[14 Dec 2000  -  Pastime Tavern.  Indiana.]

DINO

I rolled the tumbler in my hands and half wished Terry was here with me.  Nobody appreciates shitty scotch like the old man.  Heh.  Shit bar in a shit town.  I should have known better than to hold out hope for some good scotch.  I patted my jacket pockets, found my cigarettes and pulled them out.  One left.  One left from the pack I had on me when I was pulled into this... Otherplace. 

I tapped the pack on the counter as I'd done countless times in the days following my crossing.  And then I put it back and brought out the new one I'd bought.  Don't really know why I couldn't bring myself to smoke the last one.  I'm not much for ascribing sentimental value to inanimate objects.  I've lived a transitory life too long to get attached to things.  I think it was more that it was once I knew it was gone, it would be the last taste I had of the world I understood. 

This place sure as fuck didn't make much sense.  I mean, Terry and I?  We listened to that shit Maximus had to say.  To be honest, it sounded like the blarney my dad used to spout when he'd had a bit too much of Ireland's finest.  The whole thing was on the outside of believable even if I had been stamped from the same mold as the rest of them.  At least I'd have had that.  I mean, come on, man.  This merry band of Brothers all had the same face-  and it wasn't mine.  I think if I hadn't been looking from Terry to ol' Maxie and back again while he laid down what had to be the wildest story I'd heard in my life- I'd have walked right then.

I can't imagine it was an easy talk to give.  Harder still to listen to.  When Max got to the part about the reasons we were pulled- that it had to do with the old man being one of Crowe's creations, I could just see this weight settle down hard on his shoulders.  Knew just what he was thinking, too.  That he'd fucked up his 'best mate's' life.  Christ.  Like he has some sort of control over the force guiding the 'crossing'.  Clearly, my presence was an anomaly.  Max couldn't even explain it.  Terry somehow pulled me here.  I wondered if it was a comment on our friendship or maybe it was that our lives are inexorably linked.  I've saved his.  He's saved mine.  Maybe we're bound in ways we don't see.  Fuck.  Maybe it was just I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Or maybe the right one.  Guess I'll never really know the answer to that.      

You know, it's funny what you recall.  Now Max- despite the bizarre nature of what he was imparting, gave us a briefing that would have done any agent working for Luthan proud.  I listened.  Hard.  Intel in an unfamiliar situation will make or break you and I had no intention of letting this place get the better of me.  And yet all the while I was listening to him, this stupid line from a kid's song just wouldn't stop running through my mind. 

Which one of these is not like the others?

With one or two notable exceptions, I've always been the kind of person who lived his life on the edges of other people's lives.  I'd never really been a joiner.... but to go from that to being the freak of a family of freaks?  That was going to take some getting used to.  But hey, you know me.  Always did like to make an entrance. 

We made an entrance of a different sort a short while later at a primo little watering hole I knew.  Good atmosphere.  Better scotch.  Gorgeous women.  After that conversation, all of us could do with a little unwinding- on a variety of levels.  Max was a bit of an odd duck, but over the course of the evening I began to appreciate his unique brand of humor.  I also began to appreciate what his crossing must have been like.  Ours was rough and we'd had the 'luxury' of crossing into a familiar time and into a world that could understand us when we spoke.  My respect for the General ratcheted up a few notches.  He was a good guide, a good man to have at your side - or at your back - and he clearly appreciated how a woman looked coming- and going.  Guess some things don't change no matter which millennium you're born in.                       

I didn't fuck around for long, though.  Coupla days.  Just enough to get my bearings and make some decisions about which direction I wanted to go personally and professionally.  I'm not a patient man.  I don't like waiting around when there's things that need to get done.  Terry isn't either.  It helped having him there.  I can't imagine what it must be like to experience the crossing entirely alone.  To have no man whose eyes you can meet who knows the world as you do....  Did.  Talk about the rudeness of life. 

