certainly, was, but she was none the wiser, what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, and as soon as his Kayla arrived this one would cease to exist, anyway.  All he had to do to play by the book was let the minutes unfold into the hours that would then become the rest of the day until she showed up.  His Kayla wasn’t here to argue against it, the timeline was protected, so there it was.  Easy.

Only he was so lonely for her that he didn’t know what to do with himself.  He’d reasoned with himself that he’d get up and go thorugh the motions of what this day was likely to have been the first time around, but he didn’t want to move.  He didn’t want to even think about moving.  It took so much effort to will himseslf to get out of the bed – more than it did to get up after nearly every fist fight he’d ever had, including every one Kayla scraped him up from.  The one thing that seemed to conquer this slow-motion fog that had settled upon him was his fear of diverting from the timeline.  So he had to get up.  Protect their future. Protect their children.

The change of scenery from his bed to the shower didn’t change much for his motivation, he stared straight ahead there, too, and continued to try very hard to stay numb.  This particular moment in the shower was a numbing success.  But it wasn’t going to last long, because before he was done in there he was going to remember a jump where he made very mad, passionate love to his wife up against the wall he was now leaning his arms against.  He was going to remember the feel of her soft and warm body surrounding him and how much love they shared in there.  When that memory emerged a couple minutes from now, the pain would return, and by the time he got out of the shower, he wasn’t going to be so numb anymore.

The internal dialogue in Steve’s head didn’t seem to get the memo that he was trying to shut down.  Instead he led a little war with himself based on what Kayla had said last night.  She’d asked who Adrienne was.  That meant that his whole family in all its fractured pieces was coming home to roost sometime around now, and he wasn’t sure what was slated for today, tomorrow, or next week.  All he knew for sure was that Adrienne was here in some state of trying to win his brotherly affections and that it all moved very fast from here to her rape.  Being raped by your father absolutely topped the list of stuff to be prevented.  But now?  Knowing what it meant for them to make such monumental changes?  What was he supposed to do now?  Rolf said they had to go through all the motions, but now it really hit him what it was all going to mean.  If they were really going to do this right, then they had to do it all right.  But how could letting Adrienne get raped by anyone, much less her own father, be right?  Steve didn’t know how he could live with himself.  It was vile and heinous, and he didn’t know how to let it happen.  But then what of the slipstream?  Getting home?  Protecting Stephanie and Joey’s existences?  Was anything more important than that?  God, he needed his wife.  He wanted to talk it through with her, but wanting that led him to yet another battle within that war in his head.  The more he wanted to be with her the more he needed it, the less able he was going to be to go through with living the timelines, the further he put their future at risk.

His call to the loft went to her answering machine, and suddenly he couldn’t think straight about whether that meant she must have arrived or must not have arrived.  His best bet was to go to the Emergency Center where she was probably on her way to.  First, though, the hunger pangs finally got enough of his attention to make himself look for food.  He didn’t want the bowl of cereal he’d made himself eat.  But he did eat it.

The destination Kayla that still inhabited her body was on her way there, but she took a quick detour to Adrienne’s apartment to talk to her about just who she was to Steve and why her presence upsets him so much.  Adrienne was tight-lipped, and Kayla was frustrated but sympathetic to this girl that was so nice in every other way, which was why she was so concerned about what was going on.  They had no idea that they were having a conversation that had never happened before, because the first time through this timeline Steve wasn’t laying depressed in bed.  Instead he had beaten Kayla to his sister’s apartment and had seen family photos for the first time in 25 years, resulting in a blowout argument with tears both released and repressed on all three sides.  Instead of that very big fire that Kayla had then stumbled into and added her own concerned/jealous/angry fuel to, she had a much calmer, if still frustrating, conversation with the woman who would become her sister-in-law.  Neither of them had a clue that this was the wrong conversation, and they then spent the next 45 minutes with Kayla taking Adrienne to a much needed breakfast, because clearly the girl hadn’t had a good meal in some time.  It was a change Steve would never realize happened.  Was it important?  If it wasn’t the next butterfly would be.  This is why time was unharnessable; even while trying to do things right, the minutia of daily existence and its relative importance was impossible to track, despite Steve’s or anyone else’s best efforts.

In the meantime, Steve finished the only meal he’d be eating that day, put on some clothes, and finally left his apartment.  It didn’t take him long to start to panic.  The closer he got to the spot where Kayla comforted him last night, the more anxious he became, and he couldn’t get near it, because he could literally feel the grief he’d let out lingering there.  “This is crazy,” Steve said out loud.  “Get a grip, Johnson, just go.”  He decided that his ability to be snide with himself meant he hadn’t completely lost his marbles.  Only …

… Steve was pretty sure he had.  Lost his marbles.  You’ve lost it, dude, he said to himself as he made continuous adjustments to his patch, tracing his fingers back and forth across the strap covering his brow.  It’s time for that special room with your name on it again.  Steve was serious.  He felt so out of control, so completely adrift, that the only thing he had to compare it to was before he was deprogrammed.  It was like he knew what real life was, but he couldn’t find it through the haze.  It was a different kind of haze than before; that one was specifically-designed confusion, this one was pure depression, but it was a haze, nonetheless, and it reinforced in him that he couldn’t let this pain out of his body again.  Ever.  He knew on paper, in the textbooks, that he should.  But realistically, here in the real world, he couldn’t imagine that he’d come back from it.  Not after last night, and especially not now that he could barely find a way past this glass wall in the alley that separated himself from the rest of the world. 

Crazy or not, Steve did make it out of the alley and went in search of his wife.  She was there in body but she hadn’t shown up in spirit yet.  She was a bit cold to him when he walked in, still miffed that he was keeping secrets from her and that her conversation with Adrienne had gone nowhere.  Steve had no bandwidth in him to process her this way, and the look on his face made her back off immediately.  He looked so tentative and almost careful as he opened the door to the Emergency Center and simply stood there.  He was about to ask her the Stockholm question, but before he could move out of the doorway he knew the answer, so he didn’t.  He knew Kayla so well in any time that he could see her try to put her finger on his strange combination of emotions.  Clearly, he was upset.  Clearly he needed her.  But watched her try to suss it out – watched her notice that something different was stopping him now than usual.  She asked him if he would please just open up to her, but instead of telling her no like he always did, he smiled.  She didn’t know his smile was because he was sure the timeline was being matched pretty well, but it didn’t matter, because his smile was so genuine.  He told her that his secrets exist, but that one day soon they won’t matter anymore and to please just trust him.  She grudgingly agreed, and then he kissed her gently.  It wasn’t quite like him, though.  She told him she just wanted to help, and he kissed her again, insisting that that’s exactly what she was doing. 

