A/N: The idea for this fic occurred to me as a sort of abstract, "wouldn't it be interesting if..." sort of thought sometime in December-ish. I was absolutely determined that I did not want to be the one to write it, however. By mid-February, it was a Thing, and it has been a Thing since; in fact, this was supposed to be my third Continuum fic, but then Just Once snuck its way in there. I will never again lie to myself and rule out a new fic, because after half a novel of stuff I never intended to write for this fandom, I have eaten my words plenty.

Also, if you've landed here without seeing any of my other fics for this fandom, sorry-not-sorry, it's still probably pretty clear where my actual shipping allegiances lie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

P.S. My apologies for the seriously sucky formatting earlier! My usual breaks didn't copy over well and I didn't see it till now. I'm realizing that means probably everything I've posted in the last few months has equally awful formatting, too... sigh.

Jack Dillon has always considered himself to be a fairly rational man. He's never been the type to accept everything he hears as gospel, insisting instead on hard evidence at every turn. So perhaps it's a testament to his personal faith in Kiera Cameron that, presented with an explanation that should have been easily dismissed as science fiction, he found he believed her.

Oh, sure, there's proof enough. But most of that could be accounted for by a determined enough skeptic. Kiera herself laid the groundwork for just that sort of slant. However, he hasn't found himself reaching for an easier answer. This is a fact he simply has to accept: time travel is possible – more than possible; it has happened at least twice already. And in absorbing this strange truth, Dillon has to face the reality that he has not always been on the right side of this recreated history they are all living in.

He isn't even sure he's earned a spot on the ragtag team charged with the daunting task of maintaining the momentum Kiera initiated in this time. Newly aware of this lofty goal at all, he questions his own involvement constantly. What does he have to offer, really? It frustrates him to no end both that he can't do more and that he's expected to be able to do anything at all.

In the early days following Kiera's departure, Carlos comes to him frequently to seek advice on running the department. "I don't know how you ever managed to cope with this level of responsibility," confesses the detective-turned-inspector. "How do you make these kinds of decisions all day and still manage to sleep at night? Take Garza, for instance. I'm in a tight spot where she's concerned. How am I supposed to handle her? Am I supposed to let a known terrorist walk because she was a useful ally?"

"She helped save the world; that does seem like the sort of move that should earn you a few perks," Dillon muses, playing along with the charade that he's in any way qualified to offer sound counsel here.

"Yeah? Tell that to the people who lost loved ones to Liber8. And it's not like the people of this city even know all this stuff that's been going on behind the scenes. Nothing's black or white anymore, Dillon. Everything's grey now, and I was never trained for anything like this. Tell me what I should do, because I sure as hell don't know!"

Dillon loses his cool then. "You think I do?" he shouts. "You think I was trained for this, that any of us were? Newflash, Fonnegra: this isn't the world any of us knew anymore! We are all flying blind here, and if you think I have some invisible road map I'm not sharing…" He draws a shaky breath. "I had my chance already, and I screwed it up. I'm glad it's you who has to make the call now, because if any of us has a prayer of fixing what's wrong with this damn world, it's you, Carlos.

"I will continue to do what I can to protect this city, because it's in my blood. But I am done making decisions that screw over the very people I am trying to protect. My job now is to repair whatever's left of my relationship with my wife and my daughter, because I have spent far too much time only nominally a part of my own family in pursuit of justice and safety for everyone else's family. I was so focused on chasing down demons, I'm not entirely convinced I didn't become one myself in the process.

"I'm sorry I left you with this mess, Carlos, I am. But I don't think I can be trusted to fix it. Our world is changing, and I don't know if I recognize my place in it anymore."

Carlos regards him with narrowed eyes and thinned lips that Dillon has come to recognize as the man's take-no-shit face. "Sir, with all due respect for your existential angst, this isn't the time to bow out gracefully. We need all hands on deck. You still have pull at the department, and your influence reaches a lot higher than mine. Like it or not, you still have a role to play in determining the future. You can ponder life's meaning and your place in the universe on your own time."