From what I've been told, some who've crossed before me took some time to get themselves settled.  That a 'treasury' existed now for that purpose.  I didn't ask too much about that.  Plausible deniability is a beautiful thing.  Though the option was there, I couldn't really see myself sitting alone in some house somewhere while I made sense of all this.  Not my style.  Best thing for me to do was jump right back into it.  Sink or swim, man. 

I swam.  Finished mapping out the business plan with the old man and then told him I had some personal stuff to take care of.  He gave me that look he does, but he's a good friend and he knows when to keep his mouth shut.  I left him to finish sorting himself out and took off.  There were a couple of things I had to know before I could settle into this existence.  Things that were going to require the lightest of touches when I went digging.  Max had made it quite clear that in this new family we'd become a part of, security was paramount.  I agree with him.  Which meant I could still have my answers... I just needed to find them in the most circumspect way possible.

In my own world, I'd been in love once.  Truly.  Deeply.  She died tragically before our life together had hardly gotten started.  My first thought-my very first after I grasped exactly what Max was telling us, was that she might have escaped that fate here in this world.  God, my Gen.  Unsure which (if any) of my contacts remained in this world, and apprehensive about digging where I was unsure of the repercussions it might cause, I chose the least intrusive way to begin. 

In my world, I'd been away on a covert, classified mission at the time Gen died and I'd been unable to carry out her last wishes because of that.  In my absence, her estranged family buried my Gen in the cold earth in dismal little cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Losing her broke something inside me, and knowing that I hadn't even been able to put her to rest by scattering her ashes in the wind as she'd desired?  That had rested heavy on my soul these many years.

It was in that gray little patch of bare earth that I found her.  The date on the pink granite was different, but it was my Gen.  Buried in the cold earth.  Old pain welled up in me, bright and sharp like fresh blood.  I don't know how long I stood there, but I do know my hands and face were so cold they'd gone numb by the time I was ready to go back to the car.  I sat in the car a good twenty minutes, warming up and looking at the picture of Gen I'd had in my wallet when I crossed.

Twenty-four hours have passed since then.  I'm warm again but I'm not sure the numb feeling has really gone away yet.  The scotch is piss poor, but at least it goes down warm.  I just can't stop thinking about the purpose of this place, about the bigger reason for the force that prompts our crossing.  Surely there's more to it than the fact they all have the same face... but then again, maybe I only think that because my face is different.  Finding Gen dead in this world too was a bitter pill to swallow and yet, somehow, I think I knew I wasn't here to be granted a second chance with her.  You know, I'm not really sure I wanted one. 

This Gen, she's not my Gen.  She's not the woman who knocked me flat on my face and taught me about love.  She's not the woman I busted my hump to woo.  She's not the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  Make babies with.  Grow old with.  I never made this Gen smile.  No, I wanted no second chances.  I think it was mostly just that I'd been hoping her beautiful light hadn't been extinguished while it still burned so brightly.  She'd had a few more years here than she did in my world, but it just seemed like such a waste.  Christ, she wasn't even thirty. 

Last night, I saw her face in my dreams, dancing in and out of the faces of the handful of other people who've touched my heart over the years.  This morning, I did something I've not done in a long time.  Called home.  Don't really know what I was expecting.  Maybe just to hear a friendly voice.  It doesn't matter.  An unfamiliar voice picked up and I hung up.  It was a stupid thing to do, but at least I was smart enough not to do it from my hotel room.  At least it couldn't be traced back to me.  

The longer I sat there drinking, the more Max's protection of this odd family made sense to me.  There wasn't a man among them who hadn't tragically lost every connection to every living person he ever knew.  Like a fire that burned down your home... you lose everything- only here, it was with relationships as well as with things.  All they had left was each other.  How many people ever experience that in their lives?  Everything they ever worked for- gone.  Not only that, but starting over with nothing in a world where every single relationship you've ever made is wiped away, as if it never existed?  That's some pretty big incentive to protect the precious little you have left.

