[ March 14, 2004 ]

ANN

It was the wedding ring that did it to me.

No snickering, Diary. None. This has not been an easy time on me. Or on him.

Still, it does have its amusing ironies, does it not? 

Although, damn, you really have to have pity on him. Poor guy. Can you imagine what it's like for someone like him to realize the woman he's with is not the woman he wants her to be even though all evidence would say it's her? For him to have these moments where he actually does wish she was crazy like he first thought rather than to have the reality that he is stuck with some stranger?

Me? Dunno, Diary. For some reason, after I got over the initial shock, I ended up feeling oddly as if I had deserved this. Like I'd played with fate and this was how I got played back by fate.

No, I'm wrong. That wasn't my initial reaction because at first, I was convinced that even if this wasn't a dream, this was more about slipping into another portal path than about anything else. And, I figured, if I'd gone through the portal and if it now turned out there were other worlds out there rather than just mine and PW, then this was something solved as easily as slipping back through a portal. If there was a way in, there was a way out. Right?

It wasn't until later ... until after I realized that this wasn't as simple as slipping through the portal into the wrong reality ... only when I realized nothing was going to go right that I began to believe I was being punished for tempting fate.

But at first, after that first shock wore off ... I was more curious than anything. For the first few hours, even somewhat throughout the first few days, after I realized I wasn't in either PW or my world, I wanted to learn all about this other place and I was looking forward to sharing with my Sisters about what I'd learned.

I was fascinated by both the similarities and the differences between these two worlds. But I was calm even after I realized I couldn't access my portal because I still had faith that I could count on Isobel to help me.

How did I figure out that I was no longer in Perve World and that I wasn't inside a dream? Part of it was the fact that the damned headache wouldn't go away. I mean, when's the last time you've had a dream in which you felt real physical pain? Part of it was the details I was 'dreaming,' which made me think about how, even as vividly as I can dream, this was pushing it to a place I knew my inner demons didn't give a shit about so why would they choose to explore it?

But it was the detail of the ring that got inside and slapped me to attention. Even as he tried to speak with me as I held my head and he held me ... I felt the ring pressing in against my temple and wanted to wake up.

"No matter what else happens, we will work through this. We love each other too much to give up this easy. Understand?" he rather ordered me.

"No. Not really. I don't think anyway." Still wanting it to be a dream.

I felt him shift away from me. Opened my eyes to see him tilt his head and study me intently. Shaking his head slightly and blinking rapidly. He pulled my left hand away from my head and stroked the wedding ring on my finger. "First. No divorce. Got it?"

"Oh, sweet Jesus. We're married but now you're talking divorce? Fuck, what is the meaning of this?" Now praying it was a dream.

"No divorce. You tell the fucking lawyer to tear up the paperwork. We start putting our marriage back together."

"Give me a fucking break," I muttered even as he took my hand again. I kept wondering what shitty sick game my mind was playing on me. I kept wondering what stupid ignorant thing this said about me that I would dream about marriage inside the Game.

"Look at me, love. I mean really look at me." My eyes swept up to his face. This intensity there. It made me tremble with the seriousness of this all. "I will tell you everything. Because I need you to believe me. And then I need you to forgive me."

"I wouldn't ever dream this. Not in a million years, Terry." I heard my voice ... it sounded plaintive and small.

"Jesus, Annie. This is no fucking dream. This is our lives. Are you okay?" He pinched my ass hard. I yelped at the pain and slapped his chest.

"Stop it! Just stop it. Okay, fine. Jesus, don't do that again. I'm awake. Okay? See? There. Now don't ever pinch me like that again, Terry. That hurt."

This was how it went. Like we were going in and out of a real conversation. Him increasingly frustrated; me slowly becoming less confused.

But then I really looked at the ring and tried to convince myself this was the strangest dream. However, pretend all I wanted ... the pinch made me face that I wasn't dreaming. That I never had been. No dream had ever affected my senses this way ... touch, smell, taste. The ethereal nature of dreams was not so present. These senses were not normally accessed in my dreams.

He talked. I didn't listen. I was too far inside this mystery.

But there was something else going on, too. It was her. She was somehow with me. Not like she was possessing my body ... er, guess that would be her body ... but more like around the edges of consciousness, I would have vestiges of memories that were not mine. At first, it was really like this wispy inner voice that tantalized me from the furthest shadows of my memory. It wasn't for a few days before I started purposefully trying to access that voice but all I was really able to do was access feelings about certain things. It must have been what it was like for Jack to have come into our world in place of the first Jack.

In these initial confusing minutes, what these vestigial memories did for me was they enabled me to calm and realize that I was not going crazy but I was no longer inside my worlds. Either of my worlds. I was someplace entirely different and the realization eventually didn't frighten me because I thought it was temporary and that I could leave when I wanted.

It just dawned on me in a flash. That in traveling back through the portal, I'd been shunted through into a different world than the one to which I'd been heading. I suspected this Dea's hand. As it turned out, I was wrong, but that's what I figured initially ... what else could I think?

The thing was ... once I realized I was in another world, I rather assumed they would have heard of portals, right? I kinda told this Terry who I was in a way that I hoped would help him see the humor of the situation but which actually should have probably made him suspect I was crazy. It turned out that the human ability to see what you want to see led him to determine that any odd behavior on my part was easily blamed on the concussion from the fall down the stairs. No, not my fall. His Ann's fall.

It was only in his reaction to my comment ... "This is sure some shitty timing to be finding out that the portals take us into other worlds than our own" ... that I began to realize that I really had no clue as to how I was going to convince this Terry with me that I was not the woman he thought I was.

He was going to have me committed if I wasn't smart about this.

TERRY

Whatever I'd expected her to say to me, to do to me when she first saw me again ... from the moment she opened her eyes, I should have seen it ... there was something really off.