It's an interesting position Carlos is in. Well, interesting is the wrong word. Delicate, maybe; though "delicate" sounds too soft, pleasant, easy. Delicate is for flowers and laundry settings no one actually uses, not deciding how to handle the conundrum that is Jasmine Garza.

Jasmine Garza, Liber8 terrorist. Jasmine Garza, multiple murderer. Jasmine Garza, gleeful sower of discord and expert architect of chaos. Jasmine Garza… ally?

They've come to a tentative truce, fraught with complications, and Carlos has no idea how long it will last, especially now, given… well, everything. That's the problem with words like "enemy" and "hero." No person is solely sinner nor saint.

Carlos's mind drifts, as it often does, toward the ever-present question of Kiera. He's accepted – mostly – that he'll likely never know if she successfully reached her destination. There are other elements to the equation, however, that he's only just beginning to wrestle with.

It feels like speaking ill of the dead, but he's angry with her. He feels betrayed, manipulated, abandoned, and a whole host of other adjectives he'll never admit to. He risked his job, his values, his life for her, and she turned around and left the first chance she got.

Not that he blames her for wanting to see her kid, of course. But, the thing is – and this is the part in this well-trod mental circuit where his head starts to hurt – is she even really going back to her son? Ignoring every other complication, assuming she makes it back to the future at all, will Kiera be reunited with Sam? Even if he were born in this new timeline, he won't be hers – he'll be a copy. Right? That's what happened when Kiera and Alec leaped backward, anyway. Why shouldn't it work the same moving forward?

Maybe she wouldn't see it that way. She never did; didn't understand his reservations about trusting her when she showed up and his version of Kiera wound up dead. There are a lot of things, he's realizing, that Kiera never saw from his perspective; whether because it didn't fit her own goals or because it genuinely didn't occur to her, he's not 100 percent sure. He wants to believe in her still, even now, even with her gone. In one very real sense, though, his life is simpler without her. He has to admit it's nice, not having to cover for her all the time.

Kiera Cameron is the woman who saved the world, yes. But she's also the woman who left it to fend for itself. And in the process, she left her friends to pick up the scattered pieces of lives they rewrote to fit her.

Not that it's all bad. Largely because of Kiera, Carlos and the others have a real chance of making the world a better, safer, and freer place, which is all Carlos has ever really wanted to do with his life, isn't it? There's no playbook, but when has there ever been? At least they have some idea of what not to do.

But then, there are so many questions that don't have easy answers. His thoughts circle back around to Garza. She's still keeping in infrequent contact with Alec (to the latter's dismay); Carlos suspects she can't quite bring herself to forget about why she was sent back in the first place: to keep Alec in line. This puts Carlos in a tough spot. Does he use that connection to bring Garza to justice? What does justice look like for her, anyway? What Liber8 has done is unforgivable, true. As a cop, he has to look past their motives to the true nature of their crimes, and besides, even if he were personally willing to look the other way, all of Vancouver (to start) would have Garza's head. Still, there's a spark of – well, if not goodness, at least a willingness to put aside personal agenda to serve the greater good – in her, and in her own way, Garza saved the city.

It's an unwinnable scenario, which Carlos has become uncomfortably familiar with lately. He's fairly sure he's forgotten the meaning of sleep. He misses the time before all this, or even the beginning, back when Kiera at least was confident she was doing the right thing. He's beginning to understand the appeal of time travel, just for the sake of starting over.

Jasmine Garza was a part of the revolution from the time she was a teenager. In a sense, it was all she'd ever known. Orphaned early in life, like many others, she'd fallen in with the so-called "wrong" crowd at a young age, and she was a full-fledged member of Liber8 by seventeen. The movement had found her acquired occupation as – prim cough – entertainment of the evening to be useful for acquiring information. It's astounding, really, what powerful people will let slip when they view you as nothing more than an object to be used up and discarded. No one thinks to guard their secrets around trash.

