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Chapter Text

If asked - well, if asked under duress, or truth serum - he would have to say he'd fallen head over heels in love with Eve Baird the first time he'd seen her. In pitched battle, and - he could tell, even though the whole thing had started incredibly quickly - fighting, for some reason, to protect him.

Not to give his imaginary interrogator the wrong idea - odd as it was, there really wasn't anything romantic about it. It was a funny thing, a sort of brothers-in-arms feeling coupled with the flash of I've been waiting my whole life to meet this person that he might otherwise have interpreted quite differently.

The thunderbolt really hit him when their eyes met, and he could clearly read in this stranger's eyes two thoughts that he had to agree were completely accurate. The first was No seriously - ninjas???! The second was This escalated so quickly because you were thinking with your pants, didn't it?

See? Hard to argue with.

After all that, the fact that she actually knew everything about him was at most a mild surprise. Her insistence that he had to come to New York City with her - right now, right this second - now that was unexpected.

Almost as unexpected as ninjas in Oklahoma.

"Wh- what am I supposed to tell my family?"

Her face in the flickering of moon and traffic lights was unruffled. "I usually just flash my badge in those kinds of situations."

"Flash your -" He had already been pretty interested, but now even more so. It made more sense now - the dark suit, the severe look . . . normally in these parts a girl who looked like this would have been done up like Miss America. "FBI?"

She hesitated for the briefest moment. "NATO."

"NATO?" His eyes widened. "Were the ninjas terrorists?"

Now she definitely paused. ". . . sure. Let's say that."

"And they're targeting . . ." With a roll of his eyes that she couldn't see, he conceded. "Art historians?"

"They're targeting potential Librarians." He looked over at this statement, and when their eyes briefly met, she admitted, "We don't know why. Yet."

"There's others?"

"Yes. Two."

Despite himself, he blew out a small, impressed sigh. "So when I got that letter - they were only interviewing three people? Or four I guess, since I assume someone got the job." There was a long pause - the road was straight, and he finally dared to look over again. "Um -"

"No," she said.

"No?"

"No, there were at least ten or so."

"So the others -" It hit him then, and he was extremely proud of not crashing the truck. "They're dead, aren't they."

"Yes."

"And -" The reason for his earlier "um" came back to mind. "I don't - sorry, I don't know your name."

"No, I'm sorry, I abducted you without properly introducing myself." He saw the ghost of a smile. "It's Baird - Eve Baird."

He nodded. "So is that - Agent Baird, or -"

"Colonel."

"Right. Cool." The town didn't have a lot of stop lights, but they were approaching another run of them and this one was red. He started to slow down.

"Run it."

"What -"

"Badge."

"Right." Shaking his head, he gunned it through the empty intersection. "So - Colonel Baird - if you hadn't come looking for me tonight, I'd be . . ."

"You can handle yourself," she said, "but a barstool is no match for a sword."

"I owe you."

"Well," she said, and now the smile was so clear in her voice that he had to look over and see it. It was nice, if smug. "You can pay me back by doing what I tell you."

He was in the driver's seat of his truck with a woman who made him smile, instead of dead on the floor of the bar with a hole in his chest. Obedience was definitely a cheap price to pay, even if it involved him telling his brothers that the FBI needed him to help with a case of potential terrorist sabotage on an oil rig in Texas.

"I don't have an FBI badge," Baird hissed as she escorted him to his bedroom to watch while he hastily packed a bag.

"Your badge is official-looking and you're terrifying," he shot back. "They're not going to examine it."

The fact that she seemed to accept "terrifying" as a compliment confirmed his good opinion.

Thing was, he realized later, once he had met the Librarian and watched what started to happen the longer he and Baird were in the same place - Flynn had probably seen the exact same things in her that Jake had. The difference, maybe, was that Flynn had no brothers, in arms or otherwise, or that he had been almost completely alone for so long, or - well, or. Maybe they just needed different things. Baird had hit Jake from the start with a strong spark of something, but it was an affinity that came with a powerful internal taboo, almost as strong as if they had been blood.

Which was probably the reason that when they had seen her at that party in that dress, although part of him definitely noticed, another part just as firmly said wrong and in the end he mostly just felt sort of proud and impressed. Flynn, on the other hand, looked like he would've gotten weak-kneed if he hadn't already been dying. And Jake, of course, had feelings about Baird's unexpectedly sweet smile (which it was, when it was real), and her clean-laundry smell, and how oddly vulnerable she looked in her "civilian" clothes; but Flynn seemed to have very different feelings about the same things.

Apparently, that mix of comfort and challenge that said family to him had said something else to Flynn. Something a lot more like partner.

It was, he figured, the difference between two people facing the world back-to-back, and facing it side by side, going the same direction. They weren't mutually exclusive, so he was great with the way things were. As long as, that look on her face that she'd tried to hide, the day Flynn first left to go hunt for the Library? As long as she didn't look like that too often.

Chapter Text

Eve Baird sat alone in the sitting room of a suite in one of London's nicest reasonably-priced boutique hotels, biting on the side of her finger.

Not dead. Not dying.

Flynn, who didn't bounce back from death so much as ricochet, had of course wanted to fly straight back and get on with the next thing, but Eve had put her foot down. Healed or not, he had still lost who knew how much blood, and he was probably ten seconds from shock. Cassandra was shaking with stress and exhaustion, and constantly on the verge of tears. She herself had been burning adrenaline and now felt utterly drained, and from the looks of him Stone was the same.

The kid, of course, was bouncing on his toes. Whatever.

They all needed to eat something normal, and sleep, and they needed to do both of those things on solid ground and not on 16 hours' worth of airplane. They needed a hotel (and of course it was the kid who knew where to go, having found many, many things to try to steal in London over the last few years).

So they had two rooms, and a pull-out sofa bed currently in sofa form, on which Eve was sitting gnawing a welt into her finger.

Not dying.

So, the Librarian was . . . strange. Really strange. And incredibly annoying and unwilling to listen to reason. And brilliant. Undeniably brave, surprisingly good at rolling with the punches. Really surprisingly cute, especially the unexpected little crows' feet.

Not a good dancer, but he'd held her so carefully that it didn't really matter. He'd even managed not to bleed all over her, which would have been a bit of a giveaway to the rest of the room that something was wrong.

An urgent, adrenaline-fueled rush to save the world, and hopefully his life; long flights to New York and then London with him quietly fading in the seat next to her, grim and desperate looks exchanged with Stone as they took turns trying to forcefeed him water and juice; Hollywood-worthy hijinks at the palace . . . and now, no more urgency. No more dastardly plot, no more (for now) villains. And he wasn't dying anymore. And they were in a suite in one of London's nicest reasonably-priced boutique hotels.

With three other people.

In a minute her teeth were going to draw blood.

"You're gonna make that bleed."

She looked up as Stone dropped onto the sofa beside her. "Thinking."

He nodded. "This has definitely been the weirdest - I can't even keep track of how many days it's been."

"Since Oklahoma? . . . three," said Eve, who was used to hopping timezones. "Give or take."

"Three days. In three days I've been to New York and Oregon, Germany and England . . . seen the Ark of the Covenant and Excalibur -"

"Saved the world."

He smiled. "Is it always this crazy?"

She leaned her elbow on the back of the sofa, head propped on her hand. "I've been the Guardian for four days."

"Way to hit the ground running, huh?"

"I hope it's not always this crazy. I mean I hope there's at least a week or something between near-death experiences in the future."

"That said - watch your back tonight."

The segue caught her off-guard, but he looked dead serious. "Really," she said. "I'm not okay with what she did, but I don't think she's going to literally stab me in the back." Off his look she rolled her eyes and added, "And I have a gun under my pillow."

"You'd better."

"I should lend it to you - if any of our snakey friends show up, they're going to find you out here first."

"I knew I should've made Jones take the couch." He patted her knee in a rough, friendly way that didn't at all make her want to break his fingers. That was unusual. "You should stop thinking and get some sleep. I'll watch for the kid - for a while anyway."

Eve was on instant alert. "He went out again? He said he was going to the lobby."

Stone just raised his eyebrows. "You do not have teenage nieces and nephews, do you."

"I have no nieces or nephews." She sighed. "Wake me if he's not back by . . . two."

"You got it."

Behind the couch she froze, staring at the two bedroom doors. Jones was out. Due back, who knows when (Stone certainly didn't look as if they should expect him for a while). Cassandra was probably asleep already after the stress of the day, and Stone was obliviously paging through a copy of the London Review of Books with his back to her. And the Librarian would be alone in the room he was meant to be sharing with Jones . . .

For a second she hesitated, shifting on her feet, listening to her pulse in her head and a mental montage of not dying, all the time in the world, and, most decisively, way too old for the walk of shame. She sighed and went into her own room.

On the plane Flynn was quiet during takeoff, so quiet that when the seatbelt sign was turned off she gave up on him for a while and went to check on the others, each seated separately elsewhere in the cabin. Cassandra was either asleep or pretending to be. Jones looked very much as if he were hoarding minibottles of vodka. And Stone - Stone was laying the accent on thick with an attractive mid-forties British woman who was eating it up with a spoon. When she gave him a wave and an arch smile before returning to her seat, she heard the woman nervously ask, "That's not your wife, is it?"

Flynn finally appeared to take notice of her as she returned to her seat beside him. "You know," he said as she rebuckled her seatbelt, "I met my first Guardian on a plane."

"Oh?"

He nodded, looking out the window. "She threw me out."

Oh. "So, you were living tog-" Midsentence she realized what he was actually saying. "Out of the plane?"

"Yup."

"You do not look nearly as dead as I would expect." Then again . . .

Apparently having the same thought, consciously or unconsciously, he brushed a hand against the side that no longer had a fatal stab wound in it. "Well, she caught me."

"Of course she did." Eve Baird had never been airsick in her life, but her stomach was beginning to drop very uncomfortably. "Okay, if the Library thinks I can catch you after throwing you out of a plane - I am officially retired."

He placed his hand over hers in a way that was probably intended to be comforting, and . . . wasn't. "She was kind of nuts. And - please don't throw me out of a plane. I almost had a heart attack, and I'm a lot older now."

She was entirely too old to be debating whether she should turn her hand over and hold onto his. He solved the problem for her by pulling his hand away and returning it to his lap.

"What happened to her?" she found herself asking.

"She - moved on."

Better and better news. "On, or - um - on?" She gestured with sweeping fingers.

"On? Oh no - she's not dead. She just . . ."

"Moved on."

"Yup." He patted her hand again. "The job is not necessarily fatal."

"Great."

He turned fully to look at her, and they were nearly nose to nose. Eve felt tense and a little dizzy, lightheaded, her chest straining - though it got a bit better once she realized she was holding her breath and started taking in oxygen again. Another moment of decision - but even though he was looking at her, his eyes were far away. She turned her head forward and rested against her seat back. "You must have made quite the first impression," she said.

"Oh, yeah. She thought I was an incredibly attractive combination of hapless loser and idiot."

"We all need room to grow."

All the time in the world. Yup.

Of course, a day later all the time in the world turned into I'm off to find the Library and leave you with the kids, and she seized her chance. And him.

His stammering made it totally worth it.

Chapter Text

It was probably Jones irritating him, that actually made him stalk after her. Otherwise he might have been able to hold his temper and have a calmer talk about it during their next training session. But instead, he followed her into the hall calling, "Listen -"

She smiled when she turned to face him, which made him almost feel bad about planning to yell at her. "Stone? Was - is everything okay, I mean . . ." She nodded back through the windowed doors into the Annex. "With Cassandra?"

"With -" Caught off guard, he stopped his march toward her. "What?"

"You guys were talking - it looked kind of serious." Baird shrugged. "Never mind - if that wasn't what you wanted to talk about . . ."

"No, it wasn't - it's - look, you can never - never - do that again." Cassandra forgotten, now that he was talking about it, he was reliving the sudden horror and fear and anger. Kind of a lot of anger.

Baird's eyes widened slightly, although she looked more concerned than alarmed. "Do what?"

"You -" He was so flustered that words were hard to find. "What - seriously - the first thing you did -"

She blanched and took a step back, reflexively looking down at her feet. "Yeah. I lost all of you in a labyrinth with a deadly monster. That was . . . not good. I'm -"

"Not that - not - okay, not literally the first thing you did." He took a deep breath, trying to calm down enough to explain. "You - when that minotaur came at you and me, you - the first thing you did was decide to sacrifice yourself. Like, just - that's it, find the others, I'm gonna get killed now. We didn't even -" He shook his head, feeling as helpless as he had in the labyrinth. "That is not a plan! We didn't even try to make a plan -"

"There wasn't time -"

"Suicide is never Plan A!" He would be shocked now if the others couldn't hear him, but he didn't really care. Maybe if they knew what she had done, they'd be equally pissed. And they should be. He was practically shaking with it. "Okay? You dying is not the first thing we try!"

She opened her mouth as if to protest. Honestly, if she pointed out right now that she hadn't died - well, he certainly would never hit her, but there was a good chance he'd break fingers from clenching them so hard. But she didn't - instead, she breathed out slowly and visibly through her mouth and then said, "You're really mad."

"Of course I'm really -" He gritted his teeth and managed to lower his voice. "- really mad. Jesus, Eve."

She looked taken aback - either at the strength of his anger or because he had used her first name, he wasn't sure. If it was the latter she chose not to challenge it, saying only, "I'm sorry."

Her immediate apology, without further excuse or defense, defused some of his remaining anger. "You can't just -" He shook his head, looking through the window into the Annex instead of at her. "I'm never going to just leave you on a suicide mission. Not gonna happen. So if you need someone with you who's willing to do that - pick somebody else."

She was quiet for a few moments, while he continued not looking at her. Finally she said, "Jones would've left me."

"Yeah he would have."

"You're right." She stepped close enough that he was kind of forced to look her in the eye. "I mean, you're right that it was - not the best plan."

"You can't protect us if you die on our first mission."

"That is true. And, I'm really -" She trailed off, looking down at her shoes again. This was clearly as uncomfortable for her as it was for him, now that the anger had worn off. "I'm really sorry," she continued after a little cough. "That you were so upset."

"I - really wanted to punch something. Except that would have interfered with the panic attack I was having over how fast that thing was going to tear you apart." Okay, so the anger wasn't completely gone.

"You did get to hit it with a truck."

"Yeah. That helped a little." Managing to ungrit his teeth took a supreme effort, but she was apologetic and continuing to yell at her was starting to seem kind of mean. "My point is -"

"Partners?"

He looked over and saw that she was holding out her hand. Meeting her eyes, he took it in his own. "Partners."

"No dying."

"New rule." He held her hand tightly. "You keep us and you alive."

The corner of her mouth twitched a bit, but eventually she just pulled her hand away and said, "Well, I'm going home for about ten Advil, because I got thrown over a car today." Over her shoulder as she walked off she called, "Next time you see Flynn, please explain to him that the new rule applies to him, too?"

Of course that wasn't entirely the end of it, because the thing about finally finding a team, a group of people who knew his secrets and really challenged him, was that it seemed to bring out all his personality flaws at once. Jones made him irritable; with Cassandra he tended to sink into a sort of bitterness; and with Baird it turned out he had a temper. The more time they spent together, the more it pissed him off when she took risks he saw as unnecessary to protect the rest of them - and going to the same gym really seemed like it was going to be a mistake, since after the third time he yelled at her in the same week, she started making him go to her yoga class. Insisted he needed to center and learn to breathe.

Okay, he kind of had to give her that one. Plus he was man enough to admit that yoga class was an unexpected ass-kicking, and pretty good for his tight hips and hamstrings. Not that he'd previously known he had tight hips and hamstrings.

He did manage to yell at her less, but he actually thought that was because training together was turning them into a pretty good team. She let him help her more often, and he felt a lot more confident that he wouldn't be standing around watching her die anytime soon.

Win-win.

Chapter Text

"So - how come you never trained to fight before?" Eve shifted her stance for better leverage against the punching bag. "Seems like you would have been good at it."

The bag stopped moving as Stone took a few steps back, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. "Because I never thought I'd be up against anything worse than my asshole neighbor on a bender after his team loses? Nobody needs to be taught how to fight that guy."

"You'd probably think different if you were a hundred and twenty pounds and asthmatic."

"Yeah, well. Then you run." He grinned. "Notice you're not working Jones too hard."

"He has no interest. And I can't put him in the stockade for not trying, so -"

"Bet that's killing you."

"It really is." Wrapping both arms around the bag, she leaned in and let it take most of her weight off her feet. "Done for today?"

"Break any nails?" he countered.

"Sadly, no," she replied, spreading her hands to confirm. "But I think I'm cured anyway. Just in case though, if Cassandra tries to hold the door for me or something -"

"Keep you from elbowing her in the face?"

"Please. I would feel really bad about that later."

"That axe-throwing thing would be cool to hang onto, though. I mean if I could remember how to do it . . ." He bent his elbow and swung his arm in tentative imitation.

"That would be useful. For the next time there are enormous wolves."

"I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not."

"That's what this job is doing to me - I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or not." She hefted her gym bag onto her shoulder. "I need to drink."

"Best idea I've heard all day."

"So - question. What do you think about Cassandra?" she asked as he was gathering his things.

He grinned. "You thinking about asking her out?"

"You know, I would not feel at all bad about elbowing you in the face." She prodded his shin with her foot. "I mean - I assume her magical ability to fight off ten football players at once will go the way of her Casanova tendencies, but . . . she did okay. Right?"

"She did all right." He shrugged. "Most of the time she was with Jenkins, so. That was pretty safe."

Eve sighed as they headed for the door together. "So we're thinking . . . I just keep picturing her having an attack, or getting God forbid hit in the head, and -"

"Yeah. I don't know."

She looked at him helplessly. "Flynn's first Guardian threw him out of a plane."

He actually paled a little. "Well - I don't think you should do that to any of us."

"It's - it seems like kind of a metaphor. Keep her safe, or let her fly?"

"So his Guardian didn't really -"

"Oh no - she really threw him out of a plane."

He rubbed his chin. "For now?" From the look on his face, she could tell he was leaning the same way she was.

Of course, keeping Cassandra safe was all well and good until everyone else got captured and she was left on her own. By the time Eve was waking up on the floor of the House of Refuge, with both Stone and Jones standing over her looking alarmed, Stone had worked out that the house wasn't the monster. Which meant something else was. Which meant Cassandra was now alone with it.

They tried to explain this while attempting to lift her off the floor, and while Stone prodded painfully at her cheekbone.

"Sorry - I'm sorry," he kept repeating, as her eyes welled with reflexive tears. "I don't think anything's broken, though."

"I have no idea how I got here." Or why her back and the back of her head hurt so badly. She remembered being hit from the front, but then - nothing. "So Cassandra and Katie are -"

"The house was trying to scare us off," Stone said, sitting down next to her on the couch and putting a hand on her knee. "I think it was trying to warn us - about Katie."

Oh God. "So -"

"We have to find a way out of here."

They were still fighting - Jones still reluctant to believe that Katie could possibly have anything to do with what was happening in the house - when Cassandra appeared, with the Spirit. And an icepack. Eve's adrenaline drained away so fast that she nearly slept through the explanation. Voices faded to a dull roar and she completely missed Cassandra and Ezekiel - and their new friend from Downton Abbey - leaving the room. She didn't come back to full awareness until she realized Stone was trying to prod her to her feet.

It worked about as well as her attempt to stand earlier, when the spirit had appeared and she had been completely unable to defend herself and the others. Her back had completely seized up and it felt like she had broken ribs. "Need a hand," she confessed.

"It's more than just your eye," he said, suddenly sounding worried again. "What happened?"

"I don't know but I feel like I got hit by a truck." She shook her head and winced. "How did it even get me in here?"

"We both walked into the room on our own," Stone said, kneeling in front of her and looking intently at her face. "It must have had to knock you out, to get you here before Katie could hurt you. I don't think you have a concussion, though."

"My back is killing me. I did hit the wall earlier but not that hard -"

He went around behind the couch and started lifting the back of her shirt and jacket. He didn't bother asking permission, and she didn't bother protesting. Especially once he started swearing.

"What?"

"This is -" He lifted her shirt higher, almost over her shoulder blades, and with her free hand she automatically grabbed the front to keep it down over her chest and spare them both the mortification. "This is pretty gory."

Cassandra chose that moment to come back looking for them. She froze, a hand held up in front of her eyes, and said, "I don't think this is the time or the place?"

"No, come look," Stone said.

Cassandra disappeared behind her as well, and Eve heard her deep intake of breath. "Wow."

"Yeah," Stone replied.

"That is - Eve, that is really purple." A sound like a slap to the forehead, and Cassandra added, "I forgot. I mean once I saw you weren't dead I thought - but, I saw the spirit dragging you. Up the stairs."

"On her back?" Stone asked.

"By her feet, yeah. I really thought - she wasn't moving . . ."

"Okay, okay." She felt his hands now gently pressing on the back of her head, looking for tender spots. And she really hoped he was going to be able to calm Cassandra down, because -

"Ow!"

"Sorry." His hand came into her view, fingertips smeared with a small amount of drying blood. "I don't think it's too bad."

"Do you think we should go to a hospital?" Cassandra asked quietly.

"I'm fine," Eve protested, "and - he'd get arrested."

"I would," Stone conceded, as he helped to pull Eve's shirt and jacket back down.

"What?" Cassandra asked, bewildered.

"Guy my size shows up at the ER with a woman that's been beat up? What are we going to tell them, the spirit did it? I don't care what country we're in - I get arrested."

"Just help me up," Eve said. "It's just bruising, it hurts but I'm not going to die."

"Can you lift your arm up around my shoulders?" Stone slid in next to her and, with an arm wrapped tightly around her waist, managed to get them both to standing. "Great. Now all we have to do is get down the stairs."

"Super." She turned her head a little into the crook of his neck. "You gonna yell at me for getting hurt?"

"Yeah. Try to avoid getting knocked unconscious by ghosts from now on."

When they were on the road again, and the explanations had been exchanged and Jenkins had been assured that she was fine even though she was resting instead of participating in the conversation, Stone touched her hand and said, "By the way, we are definitely skipping yoga this week."

"You go to yoga together?" With her eyes closed, Eve could practically hear the raised eyebrow in Cassandra's voice.

"Do the other guys at the gym mock you mercilessly?" Ezekiel put in.

"No," Stone replied. "I'm - pretty sure everyone thinks she's my wife."

"So they think you're whipped - and mock you mercilessly?"

The car hit a bump, jarring the sore spot at the back of Eve's head against Stone's shoulder. She cried out before she could stop herself.

"Sorry!" Cassandra said immediately. "The road is really bad, I'll slow down."

"Jones," Stone said, "give me your sweatshirt."

"What for?"

"So I don't whip you, that's what for." Stone got his hands on Eve's shoulders and gently pushed her away. "Hang on," he said, holding her up for a moment before turning her away from him. "Here, pull your knees up and lie back."

She reclined back onto his lap, and onto something cushiony that she assumed was Ezekiel's sweatshirt, and pulled her feet up onto the seat with her knees bent. Stone's arm draped over her, holding her in place.

"Better?"

"Yeah." Unsure of what to do with her arm other than let it dangle off the edge of the seat, she laid her hand on top of Stone's arm.

"And plenty of other guys do yoga," he said, his voice pitched to carry to the front seat.

"Hey, what about the cute blonde on the elliptical?" Eve mumbled. "The one who's always staring at you."

"What about her?"

"Isn't being married kind of cramping your style?"

He laughed and gently squeezed her around the waist. "I'll let you know when it does."

Chapter Text

She definitely was not feeling pissed off and out of sorts because a boy didn't like her enough. Absolutely not.

After all, it really was out of line for him to come charging back in and start giving orders without even explaining -

Okay, so he had said something about dragons, and yes, in retrospect, it was pretty clear that the whole mess with Jones started because she'd held Flynn up and prevented him from intercepting the dragon at the door. So that one was going in the fail column, somewhere above "getting self knocked unconscious" and a few notches below "losing entire team in labyrinth with deadly monster".

But seriously would it kill him to learn how to talk to people. Or relearn. Or whatever. Because she didn't really think he saw her as just another minion - and one who didn't even understand the stuff they were dealing with, so basically only useful for one purpose.

Well. Until he got the Apple on his own, and then she kind of did start to think that. Only the one purpose seemed to have changed, and - she didn't know whether that was better or worse, actually.

No, she did. It was worse. At least fighting was a skill.

Blame the Apple, she chanted to herself as she herded the other two back to the back door (losing Lamia might have been a problem under other circumstances, but she still had an injured arm and Eve had a gun). Blame the Apple. After all, Stone wasn't a violent guy and Cassandra was really not evil, and Eve was pretty sure she herself had almost shot Flynn in the face.

Now that would have gone straight to the top of the fail list.

She stopped and hastily crossed herself.

"Are we praying?" Cassandra asked in a whisper.

"Before we break back into the Vatican? Yes. Or, on the other hand . . ."

"Baird?"

She held up a hand to forestall any more of Stone's questions. "If anyone - follow me."

"Where?"

She jogged over to the nearest guard, noting his earpiece. "Scusi! Per favore - il Santo Padre - si prega di dirgli che siamo i bibliotecari - e abbiamo bisogno di accedere al tetto?"

His eyes narrowed and he began speaking rapidly into his wrist - the word "bibliotecari" was repeated a number of times - and suddenly his head came up, he looked carefully at her, and he indicated to the left. "La terza porta, per favore, Signora."

"What -" Stone sputtered as they followed her through the door. "What did you just do?"

"Took a chance," Eve replied. "That if there was one person on earth guaranteed to know about the Library . . ."

"It'd be the Pope," he finished. "Damn. And the guard too?"

"No, the guard just thought I was crazy, but the important thing is he told his superiors what I was saying." She shrugged. "If it didn't work, we'd have broken in. After more praying."

"So now we just have to get back to the roof?" Cassandra asked.

"Yeah - and hope Flynn didn't close the back door behind him." She prodded Cassandra ahead of her up a staircase and let Stone watch their backs. "You know, I know Guardians have lost the Librarian, but do you think a Guardian has ever outright murdered one?"

Cassandra glanced briefly over her shoulder. "That seems like it would be frowned upon."

"Yeah," Eve muttered. "Well, if he ever tells me to show more skin again, somebody's gonna have to hold me back. Probably you," she threw back at Stone.

Her look back was long enough to see his face briefly freeze before it twisted in a glare. "Then who's gonna hold me back?"

"Good point - we really need to get rid of that Apple."

"Can we come back sometime when no one's evil?" They'd made it out onto the roof, and Cassandra was looking around her in awe.

"We'll put it on the list." Eve shoved her toward the back door. "Apple, evil Librarian. Go."

Fortunately, by the time Jones had gotten the Apple away from Flynn and Flynn had pretty much mopped up the rest of the situation (with Jones's help), everyone was so annoyed with Jones that they were all starting to feel a little bit better about their own worst selves. Kind of.

Flynn got her on her own with an extremely awkward look on his face and began, "Look, about the things I said -"

"I punched you," she said. "I think we're probably even."

"Actually, yeah, you did. Hard."

She rolled her eyes, and he reached out and grabbed her elbow.

"No, look - what I mean is - whatever that megalomaniacal jerk said, that's not what - not how I want to treat -"

She was about to take pity on him and interrupt when there was a crash from the card catalogue, followed by Cassandra's voice calling, "Um, guys? Where did we leave the first aid kit?"

"To be continued," Flynn said as they both took off running.

First, though, while they were repairing the damage that Jones, in combination with one of Jenkins's experimental artifacts, had done to the balcony, Stone found her. "So," he asked once they were off by themselves, "I gotta ask - what did you do? When you touched it."

"Um - well, I'm pretty sure it was affected by the fact that Flynn and I grabbed it at the same time." She could feel her face burning, and judging by Stone's guffaw, she was exactly as red as she felt.

"No way!" he said, elbowing her painfully in the side.

"Okay, okay -"

"Seriously?"

She shook her head. "We didn't do anything; we were holding it for like a minute and a half." As he opened his mouth, she clapped her hand over it. "Please don't say anything that'll just make me feel sad for anyone you've ever slept with."

He pushed her hand away. "Okay, but - actually, that's kind of . . . I mean . . . okay, so I was willing to kill people over where they hung their paintings, and Cassie nearly blew up Italy, but - seriously? The worst thing you have in you is wanting to bone Flynn?"

"That's - ew, first of all. Second - we were also going to take over the world, get rich, exploit the peasants, you know. Then I pulled my gun on him. It was not sweet." She sighed. "Plus when he got the Apple on his own, he could not have been less into me."

"Well, I wouldn't -" Stone was suddenly uncomfortable, and she wasn't entirely sure why. He coughed a little. "You know. I wouldn't worry about that. I'm sure he, uh . . ."

Right. He was uncomfortable because this was uncomfortable. She bumped his shoulder with hers and said, "Yeah. Thanks."

Stone was right, of course - again, it would probably take more than an argument to make her shoot Flynn (and if not, she probably shouldn't be armed), so she probably shouldn't be holding him to anything he'd said or done. Still.

She finally believed it, not when Flynn offered her official transfer papers (which, she wasn't going to think that hard about how the Library had convinced NATO to send her to . . . Portland), but when he promised to stay. Her face reacted - she could feel it - almost before her brain did. For a moment her heart leaped, but if there was anything they had learned that day, it was that getting everything they wanted might be the worst idea ever. Right?

Or at any rate she was at least as capable of making hard decisions as he was. She could still vividly feel the pang of disappointment and fear - for him, because she did think he needed her - when she'd realized that he planned to leave her behind after London. And that strange feeling in her chest when he'd admitted that he would like to have brought her with him - and not particularly for the work, as far as she could tell. But he'd decided they had to split up anyway.

And, well. She definitely remembered what she'd done before he left.

Which was why she probably should have expected what he did on their parting this time. But she didn't. That was obviously why it so flustered her and took her breath away. Because she definitely wasn't that affected just because he'd finally made a real move.

Definitely not.

Chapter Text

Notre-Dame. Not necessarily his planned first stop, but he had followed a throng. It was - it couldn't be Carnival yet, could it? No, of course not. Just . . . tourists. Exhilarated, giddy with being in the City of Light.

With all the pictures, all the books, the movies, the internet - an 800-year-old church was still new to him. If it wasn't too late, maybe we'd go inside, he thought, and didn't try to convince himself that he was thinking about the time of day.

Since it wasn't the twelfth century, or even the twentieth, he had a phone and it had Google. Another moment and he was striding briskly over the Pont St-Louis. The lapping of water, river smells, contradictory warm smells of ice cream, people passing by holding hands, the sound of footsteps on the bridge behind him. The Pont Marie, and then the Right Bank and the quays. He felt, and felt guilty for, thrilled chills. Victor Hugo could have been walking beside him, or Van Gogh on his way to paint the Pont du Carrousel. Monet. Mary Cassatt.

Of course, in reality no one was with him. No one holding shyly to his arm, no one that he would tell stories with later.

I'm sorry, he told her silently. If it could only be one of us, I'd rather you were here than me.

Just couples hand-in-hand, and distant music, the tide, footsteps. He followed his phone's instructions into the Cour Carrée, and there it was. Probably the world's most famous pyramid outside of Egypt. Glowing. Technically still open under special night hours according to Google, but - next time.

Honestly, he might break down weeping in front of the Venus de Milo tonight. That or insist she was called Aphrodite and punch a docent.

It was insane that he could walk from here to the Tuileries. It was insane that he might ever be somewhere from which he could walk to the Tuileries.

Of course, it was also insane that he now worked for a "library" that had a magical back door to Paris.

Giddy tourists and tired commuters and street buskers and footsteps, always footsteps, followed him into the Métro, where he hoped Madame Wilkes of Will Rogers Consolidated was proud of him as he managed to buy his fare in French. Destination: Place de la Concorde, the obelisk and the Arc de Triomphe.

There, amid the car horns and the stumbling slightly drunk tourists and the music, he did weep a little. Everything stopped around him for a while, even the footsteps, as he gazed in the night air.

There were other things of course - the Musée d'Orsay, Montmartre, the Sorbonne which he would have seen twenty years ago if things had been different . . . but he was tired, in so many ways, and of course he did have that magical back door.

They really needed to think of something else to call that.

So, one more Métro hop, and - there it was. Tour Eiffel. Everything faded, the noise, the cabs, the tourists, even the ever-present footsteps that had followed him all night. His throat closed.

He had to admit it wasn't - wasn't entirely - Mabel, however sweet and however pretty. It was - what he had recognized in her, what they had recognized in each other. It was lost opportunity, regret, years of life given over to responsibility, years that would never come back - just, loss. Loss.

And loneliness. Need. For understanding, for mutuality, for - everything. Anything.

Behind him footsteps broke the personal silence of his night, coming closer. He sniffed a little, then extended his right hand a bit out, a bit behind him.

Footsteps. And his hand was clasped, quickly, gently. A strong hand, back soft under his fingertips, palm calloused under his lightly stroking thumb.

He cleared his throat. "All night?"

"Alone, in an urban environment you don't know, at night? Yeah."

He took a deep breath without moving his gaze from the Eiffel Tower, deciding how he felt. "I was okay."

"Your French is pretty good."

He shrugged.

"Didn't know someone was following you all night, though."

He laughed, and squeezed her hand. "Think I didn't? You smell like honeysuckle soap and you're wearing your heavy boots."

He felt her answering laugh more than he heard it. "Fair enough."

"I think -" He took a deep breath, still looking at the iconic tower. "I think I'm good. I wish -"

"Oui?"

He smiled a little in her direction. "I feel like I should have - like she deserves - you know . . . ashes, or something. Something. Something to . . ."

"You can," Baird said softly.

"Huh?" Surely - surely she hadn't . . .

She reached into her jacket with her free hand and handed him something - a bundle of paper, and a pen. "There's a bench," she said. "Go write it down."

"Write . . . ?"

"Everything. Whatever."

He let her prod him toward the bench, then sat down with his pen and paper as she conscientiously turned away. At first he felt stupid, but he wrote her name - Mabel - and the date, and Paris and I'm sorry, and after that the words flowed. He talked about her, and her town, and her people. He talked about Paris. About the other places he'd been since the Library - Munich, and London, and Rome.

When he was finished, he held out the pen and paper to Baird like a child in elementary school.