I put it down to the blow to the head. She acted groggy. She said things that didn't make total sense, but with all she'd been through ... if I couldn't just overlook it, what kind of man was I?

She was the one who turned it sexual from almost the moment she came to. She was the one who seemed to instantly want it to be a physical re-uniting. But somewhere in the act of making love, I felt her give herself back to me. And I wasn't worried anymore. It seemed to me that if we could make love like that, there wasn't any doubt that we didn't both want to put things to right between us.

So I know I made love to her for the right reasons. But that night, I sat in the dark and let that moment play over and over in my mind. Should I have realized it was too easy?

Seeing what he'd done to her ... knowing it had to have been so much worse since the bruises were fading and the scratches were healed to nothing but pink lines. Her eye ... Fuck. Still those traces of yellow and purple.

If that shook me, it was nothing to compare to her reaction once she really began to believe she wasn't dreaming.

If nothing else told me something really bad was going on, it was the way she'd stood there in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror later that evening. Her fingers shook as she touched over the remnants of her black eye.

"You did this?" she asked. Breathless. Hurt in her eyes as she stared hard at me in the mirror. "Christ, you hit me? It's not possible. You'd never do that. Would you?"

"No. But I'm responsible."

"Then who?"

"Maximus."

She rounded on me, her eyes narrowed. "Never. Max would never hurt me. He loves me. He would not hurt any woman."

It felt like being punched. These jabs kept coming at me.

I suppose the first jab was her calling me Jack when she woke up. She seemed totally confused. We talked at each other, not to each other. That's what it seemed like. I got irritated because I couldn't seem to get her to concentrate.

When she asked me yet again if she was dreaming, I pinched her on the arse and muttered to her when she jumped ... if she was dreaming, would she have felt that? She slapped me. I figured she was with me again.

But then something happened. It wasn't until later, I realized why she'd seemed to suddenly get so calm. She knew before me, of course. I thought I was with the woman I married and I was with her body, but her spirit was not there. Instead, this stranger was locked inside my Annie's body.

She asked me the date, said something about then there was no way she'd gone into the future in her portal ... I said ... Fuck.

"What are you yammering on about, woman? Portal?"

"Yeah. I was in the portal, going back to Perve World. You know, we can go back to any time we want, maybe it works the same way coming back?"

"What the fuck's a portal? What the fuck is Perve World?"

She tilted her head at me. "But if I'm not in my future and I'm not in Perve World ... Oh ... Then I must be ... in another place and ... You do know about the portals, right?"

"Does it sound like I do?"

"Well, no." She looked at her hands and then up at me. "This is sure some shitty timing to be finding out that the portals take us into other worlds than our own."

I gave her a look. She gave me a half grin. Finally, this small voice: "I'm not who you think I am."

I pushed her away from me. Read fear in her eyes. Shook my head at her. Wondered if instead of a concussion, she'd really flipped out on me. Had the mental trauma I'd inflicted on her driven her off the deep end?

"Who do you think you are, Annie?"

She swallowed hard. "This is hard to explain. But ... well, in my world, we found the portals a while ago. We thought they just let us trade places with ourselves in our old worlds ... the ones we originally came from, I mean. This is a rather new wrinkle. I mean, we would never have known that there might be other worlds. Guess y'all just haven't found yours yet. So that means you haven't a clue as to what I'm talking about and you probably think I'm crazy, right?"

Right. I admit that I was already trying to remember the name of the psychiatrist that Dino and I referred victims to. There I was, even calculating how soon I could get him there if I sent the jet after him.

"Baby, I want you to just think carefully. Try to remember what happened before you fell. Because whatever you think is going on, it has got to be a hallucination from a concussion." But even as I was telling her that, I knew that's not what was going on. Something about her ... something was off. And I didn't think it was the concussion.

I started telling her about her walking on the beach, coming up the stairs to find me, how she fell ... how she'd been out cold when I'd reached her. She sat there staring at me.

"Man, I haven't a clue how to tell you this, Terry. Something has happened," she said finally. "I'm somewhere I shouldn't be. And I don't have a fucking clue why. And my head hurts too bad to think clearly."

"It's the concussion," I said. It was about the only thing of what she'd said that made sense to me.

"I need something for this headache." She walked into the bathroom. I heard her gasp. I walked in there and saw her looking at herself in the mirror. That's when she noticed the fading glory of her black eye. The shiner courtesy of Max. The one she got only because she'd been with him because of me. I had known from the moment I realized what had happened ... she'd been trying to hurt me in some small measure like I'd hurt her. "What the fuck kind of world is this?"

When she said Max loved her ... she said it with such absolute belief ... I felt like he'd punched me a body blow that sent me to my knees.

It spilled out of me. I told her ... all of it. It started with me angry, telling her that he didn't love her; that he barely knew her. She turned and tried to argue with me. I put my hands on her shoulders, and just talked over her ... using the physicality of my bigger presence to force her to let me be in charge just then ... to stand still while I told her ... about the spell, about the charm, about me and Uma, about Max taking Lily, about Isobel, about the way all the couples seemed to be exploding apart in the aftermath of Isobel's bloody spell, about Cort's death, about our entire world falling in on itself.

And finally, reaching the lowest part ... the absolute bottom line. About how, no matter what, the one thing I'd never survive was losing her.

At first, she kept shaking her head. But then she listened with her whole body, like she was just taking it all in. Once I had started, it all came out. It was critical that she understand that while I knew I'd done so wrong, there was more going on than she might ever have realized.

When I finished, she stepped close to me, grabbed my face and just stared in my eyes. Searching for the truth. Her attitude was not what I expected. What she said next, well, it just didn't make sense.

"My God, but y'all have really fucked things up, haven't you? Well, damn, that's a shame. A real shame." She made this deep sigh. "I need a drink. So do you."

