I woke slowly to see K's face hovering over mine, his beady blue eyes widening when he saw mine open. 

"There we go," K sighed.  "You all right?"

Somehow I managed to mumble facetiously, "You're the doctor here, you tell me."

"Touche," he chuckled.  "They say everything is right as rain.  You couldn't have come through better."

"Good.  And the offspring?"

"Flying colors as well."

Forcing a weary smile, I shielded my eyes from the bright lights all around. "Where is Danny, anyway?"

"Right next to you, asleep," K pointed over my head.  I rolled over just a little to see my boy lying in his own hospital bed with his glasses off, his face turned my way.  I could see an IV trailing from his arm.  It was a good thing Danny wasn't awake, or else he would have been freaking at the sight of a needle sticking out of his vein. 

No longer was I clad in my Catwoman garb; they had stripped me of my costume and dressed me in loose-fitting scrubs.  In spite of myself, I smiled a little.  Thankfully, it had been a long time since I'd been in the hospital.  The last time I'd worn such things, I held my newborn son in my arms with half the Deacon clan oohing and ahhing at my bedside.

I looked down at my left hand.  Whatever had been gripping my wrist was gone now.  I almost thought I was having a heart attack; that wouldn't have been a surprise if it happened.  I was terrified.  After all these years, having to so much as make eye contact with that man, I came so close to dropping dead with fright toward the end. 

Then why did I have to kiss him like that? I asked myself.  What was I thinking?

I tried not to dwell on the question, to push it aside, but it wouldn't leave my head, no matter how many times I insisted I was merely attempting to distract him.  Nor would, unfortunately, the image of those raging black eyes, that insane look I saw the moment Freddie recognized me.  That one expression spoke volumes. 

Thank God, we had gotten away when we did.  One second's further delay, and he might have murdered me with his bare hands.

How changed Freddie had become in eight years. True, I'd only been near him for a couple of minutes, all I had was a brief snapshot of his 1985 character. But even in that short amount of time, I could sense the change. The vulnerability, the tenderness, the magic that had so charmed me when I was younger, seemed to have evaporated. He had grown colder, more remote. The man almost gave off his own protective force field, drawing in a select few and repelling all else, including me.

My brows knit together as I stared off into space. God.  He seemed so empty.

"What's wrong?" K asked.

I shook my head, sighing heavily.  "Nothing, I'm just thinking."  I slowly lowered my hand from my throat, where I had been winding my finger around the long gold chain I always wore. 

I need to stop thinking about it.  It's over again, time to move on to the next thing; if I think on him too long, the darkness will return. 

"Is Stuart around?" I asked K.

"He'll be right back, he's checking a few things in the lab.  The machine had a hard time getting you guys out-"

"You and Danny, that is," C cut in all of a sudden, walking into the room.  "That's what he meant by 'you guys.'"

K's eyes narrowed.  "Well, that wasn't the problem, what happened was-"

"It's technical," C interrupted again.  "You wouldn't understand."  K glanced up at C, who put his hand on his shoulder and favored him with an odd warning look. 

"What are you talking about?" I asked K.

C stared hard into K's eyes, so hard that K looked down after a minute and sighed.  "Maybe... he can explain it better," he murmured.  "Never mind."

Before C could, however, one of the nurses approached us, whom I asked, "So when can the two of us go home?"

"Tomorrow morning," she said.  "In case something happens, Dr. Preus wishes for you to stay here overnight.  You two are fine, we don't expect anything to happen, but all the same, we want to be sure."

"That makes sense," I replied, stifling a yawn.  "He's so thoughtful."

With that she disappeared behind the heavy, pale pink curtain on the other side of Danny's bed, and started talking to someone she found there.  I lifted my head to do some eavesdropping, but they spoke too softly.  I heard only bits and pieces of conversation, but I did hear something about how somebody "shouldn't be alive, by all rights," and "what this could mean down the road." 

Just then Stuart cut in from the doorway, "Jules, you're awake!"

I turned and smiled.  "Hi, Stu."

"Hello, you brave, crazy woman," he cooed, kissing my lips.  "How are you feeling?"

"Aside of a certain wooziness and a little taste of deja vu, I'm fine," I answered. 

"Deja vu is right," Stuart agreed.  "I'm sorry you had to run into him again, but at least you two got away."

"We were lucky," I nodded.  "Very lucky." 

Still, to myself I wondered what had happened after Danny and I vanished before his eyes.  Perhaps he did wake up the next morning and pass all of it off as a vivid nightmare, a hallucination brought on by having too much fun.  I hoped the sight of me hadn't hurt him.  I didn't mind if he was annoyed that I'd crashed his party uninvited; annoyance were short-lived, and settled almost as quickly as it was aroused.  But I didn't want him to hurt.  Pain goes on, especially the emotional kind- and emotional pain, it seemed to me, was the only certainty that Freddie could fully depend upon.

