Acceptable Losses by glacis. (
~~
The first time
Sheriff Jack Carter realized he was stuck in Groundhog Day it was
frustrating. The next few times were
amusing, really irritating, tragic, painful, scary, and might even have turned
catastrophic.
Instead, it
just became the most surreal experience in his life.
Given his
life since moving to
~~
First the
shower was cold, then he cut himself shaving, then spilled breakfast on his
last clean uniform, then all the women in his life conspired to make him feel
like an idiot. None of these things were
really all that unusual, but given that Allison was marrying Stark later on
that day, it all stung a little more than usual.
Still, he
bucked up, did his duty, went to work.
Only to find Thorne telling Allison she had to lay off a dozen people,
on a Saturday, before her wedding. If it
hadn’t been for the two years he’d already spent having it pounded into his
head that
One look at
her eyes made him take the list. She
looked calm on the surface, but she was also about one stressor away from
implosion. He examined that thought for
a moment and felt proud that he’d actually been listening to Zoe talk about her
homework, and some of it stuck.
Then he
went off to fire people.
After getting
past the strangeness of having a whole person just to sweep up poop, then
getting flash-blinded by a funky light in the basement, he decided he’d had
enough for one morning, and went home.
Only to be
subjected to his brain-grating sister, three days early… and her cats. Zoe, of course, was in Heaven.
Jack was
pretty sure he’d landed in Hell when his back was turned.
Heading off
to his funeral… er, Allison’s wedding to the Other
Guy… Jack yanked Stark’s chain about the necklace he was holding as Allison’s
wedding gift, just to see him glower, then went into the tent and once again
blew his chance to ask Allison to dump the scientist and run off with the
sheriff, then he walked his girl up the aisle to give
to his rival.
Then the
sky broke open and he was back in the shower, naked, freezing, and out of soap.
Okay. So. Time loop. He spent the next ten hours trying to get
anyone to believe him, getting yelled at by women, smirked at by Stark, and discovering
a possible cause of the latest bizarreness in his universe. A clock. Made sense, really, since it was a time
screw-up, that it would be a big old atomic clock.
Since
nobody was listening to him anyway, he went off to the wedding (again) only
this time instead of blowing his chance to ask Allison to elope, he kissed her.
He knew
better than take stupid advice from his sister.
Sure,
Allison let him down easy, but still.
Having the truth rubbed in his face after his very best attempt at a ‘leave
him for me’ smooch was a bummer. He
walked her down the aisle (again) and the sky broke open in a flash of blue
light (again) and he ended up in the shower (again).
The third
time around, Jack was totally in control.
He skipped the shaving, the breakfast, the arrival of his sister, and
headed out to work. There, he argued
with Stark, in much more detail, about the big funky atomic clock that would
set the standard for timekeepers the world over, pissing off the Swiss and, as
far as Jack could figure, sticking him in a time loop.
Even if
Stark did think a time loop would destroy the world, so Jack couldn’t possibly
be in one.
Since Stark
wouldn’t shut the damned clock off, end the loop, and save the world, Jack went
off to ask Thorne to do it. She told him
to talk to Allison, who thought he was just wibbling
about the wedding, so Jack took matters in his own hands. He went back to GD, pulled a gun on
Except he hadn’t. The flash interrupted the
wedding, again, only this time when he landed in the shower, he was still in
his uniform, and both cuts from shaving he hadn’t done in this loop were on his
face, leaving a gash bleeding down his cheek.
Seriously
freaked out now, as if he hadn’t been before, Jack booked it to GD and
confronted Stark, who obviously thought he was unhinged, but who at least gave
him the name of the Time Guy (of course Global had a Time Guy. They had a Poop Guy, and Time was much more
important than Poop. Or at least Jack
thought so). Leo Weinbrenner,
the Time Guy, said he didn’t do anything but oil gears, plus he was on Jack’s
list to fire, so Jack went off to Henry, because Henry could fix anything.
Still bleeding.