A long time later ... she had woven this tale for me of this other place. She said she wasn't Annie. She said she didn't belong here. She said ...

Fuck. She said some crazy shit.

Tried every trick I knew to trip her up, to explain it away, to make her see the truth, to wake her up to reality. But she held fast to her tale of another place she called Perve World. What the fuck kinda name is that, anyway?

But gradually, I started watching her eyes. Really watching. And that's when I started really listening. Because her eyes were wrong.

I've memorized her eyes. Know their every nuance. There was just something so different once I really looked. These were not her eyes anymore. Someone else was with me and it wasn't Annie.

Scared the fuck out of me at first. Then it fucking made me angry. But in the end, it just about killed me.

When I had time to really think it through, it did explain what had happened. It explained why she had called me Jack, why she was happy to see me, why she believed Max loved her. And why she kept staring at her wedding band ... and twisting it round and round on her finger like it felt real uncomfortable to be there.

But that night, there was one thing she said that ... I never really believed it was possible until she proved it to me. Her proof? She knew something about me that I'd never told Ann. My Ann.

We were sitting in the living room. I listened to her talk about this place that I kept trying to convince myself was a bit of fevered imagination conjured up by a mind so wounded by reality that she'd invented a world she preferred.

But I forced myself to look in her eyes as she talked. I barely heard the details. I just kept asking myself, what was different? What is it about her that seems not quite the same? And she noticed. She got frustrated with me.

She started asking me questions. Pointing to the ring, asking how it had happened that Ann would agree to marriage. Because we loved each other, I said. That simple, she asked me. I just nodded. It had been that simple, hadn't it?

"I would never have found it that simple," she whispered. "Don't you see? I'm not her. We must have different pasts or something. It'd be fascinating to find out."

My fingers found their way into the palm of her hand. "Whatever is going on, Annie, I'll be right here for you. Promise."

She smiled at me. She looked so sad when she did. "Then you're not much different than the Terry I know. Maybe your past is pretty much the same? Perhaps that's part of all this ... like maybe you men come with very similar pasts into whatever world ... I mean, there must be multiple worlds, mustn't there? So maybe the major points of your past remain the same. Like in your case, right? The big things like your childhood, college, SAS, Iraq, Tecala ...Alice."

"No secrets there," I said. Clipped the words out. An unwanted reminder from her ... was she trying to freshen up that old wound? Trying to make some point about me and my ability to honor marital vows? I took a rough, deep drag on the scotch and just stared at her.

She swallowed hard and stuttered that she hadn't meant anything nasty. Right.

"Okay, so apparently that's the same ... so if your past is the same as his, it's the details, right? Maybe things he's shared with me that you've not told her and ..."

"What are you trying to prove?"

"Look, there's got to be a way to prove to you that I'm not her. This is really the only way, isn't it? I mean if I tell you things about me that are different than her, you'll just think I'm making them up and there'd be no way to prove it. But if I know some small detail ... something only you know about you ... something you'd have had to tell me for me to know ... then if you hadn't told her, it'd prove something, right?  Wouldn't it prove I knew another you and that man told me? Don't fucking roll your eyes at me. Admit that this is logical."

That little show of temper. I liked it. It seemed ... normal in a small, explainable way. It seemed like just maybe she was coming back to herself. I can't explain, not even begin to explain, how it had made me feel these long days since she'd walked away from seeing me with Uma ... how it felt to realize that her reaction was so wrong, so out of what I'd have expected, so diametrically opposed to what she should have done ... I had been living scared for her ever since.

"I hate how you treat me like that," she said softly. "Like I don't really know you."

"When have I ever treated you like that?" I asked her, wondering what I'd done to deserve this ... yet, inside, feeling this nagging worry coming back.

"I know I am not easy for you. Believe me, Terry, I know every one of my faults you do and then some. But what I know of you is what you let me see. You know, there was always this aspect of me not prying into places you didn't want me to go that benefited you."

"You? Not pry? Right." I gave this involuntary reaction ... a snort of amusement. What woman didn't pry more than most men wanted?

"Yeah. I don't pry where you don't want me. Maybe it's because I respect you or maybe it's just that I understand the need for boundaries in the Game."

The Game. The Game? Who would have wanted to believe it existed? Who would have wanted to believe their woman would want it to exist?

"Sorry. Jesus. This is hard, isn't it? I forgot ... you're not him and I shouldn't just assume that ... Okay, well see, the thing is ... it's just not ... He's the one who got me to start telling him my secrets. I ... if I could take it all back, I'd never have revealed shit to him."

"Him? Or me? You seem to be unsure who you're pretending to be with, love."

"Okay, fine. Him ... let's see ... what's he told me that ... when you were about 13, you had a dog named Clancy. A mutt you hid from your mom because she said she didn't want any of you bringing a dog home."

Clancy. Clancy? Jesus. Hadn't thought about her in years. The way she ... "So I told you about Clancy. What's that prove?"

"You told her? Did you? Then why are you looking a bit puzzled?"

"I told you that day we were in that dive of a restaurant in Mamou and that mangy bitch of a dog wandered inside ... came right up to us, remember?" She shook her head at me. "Yeah, she bloody did. Reminded me of Clancy and I told you all about how I got her to follow me home and how I fed her every day for weeks, thinking I'd fooled Mum but how it wasn't until I found my Mum playing with her when I came home from school that I knew she'd known ..."

"Fine. Then let me think of something else." She got up and walked around, sipping at her scotch and making me think how odd it was that she wasn't drinking wine. Suddenly she stopped and looked at me over her shoulder. "Begging."

"What? Begging?"

"Yeah. I took him begging for Mardi Gras beads and he ..." She gave me this giggle and looked away. It took a few tics before she looked back at me and she was looking sad. "He came to see me over Mardi Gras last year. I took him down to Bourbon Street and he ... he flashed to get beads ..."

