A/N: No, not another prompt, but I don't speak German. I don't speak French. I don't speak Arabic. This entire fic was written by a monolingual, native English speaker who is currently learning Korean and Spanish. But yes, I am completely out of my comfort zone in this fic. If I butchered your language, I am so sorry. Feel free to drag on me in the reviews. I have included at the end what I believed I was writing when I wrote in the languages other than English, if not included in the actual dialogue of the story.
"Ich liebe dich."
"Ich liebe dich … And what's that mean?"
"I love you."
13 months. 28 days. 6 hours. 42 minutes. 15 seconds. That's how long it had been since their "possibilities" talk, and still, nothing had happened.
Arriving back in the early hours of April 18th, 2018 from chasing Emma through the April 2nd, 1863 Richmond bread riot, it was already clear something had changed. None of them could place a finger, but something was there, with the heaviness in the air.
"Would've there been a way to change it to make 2018 air pollution worse?" Rufus jokingly whispered into Lucy's ear, to just receive a cold look in return.
She never found the humor in even possible changes to the timeline. No one person in the field, including herself, knows everything about every historical event, what if for some reason Kenneth A. Roberts' grandmother was there? And she hadn't known so she hadn't been on the look to make sure nothing bad happened?
That moment, that trip, would come back as a haunting to Lucy for months to come, of course, it hadn't been air pollution. Of course, it would be that in this timeline, the relationship of the team wasn't as well developed, not even after Lucy was – somehow, even still in this timeline and she can't make sense of why – kidnapped and held hostage by Flynn then almost got killed by Houdini. That Wyatt and Lucy never encouraged Rufus to go after Jiya, and so Rufus and Jiya as a couple hadn't even ever happened. Therefore, the tension surrounding their return to Mason each time wasn't uncommon in this timeline.
Why? Because Wyatt had a wedding ring in his locker, a photo of the renewal of his and his wife's vows from a year ago as the background photo for his phone, a different home address on his license than the scrappy apartment he'd been living in.
Why? Because Jessica was alive.
It wasn't hard to discover why it was that this Lucy and Wyatt never bonded. It had been 5 long months to the day since the team had returned to 2018 and Jessica had been alive. And Lucy would be damned if Wyatt had said a total of 50 words directly to her in that time period.
Of course, the tension at Mason had simmered down, much thanks to Rufus finally getting together with Jiya from this timeline, but it hadn't helped much on their trips. Sometimes, Lucy had wondered her fair share of "what ifs"; especially the "what if" of if one time, they came back and Jessica was no longer there, just like the opposite had happened. She was right now, as they walked in silence through the morning streets of April 25th, 1967 Denver, Colorado.
Of course, their tension was only made worse by the political protests and tension of the Denverites in the street, prompting Rufus to break the awkward silence and ask, "So what exactly did we just walk into?"
"The Roe v. Wade about six years before Roe v. Wade," Lucy sighed out, before clarifying, "In just a few hours, Governor of Colorado John A. Love will officially sign into law the first of its kind, a law allowing abortion in other cases than just rape or incest. It would set off others to do the same, California would do so just a few months later on June 15th, 1967, and New York would on July 1st, 1970."
"So what could Rittenhouse want here?" Rufus asked, noticing the furrow of Wyatt's brow as Lucy spoke, figuring he was wondering the same thing but wasn't about to ask.
"As you can probably tell, there were groups – especially the Catholics – completely opposed to this bill," She paused to let some women pass before continuing, "I mean, by today's standards this is very conservative, it only opens up more abortions to cases where it affects the mother's physical or mental health, or if the baby is born it will have severe deformities, and even then there has to be a board of three doctors to unanimously say "yes" that the woman can have the abortion, but I wouldn't put it above Rittenhouse to be the kind of pro-life monsters who would want to stop this," She thought and swallowed a gulp in her throat before continuing, "Or they could try to lobby to make it even more liberal, which could also have dramatic differences to our timeline of abortion rights!"
"So which lead do we follow first, professor? The loss of the bill or the more liberal version of one?" Wyatt asked, and Lucy silently upped the word count of what he's said to her to 70, trying to hide the utter joy on her face over that fact.
"I don't know," She defeatedly said, raising then lowering her shoulders as she put her pointer finger and thumb on her temples.
It turned out it was neither. Soon after their conversation, Rufus had caught a flash of red hair going up to talk to Dana McLean Greeley, one of the leaders of the Christians protesting, and the team had decided to try to eavesdrop from a distance. However, after an about 5-minute conversation with Greeley, Emma disappeared, the Lifeboat telling them she'd gone back to 2018.