Not that
anyone seemed to notice. Jack sighed and
kept on trying to save the world.
He didn’t
find Henry, but he did find his sister and his daughter, both of whom ignored
the bleeding to bitch him out. He really
didn’t need that when he had the whole world-saving thing on his plate, but he
did love them, so he tried to reassure them a little. They didn’t seem too impressed. Maybe because Lexi was too wrapped up in her pregnancy.
My God,
Jack thought, she’s breeding. The crazy
is multiplying. Still, he didn’t want
reality to unravel before he got to meet the newest Carter, so he gave up on
Henry and went to find Thorne. If it
wasn’t the clock, it was probably the bitch.
Evil Eva
was off on some insane side project of her own, probably to take over the
world, when Jack caught up with her. She
was doing weird things with holograms, so Jack grabbed her remote before she
could do any more harm. Then the blue
flash ripped the sky open, and Jack automatically jumped on her to protect her,
and when he opened his eyes again, he was in the shower.
It was
bad. Not the cold water, but the
pain. He still held Thorne’s remote, and
he was still in his uniform, but it felt like somebody’d
beaten him with a baseball bat. The way
his ribs shifted, at least one was broken, but his skin wasn’t heating up like
it would with a lot of internal bleeding, so he didn’t let it stop him.
He’d worked
through worse.
Jack went
straight to Henry, who at least looked concerned about his condition before
getting sidetracked by the remote. It
wasn’t the time loop doohickey, instead it was a
super-duper Geiger counter for empty spaces underground. Jack shook his head and wondered what the hell
he was supposed to do now, when Henry mentioned Leo Weinbrenner
being at NASA with him.
“Oiled the
gears, my ass,” Jack muttered as he headed back to Global once again.
This time
he caught Leo, and discovered he wasn’t the only one stuck in the loop. The blue light that hit him the first time
around was Leo’s invention, ultra-indigo something or other,
that slowed protons down, or something Jack didn’t quite catch.
Armed with
new information, Jack tried to convince Stark (yet again) who (once again)
thought he had gone fruit loops, not been stuck in a time loop. Back to Leo, desperate to find a way to get
Stark onboard, Jack was forced to memorize a long twisty equation… and, proving
he was desperate, did it the only way he could, which was to regress back to
first grade and sing the damned thing.
Then Leo gave him the bad news that the world could only survive one or
two more loops, before he stepped into the light chamber to make right what he
had made go wrong. Jack held his breath.
Blue light flashed.
He was back
in the goddamned shower.
Okay, this
was ridiculous, and scary, and he had a really bad feeling about it. Holding his various shifting internal
injuries in place, Jack hobbled to Global, only to find that Leo not only
hadn’t fixed the time loop, he’d turned himself into charcoal. Swallowing back the urge to barf back the
breakfast he hadn’t eaten, Jack looked for Stark.
Stark, in turn, looked at Jack like he was a lunatic as Jack sang the
stupid equation as fast as he could. Given that it was a
formula to break the light speed barrier, and there was no way in hell Jack
could have known it much less set it to music on his own, Stark was forced to
admit something hinky was going on. Jack gave him a situational brief, Stark
decided this was the last safe loop they could have before the world ended, and
that it was up to him to save everyone.
Jack left
him to it, went off to make peace with his sister, tell his daughter he loved
her, and wish Allison the very best, just in case Stark didn’t manage to save
the world, and reality as they knew it ceased to exist. He also took a moment to wonder why on earth
he was involved in shit this big, when he could be enjoying a normal life
tracking down dangerous criminals and bailing his daughter out of jail, before
shrugging and heading back to Global to see what he could do to help, if
anything.
By the time
he got there, Stark and Fargo had jury-rigged the proton acceleration chamber
Leo died in up to the new atomic clock.
If the pressure seal stayed, they’d be okay… so, of course, two minutes
before the end of the world, the seal broke.
There was
no way Stark would let
One of the
major ones being, of course, that sometimes a cop would have to sacrifice
himself to save those he had sworn to protect.