“Thank you, Sweetness,” he whispered softly as he kissed the side of her French-braided head.  “Thank you.”  Then he smiled at her like it might be the last time and left.

Several hours later, Kayla was in the act of unlocking the door to the loft when she sucked in a breath.  The nausea was more normal, this time, which when she thought about it was a pretty ridiculous thing to think to oneself.  But the fact that the jump effect was only moderately nauseating, as opposed to unbearably so, she took as a good sign.  Immediately she called for Steve.  When no answer came she slowly opened her eyes.  The dusty blue door came into slow focus for her, but she didn’t move. She shifted her eyes to her hand around her key inside the deadbolt lock and … waited.  For what she wasn’t sure, but she still felt like she might be pulled out from whence she came and chose to just wait.  Without even looking she knew that she was alone, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.  She had a whole lot to process and no one there to help her process it.  She wanted her husband, but at the same time, she needed space, too.  She’d just lost her daughter a matter of hours ago on her body clock, went into immediate chaos, and now she was gone again.  She wasn’t sure how to feel or what to do, and she just needed space by herself for a moment.

“Steve?” she called again very softly.  She finally turned her head and took in her surroundings, empty as she’d suspected.  She hadn’t seen her apartment in almost two years, but her sense memory knew just what to do, and without realizing it, she’d gone inside.  It was empty, too.  No Hope, no Diana, no Adrienne. 

No Steve. 

Just her. 

A dismal kind of fear wound its way through her as she stood in the middle of the loft during this moment by herself that she’d thought she needed.  She thought wrong.  She’d had plenty of moments alone, like in the car on the way to and from work.  But this was different.  It wasn’t a moment like that, and it wasn’t even a break in the madness that she thought she might find.  No, this was something that felt – barren.  She shivered in its oppressiveness and felt terribly vulnerable.  Like the shades of every malovelent soul she’d ever encountered in her life – Stefano, Orpheus, Harper – were trying to crush the last flicker of spirit she had in her.   The fact that Steve jumped first and landed who knew how long ago and needed to be found was trying to break through to her.  It was trying so very hard to penetrate this very black and malignant place she’d unwittingly walked into.  For the next few moments while she stood in the eye of this very bad storm with the false sense of peace that eyes of storms provided, the pointlessness of her life overwhelmed her. 

Steve had been slumped in the big, red chair beside his bed for a long time.  He didn’t feel the hours pass by him as he sat in an utter state of depression with his pool cue laying across his abdomen, but they did pass by.  The amplification effect felt so very good when it enhanced the happiness.  When it heightened the love they felt for each other and gave them more intense sexuality and far more deeply penetrating positive feelings.  But when things were bad, when the most unspeakable tragedies hit, it augmented the depression to unqualified hopelessness.  And that’s how Steve felt right now, completely hopeless.  Because if he allowed himself to be with his wife, to show his love to her and more importantly, to be loved by her, then he was not going to be strong enough to live the timeline properly.  He knew that now.  Opening up his grief to her last night was everything he feared it would be, and he literally felt the madness circling him like a predator.  But it became terribly clear when he found her at work that his will wasn’t strong.  And the pain just kept shredding his heart anew over and over, because his subconscious brain had not caught up with the loss yet and constantly had to back off of where it naturally kept trying to go.  Like to the break room to set out their sandwiches and drinks and baby food he brought so often for lunch.  But Steve no longer had a daughter to bring for lunch visits, and there would be no more baby food to set out.  The tears stung in his eye during the short moments he’d spent there with Destination Kayla, and he almost broke down and took more of that comfort he knew she had in her.  And that was all he needed to see so clearly how hopeless their existence in the slipstream really was.

He’d found his way back to numb in the hours he’d been there clutching the pool cue; it was a very thin lifeline he’d allowed himself.  The leather of the case was familiar and made him feel a small measure of safety as he felt in his hands.  It was not something he did since his return from Cincinnatti, seek comfort in objects.  But since they started jumping, there were several times that he’d looked for and found solace in the things that represented the fact that he was loved.  His beloved cookbook Kayla had gotten him for the first Christmas after they’d met.  His pool cue.  And the toy train his mother had given him in his childhood.  All three of them were in this apartment with him, and tonight it was the pool cue that lay across him like the loving arm of his wife.

My wife.

 He had to stand up to get to the small console table.  He knew it was a bad idea, but he felt compelled.  So, he didn’t fight it.

Kayla didn’t know what time it was when the phone rang or how long she’d been standing there.  The sound of the real ringer set off a mildly pleasant feeling in her that she felt rather ambivalent about.  Her child and life were gone, but the sound of that phone’s real ring punched a pinprick through the darkness those shades shrouded her in.  It saved her, too.  She was a hair’s breath away from her own paralyzing depression – the snuffing out of her own spirit.  But the telephone made the shades scatter, and the embers deep inside her burned back into a tiny flame.  It wasn’t until the voice on the answering machine came through, though, that Kayla let herself come back. 

“ … Yeah, hi, uh … Sweetness …”  There was a long pause until the next sentence.  “I … wanted to ask you somethin’, but … was just checkin’ if you were there yet.  I mean if you’re home.  You’re not there, so, uh … I guess you wouldn’t know the answer, so, uh … it’ll keep. ‘Night, baby.  I …”  He paused again, and she could hear him swallow hard.  “Sweetness, I …,” he tried again, but all he could do was roughly sigh.  “’Night, baby.” 

Wait a minute.

Kayla stepped out of the darkness, both literal and figurative, and fully entered February of 1987.  “You jumped first,” she said to the big, brown, and quite extinct answering machine sitting in front of her as if she were replying directly to Steve.  So, why wasn’t he there?  Her list of dates and locations were written in permanent marker in her brain, and she quickly narrowed down when this was likely to be.  Without thinking very hard about it, she knew that if this was her apartment without anyone else living there that the two of them were almost certainly a couple of some kind.  Except for a brief time when she was with Jack. 

Oh God.  She knew from the white line-patterned blue coat that she’d walked in with that it was winter … what if this was before the election?  What if she was living here with Jack?  She bolted out of bed and checked the closet; none of Jack’s things were here.  Oh, thank God.

She went into the bathroom and examined herself carefully in the mirror and guessed that this had to be 1987.  Maybe it was right after New Years when she’d found out that he’d been hired to stalk her.  If he’d tried to be with her right then, she might not have let him.  Maybe that’s why he called instead of coming to find her.  Maybe he already tried to find her and she’d refused to speak to him. 