It wasn't so much I was hung up on 'why me?' or 'why us?' as much as it was I simply couldn't believe the creation of something this unbelievably extraordinary didn't have a deeper meaning.  I think it's all tied up in the idea of family.  Why these men?  Soldiers and pilots, priests and cops.  All loners.  All searching.  All forced to deal with each other in this surreal existence.  Forced to work together.  That had a strange balance in it.   

It was the notion of family that stuck in my thoughts, however.  Faces from the dream I'd had last night replayed in my mind.  My mother cooking.  My father working on an old muscle car.  Heather, a good buddy's kid sister, laughing at my bad jokes.  Gen smiling.  Terry toasting a successfully negotiated ransom demand.

Heather.  Man, I hadn't thought about her in years.  Not really sure what had triggered her face to appear in my dreams.  After I joined the Corps, I started getting in the habit of going home with one of my buddies when we had leave.  Heather was his little sister.  For years, that's all it was.  She was just a kid to me and I was- fuck, I don't know what I was to her.  Who knows what goes on in a little girl's head?  She didn't stay little forever though.  By the time she was seventeen, there were some sparks between us.  I never touched her.  It wasn't like that.  It was more like walking a path and acknowledging a fork you know you're not ever going to take.  You feel this fleeting moment of 'what if?' but then you step beyond it and the memory of it fades over time.

I remember her fondly.  She had a quiet peace about her that I always liked.  She made me feel settled inside when I was around her.  Jesus.  Maybe that's what brought her to mind now.  I hadn't felt settled since I arrived in this Otherplace.  In my past, she'd been this strange sort of anchor that I'd never sought out and never expected and yet somehow, when I was with her, it was like something inside me was dialed down a few notches.  It wasn't like I ever put my life on hold for her.  I always had a woman or two (or three) in my life during the times I'd drop in on her family.  My life was full.  I worked hard, played hard, fucked hard... and yet she had this strange ability to pull me out of warp.  Like I could sit and talk to her and not be bouncing my leg and twitching in anticipation to get up and get going, to get on to the next challenge, the next fuck, the next mission.

I passed by that fork, though.  In my world, the last time I'd seen her, she'd been about nineteen.  I'd given her a little glass float to keep for me and told her I'd be back for it someday.  That was the last time I saw her.  I don't really know why I never went back.  Rhythm of life, I guess.  I don't really feel sad about it.  I can remember thinking 'what if' a few times over the years, but I'd had my career in the Marines.  Gen.  Terry.  Luthan.  And then I wanted to open my own shop and recruited Terry to get that off the ground.   

Now once again back at the beginning of the road, I wondered about the fork I didn't take.  Did Heather exist here?  She'd be what?  Twenty-four, twenty-five, now?  The thought that she might be single and interested in starting something with me didn't really cross my mind.  I kind of figured if she did exist here, she'd probably be married with a couple of kids by now and I wasn't exactly at a place in my life where I was ready for the strings that came with a serious romantic relationship. 

I think mostly, when a man is forced to start over as I had been, he searches for the things that will make his foundation strong.  She'd been a good friend to me once.  Perhaps she would be again.  And I think if I was really honest, I needed something to hold on to.  Something that wasn't connected to a family with a face I didn't share.   

[19 Dec  2000  -  San Francisco, California.]       

DINO     

It wasn't really all that hard to track Heather down- and she was far enough removed from me that I didn't have to be as painstakingly careful in the way that I looked her up.  Still, I was cautious.  I've never been one for tipping my hand.  After what had happened when I tried to call home, I changed tactics and used the Internet to look her up.  Found her old address easily enough.  That was the same but the college she'd graduated from was different.  I wondered what had affected that change.  Did a bit more digging.  Found and verified her current address and place of employment.  She was living outside of Sausalito and working at the nearby Veteran's Hospital. 

