Spoilers: End of Time parts 1 and 2

Author's Note: This is just a little snippet from Jen's POV while they waited in EoT part 2. May be rewritten as part of a larger piece after part 3.

Missing From Our Lives
by Selma McCrory
copyright 2001

I can't believe he did this.

What was it that made Wes betray us and send us home, leaving himself with no backup?

Oh, yes. Loyalty. I hadn't thought about it much since Wes revealed it that evening, but Wes was made to be loyal. To Time Force, and to me. He struggled so hard to be someone other than what others made him, and he failed. In the end, he was Alex's clone through and through.

He ignored our arguments. In the end, he was as he was programmed to be, a replacement for Alex. Alex's sense of duty came through in him and he tricked us into coming back to our own time.

I really badly want to ream him right now. I didn't ask for this. I don't want to be wiped. I don't want to return to what I was before. I don't know whether to be angry at Wes or at Alex right now. Both, I think. Two men that I have loved. One who knows, one who doesn't.

Behind me, the others wait to be reformed into what they were, though they are about as ready as I am for that. We are not the same people we were before we left, and it seems so unfair that they want to take that from us.

I know it's the rules. I know it has to be done. But to us it makes no sense. We spent a few months in the twenty-first century. Why do they think we can't adapt, acclimate, to our own?

And why wasn't I ever brave enough to tell Wes I loved him to his face? I should have done it before he got us here. But he's dead, dead nearly a thousand years before. He died because he cared about us too much to let us stay there. Just as Alex probably does.

If I ever meet Rialtson, he'll be so sorry for what he's done. If I remember. Will I remember about Wes when they're done? Or will he be an odd historical fact, a teammate I can never quite remember?

I won't let them do that. Despite everything, I love Wes. He isn't Alex, no matter what happened in the end.

If I could have prevented his death, I would have. But he's closed that exit. We aren't going back. They won't let us. No, we will be acclimated. Made to forget. Returned to what we were.

Except for the person we may forget, the one thing forever missing from our lives.

-end