Leon didn't know how long he had waited.

Collapsed onto his knees before the platform in the bunker room, he just sat there. And waited. The last time, barely a second had passed before Ally had returned. Barely enough time for any feeling of dread and misery to set in at the thought that she was gone and he might never see her again.

Now, that feeling hit him with all the more force.

It settled in slowly, with every passing second that he stared at the empty spot where she had disappeared. Like grains of sand trickling through an hourglass, his hope drained away with every passing moment, until the definitive gravity of the situation became so heavy that it pulled his heart into a bottomless black hole.

She was gone forever. Because if she had chosen to come back, ever, she would have reappeared within a split second from the moment she had left.

"Leon."

A voice, softly calling out from somewhere behind him, reached his ear. He didn't care. He remained unmoved and unmoving, staring at all that dreadfully empty space before him.

On the ground, something small and glistening caught his eye. He picked it up and traced his fingertips over familiar, rounded edges, and a sharp one that was new. A muted, bitter laugh escaped him as he recalled the conversation he had had with Ally, before her first jump. The device hadn't provided enough energy to transport everything across this time. The key that he had given to her had been cut off, and a part of its blade had been left in this time.

"Leon!"

It was Rosie. He could feel her hand on his shoulder.

"I couldn't accept that the end of the world was coming," he said quietly. "So I gave everything for Last Hope. And when I thought we really might be able to save a world, even if it was another one, I told myself that I could be content. But when I met her... I thought... that at least I wouldn't have to be alone, when it all ended."

His voice cracked, and he shuddered as a wave of emotions overcame him, all that love and longing he felt when he thought of her. It passed, and his heart became a black space, empty and infinitely heavy, so dense with pain and bitterness that there was nothing else left for him to feel.

"And now that she's gone, I cannot wait for it all to just go to hell."

"Leon. Don't say that," Rosie said softly. "Look at me."

He raised his head slowly, and turned around to face her. She wasn't wearing her glasses, which was unusual for her. And she was smiling. Her kind, almost cheerful look irritated him, until he noticed that there was a trace of something else in her eyes that he couldn't quite read.

"There is somebody you should meet," Rosie said.

She nodded over her shoulder, where Baker stood near the doorway. Next to him, with her arm hooked through his, was a person he didn't know. The woman was old, perhaps even the same age as Baker, even though her straight posture and her white hair that she wore in a neat, thick braid made her look much younger than the frail man beside her. She looked like one of the authorities, dressed in an elegant, dark grey pantsuit that showed that for the most part, the years had been kind to her. Leon squinted at the woman, wondering-

"No..." he muttered. "This can't be... you can't... You are-"

He rose to his feet, slowly and staggered, as the abject horror of his realization grabbed a paralyzing hold of his body.

It was because of her eyes.

That piercing, questioning stare from those lilac eyes was exactly like when he had first met her, two months ago. But the woman before him must have been in her seventies at least, there was no way-

Time travel? A memory from their first meeting flashed before his eyes: Alyssa, one eyebrow raised in an expression of her skepticism. You must be insane, she said.

Perhaps he was. Perhaps he was simply going insane. The implications of what this looked like were definitely insane.

"It's impossible," Leon whispered hoarsely. "If there had been two versions of the crystals in the same timeline, the jump wouldn't have worked, and-"

"You are right. But they broke, a long, long time ago," the old woman said wistfully. "If they hadn't..."

Her voice trailed off as she met his gaze. The expression of yearning on her face was so familiar, so hauntingly like Alyssa's that he shuddered. This wasn't right.

"No. I don't believe you." He shook his head violently, squinting his eyes shut like a child hoping for a nightmarish vision to go away. But when he opened his eyes again, she was still there. He buried his face in his hands. He wanted her gone, whoever she was.

"Leon."

He whimpered at the familiar sound of his name in her voice.

When he looked up again tentatively, he found her standing right before him. Her face was so much like Alyssa's, but so impossibly different, so familiar and yet so alien. But there was that same perfect slope of her nose and her wrinkled skin faintly dotted with the same pattern of freckles. He swallowed hard. Transfixed, he stared at the old woman as she slowly moved her hand to her neck and pulled a silver ball-chain out from underneath her collar.

"I believe they broke because of this," she said quietly.

"No," he simply said, but he knew that she was right.

He had thought the same thing mere moments before, when he had picked up that small piece of metal that so perfectly matched the fragment that was dangling from her chain, scratched and battered from fifty years of wear.  Two halves of a whole.

"But you can't be her!" he raised his voice, desperate to deny, clinging to his last shreds of hope that she wasn't who she claimed to be and Alyssa, his own Alyssa, would reappear behind him any moment now.

"She would have done everything to save the world and prevent this future!"

"And you think I didn't? Don't worry, Leon, I didn't forget... And now, everything is at it is supposed to be, now that she- I am gone." The old woman raised her left hand, and as her sleeve fell away, it revealed a familiar looking black bracelet. She tapped against it with a wistful smile. "Remember? Planning with hindsight."

He stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded and unable to process what this meant.

"But I suppose, in a way, you are right," the old woman dropped her gaze, and the smile on her face withered. "I am not her... no longer. Fifty years ago, I took Pandora's name and her place in the shadows... I changed my name many times. In the end, I became Nadja Espira, and-"

His mind was sent racing. So it hadn't been Espira, nor had it been her grandmother. It had been her. It had been her all along. But her grandmother had died fifty years ago, before her mother –

A wave of nausea overcame him, and he shuddered. He staggered a step back, refusing to believe, appalled by the mere thought, horrified by all the implications of her words.

He could feel Rosie's grip on his arm tighten to keep him upright.

"Did... did you know about this?" Leon whispered, and looked from Rosie, who shook her head slightly, to Baker, who nodded.

"Baker helped me... and in turn, I helped him," the old woman said quietly.

"Then tell me," Leon's gaze snapped back to her. "Why... why didn't you save the world? Wasn't that what you wanted to do all along? Why didn't you change anything?"

"Oh, Leon. Who do you think sponsored all this?" She gestured around herself. "Who do you think made all of this possible? Who made sure the anchor would stay in the same spot after its creation, so the jump would work? Who amassed all these resources for Last Hope and made sure that everything was in place, well before the war and before the people were driven underground?"

He stared at her blankly, his mind trying to wrap itself around what she was implying.

"A loop..." he whispered. "But..."

She shook her head softly, and her hand moved back to the key resting between her collar bones.

"Not just one. Two."

And he finally understood. Two keys. Two loops. Two timelines, intersecting, winding around each other only to twist back again. Only to lead back to the same, broken future.

In the end, nothing had mattered.

"So what now?" he asked bitterly, "What are we supposed to do now?"

The old woman cracked a sinister smile.

"Now, we become hope."

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche

https://youtu.be/lpnbdSRv-GI

_________

A.N.
Well.... This is it. The loop is closed.
The last chapter is dedicated to @wdhenning who called the grandmother paradox very early on :)

I've drafted and written this story over the course of roughly one month, and other than the fact that I missed the mark I set myself at 20k words by a whopping 15k, I am fairly happy with the outcome. It was nice to have a different world and different characters to explore, and tell a story that I knew from the start would be closed in itself (pun fully intended). Some things are purposefully left a bit open, but I am happy to answer any questions you might have here, especially if something didn't make sense to you. It's still a draft, after all, so I'm looking forward to your feedback to improve this story!

Thank you all so much for reading and commenting. I appreciate it tremendously! Special shout out to @Red_Leasia, @Cosmogyral-delirium and @gechochamber for all the brainstorming that really helped me wrap my head around the time traveler paradox in a double-loop!

Now it's back to editing I guess :)