As Lucy was deep in research, trying to figure out details of Dana McLean Greeley's life, a relative newcomer at Mason Industries, having come on just 2 months ago, Araceli Pérez, sat down next to her with a simple, "Hey," accompanied by a head tilt.
Lucy breathed out a sigh, unsure if it was coming out of relief or stress, she never knew anymore as she looked away from the computer to reply, "Hey, Araceli."
"Okay, so before you say anything, I already have Jiya, Miremba, and Rena on board, and you know with your time team of a threesome, things are generally better in odds, so we need to bump up to a fivesome," Araceli beamed, before continuing to Lucy's raised brow, "Girls' night out. You deserve it, Lucy, we all do."
"Depends what a girls' night out entails," Lucy murmured.
"The bar, honestly, just the bar," Araceli put her hand on Lucy's arm, "Come on, Lucy. Please," She begged, drawing out the 'please'.
Lucy thought back to all the times of her, Rufus, and Wyatt at the bar, later joined by Jiya as well, the fun they'd have that wasn't remembered at all by any other than the three than them in this timeline and nodded as she grabbed the computer to put away, "Sure, Araceli, why not?"
"Yes," She exclaimed, jumping up, "We all have to pack up some stuff at our desks, so meet us in 10 at the doors to leave?"
"Okay," Lucy said as she nodded, accompanied by the pure thought of, 'This should be interesting.'
Lucy realized she'd missed this, just sitting at a table at Portola's after a tiring mission. And she'd realized her mourning over the loss of Wyatt, someone she'd never truly had in the first place, meant her missing out on forming bonds with the female workers at Mason, who turned out to be fun to hang out at the bar with.
Araceli with her martini, Jiya with her beer, Rena with her long island, Miremba with her screwdriver, and Lucy with her gin-and-tonic, it was just a good time.
"He's looking at you," Rena smirked as she nudged Lucy and said.
"What are you," Lucy started but was cut off by actually seeing who exactly Rena must've been talking about, "Oh, that's just an old colleague of mine, William Girouard. He teaches in the International Relations program at Stanford."
"Well, then you should go say hi," Miremba suggested, the rest nodding along.
"Seriously," Lucy raised her brow at them, "What happened to a girls' night?"
"Well, forego that, because since you're not going over there, he's coming over here," Araceli observed sitting up straight, and waving her hand to instruct the others to do so as well, and even raised her hand partially to her hair, as if to instruct Lucy to run her fingers through her hair.
Lucy obliged Araceli's non-verbal directions as William got closer, saying, "Hey William," as she finished raking her hand through her hair.
"Lucy, I hope I'm not interrupting anything important," He started, to which Lucy saw out of the corner of her eye Jiya scrunching her face and shaking her head 'no', "But I saw you sitting over here and needed to say that we've missed you at Stanford," He said, before leaning in and whispering, "That Maurine Reid has got nothing on you."
Lucy let out a puff of air into a smile before raising her brow in a joking matter, "Eh bien merci, William."
"Bien sur," He replied in French before switching back to English, "God, two years has hurt my memory, how many languages other than English did you say you knew again?"
"Three," Lucy lied, hoping he didn't take her glancing away saying that as any other than the normal eye-contact-to-look-away ratio.
"Right, right," William nodded with a smile on his face, "Well, I have to get going but there's a social event I was invited to coming up in Sacramento for polyglots like us, could I text you the details and you come with me?"
"Yeah, sounds like an amazing time," Lucy smiled a tense smile, "But just so you know, I did have to change phone numbers so mine isn't the same since the last time," She started, and when he got out his phone and motioned for her to rattle off her number, she cleared her throat and stated, "510-555-0196."
"Great," He said, reaching for Lucy's hand and squeezing it before letting go and walking away as he stated, "I'll text you."
Lucy pursed her lips together into a smile until she fully saw him leave, before putting her face in her hands, causing Miremba to ask, "What's wrong?"
"William Girouard is the most judgemental man ever," Lucy stated, raising her head up to take a sip of her drink, "He can speak Mandarin, Portuguese, French, Japanese, Greenlandic, Hebrew, Gaelic, Hindi, and Finnish, as well as English. When he learned I could only speak English, French, and Latin, and so I was only trilingual and not a polyglot like him, he never looked at me the same way again," Lucy explained, rubbing her temples to try to get rid of the stress headache coming on, "So I saw my chance when he didn't remember how many I spoke, and lied. But I don't know a lick of any more languages!"
