In Due Time
Posted on October 31st, 2022 by Kathryn Harper and Jack Cahalan

“Hello, Kathryn,” said a familiar voice from behind Kate as she inspected fresh produce in the market.

Hardly anyone called her Kathryn, and that voice — Kate turned and her face lit up with recognition. “Jack!” she exclaimed as she threw her arms around her old friend, Atlantis’s former bartender, and hugged tightly. After a few moments of the familiar embrace, Kate leaned back and, still holding Jack by the shoulders, peered around him to ask, “Is Jenna with you? I hope so, and you just have to come see our new house! Lexy will be so glad to see you!”

“Jenna stayed home for this trip, but I would love to see Alexis and your new house, in due time.”

With a sudden thought that this meeting could hardly be a coincidence, Kate took a step back and narrowed her eyebrows as she asked, “So, how do you find yourself here? I know you live on Risa, but we do not normally get many offworlders up here. Not that I am not delighted to see you, of course!”

“Then they don’t know what they’re missing if they only stick to Suraya; Jenna has been showing me the whole world, and I’ve actually been here before!” Jack looked around the market and took a deep breath of the fresh, warm air that held a suggestion of autumn. “I find this area to be particularly charming, so I see why you and Alexis chose it for your home base. But as for why I’m here now, well… let’s just say that I sensed a friend in need.”

A particular word of his could hold greater weight when used by a Betazoid. “Sensed? Figuratively or literally?”

“Mm, I would say a bit of both,” he replied enigmatically. “Would you care to go somewhere more private to speak?”

“Yes, of course, Jack.” With a gesture back toward the path she had arrived from, Kate offered, “Lexy is out at the moment, but walk back to the house with me? It is not far, and I have some fantastic coffee to share.”

“Certainly!” With a grin, he added, “Perhaps ‘due time’ is a bit more due than I had imagined.”

=/\=

Seated across from her at a patio table by Kate’s pool, Jack Cahalan savored a drink of his coffee and placed the cup on the table. He met her curious gaze and calmly stated, “Few, if any, know this, but I am an El-Aurian.”

Kate’s green eyes widened at the news. Having been mostly wiped out by the Borg, El-Aurians were rare to even hear about, much less to meet, and a few famous members of that species had certainly been around for notable events in Federation history. “That is remarkable, Jack,” she began, “and I mean that, truly. Your people are simply incredible. But… why tell me that now, after all these years?” After a half a beat of thought on why he was here and revealing this secret, her voice gained a hint of a pleading tone as she asked, “Could it be that you are here to… Jack, can you answer some questions for me?”

With a genial smile, Jack answered, “As I said, I sensed a friend in need, Kathryn. You have had a bit of trouble with time lately, haven’t you? And I don’t mean that you’re busy.”

“You could say that, yes.” It was an understatement; she had sacrificed her life while stranded twenty-thousand years in the past to prevent it from happening in the first place, but still remembered all of it, including her own death. Not to mention that she possessed two physical artifacts from that experience along with a strange bond with Emily Acacia, who had empathically been by her side to soothe the pain of dying. Kate also was certain that a dream of her potential children with Lexy had actually been a glimpse of a possible timeline, and hypothesized that the two things might be related. She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache starting to come on.

Jack gave a sagely nod. “I know. Time is a weird soup, after all.”

“A weird… soup?” The headache’s beginnings ceased, pushed out by her sudden confusion as she wondered if someone else had gotten an English idiom wrong instead of her.

“It’s a saying from elsewhere… far elsewhere. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, the first thing I came to tell you is that it’s natural to be disoriented and unsure of whether things actually happened in a situation like this. You remember that year, and those who were there with you remember it, and the relationships you strengthened as you relied on each other for your very survival retain that strength. For you, it happened, even if it didn’t ‘officially’ happen happen.”

“Well, that is good to know. I think. I told my people something similar, but it is good to hear it from someone with more insight into time than most.”

After a nod, Jack added, “I remember it too, you know. From the other side, after your disappearance.”

Kate’s head snapped back as if she had been smacked on the forehead; while stranded, she had often thought about those she had left behind, but, fortunately, none of them had ever seemed to have any inkling that anything had been wrong when she returned. “Oh… I had not thought of that as a possibility, that anyone else could have even… my parents would have been inconsolable,” came her quiet reflection on this knowledge.

He solemnly lowered his head and voice. “I visited them several times when I heard the news. While I knew that you were out there and could possibly find a way back, the only way to definitively convince them of that was to reveal my true nature. That gave them hope.”

“I imagine so. Thank you for telling them such a guarded secret just to help them cope.” Shaking her head at the idea of her parents in such pain, she added, “Please, do not tell me anything more about that timeline.”

“Of course, Kathryn. Would you like to hear about something else that was almost true?”