"Fold it up," she told him softly. "Then pick a place."

An easy choice - he went for the river, reliable footsteps trailing him.

She handed him a matchbook, then took a few respectful steps back.

The note flared, warming his face and his hand in the Paris night. When he had no choice but to burn his fingers, he let it drop into the Seine like a star.

He stood clenching and unclenching his hands, smelling smoke and sulfur and burnt paper, until Baird's hand slipped into his again. "Okay?" she asked quietly.

It wasn't okay, and all that loss was still there - but he wasn't alone. He nodded. "I'm tired," he said.

"Let's go home then."

When they stepped back into the Annex, a surprise holdout was waiting for them - Cassandra, her bright hair rumpled and her eyes tired. "I got worried," she said.

"Baird was with me," he told her, although it was of course possible she'd been worried about Baird. Who'd been missing most of the day and had almost been trapped forever, while he was wrapped up in his own concerns and distractions. Guiltily, he tightened his hold on her hand.

She managed to encompass both him and Cassie in her smile before gently pulling her hand away. "Paris at night," she told the younger girl. "We're putting it on the list."

Cassie's eyes brightened. "We should pick a time," she said. "For vacation. No missions, just sightseeing."

"Do you want a ride home?" Baird asked her.

Jake shook his head, intervening in their exchange for the first time. He felt hoarse. "I'll take her, I'm closer. You should go home - you had a long enough day without me leading you all over Paris."

"I -" Baird was clearly about to protest, but her phone beeped, and he could swear she blushed a little as she looked at the message.

"Where is he?" Jake asked, the smile stretching his face as though it had been years.

"Um - Jordan." She looked up at them, the faint and pretty flush on her cheeks darkening. "He says he'll see us soon, so."

"That's good." On impulse he wrapped an arm around Baird's shoulders and pulled her close for a goodnight hug. "Thank you," he whispered close to her ear.

She bent an arm up to clasp his shoulder and murmured back, "No man left behind, Stone."

Though he felt he was pushing his luck, he kissed her cheek before he pulled away. "Cassie?" he called. "Train's leaving."

"Coming!" She grabbed up her bag. "You're going home too, right, Eve?"

"Right now," Baird promised.

Before he left, Jake caught Baird's eye and started to say, "Eve . . ." His mouth opened and closed, but the right words . . .

She nodded, though. "Yeah." Her smile, though sad, was as bright as the Paris night. "You too."

Chapter Text

He felt a little bit bad about not even trying to schedule his visit for a time when anyone would be there - but there would be plenty of time to work on his antisocial tendencies after the Library had been found and he was so close, and also he was pretty concerned that if anyone spoke to him he would lose his fragile grasp on exactly which codex he needed and where it should be and also he felt like there might be a spell on it?

Fortunately, he managed to hold onto the first two bits of information until he had extracted the volume from the Annex's catalogue, and even more fortunately, it did not appear to be as spelled or cursed or otherwise protected as he had believed.

He opened it quickly, just to be sure, facing it away from himself. Then waited. Nothing.

Nothing except - something. A presence. Quiet, feet pretty successfully not making any noise, the smallest, smallest click.

The click was definitely not supernatural. Holding the book in front of his chest - not because he expected it to protect him, but because putting his hands up would mean dropping it - he called softly, "It's me, don't shoot."

He grinned at the sound of an aggrieved huff, and the safety being put back on a gun. At least he hoped that's what the second noise was. "I could have, you know," Eve said, coming around the corner into his shelf. "I saw everyone else leave and not come back, so naturally I thought we had an intruder. Again."

Well, now he was worried. "Again?"

"Oh yeah." Hands on hips, her gun put away, she raised an eyebrow at him. "We kind of skipped over, hey Eve, I'm coming to the Annex, great, oh by the way Morgan le Fay visited the other day. Jenkins is pissed at me for not killing her, PS, so that's fun."

"Morgan le Fay was - here, here in the Annex?" He was torn between two impossible ideas. "Could you have killed her?"

"There was like a -" Eve sighed. "Yeah. Maybe, apparently. But it was probably a one-time chance."

"Well - thank you for not shooting me." He realized he still appeared to be holding the book as a shield, and lowered it. "And I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was coming. I just suddenly thought of it, and figured I'd get in and out without seeing anyone this time - not that I don't want to -" He gestured awkwardly in her direction, and Eve looked simultaneously amused and relieved by his failure to choose a verb. "But I think this could be the last step, I think - I'm there, I'm like . . ." He held up his thumb and forefinger, touching.

"Okay, okay." She was laughing. Laughing was good. "The last step? What is it?"

He held the book out to her spine-first.

"It's - um . . . that's Hebrew?" She pointed carefully without touching the gold letters, then added with more confidence, "That says Egypt."

He lifted his head in surprise. "Yes. It does. . . ?"

Her little smile was rather - grim. "Comes up in my line of work. My old line of work, I guess."

"You can read Hebrew? Modern, I assume -"

"No, I just recognize some words - names of other countries in the Middle East, words that have to do with, you know, war - the same in Arabic. If you showed me a page of the Bible I'd be clueless." She pointed again. "So what is it?"

"The definitive guide to spells and curses on early Egyptian tombs. Supposedly it was originally compiled on papyrus scrolls by Hebrew scribes who served in the pharaohs' households or else just - spied, really. This is the last copy ever made, done in Cologne in about 1100 and maybe one of the only resources we have that was produced actually intentionally for the Library. The rabbis didn't want the knowledge to be lost, but it also isn't exactly noncontroversial to suggest that Egyptian magic was real."

"But I thought there was no archaeological evidence of the Hebrews in Egypt? Shouldn't this be . . . big news for the biblical crowd? Because I thought we were going with, it was a metaphor for the Babylonian exile."

Apparently she wasn't done surprising him. He stared.

She held up two fingers. "Two priests in the family. And a nun. So?"

Usually his flashes of inspiration and insight were about books and paintings and legends and puzzles, not people. This one though, was a sudden blinding awareness of why he found Eve Baird so incredible. Because she was so curious - not smugly knowing about everything (about some things definitely, but not everything) and just so genuinely curious about the things she didn't know. Curious and interested and looking really incredibly cute, actually, and somehow he had been so excited about the Hebrew scribes and their inside pyramid knowledge that he hadn't noticed her loose hair, her partially unbuttoned shirt, and how did a thing like that happen?

(Like him not noticing, he meant. He assumed her shirt was unbuttoned because she had unbuttoned it, or not buttoned it, or at least he hoped so.)

He almost forgot to answer.

"A metaphor!" he blurted. "Yes. But not just a metaphor. And - well, lack of evidence is kind of what faith is all about, right?"

"I guess." She leaned against the shelves, arms folded across her chest. "So how is that the last step?"

"I think I know what we need to contact the Library - and where it is. And it would be most convenient not to die on the way in."

"So -" Her eyes widened. "In a pyramid? You're going to break into a - how?"

"Not me, all of us. I think it's a five-man job. That'll be fun, right?"

Part of her, just a little part, looked like it possibly wanted to agree. He loved that.

Of course the rest of her looked like it was picturing all of them dying in a sandslide.

"So, are you staying tonight?"

That was a curve ball. He forced himself to take a second to unpack his fear response, which he decided had to do with the urgency and the Library and also eight years of not having to tell anyone where he was going, but also mostly with flashbacks to being, well, lured into bed by women who subsequently betrayed him.

That last thing was unfair. There was nothing sly or intentional in Eve's expression, if anything she looked concerned. And getting more concerned, because he had forgotten to answer again.

"I - um - wasn't going to?"

"It's really late," she said, and yup, that was all Guardian and not the least bit . . . anything else. Well, maybe a tiny little bit something personal, but still not - that.

"I could . . ." He looked around him. There must be somewhere comfortable and it wasn't the worst idea.

"You never got a place here," Eve realized. She looked as if she wanted to smack herself on the forehead.

"No, I - but the Library needs to be anchored for us to access it, and we may have burned the New York location, so when we do find it we'll probably be linking through the Annex and this will become its new permanent anchor point . . . are we moving to Portland?"

Eve laughed. "Welcome to the last two months. We've missed you."

He was still standing there blinking. "We all live in Portland now."

"Yes we do." She came closer and nudged his leg with her knee. "Put the old book away and come with me, Librarian."

He asked, "Where are we going?" but he also obeyed, tucking the book into his messenger bag.

"Home."

Well now he was nervous. Which, again, didn't stop him from following her like a duckling.

Immediately after stepping in her door he dropped his bag on her couch, intending to make a stand, possibly complete with an embarrassing I don't think I'm quite ready for this to happen? protest. She swept that away (thankfully, before the protest) with a gentle smile that was, actually, not at all terrifying.

"You are too tall for my couch," she said, taking his elbow. "I know because I am too tall for my couch. Come on, I'll be a gentleman."

There was a moment when they looked at each other across her bedroom and the space between them felt weighted with purpose. But, true to her word, she turned away and broke the connection. He told himself this was what he wanted, after all, it wasn't a booty call.

He fell asleep, in his boxers and undershirt, on his side facing away from her. She'd been right of course to force him to stay and sleep - he was out in what must have been seconds. But he was rarely a sound sleeper anymore, and when he found himself awake again and rolled to look at the clock, it was only one thirty-five.

He was aware as soon as he moved that Eve had woken - something about the feeling in a room when another person is awake in it. He supposed her military history made her a light sleeper, or else she, like him, just wasn't really used to sharing her bed. She rolled to face him and propped herself up on her elbow, whispering, "Okay?"

"Yeah - sorry. Just - woke up for no reason." His voice sounded and felt groggy. He didn't really know what if anything had changed, except that it was now the quiet middle of the night and it was dark and they were both warm and sleepy, but somehow the tension was broken. Hesitantly, he extended the arm closest to her along the bed, fingertips brushing her hip.

She hesitated for a moment as well, then slid closer. She pulled the edge of a pillow down over the hard curve of his shoulder before resting her head on it (possibly the perfect woman - that did usually hurt after a while, well, from what he remembered) and slowly, as if he might protest, draped her arm over him.

He could feel her heart beating against his arm - fast. Either because she'd been startled awake, or for another reason. Kissing him in broad daylight and manhandling him were one thing, but she actually seemed a bit shy about this. And her body felt tense. He reached for her hip and gently encouraged it forward until her leg fell over his. Better, but her heart was still racing. He discarded his first impulse, which was to say literally, "I'm not planning to have sex right now, you can relax," and instead turned his head slightly to simultaneously kiss and murmur against her hair, "I'm sorry I woke you, go back to sleep."

He woke in the morning to Eve stirring against his side, shifting to her back and reaching with both hands for his hand, which was now resting on her stomach. He lay still for a while taking in her long, strong arms, the little ridges and scars he'd never seen before (at least one of which looked like an old burn). Then, because he was much too tempted to slip his fingers under the edge of her shirt, he instead brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed the back of hers.

"Are you staying today?" she asked quietly.

"No -" and did that come with a whole boatload of regret, but. The Library. Judson and Charlene.

Actually, thinking of Judson and Charlene proved helpful on a number of levels.

"I have to go back," he finished. "But I'll be calling you all - and then the sooner we can get what we need and get the Library anchored . . ." the sooner we can do this for real, the sooner I can get a place in Portland, or . . . or maybe even . . . not get my own place . . . He found that idea surprisingly comfortable. He was still not going to be sharing it with her right now.

"Okay," she said with a hint of regret but not a bit of protest. "Coffee first?"

"Oh God please."

Of course, after they'd both cleaned up and she'd made coffee but before they left her apartment, he did make time for one brief delay. Unlike the first two they'd shared practically on the run, this kiss was slow and filled with more promise than farewell. They were even actually holding each other, not grabbing at lapels or half-ready to flee. It was nice. The curl in her hair was nice. The fact that he smelled like her was nice. Everything was nice.

If and when they did this for real, he was probably going to need better words. Girls liked words.

* * *

Flynn managed to get out the back door before anyone else arrived to delay him, although of course Jenkins, upon his arrival, would immediately notice that something felt out of place. She was pretty much a hundred percent sure that he was only thinking about the catalogue and the shelf Flynn had disturbed when he asked, "Has the Librarian been here?"

Or, he was only thinking of the books and disturbed shelves, until she replied, "He just came for the night." Her grimace on hearing the words out loud was immediate and theatrical. Jenkins barely blinked, but since it was Jenkins, that was the equivalent of a regular person shrieking and waving their hands in the air. "Actually," she said, "can we rewind to before I said that?"

"Believe me, already done." His elaborate eye-roll suggested otherwise. "Did you tell him about Morgan le Fay?"

"I did - though I think he was kind of too excited about possibly finding the Library to care."

"That is a mistake," Jenkins cautioned.

"Saw that coming," Eve muttered. Still, she felt the trace of a smile on her face and suspected not even dire warnings of doom would knock it off for a while.

Chapter Text

It happened before anyone could react - they were all still struggling to get up from the floor, overcome by the effects of the gas that had been released from the mummy case. He heard the words blood sacrifice, which could not be good, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Lamia grab Flynn, which he thought she would probably regret when Baird - but Baird was just staggering to her feet, she couldn't -

And then, with little noise and less fanfare, Lamia was falling forward onto Flynn, her blood already pooling on the floor.

It was enough time for Baird, who launched herself after Dulaque before she was even completely upright. Jake had enough time to worry, to think we can't let her go alone, and then he saw that Flynn was getting up, hindered only by trying not to drop Lamia.

He'd be able to follow Baird the quickest. Jake signaled as best he could that they'd take care of Lamia, and then Flynn was gone, too.

Jake managed to pull his knees under himself somehow and slide the last few inches between himself and Lamia. "Help," he croaked.

Ezekiel fell to his knees by Lamia's side, pulling out the same handkerchief that had been stained with Cassandra's blood. Jake had to agree this was probably not the time to worry about germs. Lamia didn't react as Ezekiel pressed the handkerchief hard against the seeping wound in her side.

Cassandra made it to their aid, still coughing, and tried to help him raise Lamia's shoulders. "Where did they go?" she forced out between coughs.

"He said the 'loom of fate?'" Ezekiel shook his head. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing good."

They all twisted to look up at the tall figure of Jenkins above them. He was staring through the open doors into the darkness that had swallowed Dulaque, Baird, and Flynn, not down at them, but he added, "There's nothing you can do for her."

"He's right," Cassandra said softly. Her hand was on Lamia's throat, and as they watched she checked her wrist as well. "She's gone."

"Just - just -" Ezekiel seemed to be having a hard time believing the evidence of his eyes. "Just like that? It - it was so - I barely even saw him do it, it was so fast."

It occurred to Jake to wonder whether the kid had ever seen someone die before. Of course this death, this abrupt and sudden violence would have shocked anyone. He patted Ezekiel's shoulder and said, "Why don't you go find a blanket or something. Check the lab."

"Jenkins?" Cassandra sounded worried. Jake looked up and saw the caretaker hesitating before the open door. "What's happening?"

"The world is unraveling," Jenkins said, his back to them. "Stay here - don't follow." Then he stepped into the void and was also gone.

Jake lowered Lamia's body all the way onto the floor as Cassandra got to her feet. "Better listen to him," he cautioned her.

"I'm not going through." She was hovering near the door. "Just, I have a really bad feeling."

"Well, he said the world is unraveling, I'd say that's a pretty good reason. Plus someone just got killed on our floor."

She wrapped her arms around herself. "I wish Flynn and Colonel Baird would come back."

Ezekiel came running unsteadily back into the room, a plaid blanket bunched up in his arms. "Here - it was either this or a plastic tarp."

"Help me." The two men shook the blanket out around Lamia's feet.

"Wait." Cassandra knelt on the floor and arranged Lamia's body so that she was less sprawled. When she was finished, she stood up and got out of the way. Jake and Ezekiel lowered the blanket gently, Jake walking up to Lamia's head to kneel and cover her face. As he did that, there was a burst of noise and activity - Jenkins, Flynn, and Baird, returning without Dulaque.

He was looking at their feet, not their faces, and snapped out, "Where have you been?" before noticing that Baird wasn't really walking under her own power. She seemed to be sagging between the two men. "What happened to -"

Then he saw the blood. Dark blood, soaking her shirt and coating her hands. Alarmed, he hardly needed Flynn's shouted instructions to take her from him. He rushed to her side, taking her weight, all the while praying that it was a small wound, something superficial maybe that looked worse than it was. He was barely conscious of Ezekiel taking her other side as Jenkins staggered away, of Cassandra's hands on his shoulders and Baird's, trying to offer comfort. Flynn was - Flynn, his hands stained with Baird's blood, was trying to open the Library again.

For half a second it occurred to Jake to wonder - but, no. He didn't know Flynn well, but he couldn't picture him hurting Baird, not on purpose. Whatever had happened, it hadn't been done to get back the Library - this was a side effect.

As he had the thought, Baird sagged more heavily against him. He looked down and this time saw it properly - it wasn't a scratch, it was a hole, and it was deep. Heart-deep. Oh God.

The miracle of the Library's appearance barely registered, only Jenkins's urgency as he pushed them through the doors. Jake prayed that Ezekiel wouldn't get weak in the knees or pass out, because Baird couldn't afford to be jostled. But the kid held his ground until they could sink onto the steps, and then - and then Flynn inexplicably went running into the Library stacks in apparent delight, despite Baird's blood on his hands and his clothes.

"She's dying," Cassandra shouted, too intent on her scolding to worry about the effect on Baird - but, he realized, they didn't have to worry about that. She was unconscious now, completely limp in his arms.

This couldn't possibly be happening - not this fast, not when he hadn't even been there with her . . . he clung to her wrist and prayed, to the Sunday School and church supper God of his childhood, please don't take her - please don't make me watch her die.

He shook his head in disbelief, looking up at the others. "She's fading - I can barely feel a pulse." The Library and everything in it - can something . . .

"Flynn," Cassandra screamed, sounding thirty years older, "whatever it is, now!"

Only the distant sound of Flynn's running feet broke the silence. Baird's breathing had grown so shallow as to be almost unnoticeable. Ezekiel seemed unable to look at her. Behind them, Cassandra said softly, "Shouldn't - shouldn't we try to stop the bleeding, or . . ."

Jake shook his head, finally acknowledging the truth. "Her heart must be damaged."

"What does that mean?" Ezekiel asked, still staring straight ahead at the unmoving stacks.

"Means it's gonna stop beating whether she bleeds out or not."

Ezekiel pressed his lips together to stifle a groan. Jake held Baird closer to him and whispered against her hair even as he mentally counted the seconds she had left. "Eve, Eve, sweetheart, hang on, okay? Hang on." He could feel tears welling up in his eyes. There were other things he should say, but saying them would mean she really was dying and if he accepted that, it would happen, he was sure. He squeezed her wrist and felt his stomach drop to his knees.

"I got nothing." He looked at the others in horror. Her window, if she still had one, was closing. He cradled her head against his shoulder as Ezekiel protested - and Flynn came charging up the aisle, holding a large bottle of something green.

"What is that - you, you drank that, when you got stabbed . . ." He was stammering, mixed hope and despair smothering his words. He held Baird carefully as Cassandra lifted and supported her head, allowing Flynn to pour the mysterious liquid down her throat. Jake floundered, his hand reaching out to stroke her face and then stopping short. Cassandra was stifling her sobs as if they might interfere with the magic, and Flynn - Flynn did look worried, his face open and raw as he watched to see if the oil would take effect.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the blood was gone - even from her hands - and even the hole in her shirt had vanished as if it had never been there, and Baird gasped and sat up. She was looking at Flynn, although her hand was still clasped in Jake's.

"I was supposed to die," she said, sounding out of breath but alive, and they would definitely be talking about that statement later. Flynn said something about fate, but all Jake could think was alive.

She was trying to stand, which seemed highly unnecessary but Jake supported her to her feet anyway. "The Library's back," Cassandra said behind them, with an air of now you are allowed to be happy about that, yes.

"How does it feel?" Baird asked, and honestly he had no idea how a person could be at death's door one moment and concerned about the outcome of someone else's quest the next, but she managed it. When Flynn responded "like home," he lifted a hand as if to put it around her waist, but then noticed that it was still covered with blood.

"Here," said Ezekiel, who was looking a bit green, and passed Flynn a clean handkerchief from a seemingly inexhaustible supply. Jake supposed if the kid was that sensitive to gross stuff, it was no wonder he had so many hankies on him.

Not that he was ever, ever going to mock Ezekiel for being upset by the sight of Baird's spilled blood. He was personally hoping never to see it again, either.

"Judson and Charlene?" Eve asked. Her voice wasn't any stronger, but her breathing seemed to have evened out. Flynn shook his head, and she said, "Go look."

Flynn hesitated, which redeemed him entirely in Jake's eyes. Not that he blamed him, anymore, for being focused on the task at hand; after all, holding Baird's hand while she died instead of rushing for the healing oil wouldn't have helped her. But it was still good to see his concern, his priority.

"Go," Baird repeated. "I'm okay. And -" She bent to retrieve the bottle of healing oil, and tried to hide the fact that she was leaning on Jake a little to get back up. "Put this back where you'll be able to find it again."

"Right." Flynn gave her a long look before striding down the stairs and into the stacks, calling, "Charlene?"

"You really okay, Eve?" Ezekiel asked, and she didn't even get mad at him.

"That was really scary," Cassandra added, wiping her eyes surreptitiously with the cuffs of her sweater.

"What happened?" Jake asked. "I mean you disappear out that door and you come back -"

She took a deep breath, as if testing whether she could. "Dulaque," she said, and Jake noticed that he was still holding her hand when he felt hers tighten its grip. "He's Lancelot. The Lancelot. He stabbed me."

"Why?"

"When Flynn gets back." She shook her head. "He missed most of it, I'll have to tell you all."

"And -" Jake stepped closer and put an arm around her waist. "You're sure you feel all right?"

She frowned. "I'm cold," she said, "really cold."

"It's actually pretty cold in here," Cassandra said. "Probably from being in its own dimension or something."

"Oh," Baird said. "That's a relief."

Jake finally noticed that she was shaking, and he tugged her back down onto the steps. "Here, sit." Over her shoulder he mouthed to Cassandra and Ezekiel, "shock."

"Actually - this is stupid, but . . ." Baird sat down, showing no signs of wanting to pull away from him, so he kept his arm around her to try to warm her up. She gave him a wry smile. "I'm not - undead, or something, now, right? I mean -"

He laughed and reached to brush her neck with his fingers. "No, you're warm and you have a pulse and everything."

"That's good."

"So," he continued, "not invincible or immortal. So don't - don't scare us like that again. If you can help it." That was when he noticed it was his hands that were shaking, not Baird. "Actually," he said, curling his trembling fingers into a fist, "can I . . ."

She nodded in perfect understanding and sat up a bit straighter. "I've been kind of afraid to look myself." Continuing not to look, eyes fixed at a point straight ahead, she moved her shirt a little bit out of the way.

He pressed his fingers to her skin, conscious of Cassandra and Ezekiel's watchful eyes. "What are you looking for?" Ezekiel asked.

"Anything. Scar tissue, any . . ." He shook his head, firmly rubbing until he was positive he felt nothing beneath the skin but her rib. "There's nothing. It's like it never happened."

There was a sniffle behind them. Both he and Baird twisted around to see Cassandra wiping her eyes again, and Ezekiel staring fixedly at the ceiling.

He saw the corner of Baird's mouth, the side that was visible to him, twitch upward. "Okay," she said. "Bring it in, you two." She held out her arm, and as if they had been waiting for this signal, both of the other LITs descended on them. Cassandra wrapped her arms around both Baird and Jake from behind, and Ezekiel crouched by Baird's knee and leaned against her side.

"Okay?" she asked them.

Cassandra nodded. Ezekiel sat suddenly upright and said "oh God, Jenkins."

"What about him?" Baird asked. "Is he okay?"

"He stayed in the Annex," Cassandra said, getting to her feet.

"What - is that bad?"

Following their train of thought, Jake explained grimly, "He thinks you're dead."

While he and Baird were still getting up, both of the younger LITs went running through the door, calling for Jenkins. When Jake and Baird followed them into the Annex, his arm still at her waist, they were met with a gray-faced caretaker, looking as if he had aged another century in the last five minutes, staring at them in shock.

"Colonel Baird," he stammered.

"Bathsheba's oil of healing," she said. "Apparently."

Quickly recovering some measure of equanimity, Jenkins reached out and clasped her upper arm. "I'm so glad," he said quietly. "I'm so glad."

"Hey," said Ezekiel, who was looking around the Annex floor. "Where's Lamia?"

"Gone," Jenkins said with a bit of a cough.

"What did you -"

"I didn't do anything." Jenkins shrugged. "She's just - gone."

"How does -"

"Um," Cassandra interrupted. "Is Flynn going to freak out when he comes back and we're all gone?"

Baird's head dropped onto Jake's shoulder in defeat. He smiled and tightened the arm around her, murmuring, "People loving you is exhausting, huh?"

"Everybody back to the Library," she mumbled with her face mostly buried in Jake's shirt.

Flynn was, indeed, freaking out. A little. Baird immediately dragged him off into a private corner - apparently, he didn't remember most of what had happened while they were gone and Jake assumed she wanted to debrief and compare notes before sharing with everyone else.

When they were gone, Cassandra came to stand close to him. "You okay?" she asked softly.

He nodded. "I think so. You?"

She nodded. "It - you know, it reminded me of Flynn."

Flynn. Which she probably thought they all still blamed her for, even though - as Baird had been right to point out - she'd given up her chance at healing to save him. He remembered her hoarse screaming and knew she would have done the same all over again for Baird.

Tentatively, he put an arm around her shoulders. "She's okay. They're both okay," he said. "We're all together now."

"Yeah." She gave her best attempt at a bright smile, and he wondered how it must feel for her, knowing her death could be imminent, to watch others - both friends and enemies - suffer and die in such meaningless pain. Though he didn't feel the same about her as he did about Baird, her face, her presence had become important to him. He wondered what any of them would be able to do for her if or when the day came.

As if she knew what he was thinking, she reached up and briefly took his hand. "And we have magic," she said. "Who knows what'll happen?"

He could hear Baird and Flynn calling them. "Right," he said. "Who knows?"

Chapter Text

In Ezekiel's dreams, he was in Lima, but this time he was alone. Alone sneaking into the old ruins, alone stealing the enchanted statue, and alone when its guardians burst onto the scene with vicious-looking swords drawn. Alone when his quick tongue failed him for the first time (and why did he feel so young suddenly?) and he was about to be thief sashimi.

And then - not alone, because the statue wasn't alone in having a guardian, and Ezekiel's was able for anything. He felt he should be surprised, but wasn't, when a tall blonde whirlwind swept into the temple with gun - well, not exactly blazing. Instead she cold-cocked one guy with it, then took his sword and faced the others in a flashing, clanging, full-pitched battle.

The first two guys lost their swords easily and got conked on the head with the butt of the one Eve had taken. After that it got a little scarier. Ezekiel slid closer and closer to the wall, watching with mingled pride and fear as his Guardian battled for both of their lives.

When there were only two left (though he could see that a couple of the ones she had put down were already stirring again), she yelled over her shoulder, "Did you at least get the stone?"

"It's a statue actually." She didn't respond, probably because she was engaged in keeping a sword away from her throat. He hugged the statue tighter to his chest. "Yeah, I got it."

"Good." She got the hilt of her sword caught in the hilt of her opponent's and elbowed him in the face. Her nose was bleeding.

"Um . . ." he started.

"Later!"

"Okay." He watched, wincing, as she knocked out the last guy by hitting him in the face with his own sword, but not before he gave her a wicked cut across one forearm. She dropped the sword and carelessly wiped her brow with the injured arm, smearing her forehead with blood.

"Time to go!" She grabbed him by the elbow and forcibly dragged him from the temple.

"Eve -"

"Those guys are waking up, now move. We'll talk about it later."

Yeah, that he would have bet on.

Once they were in the Jeep she had brought, her (obviously) driving, he passed her a handkerchief. "You're kind of - gory."

She dabbed at her nose but apparently hadn't realized she was decorated like a non-PC Hollywood idea of an Indian brave. He took the handkerchief back and carefully wiped at her forehead until she pushed him away. "I'll wash at the hotel."

"Eve -"

"What's the one rule?" she burst out. "One rule."

"Don't die?"

"Okay the second rule."

He sighed. "Don't leave without telling you."

"DON'T LEAVE WITHOUT TELLING ME."

Ezekiel cringed. "I'm sorry."

"Can you admit that might have gone a little differently if I had been with you from the beginning? Not to mention - what if I hadn't gotten here?"

"I'd be dead."

"YOU'D BE DEAD."

"Yeah, I - I know." He noticed that she looked really shaken - scared, even. He swallowed hard. "I'm really sorry."

"Never again, Ezekiel."

"I promise."

"For real this time? Because you've promised twice before."

"For real." He held up the statue. "I swear on the cursed statue and everything."

***

In Cassandra's dream, Lima involved a week's worth of calculations, several pages of schematics (for Eve's benefit of course; Cassandra could see everything she needed in her mind's eye but she wanted her Guardian to have the opportunity to see it too, even if she claimed not to understand), and then about a gallon of Chilcanos after the whole thing went sideways anyway.

Of course the statue's guardians knew they were there, even after all Cassandra's careful equations and planning and even though Eve got to do the Indiana Jones thing and switch the statue for a weighted bag of rocks. And of course the bad guys with swords were unmoved by hastily shouted explanations in Spanish, or even by Eve's few stilted words of Quechua. Because of course the bad guys weren't actually Peruvian, why would anyone think that? Just because they were in Lima, protecting an ancient Peruvian statue, dressed in a costumer's idea of ancient Peruvian costume . . .

Cassandra prided herself that she might have realized their error first, but it was Eve who was equipped to respond. Listening to her rapid fire exchange with the guardians, Cassandra couldn't help but wish she had respected languages a bit more in high school. STEM had seemed more important at the time, but this was one situation in which it would really have been useful to have learned more French than Je voudrais un Orangina.

There was a pause. "Is it working?" Cassandra asked brightly.

"Nope!"

Eve had barely spoken when the guy in front swung his sword at her face. She ducked and came up under the blade, close to his face, and brought her upraised elbow down hard on his nose.

"Yeah, not working," Cassandra whispered to herself as blood spattered the floor.

"Get the car!" Eve roared as she dodged another sword. Cassandra stalled long enough to see her grab the sword out of her first opponent's slack hands; then she ran for the Jeep.

Most of the angry Frenchmen followed Eve as she ran from the ruins, but they didn't have a getaway car waiting and Eve did. As she jumped into the passenger seat she tossed the sword in her hands toward the crowd chasing her, yelling, "Je ne veux pas qu'elle!"

"What were you saying to them?" Cassandra asked as she gunned it out of the forest clearing.

"Given their response, I'm not entirely sure." Eve grinned, holding a tissue to a small cut over her eye and tilting her head rakishly. "I think some of it may have been accidental Italian."

"I can't believe they weren't actual Peruvians."

"It's just as well." Eve pulled the tissue away and started dabbing. "All I can actually say in Quechua has to do with food. Watch the road!"

"At least we got the statue!"

"That thing better be incredibly dangerous. My fencing skills were not prepared for that mess and it better be worth it."

"According to Judson it's caused the deaths of at least five local people a year over the last decade," Cassandra said, sobering quickly. "So that's five people a year we've saved in the future."

"Well. I guess that's good."

They exchanged grins. Eve added, "But you did promise me drinks."

"Yes!" In her excitement Cassandra smacked the wheel. "My old roommate Gaby swears by this place in town. Her cousins bring her there every time she visits. She says it's the best Chilcano in Peru."

Neither of them could swear to that, never having tasted any other Chilcano then or ever, but it did the trick. By midnight even Eve was almost giggly, and they talked into the wee hours before stumbling to their rooms for the night. Cassandra did have the presence of mind to tuck the statue lovingly into her suitcase - perhaps more lovingly than a cursed artifact strictly warranted - before passing out diagonally across her bed.

Best mission ever.

***

Jake dreamed of Eve, but in his dream her hair was longer and she was rail-thin, which made her look younger and even a little vulnerable. He should probably wonder why his subconscious wanted her to look . . .

But they were in Lima, and why on earth would his subconscious mind be involved when they had bigger problems - like the guys armed with swords who were currently trying to kill them.

Swords. This job just got better and better. "Swords!" he exclaimed, grinning.

"Enjoy this later!" Eve shouted, swinging a sword she'd taken from the first guy she knocked out. "Unless you've also been practicing with Excalibur - concentrate on getting the statue!"

"I - uh, okay." He shifted from foot to foot, eyeing the pedestal on which the cursed statue sat. "Do I get to do the thing?"

"I DON'T CARE."

Well they were obviously already blown, but the statue could still be booby-trapped, right? He grinned. He shouldn't be grinning when Eve was fighting for their lives, though. He forced a serious, studied expression onto his face and grabbed a handful of gravel off the floor, stuffing it into the bag in his hands.

He grinned a little when he was switching the bag with the statue on the pedestal. There may or may not have been Indiana Jones theme music in his head. "Got it!"

"Terrific, now get the car!"

It went against all his instincts to leave her there, but he was finally learning rule number one: always listen to your Guardian. He ran for the Jeep, statue clutched against his chest.

As he pulled the Jeep up to the clearing, Eve came running out full-tilt with five guys behind her. She jumped into the front seat gasping and pounded the dashboard with one hand. "Go!" she choked.

He slammed his foot to the floor, throwing up mud and grass behind them as he peeled away.

"Not Peruvians," she seemed to say as the forest zoomed by.

"What?"

She coughed a few times. "Good - plan," she wheezed. "But they don't - care - cultural history." Cough. "They're not Peruvian. They're French."

"French?"

She was in the midst of a coughing fit, and when he looked over to check on her, he saw that her nose was bleeding. "You're hurt!" he exclaimed.

She shook her head and pinched her nose. "Not broken. No big deal. Guys - French. Maybe - former colony. Doesn't matter. Here for the magic - no - cultural - connection." She coughed again hard, slightly bloody hand pressed to her chest, then seemed to get her breath back. "It was a good plan. Not your fault."

"You sure you're okay?"

"I'll get some ice at the hotel. Statue safe?"

"By your feet."