"Flashed? As in ..."

"As in flashed his dick out and received boucoup beads from his adoring audience of gays and ..." She looked hard at me. "I gave him such grief for that because only tourists do that and ... he was drunk ... he told me about this time when he was on a mission in Croatia and he'd gone to Beirut ... 'fleshpots of Beirut' he said ... and on a dare ..."

"Beirut?" I said and it wasn't that I didn't remember the trips I'd taken to Beirut for some R&R during a tough few months of a hell mission in Croatia, but ... I just didn't have a clear memory of telling Ann. Couldn't think of why I would have told her about something like those sordid and wild excursions that had happened years ago. "What'd I tell you?"

"He said one guy said he'd buy the services of two women for any one of you who'd moon near the entrance to the mosque and you ..."

"No way."

"You said you not only mooned but that some local emir saw and ordered his men to grab you but they stood not a chance against the crack men in your team ... next thing you remembered was waking up in a bed with four women and ... I think you said someone was pounding on the door and you thought you'd never find your way out of the flesh of those women clinging to you and each other and ..."

"And my mates were coming to get me before the local emir's baddies nabbed me and tossed me in the pokey and ..."

We were both smiling ... me at the memory of absurdity of youth and her maybe in response to my own amusement. And then I realized ... I didn't have a clear memory of having told Annie ... and it's just not the kind of thing I would have ever told her, in blunt honesty.

"Doesn't prove anything," I said softly.

"Doesn't it?" She seemed to have gained confidence. "Then let me think of something else.  I imagine you both shared with each other all about your first time so that wouldn't prove much. Did you ever tell her about the first time you fired a gun? In the first SAS training course?"

"Wasn't a gun, Annie."

"Yeah, sorry. I always fuck that up. This is your gun, this is your rifle ... one you use to fuck with and one you use to ... I forget how that goes."

"Yeah. Leave that one alone." We smirked at each other. Black humor in the midst of what I could feel edging into a place I didn't want it to go. "So about my rifle?"

"Yeah, firing your rifle." She cleared her throat. "You said your drill instructor or whatever the fuck you called them in the SAS ... wasn't his name Briggsie? Well, you said he gave you a nickname after you demonstrated your technique ... remember? He was trying to screw with your mind, take you down a few pegs and you didn't understand til later that it was because you were right off the bat the best, steadiest shot in the group ..."

"Nickname?" Jesus. I wasn't even sure I remembered that much less that I would have ever told her.

"Stevie Wonder." When she said it, I couldn't help the smirk. Fucking Briggsie. Trust him to call me that ... best fucking eyes in the regiment and nothing I ever did was good enough for him. But, Christ, did he make me a different man by the time he was done with me. I could hear that gravel voice saying ... and, as if on cue, his words were coming out of Ann's mouth: "Stevie Wonder -- where's your guide dog?"

Jesus. How would she know he used to say that to me? No way. No one had said that to me ... in too many years. Briggsie used to taunt me with that ... Jesus. Don't know that I even remembered it until she said it; I couldn't picture a reason I would have repeated that taunt to Annie. Why would I? Under what circumstances? I tried to think of when I might have told her about it ... could she have overheard me tell Dino?

"You know, that reminds me that he told me your nickname for your rifle."

My head shot up and I glared hard at her.

Her eyebrows drew down and she wasn't smiling at all. Deadly serious. Knowing I was getting spooked. "Briggsie made each of you name your rifle. You had to give it a woman's name because he said it was the last time in a long time you'd be fingering any woman's snatch. You called yours ..."

"Shut up."

"You called her Gwen after your ..."

"Stop it."

"Gwen was your high school English teacher's first name. Your first love. He told me how he couldn't stand up in her lessons or on the way home after on the bus. And he said, even then, even as an adult, she was still featuring pretty regularly in your wet dreams and you figured ..."

"Jesus."

"You figured she was your longest relationship to that point."

"Fuck."

"Never told her that, did you?" she said. But she didn't say it smug, like she'd won some victory. She said it knowing full well that this was a damned hard thing for me to swallow. Coming to sit by me on the couch, she stroked my hand and just stayed there with me as I absorbed this.

I got up and walked away. Was standing at the glass door, looking out on the Gulf and the stars. "How could you know?"

"Because Terry told me. You know how you just sometimes say things about your past and things you remember ... things that just come up in conversation or remind you of something ..."

I knew that she was telling me the truth. She knew things my Ann never had ... they might not have seemed like much, but they were also the kind of things I just never really had had a reason to share with Annie. God, the way it fucking felt to even consider that what she was saying about not being my Annie was true. Told her to go back and tell me about the place she came from. To tell me about the relationships. To make me understand how such a place, such a set up could exist.

It's when I understood the immensity of what she wanted me to believe. I couldn't even look at her after she started talking about all these men ... the Brothers ... that she was 'familiar' with. She was circumspect but I caught on quick enough. Fucking them all whenever they wanted ... fucking any of them whenever she wanted. The mixed up, fucked up world of multiple partners and everyone sharing. Made me flash on the little rule we all wink and joke about here. Like it had been perverted and an entire world built around it. Who'd think up something like that?

Got the impression ... the distinct impression ... that she was downplaying a lot of it. Might have been a wise move on her part, considering how I got more and more frustrated to think I'd be expected to believe this kind of shit.

But she knew things about me that I'd never shared with Ann. And she told me things about 'her Terry' that seemed ... like a semblance of how I'd feel in a given situation.

Still remember the moment ... the gut-check moment when it hit me. If this was true, then my woman was in trouble and I had to find the way to help her. My Annie. The woman I loved. Trapped somewhere in another place, with people she didn't know. I could picture her ... after the trauma of what she'd been through here and now finding herself lost to me, scared, alone, thinking she was going crazy.

