Sync- Ch 12: Dissonance
Title: Sync
Genre: Flashforward
Pairing: Bryce/Nicole
A/N: Okay, so it's a little later than I'd projected. Muse happens and also the first real convo between Bryce/Nicole post Zero Hour was kinda cringeworthy. It felt like being stuck in a room watching a couple have a complete meltdown and being embarrassed for them both. It's Post-Flashforward Day & conversation is a little less art and a little more desperate... & unforgiving. Sad but necessary. Italic blocks are flashforward. Besos! xoxo
Ed's shift had technically been over for a while and he and his partner had patched up everyone that needed it, but he'd stayed at Sanctuary waiting for the coroner. The second blackout had apparently been announced with a couple minutes to spare in an effort to minimize the number and severity of injuries and damage that the first one caused but in just the five mile radius around Sanctuary there was plenty of fallout and damage. Chelsea may have been the only person inside Sanctuary that hadn't survived it but the Coroner's department was plenty busy and traffic was more than a nightmare. When he'd called them they gave him the precise ETA of "As soon as we can." and that told Ed all he needed to know.
He was pretty much glad that he'd taken the shift that covered the Sanctuary service the night before. He hadn't known that was his destination when he'd had his flash all those months ago but with the moment passed and hindsight being 20/20, he could see how his worries about that particular moment had been for naught. Six months of stress and misreading of a moment only for him to be elated when it had all worked out. And then not twenty-five minutes later, the moment he'd never seen coming, crashed through. The face of a woman he'd never seen, tried to save and ultimately failed to do so. Even as the sun rose on Friday morning, she remained on his mind.
It wasn't that he hadn't had people die before. It was that the one thing he'd worried about had really actually come true, just with a different person at a different time on the same night. That both women were in the same place, in identical baptismal gowns and in peril in water was downright eerie. It was like he'd cosmologically broken even. He thought it far too arrogant to think that he had to have been the one in that place at that time to save Nicole. No more than he had to be the one not to save Chelsea. None of it was meant to be any more than it was happenstance. Ed considered that for him it wasn't even about Free Will. He was working. If he hadn't had to be working, his Free Will would have taken him to a Flashforward Day party and he'd have had a really decent buzz when ten o'clock rolled around.
~~~~
April 29, 10:14 PDT
"We're going to be late. Again." she laughs as they walk along hand in hand.
"We could make a run for it." he suggests and can't help but smile.
Her eyes sparkle and he knows she's up for it.
Still holding his hand she quickly kicks off her heels and picks them up. He's surprised but knows he shouldn't be.
They run, laughing. She never lets go of his hand.
The sun was setting.
~~~~
Though it seemed slightly odd, it was something of a comfort when he noticed the Starbucks across the street open for the day. He yawned and knew the cure. His foot tapped something as he walked out and looking down he saw it was a cell phone. He turned it on and was greeted by a picture on the screen of a grinning couple. It was Nicole and a guy Ed assumed must have been her boyfriend. He wondered when she'd gone and he didn't recall seeing her after the blackout happened. He hoped she'd fared well and checked her call log. The first number was the guy in the picture with her and it seemed like a good enough bet that he could get her phone back to her. He dialed as he crossed the street in search of his caffeine fix.
~~~~~~~~~~
The morning had been surreal. It had become clear over the hours that the most recent Flashforward experience wasn't of the same point in time and it was causing more than a little confusion. The fallout being reported on the news bore out in real time for Bryce. The consequence of people witnessing diverging flashes and reacting to them was resulting in more than a few cases in Trauma Surg. The man admitted with five stab wounds because his wife saw in her flash that he was cheating on her was just one of the results of the flash. When the man was finally in Recovery, finding out he and his wife were newlyweds of a couple weeks added an extra bit of insanity to the mix.
The state government issued State of Emergency for L.A. County & surrounding counties to keep people as safe as possible and contain the initial outbreak of chaos. The FBI Building had been blown up and there was yet to be any claim of responsibility. Olivia hadn't come in. Her husband was in the building. They were still looking but he was presumed dead. It was all just insanity.
As the news was about to explain what the Federal response would be, Bryce's phone rang. He barely glanced and let it register that the incoming call was from Nicole's phone.