Ever since Kiera left, things have been quiet. There's a rumbling beneath the surface, of course. Liber8 still has plenty of sympathizers in this time. The seeds of their anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian message have sprouted, though the germinating chaos has died down quite a bit in the absence of solid leadership. It's not like Garza is prepared to take on that kind of figurehead role. Hell, she's not even sure what her goals are at this point; she can hardly shepherd a group of angry hippies into effecting any real change. Right now is all about "taking time for herself" and "figuring herself out" and all that garbage.

Suffice it to say, Garza suffocates under the oppression of apparent peace. Every inch of her itches for the comfort of conflict, and in its absence, she excels at creating it. She pops into the young Sadler's place now and then – idiot hasn't changed the locks since shit went down, not that it would stop her, but it would be nice to at least be regarded as something more than a nuisance – just to rile them all up, mostly. And yeah, maybe there's a small and definitely unwanted part of her that doesn't hate the idea of "home." Not that this place would count. But there's something to be said for habit.

On this particular day, weirdo Sadler junior/senior is zonked out in the bushes next to the pool while Alec and Emily flit around the kitchen, doing whatever it is that couples who've seen some shit and somehow survived it do. Garza takes their presence as an indication to sow some discord.

"Honey, I'm home," she announces when neither immediately looks up upon her arrival.

"Oh, did I forget to put out the 'go the hell away' welcome mat?" Emily comments breezily. Garza hates her both fervently more and decidedly less than the rest of them. The badass in her recognizes the badass in Emily and respects it, although being Alec's guard dog is a clear waste of Emily's talent.

"Well, hello to you too. What, no alligator-infested moat to keep the big bad terrorist away?"

Alec glances up briefly from the peppers he's chopping. "I have no doubt Emily could be more threatening than any alligator if need be."

"You always did have a weakness for intimidating women," Garza sneers.

"Look, I'm sorry he sent you here, all right? But we've been over this. I'm not him. I'm not. And I refuse to become that person."

His insistence on serenity is infuriating. She hasn't kicked anyone's ass in far too long. "Good for you, trying to better yourself this time around. Funny, then, isn't it, how your tastes haven't changed?"

"I'll take that as a compliment," Emily interjects hastily, obviously anxious to smooth things over before the perfectly crafted tension comes to a boil. What a precious little peacemaker. How adorable.

Garza tilts her head and regards Emily. She and this young version of Alec Sadler really are something. Their relationship is damn-the-world-to-save-you dysfunctional at times, but that just makes them all the more fun to play with. "That's nice, honey, but I wasn't referring to you," she mocks sweetly.

It's immediately apparent that Emily caught Garza's meaning. Her jaw clenches, and her face whitens. Could it be she never noticed? Or perhaps Garza has hit a long-suppressed nerve. She can feign confidence all she likes, but Alec is her one weakness. Oh, this is delightful! Garza simply must file this away for later prodding. For now, she has places to be. A meeting with an especially, oh, complicated arms dealer-slash-environmentalist is calling her name.

And so Garza disappears the way she came, flouncing out of the fancy-ass house with a scoff and a short little wave at the door, still unsure of her place in this strange new world, still getting a thrill out of pissing people off. It's like therapy.

The moment they're alone, Emily whirls on Alec. "What the hell was that?" she demands.

Alec gives her a look like she's crazy, and oh, she could strangle him for it. "I'm pretty sure that was a known psycho terrorist trying to screw with our heads. Take it with a grain of salt, you know?"

"No," Emily shakes her head, "no, no. You don't get to weasel out of this one that easily. You wanted her."

"Who, Garza?" Alec blinks. "Well, yeah, apparently. Old, future, alternate timeline me, yes. Pretty sure that doesn't count as cheating, though?"

"Don't be an ass; you know who I mean." Emily rolls her eyes. "Kiera."