Someone else could do his job. He
wasn’t sure he could say the same for Stark.
Plus,
Allison was waiting. And so was the baby
she was carrying, by Stark.
Besides, let’s
face it, if Jack took some weird quantum leap Stark might be able to save
him. If Stark took it, he was
toast. There was no way
Jack took a
deep breath.
“Nathan!”
he called out.
Stark
turned to him, eyebrow arching, just as Jack stepped into the chamber.
“Catch,”
Jack called, as he tossed the necklace he’d been holding for the wedding toward
Stark’s face. Stark automatically
reached up to catch it, as Jack watched the last tenths of a second tick off,
then pressed the button when it reached 6:00:00.
No blue
light flashed.
But things
started moving really fast around him.
It was
disorienting, watching
Squinting
through one eye, he saw Stark, staring up at him for a long moment like a kid
looking at a puppy through the window of a pet store, and Jack wondered what
the hell he was doing. Wasn’t he supposed
to be at his own wedding? Then there
were more flashes, and Jack thought he caught sight of Lexi’s
blonde hair, and Zoe’s face, looking angry and sad and maybe wet with
tears. There was Allison, only she was
skinny, and was that a baby? And more… Henry, distraught, and Fargo, sitting in a corner
with his face in his hands, and always, always, Stark.
Nathan.
Searching.
Fighting.
For something.
For Jack?
~~
“Catch!”
Nathan had only
a moment to wonder what the hell Carter was playing at before he disappeared
into the chamber.
Damn
“Oh, god,”
What was he
going to tell Allison?
Or, sweet Lord, young Zoe?
He’d
informed families, in the past, when a scientist was killed in the course of
pursuing the truth. It was a difficult
part of his job, but one he took seriously.
But this, this was different.
This should have been him in that chamber, because he, not Carter, was
the scientist, and it should have been he who paid the price.
Not the
sheriff.
Normally,
in a crisis, his brain would kick in, and he would immediately begin work to
solve the problem.
But this
crisis was anything but normal.
This was
Jack.
Jack, who’d
become something of a friend lately, who’d been surprisingly gracious in
accepting Alli’s choice, who’d always done everything
he could, no matter the risk, to protect Eureka and everyone who lived there.
Who had died
to protect them.
To save the world, quite literally. Who had taken Nathan’s place.
This was
unacceptable.
Footsteps
behind him told him
The wedding.
He couldn’t
go to the wedding. He had a sheriff to
save.
But Allison
was waiting for him.
Instincts
honed over a lifetime came to the fore and, as always happened, the scientist
won out over the man.
The wedding
would have to wait. There was no telling
how long Carter had, stuck in the proton matrix within the accelerator chamber,
before his form lost all cohesion and it would be impossible to retrieve
him. It might already be impossible, but
Nathan had won out over impossible odds before, and he would this time, as
well.
Jack Carter
was not going to die on his watch, nor in his place.
~~
Allison
Blake stared at her reflection in the mirror, barely hearing Jo’s choked voice
behind her, nor Henry’s as he announced the
postponement of the wedding to the guests.
In the hubbub, she heard a sharp “No!” screamed in a voice she
recognized.
Someone had
told Zoe her father would not be coming home.
Ever again.
She knew
she should move, should get out of the fancy dress and back in her suit, should
go to GD and find out everything she could, should help fix this if it could be
fixed, should hug Zoe and cry with her and make sure Nathan was all right.
Instead,
she vomited all over her shoes, then curled up in a ball on the ground and
closed her eyes.
Some time
later, warm hands closed over her shoulders, and soft words fell on her ears,
even if they made no sense. Someone
cleaned her up, and someone else wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and it
hit her, hard, that she loved Jack Carter more than she’d realized. But among the hands and the voices, she
didn’t hear the one that might make things okay again.
Where was
Nathan?
Eventually
she came back to herself. She dressed,
saw to her son and made sure Kevin was taken home with the sitter, hugged Zoe,
met someone called Lex who said she was Jack’s sister,
had Jo drive her back to GD, and found Nathan.
