“IT LOOKS EVEN more beautiful now.”

The lights of Paris never faded. They glittered in the thin sheen of sweat that covered Wayne’s chest as Jo traced lines between and around his nipples.

“I know, I’m quite the sight to behold.” Even his usual cockiness sounded tired. Well, that’s what happened when you went three times in twenty-four hours. It seemed Jo wasn’t the only one who had been a bit pent up.

They were no longer breathless. A heavy silence had settled on them like a blanket, one they seemed content to nest under for a shameless amount of time.

“You’re not bad, I guess.” Jo finally pulled herself into a seated position.

“‘Not bad’ doesn’t have ladies screaming my name,” Wayne huffed, still splayed out on the bed. Jo ran her own hand along the sheets. She could feel them, but they didn't rumple between her splayed fingers. They didn’t move to pile at Wayne’s arm when she transferred her touch to him.

He was the most real thing she could feel when her watch wasn’t activated. His skin, the thin coating of hair on his arms, the curve of his shoulder, the stubble that seemed perpetually shy of a five o’clock-shadow no matter how much time passed.

“What is it?” He propped himself up as well, the covers not ruffling as he moved.

“We have all the time in the world, but not enough.” Jo looked to her watch. She had “all the time in the world” as long as she wasn’t actually a part of it. When she was, she had mere hours. “You’re the only thing I can touch, when I’m not using time.” She looked at her watch again; barely more than an hour was left.

“Is touching me really that bad? You seemed to enjoy it.” When his words didn’t get a rise, the grin fell from his face and Wayne rose as well to tap her chin. “Buck up, dollface. No need to have such a somber look on that beautiful brow. You did some fine work.”

“I did.” That much they could agree on. “But. . . what does it really matter? What does any of it matter?”

“Don’t go second-guessing on me now.”

“I’m not,” Jo said firmly. But the conviction loosened some with a sigh. “I’m not,” she repeated, mostly for herself. “It’s that, the world is so big. People die every second. Every moment we breathe, someone suffers. There’s not enough time to fix them all.”

“Which is why you can’t worry about them all.” It sounded cold, detached. Almost like Snow.

“How long does it take until I can feel that way?” Jo looked out the window. The city had never felt more full than when she imagined all the needs within it that went unanswered.

“Hard to say. . .” Wayne shrugged. “I think for me it was the second World War. . . watching the inexcusable carnage.”

Jo pressed her eyes shut. Being a mostly helpless spectator to the horrors of war was an impossible thing to fathom. She wanted to think about anything else. “What year are you from?”

“I was born in 1910.”

“1910. . .” she repeated, trailing off in thought. He’d been in the Society for nearly a century and a half. “How do you do it?”

“How do I do it?” He seemed startled by the question.

“Live, without living? Watch the world get spliced apart and stitched together wish after wish?” It was ineloquent, perhaps poorly put. But judging from the shadow on his face, he heard the true depth of the question.

Wayne looked out the window for a long moment and Jo left him to his thoughts. She’d let him have all the space he could gather to form the answer; it was an impossibly hard question, but one she had to ask all the same. Eventually, he stood, wordlessly, and walked out onto their rooftop terrace. “This is an answer best given with a view to cut its grim nature.”

Jo followed behind, listening closely as he spoke.

“The cheap and easy answer is that you get used to it,” he started, finally. “Because, eventually, as with all things, time and habit win out. And the more time that passes, the less invested you become.”

She stared at the Eiffel Tower in all its orange-gold, illuminated glory. Jo would always worry for her mother and Yuusuke. But what about Lydia, the little girl who would’ve been Jo’s sister? She couldn’t find much more compassion for the child than any other. With enough time, enough generations, she could see losing all connection to the real world.

“You make do with the time you have, though. Maybe even realize good ways to spend it, if you’re willing to get an earful every now and then from Snow. And, well, Eslar. . . he really is an intolerable suck-up, but the rest of the crew isn’t so bad. There’re worse people to spend eternity with.”

“At least we’re not alone,” she agreed thoughtfully.

For a long moment, they simply shared each other’s companionable silence. Jo leaned against the railing of their terrace balcony. It was such a beautiful night, such a beautiful moment. If only she could make it stretch into infinity, escape the heavy knowledge that the two of them would be heading back, likely soon. They’d finished their mission, and it would certainly be time to face the consequences of it.

With a soft sigh, Jo turned away from the mesmerizing sight. Wayne’s thoughtful expression caught her attention, a distant and almost wary look in his eyes. Slowly, Jo shifted a little bit closer to him, angling herself to catch his blank stare.

“Wayne?”

Almost as if blinking himself out of a haze, Wayne turned his attention away from wherever his thoughts had wandered and back to her. She could almost see the veil lifting from his eyes.

“Hm?” He tilted his head at her, smile soft and questioning.

“What was your wish?”

Wayne stilled. Another distant look at something she couldn’t see. Another long silence. Long enough that Jo began to feel awkward, unsure if the man would even answer at all. Perhaps he couldn’t find the words. Perhaps he didn’t want to.

“You know, that’s not something you just ask people.”

“I’m not some random person,” she needlessly reminded him. “And you already know mine.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “You know, you’re right, so I suppose it can’t hurt to tell you. But don’t go asking any of the others, all right?”

Jo nodded, and waited.

“The Great Depression seemed like it was going to last forever. There was no end in sight. . .” His voice had dropped to a thick whisper. Not heavy and husky with lust as she’d heard earlier, but weighted with longing. “I was a stockbroker, you see. Best of the best. Called me Nickel Boy, because I took a nickel and turned it into an empire. Then, I lost it all. . .