Otherwise … where was Steve?

Kayla rolled her eyes.  “That was Steve,” she said.

She called right back, but it just rang and rang.  Steve had taken her absence very badly and retreated into a final state of numbness.  It felt much better there.  So, when the phone rang, he let it.  He had no answering machine and no will to get up and answer it. 

Kayla had fully returned to herself, now, and she was in a panic to find her husband.  She loved this loft, but this place had never felt more wrong.  She flew out the door and went to Steve’s apartment.  She knocked but he didn’t answer.  He couldn’t.  He knew it might be her, but unless she’d jumped in it wasn’t his her, and he just didn’t have it in him to navigate.  Or get up again.  The fatigue and lethargy was all consuming, and he just couldn’t think though the haze of who else it might be, and he didn’t care.  So, the door went unanswered, and Kayla moved on to the next place she thought he might be.  Shenanigans wasn’t any kind of culture shock for her, because she’d just existed for two years in a time when Shenanigans looked exactly like it did right now, big hair, shoulder pads, mullets, and all.  Steve wasn’t there, and no one had seen him.  Next she tried the Cheatin’ Heart.  Her anniversary date there watching Steve play pool seemed like not yesterday but ages ago.  Now she was feeling enough anxiety to fill ten paxil prescriptions and wasn’t sure what to do next.  He’d just called her, where was he?

It was standing there outside the bar against the brick wall that Steve had once groped her against in a furious reaction to her joke gone wrong that the homesickness started to coil around her heart with such intensity that she thought she might die.  And then she knew.  She knew where he must be. 

Twenty minutes later Kayla was standing in the dusty, broken-down, abandoned livingroom of the home that she didn’t live in anymore.  Steve’s car wasn’t here when she pulled up, but he had to be here.  There was nowhere else he would be.  But when she crawled in through the broken window, there was no sign that anyone had been here in quite some time.  Not in this timeline, anyway.  The shelves were not filled with books and decoraitons, the area rug was not beneath the couch and chairs, and the jump project binder and matching journal were not awaiting new entries on the desk (which was there, as it, along with the bed and various other pieces of furniture, came with the house).  Being there was surreal.  And it hurt.  She looked to the corner where they put Emily’s swing, and it hurt.  She looked toward the dining room where Marcus ate and laughed with them regularly, and it hurt.  She looked to the center of the room where Steve had made love to her on the couch so many times and told her how beautiful she was when she was big with his babies, and it hurt. 

Out … she had to get out.  This was a mistake. This was a terrible mistake.  The pain was so bad.  It was so horribly bad.  But the homesickness … It was insidious, this feeling, and it compelled her in a way that she dreaded even as she felt she was somehow supposed to be here.  She wasn’t in control, yet she was; she did know what she was doing in continuing to stay there instead of running.  It was like after an extended time of sobriety she’d made a very conscious choice to take another drink, and once consumed there was no going back. 

Kayla was on automatic at this point.  She went into the kitchen where no electricity ran and none of their dishes hid in the cabinets.  How much they’d accumulated in their short years together in that fake timeline that never felt anything but real.  All gone.  She opened up the door to the small laundry room.  Emily’s clothes were in the dryer that wasn’t there.  She wanted to get the clothes folded.  She didn’t like leaving them for Steve, she wanted to do her part after his long days at home without any help for the housework.  Steve tried to beat her to it, because he felt the same way about her long days at work; yet most of the time she would prevail, telling him that Mr. Domestic needed a break.  But Emily’s laundry … wasn’t there …

Emily.  Kayla wanted to see her daughter.

She didn’t know how she got into her room.  Her feet took her here, but she didn’t remember the steps.  Emily’s pale green walls weren’t green, they were faded into a dull gray from whatever color they originally were, the peeled paint they’d worked so hard to clean up, once again, littering her beautiful hardwood floor.  Her name wasn’t stenciled above her crib, and her crib wasn’t pushed up against the wall with the rocking chair beside it and her Winnie-the-Pooh mobile hanging above it for her to hold court with.  But Kayla looked down into the crib that wasn’t there anyway and looked for her daughter.  She looked very hard, and it didn’t take long to see her.  She was such a pretty baby.  She was looking back up at her with her husband’s green eyes, and his mole above her lip moving with the smile of her tiny, little lips.

“Hi Emmy Girl,” her mother whispered as the setting sun illuminated the dust particles in the air.  She wanted to tell her not to go to the stairs and that Uncle Marcus would be there for her soon.  She wanted to tell her that she was the light of their lives and that Mommy would see her again one day.  But Kayla couldn’t utter another word.  Instead he backed away and tried to leave the room.  But somehow she couldn’t. 

Instead she found the same spot against the wall that she’d found the first time she’d checked out on the world and slid down to the floor.  Her arms were empty this time, but her expression wasn’t.  This time she let herself feel the pain.  She let herself stay here where it hurt instead of within herself in the safety of the dark, only this time Steve wasn’t there trying to hold her, because Steve wasn’t here.  Emily wasn’t here.  Stephanie growing inside of her wasn’t here.  Only she was here.  She took in the room, letting all the details of her beloved but dead timeline fill in so she could see them.  And she did see them.  As if they were right there in front of her.  Emily Gwendolyn was stenciled in her own hand.  Stuffed animals lived in the corners, and her daughter’s small dresser sat directly across from her, empty of the clothes that needed to be put away downstairs in the dryer.  She was an observer as she saw the Kayla in the rocking chair humming a gentle tune as Emily suckled at her breast.  Emily’s little hand was gripping her mother’s pinky, the look on both their faces so content.  Kayla watched as the Kayla in the rocking chair looked up and locked eyes with Steve sitting against the floor on the other side of the room.  She felt his unconditional love for them.  For the first time since they bagan jumping, the déjà vu wasn’t from their rightful timeline, but from the jump that Kayla’s heart felt was her primary existence.  She knew Steve felt that way, but she didn’t realize until this very moment that she did, too.  This scene playing out in front of her and roaring up from her long-term memory was one of the most beautiful moments she’d ever experienced. It was simple and without anything epic or dramatic.  But it was poignant and fundamental.  In her whole life, this was one of the moments that she knew that both she and her husband would take to their graves as truly life-defining.  She continued to watch as Steve looked upon them with more love in his eyes than she’d ever seen in another human being.  She understood, now, what Steve felt when he held his fist to his heart to keep it from overflowing with feeling.  The reverence for what she was seeing before her lasted only a moment before the pain and loss filled her up.  The minute it hit she saw another, very different vision called up from her memory.  Steve sitting in front of her right here in this very spot while Kayla cried silent tears as she rocked with their sleeping baby in her arms.  More pain as she remembered him begging her to come back to him.  He’d begged her not to shut him out … when the time came.  Now that time was here.  And she’d promised. 