Alec squints at her in disbelief. "Are you serious? She's not even in this timeline anymore, Em! Do we really have to get into this?"

"You don't think I might've wanted to know I was your second choice?"

"That was years ago! I was eighteen! Of course I was attracted to her; she was mysterious and pretty and needed my help, and yes, she could kick ass. Apparently I have a type. Does it matter? I chose you!"

"Of course it matters!" Emily yells. "Of course it matters if I was some kind of consolation prize; you think I don't care that you only got together with me because you couldn't have her?"

In the beat of silence that passes, Emily notices the rapid movement of their chests rising and falling in tandem with their shallow breaths. Tension fills the room like a gas, expanding and poisoning them both with resentful words left unsaid for too long.

Finally, Alec says, with forced calm, "I don't think you really want to go there, Emily. Because if we're going to bring up the start of our relationship, how about the fact that you only went out with me because you were bribed to?"

"We have moved past that, Alec—"

"Because there was never time!" Alec snaps. "Because you were in danger, and then you were dead, and then we were all in danger, and our lives have been nothing but chaos since and it never slows down and we never got a chance to deal with it. But you know what? I've been willing to look past it, because I'm in love with you, and I'm more interested in where we are now and where we're going next than in how we got here."

Feeling appropriately chastised, Emily bites her lip and crosses her arms over her chest. "I can't just look past it in this case," she whispers at last. "Not when a part of you is always going to belong to her. Because she's gone now, and she's always going to stay this idealized version of herself in your head; and when we fight, when shit gets real, that's what you're going to flash to. You're going to spend the next sixty years wondering what might have been. And I can't live that way, Alec, not knowing for the rest of our lives that I only hold most of the pieces to your heart."

As she turns to go, Alec reaches out and catches her wrist. "Don't you dare walk away again," he says fervently. "Is this how it's always going to be for us? You running away whenever things get too real?"

Emily shakes her head, letting her hair cover her eyes so she doesn't have to look at him and see his heart breaking in unison with hers. "This isn't like last time, Alec," she says softly. "I'm not leaving to protect you this time. I'm leaving to protect me."

But she doesn't. She finds an empty room upstairs and for exactly one hour, she allows herself this small weakness and she cries.

Alec's heart stalls in his chest for an impossibly long time. He's fairly certain he doesn't breathe again until he realizes she hasn't run, she's still here, there's still a chance to fix this. Relief washes over him in a wave and his heart starts beating again as he waits, crouched in the hall to give Emily space and try to put his thoughts together so he won't mangle his words when he faces her again.

Unsurprisingly, she hears him, or otherwise senses his presence (he's learned not to question her superpowers too much). She pokes her head into the hallway, notes Alec's weird stance, loudly exhales, and sits beside him. Feeling utterly spent, Alec slumps against the wall and tilts his head back so his entire body is propped up with minimal effort on his part. Neither of them looks at the other.

"You didn't leave," he states as neutrally as possible.

"I didn't leave."

"Are you going to?"

Her answer ignites a spark of hope. "Seems like a lot of effort, after I just came back."

Alec rolls his bottom lip back and forth between his teeth and rubs his thumb and forefinger together. He's rarely not in motion. "You know that I love you, right?"

Quietly, Emily answers, "I know."

The corner of his mouth quirks up in an unexpected, reflexive almost-smile. "Very Han Solo of you. I approve." He rolls his head to the side so he's looking at her now, and he sees she's looking back at him with a small, sad smile on her face.

"To be clear, I don't just mean I'm in love with you. I mean I choose you, and I'm going to keep choosing you, even when it's difficult, even when you're a pain in my ass, even when I don't really feel like it."

"I choose you, Pikachu," Emily whispers conspiratorially, and he's not sure what he was expecting, but it was… definitely not that.

"Seriously, Emily? I'm trying to make some big, sweeping declaration here, and you're totally killing the mood."