“Why didn’t
you come?” she asked quietly, staring at Nathan’s back, one hand cradling the
life developing below her ribs.
“He’s in
there, Alli.
There must be a way to get him back out.”
For a brief
moment she felt hope, blazing through her, as she walked up to his side. Then she glanced up into his face.
She knew
that look. He didn’t truly believe what
he was saying, but he was trying to convince himself. It was a look she’d seen before. It was the one that had torn apart their
first attempt at marriage.
Obsession.
She took a
deep breath, trying to calm her stomach.
He didn’t even look at her. A
tear slid from the corner of her eye as she realized, long before he did, just
as it had been in the past, their second chance had died in this chamber that
day. She loved Nathan well enough to
know that this puzzle, this possibly impossible quest, would eat up his
attention completely. She loved Jack
enough for a small part of her mind to be thankful that someone was willing to
tilt at windmills to get him back, but the pragmatic part of her, the largest
part of her, knew she would once again be a single mother, and there wasn’t a
damned thing she could do about it.
Staring up
at Nathan, eyes tracing the scowling expression and the intent glare, she
sighed.
Things
worked out the way they were meant to.
Didn’t mean
she had to like it.
But it did
mean she wouldn’t fight it.
Wasn’t sure
she even wanted to.
~~
Life
continued. Thorne nearly shut Global
down and almost killed a bunch of teenagers trying to cover up her past. A robot sheriff came in to replace Carter, as
if anything could, and was fried when a high school science project created a
second sun, leaving Jo the job she’d always coveted but never wanted, not at
the cost of her friend Carter.
Allison’s friend Tess became the new head of GD and nearly sent them
into another ice age; once past that minor glitch, she settled in to the job
like she’d been born for it. She knew
about Nathan’s project, but no one got in the way of Stark on a mission, so she
signed off on the budget and left him to it.
Zoe moved
away from
Henry
nearly got his lover back, but gave her up again for the greater good, and her
own. The object lesson from losing Jack
ate at his conscience, moderating his actions.
In the wake of near disaster and yet more personal loss, he returned to
his work, subtly doing everything he could to help Nathan, to take his mind off
his own heartbreak. Eventually he became
mayor, which eased his path to helping Nathan even more, as both town and
company worked, below the radar, to bring back their sheriff.
Allison quietly
got on with her life. Gave
birth to her beautiful daughter.
Moved away from
Nathan
worked.
~~
Life was a
little blurry. When
He always
had been competitive. He was seldom
self-reflective.
He loved
his daughter, from a distance, but he wasn’t really cut out to be a
father. Losing Callister
had taught him that, and Callister was an adult AI
he’d built. He’d tried with Kevin, but
even then had nearly managed to get the boy killed with the Artifact, as
science once more trumped humanity.
He
winced. Even in the privacy of his
thoughts, that was cold, but then, he’d been called an ice man on more than one
occasion. Abominable, too, and wouldn’t
Jack laugh at that pun.
He wasn’t
sure when Carter had become Jack.
Sometime in the last four years, as he’d buried himself in probabilities
and impossibilities, as he’d cut himself off from everything else, as he leaned
on Henry and Fargo and eventually Zane, and ignored Tess,
and sometimes remembered to miss Allison, it had all become about Jack.
Perhaps it
was guilt, but he’d never been one to let conscience get in the way of
scientific exploration. If he had, he’d
have never gotten in bed with the DOD.
Perhaps it was compensation, or anger, or penance, although he didn’t
really believe in that, either. Maybe it
was pride, because it should have been him who leapt in the breach to save the
world, or maybe it was just an inbred determination to solve the
unsolvable. Whatever it was, as the
months passed and the trials failed and everyone else who’d had any hope gave
up, Nathan’s determination settled into diamond hardness.
He was
going to get Jack Carter back.
If he won
another Noble and rewrote a few laws of the universe along the way, well, that
was just icing on the cake.