He answered only to be reminded that the woman he'd run off to essentially save ultimately didn't need it and the one he'd left behind had been saved by another. That his actual feelings didn't seem on the surface to mesh with how his decisions bore out was glaringly stupefying.
Bryce found himself more annoyed with the bearer of the information about what had happened to Nicole than he should be. He thanked him begrudgingly, not sure and not really caring if his annoyance bled through. It was simple. He was jealous. And while the most important thing was that Nicole was taken care of and safe while he was off waiting for her and having the flash moment arrive and pass in the company of Keiko, it just felt like the biggest universal middle finger ever. He didn't want to deal with Ed. Not today. Possibly never.
Ed said he'd be glad to drop off Nicole's phone when he made his next run to Angeles Hospital. Bryce told him that was fine and could not stop himself from telling Ed that if he wasn't around when he showed up, he could simply let anyone in Surgical that he was dropping something off for Dr. Varley. When he hung up he wanted to feel badly that he was really that person but he couldn't. He felt like he owed Ed and he didn't like that feeling at all. It wasn't even 9 AM and it was already shaping up to be a crap day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nicole's phone chimed and Ed saw that the incoming call was from someone named Quinn. Clearly someone who knew Nicole, he answered in hopes that he could allay their concerns if they were looking for her.
"Hello?"
"Who the hell are you?" Quinn's asked just a little surprised.
Not getting through to Nicole was one thing, having some random guy answer given her flash fears was wholly another.
"I'm Ed. I found Nicole's phone."
"Really? Found it where?"
"At some religious thing." Ed replied wondering just what the deal was with these people and their attitudes, but then considered that everyone was on edge now.
"Some religious thing? What religious thing?" she continued to press and tried to remember the name of that guy she'd spent the remainder of the party after the second blackout in drunken lip-lock with who worked for Red Panda's Securities Division.
"Sanctuary. She was there last night."
"Okay, maybe you're telling the truth. So you were there?"
"Yeah, I'm a paramedic. I was on duty with a private company covering the event. She almost drowned during her baptism and I pulled her out of the water."
"You saved her?" Quinn asked, her hostility suddenly abated.
"Yeah. I'd seen her in my flash and sure enough, I was there pulling her out of the water at the right time."
"And she was okay?" she asked her voice quavering a bit.
"She was fine. Just a little shaken and wet." Ed reassured her.
"I um, I know you don't know me and I probably haven't made the best first impression with this interrogation or whatever but... thank you. She's my best friend. We're like sisters and I don't know what I'd do if she died. I'm sorry, I'm crying and it's really stupid because when the second blackout happened, she was one of the people I saw in my flash and when I woke up, I was so glad that she was okay. But I guess just hearing that you saved her got to me. And I know it's your job, but really, thank you for being awesome, Ed. So much."
"You know, after all those months of thinking about my flash, this didn't feel like work. It feels personal. So, you're welcome Quinn, best friend of Nicole. You're welcome."
"Do you have any idea where she is now?"
"At Angeles Hospital. I talked to her boyfriend."
"Bryce?"
"Yeah. He said she's okay."
Quinn rolled her eyes thinking about Nicole's email to her about the Bryce situation. But what was most important was that Nicole was okay. She thanked Ed again and put in a call to Bryce.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Bryce was in the cafeteria paying for a much needed double latte when his phone vibrated.
"Hello?" He answered as he made his way outside to the courtyard.
"I really don't want to talk to you but I need information." Quinn greeted.
"Quinn, hey."
It was clear that she knew about what happened and he'd neither the inclination nor energy to protest and was just about ready to let her go off on him if she felt like she wanted to as long as he could drink his coffee and get some fresh air as she did.
"How is she?" she asked, her tone beyond frosty.
"She's sleeping but she's fine. Or she will be."
"She will be?"
"She fell and cut herself, it's all taken care of. She was pretty traumatized when she came in though."
"Yeah, well I guess almost drowning will do that to a person."
"Yeah." Bryce replied but thought that wasn't the only thing that had upset her.
Quinn remembered what she'd seen in her flash and decided to temper her words.