"Sorry, sir." Her goofy teasing is such a wild swing from where they were before that it feels like whiplash. He's not sure how to respond. He's glad, of course, that his slight against her appears to have been forgiven. It's just that he doesn't know whether to trust her new, sunny disposition. Sometimes, it feels like every time he gets close to the real Emily, she gets skittish and retreats, leaving behind a halftone version of herself. Still, even caught off guard by her personality shift, he knows he has to get these words out.

"I'm kidding. Mostly. Not about the speech. Where was I? Uh… Right. Choosing. I know you didn't ask for this – whatever this thing is that we're all doing. Mission, I guess. Big, grand plans to change the world. Things got a heck of a lot more complicated than you signed up for."

"I happen to like complicated. I thrive in it."

"Anyway, if you really want out, I wouldn't blame you. Just – don't let it be over Kiera, okay? Because that's not… Especially not because of something Garza said. That woman lives to wreak havoc."

"I'm not breaking up with you. I love a challenge. Change the world? Psh, we got this. Besides, if it comes to it, I'll just take you out myself. Badass, remember?" She grins and his soul feels lighter. "Sorry for flipping out on you earlier. Even we 'intimidating women' have insecurities, I guess. You're right; how we got here isn't important. Whatever comes at us next, we face it together. Agreed?"

"I love it when you tell me I'm right."

Emily swats his arm. "Don't get used to it."

Julian tosses his keys into a bowl on the counter and is midway through the oh-so-laborious food preparation process of microwaving chicken nuggets for dinner when, startled, he realizes his stepbrother is frenetically typing away at the kitchen table. The fact that this escaped his notice for the several minutes he's been home is surprising to Julian: not that Alec's presence in his own house is so shocking; just that Julian's always been a fairly observant individual, and he has reason enough lately to be wary. Maybe it means, for better or worse, he's becoming less vigilant. Maybe it means he's letting his guard down around Alec more. Maybe it means nothing at all, besides the fact that he's hungry and distracted.

The microwave beeping must break through Alec's focus, because he looks up, sees Julian, blinks slowly, and says hazily, "Hey. Welcome back."

Welcome back. Never welcome home. It shouldn't, but it stings. Julian knows staying with Alec was supposed to be temporary. When things went to shit – well, even more so than usual – and they were all under a semi-literal time crunch, it made sense for their band of misfits to all reside under one roof. It's just that moving out and moving on has been a slow, halting process.

Besides, he can't bring himself to feel terribly guilty about intruding on Alec and Emily's domestic life when Jason is still around, too (when he confines himself to one place; the man is a bit of a nomad at heart – sort of disconcertingly cat-like, come to think of it). Hard to live in couple-y bliss when one half's middle-aged son by another woman is floating in and out of the scene.

Julian says nothing in response to Alec's greeting, which the latter apparently takes as a signal to try harder. "Interesting day?" he inquires hopefully.

"Not in any lasting sense, no. Which is fine by me; I've had enough interesting days to last a lifetime." Julian smirks. "Nice pajamas, by the way. Must be nice. Some of us have to work for a living, you know." He's not sure where the bitterness is coming from, or if he even means it as anything other than a joke at all.

Alec glances down at his holey "resistance is futile (if 1 ohm)" t-shirt and penguin pajama pants as if noticing them for the first time. It's legitimately possible. His head has been even further in the clouds than usual lately. "I work," he protests. "I'm working now, actually."

Without knowing what makes him say it, Julian blurts out, "Doesn't it seem pointless now?"

A look of utter bafflement crosses Alec's face.

"Once you've stopped the end of the world as we know it, how do you go back to just… doing life? Working, cooking, cleaning, small talk, as if any of it matters? I mean, we've rewritten history, if what they said – Kiera and Liber8, even Brad's army, all of them – if it's true."