"Will I die if I touch it?"

He shrugged. If being the Librarian came with omniscience, it hadn't kicked in yet. "I didn't."

"Well, maybe you're more - pure in heart or something." Gingerly she reached down and picked up the statue. "So far so good."

"Away from the ley line it should be harmless."

"Judson hasn't been wrong yet, I guess." She slipped the statue into her bag. "I'll still be glad when we get it back to the Library."

"Me too." He checked his watch. "If we're staying tonight though, I definitely owe you a cerveza."

"Sounds dirty."

"It's Spanish for beer." Why the hell was he blushing?

She laughed. "I know."

Chapter Text

"Hey, how was Peru?"

Something about Flynn's tone told her that someone had already tipped him off. She stopped and raised an eyebrow.

He laughed. "Yeah, Ezekiel suggested it might have gotten a little hot."

"That's an understatement." She sighed, stepping the rest of the way toward him. "At least none of us can decide whose fault it was, so we have no one to blame."

"But you got the stone, right?"

A bit of her usual brightness returned. "Yeah. We did."

"You know, I went to Peru once, too."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Flynn leaned back against a bookshelf, and Cassandra hustled closer to match his posture. While always friendly, Flynn didn't often have time to just chat or tell them stories, and she wasn't going to miss the chance. "It was one of my first jobs, too," he continued. "With my first Guardian."

"How many have you had?"

He looked a bit pained, and for a moment Cassandra regretted the question. "Just the one," he said. "I mean - two, two now. But before Eve, just one. Anyway. I'd been the Librarian for maybe a month, and I was probably getting a little cocky, and . . . it did not go well."

"Did you blow up a bar?" Cassandra asked drily.

"Well, no. But I did get us into a sword fight, which Nicole was more or less ready for, but I - was not."

Well, that was a little weird. "Swords?" she asked. "In Lima?"

"I know. So weird."

She crossed one ankle in front of the other, trying to stay casual. "So, what was the job?"

"There was this little statue -"

"Was it killing people?" she asked, maybe a bit too quickly.

"No . . ."

Phew. Okay, so she was just getting paranoid.

"It was just sitting in a museum in France minding its own business. But then somebody figured out it was a magical artifact and they worked out that it would become powerful again if they returned it to its original location near the ley line that runs through Lima, so they brought it home and then it started killing people."

Not phew. Definitely not phew. "So - what happened?"

"Some crazy Frenchmen in traditional Peruvian costumes with swords, for some reason, attacked us and we grabbed the statue and split. Nicole was mad at me for a week." He paused. "I'm still not actually sure why."

Her panic spiraled, then just as quickly subsided. Reason. Logic. "Have you told us about this before? You must have, right?"

Flynn frowned. "I don't think so. Why?"

"Is the statue in the Library?"

"Yeah, it's kind of near the big stick that isn't Moses's."

Phew again. "I must have seen it."

"Is everything okay?"

She put on a big smile and nodded. "Fine! I just - I had a dream, the night we got back from Lima, about the statue and the . . . French sword guys. I didn't remember but I guess you must have told us about it. Or maybe Judson did."

Flynn was looking concerned. "There are a few artifacts in the Library that can affect dreams, but I don't know of any that would make you see the past."

"I'm - definitely not feeling clairvoyant. Or whatever. Like I said, I'm sure you did tell us that story before and I just forgot. Don't worry about it!"

"Okay, but - if anything else weird happens . . ."

"I'll let you know!"

***

She still kind of felt like Peru was her fault. Of course they had successfully located a dangerous object and brought it to the Library, but the path hadn't been exactly smooth. Next time she was definitely going to plan things better and not let anyone down. . .

So ending up locked in the secret passage of a Victorian mansion in Yorkshire was not really how she saw their next job going.

The problem was, the house had been built to look as Gothic and convoluted as possible with towers and turrets, balconies that wove themselves back under other floors, bay windows and attics and gables and a bunch of other stuff she didn't know the names for. And that was on the outside. The inside was an eidetic synesthete's nightmare - passages everywhere, some of them irregularly shaped or round behind a square corner, none of the walls seemed to be as long as they should be and sometimes the floor wasn't even in the right place.

For the first five to ten seconds they'd been stuck in this passage, she'd been confident that she was on the verge of working out where the exit must be. Then the seizure had hit, the hallucination spinning out of control as all the many irregular and irregularly-combined shapes of the house whirled about her. She had lost track of what she was saying, only capable of staring at the visions that had her in their grip.

She could feel Eve's hand on hers, an anchor to the waking world, but this time the tether was too long to do much good and she floated freely on an open sea, wild waves of shapes and numbers and equations.

She might have blacked out at the end, although not for long. When she came back to awareness, Eve was dabbing at her nose with a tissue and the taste of iron was in her mouth.

"Bleeding again?" Cassandra asked, trying to sound normal.

"Yeah." A few more swipes and the Guardian seemed satisfied. "I think it's stopped. You okay?"

Cassandra nodded slowly, trying to swallow away the taste of blood. "I think so. Sorry."

"It's okay." Eve's arm slipped around her in the darkness, broken only by the light from Eve's phone, and Cassandra let her head lean against the taller woman's shoulder for just a moment. "Do you think you know where the exit is?"

The library they'd left was a conventional square. The passage had one straight wall leading to a corner with another straight wall, while ahead appeared to be an irregular hexagon. She pointed. "There. I think. It should go back into the room with all the blue stuff."

"Okay." Eve's hand soothingly brushed the hair back from the side of her face. "Can you get up?"

"Yeah." She pressed her hand into the floor hard to distract herself from Eve's nearness and her smell, which was something like a red-wine color and eight and twelve all wrapped together, and the thought made her face burn as she let Eve help her to her feet.

Having incense-spicy eight/twelve red wine thoughts about her Guardian was going nowhere good. . .

***

After Peru, Cassandra's book gave her an actually relatively calm and simple-sounding case to investigate, and this time she really did want to try it on her own. This left Jake and Ezekiel (after a bit of teary goodbyeing) researching a case without her for the first time. It was technically Ezekiel's, but he recognized a certain potential for escalation into violence and had no intention of going into this one alone.

On the suggestion that he think about asking Baird for help and flying solo as far as his fellow Librarians were concerned, he said, "Not this time. I constantly feel like I should be apologizing to her for something, and I need to get over that before I can ask her for help. Never knew I was even capable of a guilty conscience before this, and it's not even real."

"What did you do?" Jake asked suspiciously.

"Nothing! That's the weird part." Ezekiel dropped the book he'd been paging through not entirely conscientiously. "You know how sometimes you have a dream about fighting with someone, or hurting their feelings or something, and you wake up and you still feel like it was real and they're going to be mad at you? Or you have a dream where someone does something to you and you wake up and you're mad at them, even though you know it wasn't real and they didn't actually do anything to you?"

"Kind of?"

"Well, it's like that." He sighed in annoyance. "I keep having these dreams about working on cases with Eve, but I'm always screwing up and not telling her where I'm going, or almost getting killed and getting her all upset, and now every time I see her I feel like she's going to yell at me."

"That's really weird," Jake said slowly.

"I know, right? I mean I haven't even done anything to piss her off lately, and if I had I still wouldn't feel guilty about it, but -"

"No," Jake said. "I mean, I've been having dreams about going on missions with Eve, too."

Ezekiel looked at him with interest. "Like, without the rest of us?"

"Yeah. I've been wondering if - you know, if it was because of what she told us, about meeting each of us as the Librarian with Flynn and the others out of the picture. If I was subconsciously still thinking about that, you know, what it would have been like, and so I was dreaming about it."

"I didn't think of that," Ezekiel said. "I mean, the first time I just assumed I was dreaming about Lima because we had just been there, and inventing Eve there because everything was such a mess - in my dream it was all totally different, but dreams don't usually make sense anyway so -"

"My first one was about Lima, too," Jake said. He no longer looked remotely interested in the book on his lap. "Was there a statue in yours?"

"Yeah." Ezekiel didn't usually truck in cold chills, but he was kind of getting one now. "In like a temple ruins. And guys with swords."

"French guys?"

"I assumed they were Peru guys? But there wasn't really a lot of talking."

Jake was wide-eyed. "Did she look different to you? Eve, I mean."

"I . . . don't think so?" He shook his head. "I guess I didn't really notice."

"Still. This is . . . really weird."

"My last one was about a dagger in a case at the Smithsonian," Ezekiel said.

"Okay," Jake replied. "So maybe they're not all the same after all. My last one was a bog in Ireland."

"Is that better or worse?"

"I don't know. I don't know what it means yet."

"Should we tell Eve?" Ezekiel paused. "By which I mean, should you tell Eve?"

"Not yet," Jake decided. "I don't want to freak her out. Maybe it's a weird coincidence."

"Maybe there's something in the Library that causes people to have particular dreams? Or, like, linked dreams?"

"Maybe . . . I don't want to ask Flynn yet, either."

"Jenkins?"

"Maybe . . ."

***

It had been a shockingly easy thing actually, the bog "monster" that turned out to be a very minor haunt mostly interested in making pretty light displays. In fact he'd been pretty happy with their suggestion that they use the Druid amulet the local schoolkids had found to send him on his way. They were in a plane back to New York before he knew it, a six-hour flight of kicking kids and angry babies, and Eve, sweet Eve who somehow made it all more bearable. And who had fallen asleep on his shoulder after issuing strict instructions to wake her if anyone tried to kill them.

From their early takeoff at Shannon they flew backward through the sunrise, pink and purple and orange streaks breaking the dark sky outside, and his cheek resting against Eve's hair as he took it all in.

Chapter Text

"So, we have a new job?"

"You do."

There was something he didn't like in his Guardian's expression. Really, really didn't like. "Am I going to hate it?"

"Probably." She reached behind her to a stack of books on the table and handed him the top one.

"GED English?" he read. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I speak English already."

"Well, when you get bored of that one, we also have math, science, and social studies."

He groaned and tried to hand the book back to her, but she wouldn't take it. "Whatever I did wrong, will it help if I apologize?"

"No getting out of this one." She pulled out a chair at the table and beamed at him in a frankly terrifying way.

"What am I being punished for?"

"Being seventeen. Sit."

Grumbling, he let her prod him into the chair. "I know what I need to know, Eve."

"That's not the point. The point is, you're a smart kid and it's not right for you not to even have a diploma."

"I have a job!"

"And someday you might want to do something else."

"I'm not even an American citizen! Can I even get a GED?"

"Charlene takes care of your visa, and yes. Now - English, or math first?"

"Science," he said with his eyes closed in defeat.

***

This nosebleed was the worst yet, coming on the heels of one of the worst seizures since she first got her diagnosis. When she finally opened her eyes, she saw that Eve's face was white and there was a small pile of bloodied tissues on the ground.

"I think it's over," she said softly.

"Does your head hurt?" Eve asked. "Anything hurt?"

Experimentally, Cassandra shook her head. "No." She met Eve's eyes and added, "I'm not going."

"Cassandra -"

"I'm not!" She pressed a clean tissue under her nose, even though it had stopped bleeding, and looked down to avoid Eve's gaze. "I'm sorry. But they're not going to tell me anything I don't already know. If it's getting bigger - there isn't going to be anything we can do."

Eve was quiet for a long time, so long that Cassandra wondered if she was angry. But when she finally spoke, she only said, "I just don't want you to give up."

"I have an inoperable brain tumor. That's kind of the definition of when to give up."

"Our world is a lot bigger than other people's," Eve continued quietly. "We never know what we're going to come across."

"Exactly." Cassandra added the tissue in her hand to the pile on the floor. "I just can't think about - about what happens when the worst happens, when we see such incredible things all the time. I'm - living. That's what I have to focus on."

"I just don't want to see you get fatalistic. It's good to focus on living, just don't - get reckless and think things don't matter."

"I'm still not going back to the hospital."

Eve nodded. "Okay," she said. "Okay."

Cassandra had the strong feeling there was a for now implied there.

***

The nausea he'd been fighting for the last day and a half threatened to overtake him again, and this was really not the time. Thundering footsteps still echoed on the stairs above them as their pursuers got closer and closer. He must have been slowing down; Eve was pushing him forward with a hand on his back. If he didn't find a way to pick up the pace, she was going to accidentally push him down the stairs.

He gripped the railing ahead and threw his weight forward, jumping the five steps to the landing at once. His stomach roiled as he landed, but with two more swings off the railing he was around the landing and down another story. Eve stopped pushing and started swinging down after him.

They burst through the emergency exit into the sunlight and he hesitated, sweating and shaking. "Left!" Eve shouted.

He coughed a little and tried not to gag. The nausea seemed to be centering into a searing pain, and he felt he was limping as he ran the way she indicated.

"Come on," she urged, pulling alongside him and taking his hand. "Cramp?"

He shook his head, afraid that if he opened his mouth to speak he would throw up, and it would be really hard to do that while running.

By some miracle he actually lasted as far as the subway, even into their hotel, but once they were on the elevator he collapsed against its wall, sweat pouring from his face.

"More jogging for both of us," Eve said on a gasp, but then the number beeped for their floor and she looked at him properly. "Jake?"

He shook his head, lips clamped firmly together.

"Are you - what is it, did something cramp up?"

He shook his head again, now parting his lips only enough to pant shallowly through the pain and nausea.

"You're gray." Eve touched his forehead with the inside of her wrist, and now she was as pale as he imagined he must be. "And you're like a stove. Have you been feeling sick?"

Neither of them paid any attention to the elevator doors closing, or to where it was going next. He nodded briefly, then winced.

She pressed on one of his bent-up knees and forced his leg straight along the floor, which caused him to cry out in pain. It felt as though someone had stitched together something in his abdomen and was now ripping it apart again.

Dropping to her knees, she pressed on his stomach, which made him shout again, but her white, scared face showed she already knew what the problem was. She reached up without leaving his side and hit the button for the lobby.

"What -" he tried to ask.

"You need an ambulance, if it's this bad already it might be close to bursting." As the elevator approached the first floor she gripped his hand. "Can you stand up? Just long enough to get off the elevator - come on . . ." Her other hand went to the small of his back and she helped push him to his feet, ignoring his groans of pain. Well, ignoring them with her actions anyway. "I'm sorry," she murmured over and over as the doors opened and they limped out. "Just another couple steps and you can sit down - here." She let him collapse on a bench and went sprinting across the lobby to the concierge . . .

Jake woke sweating, his hand automatically going to the scar on his abdomen. Ordinarily, they'd told him, they could do it laparoscopically, leaving a much smaller scar, but his appendix had been so acute that they hadn't taken any chances. Another hour, even another few minutes, and it might have burst and sent him septic.

Of course, the attack had happened on the rig in Oklahoma, and he'd been seven years away from meeting Eve Baird. A guy named Jim-Don with a missing tooth and a tattoo of his five kids' birthdays down one arm had been the one to call the ambulance, and he'd woken after surgery to the face of his brother Jed.

The sweating was getting worse.

He only barely managed to wait until waking hours before he rushed to the Annex, darting in and out of rooms and finally rushing up to the balcony, where he almost slammed into Flynn.

"I need to see Baird," he blurted to the startled Librarian.

"Okay," Flynn said slowly. "Something's wrong? Can I help? What do you need?"

Jake forced himself to calm down. "No, no, it's - it's fine, it's just -" He forced a smile. "Guardian stuff. You know."

"Uh - okay."

"Do you know where she is?"

"In the main Library. I think somewhere near the card catalogue - she thinks there's something a little bit different -"

Jake didn't wait for the rest of the explanation. He did wonder briefly, as he ran through into the Library, whether he was going to need to apologize to Flynn or make some kind of representation that he and Baird were not having a torrid affair. Though, he decided, probably not.

"I have to ask you something," he forced out through heaving breaths as soon as he could see her.

She immediately put down the file she was holding, looking alarmed. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know, I'm not sure, just -" He'd been wracking his brains the whole morning, trying to decide the exact right question, the right example. "When you met those other - usses - the other me, you know - did he tell you anything you didn't tell us? Anything?"

She looked taken aback, and a little pink, and he could tell there was something she wasn't telling him. "Why?"

"I'll tell you in a minute - I'm not even sure yet, just - whatever it is, it might be important. Did he tell you anything about past cases, artifacts, anything?"

"Cases and artifacts?" Baird repeated. "Um, no. Nothing - nothing about that except me getting killed by Excalibur. Same as the others, except - Jones mentioned the House of Refuge case going wrong, like I told you, and Cassandra met Morgan le Fay, but that's all they told me. We didn't really have time for a long talk."

"There's something else," he pressed. "I can tell."

"It's -" She was really blushing now, which was something that definitely didn't happen often. "There was a little bit of personal stuff, them just - telling me what their relationship had been like. Our relationship. Whatever. It had nothing to do with magic; it wasn't relevant to the Loom."

"Did you tell Flynn?"

She hesitated for only a second. "Yes."

"But not us?"

"I thought it would be - weird - look, just drop it?" she pleaded. "It wasn't an important part of the story. Why are you asking?"

"Can you remember any details, anything at all? Like for instance - me getting appendicitis?"

She frowned again, this time more confused than uncomfortable. "No," she said slowly, "in our two-minute conversation while being chased by Russian separatists with guns, he did not mention having appendicitis at any point. And you had your appendix out, didn't you? I mean you really did, this you."

He paused. "How do you know that?"

"I assumed that was what the scar was from."

Right. The gym. "It's not -" He sighed and started over. "I don't know if it's anything, but - Jones and I have been having dreams. I think we might be dreaming - stuff that happened in our other lives. In those other timelines."

"You mean, like -"

"I'm not sure - we're either both just having random dreams, imagining what might have happened - or we're dreaming what really happened."

Her eyes were wide. "How would that be possible?"

"I don't know, but - our first two dreams were about the same thing. The same artifact, the same scenario - only each of us was there alone with you."

"That's really weird," Eve said slowly.

"We haven't talked to anyone else yet - we could talk to Cassandra, see if she's having them too. But I wanted to see -"

"If there was anything I could verify." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. There's really nothing. Especially with you; you - he - told me the least about what had happened in the past. Of course I didn't ask a lot of questions - at that point I was still figuring out what was going on."

"My last one," he said, "was about me getting appendicitis, and we were in Minneapolis or St. Paul or someplace like that, we were running away from bad guys and then I collapsed in the hotel elevator and you called an ambulance."

She shrugged helplessly. "Maybe you dreamed that because you remember it happening for real?"

"It was seven years ago and I never think about it. Why would I start dreaming about it now?"

"I don't know." She rubbed at her forehead. "When will Cassandra be back? Tomorrow?"

"She's supposed to be."

"Okay. Let's talk to her first, before we take it to Flynn. If it's only you and Jones - I don't know what that would mean."

"You don't think . . ." He forced himself to voice the thought that'd had him sweating in his bed in the middle of the night. "Something went wrong, with the Loom . . . ?"

"I hope not." From the worried expression on her face he could tell the same thought had occurred to her. "That's all we need."

Chapter Text

When Cassandra stopped in at the Annex to drop off her notes on the tangled ley lines on the Isle of Wight, she was greeted by both of her fellow LITs (former-LITs?) and their Guardian. Her face started to flush before she could remind herself that, although she could fight monsters and did seem to have a sixth sense for when they were in trouble, Eve actually could not read minds.

The dreams were getting . . . different. Different and even more confusing, because while it had been weird enough that she kept dreaming of adventures that had never happened in a life she hadn't led (but with odd doses of reality - if she were going to have a wish-fulfillment dream life all of a sudden, wouldn't she dream away the tumor?), now her subconscious seemed to be integrating more and more of the little she knew about Flynn's life as the Librarian.

And a lot of stuff she didn't know, but had a good guess.

For instance, Flynn had never specifically told her that he had slept with the vampire who'd helped him kill Dracula, but . . . yeah. He had.

(She did really hope he'd told Eve. Vampire sex seemed like the kind of thing you should disclose.)

Anyway. Dreaming about stuff Flynn had told her, stuff she'd heard about his exploits? Made perfect sense. Dreaming (very specifically) about Simone the hot French vampire seducing her, instead of Flynn?

That raised a few issues.

Like that she was now about a hundred percent sure that she was developing an unhealthy subsconscious sexual obsession with either Eve or Flynn, and she was completely confused about which one. Which seemed like a thing a person would know. But no, she would just continue inserting herself into Flynn's sexual exploits, while also by the way dreaming that Eve - who hadn't even been there - was totally upset about a vampire trying to seduce her. Because the only thing that could put an extra cherry on this awkward sundae was imagining Eve as jealous.

She was never going to be able to look either of them in the eye again.

But it seemed like maybe they had bigger problems, because all three of the faces waiting for her in the Annex were pale and worried. "What?" she asked quickly. "Did something happen? Is - is it Flynn? Jenkins?"

Eve shook her head. "Flynn's in the Library and Jenkins is working in the back."

"Then what's wrong?"

Jake moved her, almost without her noticing, into a chair while he spoke. "Have you been having . . . unusual dreams? Lately?"

"Wh-why do you ask?"

Apparently her bright red face answered for her, because Jake prompted, "Dreams where you're the Librarian - where you became the Librarian ten years ago, like Eve saw in the other timelines?"

Well, it was some consolation that the tumor wouldn't kill her after all, because she was going to die now, of humiliation. "How did you know?" she asked in a tiny voice. She really hoped Eve couldn't actually read minds.

Jake sat down across from her. "We've been having them too. Me and Jones. They're . . . really detailed, about cases, artifacts, everything. And Baird's in all of them."

She looked automatically to Eve to make sense of this for her, but she seemed to misunderstand. Shaking her head, she said, "Not me. My dreams are no weirder than usual."

"But," Cassandra said, "I thought - I thought I was just piecing together bits Flynn had told us - my imagination was filling in the gaps -"

"Was your first one about Lima?" Ezekiel asked. "Was there a little statue?"

"Yes, it's in the Library," Cassandra said, heart pounding. But she had to be right about this, because otherwise . . . what could possibly be happening? "I - I must have seen it, and Flynn told us -"

"About the French guys with swords?" Jake asked.

Cassandra nodded desperately.

"Yeah, no - Flynn didn't tell us anything about that," Ezekiel said. "We're sure. And . . ." He trailed off and turned to Jake, looking incredibly scared.

"And neither of us knew that statue was real," Jake finished. "Until you just told us."

"Then how could you have -"

"Exactly." Jake's voice was gentle, but intense. "And I don't think you saw it in the Library, either. I think we're all seeing those other timelines."

"I'm seeing Flynn's past," Cassandra blurted. "Other things from his past too, I mean. Not just Lima."

"I don't think you are," Jake said. "We've all seen some things that also happened to Flynn - which makes sense, right, because a dangerous artifact would have been dangerous no matter who the Librarian was - but we're seeing different stuff too - things that are unique to each of us. Like me having appendicitis seven years ago - which I really did, but not in Minnesota with Eve. Like - Ezekiel getting a date with a girl from Columbia, and telling her Eve was his stepmother."

"Seriously?" Eve interjected.

"Plus," Ezekiel added, ignoring her, "remember, when Flynn became the Librarian, the Library had a Guardian. She lasted like another year at least. If we were seeing Flynn's actual past, why haven't any of us seen Nicole?"

"Why would we?" Cassandra asked. "None of us has ever seen Nicole. We don't even know what she looks like."

"We didn't know what Simone Renoir looked like either, and I saw her," Jake said. "So did Ezekiel. You?"

Cassandra nodded, blushing furiously again.

"Wait, did you let her . . ." Ezekiel made an awkward biting motion, hooking two fingers to use as fangs.

"No!" Since that was true, Cassandra managed to be indignant. "Did you?"

"I was barely eighteen, mate - Eve didn't let me anywhere near that girl."

"We're talking about this like it's real," Cassandra said. "None of it makes any sense - for that matter, in these supposed other timelines, why was Eve there to be Guardian for each of us right from the start? Where was Nicole? And why did the Library let Flynn go without Eve until this year, when in the other timelines she got called ten years earlier?"

"I think it is real," Jake said quietly. "And - I mean, none of us is Flynn. He survived without Eve until now, where from what I'm seeing - I wouldn't have."

"I would." When they all stared at him, Ezekiel partially relented. "But the world might have been destroyed."

"The point is," Jake said, "I think the only explanation is that we're somehow seeing the real alternate timelines that Eve saw. But we can't be sure because she's the only one who knows what happened in them, and none of us has dreamed anything she saw. Yet."

"And," Eve said, the first time she'd contributed to the discussion, "if you're all really seeing timelines you didn't live, the question is . . ."

"How," Ezekiel finished.

"Or why." Eve met her eyes as if she were about to impart some very bad news. "We're worried that the Loom of Fate might not have been as . . . permanently fixed as we thought."

Yeah, now she definitely understood their faces when she'd arrived. "You think the timelines are bleeding," she said slowly. "That would be - bad. Really bad."

"Dragons and zombies," Eve said. "Yeah. Not good."

"And," Jake said, but then something seemed to change his mind and he clammed up. "Uh, yeah. Not good."

He had clearly thought of something even worse that he was trying not to mention. And that was definitely not good.

***

Jake's last thought before falling asleep was after today, I'm probably due for a nightmare instead of . . . and of course if his worst fear was correct, their dreams would all turn into nightmares pretty quickly. But it wasn't a nightmare tonight.

He'd never be sure what made this trip different. Or exactly what had shifted - because something had - after they'd watched the sunrise with Simone and offered her their company as she finally allowed herself to rest. But something was different.

She'd stopped laughing and looking away, breaking the tension when those moments of almost almost happened. Instead she looked back at him. She didn't let go so quickly when one or the other of them needed a hand up; she didn't step away and walk ahead when he put his hand on her back.

Not that he consciously realized or catalogued these things, or really thought about them at all, until later. But they were there and they were true, and clearly something had sent some kind of message to his brain.

Because before this, he never ever would have taken her hand in the back of a cab. Or anywhere else. Falling asleep on each other, sure; the occasional half-embrace, definitely. But hand-holding meant something else. And Eve didn't pull away.

Instead she gave him a look that played at the edges of his memory - he knew that look, he saw it all the time, but not while holding her hand in the back of a cab.

When it stopped in front of their hotel they broke apart, each getting out on their respective sides. But he took her hand again on the walk into the hotel, and there was that look again, she let him.

On the elevator, when she was leaning against the wall and giving him that half-smile that started from her eyes, he finally recognized the look. It was the one she gave him when she'd decided to give in to something he wanted and didn't really mind at all (the look when she had decided to give in, but did mind, was quite different).

He shivered a little when he realized that what she was giving in to was him.

They had separate rooms, of course, which meant that the hallway was decision time and he could definitely mess this up. They hadn't talked at all. Normally neither of them was big on talking about things before they did them, but this did not feel like something they should do without . . . words. Some words. And not fifteen minutes after the first time he held her hand, either.

So he stopped in front of her door. As she turned to face him, he broke their handhold, lifted both hands to the sides of her face, and brushed her hair back with his fingertips, telegraphing his intentions as much as he could. She closed her eyes. Holding her face gently between his hands, he leaned in and kissed her for the first time.

It seemed to go on for days and still not close to long enough. He meant to keep it completely, unambiguously chaste, but they both stepped in and then they were completely pressed together. He could feel her pulse racing under her jawline, and her hands reaching for his waist were trembling - after four years of living in each other's pocket, she was nervous.

He should have been, but he wasn't. He felt like he'd just gotten the one thing he'd wanted most in the world for his entire life, and like he was assured it would be perfect.

And it would be, as long as he didn't mess it up.

He remembered her putting her room keycard in her back pocket, as she usually did. As innocently as possible he slipped his hand into her pocket and pulled it out, sliding it into the slot on the door with a dexterity that was frankly miraculous. He pushed the door open and pressed the card into her hand at the same time, letting himself have just a few more kisses before he pulled away.

Her eyes were bright, and her lips very red. He sighed. This is me not messing it up. Brushing her cheek softly with the back of one hand, he said, "Night."

Her eyebrows rose a little, but she seemed to take in and agree with his decision. She propped the door open with her foot and leaned over to kiss him once more - natural, and casual, as if they did this every night - and then she slipped into her room and let the door close.

He made his way into his own room and collapsed across his bed, feeling so giddy that he might never need to sleep again.

His first waking thought was, yoga is going to be really awkward this morning.

Chapter Text

Something was definitely up.

Something else, that was (or possibly, something worse). Something worse than "maybe the Loom of Fate wasn't really fixed and that's why all the Librarians are seeing alternate realities that aren't supposed to exist".

Also something worse than "warrior three is really hard to hold," because it was, but no one falls over that many times in one class.

Jacob Stone was jumpier than he'd been in the (supposedly) haunted house, and that was saying something.

He was also kind of avoiding her eye as they rolled up their mats after class. Eve let it go until they got out to the hallway between the men's and women's locker rooms, then she grabbed his gym bag out of his hands while he wasn't paying attention.

He stopped and turned. "What are you -"

She held his bag hostage against her chest. "Something wrong?"

"No."

"Stone."

"Other than -" He dropped his voice and stepped closer. "Reality as we know it possibly unraveling? No, everything's fine."

"My reality is pretty stable," she said, although that was hardly the important part. "So is yours when you're awake. Seriously, what's going on?"

He sighed and stared at the ceiling, and again she felt like it was a conscious choice not to look at her. "I gotta ask you something."

Again? "Okay?"

"I had another dream."

Two men passed them, both catching that remark and looking extremely interested in what he might possibly have been dreaming. Eve rolled her eyes and took Stone's arm, dragging him around the corner to a relatively isolated bench near the towel return. "I still don't think I'm going to be able to help," she hissed as they sat down.

"This - I think you would know." He seemed to take a while to make up his mind what he was going to say, sitting bent over with his hands clenched together and his forearms resting on his thighs. "The other me - the Librarian - were you - I mean, were we . . ." He spread his hands in a vague yet somehow eloquent gesture.

Her face burned - she knew she had to be bright red. She was also extremely hot. "Um," she said. ". . . yeah."

"You're sure?"

Unwillingly she relived their kiss and nodded, wincing, somehow feeling even hotter. "Very."

Still looking at the floor, he nodded. "I figured. I mean - I figured you'd be able to tell."

"Well. He told me, once he knew I wasn't . . . the same. I mean Cassandra figured it out right away, because of me being dead and everything, but I guess you - or, he - just thought . . . I don't know what he thought. But you know the last Librarian faked his own death, and didn't even tell his Guardian, who he was definitely sleeping with, so . . ." She was babbling. And she really hadn't meant to bring up Librarians and Guardians sleeping together.

"And you didn't tell me because you thought it would be weird?"

"Was I wrong?" she asked incredulously.

He laughed a little. "Nope."

"See, this, right now? This is weird." She nudged his knee with hers. "Pretty sure you're not going to spontaneously combust if you look at me."

He raised his head. "No, but you might. Are you coming down with something?"

She pressed the relatively cool back of her hand to her burning face. "Oh my God shut up."

He was grinning, which at least seemed more normal. "Anything else you want to get off your -"

"He kissed me."

"Wait - seriously? I - the other me did?"

She nodded. "It was a bit of a surprise, considering I didn't know I was in an alternative timeline yet."

"Did you punch him?"

"No I did not. Which was admirable restraint on my part, really."

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, he slid a fraction of an inch away from her on the bench. "I don't want to make it weird," he said. "I just - now we know, right? That we're seeing the real timelines? Because I don't think I would have just guessed, or imagined . . ."

She forced out a slow, calming breath. "Yeah. I guess we know." A really awkward thought - as if the whole thing hadn't been awkward enough - came to her. "Um, what did you . . ."

"Hmm?"

"The dream - what . . ."

"Oh." He actually looked enormously relieved, which convinced her he was telling the truth when he said, "It wasn't anything more than - what happened when you were in the timeline."

Okay, so he was apparently unable to admit in so many words that he had dreamed about kissing her, so it was still a little awkward. But it could have been so much worse. "Okay," she said aloud.

"You know I wouldn't have mentioned it, except it confirms -"

"Yeah, I know." She was still holding his bag in her lap, and she dropped it onto the bench next to him. "You know what, actually? It didn't happen. I mean it really didn't happen."

His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean - all of those timelines came into existence when the thread was cut, right?"

"Right . . ."

"And that was a month ago. And everything between us in that timeline - the other us, I mean - had already happened before that, because a month ago in that timeline I was dead. Right?"

"Right," he echoed, then added, "My dream last night - it was about six years back, I think."

"So," she said triumphantly, "It isn't possible for anything to have happened in that timeline before a month ago, because before a month ago, that timeline literally did not exist. So the other us did not do anything six years ago, because they didn't exist. All I saw was . . . an alternate-universe echo of you who thought we'd been together in a past that never actually happened. It's not weird, because it didn't happen."

He was frowning as he tried to keep up with her excited rambling. "Is that the way it works?"

"As far as I'm concerned."

He seemed satisfied, or at least satisfied enough to stop acting like they'd had a drunken one-night stand that he was ashamed of. She hadn't done quite as good a job of convincing herself. The dreams they were all having were making things difficult, dragging up all the stuff that she'd mentally filed as "bizarre, but not real." Knowing that it wasn't all her secret anymore, that the others were, through their dreams, actually experiencing these things, felt like they were . . . reading her diary, or something. Like these were fantasies she'd had that they were finding out about.

Her mind was in such a tangle that literally the moment she saw Flynn (thankfully they were alone), she burst out with, "Please tell me one of your degrees is in theoretical physics."

"It's . . . not." He looked mildly interested. "Is something exploding?"

"Yes. My head." With a thump she fell against a bookcase and let it hold her up. "If - an event happens that creates an alternate universe, and the people in the alternate universe have memories that go back to before the event that created it, but those memories are different than the memories the same people have in the real universe - are those memories real? Or are they fabricated, since the universe didn't exist at the time those memories supposedly took place?" He looked bewildered. She tried again. "Or in other words - is it possible for what makes the universe alternate, the point where it diverges from the real universe - is it possible for that point to be earlier in time than the event that actually created the alternate universe?"

"Did you just start watching Doctor Who?"

Eve twisted and let her forehead rest against a shelf. "No. It's those timelines, from when the thread was cut . . ."

"That still bothering you?"

