Steve watched as Kayla hurriedly tidied up the things they’d used. That’s my baby. Always thinking of everyone else, even here in the Twilight Zone. Then they gathered themselves up and headed out into the dawn.
It was a sheer stroke of luck that the cabin next door had a phone in it. It was different than the others and seemed more like an office disguised as a cabin. Probably because that’s pretty much what it was. Steve looked through the heavy-paned window and clearly saw it sitting on a very 20th century desk. Unfortunately, the building was locked up tight. He hated to have to break the period-looking, masterfully crafted window, so instead he broke down the door, slamming his shoulder into it. Kayla flinched at the crack and just hoped it was the door and not his shoulder. Steve rubbed at it but appeared fine other than the annoyed look on his face.
“I’m too old for this shit.” Then he looked over at Kayla with a silly grin on his face, and they both laughed at the irony.
“You sure about that?” Kayla joked.
“Only in my own mind, Sweetness,” he said as he rubbed his shoulder. The truth was that it felt good to be so young again. If only his late-model awareness could match it. “Come here and kiss my boo-boo, anyway.”
Kayla giggled and placed a kiss on Steve’s shoulder as they enjoyed the light moment. Quickly, however, they set about the task of trying to remember how to find Marcus. It was too early in the morning for him to be at the Emergency Center, and neither of them remembered his phone number anymore. So, Steve picked up the phone and did something he hadn’t done in a very long time. He dialed 411. Sure enough, his best friend was listed, and before long, the phone was ringing in Marcus’s apartment.
It wasn’t even 5am, and Marcus should have been groggy, but he was used to being awakened in the middle of the night and assumed this was the hospital calling.
Steve was silent for a second after his friend answered, then he just had to shove past the awkward. “Marcus? It’s me, Steve.”
“Steve?! Man, I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear your voice! I’ve been trying to find you for weeks now, where the hell are you?”
“Homey, listen, Kayla and I, we … we need your help. Can you come get us?”
“’Us?’ What, Kayla’s with you?”
“Yeah, we’re holed up at some Pioneer Village place near Saul Taylor’s retreat.”
“Pioneer village … pioneer village …,” Marcus thought out loud.
“Can you plug it into your G—“
“No!” Kayla interjected with a loud whisper as Steve rolled his eyes at himself.
“—I mean, do you know where it is?”
“I think I do, but Steve, what the hell are you doing out there? What’s that place got to do with this mess?”
“Nevermind that right now, can you get out here to get us or what, we’re stranded here.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m there, just hold tight.”
“And DON’T tell anyone you’re coming out here or that I called. It’s just any other day for you, ok? We’re hiding in one of the buildings, and when I see your car, we’re gonna come to you, got that Homey?”
“You got it, man, I’m on my way.”
An hour later it was bright as day, and the two of them no longer felt as confident in their hiding spot. Just as Steve was about to give up and go with Plan B, which was to call Gail, he saw the expensive luxury car slowly make its way up the road to the village.
“There he is, come on, baby. You go first, so he sees someone he recognizes.”
As it happened, it didn’t make much of a difference, as the second Steve crawled into the backseat Marcus nearly fell out of his chair. The eye he was expecting, but the rest of it was like the anti-Steve, and all he could do was stare.
Steve was beyond amused and couldn’t help but roll with laughter at the slack-jawed look his best friend was giving him. “It’s me, Homey, look,” he assured him as he leaned over Kayla’s shoulder and gave her a peck on the lips. “Now, can ya drive us home? I’ll explain on the way.”
Kayla smiled. It was slightly less of a shock to the system to see him than it was on election night, and she was able to enjoy seeing their good friend, remembering bittersweetly how they could always count on him. “Trust me,” she said, “It’s Steve.”
Marcus closed his mouth as a broad grin spread out across his face. “Damn, if I’m not the finest plastic surgeon I know,” he said as he put the car into gear and tore out of there.
“You are, aren’t ya?” Steve bellowed.
“I am, man, look how pretty you are now.”
“Now? I was pretty before!”
“Not this pretty, man.”
“Ya think so, do ya? Yeah, well, you got it almost perfect, Homey”
“Almost? Hey, don’t blame me for that surfer shade of blonde, man, that’s your stylist’s fault.”
Steve laughed. “Yeah, who knew the ISA had agent beauticians?”
Marcus eyed him in the rearview mirror before Steve laid down across the backseat so he wouldn’t be seen by the wrong eyes. “I amaze even myself,” Marcus said softly to himself. Steve grinned and was truly elated to be there with Marcus.
