A/N: Thank you all for reading, Merry Christmas and I hope you enjoy the epilogue. Goodnight everybody, and thanks again.

Six weeks later...

Christmas had come and gone, New Years went the same way. Decorations put up for Christmas were taken down, fireworks bought for midnight continued to be fired off every night for weeks after but even those were gone now, and Groundhog Day went off without a hitch, predicting a lot more winter. The snow was gone, but February was cold enough to turn morning mist to ice and kept a constant unearthly frost over the trees, grass, streets and sidewalks.

According to Kat, Sky had recovered exceptionally quickly, and at last he was able to jog alongside Jack as had been their habit for so long. He wasn't going to win any races of speed or endurance, but he had gotten the strength back in his left arm, and his hand was nearly able to function normally, though it was still much weaker than it had been before.

His gait wasn't as easy as it used to be, and he had to stop for more breathers, and couldn't make it as far, but that would go away in time. Where Sky had always adjusted his pace to Jack's, the reverse was now true, with Jack slowing down to keep in sync with Sky.

By far the most lasting damage couldn't be seen. Sky didn't just look tired because of the work his body was doing in the process of healing itself – he wasn't sleeping well, and Jack had a suspicion that Sky's nightmares were frequent and intense, though Bridge (who bunked in the same room) didn't exactly admit it was true when Jack asked him about it.

Bit by bit, Sky was letting go of what had happened, though he would never be able to entirely forget, and Jack suspected that though the nightmares would likely become less frequent, they would never go away entirely. Something like what Sky had been through stayed with you.

There were days, though fewer all the time, when Sky seemed to recall more vividly than was healthy, and on those days he could be depressed and harder than usual to get along with. In internal pain that was deeper than the physical, Sky would at those times lash out or practice avoidance. Sometimes he would seem hopeless about it, as if he would never get the confidence and trust back that had been lost.

On those days, Jack would remind him that Nathan Web may have taken him prisoner, may have tortured him, psychologically tormented him in ways he hadn't described to anyone, but Sky didn't have to let that experience rule him. It was his choice how he viewed it. He could either relive the horror every day and be afraid that it might happen again, or he could dwell on the fact that he had been to Hell, had looked the Devil square in the eye and come out alive. That wasn't nothing.

Jack figured it hadn't only been Bridge's life that had been saved by his meeting Penny. If not for that day of seeing person after person who'd been through Hell and come out with their joy in life intact, he wouldn't have had the first idea about how to talk to Sky or help him on his darkest days. If not for that, Jack would still be where he'd been at the start of all this, still angry and not really knowing why, choosing to let himself be defined by what others had done to him without realizing it.

He couldn't undo all those feelings at once, not after years of nurturing the disappointment, envy, bitterness and resentment that had been planted in his heart so long ago. But he was working on it, on letting go of those feelings one by one, and he knew someday he would look back and realize he wasn't angry anymore. And, who knew, maybe he'd someday even know why he'd had to endure that pain for all those years. Someday, maybe. If he was lucky.

Jack and Sky paused at the top of a steep incline in the trail, where they could look through the frozen trees which lined it on one side to see the nearby city from a distance. From up here, it seemed very small. Somehow, the world always seemed a little bigger when you saw a city from a distance. Even though the city was small, you realized just how many were in the world, and how much space was between them and how many people lived there and how very many depended on SPD for their lives and freedoms. So many threads, more than could be counted in a hundred years.

And yet each thread was precious beyond compare, each light brightened an otherwise dark world. To cut any of them too soon was to lessen the beauty and wonder of it all, to change forever the very fabric of reality, time and space. But even when a thread was cut, life spun on, and the picture was forever a mystery, a terrifying, beautiful, awesome mystery.

Glancing at Sky, Jack saw that his friend was breathing more heavily than would have been the case. Sky's eyes were gazing far off, his face looked tense. He was thinking, and there was darkness coming into his eyes because of it.

"You sure you're alright?" Jack asked, pretending to notice only Sky's harsh breathing and not his tension.

Sky didn't respond for a long moment. He feigned needing to catch his breath first, but Jack knew Sky was actually gathering his thoughts away from whatever dark precipice his mind had come to when they'd stopped. Sky sighed, but the weariness of it was not a physical weight on him.

"I've been shattered before," Sky said quietly, not looking Jack's way, "I can put the pieces back together."

Jack had not been talking about the jogging, and Sky was not talking about his bones. Jack believed Sky. Sky was tough, determined and willful. Web made have knocked him down, but Sky was the sort of person who always got back up, who kept fighting even with the odds against him. That resilience and courage would see him through and, if even that was not enough, there were people he could rely on to help him if he stumbled.

"Here," Sky tossed a small box he'd taken out of his pocket and Jack caught it.

"What's this?"

"A late Christmas present," Sky replied, then held up his hands to silence whatever was about to come out of Jack's mouth, "Here's the deal; you can either let the past make you unhappy, or you can put it where it belongs: in the past. If you open that, you'll be opening yourself to something really nice, and I'm not talking about what's in the box. I'm talking about a time of the year that's very special to a lot of people. But, if you want, you can leave it unopened."

"What happens then?" Jack inquired.

"Out of respect for you and what you've been through, I'll never mention it again," Sky said simply.