It wasn't really the time to notice this, but he actually was a pretty good . . . potential . . . whatever he was. Boyfriend? Ugh. At any rate - he closed the book he was holding and slid it back onto the shelf, coming closer to her in his concern.

She sighed. Once he knew what was happening, it would be so much more real. Still. "The others have been having dreams," she said. "They're dreaming the things that happened in the other timelines."

"The things that really happened?"

She nodded. "We think. Obviously it's hard to know for sure, but - yeah. They're incredibly detailed, and it seems to be . . . it's not random. They're having them every night, they seem to be in chronological order . . . whenever they dream about the same artifact, their details agree . . ."

His face was grim with realization. "The timelines are leaking."

"Cassandra said 'bleeding,' but . . . that's the idea."

"That's not good."

"We're all agreed on that."

"Cassandra told me -" He reached out to touch her elbow. "One of them was about Lima, wasn't it, and a cursed statue."

"Yeah." She covered the remaining distance between them and leaned her back against the shelves, their shoulders touching. "Any ideas? What could be causing this?"

"Well. I guess there are two obvious possibilities - either there's an artifact in the Library that's somehow causing it, or the Loom wasn't completely repaired."

"I'm betting on bachelor number two."

"It does seem the more likely." He reached down and took her hand, entwining their fingers. "So. New challenge."

"Can we get back to the river?"

"Probably not without another blood sacrifice . . ."

She winced. "I do not volunteer."

"No. Nobody's stabbing anyone."

His thumb was rubbing across the back of her hand, and despite herself she melted a little against his shoulder. She assumed he was thinking about the problem, and for the moment she was content to wait. Her confused thoughts were as loud as actual speech anyway.

After a while he folded his arm across his stomach, still holding her hand, so that her arm reached across his body. He met their hands with his free one, his fingertips stroking the inside of her wrist in a fairly distracting way. "Why don't we think about it over dinner?" he suggested.

Although she was worried, that brought a smile out of her. "Are you talking about a third date?" She paused. "You did mean together, right?"

"It's clearly our fourth date," he said, choosing to ignore her doubt.

"Then what was our third?"

"The restaurant across the street?"

She'd been counting that one. "Then what was our second? - don't say that wild goose chase Judson sent us on."

He was still holding her hand, tugging her toward the door. "What was wrong with that?"

"Other than the literal wild geese?"

"We went out somewhere together, and you kissed me. Date."

"You kissed me. And a goose bit me. Job, not date."

"So if we go out for dinner, and a goose bites you, this won't be a date either?"

"See if I get between you and the goose next time."

Chapter Text

"Well, Librarian - it's not often we get to be one on one, like this."

Ezekiel swallowed. No, it wasn't often. In fact it was never. He'd seen the woman once or twice before - usually while he was running away - and he knew who she was with. The Serpent Brotherhood. He knew she was dangerous. He also knew she was trying to use her attractiveness, her sexuality, to make him think she was less dangerous than she really was. He might not have known a whole lot about women, but he hadn't spent four years as the Librarian without learning a little something about bad guys.

He'd also never seen her naked blade before, until she pulled it out in front of his terrified eyes. He knew, of course, that she must have one - his keen eyes had spotted the sheath - but it was quite a different matter to have it brandished at him. While he was alone.

Which, yeah. He was alone. Alone and there were serious bad guys. Alone, and there were bad guys with swords. And sex, bad guys with swords and sex.

He'd never been alone like this before. One other time, he'd been alone when swords came out, and that time his Guardian had appeared immediately. Almost the second the blades flashed. And for all his complaining, all his I'm not a child and I can handle cases myself and I don't need a babysitter, he was scared. And if she'd shown up at that moment, he would have admitted it gladly. He was so scared that the words I want my mum actually flashed unironically through his brain.

But his mum was in a crappy apartment somewhere in Melbourne, and his surrogate mum was - not here.

She'd never been not here before.

He was backing up, hands held in front of him as if they could stop a sharpened blade. As if it wouldn't just cut through his hands on the way to killing him. And he had a thick, self-involved head, but it got through eventually. He was alone. He was alone and scared and in a lot of danger. No one had his back. Eve had never, never once, not had his back before. But she wasn't here. She had been behind him as they entered the museum, but she wasn't here now. If there was any humanly possible way, she would have been between him and the swords. And she wasn't here. He was alone. And that meant something unthinkable had happened to Eve.

He suddenly wanted to cry, but he didn't. Instead he thought fast, the one thing he was best at. After all, that was what Eve would have wanted him to do. Think. Solve. Be the Librarian. Survive.

He needed to stay alive until she caught up with him. Because she would. Obviously. She was his Guardian, and she would come for him.

"What would you have said to me," he asked, cheekily (he hoped). "If we'd ever been alone before."

She smiled, and it was chilling. Briefly he wondered if maybe he'd have found it sexy, if he'd been just a bit younger or a lot older. Completely naive or experienced enough to be cocky. "Good question," she said smoothly. "What do you think I would have said?"

He smiled; hefted the statue in his hand casually, as if it meant little to him. "I believe I asked first."

"You're smart enough," she acknowledged in response. "You have skills. You could be useful - important. With people who wouldn't treat you like an errant child."

Jesus bloody Christ, if only she'd known. That he'd gladly be treated like a child if it only meant Eve would show up and keep him from being kebabed. If she'd only show up at all and let him know - that she was okay.

"I don't know," he said. "The Library's a pretty good gig. What've you got that's better than that?"

"What have I got?" The woman chuckled. Evilly. Her sword didn't lower. "Can't you use your imagination?"

He made himself laugh back. "Well I've already got a woman that can kick my ass, so . . . afraid you're gonna have to come up with something new."

"Are you sure about that, Librarian?"

She was not, she was not, she was not suggesting that she'd hurt Eve. Unthinkable meant - unthinkable. Therefore he wouldn't think it.

"Pretty sure," he said slowly. "I mean, whatever you're offering is pretty tempting and I'm sure a lot of guys would have gone for it. But I'm pretty sure -"

He was stopped in his tracks by shock as the woman's sword was suddenly not in her hand anymore. It had been knocked to the ground while she was concentrating on him, her prey. Knocked to the ground by a very familiar figure.

". . . that my Guardian is going to insist I say no," he finished, grinning. Eve was a hurricane of . . . rage. Frightened rage. That was new. He could practically feel the anger and the tension rolling off her as she fought them. Protected him. Like she always did.

She was able for them, but something wasn't right. She was limping. She was bleeding - her arm, her right arm luckily. When there were still two guys left standing, she was flagging.

When he was alone, he was too scared to fight. He didn't really do fighting. But with Eve, for Eve, he could fight. He knew he could. He grabbed a dropped sword and swung it without skill but with such focused rage that he knocked the sword from the hands of his startled opponent. He didn't know what to do next, but Eve knocked the guy on the head with the hilt of a sword and he dropped.

"Go!" she shouted, and he went, knowing she was behind him. When they were outside the museum, apparently unpursued, he stopped and threw his arms around her as she collided with him.

"Ezekiel -"

"Are you okay?" he asked, squeezing her tightly around the waist. "You're bleeding and you're limping and you weren't there . . ."

"I know," she said. "I know, I'm sorry -"

"I mean are you okay?"

"I'm okay, this is not the time, move."

He obeyed, as he always - well, no, he did not always obey her instructions. But he was seriously thinking about it from now on. He ran. He would have kept running the three-plus miles back to their hotel if she hadn't shoved him into a cab.

He followed her like a lost sheep, into her room instead of his, and sat silently on the bed while she washed her arm off under the bathroom faucet. "Need help?" he asked when she started trying to open her first aid kit while clamping a towel around her arm.

She looked at him with something like interest. "Maybe. Sure."

The cut on her arm was a few inches long; he did his best with what he had and covered it with three band-aids. "That okay?" he asked as he smoothed the last one into place. "It's still bleeding."

She reached up and held the side of his face with her free hand. She was smiling at him. "It's fine," she said. "Now come on, we need to go down and eat before you pass out. And you need to change your shirt."

He looked down and nearly did pass out. His shirt had her blood on it.

"There's more on the back," she added helpfully.

He blanched.

"Want me to go your room and get you a clean shirt?"

He wanted to say yes, but she was hurt and he wasn't and even he wasn't that much of a dick. "No, I can go." His knees were shaky, but he made it to his room and managed to change.

In the hotel's little restaurant she pushed him into a chair and limped over to the bar, returning with two pints. He blinked as she put one in front of him. "You won't let me drink till I'm legal," he said.

She shrugged. "Screw it."

"Wow." He curled his hand around his glass. "Feels like my bar mitzvah or something."

Her surprised laugh was excellent. He was always proud of himself when he made her laugh like that, as if humor startled her. "Yes," she said. "Ezekiel Jones, you are now a man. Congratulations on not dying before we reached this auspicious day."

For once Ezekiel didn't feel guilty when he passed Baird in the Annex. That last dream had actually been kind of . . . fun. Well, not at first, and he did have the urge for a second to throw his arms around her and check her for injuries, but the end had been fun. Apparently, as he'd gotten older - well, Alt!him - Alt!Baird had loosened up. Maybe that was what normal parents did, too.

He apparently wasn't on Baird's radar at all, because she gave him a little wave before continuing on her way toward Jenkins's inner sanctum. Stone was another story, though - he'd returned from the Crimea the night before, and he appeared to be waiting for Ezekiel.

"Whatever's missing, it wasn't me," Ezekiel said automatically.

Stone rolled his eyes. "I gotta talk to you. How far have your dreams gotten?"

Presumably that meant Stone was still having them, too. "Still about six years ago, I think."

"Mine too. So they might be slowing down, that's good."

"How would that matter?" Ezekiel asked slowly.

Stone met his eyes, really met them, which was kind of scary. "I know Baird and Flynn are thinking about it, and I don't want to scare her, but I was hoping we could find a way to stop whatever's happening before we get to the end."

"Th-there's an end?" Ezekiel thought for a moment. "Well yeah, I guess all the timelines ended when the Loom was repaired, right? So won't it just end on its own?"

"I don't know. I don't know what'll happen when it gets to that point. But . . ." Stone sat down at the center table, looking at his hands. "What I'm worried about'll come sooner than that."

Ezekiel just looked questioningly at him.

Stone looked up again. "What's the one thing we know happened the same in every timeline?"

It hit him immediately. Oh shit. Oh SHIT.

He might have said that aloud, or maybe it was just his horrified face, because Stone nodded.

"Does - have you mentioned it to Cassandra yet?"

"Haven't seen her. I mean - I didn't want to say anything before in case it stopped and we never had to worry about it, but . . ."

As if on cue, Cassandra appeared. She stopped short in the doorway when she saw the two of them together. "Oh God, someone's dead."

"You really have to stop assuming that." Ezekiel went and took her arm, escorting her to a chair and prodding her into it. "Sit down though, we all have to talk about something."

She bit her lip and looked up at him, following him with her face as he took a chair. "Is this about the dreams again? Mine are . . . still happening." She looked a little pink.

Ezekiel looked at Stone, who said nothing. "Stone had something he needed to tell us," Ezekiel prompted. "About - why he thinks we need to stop what's happening before . . ."

"Before what?" Cassandra asked wide-eyed.

Gently, Stone repeated the same thing he'd asked Ezekiel. "What's the one thing we know happened the same in every timeline?"

"Eve," Cassandra said after a second's thought. "She was the Guardian in all of them."

"Right . . ." Ezekiel said.

His mouth twisting, Stone added, "And . . . why were all of us so surprised to see Eve when she showed up?"

"Because she w-" Cassandra's face reflected the horror Ezekiel knew had been on his own. "Oh God. She died in all of them." She reached a hand across the table toward Stone, as if asking him to help somehow. "And you think we're all going to dream that? Eve dying? Again?"

The "again" of course wasn't strictly accurate, but they'd certainly all had to watch Eve dying, even if she hadn't done so in the end. And, yeah. Now Ezekiel understood Stone's urgency. He would work pretty hard to avoid falling asleep one night and dreaming of Eve stabbed to death in front of him.

Stone shook his head. "I just keep thinking about what she said - 'I was supposed to die.' She just said it like - like that was an okay thing. Like - she had this fate, and it was really supposed to happen."

"She's fine," Cassandra said softly.

"She's fine now. What happens if the Loom really is coming unraveled and all our fates are coming together?"

Cassandra was staring at Stone with her mouth open, and Ezekiel knew he was, too.

Stone nodded. "See why I think we need to stop it?"

Chapter Text

The clippings book was so excited that it vibrated in her coat pocket. Cassandra pulled it out and it almost jumped open in her hands.

"Guys?" she heard Ezekiel call from the second floor. "Are your books wigging out right now?"

Cassandra turned and started walking slowly toward the stairs without lifting her eyes from her book. "Mine is," she called. "Something about wildfires in Norway?"

"Me too," he said, jogging down the stairs. "Where's Stone?"

"In the stacks," she said, but the man himself came through the door from the main Library even as she spoke.

"You getting this?" he asked.

Cassandra nodded. "Wildfires, drought . . ." she read from her page. "Unusually high temperatures. It's ninety degrees."

"In Norway? In February?"

Ezekiel added, "I've been to Norway. I'm not sure it's ever that hot, even in the middle of summer."

"Think we'd better all go?" Cassandra asked.

"The books seem to think so." Jake nodded toward Ezekiel. "Find Baird, tell her we're going."

"And you're not going yourself because . . ."

Jake ignored the challenge. "Cassie and I are gonna pack the equipment."

"What equipment?" Cassandra whispered as Ezekiel stalked off. "There's a crate labelled 'troll repellant' in the back near the Ark, but I think it's a joke."

"Possibly just water and sunscreen." Jake paused. "You think it's a troll?"

"Well, you know, Norway, trolls . . . that's really all I know about Norwegian mythology."

"Norse and Germanic mythology are pretty similar - Wagner's Ring cycle is based as much on Norse myth as anything - plus, you know, could be a Viking artifact, something like that."

"You think the Vikings were magic?"

He was leading her to the closet where Eve kept emergency supplies and the first aid kits. "Before this year, did you think earthquakes were magic?"

"Nope."

"You know, it's weird," he said, handing her an empty bag to hold while he packed it with water bottles. "I studied all that stuff for so long, thinking - there was a logical reason everything happened, all the development of the myths and the art and - now it turns out, maybe King Harald was just a wizard."

"Well - there'd still be a logical reason for everything. Just not the one you thought it was."

He laughed. "I guess."

"Just think, you could be the only art historian ever to discover the effects of magic on Scandinavian art . . . annnnnd, never be able to tell anyone about it."

"There is always that minor downside."

"Do you think Ezekiel actually went to get Eve?"

"Who knows." He looked around carefully before asking, "You get anywhere with that dimensional stuff you were looking into?"

She sighed. "No. I keep thinking I'm halfway there and then . . ." She clenched her fists in front of her face in frustration. "It's all pancakes."

"Did you ever try actually eating pancakes while you work on it?"

"Huh." It wasn't the worst idea in the world. Or, on the other hand, it could short-circuit her totally. "I always burn pancakes."

"Cassandra, I will make you pancakes. If it means we could figure this thing out -"

"Guys?" Eve poked her head around the corner and they both clammed up. "You ready?"

"Think so." Jake led the way out of the closet, and Cassandra followed.

Eve was typing on her phone as they walked. "Flynn says if there's any sign of a ring being involved, to call us immediately."

"Where is he?" Cassandra asked, at the same time that Jake asked, "What does that mean?"

"Estonia," Eve said. "And - I have no idea. Be on the lookout for hobbits?"

"Seriously?" Jake said.

"Yeah, let me revise that - if there's any sign of a ring being involved, call Flynn immediately."

"This one?" Ezekiel was jogging over, carrying something that looked like a miniature duffel bag.

Eve opened it and took a brief look at the contents. "That's it."

"What's that?" Cassandra asked.

"Burn kit." Eve faced them, hands on hips. "It won't help you if you get completely fried in a wildfire, so try to avoid that?"

Jake and Ezekiel nodded. Cassandra saluted.

"Do you have any idea what's going on there?"

All three of them looked at each other and shook their heads.

"Great - well, call if you get in any trouble. And remember, if there's a ring -"

"Call Flynn," Cassandra and Jake chorused together.

"Okay . . ." Eve sounded dubious, but Jenkins was beside her, already spinning the globe.

Cassandra and Ezekiel flanked the back door, waiting impatiently while Jake hefted the bag of supplies onto his back.

"Out of control fires are different from anything we've faced so far," Eve said quietly to Jake, though not so quietly that they couldn't hear.

"I worked on an oil rig for twenty years, I know a little something about fire. We'll be fine."

"Just - keep them alive?"

"Both of them?"

Eve rolled her eyes at Jake. "Not funny."

He grinned back at her, tightening the strap of the backpack over his shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll check in once we see what's going on." He gave the strap one more yank, leaned in and kissed Eve quickly, then took two steps toward the door. And stopped.

He was looking at Cassandra. Cassandra looked back, eyebrow raised and eyes wide.

"Did I just . . ."

Cassandra nodded. Over his shoulder, Eve had a look on her face that required Cassandra to smother a laugh.

Jake turned back to Eve and said, "Let's -"

"Never speak of this again?"

"Thank God." He turned back to Cassandra and Ezekiel. "Okay, let's go."

The back door deposited them in what seemed to be the back of some kind of fish shed. The heat was oppressive (and the smell of hot fish equally so). When they cautiously stepped outside, it was immediately obvious what their books had been so concerned about.

The hillside was brown, and here and there were small fires in the dry grass. The sky shone an almost uniform yellow-white, the sun itself barely visible through a sort of haze. Thick smoke rose from a patch of forest in the distance.

"Cheery," Ezekiel said.

Cassandra had to agree. "God, it's like a bomb went off."

"And it's still going off." Jake dabbed at his forehead with his sleeve. "So, any ideas?"

From a distance they could see a figure running toward them. Curious, all three of them waited until the figure - an old man, maybe seventy years old, dressed in white shirtsleeves that clung damply - had reached them. He shouted something, presumably in Norwegian.

Jake shook his head.

"English?" the man tried again, heavily accented. "You are here about the Svalinn?"

"The what?" Ezekiel asked.

"I think we probably are," Cassandra said. "Um - what is it?"

"The - er . . ." The old man held one arm bent in front of him, and waved the other as if holding a sword. "What is it, the -"

"Sword?" Ezekiel said.

"Shield!" Jake gestured toward the bent arm. "It's a shield?"

"Ja," the man said, looking relieved. "You know this? The shield, it reflects the sun, so the land doesn't burn, ja?"

"Svalinn," Jake repeated thoughtfully.

"Ja! But they have stolen it!"

"Who has?" Ezekiel asked.

"You come!" The man took off running, back in the same direction from which he'd come.

They exchanged looks, and began trudging after him.

As they crested the top of a hill, the browned landscape spread out before them. The man gestured to a boulder, against which was leaning -

"Ew," said Ezekiel.

"Agreed," Cassandra muttered.

It was a burned corpse. Burned and so thoroughly blackened that even the boulder behind it was smudged black. The only thing that wasn't burned was . . .

"Is that a ring?" Cassandra whispered. "On its finger?"

With a resigned sigh, Jake pulled out his phone.

***

The body was so thoroughly burned that Cassandra couldn't tell anything about it, other than that it seemed to be full-grown adult.

"I think it's male," Eve said, hovering over her shoulder. "Don't quote me on that."

"Do you think that's . . . it?"

Cassandra pointed with shaking finger at the ring, which seemed untouched by whatever had burned the corpse. It seemed to shine, despite the rainy, overcast day.

"It looks like what Judson described," Eve said. "The markings on the side . . ."

Cassandra rummaged in her pack for the tweezers they'd brought for just this purpose. Carefully she removed the ring from the blackened finger, wincing as bits of black . . . something flaked off. She held the ring up to the sky, clamped between the prongs of the tweezers, and examined the inside. "Yep," she said. "On the inside too. They look the same."

"And it sure looks like it was unlucky for this guy."

Cassandra turned to smile at her, and reflexively tightened her grip on the tweezers. Under the increased pressure, the ring popped out from between the prongs and started to drop. Unthinkingly she reached out and caught it in her bare hand.

Eve's quick gasp called her back to alertness. "Cassandra . . ." she said.

"It's warm," Cassandra marveled.

"Yeah, it's warm - you just pulled it off a burned corpse."

That worked, whether Eve was intending to gross her out or not. She dropped the ring onto the grass. Eve's hands covered her shoulders and pulled her back, so that she fell over her legs and sat down hard on the ground.

"Don't touch it again," Eve cautioned. She took the tweezers from Cassandra's hand and slowly picked up the ring, dropping it immediately into the little bag they'd brought.

"Sorry," Cassandra said. She was having a little bit of a hard time focusing - the palm of her hand still felt warm where the ring had landed, and something was humming through her chest.

"Do you feel okay? Anything weird?"

Cassandra had to concentrate to keep herself from humming aloud to match the humming in her chest. "A little weird?" she said. "Kind of . . . strummy?"

"I don't know what that means." Eve frowned, kneeling in front of her and looking worried. "Are you, uh, having thoughts about taking over the world? Piling up gołd?"

"No." Cassandra laughed a bit giddily. "I don't think I had it long enough. I just feel kind of - I don't know - magicky? I don't know, it's hard to -" Impulse seized her. In one move she rolled forward over her crossed ankles, dropped onto her knees, reached for Eve with both hands, and kissed her.

When she dropped back breathlessly, Eve was staring at her, expression unreadable. After a few stunned seconds, she brought one hand to her sternum. "Something - here?" she asked.

"Yes!" Cassandra didn't know if she was more relieved or disappointed that Eve had focused on the magical side effects rather than the kiss. "Did I - give it to you?"

"I don't think so." Eve still had her hand pressed to her chest. "No, it was only for a second."

"I've still got it." Cassandra breathed deeply. "I think it's fading though."

"Well, the ring should be safe in the bag."

"Judson's always right." Cassandra took another deep breath and went up on her knees to kiss Eve again. Eve's shock was apparent, but it was still fantastic - right up until Cassandra's mind was swamped with eights and twelves and she blacked out with the smell of wine-red in her nose.

***

When she walked into the Annex the next morning, Jake was waiting for her, his face drawn.

"We have a problem," he said. "That ring we reburied under the Svalinn?"

"What about it?"

"It's in the Library."

Chapter Text

Cassandra stared at him for a long moment. Finally she said, very slowly, "How can it possibly be in the Library today when we left it in Lom yesterday?"

"Yeah."

She took a visible deep breath. "Where is it?"

"Come on."

"And where's Flynn?" she called as she tried to keep up with his pace through the passage into the main Library. "Are we sure he's still in Estonia?"

Jake gave her a look over his shoulder as they headed down into the stacks. "You think he approved our plan, let us do it, then went to Norway after we left, dug the thing up again, and brought it here without telling us?"

"Well - no."

They rounded a corner full of books with a runic language on their spines, across from a shelf holding a large slice of rock and a lot of long, narrow scroll cases. The displays in the center of the aisle held mostly large stone tablets covered with runes, one shaped like a weatherbeaten cross, and something that looked like the figurehead from a ship. And then, in a small case on its own pedestal, a ring.

His heart had almost stopped when he'd seen it the first time.

"How did you find this?" Cassandra asked, circling the case and stopping to read the tag. He'd memorized it: Andvaranaut, c. 600 C.E.

"I was looking for more information about Svalinn - which, by the way, I hope Flynn reads Old Norse, because I don't - and there it was."

She met his eyes, fidgeting nervously with her hands. "I had a dream that I collected it and brought it back to the Library. But -"

"It was years ago, and nothing was burning and it had nothing to do with Svalinn?" She nodded, and he said unnecessarily, "Me too."

"We need to talk to Ezekiel," she said.

He shook his head. "I think we already know what he would tell us. More importantly - why did Flynn warn us in advance that a ring might be involved?"

Cassandra frowned. "Good question. Why would he know that, unless he'd come across it before?" She brightened. "Maybe he retrieved it - whenever, five or six years ago - and it's been in the Library this whole time? Maybe the ring can move around by itself, or -"

"Maybe . . ." You knew something was wrong with your life, he reflected, when an evil ring that could move on its own was the comforting option.

"The one in Lord of the Rings kind of could," Cassandra added. "I always thought it was kind of implied that it 'left' Gollum on purpose and went looking for a new bearer."

"But that's-" He stopped. It was fiction, but until the day before, the Volsunga saga had been fiction, too. "You think Tolkien knew the ring was real?"

"I'd be willing to believe it."

When it came down to it, so would he. "Let's find Jenkins."

The caretaker was bent nearly in half over his work bench, face almost brushing an intricate clockwork spread across the table. He somehow managed to look up at their entrance without actually straightening up. "Yes?"

"How much do you know about Andvaranaut?" Jake asked without prelude.

Now Jenkins did straighten enough to be leaning on unbent arms. "A fair amount," he said. "The individuals who inspired the tales of the Norse gods were powerful magicians, and the gift of Andvari is no joke."

"Can it move by itself?" Jake asked.

Jenkins shifted his weight into his shoulders, considering. "As you know, Professor Tolkien subscribed to the theory that the ring did have a certain consciousness . . ."

"Did he know it was real?" Cassandra interrupted.

"It's likely. Probably."

Jake felt one wild rush of pure, geek joy. From the looks of Cassandra, she felt the same and was barely restraining a dance.

"Of course," Jenkins continued, "we can be fairly certain he never actually saw it. It was - well, his books accurately portrayed the naïveté of ever believing the ring to be lost; it's never lost, someone always knows where it is, and the best case scenario is that that person is guarding it carefully and never, ever, using it or even touching it."

"I touched it," Cassandra whispered, a furtive confession. "In my dream."

Jake looked at her with interest. "Did you go evil?"

"No - I don't think it's like that, like the Apple - it's not instantaneous. I just felt - magic, it's hard to describe." She paused, then added in a rush, "Then I kissed Eve."

"What?"

Jenkins coughed once to get their attention. "A dream?" he asked.

"We'll come back to that," Jake said. "You were saying, about the ring?"

"Yes, well - let us say, the world at large has not known Andvaranaut's location since - oh, about 1530. It was assumed it had been returned to either Norway or Iceland, which, of course, turned out to be true. There were some rumors and suspicions a few years ago that someone might be using it, but the incidents seemed to stop on their own."

Jake and Cassandra locked eyes. "That's when," she said. "Judson must have heard those rumors . . ."

"And sent us." He paused. "And sent Flynn?"

"I'm not entirely following," Jenkins said, his brow furrowed. "But no, Flynn did not go after Andvaranaut at that time."

"You know for sure?" Jake asked.

"Yes - is it important?"

"Yes," Jake and Cassandra said together.

"I remember there was discussion about whether it needed to be investigated, and I think Judson was in favor, but then - his mother died. Flynn's. By the time the funeral was over, the incidents had, as I said, stopped on their own."

"That's how Flynn knew to warn us," Jake said. "He knew it might be an issue and that he hadn't solved it. And," he added as the realization hit him, "this is the first time all three of us had the same case and he didn't. That's why this is the first time we've noticed an artifact appearing that shouldn't be there."

"Uh-oh," Cassandra said softly. "Then it is connected."

"What -"

Jake forestalled Jenkins's question with, "The ring is in the Library."

The caretaker's eyes widened with surprise. "You changed your -"

"No. We buried it under Svalinn. And now it's in the Library."

"That's - not possible."

"We're afraid it is," Jake said.

Cassandra threw him one desperate look, then started explaining.

By the time she was finished, Jenkins looked pale. "So you've been dreaming the actual events of the alternative timelines that were supposed to have been ended when the Loom was repaired - and now those timelines are physically manifesting in the real world?" He shook his head. "Oh, this is not good. The implications are - apocalyptic. Not to mention the actual events of those worlds, which, according to Colonel Baird, were terrifying all on their own."

"Plus, Colonel Baird," Cassandra said. "You know. Being dead."

"We all thought the whole 'fated to die protecting the Librarian' thing was over when Flynn managed to bring the Library back and heal her," Jake said, explicitly voicing his worst fear for the first time. "What if it's not?"

For a long while Jenkins just looked back at them. Finally he asked, "What does she say about it?"

"We haven't told her," Jake said.

"You haven't -"

"She knows about the dreams," Jake continued. "She and Flynn are working on it - I mean, they said they were working on figuring out why it was happening. I haven't told her about the ring appearing, though - I mean . . ." He breathed out hard, raking one hand through his hair. "She's worried enough about Flynn being away, and since what we're really worried about is her dying - again -"

"She handled it perfectly well the last time," Jenkins said quietly. "And she is the Guardian. She has a right to know if the Library - let alone the entire world - is being threatened."

He was right, Jake knew. But none of the others had been the one cradling Eve while she died, and he just couldn't imagine telling her that they were afraid it was going to happen again - not possibly someday, not our jobs are dangerous and we never know, but soon. "Cassie's been working on something," he said. "She thinks - maybe there's a way to figure out why this is happening. To stop it. We'll - we'll tell Baird. If we have to. But if we can figure this out first . . ." He looked pleadingly at Jenkins, who nodded.

"One week," he said, "at the most. Then you'll tell her, or I will."

"We have to keep investigating our other cases, too," Jake said. "Some of that stuff is just as dangerous - and we wouldn't even have known about the ring if we hadn't gone on the Norway case."

"I bet that's why our books were so excited," Cassandra said. "You know - because it wasn't just the wildfires and stuff. It was connected to the Loom."

"One week," Jenkins repeated.

They both nodded solemnly.

***

He'd known it was coming soon - had to be. Given the myriad emotional issues already involved, he'd really hoped it would hold off until at least after Jenkins's one-week deadline, but the Indiana case appeared in his book on day two, Flynn came back, they all wrapped it up on day five, and that was when it happened.

He wondered, afterward, if it had been triggered by events in his real life. Their shared Lima and Norway dreams had happened right after all three of them had visited those places together, and maybe this was similar - it came right after he'd learned that Baird was evidently seeing someone and the subsequent revelation that what he had believed to be a sweet maybe-almost-potential something between Baird and Flynn had in fact progressed a lot further while he wasn't paying attention. So maybe, maybe his awareness of her love life had brought it on?

Or else, it was as inevitable as he'd feared; after all, the alternative him was a pretty patient guy, but he wasn't a monk.

Almost drowning was exactly as terrible as he'd always assumed (presumably actual drowning would be even worse). When he first went in he was worried about the gunfire he could still hear overhead, about Eve, about his blood in the water and sharks or whatever else might be in the middle of the ocean - but eventually he had room for nothing but the pain in his chest, the lightheadedness, the desperate reflex to take a breath that it was killing him to deny, and the tangle of rope around his ankle that prevented him from doing anything about it.

Without really being aware of it, he stopped hearing the gunfire - or the water on the bottom of the boat, or his own flailing, or - anything. He wasn't flailing anymore, either. His brain started to tell him it's okay, you can breathe water, it'll be fine, just go ahead - he couldn't see the light above the surface anymore - and then he vaguely noticed the frantic tugging at his ankle, the release of the tension there, hands at the small of his back and between his shoulder blades, forcing him up.

He took his first gasping breath a fraction of a second too soon, and surfaced coughing as the saltwater burned his windpipe. His dazed brain thought guns, but he didn't hear anything.

Hands were reaching down from the research vessel, grabbing the wrists he extended by instinct, hauling him over the side. He was aware of rope still wrapped around his ankle as they propped him up on the deck. Still coughing, he waved off the student who had looked about to try CPR.

The other boat was gone, he realized, as Eve dropped to the deck beside him. She was soaking wet - why was she wet? - and how was he out of the water with the rope still tangled around his leg?

Eve's hand clasped his bicep, slid down his wet bare arm, and grabbed hold of his hand.

"Fine," he forced out between coughs. "How did you -"

She dropped a large knife onto the deck without speaking. He finally noticed that the mess of rope around his ankle was no longer attached to anything, and that one end was raggedly cut. He reached out with his other shaky, weak arm to touch her face, then her shoulder.

"Where's - where's the other boat?"

Another student, crouching anxiously in front of them, motioned off the starboard. "Coast Guard showed up."

He stretched and could see something that might be the cabin of another, smaller boat. "Chased them off?"

"Yup."

"Anybody hurt?"

"Couple of bullet holes in the deck, but no."

Eve, moving slowly, had broken from his hold and was untangling the rope around his leg. He wanted to help, but couldn't seem to make himself move. Instead he watched as she finally cast the length of rope aside and laboriously pushed up the wet leg of his pants to get a look at his knee.

"Not shot," he said tiredly, letting his eyes fall shut. "One of them hit me. Bunch of - chain or something. Ow!" He gritted his teeth and opened his eyes as she prodded.

"It's bleeding more now that you're out of the cold water," she said. She wasn't looking at him, only at his leg. "The bruising is going to be bad."

"Better than dead." Someone was trying to drape a blanket around his shoulders, and he managed to sit up away from the side of the ship enough to allow it. "Eve."

Her eyes flickered quickly to his face, but she immediately looked down again. "I don't think anything's broken, but we should bandage it."

She managed to mostly avoid his gaze the entire time the boat was racing them back to dock, while they both refused an ambulance and he took his first incredibly stiff and painful steps to prove that he was fine, while the professor drove them back to their hotel as they dripped onto towels in his backseat, and while they limped through the hotel, too tired to care about the people staring at their wet clothes.

When she opened the door to her room, though, he followed her in. "Eve," he said, reaching out for her arm and just managing to grab it. "Come on. What's wrong?"

She finally turned to face him, her expression tremulous. "Too close," she said softly after a moment. "Much too close."

"We're fine," he said, tugging her closer. "We're both fine."

"You almost drowned."

"And you saved me." He pulled her into an embrace, but they both recoiled at the feeling of cold, wet clothes pressed closer against their skin. He laughed as they put about a foot of space between them and said, "Yeah, that's not gonna work."

Acting, at first, purely out of the instinctual reaction that they needed to get changed and get warm and dry, he automatically started to unbutton her shirt. After three buttons, his brain caught up with him. He looked up and met her eyes, which were dark. He could see her chest lifting as her breath came a little faster. Still looking into her eyes, he deliberately moved down to the next button and continued his task. After a second she lifted her hands between them and started on his buttons.