Seeing that name gave me a bit of a jolt.  In my world, I'd recently purchased some property in Sausalito.  Hmmm.... recently.  I counted the years back with a shake of my head.  Four years ago?  Has it really been that long?  Doesn't matter anyway.  I checked on that too.  No record of the sale of the property and it wasn't held in my name.  I didn't think it would be, but it still bothered me.  Felt like I'd lost my haven all over again and it unsettled me when I thought about what had happened to it now that I was gone.  What had happened to my old life?  Had it disappeared?  Had I?  What of the people who knew me? 

I don't know about the others, but though I didn't own much, what I did have was precious and it was hard to give it up.  To lose it all in one roll of some cosmic dice was rough, to say nothing of the relationships I lost along with it.  All I had of that old life was the pieces I carried in my heart, what I had in my pockets, and the contents of my wallet when I 'crossed'.  One picture of Gen.  Thank God for that.  Bit of money.  Phone number of a girl I met in a bar the night before Terry and I went to rescue the cargo from that shit jungle in Tecala.  Credit card and ID- that had been replaced with the new ones Max provided for us via SID.  A fucking Starbucks card.  Never let it be said that the universe doesn't have a sense of humor.  It can fuck you over but at least you can still get a decent cup of coffee.

I was holding one now, actually, as I waited on one of the benches outside where Heather worked.  Figured it would be better to 'bump' into her here instead of showing up on her doorstep and run the risk of making her feel trapped or that some stranger was stalking her.  I was hoping this way we might strike up a conversation that would flow a little more smoothly than me knocking on her door and saying, "Hi, I'm Dino.  You don't know me but I know you.  We were friend once in my world before I got pulled here to this Otherplace."  Christ, you might as well fit me for the tinfoil hat and straight jacket. 

Still, I couldn't help but wish things had gone a little more my way.  California dreams?  Hardly.  It was fucking cold here, gray and windy.  This was my third day on this bench and I was beginning to rethink the plan.  Hadn't had much luck.... and sitting here all day, less than a week before Christmas, watching all these vets come and go?  Lots of them in wheelchairs.  Lots of them struggling.  Alone.  It was hard to watch.  Traditionally, soldiers don't care much for hospitals.  Not because they're playing tough, but because they don't like seeing the others and being reminded what could happen to them when they're on a mission with a high probability of tanking.  I was no exception.

I didn't care much for the place but the idea that Heather worked here made me feel good.  My Heather had always had a soft heart and a deep respect for anyone who served- old, young, Air Force, Marines, Army.  She didn't care.  She'd loved to hear our stories.  And she had this way of anticipating things we might need or want without making us feel smothered. 

I remember one year we were stationed in the Gulf.  We'd been in country more than nine months and we were looking at spending a long hot Christmas crawling in the sand when the mail shipment arrived.  God, it was like watching a bunch of grown dirty men turning into little boys at Christmas.  'Poggie bait' is what we called it.  The good stuff from home.  Wives and girlfriends and mothers sending us stuff to ease our hearts and bodies.  Letters.  Pictures.  Food.  

Heather had sent her brother a stocking filled with homemade treats.  I was floored when he passed the box to me and I pulled out an identical stocking with my name stitched into the top of it.  Cookies and fudge and divinity.  My eyes watered it tasted so damned good.  And packed between the stockings was the sorriest looking Charlie Brown Christmas tree I've ever seen in my life.  Barely a foot tall and half dead from lack of water, even with the careful packing job.  And despite the fact we decorated it with empty shell casings and condom foil, it really touched me that someone would think to send us a tree. 

I could easily picture the girl who'd sent that working at a place like this- listening to the old men.  Sassing the younger ones.  Making them all feel the way I'd felt that Christmas.  I killed time trying to imagine what she might look like now.  I mostly remembered a quiet girl who could be a bit goofy and occasionally annoying, but she always had this smile I couldn't resist.  She was fair with long dark hair.  My imagination was having a hard time trying to picture her as she might be today.  I kept seeing flashes of her perpetual ponytail, braces, her face still soft with the last of that roundness from childhood.  I remember the way she used to tease me shamelessly or giggle when she beat me at cards.  She had a sharp mind and a nice laugh.  I've missed them both.   

