DISCLAIMER: I own nothing to do with the Librarians, sadly. If Noah Wyle, Dean Devlin, or anyone who does own it wants anything of this, it's theirs.

CONTINUITY NOTE: Takes place one year after the events of "And the Loom of Fate." Slight spoilers for that episode.

L ~ L ~ L ~ L ~ L

Jacob Stone winced at the taste of the fekete he'd ordered and set the cup back on the table between him and Eve Baird.

"Now I know why Hungarians call this black soup," he said.

"And that's why I ordered mine neat," Eve responded absently. "It's sweeter that way. Why are we in Budapest, again?"

"We have a door that will take us anyplace in the world we want to go. Why not Budapest?" Jake gestured at the walls of the coffee shop where they sat. "Ruszwurm's the oldest coffee shop in Budapest. It survived the Nazis and the Communists with most of its interior intact. Just look at that arched ceiling. And did you see the woodwork out front?"

"I - wasn't paying attention."

She wasn't paying attention now, either, Jake thought, not really. He lifted his cup again, steeled himself against the taste. "And that's why we're in Budapest."

Eve's gaze snapped to his. "How does that make sense?"

The coffee did not improve on second tasting, Jake decided, lowering his cup once again. Then he rested his forearms on the table, leaned forward to look Eve in the eye.

"I was trying to take your mind off it," he told her. "That it was a year ago today you nearly died at the Loom of Fate."

Eve blinked, and Jake wondered if he'd actually surprised her. Then she shook her head. "Thanks, but that wasn't necessary."

"Wasn't it?"

"No. That doesn't bother me."

"Nearly dying doesn't bother you." Jake knew he sounded skeptical, but if her words didn't deserve skepticism, then nothing did.

"Of course it bothers me - I don't have a death wish or anything," Eve explained. "But I took an oath to give my life if I have to. That still stands, even if I'm on long-term assignment to the Library. The Loom wasn't the first time I've nearly died on a mission, and it probably won't be the last, and I've accepted that."

Jake blinked. He understood the sentiment. He respected it - hell, he shared it, even if he hadn't taken a formal oath like she had. He'd accepted the Clipping Book from her and Flynn, knowing that most Librarians died on the job. Yes, he understood her words, but still …

"What is it, then, if not that?"

"What's what?"

"What's bothering you?"

She gave him a frown. "Nothing."

"You're a lousy liar, Eve. Something's been bothering you all day."

"Is that why you asked me out? Because something's bothering me?"

"Not the only reason, but the important one for now. Y'might as well tell me. I can be persistent as hell."

"You do realize I was trained to withstand a variety of torture techniques."

"I do," Jake smiled. "But I'm bettin' that Dobosh torte, Esterhazy torte, and somloi galuska weren't among them."

"You're torturing me with desserts?"

"More that I know where the best of each are to be found in Budapest, and I ain't telling you unless you tell me what's bothering you."

Eve matched his pose. "You also realize I was trained in interrogation techniques."

"I do," Jake repeated. "But I'm bettin' you don't want to make a scene."

"A scene?"

"Think coffee shop fights are different than bar fights?"

"You wouldn't start a bar fight -" she frowned, shook her head "- a coffee shop fight, just to avoid telling me about dessert?"

"Try me." Jake gave her his best good old boy grin. "Or y'could just tell me what's bothering you, if it's really not that you almost died this time last year."

Eve held his gaze long enough that Jake was almost ready to concede defeat. Almost. Then she looked down, and he bit back a cheer. He'd won - he'd engaged Colonel Eve Baird in a game of chicken, and he'd won. He reminded himself that he should never, ever, boast of that if he expected to continue living and doing well.

"It's really not that I almost died this time last year," Eve said, and only met his gaze after she said it. When she did, there was a sadness in her eyes that wrenched his heart into his throat. "It's that you did die this time last year. Or ceased to exist. Or never existed. I don't know, and that's just another grief on top of it."

