In And Out Of Time 3/10

Title: In and Out of Time (1/?)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi
Warnings: It's going to get a bit strange...AU-ish, takes place directly after Life Support©, and will include some elements of what I’ve seen of pictures on . So, there is a spoiler-ish warning for those who have yet to check those out.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Kyle XY ©, Kyle, Jessi or any other part of the show. If I did, we’d a season four with nothing BUT Kessi *sigh*

Author's Note: Took a page from Roswell’s book and decided to take a crack at the time travelling theme. To my fellow Kessi-lovers, don’t hate me too much. There’s a lot of Jessi!angst at the beginning, but it gets better, I SWEAR!!! 3

Summary: He looked up a head and he saw them: brown eyes, wide with fear, framed by a face that had yet to be worn by the devastation of war, a face that was smooth and young without the lines of worry and the frowns of frustration. He saw her, and knew, finally: I made it.

8o8o8

III.

He knew that he was playing with fire—they all were. He knew that the gamble he was making could blow up royally in all of their faces and that everything—every single thing—that they had ever worked for, slaved over, bled for and died for could end if anything he tried or any mistake he made caused a chain reaction that could make the situation that he was leaving behind even worse than it already was. But he had no choice, and as he watched the world that he had come to know, love and hate turn to fire around him, Joshua Trager knew that no matter what he did he could not fail.

The time stream was like a Technicolor nightmare of swirling blues, hot pinks and blazing greens as he felt something jerk, yank and pull painfully on his navel and he was thrown backwards, backwards to a time that he could hardly remember, and dreaded more than he had ever dreaded anything in his life. He looked back, looked back to where the future loomed in the time tunnel, the vision he saw frayed around the edges, and saw her brown eyes twinkling at him, even though a raging hellfire was blazing around her, catching fire to her hair, turning her beautiful pale skin to ash. He blinked, and she was gone, disappeared forward in time while he was slung back like a sling shot, a human cannonball defying all laws of physics and logic; it figured that he, the most skeptical of everyone, would be the one who was picked especially for this mission.

He remembered that day, so long ago, when he was called into debriefing, not even settled in his room on base yet and still carrying on his person the funk of the passed mission that had lasted two weeks and had kept him from the comfort of the underground bunker. The commander—a sprite of a woman with features that looked more suited to a sitting room somewhere along an upscale Parisian boulevard—nailed everyone gathered with a sharp glare from her ice blue eyes. Her lips had been set in a thin, grim line and, for the first time in a long time, Joshua had felt the first stirrings of anxiety twist his gut into knots. The commander, a Charlotte Deveaux, held in her arms a stack of paperwork that Joshua was sure was the cause of his anxiety; he knew by the way she clutched it, that what ever was held there could very well steer the course of the future, and that, by no means, bode well in his mind.

“I have assembled you all here because the group of you are the best, the brightest and the strongest soldiers that the resistance has and have been fighting on the front lines since the start of this war,” she began and set the stack of paperwork down on the debriefing table. “And because of your experiences, you must know that this war…is hopeless. The opposition is too strong, too powerful and we’re losing soldiers and fighters everyday and losing territory. Even now, our resources are dwindling and soon we’ll have nothing.”

The woman’s face, if at all possible, became even more grim and her ice blue eyes took on a look sadness around the edges. She breathed and handed the first page of the stack of paperwork to Joshua. He took it, looked it over and frowned. There was a diagram on the page, drawn in the shape of a whirlpool. He frowned and handed it off to the man that sat beside him, a stern-faced gentleman with a jagged scar that ran diagonal along his face from his right temple to the left side of his jaw. Commander Deveaux passed him another sheet from her stack, and another and another, all just as confusing as the first. Joshua couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing: numbers? Diagrams? Notes jotted down in a chicken-scratch handwriting that he couldn’t understand?

“Pardon me, ma’am,” Joshua started, and the commander fixed him with her hard blue eyes. “But what is all this?”

“It’s—”

“Perhaps, I can explain it better, commander,” came the softly spoken request from Joshua’s left and his brown eyes snapped to where it had come from and be held her.