"Look, I'm not going to go all best friend bitchy on you because if you and Nikki work this mess out, I don't want it to be awkward. But I will tell you this, I don't know what the deal is with you and your flash-chick and I don't even care, but I do know that Nikki didn't deserve what you handed her yesterday. She made an error in judgement. People do that sometimes when they're scared. And if you can't understand that then maybe you're fearless but if you can't forgive it then you're heartless too."
"Quinn..." Bryce began.
"Please, before you even start to explain, save it for Nikki. Just tell her, I'm in Canada and Red Panda's flying me back to LA this afternoon. I'll call when I land."
"I'll tell her."
She thanked him tersely and hung up.
Bryce sighed. It was just as well that Quinn hadn't been interested in an explanation from him. Now, he wasn't sure what he was going to say. He'd tried to think of something more than an apology when he and Nicole finally had the chance to talk about what had happened but hadn't come up with anything that didn't sound like some lame excuse. And then there was the most recent flash. He didn't know when it was but it clearly pointed to a reconciliation between them at some point. It gave him hope and all he had to do was figure out how to get from point A to B. And he hoped that it wasn't more a Point A to Z kind of journey. The more variables added to the mix, the more chance he had to mess it up and given his most recent performance, he believed that to be a very likely thing.
He checked his watch and decided to go and check on Nicole. And if she was up to it, apologize or attempt to.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Nicole woke up she'd been relieved that she'd only been asleep and her nightmare wasn't real. The minutes passed as she mercifully lost her grasp on the harsher details that had startled her awake. The lounge was quiet and she wondered how long she'd been there and what time it was as she sat up. Realizing she was sporting one of Bryce's tees was a fleeting comfort when she thought about how things had turned out. She remembered everything and while she wasn't proud of how she'd behaved she was more and more annoyed with how Bryce had treated her.
In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth, washed her face and took stock of herself in the mirror. On any other day she might have cared about the stitches in her eyebrow but now what mattered was that it hurt quite a lot and even more when she frowned. And what mattered more than that was how she'd come to have it in the first place. Another blackout. Another Flashforward. And most important was that she'd witnessed her fear bear out on Chelsea as a result. She hadn't been spared. Saved. Chelsea went hopefully and happily into that water seeking salvation completely unaware that she'd never take another breath.
Nicole thought the whole thing was unbearably unfair. Especially when she considered that the reason she'd shown up at Sanctuary was because she was seeking atonement for the breach of trust she'd scored against Bryce. Her plight had been more desperate than pious. It struck her that due to her almost drowning, her actual baptism never really took place. She didn't know whether to consider it a divine sign of damnation or grace that at the precise time the blackout struck she could have been back in the pool instead of Chelsea. But it hadn't happened that way and she knew that now she was pretty much right back where she'd begun hours before. And more than anything she needed to find a way to reconcile everything that had happened in her mind. She needed to work out the deeper meaning in it all. The reason for it. Because there had to be one.
She pulled her hair back in a ponytail as she left the bathroom. She shuffled through her bag to find her phone. She needed to call home and check on her mother.
"Damn it!" she muttered to herself when she realized her phone was missing.
She thought for a minute trying to remember where she could've left it but came up with nothing. It was just one more thing that she didn't need right now. Possibly the most minor thing going on in her life at the moment. She tossed her bag back down on the sofa in a fit of frustration and looked up when she heard the door open.
Her breath hitched when she saw him and she hoped he didn't notice.
"Hey. You''re up. How do you feel?" he asked with a smile and walked toward her.
She didn't know how to answer him. Was his inquiry just about her physical well being or was he also asking about her state of mind? And more importantly did she even want to give him an answer given their last conversation? She settled on a non-committal "Fine."
He was saying something to her about her stitches but she wasn't following it. Then he was telling her something about having tried to call her and waiting at Oomasa for her and even though she didn't really want to know, she asked the question that hovered in the back of her mind.
"Did you find her?" she heard herself ask and felt her stomach tie with dreaded anticipation.
He explained how he had missed Keiko at the detention center but much to his surprise she'd shown up at the restaurant at the appointed time. He hadn't realized that the place was the place and while the logistics of the moment played out as previously seen, it wasn't the same emotionally. But then, he said, he hadn't expected that it would be.
Nicole's only response was a nod. None of this was making her feel any better.
"What happened to you last night? After the blackout?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"No. You don't get to ask me about last night. You don't get to act like you can fix it or make it better now. Whatever was going to happen to me didn't matter enough for you to stick around one way or another so..."
