The world had turned back a hundred years in an instant, the walls of the cathedral reassembling out of ruin, the gray half-light retreating before a directionless whiteness that seared away shadows and cast every angle and surface in the same stark contrast.

He had returned to this place--for the first time? the second? the hundredth? or perhaps he had never left, and a part of him had remained trapped here forever--without the sense of urgency that had set his mind and heart racing, in a desperation to forestall what he could never prevent. There was nothing left to prevent now. It was over before he arrived.

They waited before the altar, where he had seen them alive for the last time. His steps echoed softly as he approached from the aisle, but they didn't turn around until he reached them.

"I've been here before," he said with sudden recognition, remembering this place not for what it resembled--the stage of his recurring nightmare--but for what it was. "I came here a long time ago, when I ...." His words trailed away. There was no wall behind the altar, only an opening onto a white shore edged by a gray line of water fading back into whiteness.

And he felt drawn to that horizon, drawn to whatever waited beyond it, felt his presence spread thin as the boundaries of his awareness dissolved. Long ago he had stood here, on the line between existence and nothingness, and had found something close to peace, a moment before he was dragged back from the edge and woke up in a dull cold room in a body he no longer recognized. Without realizing it, he had spent the last hundred years of his life trying to find that peace again, the calm he had first experienced on the brink of nonexistence.

"We were here once before, too." The sound of Sharon's voice recalled him from the edge, grounded him, reminded him he was still here, if here was anywhere anymore. "That boy, the young man who was with you, he led us here after we escaped the first time."

That boy--he had a momentary glimpse of a shared memory, blue-green eyes and a melancholic smile, a gentle voice whispering comfort. I can take you back to where it ended, but you'll have to go on alone. And you'll have to let go if you want to leave this moment.

"Why didn't you leave then?" he said.

"Something else ... kept us here." Sharon lowered her eyes, and Joaquin stared up at Jan with a mixture of guilt and remorse and longing and a stab of accusation that cut sharper than any of Voyager's words ever had.

Suddenly Jan understood, and he looked away so he wouldn't have to read the truth on his son's face anymore. "So it wasn't just Voyager. You still could have gone if you wanted to. But you waited." And Voyager had found them waiting, two more scattered fragments of his consciousness to be gathered back into himself.

"We didn't want to leave without you, Dad. You looked so sad and tired, like you just wanted everything to be over."

"I kept you here," Jan said coldly, too empty for dismay. "All of this is my fault. If I had been stronger, if I had prevented him, before--"

"Jan, stop it." Sharon kept her head bowed, her hair--what color had it been? he couldn't remember, and everything in this world looked gray--falling across her face. "Stop hurting yourself like that. This was our decision. We stayed because we wanted to see you again, even if it meant we'd have to go back to him."

"I'm sorry." He didn't know whether he was apologizing for blaming himself, or because he knew he deserved the blame, because he'd failed them.

While they stood here the waves had risen and the cathedral walls had faded or crumbled into sand; now only the altar remained, worn down and eroded, a half-sunken boulder at the water's edge. Sharon walked past it, staring across the waves to the unknown place.

"And ... when you shut down the weapon ...." He stopped when he saw her shudder, saw his son recoil from the memory of that place, of what they had become.

"That was our decision too," said Sharon. "Voyager had nothing to do with it. But if you hadn't been there, we might've ...."

He stared at the ground, at the crumbled fragments of rock around the base of the altar.

"Dad. It's okay. He's gone now, right? So we can all go home."

Jan looked up, into his son's eyes--gray like everything else in this world, but he could almost remember another color--and realized he no longer knew where home was. He didn't even know where he was, or where he belonged. "Could I talk to your mother alone for a minute?"

"Sure, Dad. I'll wait right here." Joaquin leaned against the sunken altar, pressing his palm to the rough stone where the Zohar-shaped outline was barely visible, its edges worn to curves.

"Sharon."

Without a word in reply, and without looking back at him, she set off down the line of the beach, along the scalloped hem of the waves, and he followed. When they stopped and he glanced in the direction they had come from, the boulder stood small and gray in the distance, amid the rubble of stone foundations that might have formed part of a building once, their outline barely hinting at its vastness. He moved closer to her side, and some unseen thread pulled his gaze back out to the horizon and stranded him there, until he forgot the difference between the breeze off the water and his own breath, between his outstretched hand and the sky.

"You love them, don't you?"

He couldn't answer. The words reached him, but he lost their meaning somewhere in the distance between the white and the gray.

"Jan."

He turned back. It was getting more difficult to recall himself; if he drifted off again, he might not return at all.