She was either more deft, or less nervous, because she caught up quickly and they acted at more or less the same time to push the sodden shirts off each other's shoulders. Still in synch, she reached for the hem of his tank top and he reached for hers, then they both paused and switched for ease, pulling their own shirts over their heads. He wanted to pull her against him, but her hands swiftly popped open the button on his pants, and she looked up and said pragmatically, "You may want to sit down. And stretch your leg out straight."

Right. Soaking wet, stiff pants and bloody, bruised knee that he couldn't bend. Not that it was foremost in his mind at the moment, but he supposed shrieking with pain would be embarrassing. He toed off his wet shoes and limped toward the bed. She beat him to it and pulled the covers down, then dragged a chair over to the bedside. Before he could think or react, she hooked her fingers in the waist of his pants and boxers and pulled both down over his hips, somehow nudging him with her shoulder down onto the bed. Sure, he thought, trying not to die. Why sit on the bed with wet pants?

He had no idea how he had the presence of mind to put his foot up on the chair - possibly she did it for him - while she carefully slid his pants the rest of the way off. She kept her head bent, looking only at the part of his legs she was uncovering at any moment and lifting the fabric as gently as she could around his injured knee. Meanwhile, he bent forward at the waist and crossed his arms on his thighs in a feeble attempt to hide the loud-and-clear message his body was sending - just in case he was reading this whole thing really wrong.

On the other hand, she was purposely putting him in her bed, naked. While she was throwing his wet pants over a chair, he quickly pulled his socks off (which was rather a proud achievement, considering his one unbending leg) and slid both legs under the sheet, bringing it up to cover his hips.

When she turned around, he reached up for her and finally, finally pulled her down into a kiss. His cold hands on her back made her jump, and he murmured apologies against her mouth as he tried his hardest to unhook her bra without touching her skin. He managed it eventually as she took care of the rest of her clothes, and she climbed cautiously over him to slide under the sheet on his other side.

Eagerly he pressed completely against her, finally feeling warm on every possible level. There was no hiding anything at this point, but she definitely didn't seem to mind. Though she pulled away momentarily from his kiss to say, "If you put those hands anywhere on my body before they warm up . . ."

Laughing, he took her hands in his own and held them tightly between their bodies, continuing to kiss her and rub their hands together until their knees knocked and he couldn't hold back a curse of pain.

"Sorry," she said. "Maybe lie on your back, and move your leg out to the side?"

She was lying on the opposite side from his injured leg, so that basically worked; she was able to drape herself over him without hitting his knee again, until both their hands warmed up enough to be put to good use and he forgot all about the throbbing in his leg for a while.

Their hands were clasped again though, palm to palm with fingers intertwined and pressed into the pillow on either side of her head, when they joined together for the first time. It should have been awkward, with him pressing his toes into the mattress to keep his leg straight and his knee off the bed, but it was perfect. Her smile as they moved together was so delighted - he delighted her, which was maybe his favorite thing that had ever happened - and he murmured I love you, Eve, I love you against her shoulder until he couldn't speak anymore.

Rolling to his back afterward proved a delicate challenge. Once he had managed it, she propped herself on one elbow and rested her other hand on his chest. "I love you, too," she said, her eyes sparkling. "You want me to go get you some ice?"

He really wanted her to never leave, ever (and certainly not to get dressed), but he had to acknowledge that he would need to walk again someday. "Probably. In a bit," he said with a grimace.

She smiled and laid her head on the pillow beside his. "Let me know."

He reached up to stroke her hair and spread it across the pillow - the curling tendrils around her face were starting to dry, but the rest was still pretty wet. Idly he wondered what Charlene would say if he told her they only needed one hotel room from now on.

She'd probably be thrilled. It would be so much cheaper.

Chapter Text

"Colonel Baird."

Jenkins was looking unusually fidgety, which right away set off her radar. "Yes?"

"Has anything . . ." He twisted his hands together. ". . . unusual, been going on?"

She paused to attempt to evaluate how serious he was. "It's a magic library."

"Yes. So, something unusual for the Library would be . . . very unusual indeed."

Ah. "They told you about their dreams?"

"Reluctantly - they came to ask me about the ring, and ended up spilling the whole story."

"The ring?" The one from Norway?

Jenkins coughed a little. "They haven't told you about the ring?"

"I . . . know they found it and reburied it with the shield, like Flynn told them to?" Raised voices echoed from the card catalogue; she could hear Cassandra in particular protesting, "It's not right, that's the problem!"

"There's a bit more to the story than that," Jenkins said.

"We're running out of time," Stone's voice boomed from the card catalogue, and Eve rubbed her forehead.

"I think they're about to tell me," she said, heading for the catalogue room.

"I'm not saying the theory is wrong," Cassandra was saying, "it's that I can't make it work -" She caught sight of Eve coming through the door and focused on her, her tone pleading. "I can't make it work for this, I'm sorry!"

"Okay," Eve said, "all of you need to tell me what's going on, right now."

Cassandra took a deep breath coupled with a bit of a sniff. "I thought multiverse theory would tell us what was going on with the alternate timelines and how we could put everything back where it belonged, but the theory doesn't work."

"You disproved all of theoretical physics, yesterday," Jones said dubiously.

"No, that's what I'm trying to tell you! All those theories are trying to explain the physical universe, the outcomes we can see and predict. That's why so many people expect physicists to be atheists, because if physics can explain everything in the universe there's no room for a deity." Cassandra stopped for air, pushing her hair back out of her face. "Or magic. That's the problem. These systems were developed to describe a world with no magic in it; they don't work when you add magic to the equation because magic defies the ordinary laws. Physics can't explain magic, and it can't solve it, either." She turned a pleading look toward Eve.

Who was extremely confused. "Okay," she said slowly. She crossed the room and gently patted Cassandra's shoulder. "Okay. It was a good thought. We'll think of something else." She turned to Stone. "Why running out of time?"

He was silent looking back at her for a long while. So were the other two, which was - bad news. Eve started to feel a chill on the back of her neck.

"You two," Stone finally said. "Take off."

"What?" Eve asked, but Cassandra said, "Really?" and Ezekiel didn't say anything at all, just hustled from the room. Cassandra followed, clutching a large book to her chest.

The chill was definite now. Eve raised her eyebrow at Stone. "Should I be sitting down? Or - armed?"

"Actually - no, follow me."

He strode toward the Library. She caught up quickly, calling, "You're going to tell me why they're so freaked out, right?"

"That ring we found, you remember what it was called?"

He was walking fast, but her legs were longer and she fell in step beside him. "Something long with an A?"

"Yeah." His hand lightly brushed her elbow to steer her toward the left. "Apparently it first surfaced five or six years back, but Flynn didn't check it out then because -"

"His mother died. He told me."

"Right. Well, in the other timelines, each of us did go after it. We all found the guy that was using it - dead and burned, just like this guy was - and each of us brought it back to the Library. Which we didn't do last week, in the real world, because we had the shield as well and Flynn thought it was most secure with the shield to guard it."

Except for the part about the alternate timelines, this she knew. "So where are we going?"

He steered her around cases full of runestones and gestured at a tiny case by itself at the end of the row.

She had a hard time not actually shivering when she saw the ring on its little pedestal, and the tag. Andvaranaut, c. 600 C.E. "Is that -"

"Yeah."

She stood staring at the ring, trying to assemble the information. "All of you dreamed about it."

"Yeah."

"How long has it been here?"

She heard his heavy exhalation over her shoulder. "At least since the day after we got back from Norway. I guess I can't swear it wasn't here before, but - Flynn didn't bring it here and no one else from the Library did either."

"And you're just telling me now because . . ."

"We thought maybe we had an answer -" Awkwardly he raked a hand through his hair, looking carefully at the floor.

"Is that why Cassandra was so upset that her idea didn't work?"

"It's you we're worried about," he blurted.

"Me?" In her surprise she took a step back and bumped into the ring's display case. "Not the dragons and zombies?"

"I mean - those would be bad. But - you were the one thing that was consistent, and all that talk about Fate, and dying for the Librarian . . . you believed all that yourself -"

"Yeah, but lucky for me, Flynn didn't." Now she understood - the chill was getting significantly worse, but at least now she felt like she had the whole picture. "He changed fate, just like reweaving the Loom changed the fate of this whole world - remember, Morgan le Fay thought it was ending."

"Can you ever prove the world isn't about to end?" He waved a hand as if to erase that remark. "I'm not trying to scare you, just - we need to stop this."

"Okay." She nodded slowly. "Things are appearing from the other timelines. It's getting worse. We need to - work a little faster. Okay."

"There's something else."

Something small but critical exploded in her head. "Oh God, how can there be anything else? You think we should ask the Serpent Brotherhood for help? Satan himself is living in Jenkins's lab? Jones is pregnant?"

He almost laughed. "Thank you for that image. Which - is kinda relevant."

"Wait, what?"

"No, I don't mean Jones - let me start over." He buried his face in his hands and moved them away only slightly to speak. "My dreams. They're, uh. Progressing."

"Isn't that what we were just talking about?"

"No, I don't mean the ring and all that stuff. I mean -" He dropped his hands and looked at her helplessly. "You and me. You know."

She didn't. Oh wait. She did. "Oh."

"I felt like I should - tell you -" He gave her a pained look, nose wrinkled. She felt herself mirroring it.

"Well," she said. "Um. Thank you?"

"Baird -"

"Well, what am I supposed to -" She bit at the knuckles of one hand in a way she hadn't felt the need to do in a while. "I'm sorry? I mean - that sounds really awkward, I'm sorry. And - please don't tell me the details."

"I wasn't going to!"

"So - okay. Good talk." She turned to go, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"Hang on. I feel like I have to - there's something I have to say."

She waited patiently. Ish. For a while. "Okay?"

"I don't know how to . . ." He sighed. "I feel like I need to apologize."

"For what?"

"For -" He seemed unable to look at her anymore; his eyes were firmly on the floor. "You didn't - you didn't consent to this."

"Neither did you."

"I know, but I'm the one that's - doing it."

Oh God. Hunting down nukes was not appropriate preparation for this. Eve pinched the bridge of her nose - she didn't have a headache yet, but somehow she felt like it would be happening soon. "I know the answer to this already," she said, "but just checking in - in the timeline you're seeing, I, uh - I was consenting then, right?"

"Yes! What the hell - why would you even -"

"Well, you're getting ready for your perp walk over there, I just thought we should clarify." She let her hand fall from her face and crossed her arms tightly. "Look, you haven't done anything wrong. At most you're - witnessing other people's lives. It's not a big deal."

He dragged his eyes up from the floor with apparent effort. "I just feel like if you didn't agree to . . . that, then I shouldn't know exactly what it's like."

She kind of got it then - it was a sort of involuntary voyeurism from his perspective. In the ordinary course of things he wouldn't have known what she looked like naked, or what she was like - yeah, going down that road was not going to make anything better. She struggled to find the right thing - or really anything - to say, and finally came up with, "That sucks. And there's nothing we can do about it. Unless you think you can stay awake till we solve this." Off his look, she held up a hand. "Kidding."

"I didn't mean to make it weirder for you, I just - I thought it was worse not to tell you."

She wasn't entirely sure she agreed, but he was shifting nervously from foot to foot and he clearly felt terrible about having violated her in some way, in his head. She flashed back on a conversation she'd had with Jenkins about Flynn, but this time there was no wise old caretaker giving her metaphors about drowning. Just her own internal monologue saying fix this, Eve, seriously what is the point of you.

Fix this. Right. She took the necessary two steps closer and wrapped her arms around him. He stood frozen for a while but she didn't release him, and eventually she felt him relax. After a moment he lifted his arms to embrace her in return, one hand coming to the back of her head.

She tightened her hold for a few seconds and rubbed a hand across his back before pulling far enough away to look him in the eye. "We're okay," she said firmly.

He nodded. His hands fell to clasp her forearms. "Thanks."

"Really, really don't mention it."

"Hey, um - are you going to tell Flynn about this?"

"Yes," she said automatically. Which surprised her a bit actually, but - well, of course she was.

"Okay, well . . ." He released her arms and took a few steps back. "I'm going to go talk Cassie off the ledge."

"I think we should have a team meeting," she said. "We all need to stop keeping things from each other, and we need to be more strategic about this. In an hour?"

He nodded. "I'll tell everybody else . . . maybe you should find Flynn."

She grinned. "Coward."

"Yeah."

***

"You okay?"

She knew she had been quiet for a while, but the real giveaway to her mood was probably the way she had been staring at the window for . . . who knew how long. It was dark, so there was nothing to see but the few leaves on the tree right outside.

Flynn sat down at the adjacent side of her kitchen table, carefully stepping over the foot Eve had propped on the rung of his chair. And, honestly, that was such a perfect image for what her life had become - her apartment in DC hadn't even had a kitchen table. And it definitely hadn't had anyone else to sit at it with her, or a whole host of other people to fret about.

"Feeling a little slutty, to be honest," she said, rolling her mostly empty beer bottle on its base on the table. "Never thought I'd be so grateful for the existence of Ezekiel Jones. And the fact that my other self wasn't angling for an appearance on To Catch a Predator."

"Has Cassandra said anything?" he asked after a swallow of his own beer.

"No. She might be too mortified to tell me anyway. I'm sure it'll happen though - I definitely got a vibe." She let the bottle rest flat on the table. "From the other one, I mean. Not our Cassandra."

"No, our Cassandra is mostly flustered at the moment."

"Are we the world's biggest jerks?" She propped her other foot next to the first one on the rung of Flynn's chair, bringing her knee up against the side of the table. "I mean, she's driving herself to distraction trying to solve this thing - mostly, apparently, because they're afraid it's going to kill me - are we doing enough for her?"

Flynn sighed. "I admit I keep putting other things ahead - she's fine at the moment, and there always seems to be something imminently deadly to deal with first."

"But there is a chance, right? It can't - Excalibur can't have been the only possibility."

"After we stop the world from unraveling," he promised. "Then we'll focus on it. Stone's been asking, too."

"Hmm."

He looked up with interest. "Something to share?"

"No," she said innocently.

He nodded. "Yeah. I've been not thinking the same thing."

"What I wish for," she said, "is loads of time for everyone to figure it all out."

He put a hand on her knee. "Are you worried?"

"About Cassandra?"

"No, I mean - scared. At all."

It was the kind of honest question you really couldn't go around answering honestly if you were a woman and you wanted them to make you a colonel. She was out of practice at even asking herself. She took a while to frown at the table. "In the moment," she said, "when we were running around the crazy timelines, and then when I was apparently deciding I could fence - you're not afraid then. You just . . . do it. Sitting around thinking about whether I'm fated to drop dead next week is different."

The hand on her knee rubbed gently. "Hey, you know we've got your back."

"Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?" She laughed quietly, placing her own hand over his on her knee. "Anyway what are you going to do - follow me around with the oil of healing?"

"If necessary."

"What I'm really -" No, she couldn't quite finish that sentence. "That ring just appeared, as far as we know. Whatever might happen - it could be something I can't defend myself against. If things from those other timelines are spontaneously becoming real, it could just . . . happen."

Flynn's eyes met hers. "You really do think you might just . . . drop dead one day?"

"I'm pretty sure that's what Stone is afraid of, anyway."

After a moment he shook his head, and the pressure of his hand on her knee increased. "I'm not saying it isn't complicated, but - actually, that's the point. It's complicated. It's bleeding and merging, not replacement. What I - what I mean is . . . that ring is in the Library, but I bet it's also buried under a shield on a mountaintop in Norway. It's what happened before - you were alive in timelines where you had already died. Timelines are sitting alongside each other."

He sat up a little further to look intently at her. "There's one thing that didn't happen in any of those other timelines, right?" he said. "You and I never met."

"Not till after I was dead, which - doesn't make any sense. Right."

"So." He smiled. "This is real. This, right now." He turned over the hand on her knee so that he could clasp the hand she'd laid on top of it. "You and me, this is our reality."

She smiled back. "That would be a comforting thought, I guess."

"Then let me prove it to you."

She knew her face must have expressed assent, even though she wasn't aware of it changing. He leaned over her bent knees to kiss her, free hand slipping around her waist. His fingers there urged her up, and she dropped her feet flat to the floor to stand up into his arms.

At some point much later, when she felt completely surrounded by his smell and his taste and his sturdiness, he broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. "Better?" he asked.

He'd slipped his hands up under the back of her shirt, and his palms were resting warm and solid against her shoulder blades. She rolled her shoulders a little just to feel him there. "You do have a pretty good bedside manner," she said, her voice coming out low and gravelly.

"Oh, I'm not even close to finished."

She wanted to tell him exactly how much she appreciated his being there, how good they were together, but she was out of practice at that, too. She ended up just holding his hand tightly as he walked them a bit sheepishly toward her bedroom.

(he hadn't done this before, not that she was keeping track; in the three times they'd slept together before - not that she was counting - he'd always let her be the one to initiate things, to take them to the next level. She understood why, or at least felt like she did, but it was still nice to feel wanted.)

He hardly let her face part from his, which made undressing complicated but was incredibly sweet really. Even once they'd settled on the bed, they lay on their sides, face to face, foreheads touching, her leg over his hip. It made things slow, but that wasn't a bad thing. At all.

"Convinced?" he asked her, at exactly the moment when she was least able to answer.

When she'd gotten her breath back, she still had a hard time coming up with the perfect reply, so she just kissed the back of his hand and rested her head against his shoulder.

Chapter Text

The clippings books - all four of them - had been strangely silent, as if acknowledging that the most pressing concern was already right here. Now, when they arrived at the Annex each morning, everyone was there waiting, ready to compare notes.

This morning was no exception. When Flynn and Eve got to the card catalogue they found all the others, including Jenkins, already seated around the table and passing notebooks back and forth.

"We think we have another one," Cassandra said as they approached. "Original Uyghur manuscript of the Book of Divination?"

"Karakol?" Jacob added.

"Ah - on the Silk Road?" Flynn shook his head. "Never been there, didn't know an earlier manuscript had been found."

"That's kind of funny," Cassandra said as Eve rounded the table to stand between her and Ezekiel. "I mean, there was a reason we all went after the ring and you didn't. But you never even heard of this?"

"It was Eve," Ezekiel said promptly. "I mean - wasn't it, in yours?"

"What do you mean?" Eve asked him. She went to lean on her elbows on the table, winced, and then straightened her arms to put her weight on her hands instead.

He held up his notebook - each of them had been writing down every morning as much as they could remember of their dreams. "It was a friend of yours who told you about the book - Turkish bloke you knew from some training exercise."

Eve frowned. "Ahmet Baykal?" she asked after a moment. "I haven't seen him in . . . but I guess it doesn't matter, because I'm living a completely different life in those timelines."

Flynn circled the table with thoughtful, halting steps. "Why would this Ahmet . . ."

"Baykal."

"Baykal, have told Eve about the manuscript? I mean, why would he think she'd be interested?"

"She mentioned to me -" Jacob paused, having looked up from his own notebook. "You limping?"

"Muscle strain," Flynn said, which was true. He added, "Just, you know, running." Which wasn't. "You were saying?"

"She told me this Ahmet guy came from a family of Sufi mystics - does that sound familiar?" Jacob asked, turning his attention to Eve.

"I - I don't know, maybe?" She gave a small shrug. "Maybe I knew him better, in the other timelines where I left NATO sooner?"

"So you think this Ahmet came from enough of a mystic family that maybe they - what, they knew about the Library?" Flynn nodded. "It's possible."

Jenkins cleared his throat. "I never knew for sure where all the other Annexes were, but I'm fairly sure one of them is in Ankara."

"So that's it," Cassandra said. "Flynn never heard about the Book of Divination because he didn't have Eve."

"Have you looked yet?" Eve asked.

They all shook their heads. "We were waiting for you," Cassandra said.

"Okay," Eve said, "well, let's go. What does it look like?"

"I drew it." Jacob held his notebook out for Eve's inspection.

"I don't suppose any of you dreamed where you put the book once you brought it back?" Jenkins asked drily.

"Um - no?"

"Nope."

"No."

Flynn turned around in his pacing and looked at Eve, who was looking to him. He considered. "There is a section on Sufism, obviously, although I'm not sure it's relevant. The Mongolian artifacts are mostly with early Russian 'cause we ran out of room on the Silk Road - metaphorically. But there's also a whole section on East Asian divination . . ."

"So what I'm hearing is, split up and start looking." Eve swept her arms to shepherd them all toward the Library. "Does anybody actually read any of these languages?"

Ezekiel put up a hand as he walked. "Turkish?"

"Seriously?" Jacob asked.

The kid shrugged. "I like Turkey."

"How about Arabic?" Eve asked him.

"No, just Turkish."

"I can read a little Mandarin," Cassandra offered. She was half-skipping to catch up to Eve. "Eve, what on earth happened to your arms?" she asked conversationally.

Flynn made a face behind them that he hoped no one noticed. Eve had rolled up her sleeves before he'd had a chance to warn her about the vivid red-purple and extremely symmetrical bruises below her elbows.

"Oh." Eve bent one arm up to look. "I fell in the shower."

Technically, that was true.

"Showers are so dangerous," Cassandra said with sympathetic hyperbole. "You could have broken something."

Both also true.

"So Cassandra's on East Asian," Eve said, and Flynn wondered if it sounded like changing the subject to anyone else.

"I'll go with her," Jacob volunteered.

"All the way down to the scimitar and make a left," Flynn said. "Jenkins, would you check out the Sufism section with Ezekiel? It's -"

"Behind the illuminated Qur'ans, I know." The caretaker sighed. "If you touch anything inappropriate, Mr. Jones, I will let the djinn get you."

"Eve and I will handle the Silk Road," Flynn finished, for the benefit of no one but himself and Eve since the others had all wandered off already.

"Are there really genies?" Eve stage-whispered.

"No," Flynn replied. "Well. Kind of - no."

Shaking her head, Eve trudged down the steps into the main aisle. "Meanwhile," she said, "you could have warned me that I looked like - you know -"

"Like you almost got killed having really awkward shower sex?" he whispered.

"Shh!"

"Oh, no one's listening." He grinned. "Anyway it was too late by the time I saw. Right at the turquoise shelf."

She paused, brought up short by the sight of an entire shelf that consisted solely of turquoise-colored volumes. "Huh. What are these?"

"All different things; apparently the Librarian three Librarians ago thought it was pretty."

"Why not." As she started walking ahead again she threw him a look over her shoulder, one that was mostly sly smile. "Not all of it was awkward."

"No, it wasn't," he said with feeling. "Still, we're -"

"Oh, we're agreed." She held up a hand and unfolded one finger, then a second, as she counted off. "Too old; never again."

"Fun though."

"Absolutely worth the experiment." She slowed and waited for him to catch up so they could walk side-by-side. "But you need to be able to walk, and if I die suddenly and traumatize the others, I don't want it to be in my shower."

"It did distract you from making mental flowcharts about Arthurian folklore."

"Oh, is that what you were doing. Distracting me."

"You weren't thinking about Dulaque, were you?" He grimaced. "Actually, I don't want to know."

She gave a quick, surprised laugh and took his hand. "I can honestly say I was not thinking about Dulaque."

They were looking for an artifact that, if it were there, would be evidence that the world was coming further unravelled and that Eve herself - if not the whole universe - could be in danger. And he swung her hand a little bit as they walked, because the world was pretty much always in danger anyway, and he'd somehow found this incredible, surprisingly sane and rational woman who nevertheless wanted to be with him, and who was willing to mostly laugh their way through spine-crunching attempts at spontaneous passion (and to agree afterward that maybe sex standing up on wet tile was best accomplished before forty).

She kept him smiling. All the time. That's what it amounted to. Enough to make the pit of his stomach actually forget about failed relationships and the ones who'd left, the ones who had wanted something in the moment but in the end hadn't really wanted him. Eve - well, he'd trapped her in a tomb with reanimated mummies, gotten her stabbed in the chest, and dropped her against the wall of her shower, and she still seemed to be sticking around.

It didn't hurt that her smile made him weak in the knees.

(That wasn't why he'd dropped her.)

"These are Cyrillic," she said, letting one hand skim against the spine of a book. "Left or right at the end of this row?"

"Um - both?"

They each went around a different corner, Eve calling, "Stone's drawing had a falcon on the spine, or - some kind of bird."

"It was bound?"

"I guess someone bound it?" He could almost hear her rolling her eyes at herself from two shelves away. "I mean, obviously someone bound it. But - a long time after it was written?"

"There actually was bookbinding in the Middle East earlier than you think." He ignored a shelf of scroll cases in favor of the worn spines of actual codices. "In Mongolia though I'd expect scrolls."

"Interesting," she said absently. "What does Uyghur look like?"

"Old Uyghur. Vertical columns of squared-off curlicues? Or maybe like vertical Hebrew done by a Chinese calligrapher?"

". . . okay."

When she spoke again, she sounded further away. "I ended up in Coptic Bibles," she called.

"You sure?"

"Yeah - luckily there are also books in English about the Coptic Bibles. You?"

He was still in a hodgepodge of Cyrillic and Arabic, no Uyghur and nothing with a bird on it. "Somewhere in Samarkand. No luck."

"Hang on, I have a text." He heard her footsteps approaching. "Stone and Cassandra have it."

No chance the ring was an anomaly, then. The edge of worry slipped further into his consciousness. "Where?"

Eve came around the corner, holding up her phone. "Where Russia meets East Asia?"

"Straight back." He put an arm lightly around her shoulders as they walked. "So it's still limited to things that were common to all of them."

He was trying to make her feel better, and judging by the look on her face, she knew it. "Yeah," she said lightly. "Nothing new."

"And that can't be much - it's not as if everyone was following the same straight path."

Eve stopped walking suddenly. "Hang on."

"What?"

"No - wait - say that again. The thing about -"

"Everyone's not following a straight path?"

"I -" She frowned, shaking her head. "No, I lost it. There was - something, I almost had it."

"About the timelines?"

"Yeah . . ." She nudged his arm, which had fallen from her shoulders when she'd stopped. "Never mind, let's go check out the book."

It was Eve, he reminded himself, who'd been the common link that united all four alternate Librarians - including himself - in figuring out how to repair the loom in the first place. It wouldn't be surprising if she managed it again.

Chapter Text

He couldn't stop fidgeting - twisting his hands together, clenching and unclenching his fists, flexing and rolling his toes. Every few breaths he had to stop and force air out slowly, trying to slow his heart and calm the tempest in his stomach.

When Eve found him in the stacks she immediately asked, "Jake? What's wrong? Are you sick?"

He shook his head (though he felt pretty sick at the moment). "Can we talk about something?" he managed to say.

"Okay," Eve said slowly. Her face was worried; as she came closer she said, "Something happened, didn't it?"

"No. No." He had to calm down; he was freaking her out. He took a deep breath and exhaled, "You hate my place."

"What?"

"My place."

She looked thrown by the subject. "Um. It's not that bad?"

"That's not exactly a ringing endorsement."

"Well, you didn't ask if I loved it." She reached out to put a hand on his arm. "Seriously, what's up?"

"I - I'm serious. My apartment is terrible."

"You're upset because you hate your apartment? You've lived there for like seven years."

"I just, um, I think we should look for a new place."

"Okay - okay." She gently squeezed his arm. "You . . . want me to help you look for an apartment?"

He was definitely screwing this up. Eve looked confused (and concerned that he might be having a psychotic break). He made himself as brave as possible. "No, I think - I think we should look for a place."

Eve blinked. "Oh. Oh."

That was all. He blew out another forceful, settling breath. "Okay. Or - I mean, we don't have to. If you don't want." He waited. "You don't."

"No! I just, I, um." She put both hands on his arm now, pressing. "Wow. I never, um. I haven't ever, lived with anyone."

"Me either." He waited. "Is that bad?"

"I don't know!" She was suddenly panicky, which for some reason made him feel better. "I don't - I just - wow. I never felt so Catholic in my life. I just - can't picture telling my father? That's insane. I'm almost forty."

"Well . . ." He had to admit that was a point he'd been mentally avoiding. "I guess I can't say my momma would a hundred percent approve. I guess."

"I mean - we're together all the time and we're paying two rents. In New York. It's stupid." She looked at him desperately.

"You know that's not why -"

"I do know that." She bit her lip. "I was looking for . . . I don't know."

"So what do we do?"

"I don't know," she said with a bit of a laugh.

He felt lightheaded. He took hold of her hands. "Well," he said. "Um, okay. Eve, will you -"

"No freakin' way!" she interrupted. "No. No no no."

"Uh." He let go of her hands and backed up. "That was very vehement. Okay."

"No - Jake -" She stepped into his space and grabbed his hands back. "I just meant - not as a solution to a problem."

"Right." He wrinkled his nose. "Not very romantic?"

"Almost as romantic as the time that guy punched you in the stomach and you just missed throwing up on me."

He finally felt like he could laugh without repeating that particular "romantic" moment. Stepping closer still, he slipped his arms around her waist. "So - it would be okay to revisit the topic? Sometime?"

He might as well have been asking now, of course. They both knew it. She met his eyes when she answered. "Yeah. Sometime."

She was no diva princess, and he was kind of an idiot a lot of the time, but even he knew that "sometime" meant not on the spur of the moment, at the right time, and probably with a ring. He could handle that.

He woke up crabby for a reason he couldn't quite put his finger on. Maybe it was the reminder that his almost-self had been so much ahead of him - actually been the Librarian after all, done so many incredible things. Almost gotten married.

Or maybe it was the "almost." After all, a dream like that one could only be so heartwarming when you knew exactly how it ended. He doubted they'd had time to actually get married; she would have mentioned that. So either they'd waited needlessly; wasted time. Or it was going to end soon.

Neither of his colleagues were in much better shape when he got to the Annex. Cassandra was bleary and red-eyed, as if she hadn't slept. Jones was quiet, and Jake couldn't even enjoy it. And to top things off, at some point in the morning Jenkins apparently decided to start burning some kind of chemical back there in his workroom.

"Is something on fire?" Cassandra whispered in the middle of their daily dream debriefing (their dreams had decidedly not agreed that night; only Ezekiel had anything involving an artifact; no one felt the need to look for it). But nothing seemed to be wrong and from the sound of things Jenkins was still alive back there, so eventually they went back to their work.

About an hour later, though, the fumes were getting stronger. Jake had just thrown down his pencil and pushed back his chair to go investigate, when Eve and Flynn came through from the main Library.

"Seriously?" Eve said immediately, her nose wrinkling. "Who thought matches in a library was a good idea?"

"Jenkins," the three former LITs chorused (or, in Cassandra's case, "Jenkins?"), but Jenkins emerged from his workroom at the same time, asking, "Did you just say 'matches?' Please tell me they haven't escalated to burning the place down around our ears."

"Wait, you're not burning stuff in your lab?" Ezekiel asked.

"Why would I be burning things?"

Jake frowned. "Then why does the place reek of struck matches?"

"Eve?" Cassandra asked worriedly, watching their Guardian over Jake's shoulder.

Jake turned to look. He had never actually seen color drain from a person's face like that before. Eve was white, and momentarily frozen. Then the spell broke, she threw a quick glance at Flynn, and she turned on her heels and sprinted for the door that led outside.

Flynn followed her before anyone else could react - Jake couldn't tell if he actually knew what was going on, or was just sticking with Eve. After a few stunned seconds, the rest of them all jumped to their feet and ran as well, following Jenkins, who had been standing already and whose long legs gave him the edge.

When they got outside, Eve and Flynn were staring at the sky. Flynn's expression was enigmatic, but Eve was transfixed with horror.

Jenkins got clear of the building and had a view of the sky first. He followed Eve and Flynn's gaze - his eyes widened and he said quietly, "Oh, my."

"What -" Jake asked, but then he was outside himself and he had a clear view. He felt his stomach plummet. Behind him, Cassandra and Ezekiel gasped.

"Not matches," Eve said, still sounding dazed. "Sulfur."

There was a dragon in the sky over the bridge. Huge, a rusty reddish color, with wings each the size of a small jet and visible talons like bent javelins. It circled overhead in a pattern that would have appeared lazy, but for the agitated way it was twisting in midair.

"This is not good," Ezekiel said.

Eve cleared her throat. When Jake looked over, he saw that Flynn was holding her arm. "Did anyone have dragons, other than Cassandra?" she asked in a tone that suggested she was striving for calm.

"No," Jake said, and he heard an answering echo from Ezekiel.

"Maybe it's unrelated?" Cassandra suggested hopefully. "I mean - not that a dragon in Portland would be good under any circumstances . . ."

"Right," Eve said. "Right. The important thing right now is dealing with the dragon, not figuring out why it's here. . . Any ideas?"

"We could call Mr. Drake?" Cassandra said. "Unless - you don't think that is Mr. Drake?"

"Mr. Drake did not exactly seem helpful and trustworthy," Ezekiel pointed out.

"That is a Western dragon," Jenkins said. "The scale pattern, the wider wings, shorter snout."

"So - not Mr. Drake," Ezekiel clarified.

"No. In any case, Mr. Drake is green."

"What about the dragon from under the Vatican?" Cassandra said. "He liked us. I mean. He didn't eat us."

Jenkins opened his mouth to reply, but Flynn cut him off. "We have a contact with the Western dragons," he said. "In Bayreuth."

Jenkins nodded in agreement.

"Bayreuth?" Jake asked. "As in - where they have the Wagner festivals?"

Flynn shrugged as he accepted Eve's iPad from her hands and knelt on the grass in the shelter of the bridge. "Dragons love opera."

"I don't know when he's kidding," Jake muttered to Eve.

"No, no one does," she replied.

Someone had evidently answered Flynn's call, because he exclaimed "Herr Weikl!" and then continued in rapid, if somewhat American-accented, German.

"What's he saying?" Cassandra whispered.

Eve shook her head. "Too fast."

They all peered at the screen, which showed a disappointingly normal man in a wool blazer. When the man got up and moved out of the frame, though (after Flynn had repeated "bitte" and "danke" several times each), they all reflexively reared back as the screen filled with one enormous yellowed eye.

"Wruen!" Flynn greeted him, apparently unaware that the rest of his team had just taken an involuntary step back.

It was a long conversation. Jenkins appeared to be mostly following, but for the rest of them it was a terrifying wait, listening to the dragon's rumbling German from the screen and watching the red one continue to circle overhead as if it too were waiting for something.