"I know, I shouldn't have just left like that. I was angry and I didn't think..."
"No, you didn't. Because the fantasy of Keiko was more important than the reality of me. Somehow, even the possibility that I might die, didn't matter. And I'm not even going to tell you what kind of revelation that was to have."
"That's not fair."
He'd told Nicole that he was only going to the detention center to see if there was anything he could do to help Keiko. It was never about abandoning her to fated danger or death. That was never his intention and her accusing him of that made him somewhat wary of where this was all going.
"Fair?! I am not having this conversation with you! My last eighteen hours have sucked and I know what I did was wrong but I also know that I didn't deserve what you did to me! And the really messed up thing is that even if telling you what happened would make me feel better right now, I still wouldn't. Because I wouldn't give you the satisfaction. You don't get to use me to make yourself feel better anymore!"
"You know it's not like that!"
He was hurt that she would accuse him of using her.
"It's exactly like that!" she yelled, on the verge of tears. "I can't do this now."
She grabbed her bag and turned to leave.
He stepped into her path in a desperate attempt to make her stay. "Wait! Please... just... last night, the second flash, what did you see?"
"What?"
She remembered what she saw and hesitated. He started explaining to her what he'd seen. She stopped listening. They didn't match but she assumed that telling him hers would only serve to convince him even more that somehow everything was going to be okay. The last time they'd actually spoken he'd been so convinced that she was untrustworthy and now he was acting like the most recent Flashforward had served as some reset button on their relationship. Like nothing had happened. And that pissed her off.
"Stop! You're seriously telling me about your Flashforward? Is that why you're okay with me now? Because of what you saw?!"
"No, I just... I didn't mean..." he began and rested his hands on her shoulders in an attempt to calm her.
Nicole cut him off and pulled away.
"Don't even! You can't take back what you said and you meant it! All these months we've known each other that led up to yesterday didn't mean anything to you. I made a mistake and that cancelled out everything else. You believed the worst of me. So I don't care what we saw and I don't care what you say, because today, right now, I don't believe you. Why should I?!"
Her words cut deep. Coupled with her unwillingness to let him explain or apologize, Bryce's frustration mounted and his patience waned.
"What do you want me to say? That I'm pretty well fucked up with way more issues than I'd like to admit?! Fine! That's me!"
"Oh, that's embarrassingly clear and that's so not the point!" Nicole seethed.
"What is then?! Tell me what you want to hear!"
"This! That you can't even see what's wrong, is what's wrong! How can I ever know if you're serious or caught up in some vision as an assurance of what you're supposed to be doing and feeling at some given moment? It's like you need some sort of marker on a map to tell you how you're supposed to be! How the hell did you cope with anything before the blackout?!"
"How did I cope?! I didn't, Nicole! Right before the first blackout happened I was standing on the pier with a gun to my head and my finger on the trigger!"
Sorry he'd said it as soon as the words left his mouth, Bryce looked away and shook his head. This wasn't how he'd planned to tell her about that at all. He was officially too tired to have this kind of conversation.
"What?" she asked, stunned. "You... you never told me that."
"Well, it's not exactly a good first conversation and it turns out it's equally bad when you're not looking to scare away someone who cares about you."
"I don't know what I'm supposed to say. Do you think that's supposed to make all this okay?"
She hated that he told her and she hated herself even more for having to resist her desire to hug him and empathize with him.
"No. Not at all." He admitted sincerely and wished he could tell her now all the things he should have before. When they would've made a difference and not come off as self-serving bullshit.
"Because it doesn't. You don't get a free pass. You said I was a liar. But the worst part was you telling me you didn't know me. After everything. I guess that made it so much easier to walk away. So now, that's what I'm going to do and I don't care what you do, as long you leave me alone."
Their flashes be damned, she just couldn't care right now. She stepped around him and walked out. In the final analysis their relationship had crashed and burned. What had begun as genuine friendship and deepened into something she'd cherished even more had finished with careless words, rash deeds and broken hearts and she still couldn't get Chelsea's death off her mind.
Of all the ways Bryce had considered April 30th playing out, this had never crossed his mind. Fate hadn't hurt Nicole and no flash of the future was going to fix the damage done. Both were all on him.
