Disclaimer – I lack the funds to buy Eureka, so perhaps someone could get it for me as a Christmas present this year?

Pairing – Jack/Nathan

Teaser – "Alright... one more time." The only thing stronger than Jack's fear right now was his irritation, so he was using that to keep from panicking. Taking a seat in front of his husband, Jack tried to be as non-confrontational as possible. "Nathan, we're about to be vibrated to death, and not in the good way." "This is crazy, Sheriff," Nathan snapped. "I am not losing my memory."

A/N – Allison isn't pregnant in this, so there will be no birthing class beepers. I've got something else in mind to save the day.

You Don't Know Jack: Redux

Chapter One

Nathan looked into Jack's bright blue eyes and felt, with utter certainty, that he had to be one of the luckiest men alive. The sun was shining down on them and they were surrounded by family and friends. This had to be the best day that Nathan could ever remember. He hadn't been nervous at all; he'd been so certain that this was what he wanted for the rest of his life.

Today was the day he married Jack Carter.

"From the moment I met you, I knew you were going to be trouble," Jack told him. "We started snarking at each other and still haven't managed to stop. You challenge me, make me go beyond my limits, accept knew ideas... and I love every minute of it because I'm with you. There's no better way I can imagine spending the rest of my life than by your side: trouble, snark, and all the rest.

"I love you, Nathan."

Nathan's hand snaked out and linked with Jack's. "I underestimated you a lot when we first met. You looked like just another member of law enforcement out to shut down any science you didn't understand. Except you weren't. You shot down every expectation I had for you while demonstrating a sense of curiosity that astounded me. You make me see the world with wonder again, Jack. I'm a better person when I'm with you.

"I love you, Jack."

Tearing their eyes away from each other, the couple turned to look at Henry. Their friend was grinning at them, clearly proud to be standing there with them at that moment. Lifting his gaze to the crowd, Henry said, "if there is any reason why these two should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace." There was a moment of silence and then Henry turned to the couple. "Do you have the rings?"

Both men nodded and produced the rings. Henry nodded and then gestured to Jack. "Place the ring on his finger and repeat after me." As Jack slid the ring onto Nathan's finger, Henry led him in saying, "with this ring, I thee wed." Then it was Nathan's turn, slipping the wedding band onto Jack's finger. "With this ring, I thee wed."

"I now pronounce you to be husbands bound in sacred matrimony," Henry announced. "Now go ahead and kiss, already."

Nathan laughed and then leaned forward, capturing Jack's lips with his own...

With a jerk, Nathan came back to reality and dropped the memory recorder on the table. "That's a pretty powerful little device, Tess. It was almost like being there again for a moment."

"Good," Tess grinned impishly. "Once the Story Nest is filled, you can relive that moment whenever you like." Her grin softened into a wistful smile. "Your wedding day... that's a pretty momentous day to share."

"I told Jack that I'm a better person when I'm with him... and I am." Nathan shrugged, looking over to the door of Cafe Diem as Jack hurried in with Jo.

Zoe snickered. "Do you see the mushiness I put up with? I mean, seriously..."

"Well I think they're cute," Tess teased.

Nathan mock glared at them and then looked up at Jack. "They're making fun of us," he whined.

"Eh, they're just jealous," Jack responded with a laugh.

"I'm sure you've noticed how my dad can be delusional, right?" Zoe asked Tess in a mock conspiratorial whisper.

"Yup," Tess responded. Then she sighed. "Well, maybe I'm a little jealous. You two are so happy together, but Allison... she'll never see me as anything other than a friend."

Jo pulled up a chair beside Tess. "I dunno. When you first showed up, Zane and I thought we saw some definite sparkage." Then she smirked at Jack and Nathan. "Setting you up with her has to be easier than getting those two together was."

"Hey!" the two men exclaimed.

Handing Jo one of the snowglobe-like memory recorders, Tess grinned impishly. "Tell me about it."

"Huh?"

"That's a storycatcher. You hold it in your hand, you look into the lens, and you describe a memorable event about living in Eureka." Jo's eyes lit up mischievously as she listened to Tess' explanation.

"So it's a glorified video recorder?" Zoe looked confused.

"It's more like a brain recorder," Tess corrected. "It creates a wireless, neural connection through the optic nerve to see memories as you recall them."

"Can it help you find something that's lost... like a wallet?" Jack asked, pulling up a chair in order to sit beside Nathan.

"Cute," Tess deadpanned. "No, it's for the Eureka Time Capsule Project. All the memories will be collected and preserved in a living, video diary."

"So no pressure," Zoe drawled, giving the storycatchers a wary look.

"The Project is also including biographical data on all the the town's current inhabitants and some of the people who aren't here right now, but have interesting histories," Nathan filled in. "Henry's putting all of that together, so Kim Yamazaki will be remembered there, as will Eva Thorne."

"Zane mentioned that he was helping put together a bunch of data on the major GD projects from the past few years," Jo added. "So... let's see. I look into it like this and just start describing a memory, right?" She held out the storycatcher.

"Yep. Just start talking," Tess encouraged.

"Well, the first time Dr. Blake approached me with the idea of setting these two up, I was initially skeptical. But that was also the day that Fargo's Mental Mouse and Taggart's nanites accidentally interacted to create an army of nanite Starks planning world domination..."

Jo rushed in with Allison, the army of Starks just seconds behind them, and she could not believe the scene that met her eyes.

Spencer was over behind glass with Henry and Zoe, waiting for the right moment to turn on his speakers and blast the nanites to dust. Dr. Blake had been with Jo; Allison had felt that her presence might be detrimental to Stark's ability to concentrate since she'd given the man divorce papers earlier. Though, there had apparently been some incident between Jack and one of the nanite versions of Stark that Carter had been refusing to elaborate on but had convinced Dr. Blake that Jack was crucial to getting Stark to subconciously command the nanite copies.