Finally - after a part of the conversation that had Jenkins looking worryingly nervous - Flynn lifted his head from the screen. "He can open a portal to take the dragon back where it belongs."

They all exhaled in relief, although that didn't explain why Jenkins looked nervous.

"Even if it came from another dimension?" Ezekiel asked.

"Universe," Cassandra corrected.

"Whatever."

"Dragon magic should sort him out," Flynn said. "But - we owe them a favor. And we have to get the dragon to the portal - they can't open it too close or he's likely to see it and run away."

"What's the favor?" Ezekiel asked, at the same time that Jake asked, "Then how do we convince him to go through the portal?"

"We're still negotiating," Flynn replied, "and . . . bait."

"Bait?" Cassandra echoed. "Like - sheep?"

The dragon rumbled again from the screen. Flynn grimaced. "He suggests we pick whoever can run the fastest."

"What?" Cassandra exclaimed.

"Makes sense," Jake admitted reluctantly. "How're we gonna convince a sheep to lead it in the right direction?"

"Where will the portal be?" Eve asked.

There was a short rumble. Flynn looked up. "He's looking at Google Earth."

Of course he was.

"He says over Smith Lake," Flynn said after a moment's wait.

"That's like two miles from here," Ezekiel said. "Is he joking?"

"Dragons don't joke," Jenkins intoned so seriously that Jake almost thought he was joking.

"Well." Flynn rocked back onto the balls of his feet. "I think I'd better go alone."

"No way," Eve said. "You're the one he's negotiating with. You need to stay here and make sure he opens the portal."

Yeah, Jake had seen where this was going a while back. Lucky he'd worn sneakers today, and so had Eve. "How fast are you?" he asked her.

Like him, she took a moment to size up both their footwear. "St. Gertrude's 5k champion," she answered. ". . . twenty-four years ago."

"Great." He looked down at Flynn. "What do we do?"

"Get his attention," Flynn replied. He looked as if he were trying to conceal his concern. "I'd get a head start first, though. And I guess, try not to lead him over too many buildings or crowded streets. Maybe go out north a bit and try to go around by the parks?"

Eve touched Flynn's shoulder briefly. "Okay," she said. "We'll go out the road, call you when we're ready." With her other hand, she felt for the gun at her waist.

"Be careful," Cassandra said nervously.

Jake smiled at her. "Hey, we ran from a Minotaur. At least the dragon's up in the air."

He followed Eve out of the park, anxious to get away before the others expressed any more fear for their lives. He was nervous enough about Eve as it was, but there was no good alternative - she'd never have let him go alone.

"Were you really a cross-country champion?" he asked as they power-walked along Terminal Road.

"No," she said. "Came in second to Bridget Riley every time."

Well, second was better than outright lying. They probably had a chance.

They didn't talk much. When they got past the most heavily populated part of the neighborhood and within sight of the small park that lay between them and the lake, Eve pulled out her phone. "We're ready," she said, presumably to Flynn. "Okay. Okay. We'll - we'll call when he's gone." She slipped the phone back into her pocket. "Ready?"

Reflexively he glanced down at his shoelaces. Tied. He bounced a little from foot to foot. "Ready."

She pulled out her gun and fired straight into the air. In the distance Jake thought he saw the dragon's giant head incline slightly in their direction. Eve fired again. This time, the dragon's serpentine body unwound from the curve it was circling into and it changed course, toward them.

"Wait," Eve said tensely. "Wait . . ."

"Eve, it's a half a mile away and it can fly."

Her hand was against his chest, her arm tense. "We have to make sure he sees us or he won't follow."

He could hear the wings now, beating the air. The dragon began to fly lower.

Eve's hand smacked against his chest quickly, twice. "Go!"

Their feet pounded the asphalt as they ran through an industrial park, empty trucks waiting in lines on either side. The sound of the wings grew closer. They hurtled into a stand of trees and Jake was tempted to stay there, but this was only starting. They burst out the other side and had to dash across train tracks to reach the park.

He saw Eve glance back over her shoulder. "He's following," she said breathlessly. "Faster."

He hadn't thought he could go much faster, but they hit an open field and the dragon behind him was good motivation. There was a terrifying roar, and the air felt suddenly warmer. Shit. He'd forgotten about the breathing-fire thing. Being a Librarian had never felt so much like a really bad day on the rig.

"Road," Eve gasped. "Left. Bridge."

"How far?" he asked, at great sacrifice to his breathing.

"Another - half mile maybe." She winced as there was another burst of heat behind them. "Catching up."

Half a mile. He could do anything for half a mile, he told himself firmly. Especially if it meant not getting killed by a dragon. He grabbed for the sleeve of Eve's shirt for reassurance that she was keeping up, and put on a burst of speed. She was with him, her long legs eating up the ground.

The road followed a short bridge into the park where they could get closest to the lake. Luckily, at this time of the morning on a work day, the road was deserted. As they crossed it, a blast of heat from behind them set the water on either side to steaming. Jake was sweating bullets, and the next blast sent a hot wave of pain up the back of his upper arm. He very carefully did not look back.

"That way," Eve gasped, pushing him off the road to the right. Another stand of trees lay between them and the lake. They ran furiously, heat and swooping wings and sulfurous breath behind them, and then they dove into the shade of the trees and rolled. The ground was soft. Eve hooked her arm around his neck and pulled his head down as a powerful force sailed over them. There was a sound like the flyover of a jet, and then nothing.

Cautiously, Eve released him and rose to her knees. Their eyes met as they stumbled to their feet, both gasping for breath. Her face was framed by wisps of hair come loose from her ponytail - her hair was getting long, which he knew was only because Eve Baird was not a person to keep track of when to go to the hairdresser, but it made her look more like Eve in his dreams, and that was unsettling.

She grasped his elbow, and silently motioned toward the lake. They crept through the trees, feet starting to sink in as the ground grew swampy. Ahead of them, the lake spread out serene and rippling. He could see a turtle on a rock.

"Gone?" he dared to ask.

She nodded slowly. "Gone. He must have made it through the portal." She exhaled heavily. "Let's see Bridget Riley do that."

"Where's Bridget Riley now?"

"Alexandria, with four kids, last I heard." She reached out for his throbbing arm, which he had almost forgotten about in the tension of their trek into the wetlands. "Your sleeve is singed. Did you get burned?"

He knew he had been, and that the shirt would stick if he left it on. He carefully pulled it over his head, trying to hide the wince of pain, though the cool air felt wonderful once he was in only his sweat-soaked undershirt. He peered over his shoulder as best he could at the back of his arm, which was lobster-red.

"Doesn't look too bad," Eve said.

"Could've definitely been worse." It would blister a little, but he'd had worse.

She held up her right hand, which had an identical red patch running from the base of her ring finger to past her wrist. "We got off easy."

"You okay to walk back?"

"Yeah - oh. We should call the others." She pulled out her phone as they picked their way back to the solid ground of the park. "We're fine," was the first thing she said. She looked at Jake and smiled tiredly. "We might both need a bath and some ice -"

"And a whole bottle of aspirin," Jake called, pitching his voice to carry.

"And, uh, some of that burn cream I keep in the cabinet - no, we're fine. I swear. Tiny burns - tiny." Once she had hung up, she reported to Jake, "Apparently we promised to retrieve a bunch of rubies from a cave in France."

"Sounds fun. As long as we don't have to go today." His right leg was stiff and by the time they got back to the road he was dragging it more than bending it. "I feel like I ran a marathon in fifteen minutes."

"Think how you're going to feel tomorrow."

"I'm trying not to." He looked sidelong at her as they slogged their way toward the bridge. "We're going to have to talk about why it was here - whether -"

"Yeah." Wearily she dropped her head a little, then rolled her neck in a stretch and held up her uninjured left hand, fingers crossed. "Here's to no zombies?"

Chapter Text

"Who needs ice first?" Cassandra heard her own voice quiver, but her hand was impressively steady as she held out the ice pack she'd crafted from ice cubes and a roll of Saran Wrap.

"He does," Eve said. "On the back of his arm."

Jake didn't even protest, which was really scary. He dropped into a chair and laid his forearm on the table, his upper arm showing a large bright pink mark.

"Wait," Eve said. "Burn cream and some kind of bandaging first. Jones -"

"Going," Ezekiel said, heading for the cabinet.

"Do we really not have any real ice packs?" Eve asked.

"We do," Cassandra replied, "but they're in the cabinet. Not cold."

"Jones?" Eve said wearily.

He was just returning with the supplies she'd requested, which he tipped onto the table. "Go put the ice packs in the freezer?"

"Please."

It was a mark of how scared they'd all been that Ezekiel was still cheerfully doing her bidding. Cassandra hovered over Jake with the burn cream and a cotton ball. "If I hurt . . ."

"It's okay," he said. "I'd do it myself if I could reach."

She was, of course, very used to him after these months - used to his presence, his safe and sturdy warmth as he often stood right next to her. She could tell by the smell of his soap when it was him coming around a corner rather than one of the others. But being right up close like this, with him in only a sleeveless shirt and his strong arms bared, the top of his chest - that was . . . different.

Fortunately she had a distraction, in the fact that she kind of hated doing anything to people that might hurt them. She winced more than he did, but she eventually got the burned area covered in cream and smoothed a couple of the large square size bandages over it. He did relax and sigh a little when she finally pressed the ice against his arm.

"You did a good job with the ice," Eve said, her left hand on Cassandra's shoulder. She was favoring the right one a bit, holding it close to her chest. Still, they were both a miracle. Eve was as pink in the face as Jake, her hair was kind of a flyaway mess and sweat still gleamed a bit in the hollow of her throat, but they were shockingly unscathed except for these little burns.

"That hand's gonna get jacked up if it tightens," Jake said from his spot at the table.

Eve acknowledged this by starting to dress the red spot on the back of her hand, eventually holding still long enough for Cassandra to help bandage it. She took the chair next to Jake's and swung it around almost backwards, so that she could press the back of her hand against the ice pack on his arm. "See, multipurposing."

"Hold it, would you?" Jake asked. "My hand's getting cold."

Eve nodded her assent as he dropped away the hand that had been holding the ice in place. "So what do we know?" she asked.

Flynn, who had been hovering behind her since they returned, took a seat across the table. "The dragon was definitely not from this universe. It never emerged in Germany - which means as soon as it entered a dragon portal, it was sent back to wherever it belonged."

"But those other universes don't exist anymore," Cassandra said. "Eve said, before the Loom was repaired, we all - I mean, the Librarians all acknowledged that they'd stop existing."

Flynn shrugged. "Wruen did try to explain, but - I think you kind of had to be a dragon."

"So, can the dragon portals send other stuff back too?" Ezekiel asked. "Like the ring and the Book of Divination?"

Flynn shook his head. "Dragon magic only works on dragons. And anyway that wouldn't solve the problem, it would just get rid of the evidence."

"I have a question," Eve said. She was twisting awkwardly over her shoulder to try to look at Flynn, and eventually turned in her chair so that her right arm was stretched across her chest to stay pressed against the ice on Jake's right arm. "Are we the only ones who could see the dragon?"

Jenkins, who was standing behind Flynn, nodded as if he had been waiting for someone to say that.

"What do you mean?" Ezekiel asked.

"Well - shouldn't people have been freaking out? Screaming in the streets, live video on CNN?"

"You're right," Jake said, twisting toward Eve as much as he could. "No one else was even paying attention."

"If you think about it," Jenkins said, "everything that's been happening has been centered around the Library. There haven't been news reports of - museum pieces showing up where they shouldn't be, buildings appearing out of nowhere, a resurgence in interest in past life regression - no one has been experiencing these phenomena except for you three. And, in the case of the artifacts and the dragon, all of us that have a connection with the Library."

"So what does that mean?" Cassandra asked.

"The Library is the common thread," Flynn mused.

Eve startled. "Say that again."

"Common thread?"

"Yes - no." She frowned. "There's something that's been bothering me - I keep almost getting it."

"Isn't it getting worse?" Jake asked. "All the other stuff was common to all three of us, but Cassie was the only one who had dragons."

"In the sky," Eve said. "She's the only one who had them flying overhead, out of control. We had a dragon right here in the room, remember."

"That is true," Jake admitted. "I did meet Drake in my dreams, too."

"I didn't," Ezekiel added. "Does it matter?"

"I'm not sure," Flynn said. "It's still sort of two out of three - still three out of four, if you count the real world, in which case all the other artifacts out of place have been three out of four as well . . ."

Patterns began to spiral; Cassandra couldn't have stopped them if she'd wanted to. Three out of four . . . four Librarians, three that weren't Flynn. Four worlds, three with Eve as Guardian (until recently; now four). Three dragons - no, technically seven at least. She tasted burning coals. "It's a straight line," she muttered. "It graphs as a straight line. It doesn't make any sense -"

"That's it!"

It was rare that something managed to startle Cassandra completely out of a hallucination. Out of one corner of her mind she saw Eve smack the table with her right hand, letting the ice pack drop into her lap. Absently Jake picked it up and pressed it back against his arm, staring at Eve. Cassandra came down slowly, the taste of fire still in her mouth.

Eve had jumped to her feet. "It's the thread," she said. She was leaning on her hands on the table, holding all of them mesmerized by her intensity. "A straight line. That's what each person's fate is supposed to be, right? One thread. One line. Woven in with others, but still one line, until it's cut. Right?"

"Right," Jake said warily.

"So - Dulaque cuts the threads. But not random ones. He wanted . . ." She trailed off, but after a breathless second for all of them her eyes lit up, as if the last piece had just fallen into place. She was looking at Jenkins. "The Library is connected to the fall of Camelot. Isn't it? In some way, the Library in its current form exists because Camelot fell."

"The structure - the organizational structure, you might say," Jenkins said haltingly. "The tradition that there is only ever one Librarian, the total secrecy -" He paused. "Suffice to say - yes."

"So when Dulaque cuts the Loom, he only cuts threads that are connected to the Library's past and future." Eve gave Jenkins an appreciative smile. "It's a side effect of what he actually wanted. And then all these possibilities are created . . . multiple possibilities for the Library in particular, for each of us - multiple paths instead of just one. And it could only be repaired with magical thread, so Flynn rewove it -" She paused, taking in all of their rapt faces. "With the thread from the labyrinth."

Flynn was standing now, too. He was looking at Eve almost as if he'd never seen her before - the two of them looked at each other for a moment as if they were alone in the room. "Oh my God," Flynn said.

Eve nodded. "What was the labyrinth?" she asked for the benefit of the rest of them, without taking her eyes off Flynn.

"A maze," Ezekiel said.

"Multiple paths," Eve said. "How many solutions?"

"One," Ezekiel and Cassandra said together. Across the room, Jenkins clapped a hand to one side of his face.

Eve broke the connection between her and Flynn and looked around at them. "So what was the thread made to do?"

"To lead Theseus out," Jake said. "To mark the one solution."

"Right," Eve said. "It was a magic thread, designed to show the one right way through, the one solution from all the possibilities."

"And I wove it into a tapestry that had already frayed into multiple possibilities," Flynn said. "You're right. You must be right."

"Cassandra was right," Eve said, turning her excited gaze on Cassandra. "You said it was a straight line. It is. The thread is making a straight line of all the possibilities - weaving all the loose ends into the most likely solution."

"The mean," Cassandra gasped, as it all finally came together. "Kind of."

"I almost get it," Ezekiel said.

"We assumed the thread would just restore the real world - the original pattern," Eve said. "And mostly it did. Mostly it could tell where the cuts had been made. But in some places it had to figure it out from a set of possibilities - the lines between those possibilities got really thin, especially for you three - for the ones who would have been Librarians. Thin enough that you could see through them, at least when you were asleep. Then it started deciding -"

"Three out of four," Flynn said.

"Exactly. It picked the most likely outcome. So if three of you retrieved an artifact - even though Flynn didn't, in the real world - the artifact is retrieved, because that's the most likely of the possibilities." Eve smiled at all of them. "All of this is happening because the thread is trying to weave all those realities back into one line."

"That's genius," Jake said. "It makes complete sense."

"The world isn't coming apart, it's - coming back together?" Cassandra mulled.

Eve nodded. "Coming back together just a little bit wrong."

"So how do we fix it?" Jake asked.

Eve's nose wrinkled. "That's where the comforting part of our talk ends. We don't know, do we."

"We can't get back to the Loom," Flynn said. "Or we're not willing to do what it would take. We don't know how to fix the Loom, or what to use in place of the thread from the labyrinth. That's about it, right?"

"I think that sums it up," Eve agreed.

"Well," Ezekiel said into the resulting silence. "At least the world isn't ending?"

"But Eve dying is still the most likely outcome!" Cassandra burst out. "Isn't it?"

"No," Flynn said, "not if this is all really being caused by the thread trying to reweave reality. People don't die - in the mythology of the Loom, they don't die from how the thread is woven. You can't kill someone by weaving in different threads. They die when their thread is cut. We know Eve's thread wasn't cut by Dulaque, or she'd be dead now. So just weaving in other possibilities can't hurt her."

Cassandra wondered if he even noticed that he'd been wandering around the table as he spoke, so that by the time he finished he was at Eve's side, his arm around her waist.

* * *

There was one dream Cassandra had been dreading. Then there was the one she had been both dreading and, in a quiet breathless place she couldn't acknowledge, anticipating.

That night was the latter.

Morgan le Fay had set her mind reeling - and in a far different way than it usually did. Of course some of the things the sorceress had suggested - so many of the things - had been wrong, very, very wrong. But some of them made so much sense. All her years as the Librarian - years of being so close to power, but so powerless against it, years of learning more and more about magic while always knowing that one day, any day, it would all abruptly end, too soon - these years had left her wanting and vulnerable. She knew that.

She also knew that the sorceress had intended to make her feel this way, hollow and desperate and yet simultaneously able to grasp anything she wanted, daring, balanced on a knife point. Somehow that knowledge, which should have dampened the feeling that she was on fire, had only fed the flame.

Eight/twelve. Deep bloodred wine color and incense spice. Nine. Five and a half. Four, though sometimes it felt like more. Six times two plus maybe three. Sixteen. Eight, and twelve, together. She took a deep breath that tasted like fire and let her blood heat in her body as she looked at Eve, who was blamelessly setting takeout boxes on Cassandra's coffee table.

She had been the Librarian for nine years. Nine years that she'd known Eve, spent nearly every day alongside her. Five and a half times that she'd kissed Eve, if you counted the time she pretended she'd been aiming for her cheek, and landed on the corner of her mouth instead. Four inches of height between them, even though she looked petite and Eve like an Amazon.

Six (times two, because bilateral symmetry in all things), plus three that weren't bilateral, six-times-two-plus-three (at least) fifteen places on her body that were aching, already feeling Eve's phantom touch. Sixteen yards to her bed.

Eve was eight and twelve, always.

She didn't say anything, because that would give too much warning. Instead she kissed Eve as soon as the other woman straightened up, her arms wrapping tightly around Eve's waist to keep her close. Six. And a half. She pulled away and then pressed their lips together again to make it seven and a half.

Eve made a noise that might have been protest, except that she could easily have pushed Cassandra away and didn't. Might have been surprise, which was fair, because seven and a half times in nine years was not a lot. Enough for a pattern though, and the pattern was an innocent one that Cassandra wanted to break, desperately. If she could manage it without fainting. She pressed her thigh, or really more her hip (four inches), between Eve's legs and, when the other woman gasped, broke away and pressed a kiss, open-mouthed, to Eve's neck. That felt like a half, so. Eight.

"Cassandra," Eve gasped, in a tone that suggested she might have been about to ask, or to pause. Cassandra kissed her again instead of giving her the opportunity, and Eve's fingers were kneading tightly into her hips. Two down. Five (times two) plus three left. She unbuttoned Eve's shirt; kissed a path down the side of her jaw, her neck, toward the hollow of her throat.

"Are we really -" Eve asked when her mouth was free. Her fingers, apparently without asking her permission, were twined in Cassandra's hair.

Cassandra pressed her mouth to the spot exactly between Eve's breasts, her hands already reaching around for the clasp of Eve's bra. "Please," she said.

"Okay," Eve said a bit desperately.

Sixteen yards. Clothes dropping. At seven yards, nine to go, she backed Eve against the wall so that she could kiss her stomach while unfastening her jeans. At eleven yards she had to stop because she couldn't take the rest of her own clothes off and walk at the same time. At sixteen she pushed Eve down onto the bed.

Eights and twelves spiraled in combination in her head, but she managed to hold on. Eve's skin really did taste like incense; it didn't matter if that was for real or only in the cross-firings of her synapses. Five times two plus three became four times two plus one plus three, became two times two plus two, became three two one and then oh dear lord zero, Eve completely overwhelming her with smell and taste and color, some even real, with heated kisses and hesitant but talented hands. Cassandra held on, she had no idea how, through a whirlwind of sensation until she had Eve crying out, eyes tightly shut as if she were having her own visions.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, the dream had nothing to do with the Library at all. As if fate were trying to maximize the joyful parts, give him as many sweet moments as possible - which of course also maximized the heartbreak. Or maybe fate had nothing to do with it. In those last days it did seem as though they themselves had been trying especially hard to have a life outside the Library. To build a life outside the Library.

They'd gone out for a normal, ordinary date night. No missions, no monsters, no magic or curses or fighting for their lives. Just dinner, tucked together at a small round table in a corner booth in the back of a dimly lit wine bar in the West Village. Three votives of slightly different sizes glowing in the middle of the table, which Jake kept fiddling with, turning one slightly, nudging them closer together or further apart. Knees touching under the table, hands resting close together, her little finger stroking over his knuckles as they ate.

So maybe there was a little magic.

It certainly felt that way as they took the long way back to her place, walking through the slight briskness of an extended late fall, some Christmas lights already gleaming around storefronts and lamp posts, and a surprising number of stars visible overhead. They held hands and gazed frankly back at the interested tourists and staggering barhoppers who gazed at them. It was one of those times when Jake felt so friendly about all of New York. Once a couple came toward them, young, close together and holding hands, the girl in black dress and heavy boots with a line of silver earrings up both ears; the boy heavily tattooed and shivering a little in a t-shirt advertising a band (probably) that Jake had never heard of. They were both slight, neither taller than Jake. As they approached each other on the narrow sidewalk, as if some magical communication had passed between the kids and Eve, Eve stepped away from his side and lifted their joined hands in the air. Grinning, the young couple tucked close together and ducked under Jake and Eve's upraised arms to pass. He could hear them giggling as they receded into the night, and Eve squeezed his hand conspiratorially.

He remembered that look on Eve's face, fond, sweetly indulgent, fun, when they were finally inside her apartment and he was pressing her up against the door. He knew how to deploy his Southern charms, especially here in the city, but he marveled at her ability, in a tiny moment, to connect with people, to form those little links between strangers that so often eased their way on missions for the Library. As there so often was, there was wonder in his voice as he told her how much he loved her. As she unbuttoned his shirt and spread her hands over his skin, as he kissed along her collarbone and slipped his hands under the waistband of her pants and called her my Eve. As he pulled her on top of him, gripping her hips so tightly it would leave a bit of a mark, sighing her name in a completely different tone; as they moved together, her hands gentle on his chest.

He wondered, in the harsh light of yet another fairly awkward morning, what would have happened if it hadn't had to play out according to some quirk of twisted fate; if that Eve hadn't died (his Eve, whispered the confused and slightly guilty part of his mind that hadn't quite woken up yet, enabled and encouraged by the fact that the blood usually allocated to his brain was still currently somewhere else without his permission).

Maybe they'd have been thinking about getting out, building a less dangerous life. More time for normal nights like -

Yeah. Mornings were now awkward. Thankfully they were all spending most of their days fairly isolated, buried in research, all trying to answer the questions Eve had set: how could the Loom be appropriately rewoven, and with what. Where would they get whatever it was. How would they access the Loom without spilling someone's blood.

Oddly they had no shortage of volunteers for that last problem - sort of. "Does it have to be literally a sacrifice?" Cassandra asked one afternoon. "I mean, I spent an hour writing proofs on weaving patterns this morning and got a nosebleed."

"Even if it does have to be a sacrifice," Ezekiel said. "It doesn't have to be a lot of blood, right? And the person clearly doesn't have to die - because we got the Library back, and Colonel Baird was still alive."

"You volunteering?" Eve asked drily.

"Yeah," Ezekiel replied, bringing all of them to a complete halt at whatever they'd been doing. "I mean, cut my arm or something, right? Get to the Loom, then use some of that magic stuff to heal me. Done."

They all continued to stare at him in silence, until Eve finally found the words to say, "We're not cutting you, Ezekiel. No."

He shrugged. "Okay. What if I stole a bag of blood from a blood bank?"

"Does intention matter?" Cassandra asked.

"Whose intention matters?" Jake countered. "Lamia had no intention of sacrificing herself; she was about to kill Flynn. Dulaque intended to sacrifice her, though."

"And he said her love for him was necessary," Flynn mused. "Did he mean it was a necessary part of the blood sacrifice, or just that it had been necessary to make her fall in love with him so that she would do his bidding?"

"Well," Cassandra said slowly. "We all love Eve, and she'd have really good aim."

"What?" Eve interrupted.

Cassandra ignored her horrified reaction. "I'm just saying, even if it does require a bigger sacrifice, you know, you're still alive like Ezekiel said. So you stab one of us really good, we open the way to the Loom, then the stabbed one gets healed with Bathsheba's oil."

"I am not stabbing any of you! Are you out of your mind?"

"Flynn then."

Flynn gaped at her. "No, Cassandra, I am not going to stab you. Any of you. Eve's right, this is all completely off the table. We will think of something else."

"Quickly," Jake muttered to himself as he went back to his original, unexpurgated Chaucer. ye shul nat asseye Fortune by no wey, but-if ye to seche tho sustren three.

They didn't figure it out fast enough.

* * *

No one let them in.

It happened three different ways; different guards overcome, some dead, different fights and different doors and corridors. In all of them, Charlene tried to fight and lost. In all of them, she made it down into her Library only after it was all over, when there was nothing left to do but close the Library off.

It happened three different ways to three different Librarians. One was considered an annoyance, perhaps talented but probably more nuisance to his potential captors than a source of power to be harnessed. He was slated to die conveniently and as quickly as possible. One was acknowledged powerful, special. She was to be taken. One was perceived as formidable, a fighter. Lamia had requested that he be spared, but it was to be only if he didn't fight back too hard. If he became a serious threat, he would die.

Three ways. One Librarian pinned against the chest of a man in black, a sword at his throat. One overpowered and handcuffed to a shelf. One they couldn't catch, slipping at speed up and down the stacks, looking for Charlene, for his Guardian, forming a plan.

One Guardian, though really three. Each story slightly different, each Guardian molded by a unique path. The first coming from behind so fast that no one had time to react, knocking the sword from the Librarian's throat with the white-hot rage of a mother bear. One approaching with sword held out before her in challenge, asking in a voice that strained for calm what the hell they thought they were doing with her Librarian. One meeting Lamia's blade with a swing of pure adrenaline, arms strengthened by the rush of love and the sure knowledge that whatever happened, "you will never find him."

Three Guardians, all holding Excalibur. All, eventually, unwillingly betrayed by that old friend. The same Crown, different fights, the same wound.

The same desperation when Charlene knew she was beaten - not even knowing that the Guardian lay bleeding on the floor, though in the back of her mind she did know that these people would not be in her Library if Eve Baird could have stopped them - the same rash, only possible choice. The same rush of the enemy to evacuate, to take what they could and get out, to forget the rest of the Library for now.

One Librarian who did nothing to stop them, who instead tried to forget everything he knew about magical wounds as he pressed his sweatshirt, and then his shirt, to the wound in his Guardian's abdomen. Who watched with half an eye as Dulaque hustled his people out, paying little attention to anything except the calm, serene woman propped up against his thighs, who - rage over with - only told him, over and over, that he would be fine. He had learned so much. He would be all right.

One Librarian who raised the hand they hadn't cuffed, who without even knowing she could do it blasted three men away from the Guardian's fallen form. Enough to keep them from finishing her off, but still too late. Too late. Excalibur flew from Lamia's startled, relaxed grip, magic surged, and the Librarian found herself uncuffed. Too late. She watched impassively as Dulaque approached, as Lamia drew her own sword and struck him down. As Lamia killed two more of her own men before the rest fled in confusion and terror. The Librarian watched all this happen as she sank to her knees over her Guardian, holding the other woman's bloodied hands and seeing visions of justice and vengeance, letting that rage fill her and drown out the heartbreak, for now.

One Librarian who was too far away, who realized too late that while he was looking for his Guardian, she had found the enemy. He heard Lamia's shout of triumph and was too late to do anything but drive them off with his own sword, killing two men before knocking Lamia's sword from her hand and the crown from her head, trapping her against a table with his sword at her throat. The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that he needed to be somewhere else. "Get them out of here," he ordered through gritted teeth, those men, those dead murderers who would not continue to lie on the same floor as his Guardian. Then he let her go and watched her do as he had commanded, while he dropped to the floor next to the other half of himself and lifted her gently into his lap.

He woke in the middle of the night, eyes streaming with tears and a weight in his chest that felt as if it would never lift. He was incoherent with mingled loss and panic, looking at the clock on the nightstand - only two a.m. - fumbling for the phone he'd left next to it. He sent a text before he knew what he was thinking or doing, grabbed for a sweatshirt and shoes, his phone and wallet, his keys. The night was crisp for spring, clear and silent except for his shallow breaths as he fought for control. He drove without conscious navigation, instinct leading him.

She must have gotten his text; it was only seconds after his frantic knock that the door opened. He stood in the doorway only looking, taking in the sight of Eve alive and well, hair rumpled over her shoulders, shivering a bit in a tank top over her pajama pants. "What happened?" she asked with an urgent concern that suggested his text had been more incoherent than he'd thought. "Is someone hurt?"

He only shook his head, afraid that he'd start crying again if he opened his mouth. But she was waiting, and looking so worried. He tried, "I - I, it was -" Closing his mouth, he took a deep breath through his nose. "I dreamed -"

In a heartbeat her expression melted from concern to sympathy. "Oh. Oh, Jacob."

The sound of his name broke his composure and he covered his face with one hand. He was aware of her pulling him into her apartment, closing the door behind him, all the while murmuring, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

When she had finished re-locking the door she pulled him into an embrace, and he buried his face in her shoulder and held on tightly. "I'm so sorry that happened," she repeated.

He was still aching with the loss and grief of his counterpart, with the knowledge that that Eve, the one who had loved him and laughed with him and made her life next to him, was gone. That he wouldn't see her in his dreams anymore, the dreams that made him feel so confused and guilty and conflicted, but briefly so happy, too. She wasn't real, but she was still really gone. It was so tempting, such a lure for the guilty part of himself that wanted that feeling back, to cling to Eve now and just pretend . . .

He wouldn't. He fought it even as he tried to hold her closer and closer. She was treating him, he realized, exactly as if his real girlfriend (he couldn't even think the word "fiancée" without dying) were gone, except that the dead woman and the one gently rubbing his back were the same person.

"I'm sorry," he finally managed to say.

"For what?"

"For waking you up - worrying you." He lifted a hand to the back of her head, his fingertips entangling in her hair. "I just needed to see that you were really okay."

"I'm fine," she said automatically. "But it's okay. I understand." She very gently disengaged and held him back a forearm's length away, her hands steadying and secure on his upper arms. Her eyes shone with the beginnings of tears and her nose had started to go a bit blotchy. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked with a little sniffle.

He shook his head. "I never want to talk about it."

Eve managing a smile. "A magical wound, Jake. How many times did Judson warn us -"

Him gripping her hand, just taking all the time he could, all the time they had . . .

Eve smiled a little and released him to run her index fingers quickly under her eyes, brushing away the tears that were threatening to fall. "Okay," she said.

"Is -" There were really a lot of parts of this he hadn't thought through. "Is Flynn here?" Talk about awkward.

"No, he's in New York."

That startled a little of the weight out of his chest. "What's he doing there?"

She shrugged. "Moving here? He never got around to it like the rest of us did."

"So he went now?"

"We both thought it was important," she stressed. "He has books at his place there that might help, and anyway we thought we should all be in it together. Officially. It didn't feel much like a team with him just camping out, like he was going to leave any second."

"Oh." He almost asked whether Flynn was getting his own place or moving in with her, but thought better of it.

"Do you want to stay?"

He really didn't want to go back home to his silent bed (and probably tear-soaked pillows). He also really didn't want to go back to sleep and risk dreaming again, but if he had to, her couch, with her safe in the next room, was looking a lot more appealing. "Can I?"

"Of course." She returned one hand to his upper arm. "Hey, is this going to be like that scene in The Sound of Music, where one kid comes into Fräulein Maria's room because she's afraid of the storm, and then another one, and then they all end up in there, including the teenagers trying to put on a brave face?"

He managed a choked laugh in the middle of trying to wipe his face dry with his fingertips. "I don't know."

She squeezed his arm. "Let me get you some blankets."

He helped her spread blankets and pillows on the couch, feeling a warmth at least try to replace the raw grief in his heart and his body. When they were finished he pulled her into another tight embrace, saying, "Thank you."

"It's okay."

Because it was true, if not in exactly the same way as in the other world, he hid his face in her hair and said, "I love you."

Her chest lifted against his as she sniffled, and he felt her arms tighten around him. "Love you, too," she said softly. She pulled back to look him in the eye. "Wake me if the other Von Trapps show up."

"Will do - goodnight."

"Goodnight."

It almost felt like a goodbye, which in a way it was. He wouldn't have that kind of license again, to hold her and almost feel the way he did in his happier dreams. The real Eve was alive and safe and his friend - the story of the intertwined alternate universes had a happy ending where everyone lived - but it was still an ending, and a loss of that other potential. He still, as he lay down, had to fight down an inner cry of I want her back. I need her.

Mercifully, he didn't dream. He did wake up again, around four, and had to slip quietly into Eve's bedroom to see her breathing. Then he was able to go back to the couch and sleep until daylight.

Chapter Text

Light was sort of filtering in, but it was going to be the kind of grayish, drizzly day in which the Pacific Northwest specialized. Cassandra might not have woken at all if her phone hadn't beeped.

Rolling out of bed and stepping into her slippers, she carried the phone out to the living room where Ezekiel was stirring into wakefulness on her couch.

