The end, y'all. Thanks for following/favoriting and if you want more, please come follow me at .com.

It is a new world with memories of the old tucked in its nooks and crannies. In each thing he sees its genesis, and life, and death.

He is outside of time and space, and can examine the awkward patterns that are woven on the back of perception, like the backs of the pieces of embroidery that their mother worked.

He sees where the constants are, beacons of stillness in the gently lapping ocean of the world.

Robert is threading through all of his memories, though some of them seem to be Rosalind's, and some of them seem to be of other men named Robert Lutece.

When he feels fully awake, he is able to think of Rosalind – his Rosalind – and she is there. He is pleased to know that he can gather her in.

She is taking notes on a notebook that – he knows – she has pulled out of time. He tries it himself with a passing leaf, and pulls it out from where its life undulates before him, and it is real, and singular, and with him. Then he lets it go, and it loops endlessly, from bud to crushed particles.

There is no longer a now – unless he wants it – and there is no longer a then – unless he wants it – and what he does know is that he wants to keep Rosalind, he wonders if she is here with him. She comes, then fades away. She comes to him as a red-haired, pigtailed child. She comes to him as an old woman, sick and dying. She is all of these things, and none of these things, and then she is standing in front of him, and he is all of these things and none of these things at once.

She reaches her hand out and takes his. It is the first thing he has felt in days, and it cheers him to realize that, perhaps, there are some things that he might be permitted to keep. A tear runs down his face, unbidden.

And the world dissolves to a pinpoint, and they are looking down at their bodies, smoking and blackened.

"I do not think we are dead, brother. Those are surely our bodies, but I believe in casting them off we have become, simultaneously, all of our possible selves. And none of them."

"Rosalind, I am quite certain…"

"…that we will be able to have our revenge…"

"…on not just this Comstock…"

"…but on every possible one…"

He feels her thoughts in his. They have a different texture, a different shine. He sees himself for the first time through her eyes, and he knows that she is seeing herself through his, and it is bliss. He knows how much he loves her, and how much she loves him.

He understands that their love is a variable, and he cherishes it even more for knowing. He sees the worlds in which they are apart, in which they never meet. He sees the worlds in which he hurts her, driving her away, as well as the reverse. He sees worlds in which they pass each other, precisely once, on the street, and never see each other again, but think of the other every day.

He understands that in this vast shifting sea of endings that there are few things to hold, and even fewer worth holding.

He understands that all things are both constants and variables. They are now beyond that consideration, though, in the same way that a man's grade school triumphs do not preoccupy him on his deathbed.

He sees the thing that they are about to undertake. It is of a different tone than the rest of his perceptions. It is shifting beyond the shifting that is taking place all around him at all moments.

He thinks of his work, before the end. Child's play, he thinks.

He feels a pulse from Rosalind's mind. "This will be…"

"…an experiment beyond what either of us have ever dreamed…"

He kisses her, and the kiss spirals off to become an infinite number of kisses, rippling through time.