She wore a white lab coat, clean despite the fact that water rations had been cut back again in the past month. Her brown eyes fell on his. She smiled and looked away, meeting the commander’s no nonsense gaze with a determined look of her own.

“Of course, Ms. Hollander,” came the commander’s curt reply, and the small woman stepped out of the way and allowed her, Jessi Hollander, leeway into the room and full reign of the floor. Joshua’s heart skipped a beat and he swallowed tickly as Jessi nodded and stepped further into room. Everyone was silent, all eyes trained on the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman that had done more for the war effort than any twenty, trained soldiers combined.

“What you see before you, ladies and gentlemen,” she began with a pointed look at all of them, “is hope. Hope for the future. Hope for the present. And hope for the past. In the old days,” Jessi began a slow circuit about the room, starting at the farthest edge of the debriefing table and traveling around it, picking up the individual pages of notes and research before setting them down again and continuing on, “scientists claimed that time moved in a linear fashion, and that nothing and no one could ever break through it or ever travel along its pathways.” She stopped beside Joshua and he felt a shiver run up and down his spine and sweat break out along the skin of his brow. She smiled at him and butterflies fluttered maniacally in his stomach. “But I’ve discovered a way,” she continued in a gentle whisper. Joshua swallowed thickly. “I’ve discovered a way to go back and change…everything.”

There was an assortment of protests that reverberated around the room, but Joshua heard none of it. His attention was fixed on the woman that stood before him, smiling; her brown eyes boring into his, boring into his soul. He breathed, but every breath felt like a chore. His heart thumped faster, blood rushed like a flood through his veins.

“I’ve discovered,” Jessi said louder over the din; everyone immediately fell silent, “how to go back and make right what went horribly wrong. I’ve discovered how to stop the Destroyer.”

The rest of the meeting was a blur, the rest of what had been spoken of were vague snippets of here or there conversations passing through his thoughts. All he remembered mostly from that day, weeks and weeks ago, were her eyes, brown lasers boring into him, turning him into mush on the spot. It hadn’t always been that way; he hadn’t always seen her in that light, and he knew that even with what he had grown to feel for her, her depth of emotion for him was only on the surface; he knew that he could never be HIM, and would never—no matter how long he tried or how hard—reach into those secret depths of hers and wade through the darkness and the shadows that existed.

Mere seconds were passing, he knew, but in this strange world of colors shooting passed his vision at light speed, it felt like the seconds were crawling and when tried to focus on the lights, pictures blazed passed his curious gaze. The images stung. They cut deep. He saw his life flash before his eyes: everything backwards like some cosmic hand had pressed rewind on the VCR of his mortal existence. The first time he had ever shot a gun. The first time he had ever gotten shit-faced drunk. The first time he had ever gotten his heart broken and the first time he had ever killed a man. All there, all replayed for him like some sick cosmic joke. It made him smirk in mirthless humor.

Jessi had said that when he entered the time stream he wouldn’t see a thing. She had predicted that the minute he stepped through the thin veil that was reality and time and space, he would blink and in those mere seconds he would be at his destination. But as he looked out and saw his life replaying before him—the good times and the bad—a sudden thought struck him: it was nice to know that even Jessi could be wrong sometimes. The thought was a bitter one, but Joshua blinked again, more seconds passed and he saw up ahead the vision of star lights and the sky line of a Seattle that had not yet been decimated by the ravages of war.

He saw up a head earth with the first sprigs of green grass dusting a ground that had been, only a few short weeks ago, covered in a thick layer of snow. He saw the gentle glow of a street light and the vague sounds of insects singing. Fourteen years propelled into the past. Fourteen years and he could only vaguely remember that he’d been dating Andy at this time, and that life—for the most part—had been simple.

He looked up a head and he saw them: brown eyes, wide with fear, framed by a face that had yet to be worn by the devastation of war, a face that was smooth and young without the lines of worry and the frowns of frustration. He saw her, and knew, finally:

I made it.