"Jack will take care of her," Ann whispered to me. "He loves me too much, no matter what. He will shelter her until ... once he realizes she's not me, he will contact Isobel for help."

"Isobel?"

"Sure. If anyone will know what to do, it will be Isobel. Plus, she has powers that could help. In fact, she might already be trying to help me with the portal. That'll be the first thing they'll think about. Jack ... well, I think Jack knew if he saw me again that I was coming through the portal and ... I mean, I imagine he'd assume I was trying to return to them and that something bad happened in that."

"Why the fuck would you bloody trust Isobel's powers?"

"Why wouldn't we? Oh, wait. I forgot. Here you believe Isobel's powers are black and that she's evil. Or something. But not our Isobel. Trust me, Terry. It's Isobel who would be the key for us back there."

"Then let's fucking hope they're working on something. Annie would be scared to death. She knows nothing about portals and such shit. And she sure the fuck barely knows Jacko. Think what that would be like. At least you know me. Think if she came to and found Jack trying ... He'd better fucking keep his hands off her."

"Jesus, Terry. Jack isn't going to force himself on her."

"If he thought she was you? You said that you and Jack were ..."

She looked away from me. Cleared her throat. "Yeah. Well. Jack and I were ... Not that it matters, but Jack and I were having a few problems. He'd not have been making advances on her. He'd have waited for a signal of some kind. Which I assume she would not have given."

"She would not."

"Right. Of course. So anyway ..." She walked right up to me, kissed me on the forehead and said if I'd show her where Ann's laptop was, she'd activate her portal and be gone.

I'll never forget seeing the edges of her sad smile when she said it. Almost like in this brief time, she'd grown attached to me. It made me wonder about her and that other Terry. About things left unsaid about how she felt about him.

"Will she forgive you?" she asked me as she powered the computer up. She glanced at me and sighed. "Yeah. I think she will. She's got to be smart enough to realize how wonderful a man you are. We all make mistakes, Terry. No one should be judged by the worst thing they ever do in life. You know?"

For some reason, that touched me deeply. I blinked back tears. It was a revelation. A glimpse into Ann ... surely this Ann was enough like mine to give me hope. "Thanks, love. You've obviously got a heart like hers. You tell your Terry for me that he's a lucky man."

"Somehow, I think he'd disagree. Geez. Why did I tell you that?" Her eyes turned to the screen. "Sorry. I'll just ... Oh, for fuck's sake. Now what?"

[ March 15, 2004 ] 

ANN 

I sat there on the bottom step of the stairs to the deck and looked at the small patch of garden fenced off from the sand. My uncle had done this same thing at the cabin of his that I was familiar with. The one on Nevarre Beach, about a half hour south of Pensacola Beach, where Terry said this cabin was. I hated this feeling of almost ... almost but not quite ... almost knowing a familiar place.

Just as at the other cabin, the centerpiece of this garden was a brilliant blue gazing ball set upon a concrete pillar about three feet high. Its surface was so smooth. I stared at it and got the oddest feeling of looking in a mirror. The world reflected back to me in curved lines and blue light wasn't anything short of unsettling considering the way I was feeling.

"Y'okay, Ann?"

I jumped up. "Fuck. You startled me, Terry. Stop sneaking up on me, okay?"

"Wasn't sneaking up, love. Think maybe you were just somewhere else?"

He said it soft ... he'd been soft in general with me that morning. Polite. Tender. Like he wasn't sure what was right but all the protective tendencies in him were on high alert. His professional manner ... giving him emotional distance while pretending he meant that bedside manner that was supposed to make you feel safe while in an impossible situation. Last thing he wanted to do was scare me more than he knew I was already scared.

Something pricked at my mind and I glanced back at the gazing ball. A memory flashed and then snuck away only to leave me uneasy. I frowned and tried to regain control of this memory of a conversation. And when I did, I closed my eyes. "Oh, shit. I think maybe I'm beginning to feel really ... I swear, Terry, if you don't already think I'm crazy, you will if I tell you this."

"Lots of unexplained things have happened to us lately, love. Maybe you'll find me more receptive than him." I glanced at him. He was looking off over my head but then his eyes dropped to mine. "Than your Terry, I mean. We're not exactly alike, right? After this spell and charm shit of Isobel's, I may be prepared to believe things that others would find crazy. After all, I'm standing here believing that my wife's consciousness has traded places with her alter ego in another world. What could be crazier than that?"

"Fair enough. Okay, here goes," I said with a voice much stronger than I felt inside. "Right before I left Perve World, Isobel mentioned something about ... this strange thing. Something about how she'd been convinced another Isobel was staring back at her through a mirror in her bedroom. She'd felt in danger, had felt this other Isobel was malevolent and was capable of coming into our world. I think that's what she told me, anyway. She'd been so rattled that she broke the mirror to keep her out. And then later, I think she began to convince herself that she must have been dreaming or something. But ... I kinda thought it was all some mystical crap ... but ... it just dawned on me ... what if it did happen?"

"What has that got to do with us?" he frowned at me and started feeling around in his pockets for his cigarettes. I wondered if this was as telling about his nerves as it was when the Terry I knew did this. "Wait. You saying the Isobel from here ..."

"Yeah. What if? Think about it, Terry. You said this Isobel is evil, uses occult powers, things like that. Our Isobel is like the opposite. She is good and sweet ... I have always conjectured that she didn't know the extent of her powers. Anyway, what if the Isobel from here had somehow found out about Perve World? What if ... Oh, God."

"What if what? Stop doing that and just fucking say it, Ann."

