It wasn't her. Not a freedom fighter from a different - but in the end, all the same - world. Not a woman who had loved and fought and suffered and lost. Not the woman who'd laid in his bed and pretended to sleep so that he would permit his curious fingers to feel the bumps of her spine in the dark. Not the Evey Hammond he knew.
But how couldn't it be her? They shared a face, they shared a name. They shared that smile.
Did she forget him? Maybe, somehow, because they had met on the island and not in this city, things had gone back to the way they were for her before now that they were back, and the island had never existed, and John had never existed. But how could he remember everything that had happened if she couldn't?
The glimmer in his eyes when she turned around faded. He'd been cheated by some misalignment in time, but he wasn't sure if that feeling in his stomach was anger. He was certainly confused, though nothing showed on his face beyond the stoic mask he was trying almost too desperately to hide the cracks of.
"Sorry," he heard himself say. He took a small step backwards. He couldn't remember ever feeling as vulnerable as he thought he sounded.
"I thought you were someone else." He forced the smallest of smiles at her and turned away to leave.