8o8o8

Jessi screamed as the pillar of light fell from the sky, traveling faster and faster and faster to where she stood, frozen in fear and a sick fascination, staring up at an impossible perversion of nature. Light didn’t do things like that, and the world didn’t react the way it had only moments before with a keening wail ripping through the atmosphere and the force of a whirlwind gale. Nothing scientifically could explain any of this, and even though Jessi’s mind groped around for answers, she knew that she would find none. All she could do was watch as the pillar descended and wonder which god of this messed up universe that she found herself in had she managed to piss off now.

The earth began to rumble again underneath her feet at the light’s descent, the trees began to shiver in their places and the wind began to stir like a dog being called by its unholy master. It was then that Jessi’s feet allowed her to move and at that last second, when disaster seemed imminent and her life would surely have flash before her eyes, Jessi dodged out of the way just in time, landing on the ground in a jarring roll before staggering to her feet and watching, her heart thundering loudly in her ears and her breath coming to her in ragged gasps, as the pillar of light slammed into the earth, lightning cackling around its edges and the figure of a man standing, peaceably in the center.

Jessi’s mouth parted in shock.

No, no, most certainly not. Her mind was moving faster and faster, traveling at light speed, trying to take in all that she was seeing and arrange it in such a way that logic could prevail and her universe would not be turned on its rear. But nothing could account for this. Nothing could explain this, no matter how much her mind tried to reason it out. There was just no way possible for light to exist in such a concentrated form and to cause these types of changes to the world around her and for a man—a literal human being—to be able to exist within it without being burned to a crisp.

In spite of herself, Jessi’s feet edged her forward, avoiding the active forks of lightning that licked the air, and reached her hand out to touch…

It wasn’t hot. Not like how the atmosphere had been before the pillar had arrived. There was no heat radiating from it all. Her eyes widened in fascination and she licked her lips, reaching her hand even further out. She just wanted to touch…

It was then that the man turned. His brown eyes widened and his mouth parted in a shout.

A tongue of lightning shot from the pillar with such speed that Jessi had no time to dodge and all she could do was look on in horror as it sped towards her, faster and faster, a jagged, white blazing light that would surely be her doom.

It drew closer.

Blinded her.

Jessi felt heat then pain as the tongue of lightning whipped across her skin. Her nerve endings screamed agony. Her body blazed with fire. It hurt so much that she couldn’t cry out, the sound stuck in her throat. She was lifted up, up, up—an impossible height off the ground—and tossed like a rag doll into a tree.

Her head cracked against the wood.

She heard the man shout her name.

She wanted to ask what the hell had just happened, but her angry question came out as a whimper of pain. Her teeth were clenched, her jaw locked and her hands were balled into tight white fists. Her mind was working, fighting through the throes of agony that threatened to overtake her. She had to fight through this. She had to.

What if this was Latnok’s doing? What if this was some kind of new invention that they had decided to test out on her? She wasn’t entirely sure about the organization and how far advanced its technologies were, but if this was something that they had cooked up, then she had to pull herself together, shake off the pain that she was feeling and fight them. They could hurt Kyle. They could hurt the Tragers. She didn’t want to lose the only family that was slowly beginning to welcome her into their fold; she’d before die she ever lost that.

And so, with a laborious breath, Jessi dragged herself to her feet, leaning on the tree for support and raising her hand to the man that stepped out of the slowly diminishing pillar of light. He looked vaguely familiar, like maybe she had seen him from somewhere before, but she didn’t want to let that distract her. She went deep into her mind, where synapses fired and electrical impulses danced along the neural pathways, deep into the place where she could feel connected to the gravitational pull of the world around her, where she could see and count every single electron and proton that crashed and flew apart from each other in the small microcosm of the atomic world, and attempted to change the polarity in the world around her.