Jake blew out a breath. Of course she'd told them - him, Cassandra, and Jones - about her adventure at the Loom of Fate, the timelines she'd visited, the versions of each of them she'd met, and that they'd all given their lives, their very existences, to save her timeline, her world.

Jones had shrugged it off, as if it were of no consequence. Cassandra had gone into one of her rambles about infinite dimensions and parallel worlds. And Jake - Jake had thanked her for telling him. He'd thought that was all she needed, to unburden herself. Now he suspected he'd been wrong.

"Tell me about him," Jake said. To Eve's inquiring glance he added, "The alternate me."

"It's not like I really knew him," Eve demurred. "If I spent a total of twenty minutes with him, I'd be surprised."

"But those minutes mattered," Jake pointed out. "They left enough of an impression that you're still thinking about him a year later. So tell me about him."

Eve gave a half-laugh, and even that aborted sound had an edge of hysteria to it. "He's you. What could I possibly tell you about him that you don't already know?"

Jake considered the question seriously - if only because Eve was to be taken seriously. "You said he'd been the Librarian for ten years, right?"

"Right. In that timeline - in all three timelines - Flynn didn't respond to the invitation, and you got the job in his … instead of him."

"So tell me about that. What were your impressions of him as a Librarian?"

It was Eve's turn to consider a question, Jake thought, only she covered her consideration with a sip of her coffee. She didn't wince, as he was sure he'd done, and he looked around for a server. It shouldn't be too late to change his order for whatever Eve had - neat, she'd called it.

But there was no server in sight, and Jake stared gloomily into his cup, his Mama's voice in his mind: Waste not, want not.

But Mama never had to contend with Hungarian fekete, the poorest excuse for coffee he'd ever had.

Eve's voice brought him back to the present.

"He was doing a good job, as far as I could tell," she said. "The best of the three of you. I mean, his world wasn't full of ghosts like Ezekiel's, or a feudal society like Cassie's."

"Oh?" It was as neutral a prompt as Jake could manage. Eve Baird didn't give compliments lightly, and in ten minutes or less, his alternate self had impressed her enough that she was offering a compliment a year later. Jake probably had no right to be proud of that fact, but he was.

"As far as I could tell," Eve repeated. "I mean, I met him in the jungles of some country - eastern Europe somewhere, I think - not in his headquarters, like I met the alternate Jones and the alternate Cassie."

"Maybe the field was his headquarters," Jake offered. "If the magic was running wild like you said."

Eve looked thoughtful. "I can see that. He did say the best he could do was hunt down magical artifacts and keep them out of the wrong hands. Keep them safe. Even when technology was failing."

She looked thoughtful, but also like she was about to turn down a dark road, so Jake prompted, "What else?"

"Not much. He activated a stone circle to get me and Flynn back where we'd come from - not that it worked - and then we were gone."

"What else?" Jake prompted once again. He might not be as sensitive as Cassandra, but he damn sure knew there was more to this story than Eve had told him.

"I saw him one more time," Eve said after a while. "Cassandra - the alternate Cassandra - figured out how to get me and Flynn back to this timeline. The spell required a focus, something common to all three alternate timelines."

Jake understood immediately. "The Librarians."

"The Librarians," Eve confirmed. "The spell summoned you and Jones to her Annex, and then she opened the door to this Annex."

She looked down again, staring into her cup. Jake would bet she was seeing memories, not just the dregs of her coffee.

"It's - we were about to step through the door when Flynn stopped and turned back to the three of you. I hadn't even thought - but he did. He said that if we did this, if we were successful, then the three of you wouldn't survive."

Eve took a breath and looked up again. "You - he was the first to respond. He rested a fist on his heart, said that he'd had an interesting life. And he smiled when he said it."

Her voice broke on that last, and Jake's heart clutched in sympathy. He stretched out a hand to her, pulled it back when he saw she was struggling not to cry.