"I'm sorry, Lucy," Rena said, empathy in the eyes she looked at Lucy with, before switching her eyes to Lucy's drink, "Should we get you something stronger?"
"No, no, no," Lucy raised and shook her hand in resistance, "The opposite of what I need is to get drunk right now, I need to figure out a plan to learn another language," She almost finished, before noticing her phone light up with a text message and reading it to continue, "Within 20 days."
"I wish I could help," Araceli said somberly, one of the softest tones Lucy's sworn she'd ever heard from the brunette, "I, obviously, speak Spanish first language, but I really need to focus on work, I just started you know, and I need this. Plus, don't want any of those Trump supporters to say I should be deported and go back to Mexico."
"And I'd say if he knows Japanese and Portuguese, Japanese nor Portuguese should be one of the languages you learn so I'm out too," Rena said, lifting her hands in defeat, "Jiya's Lebanese though! They speak Arabic there!"
"Ana La A'arif Al-Arabiya," Jiya started, shaking her head jokingly with a smile on her face, "Hal Tatahaddatheena Al-Enklezyia?"
"Is that a yes you can help?" Lucy asked, she and Jiya had never talked about language before, in either timeline, and Lucy was realizing what a mistake that was.
"Lucy, what I said was," Jiya got ready to explain, taking a sip of her drink before doing so, "'I don't speak any Arabic. Do you speak English?', and surely if you tried to say that there and pass it off as anything else, someone would catch on."
"Don't look at me either," Miremba stated, putting her hands up as if to show she had nothing, "I'm monolingual, just English."
"Just great," Lucy said in an exasperated tone, getting money out of her wallet to leave, "Maybe I should get going so I can try to do some duolingo classes online."
"Wait, Wyatt knows German," Araceli's face brightened as she exclaimed, "Ask him to help teach you, German, the next time you see him!"
"I," Lucy trailed off, being interrupted by Jiya.
"Lucy, I know you two aren't friends, but from what Rufus tells me, there's trouble in paradise," Jiya explained, taking Lucy's hands in her's and winking, "I'm sure he wouldn't mind devoting a couple more hours at work and teaching you, German."
Lucy took a deep breath, but barely got out a "Fine," before her phone rang, Agent Christopher calling her into Mason.
"Remind me why we're in England 1764 again," Rufus said, scratching his 18th-century pants, "Didn't Rittenhouse not even start until the American Revolution?"
"Without the Sugar Act, there wouldn't be an American Revolution, or at least not one for much longer. What the act put in place greatly increased the movement that would lead to the revolution," Lucy started as she walked towards the Parliament building, though she stopped in her tracks and turned to ask, "But then why would Rittenhouse want to interfere? No Sugar Act, no revolution, no Rittenhouse."
"Benedict Arnold," Wyatt pointed out.
"Could Emma also be playing double agent?" Rufus inquired.
"She killed an entire room of men to get the Mothership, she played the double agent with Flynn, but she's not doing that right now," Wyatt spat back at him.
Rufus slumped his shoulders as he asked Lucy, "So what do we do?"
"We head to the parliament building, hope whatever Emma is there for is in there," Lucy said, taking the lead in front of the two guys.
Before they knew what had happened, Wyatt spotted Emma leaving the Parliament building, probably already having done whatever she had set out to do, talk to whoever she talked to. And they were back in 2018.
Lucy had been pacing around since they'd gotten back, and since Jiya had helped her out of her 18th-century dress. She knew he hadn't left yet, he was still in the locker room downstairs meanwhile she was on the main floor that he would need to come up to when he exited, and Rufus had confirmed that during the time she was getting changed with help of Jiya upstairs, he hadn't left.
Lucy had meant to ask about the German tutoring in 1764, but she hadn't gotten the chance. Plus, they had to pass as a concerned, politically active couple, with Rufus as their slave, if the talk had turned explosive there would be no good end.
But to wait is to make it worse, she had realized, possibly why the number of words spoken in 5 months to each other totaled to be under 100.
The sound of feet walking up the steps - 'One would think someone with as much money as Connor Mason could invest in less noisy steps,' She quickly thought - interrupted her and jolted her into action mode. Lucy greeted Wyatt second he stepped onto the floor with a simple wave and a, "Guten Tag."
"It's 11:48 pm," Wyatt pointed out, clearly tired and with a want to avoid a conversation.
"And?" Lucy questioned with a sigh.
"Guten Abend … or even Gute Nacht at this point," Wyatt said, making his way towards the exit.