"Maybe everything in our world is shook up because of what's happened to my Uma. This Dea person who seems to be some spirit fucking around with our lives for her amusement ... what if her taking my Uma ... what if her involvement in our world has ... I don't know the answer but I bet this has all been tied in together somehow. If our world was unsettled and the Isobel from here somehow felt those vibes and that's a reason why she connected with our Isobel ... And maybe your Isobel is the real reason I was drawn here ... Maybe it was more than just me being in the portal at the same time your Ann was unconscious ... maybe your Isobel took advantage of us both being vulnerable and not tied to our own worlds ... and maybe ... Shit. Isobel has always said those with second sight use reflective surfaces. Maybe your Isobel saw what was happening here because of this gazing ball. And if she's at the bottom of all this, then she's the answer to getting back."

He gave me this look. That sour lemon look. "That's a shitload of maybe's, Ann. You don't build a plan of action on something so flimsy," he said, turning and walking up the stairs away from me.

"Yeah, but even so ... if your Isobel has powers, I bet she's got the power to help me get back. Portal or no portal."

"No." He rounded on me and leveled me with that tough guy look of his. "No Isobel. We'll look for the portal. It may be home in DC ... it may be like yours but needs to be connected to her main computer."

"That makes no sense."

"I don't give a shit what you think, Ann. We're doing this my way. There is no chance I'll let you near Isobel. She's way too dangerous. Now get in here, get packed. We'll do this smart, not based on this netherworld bullshit you're spouting."

"Did she let you talk to her this way? Ann? Because I sure as hell won't. Get fucked."

We stood there glaring at each other. I don't know ... but maybe the anger in me directed at him was a carryover from how I'd been feeling toward the Terry I'd known in PW. Strange thing was ... I felt like giving in to my anger with this one. With the other one, I'd always been half afraid that I'd say something to him the wrong way and that'd be it between us. In this one moment, I might have said anything to this Terry. I might really have blasted him. I felt like it. He did, too, and I could tell.

He slowly descended the stairs until he was standing right in front of me. His voice was measured but heated. "She didn't make me talk to her this way. She trusted me. It's pretty clear, love, that whatever you had with that Terry, you didn't have much if you can't trust my instincts."

"You bastard." I spat it out but his words wounded me. "I cannot believe for a moment that any version of me would have let a man like you dictate to her. What was she, some Stepford Wife? Did she not think on her own? Was she a pushover for you because you have a big dick and loud voice? What? Why would she put up with you?"

"Because she loves me," he said in this soft, scarred voice. Pain stabbed out at me from his eyes. "I might not have deserved it, but she did love me. She is everything to me."

"Then why did you cheat on her?" I said ... my voice was firm but I was shaking on the inside because I felt like I owed it to her to stand up for her. But I knew I'd gone too far when he winced like I'd just stabbed him through his heart.

"Because I'm a bastard. Isn't that obvious?" He turned and walked up the stairs.

"No. It's not." The words were out of me ... honest emotion that I just no longer felt like keeping in. "God. I'm sorry I said that to you. I don't mean it. Honest. It's just ... this situation ... it's impossible, isn't it? But I don't honestly feel that way about you ... or him. There is no way any version of Terry is a bastard. He's one of the finest men I've ever met. I haven't known you long but I think I'd know by now if you were his opposite."

He stopped but wouldn't turn to face me. "Then you tell me why I fucked this up. Because she'd be here now if not for what I did."

"You're human, Terry. And there were forces beyond your control at work. I don't know. Maybe this was about correcting the way things should have been."

He turned slowly and looked down at me. "Correcting what?"

"In my world, just like here, Terry and I met first. He was my first and ... what happened was so powerful that I was in love with him from the beginning without understanding the realities within the Game. And then ... I knew when he met Uma that everything would change between us. I knew she was the right one for him. They were ... they were the real deal. I never really got over it, truthfully. I kept thinking I would, but I guess maybe I didn't want to for some reason. But here's the thing. It's hard to realize you're not good enough for someone you love that much, right? And I never was good enough. So maybe this Ann here wasn't good enough for you either. Maybe it was Uma you were meant to be with here as well. But ... the other couples, too, Terry. None of you are with the primary partner you are with in Perve World and ... Maybe this was about correcting that mistake, setting things to right here."

His eyes flashed at me. "I love my wife. You do not know her. There was never a fucking issue of her not being good enough for me. My life with her has not been a mistake. What we have together is the real deal. And when she is back here, she will forgive me and we will rebuild our marriage. Whatever I feel for Uma, it's not about that."

Were our natures that dissimilar in this world? I wasn't sure. But I didn't want to convince him otherwise. I wanted to believe that somewhere there really was a Terry who loved an Ann that much.

[ March 20, 2004 ]

Our ability to deal with each other seemed to work until about three days after we got to their home in DC. The first night, we were very supportive to each other when I could not get the portal to work from her home computer. The next day, we brainstormed ideas about what we might be able to do. He didn't even make fun of me when I said if it took magic, I happened to know who the best voodoo priestess was in New Orleans. But he walked out of the room when I made a soft comment that maybe ... just maybe ... we'd have to think some about how we could use Isobel's powers to our own benefit.

The second night, I couldn't sleep. I got up and wandered in the dark house. It was noisy in that city. Much noisier than my neighborhood in gentile New Orleans. I sat in a window seat and wondered for a long time about this woman. This Ann. Who was she?

Frustrated for a bit of envy I realized I was feeling. It truly was envy. My eyes roamed to the stairs. He was up those stairs, in their bedroom. What had life been like for them ... I mean, really like for them before the spell had torn their world asunder? Were they really as together as he had made it sound? Was she really as wonderful as he said he thought she was? What was it like for him, in the face of that, to be existing back here without her? Something seemed to draw me up there. I crept up because I sure as hell didn't want Terry to hear me. He'd think I was certifiable but for some reason, I felt comforted the closer I got to where I knew he was sleeping.

