It was a yearly ritual.

Querl Dox sat at the small round table, the dim lighting turning his golden hair bronze and his green skin deep emerald, the darkness of a forest. A small candle burned on the table, casting flickering shadows over his plastic orange tumbler of kona juice. Music drifted throughout the small bar, unsuited to his mood. It spoke of darkness, but of promises, of broken hearts, but new beginnings. It was the kind of music that people went into bars expecting to hear.

He remembered the first time he saw her. The first time she smiled at him. A sweet, lingering kiss that promised so much more than the bar music could hope to deliver. Her eyes had been as blue as the skies she flew through.

He remembered hiding the information in the databanks from her, so she wouldn't know. So Superboy--and later, much more rarely, Superman--wouldn't know. Even though they showed no inclination to search the data for their 'histories', with some things you just didn't take chances.

He remembered dark nights when she returned to her time, never wanting to know when she'd come from, to when she was returning. Always afraid this time would be the last time he would see her. The last time to hear her laughter.

A shadow fell across his table, and the second person of his ritual arrived.

A dark brown jacket, worn on the edges, was held loosely over his shoulder. A tight shirt was a second skin over his chest, and tighter gray pants slithered into the tops of his scuffed boots. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the candlelight glinted off a small gold earring in one ear. He hadn't shaved again. That was to be expected.

Jo Nah slumped into the second chair at the table. Liquid sloshed over the rim of his mug, leaving a puddle of silverale on the flat surface. "Brrainy," he slurred, focusing on his teammate. The scientist nodded once, solemnly. Was he a friend? Usually. Understandable? Rarely. Jo had found Brainy to be a puzzle over the years. Until lately.

Until once a year.

It wasn't the date he'd lost her. It was the date they'd all lost Kara. But he couldn't bring himself to leave his rooms on the day he'd lost her. He'd drunk himself into a stupor that first anniversary. He had lost everything with her, everything, and gained nothing at all for it.

Nothing except the beginnings of understanding Brainy.

He swallowed more silverale and shut his eyes. It was such poor recompense.

***

Brainiac 5 tapped off the omnicon and quietly explained. "There was a large discharge of chronal energy intersecting with the arrival of Tinya's ship. We'd been charting it but hadn't been able to pinpoint when it would arrive until it was too late."

Ultra Boy leapt from the chair in the lounge and reached for Brainy, hands clenching into fists before thinking. His arms dropped to his sides and he shook. "You knew?! You knew this was going to happen and you didn't warn us? She's dead you green-skinned computer and you knew--"

The scientist turned the handset over to Jo, who stared at the small screen unthinkingly. "As I stated, we hadn't known when it would hit until we couldn't stop it. The charts clearly show how it appeared to hover, for lack of a better descriptor, until something seemed to give it direction. Tracking through time is more difficult now, of course."

There was a stinging sensation as Jo flung his hand out, and a skittering crash of the omnicom hitting the wall. Brainiac 5 flexed his fingers to determine if anything was broken, but before he could decide Jo grabbed him by the collar of his lab jacket and threw him into the wall. His head hit the wall and for a moment he saw stars clouding his vision. No sooner had his sight cleared then Ultra Boy's fist slammed into his jaw. There was a sickening crunch and Querl moaned in pain.

As if the cry was a switch Jo stepped away. His face was a grimace of horrified grief as he watched his teammate pick himself up off the floor. Brainy took a moment to orient through the pain, wincing every time his jaw moved involuntarily. As impassively as he could manage, he picked up the discarded omnicom and pressed it into Jo's hands. Then with a scathing look of disdain, he turned and walked out of the room.

Jo said nothing as the door hissed shut behind the scientist. All he could do was curl up and cry.

Months later, he received a small white card, tucked under his door. It listed a small bar near the old Legion HQ with a date and time. Curious, he went.

When he saw Querl at the table, he remembered what the day was.

***

"TINYA!"