However, Lucy had no intention of letting him out of the conversation … Not this time, "This actually ties into something I was hoping you would help me with," She started, walking at the same pace as him. When she noticed he had put a confused look on his face but as it had been seconds already, had no intention to speak and ask what she meant, Lucy followed up with the plea, "Will you please teach me German, Wyatt?"
"Why?" She heard Wyatt let out, it was soft - almost inaudible - but also had an annoyed tone to it at the same time.
"I said something stupid, and have 20 days to pick up another language. And no one else could help, but people consistently suggested I ask you," Lucy said, before starting to separate from Wyatt as she walked to her own car backward, saying, "If it was a mistake though, excuse me."
Wyatt shook his head before saying, "Tomorrow. If you are to learn German in 20 days, we need to start immediately, so let's meet here at 11am."
"Thank you," Lucy said in his direction before turning in the direction her car was, allowing a smile to take place on her face.
"How do you want to do this?" Wyatt asked in a matter-of-fact tone.
Lucy had brought an audio recorder, a notebook, and a pen, as well as the conference room that they were lucky enough to grab, had a whiteboard. She looked back and forth between the resources and Wyatt, before she said, "To be honest I don't know. I started learning French and Latin in high school, continued through college, and it was all the very much lecture turned lecture and conversation in the language teaching style. But I don't have enough knowledge yet to do conversation, and a formal lecture would be kind of silly with just me and you."
"Do you want to just test out different ways then?" Wyatt raised his eyebrow at her.
"Sounds perfect," Lucy agreed with a tight smile and nod.
"I think I understand where your mistake came in last night," Wyatt pursed his lips and nodded as he said, taking a marker to the whiteboard to write down the words he'd say, "Many people who don't know German think 'Guten Tag' is the word for 'Hello' but it's not. 'Hello' is 'Hallo'. 'Guten Tag' can equate to 'Hallo' but only in the hours of the afternoon, because 'Guten Tag' means 'Good Afternoon'. Likewise, if it's morning you'd want to use 'Guten Morgen' for 'Good Morning', and if it's evening you'd want to use 'Guten Abend' for 'Good Evening'. Though as it gets closer to when you'd go to bed, you would then use 'Gute Nacht' for 'Good Night'. You should almost always use 'Hallo' for professional reasons or for meeting someone for the first time, though," He took a deep breath and shook out his writing hand to look back at Lucy, clearly with concern on his face, "Did you get all that?"
"I think so," Lucy said before repeating, trying to make sure she looked down at her paper or at the whiteboard as little as possible, "'Hallo' is more formal 'Hello', and directly means 'Hello'. 'Guten Tag', 'Guten Morgen', 'Guten Abend', and 'Gute Nacht' can all be used for 'Hello' but you want to pay attention to times of day because 'Tag' is for afternoon, 'Morgen' is for morning, 'Abend' is for evening, and 'Nacht' is for late night. Am I right?"
"You are," Wyatt observed, surprise on his face, "Do you want to continue with this style or change it up?"
"This style is good," Lucy gave a reassuring smile, "Go on."
They eventually agreed on this style of teaching, a few words to know for a section and then at the end of every hour have a small conversation, that would hopefully build as Lucy learned more.
"Hallo," Wyatt started, "Wie heißt Du?"
Lucy breathed in a sharp, nervous breath before starting back, "Hallo, Ich heiße Lucy Preston. Wie heißt Du?"
"Wyatt Logan," Wyatt responded before asking, "Wie geht es dir?"
Lucy kept her cool this time as she calmly responded, "Gut, und Ihnen?"
"Teils, teils," Wyatt cracked a smile as he said it, clearly as a joke, though Lucy noticed it was the first time she saw him carefree in a while, "Ich muss fort."
"Auf Wiedersehen," Lucy said, before realizing she mispronounced the 'Wiedersehen' as she pronounced the 'W' instead of having the 'W' pronounced as a 'V' and corrected herself by repeating - correctly this time, "Auf Wiedersehen."
"Warum muss ich Ihnen in neunzehn Tagen Deutsch beibringen?" Wyatt asked.
"Okay, I only understood about three words in that, did we go over all of those?" Lucy switched back to English, asking as she widened her eyes.
"No, we didn't," Wyatt said, clearing his throat before pointing at her notebook, "By the way, make note that 'No' is 'Nein', 'Yes' is 'Ja', and 'Maybe' is 'Vielleicht'."
"Okay," Lucy said, letting out an annoyed breath as she wrote down the words, "But I do need you to tell me what you said, even if you don't say it slower and in parts so I can write down. I want to know what you said to me," She demanded.