I was slipping away again, before Stuart's clear voice drew me back toward reality.  "...Is definitely damaged, so it'll be at least a few days' repairs before there can be any more unauthorized adventures," he quipped.  "But for the most part, in the more minor areas, Speck is still kicking."

"So," K asked, "you're saying we can't-"

"Not for a while," Stuart shook his head.  He went on to say something else, but I wasn't listening.  I glanced back at the curtain, frowning.  For I had heard something besides the conversations of the nurses.  It was another voice, something that sounded like a faint, groggy moan as if its owner was stirring awake.

I squinted and sat up a little further. I could see the slightest shadow of what looked like another bed, and heard beeps and buzzes from machines too faint to be on our side. Did we have a roommate?

"Who's that over there?" I asked.

C blinked. "Where?"

"Behind the curtain. Is there someone else in here besides us?"

Stuart waved his hand.  "Don't worry about it, honey, just relax."

At that moment the nurse walked out from behind the curtain with a tablet in her hand -almost nobody used clipboards anymore, tablets were the standard- and she started to say something when C cut her off before one sound left her throat.

"Administer the sedative, please," he instructed shortly.

I thought for a moment that he meant me.  "What?  I don't need a sedative, I'm f-"

"Not you," K said quietly.  Now both C and Stuart were glaring at poor K.  And I couldn't understand why.  C didn't mean Danny, either, for he still lay sleeping. 

"Then who?" I asked, following the nurse with my eyes as she disappeared again behind the curtain.

Stuart repeated, "Like I said, it's nothing, don't-"

"If it's nothing, then it shouldn't be a problem for you to tell me," I stated.  "Who's back there?"

All three men looked at each other, looking trapped.  C rubbed his face; K stared down at his lap and licked his lips; Stuart let out a deep sigh through his nose before looking up at me and taking my hand in his.

"Jules, do you trust me?" he asked.

"Of course," I said.

"Then please don't worry about what's behind that curtain," he pleaded.  "We'll all be much better off if we just let it lie."

"Let what lie?  Stu, you're scaring me.  What happened?"

Then I heard some more rustling.  There was definitely someone else on the other side.  I sat up a little straighter, listened a little closer. 

"Maybe she could use one, after all," C mused quietly.  But I didn't react, as I barely noticed him talking.  I was too focused on the curtain, squinting hard to make out any shadows or sounds that slipped through the heavy fabric.  Suddenly I remembered the pressure round my wrist- and how narrowly I had escaped Freddie earlier.  It had been almost too close- so close it almost wasn't close enough.

That pressure, that grip.  It felt intentional, almost like- like someone had grabbed me...

My throat went dry. 

Stuart took a deep breath, saying, "Maybe we should move you two to the other room now, the tests are finished I think, and- and that stuff's probably going to distract you, keep you up all night, so perhaps now's a good-"

"Stuart, I didn't come back alone, did I?" I croaked, my voice shaking.

He blinked.  "Why would you ask me a thing like th-"

"WHO'S BEHIND THAT F---ING CURTAIN?" I exploded. 

The next thing they knew, I had yanked the IV out of my arm.  Ignoring the sudden light-headedness I felt from getting up so fast, I hobbled past Danny while Stuart begged me please not to move any closer.  C practically sprang at me, the nurses moved to tackle me to the floor, but it was too late.  The plastic hooks of the curtain squeaked across the rod as I tore it back.

And for a few seconds I forgot how to breathe.

I saw the medic just hanging the IV drip back up, having just finished adding the sedative, a sedative which was inching its way down, down, through the tube, into a needle.  This needle was stuck in the wrist of the man lying there, washed in the soft yellow-white lighting overhead.  He was hooked up to seemingly every kind of machine the typical up-to-date hospital has to offer- heart monitors, brain scanners, you name it.  He was gently moving, rolling his head from side to side, brows flexing under the sticky white sensors attached to his forehead, eyes struggling valiantly to open.  He was trying to wake up.

Freddie Mercury, a man dead longer than I had been alive, was trying to wake up.

I stood there frozen, unable to comprehend what I was seeing.  Behind me I could hear one of the three swear to himself.  I opened my own mouth, but I couldn't find the words, save for a small, slow, and squeaky "Oh... Jesus...Lord... Oh my God..."

"Jules," Stuart said, placing his hand wearily on my shoulder, "please let them alone, they're still working on him-"

But it was at that moment that, after numerous failed attempts, Freddie's eyes fluttered half-open and blearily swept the room for a second, before finding mine and staying there.  The fingers of his IV-less hand twitched as he lifted it up a little.  He blinked once, his expression dopey with drugs and time-travel aftershocks.

And he mumbled, so softly I almost didn't understand him, "...Am I dead?"

I shook my head.

