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The house is dark, which is to be expected. Leonard had inherited it when his father passed, and never really known what to do with it. It’s curious that The Guardian would send him back to Earth, but he supposes it’s better than being stranded on an asteroid somewhere. Now, all he has to do is make his way to The Enterprise. It should be in orbit around the planet- he’ll see it from the sky when it starts crashing. Then, he’ll have half an hour to-
“Who’s there?” a voice wheezes.
His blood runs cold.
It’s a voice he hasn’t heard for a long time. Not since before the divorce. Not since-
There’s a cough. “Lights…”
He steps backwards, expecting to be swallowed by the cool liquid of the portal, but all he feels is the hard brick wall.
His heart sinks.
The Guardian had told him it would take him to where (and when) he needed to be; and not where he wanted to go.
The lights flick on next door, and he hears the old man calling again.
A tremor runs through his hands. If it’s the day that he thinks- if it’s when he thinks…
Please, no. He doesn’t have the strength to do this again.
“Leonard?”
He squeezes his eyes shut, like blotting out a bad dream. When he opens them, the scene is still there- the biobed, the medicine bag he’d left overnight. He’s six years too early to do what he travelled through the portal to do, but there’s still a change he can make here.
He takes a deep breath, and sets his sights on the figure on the bed. He looks less frail than he remembers him, and he’s not sure what that means.
This is good, he thinks. If he undoes what he did here, then he has no reason to run away. No reason to go to Starfleet. Perhaps it’ll save a lot of people some heartbreak in the end. Perhaps, this way, doing nothing won’t feel so much like killing Jim.
He twists the ring on his finger as he approaches.
“Hi, pa,” he whispers.