My trip down memory lane was interrupted when the heavy glass doors opened and a woman came through them, pushing an old man in a wheelchair.  She was a brunette, but far too short to be the woman I was seeking.  I took another sip of my now-cold coffee and sighed as I shifted on the hard wooden bench.  I'm good at waiting.  I just don't like it much.  I let my gaze wander and didn't pay much attention the next time the doors opened, though I kept counting for some ridiculous reason.  Guess it helped pass the time.  Three hundred eighty-nine the first day.  Four hundred thirty-two the second day.  Today, the people passing through that door that weren't her clocked in at two hundred sixty-four.... and counting. 

I heard a grizzled old voice boom out, "Hey there!  How's my favorite girlfriend?"  I turned to look, not quite believing my eyes until I heard her silvery laugh ring out.  I knew that laugh.  A slender young woman was steadying a doddering old man as he made his way up the three low steps in front of the building.  I took a long appreciative look at her.  I couldn't yet see her face but I heard her ask him if he was being good, staying out of trouble and his scratchy old voice rise again.  "Hell no, girl.  Keeps me young."    

She held the door for him and teased him back before she finally turned and started back down the walkway.  She shivered against the bite of the wind and pulled her thin coat tighter around her slender body.  I felt the immediate surge of warm excitement you always feel when you see someone you remember fondly but haven't seen in years.  I also felt an unexpected prickle of arousal bloom low in my belly and creep between my legs.  The girl I remembered had become a beautiful woman- both going and coming. 

She was thinner than I thought she'd be.  Thinner than she probably should be.  Her hair was long and loose, fluttering in the wind.  Her face had lost the roundness of youth and her cheekbones were more pronounced.  She still had that same infectious smile, though, and the same light still danced in her eyes.  She seemed tired and a little harried, but I could see a lot of my Heather in this woman before me.  Little mannerisms I recognized, others I didn't.

She walked with her chin up, taking in everything.  It made me smile as I watched her eyes move, resting on the seagulls wandering on the grass to the waving flag above to an old couple walking slowly toward the parking lot.  Something warmed inside me as her eyes rested on me a brief moment in passing and then I felt something else entirely as her gaze darted back to me and she stopped dead in her tracks. 

What I first thought was simply her appreciation of a man she thought was attractive suddenly became something else as I saw the flare of recognition in her eyes.  She mouthed my name but no sound came out.  Her slender hands clutched her coat tighter and she backed up a few steps, shaking her head in disbelief.  

Oh fuck.  

It simply hadn't occurred to me that there might already be a Dean Thomas O'Leary in this world.  I can't for the life of me think why that never entered my mind- but it hadn't.  Not once.  I almost never miss anything that big.  I mean-- I'm usually the man with the plan.  My ability to think things out from every angle happens to be pretty damn good.  You don't get to be my age in this line of work if it isn't... and this was just now occurring to me?  Shit.  SHIT!   Maybe I was still feeling the effects of the crossing.  Who the fuck knows.  I could tell by her reaction, though, that I'd made a serious miscalculation.

"Dean?"  I nodded and her mouth open and shut a few times as we simply stood there, staring at each other.  "Oh God.  Oh my God."  She kind of rocked back and forth, hugging herself.  She mumbled, more whispering to herself than talking to me.  I didn't know what the hell to say.  And then things got worse.  So, SO much worse.  "But- but.... you're dead." 

Holy God.  Fuck- I just... I couldn't even think.  Jesus.  Dead?!  