"What is it?" Jack asked, inspecting the green paper and red ribbon.

"That's the beauty of the future, Jack," Sky said with an amused grin.

Hearing shoe treads crunching on gravel, Jack looked up sharply from the box to see that Sky had begun to jog again and was leaving him behind. As Jack stuffed the box in his jacket pocket, Sky tossed the end of his thought over his shoulder.

"You don't get to find out for sure until you're on the other side, when the future becomes the present."

"Oh you did not just make that joke!" Jack shouted, "Get back here!"

In the evening, after a battle with Grumm's army which the Rangers had emerged victorious from, Jack found himself sitting at the table in the common area, the book he'd never managed to finish sitting on it next to the as yet unopened gift, his elbows resting on the table, chin on his interlaced fingers.

It didn't make any sense to be afraid of the gift. He knew full well that this one would not be taken away from him, that he would be able to keep it. And yet year upon year of bitter experience weighed on him, and he was afraid to open it, scared to death he'd actually like it, absolutely terrified of the change that would come about if that proved to be the case.

On the other hand, he was curious. He didn't just want to know what Sky had gotten for him, of course. He also wanted to know what it felt like. He knew what Christmas looked like from the other side, but though he could see what the others felt, he couldn't feel it for himself because he was on the outside looking in. They all had something that he didn't, and he wanted to know what that was.

But change isn't easy. Changing how you feel about something means changing what you believe, and that's hard. Nothing terrifies people so much as the amorphous unknown, and nothing is more unknown than change, because you can't know the full effect it will have until after you've already done it. Even if you're wildly, miserably unhappy, living with that is often easier than actually doing something to change it, because the unhappiness and misery is known and it is therefore -no matter how painful it may be- more comfortable than anything else, because everything else is unknown.

"I don't think you'll like how the story ends."

Jack looked up in surprise. He wasn't sure how long Bridge had been standing there, and was so lost in his own thoughts that he had trouble understanding what Bridge's remark related to.

"What?"

"The book," Bridge nodded towards the paperback, "It doesn't have a happy ending."

"Oh," Jack said, looking at the book, having forgotten it was even there, "I don't suppose you'll give me a spoiler, will you?"

Bridge slid into the chair across from Jack, and didn't respond until he'd settled comfortably.

"You wouldn't want to read it if I did that," Bridge said.

"What's the point in reading it if I won't like it?" Jack inquired.

"How do you know you won't like it?" Bridge returned.

"Well, you just said-" Jack didn't get to finish because Bridge interrupted him.

"I said you wouldn't like the ending," Bridge said, "But that doesn't mean there's nothing in it that's worth thinking about. And you can't think about something you haven't read."

"Oh great, and here I was trying to decide between the book and the gift, and it turns out they're both the present," Jack sighed dejectedly, leaning back in his chair, "I don't suppose you know what I should do."

"Are you kidding? I barely know what I am doing half the time, much less what I should be doing."

"You seemed to know well enough when it came to Nathan Web," Jack remarked.

"I don't get to choose what I see," Bridge replied, "Only what I do with it."

"Way to avoid making sense for an entire conversation," Jack said.

Bridge shrugged and got up from the table. But before he started walking away, he turned back to Jack and gazed at him thoughtfully for a long moment.

"It seems to me that, at this particular crossroad, you are being given a very unusual opportunity."

"How so?"

"You get to choose not only what you're going to do next, but also what you're going to see. That's a rare gift," with these enigmatic words hanging in the air, Bridge walked away, leaving Jack still sitting with the book and the green wrapped, red ribbon tied package...

We don't get to choose how and when we die. Even when someone decides to cut the thin thread that binds life to this Earth, in their heart they are already dead, it is this death of soul that brings the destruction of flesh and bone which follows. When death comes, it does so in the time and place of its own choosing, the beginning and the end are the only points of life where we are without choice, when the cold hand of Fate lays itself upon our shoulder and removes all options.

But what we do in between, that's up to us. Who we are does not not begin with conception nor end with death, but shows itself in the tapestry of our lives, in the choices we make in the time we are given, the places we go in our hearts and minds with the gifts and curses offered by life.

We make countless choices every single day. Whether to hit the snooze alarm one more time, what to have for breakfast, whether or not to even have breakfast, what we wear, what we have with our morning coffee, what radio station we listen to on the way to work, what we say to someone when we answer the phone, which websites we visit, how we react to something we read on the internet, if we go out for a drink after work, where we go and who we go with, what we do on our day off, how often we call our mother, who we let into our lives as friends, whether or not we lie about our age if someone asks, what games we play and who we play them with and how long we play them.

We don't get to choose how we are born, how we die or what happens to us between times, but we do get to choose how we live. Every choice we make, big or small, becomes a part of who we are; a letter in a word in a paragraph on a page in a chapter in the story of our lives. It might not seem like much, until you realize there's only one letter difference between Dead and Read, Here and There, If and Is, Grave and Grace. All of a sudden, that one little tiny, insignificant letter makes all the difference in the world...

Slowly, with much uncertainty, Jack reached out and picked up the present, at last both letting go and holding on, capturing both the past and the future in a moment of time, choosing on this day to look towards the great unknown with hope instead of fear.

It was more than something. It was everything.

THE END

"The Present is the point at which time touches eternity."
-The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis)