The young man shook in Greg's arms.
Rain drizzled on the pavement. Blue lights painted wet brick in restless flashes. Greg Lestrade, Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard for twenty-three years, held on with the practiced certainty of someone who had spent decades talking people back from impossible edges.
"Glad you stayed," Greg said quietly.
The sobs came all at once, violent and exhausted. Greg simply stood there, letting him cry until the worst of it passed.
As Greg gently pulled away, there was…
No, not ordinary silence.
Complete. Absolute. Stillness.
The flashing police lights froze mid-pulse. The young man's expression remained fixed.
Even the raindrops hung motionless in the air.
Before Greg floated countless grains of luminous sand, suspended in the air. They swirled together in impossible currents, every grain changing colors —silver into violets, emeralds into crimsons, sapphires into golds. A kaleidoscope of colors bold and dim, of days and nights and lives and deaths, all forming a living rainbow.
And somehow Gareth knew it was looking at him, through him, scanning him.
"Why do you look like you belong in an hourglass?"
The sands rippled as if amused.
Curiosity overrode caution; Greg extended one finger.
Until it brushed the swirling cloud.
And the world shattered and folded around him.
Buildings stretched and rewove themselves.
People blurred into streaks.
Then the stillness returned.
He stood on a familiar street.
Across the road stood the young man.
But somehow older; by four or five years.
A little laugh escaped the young man as a small child, who looked like him, clung happily to his shoulders.
The realization hit Greg like a train.
He jerked his finger back and instantly, the vision collapsed.
Then rainbow sands waited patiently.
Heart pounding, Greg looked around.
A teenage girl nearly walked through him before freezing with the rest of the world.
Mocha complexion, dark braid. Freckles. School blazer.
Recognition struck instantly. He knew that face from photographs she'd had reluctantly shown the squad after losing a bet.
His partner, or rather, his future partner.
Greg’s breath caught as the implications flooded in.
Then another thought appeared. One he had buried for years.
The man Greg loved with every stubborn piece of his heart. The brilliant man who had accepted an appointment to some strange Office no one could ever explain, smiled sadly one evening, kissed Greg goodbye...
No body found, no answers given; eventually declared dead.
If this truly crossed time, he could see Mycroft again.
Just once. Just hear his voice.
His hands trembled as Greg's chest tightened in ardent want.
The self-reprimand came out harsher than intended.
"I don't get to undo grief because I miss someone."
He shut his eyes. The temptation hurt more than any wound he'd ever carried.
"But changing the past..."
He shook his head bitterly.
"...that's how detectives become evidence."
Slowly... Deliberately...
He touched the sands once more.
Push just a little forward.
Tiny adjustments. Feeling the flow rather than seeing, until…
Rain resumed. Sirens wailed.
The young man finished wiping his eyes and stilled again.
Everything was exactly as it had been.
The swirling sands alone remained.
"I don't know what you are... But you're far too dangerous to just be willy-nilly letting people control you like this."
The colors gently pulsed as if waiting….
Instead of answering, it flowed around him, through him.
Warm. Cold. Young. Ancient. Endless.
Speaking not in words, but Memory.
He felt civilizations rise and disappear between heartbeats.
Rivers of history branching into futures beyond counting.
He understood the being before him was simply Time.
Asking him to serve - a duty, a stewardship.
It was searching for one capable of restraint before power.
Someone who would choose not to change history even when given every reason.
Its current guardian no longer wished to serve.
Because eternity had become enough.
Should Greg accept, he would walk every century, guard every timeline.
For as long as he wished.
“And if one day I too, chose to lay the burden down?”
He would be returned here. To this exact heartbeat.
Because that Time would belong to another Greg. Not this one.
Everyone and thing remained frozen in Time.
The young man waited unknowingly for a better tomorrow Greg had already glimpsed.
He imagined the chaos of such power falling into the wrong hands…
A tyrant. A person grieving unwilling to let loss remain loss.
At history rewritten endlessly by someone's preferred draft.
…and shuddered mentally and physically at the thought
The sands answered with a feeling - a different Memory.
Something terrible that had nearly happened but for those in Office stopping it.
And alongside the dark memory, amusement. As though knowing such a person attempting to master Time itself usually ended spectacularly badly.
Greg didn't quite understand it, but he believed it.
The man he'd loved was gone. His career had reached its quiet twilight.
No one depended on him for anything.
Yet untold numbers depended on history to remain exactly what it needed to be. Past. Present. Future.
"I spent decades serving as a custodian of the people... Now I'm being offered to serve as the Custodian of Time.”
I’m not ready for this. But is anyone?
He looked once more toward the young man.
Greg then extended his hand.
The rainbow sands rushed joyfully around him.
Robes draped his body, and an hourglass floated to his hand.
And somewhere, beyond every yesterday and tomorrow…
Time welcomed its newest guardian -Chronos.
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