Finally, the scene shifted to what was really in front of her, and all Kayla saw was he dust and debris littering the empty floor.  She also heard someone crying.  Only it wasn’t crying, it was weeping in gut-wrenching, screaming sobs that filled the entire house with their sorrow.   That’s when she realized that she was the one who was crying.  Since the moment she’d slid down that wall and watched the memory of her life assail her, she’d been purging the anguish from the very depths of her broken soul.  Reality came back to her, and she knew she had to get out of that room, afraid it would swallow her up.  But she didn’t move.  Instead she kept crying, harder, if that was possible.  Until she finally recognized it for what it was.  Mourning.  Catharsis.  The processing of her grief.  Only one thing had ever felt this bad, and her psyche did not spare from her the memory of it in this moment.  Instead it fed it to her like a dish of broken glass so her misery could love its company.  In a courageous act of acceptance, Kayla suddenly embraced the pain of losing Emily along with the remembered pain of losing her husband and held them so tightly to herself.  The sobs hemorrhaging from her in this badly needed release of pain felt like a relief once she finally let them come – once she finally let herself feel them without her safety net.  Because her anchor wasn’t here when the pain broke forth.  So, she let it.

Kayla finally calmed.  She’d been curled up in a fetal position against the dusty floor.  Now she caught her breath and, eventually, stood up, paint chips litering her hair.  To say that she felt better wasn’t quite accurate, but she did feel a relief that had removed some of the tension that had her tied like so many knots.  The knots were still there, but many had been loosened. 

Before she crossed the threshold into the hallway she turned back and made herself look at the back wall where Emily’s crib had sat just a day ago.  She tried to say goodbye.  She tried to say the word.  But it got stuck in her throat and back down inside her instead of out where it would be too real for her to handle right now.  She really tried to say it, but it was too soon, and she couldn’t do it.  Instead she held up the sign for “I love you” and caught one more glipse of her daughter standing up in her crib smiling at her.

Ma-ma.

Kayla quickly exited. 

Anxiety crept back upon her in the hallway, because her bedroom was right there.  What was she doing here?  What the hell was he doing here?  She had to leave. She had to get out.  But her feet would not obey.  She didn’t want to leave.  This was her house.  Hers and Steve’s.  She needed him so badly.  Where was he?  Why couldn’t she find him?  She wanted to run to him, to wherever he was right now.  But instead of running down those stairs and out the front door, her feet took her inexplicably across through the door in front of her and into their bedroom.  There, right where she left it when Steve died in 1990 and when she last saw it in 1979 and when she’d jumped away from it just yesterday, was their bed.  Same bed.  Same dust cloths.  The smell of the room was familiar.  It wasn’t their smell, as they hadn’t inhabited it yet, but it was a smell she knew, and it comforted her. 

Kayla moved the dust cloths aside and pulled back the delicate, old bed linens that she’d so carefully cared for in more than one timeline, and she laid down on Steve’s side of the bed.  She wanted to smell him on his pillow, but his smell wasn’t there yet.  How many times had Kayla made love to him in this bed?  How many conversations had they had in this bed.  How many plans had they made in this bed.  How many times had Stephanie played in this bed.  How many times had Emily nursed in this bed?  How many times had they thought about Joey in this bed?  How many times had they brooded and sniped and made up in this bed?  How many times were they going to be stolen from their lives right out of this very bed?  Kayla didn’t know.  But what she did know was that she was able to calm down enough to get her head on relatively straighter while she laid here and tried to commune with her husband here in this bed.

Kayla needed to find Steve.  He was in Salem, of that there was no doubt.  She sat up and took a very deep and cleansing breath.  This was her house, she didn’t care when.  She didn’t care that all the loving care they’d taken to clean it up and make it their home was not going to stick.  It was hers.  She felt her rightness within these walls.  She was glad she came here and let a small smile tug at the corners of her mouth as she looked out at the room. 

“Had a good cry,” she said out loud, and the sound of the voice coming out of her raw throat startled her.  She shrugged and wiped at her eyes and nose.  “You’re out of Kleenex.”  She unabashedly used her sleeve on the hopeless mess of her face and then reverently re-made the bed and put the dust cloths back.

Kayla didn’t look at the spot where the beautiful portraits she’d had made no longer hung.  She didn’t go back into the livingroom.  Or the kitchen or the dining room or even into Emily & Gideon’s trunk, which she knew did actually exist in the basement with both their journal and bible.  She did, however, make a beeline for the broken window she’d crawled into, got back in her car, and left her house.

It was half an hour later while Steve continued to half lay in bed awake and staring when Kayla knocked on the door again.  At first he didn’t really react other than to look in its direction.  When Kayla called his name his heart clenched.  This time she didn’t go away.  This time she tried the doorknob and cried when it twisted and turned to no effect with the deadbolt engaged.  Steve could never stand to hear her cry, and like this morning, something motivated him to get up.

When the door opened, they were both positively transported.  It was like a scene out of a movie.  She looked up at Steve, and he looked down at Kayla, and they felt bowled over at the imagery.  It only lasted a moment, however, because the cosmetics on the outside couldn’t compare to what they saw in each other’s eyes: A lifetime of shared loss and understanding.  It was also a shock, however, for Steve to see how red and swollen Kayla’s eyes were.  It was, in fact, impossible to miss, and got the first emotional reaction out of him in hours.

“Baby?” he asked as he looked down upon her.  Kayla didn’t say anything right away.  Steve blinked down at her patiently waiting. 

“When are we?” she asked in a husky whisper.

Steve let out a breath of relief, the vapor disappearing into the ice cold night.  She was here.  He cupped her face in his left hand.  “I dunno.  Early ’87 I think.”  Kayla stroked his arm and leaned her cheek into his palm. 

“I couldn’t find you.”

He heard how stuffy her nose was.  She’d been crying.  Hard.  Steve’s left hand matched his right and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs before bringing her head to his chest.  “I’m sorry, baby.”

Kayla nodded and squeezed him around his middle.  He was wearing the black tank top that wasn’t ripped up from the lab explosion yet, and an unbuttoned black button-down shirt over it. It was cold out there in the doorway, but Kayla was so relieved to feel her husband’s warm chest through his rumpled clothes that smelled just like him beneath her cheek that she made no move to come inside from the cold.  Steve did, however and pulled her inside and shut the door.  She felt so good.  And just like that, she broke through the numbing walls. 

