Work Text
Year 1966
Afterwards, he goes home.
The dead man in the alley is only the tip of the iceberg of unbelievable, incomprehensible actions the last 22 years have cost him and it's enough now.
For the first time since he's met Cole and Cassandra he's sure they are at a point where they'll find a way to save the future, they have some sort of plan. Which is more than the last few times their paths have crossed.
It gives him hope.
Enough hope to forgo his empty, quiet apartment.
Instead Gale drives. Drives past flickering street lamps and the dirty streets of the city and right back to the house that used to be home.
He wants it to be home again, has always wanted it to be home. But for so many years he couldn't look into his wife's eyes without the truth always almost spilling from his lips, but never taking the leap.
In his nightmares Elizabeth's beautiful blue eyes always turned milky and cold and dead.
But now, for the first time in 22 years Gale feels hope reinvigorate his faith. Maybe time can change. They had saved his life in '61, maybe they could save the world.
So he drives towards the house where his children grew up, in the same neighbourhood his already grown book-worm daughter is raising his first granddaughter and he knocks on the door watches as the lights turn on in the middle of the night.
Year 2013
Afterwards, she goes home.It's not even a question, she buys the house as soon as she sets eyes on it. Their house. She needs it like she needs air, and all the ghosts that come with owning it.Her job fills the emptiness of her life about as well as Cassie expects it to. The house needs touch up, the garden around it needs tending and as she brings it all to life her own brightens up in the same breath.She follows Jennifer's work at Markridge from afar, always afraid to step just too close and destroying the fragile equilibrium of the new timeline. Jennifer deserves peace and success and her unicorns, she has suffered enough to lead them all the way.And well yeah, Cassie also does keep tabs on Katarina and, by association Elliot, reading physic journals and how certain forces affect the molecules in human bodies on her porch. There is no word of time travel and the absence of the phrase is far more beautiful than any sound she could come up with.She tries to not think about Cole, because it always ends in empty wine bottle and tears.It is only one day when FBI vans appear on a news segment, that she remembers Robert Gale and wonders how his life has turned out, given that he has never met them in this timeline.Thankfully the internet is a treasure trove of information and she does in fact find an obituary from an old newspaper. Gale died in 1985, survived by his wife and two children, a few grandkids and a great-granddaughter even.Sadness mixes with the relief that he doesn't spend his life alone, how he was surrounded by his family instead of chasing phantoms always a step ahead.Her eyes linger on the obituary, the kind words, the names of his family members. Common names, ordinary. And yet.Cassie shoves the thought aside and concentrates on her boring, beautiful life instead.
Year 1980
"I swear, you better show your best behaviour," Liz admonishes quietly as their granddaughter and her fiance walk into their living room. Gale zips his mouth closed.
"I haven't planed to say anything."
"You better not."
He can't really say anything without sounding like a hypocrite anyway, he thinks. They had their children rather early in their marriage and his daughter has followed their footsteps. It's no surprise his granddaughter is continuing the tradition, even though part of him wishes Kathryn'd have waited just a few more years. She's barely 22.
But he won't start a fight now when this is their first visit. And the baby girl in Kathryn's arms is cute as a button.
"So, what is her name?" he asks Kathryn, as he is already pulling a grimace to entertain the small baby. They haven't been told her name, Katie wanted to do it in person.
"Cassandra."
Shock paralyses his body, rendering him incapable of responding in any manner. It must show on his face, his expression always does, because Kathryn only laughs. "I know it's uncommon, but we liked it so much. Our little prophet."
He looks at the small child and somehow it finally makes sense.
Year 2013
She doesn't do anything about. Cole comes back and maybe she actually forgets about it for a while.Pretends to forget about it for a little while longer even after everything has settled. Until she can't stand it anymore, the uncertainty and she takes the car and Cole and drives to her grandparent's old bookstore. Cassie has showed him the obituary, explained what it means. He hasn't laughed at her, he hasn't called her crazy. Though he really isn't in the position to say anything on that matter. Up on the attic are boxes with her mother's belongings. Her father had stored it there after her early death and nobody had ever touched it again. It contains a lot of her mother's favourites: books, photographs, mementos. It's the only starting place she has without finding her extended family for not reason other than a gut feeling. It's dusty, and mostly dark, the light bulb has long burned out. Cole holds her phone with the torch app for her. She tries not to dwell on certain pieces, only looking for a sign of the man they saved in a different time. At the bottom of the third box is a letter with her name on it.Cassie knows the writing and she knows Cole recognises it too; it's the same as on the picture in the Emerson Hotel. She rips open the envelope, the tearing of the paper the only sound in the closed space. The letter paper is yellowed, the page stained with ink. But the writing is still eligible. It's only a few short lines, from her great-grandfather, through time and space. Afterward I went past what you had passed Before we met, and you what I had passed.
(I remembered. Thank you for saving the world.)
A tear rolls down her face. She looks up to see the stricken look on Cole's face. "Cass, he lived." She nods, of course. It's the mathematics of surviving, counting their winnings in hearts still beating, lungs soon breathing. "Like one day Hannah will."Now it's his turn to nod, "Yes. He lived and he remembered you, because you saved his life. That's the now we have." They sit on the dirty wooden floor for a long time.
Year 1985
Before, he considers it a life well lived.There's only a small desk lamp illuminating his home office.The pen in his hands shakes, ink spluttering all over the white paper. His mind is a mess, a carousel spinning endlessly. Gale thinks about his wife and how he loved her for almost all of his life and how she never left him.And he thinks about bullets riddling his body, the heavy feel of kevlar on his shoulders, the sadness in the older Cassandra's eyes in a city of ash and dust.Over the years he has pieced it all together, finishing a puzzle with only half the pieces and one hand tied behind his back. He has wisely kept his mouth shut about the existence of time travelers all his life. Not need to wake sleeping monkeys.He doesn't think there are words appropriate for him to tell her, but he tries regardless. It'd have to suffice. He writes her name on her envelope and seals it. His last words, conserved through time, may they one day reach her and laugh at the silly last errancy of an old man. He goes to bed, his eyes heavy with something other than sleep, something final.In the dead of night, with his last breath, Robert Gale prays for them to never met him, for her to never understand meaning in his words.