The drive back to Steve and Kayla’s house was filled with laughter. And a lot of lies. It was a weird place to be. Marcus asked one question after the next after the next one after that, and it was all the two of them could do to keep their friend at bay. One minute Steve was happily throwing brotherly insults back and forth to his best friend, the next he was explaining how he and Kayla got there with omissions, half-truths, and downright lies while guilt set up shop. Kayla tried to keep it all straight in her head, but with each friendly jibe that made her laugh right along with them came an equal amount of confusion as to what part of the story she thought they should be telling him. And always running in the background was the fact that it was going to reset, so why try so hard? Because you don’t know how long you’ll be here, and you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot.
They explained how Kayla got there in the van, Steve’s cover as Daniel Lucas, and the whole drug cartel headed by Jehricho; those parts were the truth. But when it came to Faith, timing, discussions Kayla had with Marcus “yesterday,” and other nitty gritty details it got fuzzy, even for Kayla. These were details long forgotten to her, and in all fairness, even Gail Carson’s name was something she barely pulled from her memory. In fact, Gail, herself, was a subject neither of them knew how to address. Steve remembered that Marcus had really cared about her, maybe even loved her, and the whole business with her being ISA and keeping him in the dark had really been a blow to him. So, neither one of them had named the ISA contact that they mentioned they were going to call as soon as they got home. They also didn’t talk about how they’d come to know so much about what was really going on behind Reverend Taylor’s revival tent since, technically, most of it hadn’t happened yet. They just did the best they could with generalizations, vagaries, and changing the subject when it got too close to something they couldn’t explain without sounding stark raving mad.
Marcus walked Kayla in right through the front door as if they’d just been out to breakfast, but Steve snuck in through a broken window at the side of the house that he noticed the last time they jumped here. He had hoped it would be there at this earlier time and breathed a sigh of relief when it was. The last thing he needed was the neighbors seeing some stranger walking in the front door with his wife. Yet, he was also a little unnerved by it and wondered who else was able to get in and snoop around so easily; he made a mental note to fix the window.
When they all met up in the living room, Marcus watched with a smile as Steve and Kayla embraced with joy to be back in their home again. This shouldn’t have been too strange, as Steve had spent weeks undercover, after all, and would have been happy to be home. But something about this embrace between his two best friends was off.
Kayla saw the way Marcus was warily eyeing them over Steve’s shoulder and knew if they didn’t shoo him out of there that more questions they didn’t want were going to start anew. “Ah, Marcus. Thanks for coming for us, so early in the morning and everything.” She looked up at Steve, who took his wife’s non-verbal cues only the two of them understood.
“Yeah, man,” Steve said with a bit of disappointment at the fact that they had to let him go, “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it.”
Marcus was no dummy. Something was up. “Are you people for real, here? I was not born yesterday, and I know that you are hiding something. Now, how about you stop insulting my intelligence and just be out with it?”
“Marcus, I – don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kayla said.
“No, of course, you don’t. I’m sure you don’t either, do you, Steve?”
“Marcus,” Steve said putting on his best innocent act, “I don’t, man. We’ve told you everything we know, and now I’ve gotta call my ISA contact and get them this information before anything else happens out there. Especially to you.” That part, at least, was the truth.
Marcus glared at him with his arms folded in front of him.
“Homey. Come on, now, Faith is depending on me, I’ve gotta make calls and get this over with so that I can come out from this cover and start growin’ my hair back, man.”
“Steve—“
“Dude, I also wouldn’t mind bein’ alone with my wife, if ya don’t mind.”
“Isn’t that where you just were?”
Steve held out his hand toward Marcus, who instinctively began slapping it with his own back and forth in the “secret handshake” Steve hadn’t done with his best friend in 20 years. “Trust me? Please, Homey?”
Kayla walked Marcus to the door and gave his hand a squeeze. “Thank you, Marcus.”
“Alright, I’ll go,” he said grudgingly, “but I’m not dropping this. I’ll see you later,” he said.
“Later?”
“The Emergency Center, you close tonight just like last night, remember?”
“Right!” she said. “I’ll … be there.”
No, you won’t, Steve thought.
Kayla then walked back to the living room to give Steve a moment with his best friend.
“Trust me, Marcus. Trust that I know what I’m doing.”
Marcus eyed Steve and then nodded. “Womb to tomb, right?”
“Womb to tomb,” Steve replied. “It’ll be over real soon, ok? Thanks again, man.” Steve gathered Marcus in a bear hug and tried his best to keep his eyes from betraying him.