Genre: Flashforward
Pairing: Bryce/Nicole
A/N: Okay, so it's a little later than I'd projected. Muse happens and also the first real convo between Bryce/Nicole post Zero Hour was kinda cringeworthy. It felt like being stuck in a room watching a couple have a complete meltdown and being embarrassed for them both. It's Post-Flashforward Day & conversation is a little less art and a little more desperate... & unforgiving. Sad but necessary. Italic blocks are flashforward. Besos! xoxo
Ed's shift had technically been over for a while and he and his partner had patched up everyone that needed it, but he'd stayed at Sanctuary waiting for the coroner. The second blackout had apparently been announced with a couple minutes to spare in an effort to minimize the number and severity of injuries and damage that the first one caused but in just the five mile radius around Sanctuary there was plenty of fallout and damage. Chelsea may have been the only person inside Sanctuary that hadn't survived it but the Coroner's department was plenty busy and traffic was more than a nightmare. When he'd called them they gave him the precise ETA of "As soon as we can." and that told Ed all he needed to know.
He was pretty much glad that he'd taken the shift that covered the Sanctuary service the night before. He hadn't known that was his destination when he'd had his flash all those months ago but with the moment passed and hindsight being 20/20, he could see how his worries about that particular moment had been for naught. Six months of stress and misreading of a moment only for him to be elated when it had all worked out. And then not twenty-five minutes later, the moment he'd never seen coming, crashed through. The face of a woman he'd never seen, tried to save and ultimately failed to do so. Even as the sun rose on Friday morning, she remained on his mind.
It wasn't that he hadn't had people die before. It was that the one thing he'd worried about had really actually come true, just with a different person at a different time on the same night. That both women were in the same place, in identical baptismal gowns and in peril in water was downright eerie. It was like he'd cosmologically broken even. He thought it far too arrogant to think that he had to have been the one in that place at that time to save Nicole. No more than he had to be the one not to save Chelsea. None of it was meant to be any more than it was happenstance. Ed considered that for him it wasn't even about Free Will. He was working. If he hadn't had to be working, his Free Will would have taken him to a Flashforward Day party and he'd have had a really decent buzz when ten o'clock rolled around.
~~~~
April 29, 10:14 PDT
"We're going to be late. Again." she laughs as they walk along hand in hand.
"We could make a run for it." he suggests and can't help but smile.
Her eyes sparkle and he knows she's up for it.
Still holding his hand she quickly kicks off her heels and picks them up. He's surprised but knows he shouldn't be.
They run, laughing. She never lets go of his hand.
The sun was setting.
~~~~
Though it seemed slightly odd, it was something of a comfort when he noticed the Starbucks across the street open for the day. He yawned and knew the cure. His foot tapped something as he walked out and looking down he saw it was a cell phone. He turned it on and was greeted by a picture on the screen of a grinning couple. It was Nicole and a guy Ed assumed must have been her boyfriend. He wondered when she'd gone and he didn't recall seeing her after the blackout happened. He hoped she'd fared well and checked her call log. The first number was the guy in the picture with her and it seemed like a good enough bet that he could get her phone back to her. He dialed as he crossed the street in search of his caffeine fix.
~~~~~~~~~~
The morning had been surreal. It had become clear over the hours that the most recent Flashforward experience wasn't of the same point in time and it was causing more than a little confusion. The fallout being reported on the news bore out in real time for Bryce. The consequence of people witnessing diverging flashes and reacting to them was resulting in more than a few cases in Trauma Surg. The man admitted with five stab wounds because his wife saw in her flash that he was cheating on her was just one of the results of the flash. When the man was finally in Recovery, finding out he and his wife were newlyweds of a couple weeks added an extra bit of insanity to the mix.
The state government issued State of Emergency for L.A. County & surrounding counties to keep people as safe as possible and contain the initial outbreak of chaos. The FBI Building had been blown up and there was yet to be any claim of responsibility. Olivia hadn't come in. Her husband was in the building. They were still looking but he was presumed dead. It was all just insanity.
As the news was about to explain what the Federal response would be, Bryce's phone rang. He barely glanced and let it register that the incoming call was from Nicole's phone.