~~
The images
weren’t whirring by quite as fast as they used to, Jack decided. He could actually open his eyes without
wanting to hurl. Plus, he wasn’t hurting
as he had been when he’d first gotten stuck.
Seemed like he was healing up okay. As he watched the world whizz past he noticed
some things.
Zoe wasn’t
there.
Neither was
Lexi, but more to the point, neither was
Allison. Some redheaded chick in tall
boots showed up a few times, and lately a new kid had been hanging around, but
mainly it was Nathan. Sometimes
Henry, a few more times Fargo, but always Nathan.
Jack wasn’t
sure when Stark had become Nathan, but he had a sneaking suspicion it had
started before he landed in the stasis chamber, or time bubble, or whatever the
hell he was stuck in. They’d worked
pretty well together, and even bonded a little, weirdly enough, tunneling under
the town to keep it from blowing up like a volcano. He hadn’t been quite as resentful as he
probably should have been when Allison chose Nathan. Plus, there was something reassuring about
the fact that while everyone else seemed to have pretty much given up on him,
Nathan was still there.
Of course,
it was probably because Nathan’s brain, and Nathan’s ego, couldn’t stand the
chance that there was a problem he couldn’t solve, but by that point, Jack
would take anything he could get.
With nothing
to do but sit there, stare at Nathan, and think, Jack, not usually being one
for self-analysis, found himself doing exactly that. What was it about Allison that drew him
in? Yeah, sure, she was gorgeous. A good mom. Kind of. Damned brilliant. Not very good with Zoe. Tended to forget about
Kevin. Was having (already had?)
a baby with Nathan. Still wanted Jack to
walk her down the aisle, and come to think of it, that
was kind of gratuitous cruelty, knowing that he thought he was in love with her.
That
stopped him cold.
Thought?
Not was?
He stared
at Nathan some more.
Yeah.
Wasn’t,
really. Would probably
go for the cute redhead, given the option. Was, apparently, a bit of a slut, himself. Hell, given
his track record, he’d probably have better luck with
That thought made him shudder, and he quickly inserted Henry’s face in place of
No, that
didn’t work, either. Henry was his best
friend. Probably sexy, but more like a
brother than a lover, and Jack wasn’t into incest. Given what his sister was like, that was
probably just as well, or God knows what might have happened. Lexi was strange.
Without
conscious thought, Nathan’s face took Henry’s place in Jack’s mind’s eye,
overlaying the image in front of his actual eyes, of
Nathan in shirtsleeves bent over a keyboard typing so fast his fingers looked
like hummingbirds’ wings. Jack had a
feeling even if he wasn’t watching the world in super-fast motion,
Nathan’s fingers would still be moving too fast to see. He just typed like that.
And holy cow.
Nathan’s image was still in Jack’s mind’s eye, only this time, he wasn’t
wearing a shirt. Or
anything else.
When had that happened?
And when
did naked Stark get so sexy?
Another
image flashed, this one of Nathan strapped down on a chair wearing nothing but
boxers, surrounded by glass, as scientists did something to his nano-somethings to stop his clones from taking over the
town, and Jack shivered.
Okay, so
maybe naked Stark had been sexy long before he became Nathan.
He was
still chewing on that thought, and wondering how long a hard-on could last when
a guy was stuck in a time bubble, when the pressure seals burst and he fell out
of the chamber into Nathan Stark’s arms.
~~
December 3,
2012. Four years, three months, fourteen
days, two hours and twenty one minutes since Jack stepped into the chamber and
disintegrated.
Nathan
stretched his back and winced at the cracks even as he sighed at the release of
tension along his spine.
This was
it.
This had to
be it.
He refused
to admit defeat, but he had to admit he was running out of ideas. Over the past fifteen months he’d noticed a
change in the proton flux within the core of the chamber, though; they appeared
to be gradually increasing in speed, as if to catch up somehow with the flow of
time around them. The indigo light was
deepening, to true black. That had
triggered an idea that led to a new approach, and after several computer trials
he, Fargo, and Zane were ready to implement his solution.