He blinked again, then actually rolled his eyes and said, with palpable disappointment, "F---," before his eyes drooped closed and stayed closed.  His hand falling back against the bed, he succumbed to the sedative.

"Sounds like he's 'all there' to me," K quipped softly.

I covered my mouth, took a step back. "Stu," I breathed out, "tell me I'm seeing things."

"You're seeing things," C answered for him.

In C's mouth, the words were drastically less convincing. Stuart tried tugging me back over to our side of the curtain, but I stayed where I was, watching Freddie sleep, marveling at every breath he took.

"How did this happen?" I whispered.

"Just before we pulled you in, he must have grabbed your wrist and held on so tight Speck's computer thought he was just another part of you, and counted his mass in with yours," K explained.  "So you could say he kind of tagged along."

I couldn't stop looking at him, glad they had dressed him in solid colors as opposed to the less-dignified emoji-patterned scrubs that poor Danny wore.  "What did you do with his clothes?"

C snorted.  "What clothes?"

I frowned.  "You don't mean to say he-"

"What you see now, is all we wish we saw then," K said glibly.  "We got an eyeful.  I'll just say it that way."

But I didn't care what they saw.  "You have to send him back.  He doesn't belong here."

"I couldn't agree with you more, Jules," Stuart sighed, "except as of right now, we... can't."

At last I found the strength to stop staring at Freddie for a while, and I whirled to face Stuart.  "What?  Why not?"

"We've never used Speck to transport multiple people at once- and even if we did, we would use the actual setting which adjusts it transport capacity in order to accommodate two or more," Stuart said.  "But it brought you two back at one time in the individual setting, which, from what I saw a few minutes ago, has damaged the Speck's overall transport ability.  I don't know how long it will take to fix, but we can't do it overnight.

"So we are going to have to keep this guy here until we get Speck sorted out.  Luckily, the machine can still maintain a grip of the exact moment we brought you and him back to the present.  How long is still anyone's guess, maybe days, weeks, perhaps a whole month- but definitely long enough for us to fix Speck if we put a good foot under it- and as long as we have that moment in our grasp, we can avoid any time discrepancies and rifts in the continuum."

"So there actually are such things as discrepancies?" I asked.  "Changes on the continuum?"

"In theory," K nodded.  "There's no evidence of it thus far.  We haven't tried causing one, to be honest, we haven't reached that level of unadulterated hubris.  So really, right now, all we are doing is playing by the rules.  What's happened tonight, you bringing Freddie back with you, is the most radical turn of events yet.  And at this point, I can't tell you if this is a discrepancy waiting to happen, or this was meant to happen, or if Speck's A.I. decided to play a little trick on us inferior humans, or what have you.  For as long as the bridge exists, we won't fully know- but when we can dig deeper into what happened, we'll certainly have a better idea."

I nodded, then turned to Freddie's sleeping body once more.  "So," I asked, "what are you going to do with him in the meantime?"

"What do you mean, what will we do with him?" C asked.  "We'll be keeping him down here."

"Awake?"

C shook his head, smirking.  "Unlikely."

"You're not really just going to keep him doped up and comatose this whole time?  You said it might take days, at least!"

"What's it to you, Julia?" C asked slyly, touching my arm in feigned comfort.  "Worried for him?"

I glared at him.  "No, I'm not, I just-"

"It makes more sense to keep him down here, Jules," Stuart said.  "He'll be easier to control, and it'll be much less expensive for us, if he doesn't ever realize where he is, considering how much it costs the university to operate the Crebinator."

I yanked my arm away from C.  "The What-inator?"

"Crebinator," Stuart explained.  "It's a memory-wipe device we use whenever the trips take a wrong turn.  It stuns the neurons which allow for access to a certain memory, and more or less cuts the connection, making for selective amnesia."

A light switched on in my head.  The most peculiar plan started to take shape.  "So you can make it so that he doesn't remember anything?"

"It's 2027, honey; we can make him forget or remember anything we choose," Stuart said.

I nodded, and swallowed.  "Then I'll take him."

C rolled his eyes, and Stuart looked completely taken aback.  "What?"

I blinked, utterly surprised at what I had just volunteered to do.  But then I said it again, more assertively.  "I'll take him.  I'll- look after him."

"We can't let you do that," C said.  "George would never allow for this to happen."

"And I can't let you just keep him sedated for God knows how long, staying in this one bed for days until you finally get things working again.  Bedsores hurt!"

"We won't keep him long enough for him to develop bedsores, don't get excited-"

"What's more," I went on over C, "I owe him.  He- was very kind to me, and looked after me when I fell into his life- and now that he's more or less tumbled into mine, I only think it's, you know, fair that... I do the same for him."

"Oh, right," C said sarcastically.  "Bound by honor, I suppose."