"Yeah, well, we haven't averted the crisis entirely yet, just put it off, so there's still a lot of work to be done. I'm hoping this—" he gestures at whatever's on his screen – "is part of that. If you mean how do I, how do any of us, keep going when our world has been turned upside down and inside out…" He shrugs. "I don't have an answer for you. We just do, I guess. We do what needs to be done, and we try not to screw it up this time."

Julian nods thoughtfully. A notion that's been pestering him finds voice almost against his will. "Why'd you let her go back?"

Alec barks out a laugh. "No one lets Kiera Cameron do anything."

"You know what I mean. You have no idea what, if anything, is waiting for her on the other side. You might have damned her to oblivion, for all you know. And you have to spend the next sixty years wondering—"

"You and Emily both! Do I really seem like I have nothing better to do with my time than sit around and worry about Kiera?"

At that point, Julian pops a disappointingly cold nugget into his mouth and tries to plot a quick exit from the conversation. "Didn't realize that would touch a nerve, sorry. I'm not about to insert myself into your lovers' quarrel with Emily; believe me, there's nothing I want less at this moment."

Biting his lip, gaze averted, Alec blows air forcefully out the side of his mouth, which Julian recognizes to mean it's Confession Time. Not quite what he'd bargained for, but he can't exactly turn back now. "Fine. You want to know why I helped her make the jump?"

"I don't—"

But it's too late; it's been pent up for too long; Alec doesn't even hear him as the words come tumbling out.

"Because I screwed her over, okay? From the beginning of this – from before the beginning, depending on how you look at it – I've been screwing her over. He – I – sent her back here, ripped her away from her husband and son to fix my mess, didn't I? And I lied to her and made her think she was going home when I went back to save Emily. And I can't even begin to list the ways the other me wreaked havoc with her life and everyone else's, and he wouldn't have even existed if it weren't for my choices. And that whole thing with Brad and Dark Future Kellogg or whatever, that's at least partly my fault too, or future me, anyway. So, yeah, was it smart to send her back? Probably not. But it's what she wanted, to see her son, and who am I to argue with that?"

The furious barrage of self-recrimination abates at last, and silence descends upon the kitchen.

Feeling supremely uncomfortable, Julian shuffles his feet and counters, "Far be it from me to interfere with your self-loathing, but consider this: most of that list wasn't even truly your doing. Versions of you, maybe, but not any more the same person as the you that's sitting in front of me than the school bus driver who flipped me off today. Also, if we're assigning blame, Kiera screwed you over pretty badly, too. Not least of which includes when she handed you over to the creepy time guardian cult to be brainwashed or erased from the timeline or whatever the hell the goal was there. So it's hardly as black-and-white as you've drawn it up in your head to be."

"Kiera made the calls she did to save the world," Alec points out. "A noble motive, surely, even if the actual decisions weren't optimal."

"Yeah, well, you were trying to save your girlfriend. I wouldn't call that entirely selfish. And how much did she really care about fixing everything if, in the end, she left us to figure all this shit out for ourselves?"

For once in his damn life, Alec is speechless. It's a question nobody has had any desire to confront, and just hearing it in his own voice sounds obscene to Julian's ears. He's never been one to shy away from questioning – well, everything, but people, mostly, and their motives. He can't pretend he understands all of the science or magic behind time travel, but he does understand a pretty good chunk of politics. For instance, that being a leader means sticking around to make change where it needs to happen. You don't just drop a bombshell on your team and leave them to deal with the impact. You can't start a story and then skip ahead to the ending without putting in the effort in the middle.

For better or worse, Kiera had a major impact on all of them. Not only on a personal level, the power of friendship and all that nonsense (it makes him want to gag) but all that she stood for. Like the rest of them, Julian can never be the same. He has to live with the knowledge of what he's capable of, what his words can inspire. And he has to decide what to do with that knowledge. Lately, it feels like he's paralyzed by the possibilities. While he has no particular fondness for Kiera as a person, he's pretty deeply invested in what became of her when she traveled through time again; after all, it has serious implications for his own future. Whether he has one worth pursuing. "Do you think she made it?"