"Jake texted," she said, once they had made eye contact and she knew her voice wouldn't startle him.

Ezekiel sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes with the back of one hand. "He actually made it through the night?"

"No. He went to Eve's."

"That was kind of . . . ballsy."

Cassandra raised her eyebrows in response, scanning his text again. Ezekiel's here, she typed. Want to meet us? "I think he freaked out," she said aloud. "She let him stay, so - I guess she can't have been mad."

"I'm not sure that follows."

Her phone beeped again. "He's coming over," she reported.

"Great." Ezekiel sighed. "Maybe if we huddle, we can all figure out how not to weep like children when we see her."

"I think he did that part already." They all had, although not actually in Eve's presence. Cassandra rubbed her own eyes, which felt dry and irritated. "I need a Tylenol or something, you?"

"No, but can we make coffee?" He stopped in the act of getting to his feet. "You don't - have a headache, do you?" He gestured vaguely to the top of his forehead.

She shook her head. "It's not the - you know. Crying gives me a headache, that's all."

"Sorry if I fanned the flame."

"No, it was way better than crying alone." On autopilot she made the coffee, filling the whole pot in case Jake felt as wrung out as they did. "Did you dream any more?"

"No, thank God."

"Me either. I hope -" She paused while pressing buttons - the numbers were there, twelve cups five minutes nineteen-point-two ounces per - but it was mild, normal background noise. "I hope tonight's don't pick right up there. I mean, by the time Eve met us we seemed to have gotten over it - not gotten over it, but -"

"We weren't wrecked puddles of depression anymore?"

"Right." She tapped the coffee measuring scoop thoughtfully on the counter. One, two, three. "It would be nice to skip ahead to that."

"Maybe they'll stop." He trudged to the pass-through counter and leaned against the other side, facing her. "All our dreams were about Eve. Ever wonder why?"

"They were all about the Library." One, two - She tossed the scoop aside to stop herself from playing with it. "No, they weren't. Some of them were just about us and Eve. That's interesting."

"Maybe now that she's dead -" They both winced, and he shrugged apologetically. "You know. Maybe the dreams will stop? - can I have a glass?"

"Maybe," Cassandra mused, passing him one. "It would be nice - we're already kind of feeling it, all that . . . wrecked puddle of depression stuff. It would be nice not to actually see what it was really like for us. Full-force, without knowing she's fine and we'll see her in the morning."

Ezekiel reached around the faucet to turn it on and fill his glass. "In Harry Potter they have Dreamless Sleep potion. Think that's real?"

"If it was I think Flynn would have told us by now. Especially once Jake started having sex dreams about his girlfriend."

Ezekiel, who had just taken a sip of water, coughed and choked most of it into the sink.

"Yeah," Cassandra said. "That happened."

"He-" He coughed another few times. "He told you about it?"

"No, but - I've got a feeling. He's been acting super weird. Also," she confessed, her nose wrinkling in embarrassment, "I, uh. In my dreams . . ."

"In your dreams what?"

She widened her eyes and raised her eyebrows. "With Eve."

"Seriously?" He made a face. "I'm kind of glad I was a child. I mean - no offense to her. But that would be really weird."

"It kind of . . ." Weird wasn't exactly the right word. Or, not all of the words. "Yeah. I was kind of weird. I had started using magic, and it was . . . having an effect, I think. Anyway it was really all me, she - she never would have on her own." She gave an exaggerated eye-roll. "Well obviously not on her own, like - you know what I mean."

"I'm trying not to," he said with his mouth partially in his upraised water glass.

"I mean, I wonder if it was the same for him. That's all - you know, if he was the one kind of pushing her . . ."

"Ask him."

"Yeah. No." A car door slamming outside broke the early-morning quiet. "Think that's him?"

"You might want to go put on a jumper or something," he said delicately. Then he made a fairly indelicate gesture at his chest.

She looked down and immediately crossed her arms over her chest in its thin tank top. "Ezekiel!"

"Hey, I'm preserving your modesty," he called as she shuffled to her bedroom to find a sweater.

"You could have preserved it ten minutes ago!"

"Doesn't need preserving from me."

"Wh- I'm not even going to delve into that." She pulled a heavy - very heavy - sweater over her head just as a knock sounded at the apartment door.

Whatever levity had been brought to the situation by her annoyance at Ezekiel faded quickly when she saw Jake's face. He looked worse than either of them, more red-eyed than she was and paler than Ezekiel. "Hey," she said softly. "Come in. You okay?"

"Yeah," he said as he stepped into the apartment.

"How's Eve?" she asked.

"She's okay. Probably better if I hadn't woken her up." He headed straight for the kitchen counter, where Ezekiel had started to fill mugs with coffee. "So I guess you guys . . ."

"Yup," Cassandra said. "Ezekiel came over around three. I was already awake."

"Watching The Golden Girls," Ezekiel added. "Which, actually, kind of helped. We watched like three more episodes before either of us was brave enough to go back to sleep."

"Thanks for waking me, by the way," Cassandra said. "I'd have had a really stiff neck if I'd slept on the couch like that."

"I just wanted the whole couch."

"You could have left me there and slept in the bed, but you didn't."

He looked as though he hadn't thought of this, which took some of the sweetness out of the gesture. "You're right. I could have."

"Was Flynn there?" she asked Jake.

Before he could answer, Ezekiel said, "Nah, he's in New York. I saw him leave by the back door yesterday."

"Oh." The question spilled out before she could stop it, although she winced even as she was saying it. "So did anything . . ."

"Did anything what?" Jake asked.

She spread her hands in what seemed to her to be an eloquent invitation to elaborate.

Apparently it wasn't. "What?" Jake repeated.

She felt her wince try to turn itself into a forced, casual smile. ". . . happen?"

"Huh?"

"Did anything . . ."

"Wait, what? No." In his vehemence he nearly sloshed coffee over the rim of the cup Ezekiel had handed him.

"Sorry - sorry!" she said quickly. "I shouldn't have asked, just - you know, it was an emotional time, and the middle of the night and all, and -"

"Well - did you guys . . . ?" He looked between them as he asked what was clearly a rhetorical question.

"No!" they both said, and Cassandra added, "but we didn't watch each other die. Not that that's the only reason -" She threw an apologetic look at Ezekiel. "No offense."

"Right back at you," Ezekiel said.

"Well we've all watched Eve nearly die before, and none of us slept with her then, either." Jake took a grumpy sip of his coffee, eyebrows still scowling at them over the rim of the cup. "I am not that guy," he added after he'd swallowed. "Neither of us is that guy."

"Neither of -" She looked between him and Ezekiel in confusion.

"He means Eve," Ezekiel clarified.

"Oh."

Jake stared into his coffee. "She was - I -"

"Wept on her like a child?" Ezekiel suggested.

"Pretty much." Jake looked as though he expected mocking, but Ezekiel only raised his eyebrows as he stirred sugar - way too much sugar - into his coffee.

"Don't look at me, mate," he said. "Cassandra and I nearly flooded the place between us. I'm surprised the downstairs neighbors haven't complained of leakage."

"It was bad," Cassandra said quietly.

"Yeah," Jake said in a similar tone. "I, uh. I should have thought of you guys. I just panicked. I thought - what if Flynn's wrong, what if -"

Cassandra placed her hand carefully over his where it rested on the counter. "But she's okay, and now it's done. We were all afraid of this, but it's passed now. We don't have to worry about it anymore."

"No," Jake said a bit bitterly. "We just have to remember."

Cassandra squeezed his hand, and felt Ezekiel, beside her, lightly place his arm around her waist. "We still have her, though. And Flynn and Jenkins, and each other." Jake lifted his eyes to hers, and she understood, seeing the bleakness in his expression. "It's not the same."

He took a while to speak, and she and Ezekiel were both quiet, waiting. "It's - I'm not in love with her, or anything. I'm really not." He gave a little laugh. "If I were going to be - I would have been already. I think it's . . ." After a few moments of silence, he took a sip of his coffee, leaving his other hand under Cassandra's. He sighed out an audible breath. "In that universe, she was - the love of my life. You know? I think - I miss that. Already. I didn't know what it was like before, and now I do, and now I know I don't have it."

"Sucks," Ezekiel said sympathetically.

Jake gave a rueful almost-laugh. "Yeah, it really does."

"Fate kind of sucks," Cassandra said.

"Yeah, it does," Jake repeated, looking at her, and she realized he was thinking about her tumor, which hadn't been what she'd meant at all. Although - it was a fair point. That definitely sucked too.

"Hey, listen." Jake idly laid his other hand, the one Cassandra wasn't holding, on the counter palm-up. "You guys - um -"

Ezekiel seemed to understand. He smacked his free hand down on top of Jake's, hard enough to make a sound and to play off as a sort of high-five, but left it resting there. "Yeah," he said. "We know. All for one and all that."

Cassandra put her other hand on Ezekiel's waist, completing the circle. Her nose burned with threatened tears. "Yeah," she agreed. "Me too."

Jake looked at them for a moment before sliding both his hands out from under theirs and patting the backs of their hands. "You got flour and eggs? And milk?"

"Um." Cassandra blinked. "I think so?"

"Good, because I promised to make you pancakes."

She followed him with her eyes as he came around the counter into the kitchen. "I don't think it's going to help us figure out how to fix the Loom."

"I know that. Flour?"

"Over there." She pointed. "So - just because?"

"Yeah, just because."

"What do pancakes have to do with the Loom?" Ezekiel asked.

Cassandra sighed. "Nothing. They're just representative of my math paralysis."

"Oh." Ezekiel reached over her to pour more coffee. "I'm nowhere either."

Jake banged a pan onto the stove. "All I've got are a bunch of references to wheels and lots and other stuff that has nothing to do with weaving - and the three sisters are all over the place, anytime I think I found a useful reference, it just says 'seek the three sisters' or something."

"Like in Macbeth?" Ezekiel frowned.

"No," Jake said. "Well - maybe. But they mean the Fates, the Moirai. Clotho, Lachesis, and the other one. In Greek mythology they supposedly controlled everybody's fate - one sister spun the thread of your life, the second measured it out, and the third cut it."

"Like Flynn said," Cassandra interjected. "He said Eve would only die if her thread was cut."

"Right. Atropos. She cut your thread with her shears, and then you died. Butter?"

"Use olive oil." Cassandra reached around him to place the bottle within his reach. "So that's not helpful?"

"No, I mean . . ." Jake had found a beater, and he waved it as he spoke. "We got a Loom, but no Fates."

"Why is that?" Ezekiel asked suddenly. "I mean - did the Loom weave itself?"

Cassandra frowned at the countertop. "The labyrinth thread kind of did -"

"No, they said Flynn wove it," Jake said as he cracked eggs into a bowl he'd pulled from somewhere. "The thread's magical properties kind of manipulated things, but Flynn did the actual weaving."

"So who wove the Loom?" Cassandra echoed Ezekiel's question. "If there's a literal loom, why are there no literal weavers? Doesn't the Loom's existence suggest the Fates should be real, too?"

"Then where are they?" Ezekiel asked.

There was quiet. Jake ran his fingers under the faucet and flicked some water at the pan, and it sizzled loudly. "I don't know," Jake said finally. He picked up the bowl and started pouring batter onto the pan. "It does make sense that they should exist. Maybe."

"So if they are real, but the Loom was left unattended - they're missing? The Fates are missing?" Ezekiel's eyes met Cassandra's intently. "Does that sound like something that might contribute to problems with fate getting all tangled up?"

"Sounds . . ." said Cassandra slowly, "like something we should at least ask Flynn and Jenkins about. They should know, right? If there were real Fates?"

Jake looked at them over his shoulder. "It would be great if this was something. Something actually useful."

"The Fates would probably be better at fixing the Loom than us," Ezekiel said.

"If they're real," Cassandra added.

"It's a big if," Jake cautioned from the stove. "But it's a valid question. Cassie - some plates?"

She reached over his arm to get them down. Already his presence, and the smell of breakfast, was adding to the good work Ezekiel's presence had begun of soothing some of the horror of the night. They had their team, and they had some hope.

Chapter Text

Flynn could tell something was wrong the minute he stepped through the back door into the Annex.

It wasn't Eve, really, although in retrospect she probably was looking sober and tired. But it wasn't as if there weren't already enough reasons for that.

No, the clue was Ezekiel, who was following Eve like a puppy, carrying stacks of files.

"Hey," Eve said when she saw him. She leaned closer as she passed, but then just quirked an eyebrow as if to say "not in front of the children."

He grinned back, but her smile was somewhat lacking.

Then, in the card catalogue, there was Cassandra, dark circles under her eyes as she buried herself in her reading. And Jake, looking over at Eve every two minutes as if to make sure she was still there. Both of them looked up to greet Flynn, but they seemed subdued. And as Eve and Ezekiel first joined the other two around the table, Eve took a moment to lay a hand briefly on Cassandra's arm as if reassuring her about something.

Flynn poked his head into Jenkins's lab, where the caretaker was bent over some kind of shimmering web that looked like a hologram. "You're back," Jenkins said without inflection, and without looking up.

"Yeah - um." Flynn sidled into the lab. "Is something up? It's like somebody died out there."

"Someone did," Jenkins said. "In a way."

"What - who?"

"Not in this reality, but - Colonel Baird. Three times. Last night."

"Oh. Hell." Flynn dropped into a chair in the corner, Jenkins glaring at him as if he should have asked permission first. "No wonder."

Jenkins looked up from his project and said mildly, "They'll recover."

Flynn blew out a heavy exhale. "At least it's over. And they know she's still fine."

"Miss Cillian has been advancing that view." Jenkins did something to the web and asked, "A hand, for a moment, if you would?"

Pushing himself to his feet, Flynn asked, "What do you need?"

"Your hand," Jenkins repeated, not entirely patiently. "Put it there."

Hesitantly Flynn slid his hand through the shimmering strands where Jenkins had indicated. "I don't feel anything."

"I expected that. Try grasping a strand."

Flynn tried, but his fingers slipped through.

"Good," Jenkins said. "That's all."

Flynn withdrew his hand. "You going to explain what that was about?"

"No."

"Does it have to do with the Loom of Fate?"

Jenkins made a gesture, and the web collapsed into a tiny ball. "You know, if she goes home they will."

Flynn checked his watch. It had been almost midnight when he'd finally left New York, and now it was after nine here. "Got it," he said, and went out to hustle Eve away.

They ended up spending at least an hour just sitting side by side on Eve's couch, hand in hand, occasionally talking but mostly just sitting. "Like going to your own funeral," she said once. "You don't know how weird - for everyone around you to be so upset, over you. You know, it's - if that ever happened, I pretty much assumed I wouldn't be there to see it."

Neither of them mentioned the times each of them had nearly bled to death in front of the others - in those cases, at least, the healing had been complete. The relief of it hadn't totally drowned out the memory of the fear and worry, but there had been no grief. Not like this time, where all three of their LITs had the sharp, realistic memory of actually losing her and knowing it was for good.

"Stone was so worried I might have actually died that he came over here," she said, and he understood that she felt like she had to tell him, and also was testing the waters a bit. Was he supposed to be jealous? Was he jealous?

"Was - uh - was he okay?" he asked, because concern over the grieving friend seemed like the right answer.

"He will be," she said. He couldn't tell whether he had passed or not. Or even if there actually had been a test. She added, "They were all pretty freaked out. While he was sleeping on my couch -" that was casually clarified for his benefit "- Ezekiel was over at Cassandra's. Can you picture that?"

Their smug, self-assured thief fleeing to Cassandra's apartment in the middle of the night for comfort? It was hard to picture, which made it heartwrenching to know it was true.

It was after eleven when he finally tugged her to bed. Since their relationship had . . . escalated, or - well, since they had become whatever they were . . . it had been a long time for both of them, and the nights they didn't have sex were rarer than the nights they did. But tonight by mutual agreement they just settled side by side, touching at nearly every point. In a lot of ways it was a good thing - lately, whenever they were together Flynn had started to feel a surging wave of words pressing almost physically up through his chest into his throat, words she probably wasn't ready to hear and he probably wasn't ready to say, but they were getting harder and harder to choke back. And, gradually turning into a giant cliche as he was, he found it much more difficult to hold the words back during intimate moments.

Tonight, with everyone's emotions running high, holding back would have been impossible.

He fell asleep easily, but his mind was more troubled than he had thought. He woke before dawn and lay restlessly awake staring at the shadows on the ceiling, thinking of Jacob Stone so horrified by the image of Eve dying in his dreams that he had to see her immediately. And of the Jacob Stone who hadn't had that option.

Eve had rolled to her side, back to him, in her sleep, but she instinctively turned toward him as she woke. She was always reticent about waking him; she wouldn't touch him unless she knew he was awake already. So he stretched, putting one arm behind his head. She slid closer then, draping her arm over him and pressing against his side.

"You been awake long?" she asked softly. He heard it as a way of asking if he was all right without actually asking, which he appreciated.

"A while." He took some time to decide whether to elaborate, while her hand slipped innocently and without obvious intention under the hem of his shirt and gently rubbed his side. "I was," he said slowly, "I was thinking about Jake."

"Oh?"

When he didn't answer, she eventually propped her head up on her elbow against the pillows, her other hand still on his stomach, and looked down at him while he thought.

"I know," he said at last, "it's always - I mean, it's the job, our jobs, we never know, or, we always know something can - but most of the time I can not think about it, you know? You can't think about it all the time, or you'd never . . ." He sighed. "I just keep seeing him in my mind, what it must have been like - how he must have felt - it's just - it's just a little harder not to think about, right now."

He had no idea whether any of that made any sense outside of his head. But Eve settled herself back down against him, and after a long pause she said, "You know - I was commissioned when I was twenty-two, I've never - I've never been able to make promises to anybody. That nothing would happen - not to my father, not to anyone I ever . . . that's not new to me, with this job. I always . . ." She took a deep breath; he felt it, her chest lifting against his side. "And you're right, you can't make those promises either."

Her hand, maybe unawares, was caressing the place where he would have had a scar, if Excalibur's magical healing had been less absolute. If he looked down, at this angle her breasts curved out of the top of her shirt and he could almost remember exactly where her spot should be, where she had been pierced. He could see the spots that were real, too, including the one on the inside of her upper arm that she had never talked about but that looked a lot like a small-caliber bullet wound.

Her body was tense against him - she was nervous about something - and in a flash of clarity he got it. From practically the moment she'd shown up at the Library, he had been telling her that he didn't need anyone, because everyone ended up leaving. Or dying. He'd obviously come pretty far from his original stance on needing her around, but - of course. She was afraid he couldn't take it, that he'd start putting the distance back between them to avoid being hurt if something happened to her.

He pulled her closer, mostly on top of him, so that he could rub her back with the hand that had been trapped under her. "I can make some promises," he said. "Not to be reckless -"

"Really?"

Only she could give him sarcasm in the middle of a heartfelt moment. "I can try," he amended. "And - not to run." With his hand on her back he pressed her tighter against him. "And so can you."

He waited out what felt like a long silence, but probably wasn't. "Yes. I can," she said. Now she seemed to be gritting her teeth against saying something else, but he didn't pry.

No one was completely back to normal at the Annex that morning, but the funereal atmosphere had somewhat abated. Ezekiel even seemed to be enjoying himself as Jake tried to guide him through reading some of the many Middle English sources he'd found after following Chaucer's trail.

"It's not so bad when you read it out loud," he said cheerfully, after a long study of one page. "I mean, on paper it looks like French had an illegitimate love child with Welsh, but when you hear it - 'the sistren weave their tapestry beside the -' uh '- stream? Where none can . . . access? But if -' that's like 'unless,' right?"

"Yes," Jake, Flynn, and, surprisingly, Eve all said at the same time.

"Okay - 'unless he . . . die.' Awesome. 'Or, he seek - seeks - that strange land under the . . . vial?'"

"Probably 'veil'?" Jake peered over his shoulder. "Yeah. Not bad though."

"Sounds like what we knew already," Ezekiel said, but he reapplied himself to the book.

"'Under the veil' is interesting," said Jenkins, who was holed up in a corner with Cassandra, staring at a stone slab covered with seemingly random markings. "It reminds me of how they - well, some people - used to talk about -"

He didn't finish, because somewhere a loud and urgent alarm was going off. "Oh, what now?" Cassandra asked, dropping her pen in exasperation.

"The Library alarms . . . ?" Eve asked, but Flynn shook his head.

"That's not what they sound like -"

"It's this door," Jenkins said, rising to his full height. "Someone is trying to get into the Annex from outside."

"You mean in regular Portland?" Jake asked.

"There are alarms on the door?" Ezekiel frowned, both hands over his ears. "I forgot my key last week and broke in. There were no alarms then."

"You weren't trying to use magic to get in." Jenkins was tense, already moving cautiously toward the hall. "Someone is trying to magically breach the Annex's protections."

Flynn saw Eve collect her gun and tuck it into its usual position at her side as she followed Jenkins toward the door. He didn't know how much good it would do her against a magical threat, but - on the same theory, he reached for one of the light swords that they had taken to keeping in an umbrella stand near the back door. He heard the scrape of metal as Jake grabbed for the other one and followed him.

Whatever Flynn had been expecting to see outside their door, the ordinary-looking redheaded woman standing there patiently - about thirty yards away, framed by a patch of sunlight - was not it. Judging from the others' reactions, however, the woman was not as ordinary as she appeared.

"How did you find this place?" Jenkins asked, his tone dangerous.

The woman laughed. "Witch. Remember?"

"Thought you preferred sorceress?" Eve had her gun drawn - against an apparently unarmed woman - that was interesting. And alarming.

Wait. Sorceress. "You're Morgan le Fay!" Flynn said, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically given the situation. After all, it had not sounded as if their last encounter with her had been a positive one.

Morgan smiled. "Librarian, I presume?"

"What do you want?" Eve asked, without lowering her gun.

"Sanctuary."

"What?" both Eve and Jenkins said. Flynn had to agree with them - no one who came seeking sanctuary should seem quite that . . . smug.

"Were you listening when I told you this world was heading for trouble?" Morgan crossed her arms over her chest.

"Yeah," Eve said. "You told me it was all in the Loom of Fate. Thanks for the heads up, by the way, but we took care of that."

Morgan barely blinked. "Did you, now. Are you completely sure?"

"How did you know what Dulaque was planning?" Eve asked, ignoring the question.

"Oh, I can answer that," said Jenkins, who was staring at Morgan as if she were a cobra. "He asked for her help, just like always."

"Wait - you were in on all of that?" Flynn had almost forgotten Jake was behind him, but now the other man was taking a few furious steps toward the sorceress. "You knew what was going to happen?"

"Calm down, I knew he was interested in the Loom of Fate, and yes, he did ask for my help, but I refused. And I had no idea the Librarian and his Merry Men were involved." Morgan stretched both arms down and then swept them overhead slowly as if she were about to start doing yoga poses in their park. "I thought he was looking for a way to pierce the veil, and that was bad enough."

"The veil?" So Ezekiel had come out, too. "It's real? It's - literal?"

Morgan rolled her eyes, visible even from this distance. "Of course it's real, and no, it's not literal. Where did the Library find you?"

"You still haven't impressed me with your need for sanctuary," said Eve, who still had her gun trained on Morgan with both hands.

"You, on the other hand, impress me a little," Morgan replied. "You misquoted me just now - remember, I said you had been woven into the Loom of Fate. I do confess I had expected to find the Library Guardianless."

Eve didn't so much as twitch, but -

"You expected her to be dead?" Outraged indignation brought Ezekiel forward as well - he almost stepped past Flynn, but Flynn caught him with one arm and pushed the kid back behind his shoulder. Undeterred, Ezekiel continued, "How did you know what was going to happen?"

"Same way I knew Dulaque screwed up - as if that wasn't predictable." Morgan was moving her arms in that odd pattern again as she talked. "I was hiding - in that place I took you -"

Eyebrow raised, Flynn glanced at Eve, but she still didn't react.

"- and I ran into a few of my sisters that I wasn't expecting to see there." Morgan smiled. "Apparently that idiot Dulaque managed to pierce the veil, but he was actually surprised when they didn't just turn the fate of the world over to him. They escaped, after sealing off the Loom of Fate in its own dimension. But they did mention some unfortunate - accidents, that occurred when he tried to attack the Loom. Some threads got a little frayed that weren't due to be cut yet." With an exaggeratedly fake grimace, she added, to Eve, "They mentioned you specifically."

Eve shifted infinitesimally, her gun still steady. "I'm still here," she said. "And still waiting to hear why we should help you?"

"The Library has power." Morgan stretched her arms overhead again, the gesture sultry although her voice conveyed focused strength. "Thanks to your halfway job on the Loom, the dimensions of this world are shifting and I can't hide myself as easily as I used to. I need shelter, and access to power."

Jenkins was beside Eve now, on the side furthest from Flynn. His voice trembled as he said, "You will not get anywhere near this Library."

Morgan dropped her arms and stared him down. "Let me in, and I'll help you fix the Loom once and for all."

"Sorry, I'm with him," Eve said. "No way."

"Over your dead body, right?" Morgan said with a terrifying smirk. "You know it's cute that we're all pretending you can stop me." Sweeping her arms overhead one more time, she sent a blast of raw power at the building behind them. The alarms, which Flynn hadn't even noticed had stopped, blared again.

"Can she -" Flynn asked Jenkins, as quietly as he could.

Jenkins shook his head, but pitched his voice so that Morgan could hear the reply. "To breach the security by magical force would take her longer than she wants, and it would drain her. She needs to get us to let her in."

"And we're not going to do that," Eve said firmly.

With another chilling smile, Morgan blasted them again - but this time, her magic picked up rocks and gravel from the ground in a whirlwind and hurled them at the people standing in front of the Annex. Flynn ducked as little as possible, shielding his eyes with his hands, so as not to lose sight of Morgan and he saw the others doing the same. Eve managed not to lower her weapon, but when the dust cleared, Flynn saw that the side of her face was bleeding a little.

"You're quiet, Librarian," Morgan said.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jake sidling back toward the Annex door. He strove not to look and draw Morgan's attention to whatever the other man was doing. Shrugging, he said, "They seem to have a pretty good grip on things. I don't usually invite people who threaten me into the Library."

"Not even to save the world?" Morgan might have thought no one noticed her walking slowly, slowly closer, but he did. She'd only covered about two feet of space but she was still creeping. Her eyes shifted from him to Eve. "Not even for her - or did I hear wrong, about your habit of getting a little too closely involved?"

So . . . apparently her information was about nine or ten years old. Interesting again. Well. Or it was extremely recent, but he doubted that. "She doesn't need saving," he said.

"Well." Morgan turned her eyes on Eve in a show of false sympathy. "Men, huh?"

Jake was back, moving up between Flynn and Eve, close to Eve's side. He made a gesture that seemed - unnecessarily - to be telling Flynn to stay put.

"Although this one's cute, too," Morgan continued cheerfully. "Maybe he cares enough to put things right before something unfortunate happens."

This whole thing was getting weird - weirder than usual - really fast. Jake had a restraining hand on Eve's hip as if he thought she was likely to charge Morgan. The blood still slowly oozing from her face was pretty good evidence that that would be a bad idea, but Eve looked perfectly calm in any case.

Jake leaned closer as if he were saying something - something very short - in her ear, but she didn't move.

"Love triangle!" Morgan exclaimed, practically clapping her hands together.

Eve laughed. "Those have worked out pretty good for you before, I know," she said. "But sorry. Not this time."

"So you've settled on that one." Even from a distance Morgan's glance at Flynn managed to be disparaging. "Hope he's told you about his last Guardian."

Yup. Information definitely about nine years old.

"He has," Eve said. "Annnnd . . . I'm really not sure what you think any of this is getting you?"

"Just looking out for the other girl," Morgan said. "Let me guess - you're different. You think he loves you."

Flynn suddenly realized that Jake wasn't holding Eve back - he was keeping her from moving closer to Flynn for some reason. They were clustered in two groups relatively far apart, Flynn and Ezekiel on one side, Jake, Eve, and Jenkins on the other (and where was Cassandra?), with a clear path to the Annex door between them. Why - and in the meantime, oh God, Eve . . .

Eve laughed, again, and said something Flynn completely did not expect (and judging by the fact that she actually had an unschooled expression on her face for a moment, Morgan hadn't expected it, either). "How could he possibly know that?" Eve asked. "This really isn't Camelot, you know, where somebody drops a scarf on the ground and they call it eternal love and start wars over it. It takes time to know how you feel about somebody. I mean I'm sorry to disappoint you, but real life just isn't that dramatic."

"Oh, it can be plenty dramatic." Morgan was raising her hands again. Flynn tensed and made sure Ezekiel was still mostly behind him, as the sorceress resumed her slow movement forward. "I am getting a little tired of this game we're playing -"

"We?" Eve said.

"I'm going to have to ask again - are you going to let me in, or not?"

Morgan brought her hands down in a harsh sweep, sending another burst of power toward the Annex door - and then it . . . bounced back on her. She blinked, backed up a step, and tried again.

This time there was a visible clash in the air, like two forcefields colliding. Flynn felt a rush like wind sweep between him and Ezekiel and the others, coming from the direction of the Annex and blocking Morgan's magic. Morgan was looking shocked, still holding her hands up as if she had forgotten what she was doing with them. Trying not to turn his head too obviously, Flynn risked a look out of the corner of his eye.

Cassandra was walking calmly and confidently forward, and her hands were surrounded by a glowing blue light - strikingly similar to the web Jenkins had been messing around with earlier. She raised them as if holding a beach ball, then rotated the palms just slightly toward Morgan. The sorceress definitely flinched.

"How are you doing that?" she asked, as if torn between fascination and horror. Flynn wouldn't have minded knowing the answer himself.

"Never mind how," Cassandra said. "You're leaving."

For a moment all of them were deadly still.

"Now," Cassandra added.

Morgan's expression was rebellious, but she had lowered her hands. "You can't keep me out forever," she warned.

"But for now I can," Cassandra said calmly. "Go. Now."

Morgan broke their stare to smirk at Eve. "See you around, Guardian," she said. Then she was suddenly gone.

It took everyone else a moment to take in that she had left, and to break their frozen stances. Jenkins, Flynn noticed, was the only one not staring at Cassandra as if she'd just grown a second head.

"How long have you been working on that?" Flynn asked.

Cassandra had her hands cupped against her breastbone, fingers intertwined. "I may have . . . accidentally held onto some of Merlin's magic. From the fairy tale book."

"That's what you were -" Flynn started to say to Jenkins, but he was distracted by another thought. "Really Merlin?"

"We don't know." Without taking her hands from her chest, Cassandra nodded at Eve. "She's bleeding."

Eve, who still hadn't put her gun away, swiped at her face with a careless hand. Ezekiel offered her an ever-present handkerchief - that kid was going to become an expert in getting out bloodstains, unless he kept just buying (or stealing) new ones - and she pressed it hard to the bleeding spot. "So you got all that, right?"

Flynn blinked, but Ezekiel recited, "Dulaque pierced the veil and found the Loom, so the Fates sealed it off in its own dimension - like Judson and Charlene did with the Library. Morgan met the Fates somewhere -"

"Somewhere out of time," Eve said. "Sort of."

"And so," Ezekiel summed up, "we were right, and what we really need to do right now is find the Fates and get them to go back to the Loom and fix it."

Eve pulled the handkerchief away from her face, but Cassandra said, "That isn't stopping at all."

"How bad can it be?" Eve asked.

"Was that rhetorical?" Jake, who was closest, pried her hand away from her face and said, "Because it's actually pretty bad. Might need to be stitched."

"I don't need -"

"He's right," Cassandra interrupted. "I should take you -"

"I can -" Flynn started to interject.

"I may have been mopping the floor, but I worked in an ER for five years." Cassandra crossed her arms; Flynn hadn't noticed what, if anything, she'd done with the glowing ball of magic. "I know how to make sure you get a plastic surgeon to fix that and not an ER resident who hasn't slept in three days."

"I do not need a plastic surgeon," Eve protested.

"Yeah, you think you're not vain, but you don't want a huge scar across your cheek either." Cassandra physically turned Eve and prodded her toward their cars.

"We need to talk about the . . . Merlin thing," Flynn said, falling into step after them.

"Talk in the car!" Cassandra called.

It was just slightly possible that power had gone to her head. Also, she didn't have a car.

In the meantime, there were things he needed to say to Eve, and he needed to figure out a way to say them so she wouldn't think Morgan had goaded him into it, and if Morgan had still been here he felt like he could happily have tried strangling her. Even though it probably wouldn't have worked.

He finally hit on the right thing just as Eve was about to get into the passenger seat of Ezekiel's car (he wasn't even going to ask how Cassandra had gotten the keys). At least, he really hoped it was the right thing, for now. The rest could wait for when it didn't seem so immediately prompted by a sorceress's taunting.

He caught hold of the door with one hand, and put the other at her waist. Cassandra was out of earshot as she circled around to the driver's seat. He leaned close to Eve. "Hey." When she had turned to meet his eyes, he said, "I know. Okay?"

It seemed like she had stopped breathing for a second. "Yeah," she said. She smiled, mostly with the side of her face that wasn't bleeding, and slid into the car.

"Hey, what did Jake say to you?" Flynn remembered to ask once they were on the road, him sharing the backseat with several suspicious-looking boxes. "When he came up to you out there?"

"Stall," Eve said.

"That's it?"

She shrugged. "I don't think he knew what Cassandra was doing -"

"He didn't," Cassandra said. "But I told him to keep everyone out of the way."

"And you and Jenkins have been working on this?" Flynn asked.

"It's a long story."

"And we're about to have a long time to listen to it," Eve said. "Start talking."

Cassandra sighed.

Chapter Text

Jake was early and the Annex was quiet, but something told him it was not entirely empty. He checked Jenkins's workroom, but it wasn't the caretaker who had arrived so close to dawn. Quietly he climbed the stairs to the balcony and finally found Cassandra, stretched out asleep on an ancient-looking cushioned bench behind the shelves. He recognized the clothes she'd been wearing the day before.

He bent and touched her shoulder, calling her name softly. She didn't react, so he gave her arm a gentle shake and repeated a bit more loudly, "Cassie."

She startled and met his eyes immediately. "Jake?" She sounded confused. "What time is it?"