No!

Steve watched from the landing as she descended the stairs, took off her coat, and laid it on the back of the old chair.  She had that coat at home, he thought.  Their other home.  Emily had a navy blue snow suit the same color. Dammit, was everything going to remind him? 

No!

Kayla looked more disheveled than she did when he saw her just a couple hours ago.  Her hair was displaced from her French braid, and she was covered in a smattering of random dust and particles of something.  She sat on the foot of the bed and looked up her sad, blue eyes at him, every bit of makeup she’d had on now sitting below her lash line. 

“Are you coming down?” It hurt her to talk, her throat was so raw.

“Yeah,” he cleared his throat and adjusted his patch.  Kayla cocked her head at him, the combination signaling clear apprehension.  Steve didn’t ask what she was thinking; he knew her, and he knew that she sensed his tension.  He wanted to sit next to her and let her hold him as he cried for their lost child and lost life and inability to find enough time in these quick jumps to re-adjust.  He wanted to tell her how much he loved her, but he forced himself not to, because he loved her too much to indulge in any of it.  The results of letting himself out with the Destination Kayla more than enough to know he couldn’t do it with his.  Because he’d never come back from it.  This was when Steve detached for the final time. 

Kayla watched as a shadow fell across her husband’s face.  Then he went to the red wingback chair where he had to move the pool cue she’d given him to sit down.  He propped it gently up against the wall.  If she hadn’t been there herself to see that he wasn’t there she’d have thought that maybe he’d been there playing pool. 

His silence as he stared at something in his lap was truly ominous.  He wasn’t making a conscious decision to be cold or to ignore her; he simply found a way back to numb, and that was where he was going to be staying.

“Steve?” she put a hand on his knee, but he did not react.

“Yeah?”

She didn’t reply.  She could see that he was not ok.  She stroked her hand gently up around his knee, the denim of his jeans warm against her skin.  Eventually she tried to engage him again.

“Where were you when you jumped in?” she asked.

“Alley outside.”  Kayla nodded and watched Steve’s demeanor very carefully.  Her poor husband was in real trouble.  “Where were you?” he finally added. 

“The loft.  Opening the door.”  When he didn’t say anything she went on.  “I looked all over for you.” 

“Was that you before?  A little while ago.”

Kayla was confused.  “At the door?  Wait, you were here?”  Steve actually met her eye and nodded.  “Why didn’t you answer?”

Steve shrugged.  “I didn’t know it was you.”

“I … Yeah, that was me, then, I guess.”  Her sympathy drained a little, because all he had to do was answer the door to have saved her from a whole lot of panic and torment.  Steve saw her irritation in her face.  “I’m not exaggerating, Steve, I looked everywhere.  I knew you had arrived but I had no idea how long or what the date was, so I finally gave up the usual places and tried the house.”

Steve sat up a little straighter at this.  “What were you doin’ there?”  It was like an accusation, and Kayla did not appreciate it.

“Looking for you.”  

He let himself reach out to tip her chin.  “You’ve been crying.”  She nodded with the statement of the obvious.  Steve saw she was just getting angrier and let the remorse he felt at knowing she was crying in their house all by herself fade back into the numbness he’d surrounded himself with.  She turned her chin out of his fingers, and he dropped his hand.

“Why didn’t you answer the door?”

“Kayla, I just saw the other you and didn’t think it was you you.  I didn’t want to see anyone else.” 

Kayla’s heart dropped.  “You just saw me?”

“Yeah, the other you,” he repeated.  “At the Emergency Center.  Went to check if you were you yet.”

“I thought you arrived in the alley,” she said.

Steve exhaled, and Kayla could clearly see in his expression that things were not as they appeared.  “Yesterday,” he said quietly.

Kayla took that in and wasn’t quite sure what this feeling was that was forming in the very pit of her stomach.  Was it anger?  Sadness?  She could swear there was some jealousy or possibly abandonment there, but she wouldn’t acknowledge those.  Whatever it was, it was painful, and the fresh loss of her life spilled through her.  She crossed her arms and simply said, “oh.”  She could help the hurt in her voice.

Steve let out a breath.  He didn’t know how he wasn’t going to crumble.

“You saw me at the Emergency Center.  But then you – you left.  You didn’t stay and wait.”

Steve knew where this was going, and he knew she was going to be mad.  “No, I didn’t.  I wanted to—“

“How long have you been here?  Yesterday when?”

He faced this, because there would be no secrets here.  She had to understand what they had to do, because he couldn’t lose anyone or anything else.  “Last night.  Been probably a little more than 24 hours.”

Kayla stayed very calm, but her hoarse voice tightened even further, and she looked stricken.  “You wanted to, but you didn’t.  Steve, we’ve been right behind each other since we left the house.”

“It’s random, you know that.  You weren’t right behind me on this one or the last one, either.”

“Ok, fine, but you got here and … you knew where I was.  What month is it?”

“No idea.  February maybe.  Adrienne’s here, Mama’s not.”

“So it’s not New Years?”  Steve shook his head.  “And you just saw me.  At the Emergency Center?  Wait, Adrienne … then … Steve, we were dating here!”

“Please, baby, we never dated,” he tried to be glib.

“Stop it!  Why would you leave?  Let me jump in by myself when you could have been there?  Why didn’t you stay with me?”

Steve heard the building anger in her voice, but he had no emotional energy to fight.  So, rather than add his own angry voice after his meager attempt at wit failed, he tried to calm her down so they could talk about this.  Still sitting across from her, because he couldn’t get right next to her or he’d lose his resolve, he took her hands in his.  “How was I supposed to do that, honey?  Say, come on, Sweetness, stay with me tonight?”

Honey.  It was never a great sign when he called her that.  “You know I would have.”

Nothing could have reinforced Steve’s position more than this very statement.  It made tears spring to his eye, and when Kayla caught it, she was so alarmed with what she just knew in her gut was going on in his head that she almost didn’t know what to do with herself. 

“You don’t think I wanted to?” his voice hardened.  Believe me, I wanted to.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because it would change things.”  There it was.  The beginning of this conversation had now truly begun.  “I couldn’t risk changing anything.  We can’t risk it.  No matter how much we want to.”

Kayla swallowed.  “How?  How would it have changed anything, we were with each other here.”  She’d started to cry, irritating her already irritated eyes.

Steve was struggling to explain it because the haze of depression had addled his brain, and he didn’t want it any more than she did, anyway.  “We – it – we lived – we weren’t serious here.”  That was the absolute wrong thing to say and he wanted to take back that completely wrong choice of words that hurt her deeply the minute he uttered them.