“That economic downturn was a ravenous beast let loose on America. Everyone lost everything; no one could find two pennies to rub together. Then the dollar showed signs of further collapse. A war was brewing and all our allies pulled out of trade with us.”

“But, it did end.” She’d read it in the history books.

“I know. I made it end.” Wayne's eyes were so filled with sorrow that it was a jarring contrast to his proud grin. “Snow told me later that, in the world I came from, it was going to last another twenty years; America was never going to recover.”

“But. . .”

“The world you lived in was an offshoot of the world I wished for. Technically, Jo, we never lived in the same reality, you and I. We were separated from the moment I made my wish, and it only continued to split from there.”

She shouldn’t have been startled, but she was. She knew now that the world was merely the product of wishes that severed reality across time. But to really think about it was a bit surreal. She’d never lived in the same world as any member of the Society. With her wish, she’d lived in a different world than anyone else in existence.

“You wished to save your country, and I messed with all of reality just to save my friend’s life,” Jo whispered. “A friend. . . who no longer exists.”

“He doesn’t exist?” Wayne whistled. “Then who did we just stick our necks out for?”

Jo laughed softly, leaning back on the railing and letting her head drop between her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “Me? I guess. . . my need for purpose? Because the Yuusuke we saved has never even met Josephina Espinosa.” Wayne was silent, and Jo found herself talking, frantic not to be left alone with her thoughts. “This was all for someone who I should have no attachment to. I spent time helping a random person, a stranger, using my time for that, when there are so many more important things. I guess it’s just how I am? Messed-up priorities? Because even my wish wasn’t noble—I didn’t even wish to change the world, or a country—and neither are my actions now.”

Her companion’s continued silence threatened to tear her apart. Just as Jo opened her mouth and took a breath, preparing to ramble again, Wayne cut her off. “It was noble, Jo, then and now. Because you did change the world. You changed his world. You gave him a world. It doesn’t matter if he knows it or not, because the fact remains.”

“I guess. . .” She swallowed the taste of salt and looked back out to the city, blinking into the night lights.

“I don’t think you have messed-up priorities at all.” His shoulder pressed gently against hers. “Sticking your neck out for your friend? Doing the right thing? It’ll be Snow or Eslar—whoever gives us the business for this—that has messed up priorities.”

“Thanks, Wayne.” Jo laughed softly. “Here’s to hoping he’s not reckless enough to throw it away again.”

“Well, I wished for an economically strong America, only to watch it be squandered in conflict after conflict, wasted in poor decision making, and ultimately dissolve into nothing as the country was carved up by the Commonwealth Powers of World War III.”

She heard the bitterness in his voice and was all too ready to change the subject, for both their sakes. “I’ve never heard you speak like this before, by the way.”

“Like what?” His entire voice and demeanor were different.

“Like. . . normal? You don’t have the same accent. And I think it’s been a whole hour now since you called me doll.”

“Missing it, doll?”

She laughed. “No, not that. I just thought that you didn’t know how to speak any other way.”

“I can speak however I want. I’m not like the others—modernizing, keeping up with the times on the outside. I choose to speak as I do because it’s all I have left of those days.” It reminded Jo of what he said about eating. Sleeping was the same, no doubt. They all had little things that would keep them connected to the lost realities they’d come from.

“I wonder what I’ll keep doing, to remember my time,” Jo whispered, the sentiment stilling her. A long silence passed between them and when Jo returned her mind to the present, Wayne was staring off at some invisible point beyond the horizon.

“Nickel for your thoughts?” Jo asked, and Wayne laughed, tension easing from his shoulders just like that.

“Oh nothin’ really. Just wondering how the wish is going. It’s not common to be gone so long.”

“Well, I suppose we should get back.”

“About that time,” Wayne agreed, though he hardly seemed happy for the fact.

“Should I pack up my things?” Jo asked as they started in to the hotel room. She motioned to the monitor set-up still occupying the main room of the suite.

“No point. Can’t bring anything back from the real world.”

Jo looked at the desktop she’d made a reality, for however brief a time. It was glorious. And it’d be pieced apart, bagged for evidence (though the authorities would never find anything concrete), stolen by hotel staff, or sold away to pay for the room. Jo swallowed away the grief at the idea of letting it go. “I don’t need it, anyway. The recreation room worked fine.”

“That’s the spirit.” Wayne was already dressed and Jo followed suit. “Say, about this whole little—”

“If you’re talking about helping Yuusuke, I’m not compelled to tell anyone anything.” Jo pulled up her jeans. “If you’re talking about the sex. . . I’m still not going to divulge.” She stopped dressing for a moment, watching his reaction, pleased with what she saw.

“Good, because this team is everything to me. I would not want to mess things up for a bit of fun.”

“You didn’t mess things up,” Jo assured him. She leveled her eyes with his. They were going to be stuck together in confined quarters for eternity; the man was right, best to air everything out now. “It was just casual, you know. I don’t feel anything for you, other than friendship. It’d just been a really long time for me and—”

Wayne saved Jo from another awkward rambling session with a hand and a small smile. “Same for me too, doll.”

“Friends?” Jo asked, relieved that she could be certain she already knew the answer.

“Friends.”

“Good, now that that’s squared away. . .” She zipped up her hoodie. “I’m ready to go back.”

“Brace yourself.” Wayne’s hand hovered over the handle of what was the bathroom—until it morphed into the Society’s Door. “I’ve never been gone for this long without warning or wish duty. Don’t know how people will react.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

The moment Wayne opened the door, Jo knew she’d been very, very wrong in that assessment.