"You love them," she said. "The ones I saw with you the first time we escaped. That girl, and the others. You're alive now because of them; they're the reason why you have to go on living. That's why we stopped you when you tried ...." Her words cut off abruptly. She lifted her face to the horizon, and he sensed that she was also being drawn toward the edge, toward the place where all distinction was lost. "It's strange," she said after a few minutes. "I used to think that if I ever saw you again, you wouldn't have changed, no matter how much time had passed, and in a lot of ways, you really haven't. But there was also a part of me that hoped I'd never have the chance to find out. After I realized what we'd done to you ...."

"Sharon, that wasn't your fault."

"Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. I just want you to know you're not the only one who wanted to forget everything."

For a long moment the only sound came from the waves.

Then she said, "He promised us two things, the second time. The chance to see you again, and the chance to forget what had happened to keep us apart. That's why his offer was so hard to resist, even after we'd been trapped in his mind once before. But it wasn't the same as the first time; we couldn't go back to not knowing. I couldn't forget what I had done, or how I'd hurt you. And he used that pain against us--against you, and everything. Haven't you ever felt as if you had enough pain and grief inside you to destroy the world, if only you could release it somehow?"

At first he didn't think he had ever felt that way, but he realized that was because he had never wanted to inflict his pain on the world; instead he had turned it inward, crushed it down inside himself and hoped for his own destruction.

She stood with her back to him now. He reached toward her, but she pulled away as soon as his fingertips brushed her arm. "No. Don't. Not now." She wrapped herself in her arms as if his touch had chilled her. "Please don't make this any harder for me, or yourself."

He curled his hands at his sides. "What should I do?" He wasn't just being drawn toward the horizon now; something else was holding him back, a faint insistent tug in the opposite direction. Maybe that was all that had kept him from disintegrating completely when he stared out across the waves. Perhaps it was the same as what had compelled Sharon and Joaquin to wait for him, when they should have gone ahead on their own.

"I can't decide for you," she said. "But I think you already know what you want." When she turned from the shoreline it seemed as though the sea was still reflected in her eyes; they were the same shade of gray.

And he did know; he had known since he arrived here, but until she reminded him, he hadn't been able to acknowledge it as such. "What about you and Joaquin?"

"Don't worry about us. We'll be fine, where we're going. I don't know exactly what will happen after that, but if we can, we'll try to wait for you there."

"Thank you." The words sounded clumsy and inadequate, but he didn't know what else to say.

They turned back toward the sinking outline of the cathedral, the last stones of the foundation level with the sand, the altar a featureless outcrop surrounded by water. Joaquin perched atop it, swinging his legs over the edge, and he scrambled down to the sand as they approached.

"You're leaving again, aren't you?" He frowned at Jan. "I can tell. You're going to go away and forget about us, just like you did last time."

Behind Jan, Sharon drew a sharp breath. "Joaquin, that isn't--"

"It's all right, Sharon." Jan knelt in front of Joaquin. "Listen, I .... I can't go with you and your mother just yet. I still have work to do where I came from."

"I know, Dad." Joaquin held his gaze patiently, the accusation gone from his face now, softened by a need for reassurance. It would be easy to make up answers, to tell him they would meet again someday, in another lifetime, or in a place and time beyond the boundaries of this world. But Jan didn't know if any of that was true. All he could remember was what MOMO and the others had learned about the imaginary domain two years ago, when they started building the AMN, that nothing was ever really lost, and even the moments he had tried to forget, the memories he had tried to suppress, had resurfaced because they were too important to let go.

He gripped Joaquin's shoulder. "I'm not sure if I'll get to see you again," he said, "but I have an assignment for you."

"An assignment?" Joaquin's eyes brightened, and for a moment Jan thought he remembered what color they were. "Is it important?"

"Very important. Now listen--I'm not sure what it's going to be like where you're going, but as long as you're still together, I want you to look out for your mother, just like she's always looking out for you. Protect each other. That's important, all right? Can you do that for me?"

Joaquin tried to make his face look serious, but he couldn't quite manage it. He saluted, beaming. "Yes, sir, Captain!"

Jan stood and touched the side of his own forehead. "You're the captain now, Joaquin. I leave you in charge." He turned back toward Sharon. The breeze loosened strands from her hair and trailed them across her face, and he had to fight the impulse to reach over and brush them away, because he was afraid of what might happen if he touched her again, and he knew she was afraid too. Seeing her now, he remembered why he had loved her and why, later, he had wanted to forget her--the reasons for both were the same.

"I guess this is it, then," she said.

"I guess so."

"I'll never forget you."

He was about to say he wouldn't either, but he realized he didn't have to, that somehow she knew already, and that was enough.

After they had gone, he stood on the beach and watched the gray waves rise above the ruins, closing over the altar stone and swallowing it down into the shadows, until nothing remained of the place that had haunted his memories for the last hundred years. And he turned from the white horizon and started toward home.