He answered only to be reminded that the woman he'd run off to essentially save ultimately didn't need it and the one he'd left behind had been saved by another. That his actual feelings didn't seem on the surface to mesh with how his decisions bore out was glaringly stupefying.
Bryce found himself more annoyed with the bearer of the information about what had happened to Nicole than he should be. He thanked him begrudgingly, not sure and not really caring if his annoyance bled through. It was simple. He was jealous. And while the most important thing was that Nicole was taken care of and safe while he was off waiting for her and having the flash moment arrive and pass in the company of Keiko, it just felt like the biggest universal middle finger ever. He didn't want to deal with Ed. Not today. Possibly never.
Ed said he'd be glad to drop off Nicole's phone when he made his next run to Angeles Hospital. Bryce told him that was fine and could not stop himself from telling Ed that if he wasn't around when he showed up, he could simply let anyone in Surgical that he was dropping something off for Dr. Varley. When he hung up he wanted to feel badly that he was really that person but he couldn't. He felt like he owed Ed and he didn't like that feeling at all. It wasn't even 9 AM and it was already shaping up to be a crap day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nicole's phone chimed and Ed saw that the incoming call was from someone named Quinn. Clearly someone who knew Nicole, he answered in hopes that he could allay their concerns if they were looking for her.
"Hello?"
"Who the hell are you?" Quinn's asked just a little surprised.
Not getting through to Nicole was one thing, having some random guy answer given her flash fears was wholly another.
"I'm Ed. I found Nicole's phone."
"Really? Found it where?"
"At some religious thing." Ed replied wondering just what the deal was with these people and their attitudes, but then considered that everyone was on edge now.
"Some religious thing? What religious thing?" she continued to press and tried to remember the name of that guy she'd spent the remainder of the party after the second blackout in drunken lip-lock with who worked for Red Panda's Securities Division.
"Sanctuary. She was there last night."
"Okay, maybe you're telling the truth. So you were there?"
"Yeah, I'm a paramedic. I was on duty with a private company covering the event. She almost drowned during her baptism and I pulled her out of the water."
"You saved her?" Quinn asked, her hostility suddenly abated.
"Yeah. I'd seen her in my flash and sure enough, I was there pulling her out of the water at the right time."
"And she was okay?" she asked her voice quavering a bit.
"She was fine. Just a little shaken and wet." Ed reassured her.
"I um, I know you don't know me and I probably haven't made the best first impression with this interrogation or whatever but... thank you. She's my best friend. We're like sisters and I don't know what I'd do if she died. I'm sorry, I'm crying and it's really stupid because when the second blackout happened, she was one of the people I saw in my flash and when I woke up, I was so glad that she was okay. But I guess just hearing that you saved her got to me. And I know it's your job, but really, thank you for being awesome, Ed. So much."
"You know, after all those months of thinking about my flash, this didn't feel like work. It feels personal. So, you're welcome Quinn, best friend of Nicole. You're welcome."
"Do you have any idea where she is now?"
"At Angeles Hospital. I talked to her boyfriend."
"Bryce?"
"Yeah. He said she's okay."
Quinn rolled her eyes thinking about Nicole's email to her about the Bryce situation. But what was most important was that Nicole was okay. She thanked Ed again and put in a call to Bryce.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Bryce was in the cafeteria paying for a much needed double latte when his phone vibrated.
"Hello?" He answered as he made his way outside to the courtyard.
"I really don't want to talk to you but I need information." Quinn greeted.
"Quinn, hey."
It was clear that she knew about what happened and he'd neither the inclination nor energy to protest and was just about ready to let her go off on him if she felt like she wanted to as long as he could drink his coffee and get some fresh air as she did.
"How is she?" she asked, her tone beyond frosty.
"She's sleeping but she's fine. Or she will be."
"She will be?"
"She fell and cut herself, it's all taken care of. She was pretty traumatized when she came in though."
"Yeah, well I guess almost drowning will do that to a person."
"Yeah." Bryce replied but thought that wasn't the only thing that had upset her.
Quinn remembered what she'd seen in her flash and decided to temper her words.
"Look, I'm not going to go all best friend bitchy on you because if you and Nikki work this mess out, I don't want it to be awkward. But I will tell you this, I don't know what the deal is with you and your flash-chick and I don't even care, but I do know that Nikki didn't deserve what you handed her yesterday. She made an error in judgement. People do that sometimes when they're scared. And if you can't understand that then maybe you're fearless but if you can't forgive it then you're heartless too."