"About seven-thirty." He slipped an arm under her shoulders and helped her rise to sitting. "Did you sleep here?"

"It's comfortable," she said, still not sounding entirely awake. She was trying to straighten her hair with her fingers and, not much more than half-awake himself, he almost helped before he remembered boundaries.

"I don't see how that can be possible," he said, eyeing the bench on which she'd been sleeping with her knees bent at right angles and her feet on the floor. "How is your back not wrecked?"

"It's fine." Both hands on the back of her neck, she stretched forward as if to prove the point. "What time is it?"

"Still about seven-thirty." Smiling, he took her elbow and tried to prod her to standing. "I was going to make coffee, you want to have some and then go home and go to bed?"

"No." She frowned down at the pile of books - most propped or marked open - surrounding them on the floor. "There was - ancient Greeks had a remarkable understanding of geometry, even in their weaving, you know, and by the way? I think that story about the spider might be true."

It took him a moment to follow. "Arachne?"

"Mmm-hmm. I think whatever the 'veil' really is, I think they wove it from magic the same way they would have woven fabric, and I think a few people throughout history have figured out the way through that pattern - whether that's what Dulaque did or not, I'm not sure, but if we have to do the same thing . . ." She rubbed her eyes. "I think I do need coffee."

"Come on."

"Wait." She pulled a post-it note from somewhere and scrawled "DO NOT MOVE" on it before sticking it to the book closest to the middle of the mess. "Okay."

He stuck close to her on the way down the stairs, but she did seem to be waking up. While he went about the business of making coffee, she leaned a hip against the counter in their little kitchenette and washed some pots and beakers that Jenkins had left there.

"I think Jenkins already washed those," Jake pointed out.

She nodded seriously as she soaped a beaker. "Yeah, but you don't want to know what was in them."

He really didn't, now. "So," he said as he measured out coffee grounds. "You doing okay? With . . . everything?"

She nodded again, slowly and deliberately, without looking at him. "Okay. Dreams haven't stopped."

"No. Mine either."

"I'm a little . . ." She shook a beaker hard a few times over the sink to fling the excess water off. "I was getting pretty strange, you know, in that universe, even while Eve was still around. But without her I'm really weird. And spending a lot of time with Lamia."

"Really?"

She looked at him and made a face. "Gross. No, you are not allowed to be into that."

"I'm not . . ." Shaking his head, he poured water into the coffee pot. "I'm kind of reckless."

"Still - she's tried to kill us I don't know how many -"

"No. In the other universe, I mean. It's like . . ." His face was burning, and he turned away from her to start the coffee. "It's like I kind of don't care anymore. I guess. Like - either I'll get killed or I won't, you know? and if I do, then . . ."

Cassandra laid a wet hand on his sleeve. He didn't mind. "Yeah," she said softly. "Are you okay? I know it was a lot more - intense, for you."

"I'm okay." The coffee was started and he didn't have a reason to be standing at the counter, staring at the wall instead of looking at her, anymore. So he traded sides with her, picked up a dishtowel, and started drying beakers. "I miss . . . you know. I'm okay."

She looked, from out the corner of his eye, as if she wanted to ask something but didn't know how. "Is . . . is it hard for you? I mean that . . . that she's with Flynn."

The words came out in a rush, her eyes still trained studiously on the beaker in her hand.

"No." He put down the now-dry beaker and briefly touched her lower back. "It's not that. I love her, but she's like a sister to me. I'm glad they're happy."

She handed him the next beaker. "Me too. I was just - you know, in my universe we had a relationship, but I didn't think it was the same, the whole soulmate thing you had."

That was a good word for it. He took the beaker from her without comment.

"So it's different for me. And anyway - it's not that I've never . . . with women," she continued, blithely clarifying something that he had wondered but would never have asked. "But it's not really fifty-fifty for me. More like seventy-thirty. I think it was mostly that it was her, and that we were so close and everything . . . but in the real world I'm not sure she's my type."

He had no idea how to follow that up - and he was aware that she was watching him a little. Right. Cowboy from the sticks. She was a bit worried about his reaction. "It's different for me, too," he said finally. "I wouldn't - I wouldn't, with her, in this world. Not because I don't like women -"

"Right," she assented quickly.

"- but it just wouldn't feel right. We're different people than we were in that reality."

Something about Cassandra's face was a bit wistful, but she just handed him a wet pot and changed the subject, sort of. "So. Got any actual sisters?"

"No. Well - I did, but I didn't know her. She would have been older than me, but she didn't live."

Briefly Cassandra's shoulder leaned against his. "What happened?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Nothing - just one of those things. What about you, brothers and sisters?"

"Nope, only child." She waited for him to set the pot aside, then handed him another beaker. "Which I bet my parents really regretted when - you know." She gestured at her forehead. "No backups."

"You can't replace people."

"No, I know. Still."

"Were you an only child on purpose? I mean -"

"Yeah." She gave a tiny sigh. "That way they could really focus on me."

"Sounds . . . intense."

"Oh yeah." She paused. "What was her name? your sister."

A name from nightly childhood prayers and a bouquet on her birthday. "Elizabeth."

"That's nice."

"I have three brothers. She would've been the only girl." The coffeemaker beeped, and he wiped his hands on the towel and slipped around behind her to fill cups.

"So, Eve . . ." Cassandra raised her eyes hesitantly to his as he passed a cup in her direction. "I get it."

He frowned, not completely sure what she thought she was getting, but her smile was sweet so he supposed it didn't really matter. He caught himself reaching out to touch her hip and instead wrapped his hand around his coffee cup. "So."

Voices echoed out in the Annex, and Cassandra took a step away from him. He wasn't sure if he was imagining the look of slight disappointment on her face. "I have to talk to Flynn," she said, and vanished, taking her coffee with her.

Jake stood there waiting, carefully sipping his hot coffee, until he heard footsteps approaching the kitchenette. Eve poked her head in a second later. "You made coffee?"

"I made a lot." He poured out a cup and slid it across the counter. She looped her fingers through the handle but left it sitting there. The fingers of her other hand, as they often had in the last couple days, tapped against the bandage on the side of her face that covered the plastic surgeon's stitches. The bandage seemed to annoy her, but Cassandra said the surgeon had done neat work.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

He nodded. "Fine." It wasn't anything he wanted to lay on her, anyway. She was already bearing enough of the collective burden of all their traumatized psyches, without . . . "I, um. I'm afraid - I'm worried I might be . . ."

She looked not at all surprised that he started talking immediately after telling her everything was fine.

"You know before the Library, nobody really knew about . . . me. Who I was."

Eve nodded.

"Well, so - I guess, after seeing the other reality, now I know what it's like to be with someone who knows - who gets everything, you know, even all the stuff about the Library and magic and everything. I wouldn't have thought that was even possible."

"Flynn almost let a vampire bite him once for the same reason," she said with a smile, picking up her coffee cup.

"He told you that?"

She nodded.

"You guys really have a grotesquely healthy relationship, you know that, right?"

"Most people's definition of a healthy relationship would not include a vampire talk," Eve said. "But okay. Anyway - I understand."

"But it's . . ." He tried to remind himself that he didn't want to lay this on her - that he actually didn't want to say it out loud, at all - but it didn't work. "I'm afraid . . . I'm going to make a mistake because of how much I want that, and let it make me think I have . . . other feelings."

Eve looked confused.

"Other feelings," he repeated, ". . . for someone else. Who isn't you."

Her brow furrowed. He wasn't doing a very good job of this. "I'm perfectly happy for you to have feelings for someone who isn't me?" she said. Then suddenly her expression cleared. "Oh. I get it."

"Yeah," he said. He could feel his face reddening.

"Well." She set her cup down again. "So you're worried that you're going to think you have feelings for - someone else, just because - that person is the only other, um, option, in terms of people who know everything about you?"

"Yes. And hurt one of us, or both of us."

Eve hesitated. "Do you feel -"

"I don't know."

"Okay. Well." She reached out and lightly grasped his arm. "It's not a quiz. You don't have to know right this second. You can - just not do anything till you're sure."

"What if I can't tell?"

She grimaced, but said, "If you can't tell, I think that's your answer. I trust you."

"What if I don't trust me?"

"Then, I'm the one whose job it is to protect all of you - including from each other, if necessary - so my opinion trumps."

Ezekiel's head appeared in the doorway. "Come now," he said, before immediately disappearing again.

Jake and Eve exchanged looks. "Is someone -" she started to say.

"I didn't hear anything."

They both put their cups down and hurried back out into the Annex - Eve's hand touching and holding his for the tiniest second as they brushed against each other.

Jake skidded to a halt as soon as he reached the card catalogue, and he felt Eve bump into him as she did the same. "Whoa," he said.

Spread floor to ceiling across the entire width of the room was a shimmering web in midair. It didn't really end, either, just sort of faded into insubstantiality around the edges. It wasn't three-dimensional, not really, but as he looked at it he could see all manner of shapes and figures apparently suspended and intricately woven together.

"I just got it," said Cassandra, who was standing almost up against the web with Jenkins beside her. "It all just . . ."

"What is it?" Jake asked.

"It's the veil," Flynn said. He was standing across from Cassandra and Jenkins, looking more at their resident mathlete than at the web. "Sort of."

"She made the veil visible?" Ezekiel asked. "I thought it wasn't literal."

"It isn't," Jenkins explained. "This isn't the actual veil; it's a visualization. It's the image of the veil that Miss Cillian came up with in her mind after she had worked out the geometry." His long arm swept in front of the veil, well over Cassandra's head. "This is her mental picture."

"What Cassandra figured out how to do," Flynn finished, "was manifest the image in her mind so we could all see it."

Whoa. Jake's eyes ran over the web in wonder, his head tilting back so he could follow it to the ceiling. "So we're all seeing her - her vision?"

"It's a hallucination," Cassandra said calmly. "I don't usually have a choice about whether I see them, but - yeah. Jenkins and I figured out how to let you all see it, too."

"That's amazing," Eve said.

"So," Jake asked, "does the veil exist somewhere, in a reality, like this?"

"I think it's everywhere," Flynn said. "It's not here, in this image, but the image can show us how to get through it without damaging it -"

"Then," Cassandra continued, "I think we just - do it. In midair, as if the veil were real. I think that's the way it works."

"And we find the Fates," Ezekiel said.

Flynn nodded. "That's the hope. Cassandra?"

She smiled, a slow, pleased smile that somehow made her look like a stranger. "There," she said, pointing at a spot that, to Jake, looked exactly like every other spot on the web. "That's Morgan's way, and it doesn't do violence to the veil. She can be subtle sometimes. She probably learned this way long before she became who she is - it's the path of Samhain."

Jake suddenly had a feeling that he knew exactly what Cassandra meant when she said the alternative version of herself was "really weird."

Behind him, Eve whispered, "Is this creeping anyone else out a little?"

Ezekiel had slipped closer to them both while Cassandra was talking, and now he whispered in reply, "I kind of want someone to hold my hand."

Flynn and Jenkins were both watching Cassandra carefully, but neither of them looked alarmed. "Do it if you can," Flynn said. He looked quickly to Jenkins before adding, "You have the right instinct. I think it'll be okay."

Cassandra nodded, and the web suddenly was gone. In its place the air of the room looked almost foggy, as if the wall behind where the web had been had gone blurry. Cassandra slowly reached out with one hand, slid her extended fingers forward so purposefully that it looked as if she were actually parting some substantial matter, and even more slowly twisted her wrist. Her fingertips curled in empty air.

Then, something happened. They were still in the Annex, but everything around them was a shadow, drained of light and color. A bench made of stone sat approximately where Cassandra's vision of the web had been, and behind it Jake could see both the wall of the Annex, and a rolling vista of field and distant mountain, at the same time. Three women sat on the bench, not old, not young, dressed in plain robes. The one on the right was hooded.

"Librarians," the woman in the middle said.

Flynn looked around as if to ascertain that they were all there. "We aren't the first to come looking for you recently," he said.

Jake felt a warmth against his shoulder that was out of place in this shadow world. It was Eve, come to stand as close to him as she could. He looked down and over, and smiled despite the apprehension he felt. Ezekiel was on Eve's other side, and he was clutching her hand with both of his.

"No," said the woman on the left. "Lancelot du Lac thought he could force us to change the pattern -"

"- we did our best," said the woman in the middle. "We hid the Loom away -"

"-but he did not balk at blood sacrifice," said the woman on the right.

"No," Flynn said. "We tried to repair the damage, but -"

"-Ariadne's thread was not meant for weaving." The woman in the middle nodded slowly as she looked around at the Librarians.

The woman on the right sat up taller, revealing that there was a normal human face under her hood (Jake didn't know what he'd been expecting). "Eve Baird," she said.

Someone gasped, though Jake couldn't tell who. He fumbled for Eve's other hand and held it as she replied. "Yes?"

"You are intricately connected with the Library."

"Intricately," echoed the woman in the middle.

The woman on the left smiled. Her hands worked in the air as if she were twisting something invisible. "A birch, just barely," she said. "I remember. Late - they thought you were late, but you were Αἰγόκερως."

"I was what?" Eve whispered.

"Capricorn," Flynn replied under his breath.

"Oh. I knew that."

"And birch," the woman on the left continued. Silently, Jake named her now as she relived Eve's birth. Clotho. "And eagle. More than most. God-is-gracious, they said, but because of the date they called you 'living.'"

None of that was making a whole lot of sense to Jake, but Eve's grip on his hand was tight.

The woman on the left - Atropos. Inevitable. - held out an open palm. "They were right. When Lancelot du Lac assaulted the Loom, I almost cut you off. It would have been an accident, but accidents are not possible. Whatever happened would have been what I would have done, whether he had attacked or not. I never know what I will do until I do it."

"What?" Ezekiel muttered.

The woman smiled. "So you live. There are no accidents. Your thread was frayed, but it has been rewoven."

"Can you fix the Loom?" Flynn asked.

The woman in the middle - Lachesis - nodded. "We can untangle the mistaken realities that are arising, and would continue to arise, from Ariadne's thread. We would have done so already, if we had known for sure that du Lac would not find us."

Her sisters chimed in. "He did enough damage with just the Loom -

"-we escaped from him the first time -"

"-with the Loom and us as hostages, he could destroy time itself."

"He has been weakened," Jenkins said, speaking up for the first time since Cassandra had brought them through the veil. "Next time, he will try something else."

"We need help to bring the Loom back," the woman in the middle said. She seemed to be the spokeswoman, except for when one of her sisters went off on a tangent. She nodded at Cassandra. "She can help us. Your parents named you after a seeress, little one."

"A doomed seeress," Cassandra said.

"I never know what I will do until I do it," the third sister repeated, almost in a chant.

"We can't tell you," said the woman in the middle.

Cassandra nodded. "I understand."

"What?" Ezekiel said again.

"Spoilers," Eve whispered.

"Oh."

"We will tell you what to do," the middle sister told Cassandra. "Go back now."

"But how will -"

In the middle of Cassandra's question, light and color returned. The back wall was solid again, and the Fates were gone.

"That was interesting," Jenkins said.

Jake realized he was still holding Eve's hand, and released it. "So - the Fates are going to somehow tell Cassie how to get them back to the Loom -"

"Or the Loom back to them," Jenkins corrected.

"And then they'll fix it? And - that's it?" Jake shook his head. "I still don't - what the hell did Morgan want?"

"Probably? Just to trick us into giving her access to the Library." Jenkins was staring at the wall, as if the distant mountains were still there. "I doubt it had anything to do with the Fates, or the Loom. She knew the world was in no real danger."

"And neither is Eve." Cassandra no longer sounded like a guest star on Game of Thrones; she was her normal self again. "That part was clear, right? Everything was fixed and she's safe."

"What was that about God-is-gracious?" Jake asked.

"I assume -" Flynn started. "'Living,' that's 'Eve.' 'God-is-gracious' is the traditional meaning of the name 'John.'"

Eve, who looked a bit shell-shocked, said, "My middle name is Johannah. My parents didn't choose it because of - I doubt they even knew what it meant."

"Well, your parents were not semi-omniscient minor deities." Flynn was grinning. "Unlike our new friends. Cassandra, any idea how they plan to tell you what to do?"

She shook her head. "None."

Into the ensuing silence, Jake said, "There's a lot more coffee?"

Chapter Text

In the middle of all the drama and insanity and figures from mythology appearing next to their desks, it was sometimes reassuring that the mundane things of life carried on in the background. Like allergy season in Portland, which seemed as if it might last nine months of the year.

Eve woke in the middle of the night to the sound of Flynn's hacking cough in the bed beside her. She gave it a few moments, but once it became clear that he couldn't stop, she slipped out of bed and went to get him a glass of water.

She went with a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She'd gone to sleep in just her underwear and a tank top, and even in the darkened room and through his coughing fit, she could tell he was watching her go.

Although Flynn was like sleeping with a furnace, the apartment itself wasn't that warm and she was chilled by the time she got back into bed, handing him the glass she'd brought. She waited, pulling the edge of the sheet over her arms and giving him space to convulse, until the coughing abated.

"Thanks," he said hoarsely as he set the glass aside. "And sorry."

"Want to shut the window?"

"No, I think it actually helps - it's like, immersion therapy." He brushed his hand against her arm. "You got cold, come here."

She leaned against him as he settled back down and wrapped his arms tightly around her. For a while all she could concentrate on was the sensation of cold shivers leaving her body as his warmth seeped back into her skin. Eventually, though, her mind jumped back to the topic that had been occupying her - and, she assumed, all of them - before she'd fallen asleep. "You think it's going to be today?" she asked softly.

"Yeah. I don't know why they even waited this long, I assumed it would be immediately."

"They'd probably tell us they don't know, either."

He laughed, which made him cough softly a couple more times. She rubbed her hand over his chest until it stopped. "Yeah," he said. "They like their air of mystery."

"I guess it would be kind of disappointing if they were just like -"

"Right. 'Eve Baird - I had you in my iPhone for June 10, 2086. It's right here on the Loom of Fate app.'"

She wrapped her arm around his waist as she laughed. "I'm going to live to be a hundred and twelve?"

"Well, sure. All that magic. Like Dumbledore."

"The Library better have a damn good retirement plan."

"That's a given."

She lifted her head from his shoulder. "Not storage in a mirror."

"No, that's, like, post-retirement."

"Hmm." It was three in the morning, but she couldn't feel sleepy with the prospect of what was probably coming that day. And, well - if you couldn't act on impulse in the middle of the night, when could you? They were already fairly entwined; she rolled to her back and used her core strength to tug him along with her, settling him in the cradle of her hips.

His hand automatically landed on the pillow beside her head, his fingertips stroking the place where she was finally free of both stitches and band-aids. Not that she wanted to admit Cassandra's point about her vanity, but the faint red line probably did look a lot better than a scabbed-over gash would have. Flynn had been sort of fascinated with its healing, so she let him run his fingers over the tiny ridge.

"I'm still cold," she said in response to the questioning expression she could just make out in the dim streetlamp light. "And awake."

"Oh." His other hand drifted to the hem of her shirt. "Both of those are my fault."

"Yes."

"I should do something about that."

"Yes. You really should."

He bent his head, and stopped with his lips hovering against her collarbone. "I might have a coughing fit at you."

"I accept that risk."

He did, actually, start coughing once, and his attempt to suppress it against her shoulder led to him accidentally biting her a little. She didn't mind. It actually had the same desired effect as the whole endeavor - if she was going to return to the River today, and stand in the same place where she'd almost died, she wanted to still be able to feel him. It was the kind of thing that maybe should have been a dirty thought, but somehow really wasn't.

They were both honest people, and it was odd that there was anything left unspoken between them. Nevertheless. There was something, and now seemed as good a time as any, even though she hadn't wanted to seem needy by going first. And after all, he really had told her already, just not . . . well. She was settled over his chest again, her heart rate slowly returning to normal, and actually beginning to feel like she could go back to sleep. So she closed her eyes, spreading her palm over his now-bare stomach, and strove to sound both casual and half asleep as she murmured, "I love you, Flynn."

And she had been right, because when he immediately lifted his hand to her hair and started to reply, he wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know.

They'd both been right about the day, too. Cassandra was first to the Annex that morning - she was wearing different clothes, so at least it seemed she hadn't slept there again - and she and Jenkins met everyone else at the door, a white envelope in Cassandra's hands.

"It looks just like the ones from the Library," she repeated to each new person as they arrived, until they had all assembled. "But it's not."

Once Ezekiel, the last that day as usual, had joined them, she finally pulled the card inside from the envelope. Even the writing resembled the Library's, shimmering with magic, except . . .

"I can't read it," Cassandra said, holding it out to show them. "Funny they didn't know that."

"In the alternate universes," Eve said slowly, "it took all of you. I think that was the point." She took the card from Cassandra's outstretched hand and put it into Jake's. "You read Greek, right?" So did Flynn, but she hoped he understood - this seemed to be about their LITs.

Jake nodded and swallowed visibly as he read the letters on the card. "It says this part" - he pointed toward the bottom portion of the message, which was arranged as if it might be verse - "is a spell, but you need the focus - What?"

As he said the words, an image appeared superimposed over the Greek letters. It looked like a statue of a woman, primitive, with a large head and some kind of hat.

"Is this in the Library?" Jake asked.

Flynn leaned over the card. "I don't think so."

Ezekiel, unaccountably, was laughing. "You did say it took all of us," he said. "That's in the British Museum."

"You're sure?" Cassandra asked.

"Positive." He was grinning smugly from ear to ear.

Eve's thoughts must have been more clearly reflected on her face than she believed, because as soon as Ezekiel looked at her, he held his hands up in defense.

"Hey," he said, "I'll bring it right back when we're done."

Eve sighed. "You're completely sure you know what this is? And - isn't the British Museum open right now?"

"Nope. Closed an hour and a half ago." He was practically bouncing on his toes. "Take me two minutes."

He was right - this was all on purpose, and he did have his contribution to make. "Go," she said.

About the two minutes he was wrong - it actually took almost five. Eve was willing to admit that was still pretty impressive work. Ezekiel came through the back door holding an apparently identical figure in each hand.

"There are two in the collection," he explained, setting both on the card catalogue table. "I wasn't sure if it mattered."

"It does look the same," Jake said, doubtfully comparing the figures to the image on the card. "Wait - look!"

The image had faded, leaving behind only the words once more.

"I hope that's a good sign," Flynn said.

Ezekiel pointed carefully at the two figures. "They're from Rhodes, supposedly goddesses but no one knows exactly who they're meant to be."

"Do you think they have something to do with the Fates?" Cassandra asked.

"Is that ivory?" Jenkins asked, peering over Flynn's shoulder.

"According to the placard, it's bone." Ezekiel grimaced. "It doesn't say bone from what, and I don't want to know."

"So, we're supposed to read this spell while . . . looking at the statue, I guess," Jake said. "I guess both, just in case. How do I - Cassandra has to read it, but if I tell her what it says, won't I be reading it?"

"Does it matter?" Eve asked.

"She's the one who kept Merlin's magic." Jake frowned. "Oh wait. Got it." He reached for a notebook and pen that were lying on the table and scribbled quickly, while they all waited and watched. "Here, Cassie." He ripped the page off the notebook and handed it to her.

She squinted at the page. "What's - oh, I see. You wrote it out phonetically?"

"Is it good enough to follow?"

"I think so." Cassandra looked around at the rest of them. "Are we ready?"

"Wait," Jenkins said. "Miss Cillian - come stand here, that's right. And everyone else, in a circle around her." He included himself, so that they formed a five-pointed star as well as a circle around Cassandra.

"Do we - hold hands, or . . ." Jake trailed off.

"That would be good, yes." Un-self-consciously Jenkins took hold of one of Jake's hands.

In the center, Cassandra waited until they were all linked up. "Ready?" she asked again, her voice wavering.

Ezekiel's hand was trembling in Eve's. She squeezed his and sent him a reassuring smile.

"Ready," Jenkins said.

Cassandra took a deep breath, held Jake's page of notes up in front of her, and began to read slowly and awkwardly.

Eve looked to Ezekiel again, knowing that they were probably the only ones - other than Cassandra herself - who didn't know what she was saying. He looked nervous, but he nodded at her and squeezed her hand in response.

This time the Annex vanished entirely - or, more likely, they did. There was a falling sensation, and then they were standing on a familiar riverbank.

Eve's stomach dropped, but she held it together as they all let go of each other's hands and walked toward the abandoned Loom. She didn't want to look, but her eyes failed to obey. The answer she hadn't wanted to know was yes - there was blood on the ground in front of the Loom, and on the stones. Wet blood. Time apparently ran slowly here. Eve rubbed her forehead, a mild headache forming in the heavy air.

"Where are the Fates?" Ezekiel asked.

"She didn't get through the whole spell," Jake replied.

Nodding, Cassandra lifted the paper again and continued to read.

She pronounced the last few syllables slowly, waiting in the ensuing silence. After a few moments, she lowered the paper. "Did I -"

And then they were there, all three women, in a row behind the Loom.

"You did well," said the hooded one on the right.

"Who wove Ariadne's thread into the Loom?" the one in the middle asked.

"I did - kind of." Flynn half-raised his hand. "Technically another me started it, but I think I finished."

"Then you are the one to undo it," said the woman in the middle. "Carefully, now - do not cut; that would be as devastating as du Lac's assault."

Dulaque. A phantom pain stabbed through Eve's chest, compounding the throbbing in her head, as she remembered to look around for him.

"He is not here," said the woman on the right. "Galeas was correct; he has moved on."

Jenkins's face twitched, but no one said anything else.

"You must unpick the thread," the woman on the left chimed in now. "Start only with the labyrinth thread. You can see it?"

"Yes," said Flynn, already holding two fingers tentatively ready to pinch. "What's going to happen?"

The hooded woman left her place and came to his side, putting both hands on the fabric in apparently deliberate places. "Nothing. I will hold all in stasis until you are finished, and my sisters will make the repair."

Flynn nodded to himself, his eyes fixed on the fabric. Slowly he brought his fingers to the thread, in a place that seemed to make sense to him, and pulled.

The tension intensified Eve's headache, and she raised both hands to her temples to try to massage it away. Jake and Cassandra, now flanking Flynn and the Loom, looked as if they were holding their breath.

"Yes," the middle sister said softly, peering around the Loom. "You're correct. The rest, now."

Flynn tugged more insistently, and the end of the thread actually came loose from the fabric. He grasped it and pulled, but that was the last thing Eve saw - the pain now knifing through her head was like nothing she'd ever felt before, and she'd automatically closed her eyes against it.

Weakness spread through her, and her knees buckled. Eyes still closed, she realized she was going to hit the ground on the riverbank. Again.

But she didn't - this time someone was there, and her fall was slowed by long arms that caught and held her, while her rescuer dropped to his knees and lowered her gently to the ground. He stayed so out of the fray usually that it was easy to forget that Jenkins was a big man, and deceptively strong, but both were true. He handled her tall frame as if she had been a child.

A roaring in her ears drowned out the real noise of the world, but dimly she heard at least three people screaming her name - and, she was pretty sure, Flynn's outraged voice shouting, "You said nothing!"

"She was in all the universes at once," Jenkins said, but his voice was competing with wind and screaming and the roar of dragons in her mind. "Right now, they're coming separate again."

The pain was blinding and she still couldn't really move, but one of her hands was on Jenkins's arm and she pressed it, squeezing until her arm shook.

He got the message. "She's all right," she heard him say as if from a long distance. "Just fix it."

"We - we have to wind it," Jake said, or something like that. His voice was terrified, and he was saying two different things in her head at once. Can you throw down the rest of the rope, Eve? Just hold on . . .

"I'm trying - Jenkins!"

That was Cassandra, panic in her tone as well. The dragons - they're not leaving . . .

"Here. Go help." An Australian accent, and slimmer arms reaching behind Eve's back to support her. She wanted to say she could sit up herself, but she tried and failed. A moment later she felt what she realized was Ezekiel's bent knee, propping her up as Jenkins left her side. One of Ezekiel's hands clasped hers, while the other cradled the side of her head. "You okay, Eve? They're almost done, I think."

She could only grit her teeth against the pain in her head, but she managed to squeeze his fingers to let him know she was conscious. Don't leave me, he said, but not out loud. Only in the agonizing haze in her mind.

"Slow down just a little." Jenkins's voice, unsurprisingly calm, cut a path through the chaos. "It'll be all right, just slow down so we can . . ."

"Good," said what sounded like three women's voices in unison. "The last now, good . . ."

Eve turned her head and let it rest against Ezekiel's shoulder. The chorus of panic in her mind was building, and she was beginning to be afraid that she would go insane if this didn't end soon.

There was a rush of wind past her face, and her ears throbbed with pressure that sounded like her name. "Did you feel that?" she forced past clenched teeth.

"Feel what?" Ezekiel asked.

Tears welled behind her tightly closed eyes. She couldn't answer, or even shake her head - the pain had worsened, which she wouldn't have believed possible - and she probably would have screamed if she hadn't thought it would make things worse. At some point Ezekiel had let go of her hand and started rubbing her arm.

The vise of pain had just started to loosen when she was shifted again, this time into a more familiar embrace. A bent arm behind her shoulders, palm wrapping up to smooth over the top of her head. He held her the same way when she was lying in bed with him. The headache was fading so gradually that it took her a while to notice. "Done?" she was able to ask.

She probably should have been mortified by the way Flynn was holding her in front of the others, especially by the way his other hand had taken up a favorite position directly under her breast, his thumb splayed onto her breastbone. She actually couldn't have cared less.

"Done," he said.

A third hand, which she was pretty sure belonged to Jake, was on her shoulder. She nodded to reassure them all, and took a deep breath filled with the smell of Flynn's skin and his shirt against her cheek.

"The Loom is repaired," Flynn continued, speaking mercifully softly. "The Fates are gone, they took it - back where it belongs. Cassandra can get us out of here."

"What happened?" Cassandra asked.

Eve was finally able to move independently again, raising a hand to her forehead. She still didn't open her eyes. "Incredible headache."

"But it's better?"

Ezekiel. Sounding anxious. She fumbled in the direction of the sound and found his hand. "Not gone yet," she said. "But better."

"Can you stand?" Jake asked.

Eve thought about that for a moment, then said, "Yeah. I think so."

She carefully let her eyes start to flutter open as Flynn shifted his arms against her and Jake - she was pretty sure - took firm hold of her other upper arm. They lifted her to her feet almost without her participation.

Her eyes opened fully once her feet took her own weight. Jenkins looked wary. Ezekiel was behind her, but Cassandra looked as if she'd been crying.

"I'm really glad we didn't know that was going to happen," Jake said, still holding her arm.

"I wonder," Flynn said. "If we hadn't all come - if Eve had stayed back at the Annex -"

"I wouldn't have," she said immediately. "Let you all teleport yourselves into another dimension without me?"

The irony was not lost on her. She hadn't exactly done a lot of guarding while she was half passed out on the ground.

"Are we ready to go back?" Cassandra asked.

Eve looked out across the river, breathing deeply and slowly. "I think they were here," she said. "The other Librarians. Just - for a minute, while the Loom was undone."

They were all quiet. Jake slid his hand down Eve's arm to take her hand, and on her other side Flynn eventually did the same. They reformed their circle around Cassandra, who was still clutching the page of notes Jake had given her before they left the Annex.

"Go ahead," Jenkins said.

Flynn leaned close to Eve as if to say something, but only brushed his nose and forehead against her temple. She adjusted the hold of their hands, intertwining their fingers, as Cassandra began to read.

The transition back was more abrupt. There was a pressurized feeling, and Eve had to take weight into her bent knees when they "landed" back in the Annex. Of course she was still wobbly, but the others seemed to have felt the effect as well.

They all stayed where they were for a moment, looking around the circle - Cassandra twisting in the middle to see all of them.

"That's it," Ezekiel said. "Right? Done. For good."

"Should be," Cassandra replied. She sidled toward the space between Jake and Ezekiel, and they released each other's hands but both reached for her. Jake took her hand, and Ezekiel wrapped his hand around her arm as she backed into the circle.

Jenkins dropped Ezekiel and Flynn's hands and took a small step back, still not really breaking the circle. "Dulaque started this," he said, and with a jolt Eve remembered that Dulaque was - had once been - his father. "He's not over, but this - this is. No more unraveling."

"It took all of us," Cassandra said, releasing Jake's hand to lay hers over the hand that Ezekiel still had on her arm.

The warmth that Eve had felt that morning, lying in bed with Flynn, was spreading through her again, although she still had a persistent - but thankfully much less severe - headache. Possibly the release from the more severe pain was triggering a kind of euphoria. She just wanted to cuddle all of them, all her chicks - maybe even Jenkins. Definitely an urge that needed to be suppressed.

"We should celebrate," Jake said. "But Eve - still looks kind of white."

"It's eleven a.m.," Cassandra pointed out sensibly. "We can all take the rest of the day off and get together later? For dinner?"

"Brilliant," Ezekiel said. "Takeout at my place?"

"Takeout?" Jake said, as if he didn't quite think that was festive enough.

Ezekiel shrugged. "We can't exactly sit in the middle of a restaurant and talk about . . . any of this."

"Fair point," Jake allowed.

Eve was just beginning to feel like she should extract herself from Flynn's hold, at least while in the workplace. Since she wasn't actually ready to do that, going home for a while seemed like a solid plan - and so did celebrating later. She smiled at Ezekiel. "I'm in."

"Me too," Flynn said, probably unnecessarily.

"Jenkins?" Cassandra asked.

The caretaker blinked in momentary surprise, but said, "Oh. Fine." His face gave away that he was pleased, if his tone didn't.

"Then I'm going home for drugs," Eve said. She gripped Flynn's hand tightly enough to send him a clear message that he would be coming with her.

Jake's eyes darted to Flynn's face, and another message seemed to have been exchanged. Flynn nodded and tugged Eve toward the door.

"They worry," he said when they were alone in the hall.

"I know." She turned to give him a smile. "Just them?"

He stopped, and stopped her with an outstretched hand, so that he could kiss her. "They don't get to take you home and coddle you," he said when they had parted.

"I have a feeling that's what they'll be doing later, actually."

They started walking again, out the bridge doors and into the sunshine. Flynn sneezed. "And that's okay with you?" he asked, after a momentary sniffle.

She grasped his arm lightly with both hands. "I'm learning to live with it."