It would
retrieve Jack.
Or it would
kill him.
Do, or die.
Given
Nathan’s suspicion that Jack was running out of time anyway, he did what he
always did in a deadline situation, and went with his gut (not that he’d ever
admit that to anyone but Henry, who already knew it).
He input
the last of the commands, and stepped toward the chamber. Behind him, Zane’s voice calmly called out
updates, speed and function and mean and deceleration, as
This had to
work.
Had to, damnit.
He didn’t
realize he’d walked right up to the chamber, nearly pressed against the glass,
until he saw movement inside. A swirl of
light, blue, then darker, then black, then lighter, solidifying slowly, so
slowly, then faster, and faster… until Jack Carter grinned at him. Stumbled out of the
chamber. Fell on top of him.
Kissed him.
“Holy
shit,” Zane said somewhere in the distance.
“Ditto,”
Nathan was
too busy being kissed by Jack to pay any attention.
It appeared
that the time away, locked in a pocket of time outside the standard flow,
hadn’t done much but turn Jack on.
Normally, Nathan would have been shocked, or amused, or asked the man if
he, Nathan, had somehow metamorphosed into Allison, but the situation hadn’t
been normal for a very long time.
Nathan
kissed Jack back.
Somewhere
even further in the distance, he heard Tess Fontana say, “Oh. That explains everything.”
He didn’t
bother trying to puzzle out what ‘everything’ was. Jack was on top of him. Jack was back.
Jack had an
erection that was drilling a hole in Nathan’s stomach. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the
circumstances, it matched the one Nathan sported, currently drilling a hole in
Jack’s thigh.
They’d have
to do something about that.
Giving in
to the realization that he’d completely lost his sense of propriety, combined
with the euphoria that solving a thorny scientific challenge had always brought
and the adrenaline from doing what everyone said couldn’t be done, and the
physical reality of 170 pounds of aroused Jack Carter spread-eagled atop him
trying to suck his tongue out of his mouth, Nathan went with the flow.
~~
It was
quite some time before they came back to reality, found all their clothes,
stretched out the kinks, and looked up.
Zane had
come through for them, no doubt at
Jack looked
at Nathan, naked, wrapped around him, and blushed.
“So,”
Nathan said slowly, “welcome back.”
Jack
grinned. Nathan smirked at him.
“Thanks for
getting me back,” Jack answered, running one hand down Nathan’s face, drawing
him down into another kiss, wiping away that smirk.
When they
came up for air, Nathan’s expression was as smug as ever, but for once, Jack
thought it was cute, not irritating.
“I will
always have your back, Jack,” Nathan informed him solemnly, then snickered.
“Yeah, and
the next couple feet below it,” Jack snickered back, shifting his weight. It wasn’t the first time he’d had a guy for a
lover, but it had been awhile, and Nathan was… proportionately built.
In other
words, hung like a damned horse.
He hadn’t
really intended to have sex with Nathan within seconds of his rescue, but
hormones had a mind of their own, and Nathan was all for it, so there it
was. Funny how fast he came up with the
lube, though. Seemed
like GD labs came equipped for any eventuality, which gave Jack pause, until
his brain latched onto another question.
“Er, what about Allison?” he asked uncomfortably. He hadn’t noticed any rings on the hands
Nathan had put all over him.
Nathan
stared at him blankly.
“Conversation for another time, maybe?” Jack persisted.
Nathan
nodded. Then the dark fog on the glass
started to clear, and they both dove for their clothes. They were barely dressed when the door
opened, and
Jack rolled
his eyes and finished buttoning his shirt.
Scientists.
Couldn’t live without ‘em, couldn’t shoot them
all and hide the bodies. Someone would
notice. Jack gave Nathan’s ass a quick
glance. Besides, he’d miss at least one
of them.
Yeah, with
everything that changed, some things remained the same.
FIN
More alike than different… or maybe
Alison dressed them both!