Jake didn't know Eve Baird well - certainly not as well as his alternate self had known her - but he had good instincts, when he chose to listen to them. At this moment, his instincts were telling him that if he offered comfort, what little control she had would shatter, and he did know her well enough to know that she would never want to lose control in public.

So Jake sat and sipped at his fekete, trying not to grimace, while Eve gathered her composure.

He'd known it wouldn't take long, and he'd barely taken his second sip before Eve raised her head, meeting his gaze almost defiantly as she waited for - what? His judgment? His censure? He didn't know, and he didn't care. All he had to offer was what he felt.

"Glad did I live and gladly die, and I laid me down with a will."

Eve blinked, and Jake smiled at how quickly her expression went from defiant to confused.

"For the longest time, I thought Stevenson was full of it when he wrote those lines," Jake said. "I couldn't imagine the kind of life that could provoke that feeling."

"Can you now?"

"Yeah," Jake said, still surprised that it was true. But still he knew he wasn't the same as the alternate him, and honesty compelled him to add, "And I'd like to think I would've done the same as he did."

"You would have."

Eve's immediate certainty made him frown. She chuckled in response.

"Of course you would," Eve said, "because you already do. Haven't you noticed? You're the first one to step up when you're needed."

Jake shrugged. He never had been good at accepting compliments - maybe because he got so few of them. "Just doing what needs to be done."

"I know that's what you tell others, and maybe you even tell yourself the same thing, but that's not all of it."

Jake met her challenging gaze with his own. "No? What else is there?"

"You love this. Being a Librarian." Eve studied him. "You might even say you were born to be the Librarian."

"All three of us were - four, counting Flynn," Jake countered. "You saw us yourself - the alternate timelines."

Eve snorted. "Yeah, I saw."

Jake lifted an eyebrow in silent inquiry.

"I saw Jones turn it into a franchise."

The loathing in the word made Jake smile - as did the certainty that it was exactly what Jones would do, left to his own devices.

"I saw Cassandra become a feudal wizard-queen."

Jake felt his smile slipping into the frown he usually only felt when he was studying a particularly puzzling bit of history. Cassandra - a feudal wizard queen? The image wasn't as incongruous as it should've been, not when he'd seen the 'worst' version of Cassandra that the Apple of Discord had evoked. He couldn't quite suppress a shudder at the memory.

"I saw you," Eve was saying, "in the field, doing the job the best you knew how. It may've been a rear-guard action, but you never gave up. So, yeah, you were born for the job."

Jake swallowed, and again, trying for enough saliva to form the question he had to ask. "And Flynn?"

Another snort, this one more exasperated than angry. "It's more like a game to him than anything else. Not to say he's not a good Librarian, but he's in it for the challenge, not the work."

Jake knew she hadn't meant it that way, but Eve's words were a confirmation to him, a confirmation that he'd made the right call in staying at the Annex and then the Library instead of going home to Oklahoma.

Only - Oklahoma wasn't his home anymore. It couldn't be, and if he were honest with himself, it hadn't been since the day he'd chosen to stay there and take over the family business rather than follow his heart to Cambridge or the Sorbonne.

He couldn't say he'd made that choice gladly, but he couldn't regret it, just like he couldn't regret staying with Baird and the others - as she'd said, he was born for this life. In this world, it'd just taken him a little longer to figure it out.

But the silence had stretched between them while he thought over her words, almost uncomfortable, and he cleared his throat.

"Careful, Colonel," Jake said. "You'll make my head swell."

Eve laughed, and the gloom that she'd been wearing like a cloak suddenly dissipated. "Not sure anything can do that, Stone. You're pretty solid."

Jake ducked his head, once again embarrassed by her praise. "Yeah, well." He took a breath, looked up at her. "I'm pretty sure the alternate me would rather we drank a toast to his memory than get all maudlin about it. I know I would."

Eve set her cup aside. "You know any good bars in Budapest?"

"I'm sure we can find one."