“The hell we weren’t, Steve!” she snatched her hands out from his.  “How can you say that?!”

“I didn’t meant it like that,” he tried to backpedal, but Kayla plowed past him.

“You loved me, and you know it!  I’d already loved you for months, and you loved me, too!  We didn’t see other people.  We may not have had any conventional dates, but we were serious!”

Steve had to get up and pace.  “I didn’t mean it that way!” 

Kayla got up and followed him back and forth, which made him crazy, because all he wanted to do was be with her, and her proximity didn’t help.  So he took her by the hips then held her away from him.  “Stay,” he said in a pleading tone. 

“What am I, your pet?!”

“No, you’re my wife!”  When did they start fighting?  “But I – we – I can’t – I just want to hold you.”

Now Kayla was confused again.  “What’s stopping you?”

“Kayla,” he growled, “you’re not getting it!  I can’t just kiss you and hold you and not change things.”

Kayla gaped.  Steve read the incredulity on her face without her having to actually say it, and he was actually offended.

“No!  Goddammit, no, Jesus!  It’s not just sex, it’s investment, baby, don’t you get it?!   Stayin’ together!”

Kayla paled, because there it was.  “What?” she squeaked.

He walked to the window ledge and leaned his arms against the wall.  “You heard me!  We can’t stay together like we’re us if we’re somewhere we’re not!”  He spun toward her. “If we’re here another night, then you have to live in the loft, and I have to live here.”

Kayla folded her arms.  “No.”

“Yes.”

 “Why?” she stuck out her chin defiantly.

“You know why.”

“I know what Dr. Rolf said, but we don’t know that any of that is true.”

“Kayla?  Did you go on the same rollercoaster ride I did just now?  Because I think we just got exactly what Rolf said we were gonna get.  What did we jump, five times?  Six?”  In fact, it was seven.  “I feel like we were just home with her yesterday, that’s what it feels like!”  His voice cracked.  “But it was a ton of jumps ago!  The whole thing is unstable, Kayla, and I’m scared.”  Steve rarely admitted that emotion, even in 2009.  “I’m real scared that if we don’t get this slipstream stable that we’re gonna keep suffering.  When I got here and I realized where I was I almost couldn’t cope. I wanted it to be somewhere we could be together, but at least we’re a couple here.  And I dunno, maybe we’ll jump in a minute, and we can have hope for the next place.”

For a moment, she almost relented.  But she knew her husband; he was holding something back.  “There’s something else, Steve.  What aren’t you telling me?”

“There’s nothing I’m not tellin’ you.”

“Don’t lie to me!” she yelled.

“I’m not!”

“Really?  Then why can’t you hold me?  You said you can’t hold me because we have to follow the timeline?  Well you held me and kissed me plenty right about now, so how about you come out with whatever it is!” 

Steve turned away and pumped his jaw.  Why did she have to be so damned perceptive?   The hopelessness welled back up in him.  He didn’t want to be here without her.  But she had to go. 

“If you think I’m leaving here to sleep alone tonight, you’ve got another thing coming.  Because I need you, Steve Johnson.  I know you’re hurting, but I’m hurting, too.”  Then she went to him and laid her head against his chest.

She was right.  She’d been his rock back there on the previous jump, now he needed to be hers.  But having her arms around him right now was enough to make him never want to let her go, and there was no question in his mind, she was going to have to go.  For their own self-preservation. 

Steve moved his arms into position to push her away from him, but he couldn’t do it and relented into holding her instead.  No! he screamed to himself as he continued not letting go.  “Relax, Sweetness,” he said shakily, “I know you’re upset.”

“Upset?” she wiped her cheeks on his shirt, and it felt so much like burrowing into him.  “You’re telling me to leave.  I don’t have a word for what I am, but upset doesn’t do it justice.”

“I’m sorry, Sweetness, I’m sorry.  Everything is so wrong.  Everything’s gone all wrong.”

Kayla could feel him on the very edge.  He wanted to let go and cry.  She wished he would.  “We’re together,” she cried with a heartbreakingly hopeful tone.  “At least we still have each other.”

Steve swallowed down the lump in his throat.  “I’m not sayin’ we’re not together, Kayla.  God, I’m not sayin’ that.   I’m your husband, that’s never gonna change.  I’m sayin’ I can’t lose anyone else.  I can’t, Sweetness.”

“Ok,” she said, pulling away from him and holding his face in her hands, “ok, I get that,” she tried more rationally, “Maybe we have to live the timeline or it will implode.  But how far do we take that?  If you’re really saying that we should live exactly like we lived the timeline before, and Jo’s not here yet, then that means Adrienne hasn’t been raped yet.”

“I know!  I already ran through all of that in my head.  I’ve been through it up and back, and I don’t have a good answer.

“Yeah?” Kayla snapped.  “Had lots of time without me to think about that did you?”  Her tongue was sharp, and it sliced right through him.

Steve had very little control and snapped right back.  “Ya know, we’ve spent the better part of three years nothin’ but with each other, I think I’m entitled to a little time to myself when you weren’t even here yet!”  Kayla fell silent and glared a hole through him.  “Baby, all I’ve been wantin’ to do is talk about it with you,” he said more quietly, ‘cause, I dunno how to deal with it.  I can’t let Duke get to her, I can’t let my baby sister go through it again.”

“Then don’t,” she said.

“But that’s big.  So much happened because of that, and if we stop it – if we change it – that’s gonna throw the timeline into another carnival ride.”  Kayla huffed out a frustrated breath, but Steve wasn’t going to tolerate any more denial from her.  “Kayla, it will.  Did you feel those jumps?  One of ‘em I almost jumped away before you even got there!  That jump sickness was like poison, baby, I saw you got sick before I even got to the pub.”

“So, we let it happen then?”

“I DON’T F*CKING KNOW!”  Steve was ready to break down.  He seriously couldn’t see straight and truly craved the numb nothingness he’d just been enjoying for the past several hours to this turmoil threatening to send him off the deep end of sanity.

“I know you’re hurting,” Kayla said low and intense through gritted teeth, “but so am I.  So don’t. F*cking. Yell at me.”

“Sorry,” he said, but wouldn’t look her in the eye.  “What do you think we should do?”

“I think we should stay together and prevent your father from raping Adrienne,” she said in no uncertain terms.

Steve threw up his hands.  “Of course, you do.”