"Quinn..." Bryce began.
"Please, before you even start to explain, save it for Nikki. Just tell her, I'm in Canada and Red Panda's flying me back to LA this afternoon. I'll call when I land."
"I'll tell her."
She thanked him tersely and hung up.
Bryce sighed. It was just as well that Quinn hadn't been interested in an explanation from him. Now, he wasn't sure what he was going to say. He'd tried to think of something more than an apology when he and Nicole finally had the chance to talk about what had happened but hadn't come up with anything that didn't sound like some lame excuse. And then there was the most recent flash. He didn't know when it was but it clearly pointed to a reconciliation between them at some point. It gave him hope and all he had to do was figure out how to get from point A to B. And he hoped that it wasn't more a Point A to Z kind of journey. The more variables added to the mix, the more chance he had to mess it up and given his most recent performance, he believed that to be a very likely thing.
He checked his watch and decided to go and check on Nicole. And if she was up to it, apologize or attempt to.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Nicole woke up she'd been relieved that she'd only been asleep and her nightmare wasn't real. The minutes passed as she mercifully lost her grasp on the harsher details that had startled her awake. The lounge was quiet and she wondered how long she'd been there and what time it was as she sat up. Realizing she was sporting one of Bryce's tees was a fleeting comfort when she thought about how things had turned out. She remembered everything and while she wasn't proud of how she'd behaved she was more and more annoyed with how Bryce had treated her.
In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth, washed her face and took stock of herself in the mirror. On any other day she might have cared about the stitches in her eyebrow but now what mattered was that it hurt quite a lot and even more when she frowned. And what mattered more than that was how she'd come to have it in the first place. Another blackout. Another Flashforward. And most important was that she'd witnessed her fear bear out on Chelsea as a result. She hadn't been spared. Saved. Chelsea went hopefully and happily into that water seeking salvation completely unaware that she'd never take another breath.
Nicole thought the whole thing was unbearably unfair. Especially when she considered that the reason she'd shown up at Sanctuary was because she was seeking atonement for the breach of trust she'd scored against Bryce. Her plight had been more desperate than pious. It struck her that due to her almost drowning, her actual baptism never really took place. She didn't know whether to consider it a divine sign of damnation or grace that at the precise time the blackout struck she could have been back in the pool instead of Chelsea. But it hadn't happened that way and she knew that now she was pretty much right back where she'd begun hours before. And more than anything she needed to find a way to reconcile everything that had happened in her mind. She needed to work out the deeper meaning in it all. The reason for it. Because there had to be one.
She pulled her hair back in a ponytail as she left the bathroom. She shuffled through her bag to find her phone. She needed to call home and check on her mother.
"Damn it!" she muttered to herself when she realized her phone was missing.
She thought for a minute trying to remember where she could've left it but came up with nothing. It was just one more thing that she didn't need right now. Possibly the most minor thing going on in her life at the moment. She tossed her bag back down on the sofa in a fit of frustration and looked up when she heard the door open.
Her breath hitched when she saw him and she hoped he didn't notice.
"Hey. You''re up. How do you feel?" he asked with a smile and walked toward her.
She didn't know how to answer him. Was his inquiry just about her physical well being or was he also asking about her state of mind? And more importantly did she even want to give him an answer given their last conversation? She settled on a non-committal "Fine."
He was saying something to her about her stitches but she wasn't following it. Then he was telling her something about having tried to call her and waiting at Oomasa for her and even though she didn't really want to know, she asked the question that hovered in the back of her mind.
"Did you find her?" she heard herself ask and felt her stomach tie with dreaded anticipation.
He explained how he had missed Keiko at the detention center but much to his surprise she'd shown up at the restaurant at the appointed time. He hadn't realized that the place was the place and while the logistics of the moment played out as previously seen, it wasn't the same emotionally. But then, he said, he hadn't expected that it would be.
Nicole's only response was a nod. None of this was making her feel any better.
"What happened to you last night? After the blackout?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"No. You don't get to ask me about last night. You don't get to act like you can fix it or make it better now. Whatever was going to happen to me didn't matter enough for you to stick around one way or another so..."