Her hand reached out to touch me and she shuddered as her fingertips brushed the leather of my coat.  "You're real."  She sounded surprised- and shocked.  Every last bit of the color drained from her face and I could tell she was about to bolt.  "Oh, God.  How?  How?!"  She shook her head angrily and backed away again.  "No.  NO!"

Her sudden exclamation jolted me into motion and my brain whirled.  I reached for her hand.  "Wait!"  Jesus.  If the Dean she knew was dead- then she must either think she's insane or that I'm a ghost.  In an instant, I replayed and weighed every last thing Max had said about outsiders being made privy to the family secret.  And then I made a decision.  My Heather- she always believed there were things beyond her ken.  Things that you couldn't see.  Things that must be embraced by faith alone.  My Heather would have heard the secret and understood.  I know it in my heart. 

Sink or swim.  Throwing aside every single thing Max had told me, I began talking.  Pixie on speed, Terry calls it.  I heard the words almost from outside myself.  Heard my voice explaining about the crossing and this Otherplace I'd found myself in.  Not completely around the bend, I omitted any reference to Crowe and multiple men all having the same face.  I might have been desperate but I wasn't stupid.  I think well under pressure and I gave her as much of the truth as I possibly could, willing her to understand.  I wanted to make her understand that she wasn't crazy- and neither was I.  And I desperately needed her not to turn from me.  I needed to cling to this one root.  Badly. 

Which one of these is not like the others? 

All the rest of the brothers- their faces alone made them members of something I will never be a part of, crossing or not.  I needed my own foundation.  Something outside of that.  And I had absolutely no idea how desperately I'd been needing it until I saw that it might slip through my grasp.  I opened my mouth and let it pour out in a flood.   

I needed her to swim.  She sank like a stone.

"It's too much."  She took another step back from me.  It killed me not to advance on her but I was afraid she'd run if I did.  "I can't do this again."  Her hand formed a fist and struck her chest over her heart.  "Not again...."  I don't even know if she realized she was rubbing her heart.  "Ashes to ashes...."  her voice choked and I didn't quite catch her words.   

"What?"   

"Your ashes....."  She tripped over the words.  "His ashes..."  Oh shit.  My chest felt tight.  The world seemed to come to a screeching halt.  Even the wind died down.  I think even our hearts stilled.  "I scattered them...." she motioned to Sausalito Bay behind us and the hair on the back of my neck rose.  "Like he wanted, I scattered them," she repeated almost to herself.  Her eyes met mine.  "I just- I can't hurt like that again.  I can't...."  She shook her head and moved back a couple of more steps.  "I'm sorry... I just can't."  She suddenly seemed to shake herself and look at her watch.  "I have to go.  I have to go now...."

"Don't go."  I could see her struggling.  I felt like a complete shit for asking her to stay but something in me was telling me not to let her go.  "Please, I know it's hard.  Just hear me out."  I'd hardly had a chance to tell her the most basic facts.  She knew nothing of my life and I knew nothing of hers or how she came to be the one to scatter her Dean's ashes. 

For a moment there was a flare in her eyes and then she blinked it away.  "I'm sorry...."  

"Please, listen to me."

"I have to go," she said again.  "I have to be somewhere."

That sobered me.  A date then?  Jesus.  I'd noticed she wasn't wearing a ring, but surely a woman like her would have someone in her life.  I kicked myself again for being so selfish and finally just nodded and stepped back.  I'd never force her into anything.  Not my Heather.  Not this Heather either.

She wiped the tears from her face and half ran half walked to her car, her hand over her mouth.  I'd shaken her bad.  And the knowledge that I was dead in this world had shaken me pretty bad, too.... but not as bad as the knowledge that she'd scattered my ashes into the wind.  Well, his ashes.  Her dean's.  That put everything into an entirely different light, now didn't it?  Jesus.  Her Dean. 

Oh fuck.  My head hurt.  My heart hurt.  I'd come here looking for answers and all I'd done is unearth more questions.  So I did the only thing I could.

I followed her.