If that had been my Terry in there, I would never have been able to do anything but go in there and ask him to hold me.

I sat outside their door for the longest time and thought about her. About the way I had apparently turned out here to have become a person who could command the devotion and love he felt for her. About the way she must have been to have apparently eased right into a marriage ... a marriage that from his reaction to my questions I knew he thought was a really good and fulfilling union. It seemed such a shame that things had turned out like they had for them.

In my heart, I knew one thing ... when she got back with him, the separation would make her realize that there were a lot worse things in life than a husband who slips in his vows. I just had faith in her, somehow. And when she found out that he would have resisted 'the pull' if not for the spell and that charm ... she'd never toss away the love I knew she felt for him.

Eventually, the cold got to me and I slunk back down the stairs. But I was still restless and ... sad.

I realized that I was crying as I sat back down in the window seat and looked out their window onto the city street and concrete before me. God. I'd been resisting this moment with all my willpower for days but then it was right there ... and all I could think about was Jack. How the last sentiment he'd really read from me was one I wished I hadn't left with. I had done it to free him from feeling any obligation toward me; but how I wished he knew the truth. His love had mattered so very much in the long run. I still loved Terry and Max; I still felt such affection for the others. But it was Jack that I would never get over having not been able to find a way to be together that satisfied us both.

Following our rather disastrous chasing of a fantasy that turned into a drop off the edge into the darkness of angry, raw feelings back in January, we had taken a break for what amounted to about a month. He'd sailed off on his boat and I'd taken off to visit Egan. It was in the visit with Egan that I first voiced to anyone what had happened. It was in Egan that I found the quiet to examine what it meant to me to realize that Jack's desires for what he wanted with me had grown while I resisted change with all my might. But it was also Egan who helped me probe why that was so. It was all jumbled up inside me and Egan was the first one to make me admit I was already planning to go back into my old world and stay there. He knew I'd come to say goodbye.

I'd spent some time with Stephen after that. We talked all about his theory into the probability that I was not like the other Sisters but more like him and Jack in that I might have been breathed to life through the portal after having been created as words on paper. What I didn't understand was ... what story had the novel been about? Stephen said that maybe it wasn't finished yet. So many things lent credence to his ideas.

One thing I realized ... more than staying in the Game when it had become so hard, I wanted to know who or what I was.

So many things are not the same, I told Stephen. He had held my hand and listened to me list off the things that had changed and how little I wanted to change with them. Jack remains a constant, Stephen said. And it wasn't that I didn't know he was right in some ways, but in others, he was wrong. Jack was evolving. He wanted more; he understood there was more I could have given him if I chose to.

Then one night, Maximus called me and set the date for our next visit. We had said we'd see each other after his mission because he was expecting a break of about a month or so. All night long, I thought about Max and how I loved him in this way that I didn't love others. Why I did, I am not sure. For such a strong man and such an improbable woman, it was an unusual deal. I felt like he needed relatively unconditional love and that, if he had it and believed in it, he might begin to believe it was possible for him to have that kind of absolute love he craved but didn't think was meant for him.

So say I left ... returned to my world to find out my origins ... and say I never returned. Would that harm Maximus? Did his need to have me out there loving him no matter what ... would my leaving make him stop believing? Would that hurt him?

I wanted two things out of that visit with Max. I wanted to know, really know, if his feelings for me were now deep enough that he might have wanted me as his Number One. If he did, I had to stay in Perve World because I'd never desert him. If he didn't, then I wanted to leave him with a memory of our time together that forever after made him hold tight to the belief that for a short time, I had existed with him and I had loved him so much that the love would outlast me.

And when I found myself gaining those two outcomes with Max during that visit, then all I had left was Jack. Was he reason enough to stay? No, in the end, he wasn't. And the reason was as I told Egan. Jack loved me so much that he'd want me to do what I needed to do.

Not that Jack wanted me to leave. But he also didn't want me to stay if I needed to go. But he told me this ... that if I came back, it would be for him.

In the end, I tried to be noble toward Jack. He would have waited for me and I wanted to give him the release he might need if I did not come back. But I did it wrong ... I should never have denigrated what we had the way I did. It would hurt a soul that should have been protected and loved.

If I didn't get back soon, I feared ever setting things right for Jack. Even if we never were going to have a conventional relationship and even if I was always going to love those others, I wanted my life back to where it had been ... I needed to get back there and undo the damage I'd done to someone who mattered to me.

So this is what I tortured myself with that night. The knowledge that I'd never be able to explain to Jack, never be able to take the sting away, never be able to comfort him.

After a while, I got bored just moping around as it wasn't getting me back home. I went into her office and fired up her computer. I had tried to find the portal so often that Explorer seemed to know instantly where I was heading. I tried variations on the address; I did searches for boards. An hour later, my fingers hovered over the keyboard and I searched in vain within my brain for a new idea. I minimized Explorer to give myself a chance to think without its accusing screen staring me in the face.

Okay, Diary, just remember one thing when I tell you what I did ... remember that I was once a snoop by trade. Okay?

I opened her directories and started searching. There was just an instinctive knowledge in me that she kept a journal of some sort on the computer. Just like I did. I actually even knew where she'd put it and ... there it was. Password protected ... but I knew the password. And the file opened before my eyes. I darted a glance at the door to make sure I was still alone.

Was this violating her privacy or was this looking for a clue to help us both?

A bit of both, to be perfectly candid.

I wanted to know her. I wanted to understand her. I wanted to find out if there was a reason buried in here. I wanted to figure out if there was some indication that she had come through a portal to this world and if so, where it might have been.