Marcus started out the door then turned back. “Promise me one thing, man. Don’t mess up my handiwork, ok?”
Steve froze as every little hair on his arms and legs stood up. That last statement really shook him. He tried to let it roll off his back and forced a smile as he nodded. Then Steve closed the door on the man he was lucky enough to get impossible time with not once but twice. He didn’t know if there would be a third.
“You can now, you know,” Kayla said from behind him.
Steve whirled around, startled. “Oh, baby, don’t do that.”
Kayla walked into his arms and kissed his cheek. “You can keep that eye if you want to. Now that you know what happens, you aren’t likely to be injured. For as long as we’re here, you get to keep your eye.”
Steve frowned. “I don’t want to,” he said. Kayla knew why.
“You don’t need that patch to be my Steve. You don’t need to feel guilty while wearing the face you were born with, either. We know Marina is coming, so we can handle everything differently. Better.”
Steve kissed the top of Kayla’s head and ran his hand over the walls as he made his way back to the living room. “There’s no ‘we’ here, Sweetness, I’m the one who has to handle everything differently.”
Kayla looked at him like he’d grown a second head then followed close behind. “Steve? Are we remembering two different things? There were two of us in that situation, and I could have done a lot of things differently. I should have done some things differently.”
“Like what? Ask me if I’d ever had a secret wife?”
“Stop it,” she snapped. I don’t want to hear you put yourself down anymore. I’m not perfect, you know. How about that you had to hear about my pregnancy from Jack? Did I handle that perfectly? Do you think I’m proud of myself? No, I had plenty of chances to tell you and didn’t. Even if I was mad, one of my biggest regrets in my whole life is that you didn’t hear it from me.”
Steve felt a stab of regret at the reminder of that time. When Jack told him about it on the pier that night, it about killed him. Steve plowed his hand through his hair and started to fidget.
Kayla knew that look he had on his face. That was Steve trying not to be angry at her. Finally, she knew she hit a nerve that might break him out of this self-hatred he was having.
“So, now do you think maybe we were in this together? That maybe I didn’t do quite right by you during that whole time, either?”
“Why are we talking about this, Kayla? Why are you dredging that whole thing up?”
“I didn’t dredge it up, Steve, we’re in it! We’re living it right now! You said she showed up on your way home from DC, that’s, what, a week away? All I’m saying is that you need to stop hating yourself for it. You did the wrong thing, yes, fine! But so did I. It’s not about who was more wrong, it was about letting us hurt each other.” She rubbed her hand up and down his arm, hating the spat they were suddenly having and softened her tone. “I wish I could go back and make sure I told you about what our love made myself. That makes it both of us that can handle everything differently.”
Steve hated to acknowledge anything in Kayla that could be defined as needing room for improvement, let alone admitting he was angry at her. But the truth was that the hurt of that singular mistake on Kayla’s part did still sting, even if it had dulled to near non-existence by now.
She saw Steve struggle with it as he worked the muscle in his jaw, refusing to look her in the eye. She gently placed a forefinger to her husband’s chin and forced him to look at her. “It’s ok to be a little mad at me.”
He glanced away again before she could see the hurt in his eyes. “Ok, I’m a little mad at you,” he said quietly. Kayla smiled. “That makes you happy?” he asked looking back at her in disbelief.
“Yes,” she said with eyes that meant it. “It does.” Then she went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. “Now if we’re here long enough, we can fix all those things, and you can stop hating that handsome face of yours.”
Steve closed his eyes to the feel of his wife in his arms. She really was amazing.
“I think we should see if we wake up here tomorrow, and if we do, we can talk about how to handle Marina. Until then, let’s call Gail, then … just enjoy being here in our home. Just for today, let’s be us. Here. At home.”
Steve smiled. “You always were the smart one, Sweetness.”
An hour later, Steve hung up with a very angry Gail, whom they found at the Emergency Center, and told her that no matter how badly she wanted to talk to him right now, he’d just told her everything she needed to know, Marcus was safe, and, no, he wasn’t going anywhere to debrief on anything or rescue anyone. Not right now. Gail tried to reason with him that his refusal to elaborate on how he came to know about Shane and the secret room in the mountain and Jericho and the revival front would put him in hot water with the ISA. But that was just too bad, because he was home, and he wanted to enjoy it.
Steve hung up, and he felt the duty toward the people he left behind resolve itself. For however long he would be here, he felt like right had been done. And he realized … as much as he’d wanted out of this body before, now he kind of didn’t want to jump yet.