“Then why did you ask?  You seem to have made up your mind without me on all of this, anyway, so why bother even asking me?  Why bother even calling to find me at all?”  He looked at her questioningly.  “I heard the message you left on the machine.  Looking for me.  I was there when the phone rang, but I was … not myself.”  Kayla saw concern etch her husband’s eye.  “Then I heard you.  You.  My husband.  Not the brooding guy I wasn’t, apparently, dating, but you, the man I’ve married five times.  I heard your voice on the machine, and it was clearly you, looking for me.  You were going to ask me about Stockholm, I understood what you were saying.  And it pulled me out of that place I went.  Same as when we were in Emily’s room and you begged me to come back out.”  Steve’s reaction to their daughter’s name was like doom.  “And so I did.  Again.  For you.  Because my husband needed me.”  Steve’s face twisted with emotion.  “And because I need him, too.”

“Sweetness,” Steve let out a strangled cry.  He leaned a straight arm on the chair and dropped his face into his other hand.  “I’m sorry.”

She was too angry to go to him.  “So, you think living apart is the answer.”

“I think following the timeline is the answer, Kayla, we can’t make major changes anymore.  You were right all along, from the very first jump.  You were right!”

“So, I should stay married to Jack.”   Steve pumped a muscle in his jaw.  “And Adrienne?  How about letting them take you in three more years, should I do that, too?”

“I don’t have all the answers, baby!”

“Oh, but you sure have them when it’s convenient, don’t you!  How can you be doing this?!  What are you even thinking?!”

“I’m thinking that we aren’t married here.”

Kayla’s mouth dropped open, incredulous.  “Not married?!  Since when?  What ever happened to ‘we never weren’t married, baby!’ huh?  What ever happened to that?

“Losing Emily happened to that!”  The words ripped loose from the rent in Steve’s soul.  “That hurricane of jumps from hell, that’s what happened to that!  I jumped into a moving car, Kayla, what if it had been you?!”

Kayla started to sob.  “You just said you’re my husband and that’s never going to change!”

“It’s not!”

“Make up your mind, which is it?!”

“We’re married!”

“Thanks for clarifying that!  So you’re just going to send me away? Is that it?” She was swaying back and forth with desperation.  “You can jut let me walk out the door, and if we jump, then oh well?”

“I’m trying to protect us!  You make it sound like I don’t want you!”

They’d been circling one another about the room, each of them with their fair share of nervous anxiety.  Now Kayla walked up to her husband and stared him square in the face for just a moment before crushing her lips to his and kissing him with insistence that he return that kiss.  It was the first time they’d kissed since their jump away from the house.  It was not gentle.  It was not sweet.  It was not hot.  But it was passionate.  Their need and grief and very deep love was so formidable that the minute the connection was made Steve knew he was heading for disaster – that he wasn’t going to be able to let her go.  He pulled away.

“No!” she pulled him back.  “No!”  She kissed him again, this time more forefully. 

“Kayla, we can’t.”

“We can!  We did before!”

“We can’t now!”

“I need you!  Don’t you see that I need you?!  So, what you can’t be there for me when I need you?  How can you be so selfish?!

She was right, he was selfish.  He was so damned selfish.

Before he could stop himself Steve gripped his wife hard by the upper arms and pulled her possessively against him. He covered her plump lips that he could kiss all night and never get tired of them, and he made sure she knew just how much she was wanted.  She moaned into his kiss, returning it in equal intensity.  They ate at each other’s mouths, and desperately instilled their love for one another, the smacks of their lips the only sounds now filling the room.

Steve ran his hands up and down Kayla’s body.  There was nothing sexual happening in this room.  Every touch of Steve’s fingers was meant to communicate.  Every touch of Kayla’s, however, started breaking the levies holding in the emotions that he’d let out last night with the other Kayla, and a nightmare of torture opened up in his mind.  An endless sea of jumps that lasted into forever.  When Kayla came up for air and laid her head in the crook of her husband’s neck she said the words that shut truly and finally Steve down.

“I love you.” 

Steve went very still, and Kayla felt the very air shift around them.  “Steve … ?”  It was an accusation as much as a plea.

If I say it, it’ll be real, and I won’t be able to go through with any of it, and we’ll lose all of them.  We’ll lose everything.  So he stepped out of her embrace and turned away from her. 

“Steve …?”  He didn’t move.  “I said I love you.”

“I heard you,” he said very quietly.  “I’m right here.”

“No you’re not,” she realized.  “You’re not here at all.”

Steve resignedly looked her in the eye but said nothing.  His neutral expression was completely forced.

“What are you doing?”

“Coping,” he said truthfully.

She eyed him.  There were no tears now.  She’d cried all the tears she had in her for the time being.  She figured more couldn’t be far behind.  “I know what you’re doing.  You’re shutting me out … so you can fool the timeline or maybe yourself.”

Steve turned back around and walked to the bed.  Kayla, however, flared hot.  “Damn you, Steve!  You’re pushing me away.  My God, really?  Really?!  After all these years and everything we’ve been through?  All the bullshit you always wished you could undo, you’re seriously doing it again?”

“Don’t push me, Kayla.”

“Don’t push you,” she repeated with an awed expression.  “Don’t push you?!”  When I’ve never needed you more in my whole life?  My whole f*cking, God-forsaken life!  Because, trust me, anyone who would be so cruel as to give me a child to love and then take her away is forsaking me,” she screamed in her very hoarse voice.  “And you’re going to leave me again?!”

“Leave you?” he said dejectedly.  “Who said anything about leaving?”

“Isn’t that what you’re going to do?” she accused.  “I go, you stay, what’s the difference, it’s leaving!”

“No, that wasn’t what I was going to do.”  This ws spiraling out of control, but the depression made it hard for him to know how to unspiral it.

Kayla took a deep breath and dragged a hand across her forehead.  “Steve, I know you.  And I know what you’re like when you’re hurting.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never hurt like this!” he suddenly roared.

Kayla’s eyes finally filled with unshed tears again.  She nodded.  “I know,” she said defeatedly.  “But you know what, I have.”  A vision of Kayla screaming to the heavens from the roof floated on his periphery but never made it inside him.  “And now, this … what you’re doing?  I know this really well.  I’ve seen it too many times, I can’t take it again.  You can’t leave me again.”

“I’m not!” 

“Ok, you just keep pretending.”  Steve gave her a very hard look.

Kayla was starting to lose her own grip.  She resented everything and everyone, including the man standing in front of her and her very self.  “Listen,” she said wiping the tears from her swollen eyes.  “It’s late.  We’ve been through a lot. I think we should just go to sleep and think about this fresh in the morning.”