Alec stares at the floor. "I have to believe she did. I can't spend my life wondering. Emily was right."

"Like, in general? You should tell her that; it'll be music to her ears, I'm sure."

"Ass," Alec snorts, but it's almost affectionate. Gross, they're becoming friends now. This was definitely not part of the plan. "No, we were arguing earlier about me being hung up on Kiera and what happened. What's going to happen. Or won't."

Curiosity gets the better of him. "You think Emily's jealous of Kiera?"

"I don't think it's that. She was, once, in the beginning, I think. We're past that… I hope. No, I think it's probably more like… she resents Kiera, you know? For being so important in my life. She'd probably resent anyone for that, but Kiera being, well… Kiera, that doesn't exactly help."

"You realize how utterly ridiculous our lives are now because of this woman?"

"Yeah," Alec sighs. "It's not like I'd undo it all if I had the chance – well, maybe some things – but it'd be nice to go back to a less complicated version of reality. Think there's an uncorrupted save file somewhere?"

"You nerd," Julian scoffs, but actually, the idea does sound appealing.

Jason wakes with a start and peers intently at the smudged handwriting on the back of his hand, hoping for a clue to his current situation. Yesterday's Jason would have known. Would have been able to tease out the sense from the tangle of thoughts in his brain. Doesn't matter; he has to keep going. Urgency pushes him to his feet. He vaguely recognizes his surroundings – water, lots of it; he must have fallen asleep in the bushes beside the pool. But where? Home – well, almost. Sort of. He quite likes this place, actually. It's big, but that's not so different from before, is it? It's not the same, but nothing is the same, and that's good. Right? A chance to start over, to impress Dad-but-not-Dad. Rewind, restart, redo.

He barrels through the house like a bat out of hell, as someone from before – who? He can't remember who – would say. Looking for the woman, the one with the brown hair. Not that one, with the reddishness; that's Not-Mom. Well, the other woman, she's not Mom, too. But different. That's why he's looking for her, isn't it? She's different. Different like him. Maybe she has answers. Not that he remembers the question anymore.

"Whoa. Whoa, Jason, slow down. Where's the fire, huh?"

The disembodied voice slowly attaches itself to a semi-familiar face – young Theseus, the uncle who was scarcely spoken of in Jason's childhood. The boogeyman whispered to other children lived in his own family's closets. Perturbing, indeed.

"Fire? No fire. There's water, lots of water, outside…"

"That's a pool, Jason. Jeez, you're bad today, huh? Guess whatever Alec's got you on isn't working."

Jason tilts his head and regards the boogeyman. Strange, he's not so frightening up close. "Dad? Have you seen Dad? He might know…" Words are jumbled; it's getting harder to make them happen out his mouth.

Theseus shakes his head and sounds irritated as he replies, "You and the 'dad' thing. He's not actually your dad; you know that, right? I mean, he's physically the same person, or at least genetically, but…" He sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair. "Why am I trying to explain this to you? Especially on a bad day, it's like conversing with an intelligent cocker spaniel. I guess time travel messes with your mind. How'd you even end up here, anyway? In this decade, I mean."

Jason purses his lips and shakes his head from side to side, not for the sake of disagreement so much as to maintain constant motion. "Mm. Dad asked. Every story needs a hero, yes? White knight, right the wrongs. Shh, tell no one." The sound of his own fingers snapping comes to him distantly, disconnected entirely from the sensation so that only the sight of his hands fluttering around his face tells him it's his body making the sound at all.

"That's the trouble with this story, isn't it? Everybody thinks they're the hero," Theseus muses, almost to himself. "We've got too many damn heroes. Maybe some of us need to just live, you know?"

This strikes Jason as the sort of statement that doesn't really require an answer – or rather, requires a much more in-depth answer than he's capable of giving. And so, humming to himself quietly, he wanders off once more, still pursuing answers to a question he isn't sure how to ask.