"It's only right," I said, gritting my teeth against the sudden insidious wave of emotions threatening to crash down on me.  "And he's... going to be spending enough time in a few years, bedridden, unable to move, comatose... so... I'd really rather us not add to that, if you don't mind.  Can you understand that?"

Even in 2027, as many cool tricks as our tablets and computers could do, there still existed no official FDA-approved cure for HIV.

"I'm with her on this actually," K said, suddenly assertive, and looked at Freddie. "My only worry is whether or not he'll be recognized, and our cover gets blown or something."

I shook my head. "I wouldn't worry about that. These days, everyone thinks Freddie looks like Rami Malek."

Then Stuart led me away from the others, back out into the hall where we could speak alone.  He took my hands, tried to take a deep breath. 

"Honey, look," he said. "I understand you're not feeling like yourself, you weren't expecting to see him here, I really think- maybe I should take you two home and you can forget about this..." Stuart trailed off, then waved toward the room where my son and his father were lying.

"I will let you take us home," I whispered.  "But only on the condition that you promise me, that as soon as you guys finish running tests on him, making sure he's sentient and healthy or whatever, you have them bring him to my house."

Stuart swallowed.  "Jules, I really think this is a bad idea.  How are you supposed to keep track of him?  He could just up and run, or- And what about the kid?"

"What about Danny?"

"Aren't you afraid of, you know, what kind of influence he'll be on him?"

"I've already thought about that," I lied.  "I'll worry about it when it becomes an issue."

"And also, on an admittedly more selfish note," Stuart said, looking down awkwardly, "I'm afraid- I mean he's your ex, for God's sake, and you clearly still care for him-"

"Stuart, really?" I said.  "Freddie was in a relationship in 1985- and besides, he's gay.  You haven't a thing to-"

"Not gay enough, I've heard," he muttered, hints of green all in his voice. 

Oh, C, you and your big ugly mouth.

"Stuart, I want him gone," I stated in pure honesty.  "Please get that through your head.  I don't want him here any more than you do.  But I also owe him the same courtesy and generosity he showed me when I was the one playing the intruder.  I'm just trying to do the right thing by everyone.  As long as he doesn't remember us, or remember this place, I can do this. 

"Look.  I promise you this, on my life: if I ever get one suspicion that he's trying to manipulate me, or take advantage of me, or God forbid, flirt with me in that way, he's outta there.  I'm not trying to rekindle an old flame, that ship has sailed.  I just want to do the right thing.  I don't care for him any more than I would care for anyone else in the same spot.  Please believe me."

Stuart looked into my eyes, and I gazed back into his with as sincere an expression as I could make.  And at last, to my relief, he sighed and nodded. 

"Okay, we'll give it a go," he conceded.  "I'll have the team bring him over- asleep- tomorrow night or the day after tomorrow, whenever we get him squared away, and I will work like hell to fix the Speck.  Fair?"

I kissed Stuart, and put my arms around him.  "Fair."

"I'm only doing this because I love you and I trust you," he murmured into my neck.  "You realize that, right?"

I looked down.  "Mm-hm.  I love you, too."

Without much further ado, the doctors gave Danny and myself one more once-over, and decided we were clear to head home.  So Stuart lifted the sleeping Danny carefully in his arms and started out of the room, leaving me, the doctors, and Freddie in the room.

"We shall see," C said solemnly.  "I haven't got a lot of faith in this test myself, if you know what I mean."

K rolled his eyes and followed him out, with the nurses in tow.  Now I alone stood behind in the room where Freddie lay, completely unconscious.  I couldn't help but walk over and draw that curtain back one more time to watch him breathe.  I blinked, rubbed my eyes, but he was still there. 

Why is this happening to me again?

As far as I was concerned, I really didn't have a choice but to take him in.  I was, as C had joked, morally bound to help- and anyway, he wouldn't bring our memory home with him.  That alone made this set-up tolerable.

The hall was full of chatter.  Someone called my name, said to stop dallying and get ready to go, but I still hesitated.  Instead, I drew closer to Freddie, staring into his peaceful face.  His hand, the one he tried to reach up, lay limply at his side.  Without realizing it, my own hand began to drift towards it, and just as my fingertips grazed the top-

"Julia, come on," K's voice coaxed from the door.  "You'll have plenty of time for that later.  Trust me."

Lowering my eyes, I quickly trotted out, asking myself again what the heck was I just doing in the last minute, and what was the matter with me, and why the heck had I just gotten myself into a replay of the snowball of events that had so screwed me up ten years ago.

Wasn't that the definition of insanity?  Doing something over and over again and expecting a different result?  Perhaps I was crazy after all.  I certainly could pass for it some days.

But I hadn't time to think about that now.  There were too many things to do before he came and stayed.  I had to clean the house, guess at his size and buy a modest wardrobe, call Roxie, and whatever else I couldn't remember at the moment...