Kate took a drink of her coffee, considering. She now found herself impatient for him to get to the point already, since some of these questions had been burning in her for years now, but she also imagined that her trusted old friend must have a good reason for offering such a story, so she nodded. “Yes, please.”

“In a timeline that was incredibly close to becoming reality, Admiral Zuriyev never married Brooke Dolan, instead ending up with the ship’s counselor, Tempest Rainbird. I actually ended up with Brooke in that one, believe it or not; damn, she was fun.” Jack chuckled and smiled wistfully before continuing, “But, since Alexi and Tempest married, Josie Zuriyev was never born in that timeline, and consequently, no one went to Atlantis to ask Ian Blackthorne to investigate the Admiral’s suspicious retirement. Blackthorne and T’Kirr never went to Earth to do just that, so they couldn’t appear to die in that shuttlecraft accident on their way back.”

Jack took a drink of coffee and cracked his back before continuing the story. “By the time Section 31 could actually abduct them, circumstances had changed so that they did not have the luxury of leaving them alive after their telepathic interrogations were over. They were executed, so no one ever tipped you off that they were still alive, and Atlantis never went on the rescue mission that led to Blackthorne bringing a coalition of allies to expose and challenge them at Earth.” Sensing her impending objection, he added, “You tried, Kathryn, but it was too late by then. Well, I mean, it didn’t happen, but you know what I mean. Your languages lack a proper verb tense to describe this.”

During the story, Kate had risen from her seat and began pacing around the near side of the pool, desperately searching for understanding as to its meaning. “That’s… interesting, but please, Jack… I need to understand all of this.”

Jack dipped his head in concession. “I am getting to the point, I promise, Kathryn. As for the story, it serves as a relatable way to show how close the possible timelines really are, and how often they still intersect. AJ Zuriyev had more of an effect on history than she’ll ever know, and she never would have been born if Brooke’s first assignment out of the Academy hadn’t been the Lexington, which it wasn’t in that timeline I described to you. Brooke still ended up on Atlantis, but instead of having already met Alexi on the Lexington and married him by the time they arrived, she hooked up with me after we got rip-roaringly drunk together in Ten-Forward one night.”

Picking up a change in Jack’s tone as he spoke of Brooke, Kate paused her pacing to pull at that thread while her mind raced through everything he had told her so far. “You sound somewhat wistful about her.”

“Like I said, she was fun. Don’t get me wrong though, I am madly in love with Jenna, but have you ever thought back on past partners and wondered what it would have been like had things worked out?” A small smile crept at the corners of his mouth as a bit of nostalgia manifested in his mind as memories of so many relationships in multiple timelines. “I know, in a lot of cases, and it gives me a sense of perspective and a bit of contentment, as if I actually lived that life.”

Her thoughts did drift through a few of her romances before Lexy; most had ended disastrously, and for them to have actually worked out would have required different versions of both her partners and her. “I cannot even imagine what that must be like,” Kate mused before sitting back down at the table and finishing her coffee. “You seem to be building up to a lesson with all of this, though… please, Jack, tell me?”

“As sharp as ever, dear Kathryn. Well, I came to tell you that the glimpses of your children in your dreams were actually insights into a possible timeline, as you suspected. It is a side-effect of what we call Af-Kelt, or time sickness, a lingering ripple of a disturbance in spacetime. And, also as you suspected, the disturbance in question was your shutdown of the Gencodian reactor and your death there. I must say, your resilience in the face of these… reverberations is remarkable and nothing you have felt about any of this is in any way abnormal, especially given the incredible nature of what you’ve been through. Your strange bond with Emilaina is another side-effect, but one that we have never seen before; her empathic sharing and easing of the pain of your death while the timeline was being changed was clearly the cause, but this result is actually unprecedented, as far as I know.” With a smirk, Jack added, “So, congratulations on surprising an El-Aurian.”

Seeing her facial expression soften as he verified her suspicions, Jack’s smirk turned to a warm smile as he reached across the table and took one of Kate’s hands in both of his to give it a reassuring squeeze. “And one more thing — that timeline you glimpsed with your children is still out there. Nothing you have done so far has precluded it, including accepting that promotion, and for now, continuing to command Atlantis and Third Fleet will not close it off to you. While we El-Aurians cannot predict the future, we can see possibilities, and I can tell you that there is still much more out there for you to learn, discover, experience, and be, Kathryn, if you wish to.”

Kate’s eyes became misty as so much fell into place for her and the reason for his visit became clear. Just having someone that could definitely confirm what had happened to her, validate her feelings about it, and tell her that everything would be fine was an incredible boost to her emotional state, but hearing it from her old friend made it more of an affirmation. Kate wiped at her face with her free hand and smiled at his now blurry visage. “Thank you, my friend. You have helped me more than even you will ever know.”

“Oh, I think I know,” Jack answered softly as his eyes returned from a distant stare to meet hers, smiling at him through happy tears. “And you’re welcome, Kathryn.”