The cry was wrenched from deep in his gut at the long-desired, long past hoped for sight of his fiancée. Tentatively he reached out a hand to touch, afraid she wouldn't be real even now, that this would be some final twist from Glorith's battles with the Time Trapper.

Her skin was firm beneath his hand and he stroked her cheek in tender wonderment, aware he'd been given the most precious gift possible.

***

The second year there had been no card. Jo had considered for a while and finally decided on going anyway. If Brainy had a problem he'd leave. So he appeared at the same bar at the same time, ordered a silverale, and found, tucked into the same corner, the green-skinned scientist nursing a kona juice. Silence greeted him as he arrived at the table and commandeered a chair. He could live with that.

They didn't speak the entire night. It was a companionable silence. They understood each other, this one night of the year.

***

Tinya Wazzo huddled in her boyfriend's arms as if he could shut out the world around them both. Tears streaked down her cheeks, soaking the front of his uniform. She couldn't stop crying. She wasn't even sure whom she was crying for at this point.

She'd gone to see Jo.

She couldn't help herself. She knew he'd lost his Tinya. She knew he wasn't her Jo. She'd tried to talk to him once before but they were too new; the older copies (her mind shied away from the word, substituted counterparts) hadn't had a chance to get used to them. His grief was too raw then. So she waited, thinking perhaps time would dull the edge.

He'd cried.

She had stood, transfixed, in the center of his door, watching an older Jo cry just to look at her. She watched the horrible realization that she wasn't his Tinya go through his eyes. That she was just an apparition to him. A ghost.

A phantom.

And then he turned away from the door so she wouldn't see him break down. Her heart thudded in her throat and she wanted to go to him. He was so achingly familiar to her. He wasn't some copy or weird experiment. He was Jo.

The thought sent her hands to her mouth, incapable of stopping a startled "Oh!" from escaping, before she took steps backwards, away from the door. As it had slid shut she spun, diving through the wall, concerned with escape. She ran until she found Jo again, her Jo, and collapsed in his arms, trying to banish the sight of his other from her mind.

Jo Nah brushed the tears from her cheeks gently, rocking her in his arms. He'd avoided his counterpart as much as he could, unable to bear the thought of what he would do if he lost the woman he now held. He was aware of just how precious she was.

***

He was not a man given to emotions. He knew this with the certainty he knew his equations. He did not indulge in such things.

He stared at his companion over the lip of his mug. In some ways he envied Jo's ability to rage. Ultra Boy's emotions were never far from the surface, although his intellect was kept well hidden. In many ways, the complete opposite of himself.

And yet, in at least one way, they were both so completely alike.

Querl sipped his juice slowly, contemplating his companion. He realized he was glad the other man was present.

It was almost as unsettling a thought as the original impulse to invite the man to this remembrance, despite the broken jaw.

***

Phantom Girl looked at the stars and the Legionnaires gathered on the small asteroid in the deepness of space. She couldn't comprehend what she saw. There were doubles of everyone, all around. It made no sense. But Jo was here. Her blue eyes sought out her fiancée and instead met younger, eerily similar eyes.

Apparition folded her hands in front of her. "I want to thank you."

"Thank me? For what?"

She gestured at Jo--at the older Tinya's Jo, who was talking quietly with Brainy. The scientist had come up and asked to speak to him for a moment and he'd reluctantly moved from Tinya's side. "You love him," she said quietly.

She was rewarded with a nod and a tender smile. "I do."

"And that makes everything all right."

The two Tinyas smiled at each other in perfect understanding.

***

He finally spoke. "Was it worth it?"

Blearily, Jo looked up. "Wha?"

Querl cupped his hand around the tumbler of kona. "I mean, if you knew it would end this way, would you still have fallen in love with her?"

It took a moment for Jo to figure out what Brainy was asking, and then it was all too simple to answer. "Yeah. I would 'ave. She was worrth this. She was worth a lot more than this."

Brainy nodded. "Yes." He pictured Kara again in his mind. "She was."

~The End~