For hours I read her journal. She had started it when she was exiled to Central America. She talked about why she was sent there; she talked about what had happened between her and Cal. I was floored by some of the revelations. I was astonished by the way our paths seemed to diverge in diametrically different directions from the moment of the pregnancy. Our lives hinged on one night ... God. One night had made all the difference in the world. It had not been the night I had thought would be the pivotal moment ... it was not the night I'd changed for my old self back in my real world.

I was also stunned by some of her attitudes, her preferences, her abilities. She was so different from me in ways that I would never have anticipated.

But ... I was also amazed at the similarities. They far outweighed the differences, I suppose.

The way she wrote was different than me. Less emotion. Less explanation. Less examination of her motives.

I loved reading about Terry. About how she met him. About how they were together. About how she loved him and how she might have been scared to leap into love with him but she decided to do it anyway. And she never had a doubt once she did it.

They really had had a good life together. Give and take. Mistakes, of course. But through it all, a deep affection and adoration for him pervaded her journal entries. She loved him so much. So much. And she felt so loved in return. She felt safe within his love.

How heartbreaking to then read of her insecurities. But perhaps you are always most fearful of losing the one thing that simply means life to you. And to feel she was failing him as she floundered about trying to find a compromise. Isn't that life, though? Real life? Wouldn't it be nice if it was all neat and laid out for you ... and you'd know in advance that what you were deciding was important?

God. How the affair ripped her up. I sat there sobbing as I read her entries. She was brutal in reporting what she'd done, how she'd felt. I felt completely drained ... I felt a pain so complete that it seemed to blot out my own pain.

I crawled back into bed after reading her last journal entry. She'd written it in Florida; like me, she kept mirror drives and transmitted between them to keep a safe backup for her hard drive on the laptop. In it, she had written of how it felt to have lost everything she held most dear and to have to face a life alone. Those last few entries made her seem weak and rather pathetic. She was too much like me in how she handled being hurt. I didn't like her so much after reading it.

Where had the woman I had come to feel was the better part of me gone? I lay in bed and stared at the white ceiling and wondered why I was so fucking disappointed in this other Ann. Why hadn't she told Terry to get fucked? Why hadn't she raged at him? Why had she just immediately caved in on herself and assumed that what he did was her fault, her failing? I mean, I just had expected better from her. I thought she'd lick her wounds and then come out fighting. I thought she'd see that she was allowed to fuck up and that what she did might not have been right, but it didn't make her a bad person.

All day long, I couldn't shake that deep disappointment in her. Terry knew something was bugging me but I froze him out. I was pissed at him; I blamed him for making her feel unworthy.

Inside my soul, I felt like I was fighting her fight for her. It was like I had this strange need to be loyal to her, to defend her, to do battle for her when she had run away.

Most of that day, I couldn't even stand to be around him. And he kept coming in to whatever room I was in ... trying to make me talk to him and getting silently furious with my attitude. It was like I was this wound for him and he just couldn't let it heal on its own. Maybe it was a torture he did to himself because he felt he deserved it?

Early in the afternoon, I couldn't take it anymore so I booked out of their townhouse. Left him a note ... he was up in his office on the phone with Dino about work ... and I took off. I wandered the streets of Georgetown. I thought about going to see Heather but then I might see Dino ... and I wasn't sure either of them knew I wasn't the Ann they knew and I wasn't sure if I'd not hurt worse to be with people that I kinda sorta knew but didn't.

I ended up in a library. I wandered stacks of books. Some nasty shit inside me drew me to the fiction section and like some homing beacon, I was standing before the "O" section of authors. "The Reverse Of The Medal." Staring at the title. Ignoring all the other Patrick O'Brien novels surrounding it. My fingers on the spine. My heart leaking out of me.

He'd been the one Brother I'd really believed when he said he loved me. And look how I repaid him.

I sat at a dark wood table and read. For hours, I simply absorbed Jack in the only way available to me. It was always the saddest book of the entire series for me. It matched my mood.

When the library closed, I didn't want to go back to their home. I walked to the Westin Hotel and sat in the softness of the atrium as I considered taking a room there for the night just to have a place to call my own even if I'd be renting it. Had a glass of wine and thought about how much I didn't want to be here in this other world.

There wasn't a fucking thing for me there.

It's like in that one moment I realized that. The barest truth was this: I was maybe stuck in this place where I didn't know anyone. She was on the outs with her family; I didn't have them, then. She was living in a city I never had; I didn't have a job I could do nor friends I knew. She was loved by people who would never accept anyone in her place. That was the crux of it, really.

They loved her. Not me. They didn't even know me. They'd never accept me because to accept me meant they had to accept that she was never coming back even though she was who they'd want here.

So ... I had no money, no job, no family, no friends ... no one who wanted me to be here.

It made me desperate. There was no way I could stay there. I had to get out. My heart thudded and raced and ... God, how my poor heart hurt. Because, in reality, I had to concede that I basically had no place I knew to go for help.

Maybe I really had burned the bridges in my life.

Maybe this was my fate, then. Maybe this was what Maximus feared for me ... that I'd tangle with my destiny and in doing so, I'd pay a price so big that it would destroy me. Even if I somehow found a way back, they might not want me back in PW when they found what I'd left behind as my final message. Maybe they'd never forgive me for leaving when they needed me to be standing there with them instead of being so selfish to have chosen to go off to find the mystery of my origins.

Time went by as I sat there musing and sinking further into my own troubles. Eventually, I came to the only conclusion I could. I had to play with the hand I'd been dealt. She didn't need me as her champion; I had to trust that she would handle her own life as she saw fit.

Wasn't it long past time that I showed what I was really made of? So what if I knew no one here and no one here wanted me here? What I had to do was get home. And to do that, I had only one real ally I could trust ... Terry. We would have to work together. I would have to rely on him. He would have to help me. I would have to listen to him. He would have to believe in me.

Who braver than Terry for this kind of a job? Who more dogged than me to search for the answer?