“Yeah, ok,” he replied manically.  “I’ll drive you home.” 

The room went cold.

“I am home,” Kayla said.

Steve shook his head.  “You’ve gotta go.”

“No.”  She was positively defiant.  “You don’t get to decide everything.”  Kayla kicked off her shoes and climbed into Steve’s bed fully clothed.  “Stand there or don’t, I’m going to sleep now.”

Steve laughed.  It was not a happy sound.  Kayla didn’t react, so he finally gave in and sat on the opposite side of the bed – the spots they usually occupied in all the beds they ever slept in.  He didn’t touch her.  “You’re right, you’re home.”  She rolled over and looked at him.  The look in her eyes was still cold and actually kind of empty.  He saw how much pain she was in.  “You wanna stay, you can stay.  But it’s gonna be bad for us later.”

“Tempting time is a bad idea, you’re right about that.  But living apart?  Being apart from each other while we’re both here in the same jump and when we’ve never needed each other more?  That’s a worse one.  That’s bad for us now, Steve.”

He was just too lost in the confusing haze of depression that spread through his mind like an emotional cancer.

“We’ve just suffered the worst thing a parent could suffer.  We lost a child,” she said breathily.  “I promised you I wouldn’t shut you out, and I haven’t.  But you’re not doing the same.  I need you so much.  Please don’t make me beg you.”

Steve felt slapped.  “Don’t you say that.  You never have to beg me for anything.”

“Oh really,” she laughed painfully, “I think I do.”

“No,” he said roughly.  “No.  Nothing has changed between us, we just have to protect ourselves and—“  Something about referencing their children seized Steve around the throat, and he couldn’t say it.  “I’m tryin’ to fix the slipstream and protect us.”

“You’re not protecting us, you’re running away.”

“I wasn’t running away when I opened up to you last night.”

“You didn’t open up last night, Steve.  You ran away to the chair, just like you ran away to this apartment.”

No secrets.

“I meant here.  In the alley.”  Kayla didn’t understand.  “I was playin’ my harp, and I guess I was upset about something else.  Adrienne.  You were there and told me,” he took a deep breath, “love doesn’t always have to hurt.  You remember that?”

She did remember that.  It was coming into very bitter focus now, because Kayla did remember that night so very well.  Yesterday was that night? “The other me?  I – she – comforted you last night?”

Steve nodded. 

Kayla sat up in bed and pulled the bedcovers up over her fully clothed chest.  She felt very vulnerable, and she wasn’t sure why.  Then the words poured out of her like bitter knives.

“Remember the last time you made love to me before I married Jack?”  Steve’s blood turned icy at this reference.  “Remember how I poured my heart out to you and you told me I was like one of your girls on shore leave?”

“What are you—”

“That’s how I feel right now.”

That was one of the few things in this conversation that punched through to Steve’s detached emotions and made him feel something quite strongly.  “Jesus Christ, Kayla.  How can you say that to me?  How?”

“Because that’s how I feel.”  Suddenly, Kayla was the one who felt positively numb.  “Like you let another woman in and shut me out.”

“That’s not what happened before!  And she is you.  You were there, and I couldn’t … keep it in …”

“You’re keeping it in really well now,” she said so quietly.  “So well that you can’t even touch me.”  I need your comfort so badly.  But you’re not here for me.  You’re not.”  Her tone was so dead.  Hollow.  She stared out and through him.  “I need my anchor, Steve.  Why won’t you give me the comfort I need after I stayed strong to give you yours?”

He gathered a fist full of her hair at the back of her head and turned her head to face him.  But now she was the detached one.  He was jealous.  He wanted to go back into that easier existence of numbness.  “If that’s what you think then I don’t know what to say to you, baby.  That was one of the worst things I ever did, and I know it.  And ya know what, you know it.  You know how I feel about all of it.  The guilt I carry around.  Yeah, I left you then.  But I’m not leavin’ you now.  That’s not what this is.  Can’t you see it’s killing me, Kayla?  Why can’t you see that I’m tryin’ to protect our future and our other two kids?!”

Kayla just looked disappointedly at him with so much hurt behind her eyes.  He let the other Kayla love him, but her he doesn’t answer the door for, won’t say I love you to, and pushes away.  She wrested her head away from him, then drew up her knees and rested her forehead upon them. 

Steve was done.  He wanted the nothingness back so this hurt would stop.  So she would leave.  So they could survive.  He rolled away from her.  The gulf between them so much wider than the physical space separating them. 

“You doubt me.  After all these years … how could you doubt me?” he whispered.

The yank at Kayla’s gut that happened right there was a relief. It really was.  She huffed out a breath, but Steve didn’t recognize the sound as anything but more of what they were doing.  Bitterly fighting.  His head completely elsewhere.  Kayla called his name weakly, but it reached him like slow motion through his fog.  “What?” he replied absently, but the room was spinning away from her fast.  She had to let Steve know she was going, that she had to do.  No matter what was happening or what they were doing, she wouldn’t leave without making sure he knew.  Steve’s tug came right on schedule, and now he finally turned towared her as the too familiar sensation pulled him to its will.  But she was awash in the most confusing, upsetting, anger, grief, jealousy, and sadness that she wasn’t able to get out the words she needed him to hear.  He watched her last second inside her body.  But she was an empty shell now with half-lidded eyes and no one inside. 

“No!”  he reached for her even as the bed spun.  “You don’t leave without telling me!”  But she did.  It wasn’t purposeful, but she did.  “How could you do that?”  Steve felt a good bit of betrayal for the moment before he succumbed back to the numbness.  She jumped without warning him, without telling him good bye.  But when the jump effect took him, he wasn’t angry or feeling betrayed, because he was, once again, feeling absolutely nothing at all.

This ripping of their very happy, very contented lives out from under them – the all but nullification of their third-born child and snuffing out of her very existence and the existence of that timeline – was the worst thing they would ever go through.  It was the very stuff of temporary insanity.  Mourning was in its infancy, and coping wasn’t even on the horizon yet.  They’d never had to grieve like this.  Kayla had once lost her soulmate, Steve had once lost his mind, but neither of them had ever lost a child.  It caused them to make critical mistakes with each other and with themselves.  They needed the kind of help the temporary nature of their existence made almost impossible.  Their love for each other was pure, and it was not doubted.  But their hearts were so broken that they didn’t know how to sort through the pieces enough to get to it.  Steve was terrified of an eternity in the slipstream, and Kayla was terrified of losing her anchor while in it.  The Sophie’s choice in all this wasn’t one child over another.  It was choosing to avoid the butterfly effect at the expense of their marriage. 

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