However, considering the way Jack and Stark were currently liplocked with Taggart smirking at them, Spencer looking faint, Henry grinning, and Zoe hiding her eyes, Jo had a fairly good idea what had happened with the nanite Stark.

Damn... Allison was right about these two.

Of course, knowing the way their minds worked, it was going to take more than this to make them fess up their feelings for one another. As the nanite army invaded and Spencer flipped on his stereo system, Jo locked eyes with Allison.

Dr. Blake had just found her first partner in crime.

"Why was there an army of nanites, though?" Tess asked. "What were they trying to accomplish?"

"The Mental Mouse was tied into my subconscious," Nathan grumbled, glaring at Jo. That hadn't exactly been the greatest day of his life, though his first kiss with Jack had certainly been spectacular. "It transmitted information on the same frequency Taggart's nanites received commands."

"So one version tried to kiss me while the rest latched on to his dreams of world domination." Jack linked his hand with Nathan's and grinned at him.

"That's not all I dream about," Nathan drawled pointedly, making Jack blush.

"Ugh! TMI, guys," Zoe wrinkled her nose and then picked up a storycatcher for herself. "Well, I'm not sure what memory I'll immortalize yet, but I'll figure it out after work... which I should get back to now that my lunch break is over."

"Well, as interesting as hearing about these storycatchers has been, Allison wants us," Jack gestured to himself and his husband, "to help make certain GD is cleared out before the sonic cleaning."

Nathan nodded and the two of them stood up. Before they could go anywhere, however, Fargo raced up to Tess. "Tess, do you think I could get another story thing? I think mine overloaded."

Snorting in amusement, Nathan muttered, "no, really?"

"It's not surprising. You've been at the center of every disaster this town has ever had," Jack added, much to Jo's clear amusement.

"Not all of them," Fargo objected, looking very put out.

"Death ray, homicidal smart house," Jo started listing as Tess swapped out memory recorders for Fargo, "force field bubble..."

"You need to learn not to push unlabeled buttons, Fargo," Nathan added. "It's like a compulsion for you and it never ceases to land you in trouble."

"We should start keeping a tally," Jack observed. "We could start a pool."

"Yeah..." Jo looked over at Vince. "Though, I think our resident bookie has already got one stashed away somewhere."

Fargo pouted. "That's not funny."

Jack picked up a storycatcher and tucked it into a pocket as he and Nathan left. As they walked out the door, though, Nathan thought he heard Fargo asking Tess about what others had to say about him...

-=-=-=

"So what is a sonic cleaning, anyway?" Jack asked as he and Nathan walked into GD. "I know it's happened twice before since I've moved to Eureka, but I've never been clear on the details."

"Well... you remember how sound can be used to harden carbon into diamonds, right?" Nathan asked. Receiving an affirmative nod from Jack, he continued to explain. "A sonic cleaning bombards everything in GD with a frequency that is harmless to metals, but will shake apart anything organic into its constituent elements. Once the sonic cleaning is done, the janitorial staff gets sent back in and dusts everything off."

By then they'd reached Allison and a strange, mousy scientist with huge headphones over his ears: Dr. Kennison. Nathan had met the man only once before and found him to be rather irritated. For whatever reason, Kennison would speak loudly, but expect everyone else to speak normally. The man was disconcerting to say the least.

"Carter, this is Dr. Kennison," Allison introduced. "I'm sure you remember him, Nathan," she added in amusement.

"Unfortunately," Nathan agreed.

"Hi, how are you?" Jack greeted Kennison, pitching his voice to match Kennison's volume.

Much to Nathan's amusement, Kennison gave Jack a bewildered look and asked, "why are you yelling?" in his typically loud voice.

"Dr. Kennison is the scientist who pioneered the acoustic cleaning process we use during the sonic cleaning," Nathan told Jack, who was giving him a look that clearly said that Nathan should have mentioned this nut's quirks earlier. "It'll have Global completely sterilized in forty-eight hours."

"I like the way that sounds," Jack punned, earning eye rolls from Nathan and Allison and a fake laugh from Kennison.

"Final checks, Dr. Blake, Dr. Stark," Kennison said. "We've got three stragglers: Ash... Boubay... Fargo." He clicked off his tiny PDA.

"I'm sure they're still locking up," Nathan responded. Kennison humphed and wandered off.

"We have to make sure that any biological experiments have been removed or contained and any volatile GD projects have been secured," Allison told Jack.

"Then we should probably hurry Fargo out of here before something goes wrong," Jack joked.

"Let's track him down, then," Nathan agreed.

Around them sounded Global's warning system alerting them to the sonic cleaning in ninety minutes.

-=-=-=

In Tess Fontana's lab in Section Five, there was a scientist present. Unfortunately, this scientist was Fargo and not Tess.

Fargo had snuck into the lab in order to view memories through the Story Nest. He wanted to know if what Carter, Stark, and Jo had said about him was the way everyone remembered him: a troublemaker caught in the middle of nearly every Eureka disaster. Not that he wasn't constantly causing unintentional trouble... but was it too much to ask to be remembered as a brilliant scientist as well?

Apparently so.

As Fargo placed the viewing halo back on the desk, he started fiddling with the computer. If he couldn't be remembered as a genius and he didn't want to be remembered as a klutz, then he was just going to have to be remembered for being a suave sword fighter... even if that was a memory of a dream and not reality.

After all, history was always being rewritten, anyway.

A/N - I rather liked the opportunity this episode gave me as far as bringing Nathan back in. It felt completely natural and the majority of the story wrote itself in a matter of hours. :)