Steve gathered Kayla into his arms and sat heavily with her on the couch. “You know what, baby?”
“Mm?” she cooed as she enjoyed the feel of her head in the crook of his neck.
“I’m starving. Wanna raid the kitchen?”
“Yes!” she said as hunger suddenly became the only thing she was feeling. Kayla bounded up and pulled her husband along with her.
They arrived to the fridge with empty stomachs of hope. And for once, they were greeted with a fridge that had enough food in it to give them a real meal. It may not have been truly stocked, but it was more than sufficient. They prepared pasta with chicken, broccoli, and asparagus and had their first ice cold soda in positively days. It was quite a feast compared to their last meal, which they couldn’t swear to, but they believed was four jumps ago in Steve’s apartment.
“It’s interesting how the place has changed since our last jump, isn’t it?” Kayla asked.
Steve thought about it. “Yeah, but our last jump was just about a year from now, wasn’t it?”
That statement made no sense, yet Kayla understood it. “Ugh, don’t confuse me with the timeline stuff,” she groaned, “but I think you’re right, yeah.”
“By the way,” Steve interjected between forkfuls of spaghetti, “did you know we have a broken window on the side of the house? Anyone could have just strolled right in here like I did.”
“I, ah, I don’t remember. I’m not sure if I knew that or not.”
“Well, we do, baby. Not for long, though,” he said as he took another heaping bite.
“Why?”
“’Cause I’m gonna fix it tomorrow.”
This made Kayla take pause.
“What?” Steve asked.
“This morning you wanted to go home, and now you want to stay long enough that you have time to fix the window?”
Steve quietly looked her in the eye. “Sweetness, I do want to go home.” His eyes told her how much he missed Joe even if his voice couldn’t form the words. “And I want to stop the leaping. But—,” he cut himself off. She waited patiently for him to work it through. Then he looked over at something rather interesting by the stove and said, “If I hadn’t died—I mean if they hadn’t taken me away, then this house still would have been our home. Sweetness, this was it. This was home. In my head, this house is where we belong. I guess I just wanna spend some time in it, the two of us, like it would have been if we were back home in it in 2009.
She looked at her husband and felt the longing that was radiating from him and realized that she felt the same way. This really was home, and she missed it, too. “Steve, I don’t know how long we’ll be here or if you’ll get to fix the window.”
“It’s not about the window, Sweetness.”
“I know,” she said getting up to sit in her husband’s lap. “But we seem to be spending only a little while in each place, so …” she strummed her finger across his left eyebrow, “… I have an idea.”
“Oh yeah, and what’s that?”
“I think we should go exploring,” she smiled down at him. Steve beamed at her. He loved that idea. “You know, like when we first got here, discovering all those little secret passages and cubbies. Last time we were here we weren’t sure what was going on—“
“Right, baby, ‘cause now we’ve got that all figured out.”
“—so we were kind of afraid to do much. Steve!” she smacked him in the shoulder with his little remark. Now, come on, I’m being serious.”
“Baby,” he mocked injury as he chuckled, “don’t smack me around, that’s the bad shoulder.”
“Oh, do I need to kiss it again?”
“Definitely.”
Kayla gave him a “you will never learn” look and bent down to kiss his shoulder for the second time that morning. “All better?”
“Yeahp, I think so.”
“Ok, so as I was saying, Mr. Johnson, I think it would be fun to go enjoy the special features of our house. More of the scenic route than we took the last time we jumped here.”
“Can we make a stop in the bedroom?” Steve asked with a smirk.
“I,” Kayla replied in a sultry voice as she got up off his lap, “wouldn’t have it any other way.” Steve followed her up off the chair, grabbed her and captured her lips in a deep and romantic kiss. Their tongues danced as their bodies pressed against each other with love and desire. Kayla wrapped her arms around his neck, and Steve brought his to her rear and the back of her head respectively, clutching her in his protective embrace.
In that moment, the two of them felt more at home than at any other time since they’d begun this wild trip through time. In that moment, they didn’t need to understand why or how or who. In that moment, they were home.
* * * *
He pushed back from the monitor and was extraordinarily pleased with what he saw. The data wasn’t just mathematically sound, it was as close to perfect as he’d dared to hope for. Which, truth be told, wasn’t actually very perfect at all, but time was rarely perfect, so he was pleased all the same. The only real surprise was just how unstable the slipstream was. He knew it would be, but the complexity of it all once it was actually set in motion he was not prepared for. Not that it mattered. He smiled to himself as he laughed with satisfaction as the constant stream of numbers scrolled by on his wayward pair, pleased in the knowledge that he was finally making good on what should have been done in the first place.