"I know, I shouldn't have just left like that. I was angry and I didn't think..."
"No, you didn't. Because the fantasy of Keiko was more important than the reality of me. Somehow, even the possibility that I might die, didn't matter. And I'm not even going to tell you what kind of revelation that was to have."
"That's not fair."
He'd told Nicole that he was only going to the detention center to see if there was anything he could do to help Keiko. It was never about abandoning her to fated danger or death. That was never his intention and her accusing him of that made him somewhat wary of where this was all going.
"Fair?! I am not having this conversation with you! My last eighteen hours have sucked and I know what I did was wrong but I also know that I didn't deserve what you did to me! And the really messed up thing is that even if telling you what happened would make me feel better right now, I still wouldn't. Because I wouldn't give you the satisfaction. You don't get to use me to make yourself feel better anymore!"
"You know it's not like that!"
He was hurt that she would accuse him of using her.
"It's exactly like that!" she yelled, on the verge of tears. "I can't do this now."
She grabbed her bag and turned to leave.
He stepped into her path in a desperate attempt to make her stay. "Wait! Please... just... last night, the second flash, what did you see?"
"What?"
She remembered what she saw and hesitated. He started explaining to her what he'd seen. She stopped listening. They didn't match but she assumed that telling him hers would only serve to convince him even more that somehow everything was going to be okay. The last time they'd actually spoken he'd been so convinced that she was untrustworthy and now he was acting like the most recent Flashforward had served as some reset button on their relationship. Like nothing had happened. And that pissed her off.
"Stop! You're seriously telling me about your Flashforward? Is that why you're okay with me now? Because of what you saw?!"
"No, I just... I didn't mean..." he began and rested his hands on her shoulders in an attempt to calm her.
Nicole cut him off and pulled away.
"Don't even! You can't take back what you said and you meant it! All these months we've known each other that led up to yesterday didn't mean anything to you. I made a mistake and that cancelled out everything else. You believed the worst of me. So I don't care what we saw and I don't care what you say, because today, right now, I don't believe you. Why should I?!"
Her words cut deep. Coupled with her unwillingness to let him explain or apologize, Bryce's frustration mounted and his patience waned.
"What do you want me to say? That I'm pretty well fucked up with way more issues than I'd like to admit?! Fine! That's me!"
"Oh, that's embarrassingly clear and that's so not the point!" Nicole seethed.
"What is then?! Tell me what you want to hear!"
"This! That you can't even see what's wrong, is what's wrong! How can I ever know if you're serious or caught up in some vision as an assurance of what you're supposed to be doing and feeling at some given moment? It's like you need some sort of marker on a map to tell you how you're supposed to be! How the hell did you cope with anything before the blackout?!"
"How did I cope?! I didn't, Nicole! Right before the first blackout happened I was standing on the pier with a gun to my head and my finger on the trigger!"
Sorry he'd said it as soon as the words left his mouth, Bryce looked away and shook his head. This wasn't how he'd planned to tell her about that at all. He was officially too tired to have this kind of conversation.
"What?" she asked, stunned. "You... you never told me that."
"Well, it's not exactly a good first conversation and it turns out it's equally bad when you're not looking to scare away someone who cares about you."
"I don't know what I'm supposed to say. Do you think that's supposed to make all this okay?"
She hated that he told her and she hated herself even more for having to resist her desire to hug him and empathize with him.
"No. Not at all." He admitted sincerely and wished he could tell her now all the things he should have before. When they would've made a difference and not come off as self-serving bullshit.
"Because it doesn't. You don't get a free pass. You said I was a liar. But the worst part was you telling me you didn't know me. After everything. I guess that made it so much easier to walk away. So now, that's what I'm going to do and I don't care what you do, as long you leave me alone."
Their flashes be damned, she just couldn't care right now. She stepped around him and walked out. In the final analysis their relationship had crashed and burned. What had begun as genuine friendship and deepened into something she'd cherished even more had finished with careless words, rash deeds and broken hearts and she still couldn't get Chelsea's death off her mind.
Of all the ways Bryce had considered April 30th playing out, this had never crossed his mind. Fate hadn't hurt Nicole and no flash of the future was going to fix the damage done. Both were all on him.