It was difficult and when she looked up the man cocked his head to the side, grinned at her with a mouth that looked like it had not smiled in a very, very long time and touched something on his wrist. He seemed to be wearing a watch, but it was nothing like any watch that Jessi had ever seen. No matter; he’d be dealt with soon enough. She turned her body’s own polarity, her body’s own gravitational force to the world outside, manipulating every piece and part of her down to the very last cell, forcing it out, at the man, in a wall of energy that should’ve knocked him over and out cold.

But it didn’t.

Nothing happened, and when she tried again, he only grinned wider and approached her weakened form on feet that barely made a sound along the grass strewn earth.

“Don’t worry, Jessi,” he said, reaching a hand out to touch her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She pressed herself closer to the tree that she was leaning on, forcing away the sharp jolt of pain that still reverberated through her and frowned at him. “Who-who are you? What do you want?”

“I—”

“Get away from her!”

The man looked up in surprise. A familiar shiver rushed up and down Jessi’s body, like someone had dipped her body in warm, soothing water and a calm stole over her mind that she had grown so accustomed to feeling that she had stopped thinking anything of it. But now, now she was glad to feel it, glad to feel the essence and presence of Kyle as he stepped out of a thick outgrowth of bushes, chest heaving and face flushed. His blue eyes blazed with anger.

In the next few seconds, everything moved so fast that Jessi had only had a split second to react, adrenaline surging through her already battered, bruised and fatigued body, and forcing her to get up and to act before her entire world came crashing down around her ears: the man turned, his face transforming from that of the tenderness and concern that he had shown her only seconds before, pulling back in a snarl of anger and a hatred so deep that it blazed in his eyes and she was sure had consumed his soul; he flicked his wrist and from the sleeve of his shirt, came a gun; Kyle shouted her name; the man raised his weapon and Kyle raised his hand to stop him.

“Destroyer!” the man spat in anger and loathing.

“Kyle!” Jessi screamed, and pushed herself up from the ground.

The man’s hand squeezed the trigger, and Jessi slammed into him with all her might as a shot rang out and Kyle went down. She hit the ground with such force that the wind was knocked out of her, but the man was up again and moving. Cocking his gun again and aiming. But this time Kyle was ready. Before the man could shoot, Kyle had it, ripped from the man’s hand, and poised, floating, in the night air. The man looked up then snapped his gaze to glare at Kyle and growl before he turned—Jessi looked up and met the man’s razor sharp gaze.

He grabbed her hand, pressed a button on his watch, and the two of them disappeared.

8o8o8

They were gone.

There one moment, and then—in the blink of an eye—Jessi and the strange man were gone.

Kyle breathed, heart still hammering against the confines of his chest, body still shaking from the rush of adrenaline that coursed through his blood like hot lava. He strained his senses, casting them out like a net, casting them so far and so wide, listening to every sound, from woodland creatures to the distance rush of a lonely car passing along empty Seattle streets.

Nothing.

No one.

He stood upright, walked to where Jessi and the man had been. Kneeled. Pressed his hand to earth. It was still warm where her body had lay. His nose twitched and picked up the faint scent of her before a gentle breeze blew it away and carried it farther than his outstretched senses could detect.

He swallowed thickly.

His hand trembled against the earth.

He breathed.

Jessi was gone.

Jessi was…

A frown creased his features. His normally smiling, grinning, smirking mouth pressed into a thin line. His blue eyes blazed in the darkness. He looked up at the star lights that had born silent witness to what had just transpired.

Jessi was gone.

He couldn’t feel her presence, the comforting warmth that stole over him when he knew she was near. He couldn’t detect her anywhere, not anywhere close.

Was this Latnok? Were they punishing him? Did they take her to ensure that he would follow through with their plans? Kyle stood.

He breathed again.

Felt anger surge through him. Felt raw fury tear through him with the force of a gale wind.

He had already lost so much tonight. He had already been taken through enough emotional upheavals to last him a lifetime. He had been pushed and shoved and manipulated, he had been attacked, his family attacked, Amanda attacked, and now this…

Now Jessi…

Kyle’s entire body began to tremble with the whirlwind of emotions that rushed through him. He swallowed thickly again.

He was going to find her.

He was going to get Jessi back.