* * * *
Several hours later, Steve and Kayla were dusty and cobwebby from their scenic tour and went upstairs to clean up. Steve was more than happy to get rid of his Daniel Lucas wardrobe and was surprised it took him so long. But somewhere between the end of the hallway and their bedroom, Kayla had stopped short. When he looked back for her, he saw her staring into what would become Stephanie’s room. The look on her face was not one of sweet nostalgia. Uh oh.
“Sweetness?” Kayla turned toward him, and Steve saw his wife visibly blanch. “Kayla? What is it?”
“Steve,” Kayla whispered. “Making Stephanie … it’s going to be so … hard to make sure she—that we—that we get her.” Kayla opened the door and walked into her daughter’s room, disappearing from Steve’s sight. He immediately bounded the few steps it took to follow her and ensure she was in his eyeshot.
“Don’t disappear like that, baby.”
Kayla ignored the statement and went on with her previous thought. “It’s going to be almost impossible.”
“Sweetness, are you forgetting something very important? What we’re doing isn’t changing anything. Remember? So, Stephanie is going to be made, born, and be her mama’s daughter.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“What, election night didn’t drive that home?”
“Well, yes, it did,” Kayla admitted, but she was a worrier, and she wasn’t sure they could count on one incidence. “But it was just that one jump, maybe things were changed and we couldn’t tell.”
“No, Kayla, that man didn’t have a mark on him, and I remember what I did to his lip. My knuckles felt what I did to his lip. There’s no way. I’m telling you, it’s like we were never there.”
He was right, Kayla knew that they changed the future, yet those changes didn’t take by the time they’d jumped back.
“What is this really about, Kayla? Why are you so worried about making Stephanie.”
“I don’t want to … lose her. I’m afraid we’ll be here a really long time when we’re supposed to conceive her and then not do it, and then what if we’re here a long time? I don’t want to lose our baby.”
“Don’t say that, Kayla, we know just when to make her.”
“No, I don’t think we do. And even if we did, that call you made this morning means that Reverend Taylor is probably going to live, which means we won’t have his funeral, and we won’t make love that night.” She was starting to get quite upset. “And Marina had started sending stuff to you by then, so that night we have to—we need—to make sure—”
“Baby, baby, baby, you’ve gotta calm down, now, we don’t need the funeral or anything else to still make sure we make love. We’ll conceive our daughter, Kayla, we will.”
“But it’s statistically impossible for everything to happen exactly the same way at the same time. The egg will be the same, but there’s no way the sperm will, and that’s a different baby, Steve, that won’t be Stephanie!”
“Kayla!” He grabbed her face in his hands and plied it with kisses. “We’re gonna make her. Ok? If we’re still here, we’re gonna make her. Her. Now you believe that, Sweetness. Ok?”
“Steve.”
“Ok?” he asked with room for just one answer.
“Ok,” she relented.
“Wanna practice?” he asked with raised eyebrows.
Kayla let out a breathy chuckle and decided to take her own advice. She wasn’t convinced by any means that conceiving their children would be as easy to do as the first time. She knew the randomness with which human reproduction really operated, and getting their Stephanie back was going to be difficult if nothing else. But, she realized that stressing over it right at this moment was not going to get anyone anywhere and that if Steve could take it one day at a time with how he was feeling, she could, too. So, she took a deep breath and released that worry for the time being. Let’s see if we wake up here in the morning.
The tug at their midsections was strong and the incongruities meeting their eyes came in an instant.
Or not, she added as a commensurate afterthought.
“Dammit!” Steve yelled as he reached for his wife.
Bye house, Kayla said silently. Then they clutched on to each other in a deep embrace, and rather than bury her head in her husband’s neck, this time she pulled back and looked him in the eyes. “I love you,” she said, “in any face.” The love she saw reflected back in those eyes told her all she needed to know before they finally jumped away.
A moment later Steve was met with biting cold. He knew without even looking that he was alone again. Shit, what the hell are we doing wrong, here?! Before he could finish the thought he detected the steel between his teeth as the bitterness of the wind thrashed at his skin. Like the jump before this one, he was stumped as to where he was. Then he realized that he was standing on a ladder, and the reality of his situation hit him with an icy fear that had nothing to do with the weather. I’m at the Deveraux estate. And Kayla’s inside … dying.