"I asked you why you are having me teach you German in what is now just 19 days," Wyatt said, "And more than 'a mistake', what does that mean?"
"I have a date, finally, with an old colleague from Stanford," Lucy cracked a smile, "But he's a snobby polyglot, judges you based on the number of languages you know, and so I said I knew one extra language than I did. And now he wants to take me to a polyglot conference in Sacramento. So I need to have another language under my belt by then because hell knows he's even probably taking me to this as our first date to expose me for lying … Somehow," Lucy puckered her lips as she finished, the smile far gone from her face.
"Do you really want to be with someone like that?" Wyatt asked, his eyebrows lowering.
"He compliments me in other ways, plus I just really need to go on a date. I've been single too long," Lucy shook her head, "Speaking of relationships, how's Jessica?"
"Good," Wyatt simply said.
"Good," Lucy gave him a smile. A forced one, a sad one, but a smile.
"Should we continue on with the lesson?" Wyatt asked, and it wasn't lost on Lucy that with that he had moved from where they had been - so close, where it should have been considered an uncomfortable amount of closeness even though it wasn't - to further away and closer to the whiteboard again.
"Of course," She said, picking up her pen and focusing her attention back between the notebook and whiteboard.
"Vielen Dank," Lucy said in a soft voice.
Only one other time during the past nearly three weeks had Emma taken out the Mothership, and Lucy thanked God for that. The two of them had been able to use so much of that time not wasted on Emma and Rittenhouse on the German lessons. Including a lesson on Wyatt's 'fun fact' as he called it that 'Ritten' is German for 'Rode' so 'Rittenhouse' is 'Rode house', which as Lucy put it at the time, "Made no sense," though she'd be lying if she said she never thought of that and laughed to herself. It had been nice, the conversations evolved past formalities to more in depth, and it was like things had started over again. Like Jessica wasn't around … Even when Lucy would go home and cry over the remembering that she was.
"Gern geschehen," Wyatt replied before clearing his throat, "One last thing, things you may want to say one day to … What is his name again?"
"William?" Lucy questioned.
"Yes, William," Wyatt nodded, letting out a deep breath through his nose, "There's 'Ich liebe dich' and 'Du bist mein Ein und Alles'."
"Ich liebe dich," Lucy repeated, trying to make the language sound as soft as possible, it felt as though it was meant to be a soft phrase, "And what's that mean?"
"I love you," Wyatt stated, catching Lucy off guard before he finished with, "And 'Du bist mein Ein und Alles' means 'You are my everything', just so romantic phrases for you," Bringing Lucy back to reality that it was just part of the lesson, not any type of declaration of feelings.
"Well that is appreciated," She said, before going in for a hug. Their first since Jessica came back, and it felt as though for her she was transported back to that February 2017 night. The night something may have happened but all there was was a hug. Ended in Lucy going back to her mom's house, and Rittenhouse setting the team off on a mission none of them had been prepared for.
"Yeah, of course," Wyatt smiled as he said and pulled away from her hug to put his hands on his shoulders and look her directly in the eyes as he continued, "And remember - if you get yourself in a difficult situation, excuse yourself with a -"
"'Ich muss mal' or 'Ich hole mir was zum Essen'," Lucy interrupted, remembering it from past lessons.
"Yes," Wyatt nodded, seemingly proud of her for interrupting rather than annoyed, "Spend a few minutes away, and come back when either you see another person or think the topic could have changed."
"Got it," Lucy nodded as she walked away. ' Time to go home and finish preparing for tonight ,' She thought.
Sacramento was beautiful.
Lucy had been in the city multiple times before, but never in the building that was rented out for tonight. However, just because the scenery was beautiful didn't mean her night was going beautifully.
Nothing William was doing could remind her of why she chose to do this, and the rest of the people were excruciatingly boring. Even the food and wine were subpar, at best. Lucy had probably asked William already if they could leave yet fifteen times, and it was barely an hour and a half in.
She probably started texting Wyatt about ten minutes ago, and the two were engaged in inside jokes and better conversation than she had had all evening, including Wyatt teasingly asking if she needed to be saved.
'It's nice ,' She reminded herself, 'It's nice where we're at again. No need to risk that. ' As she debated sending a text saying one of the phrases he had taught her earlier: 'Du bist mein Ein und Alles.'
All she ended up telling him to do was to please make the nearly two-hour drive, she needed to be taken out of this place, and the waiting had been longer than any other portion of the evening.
As she got into his car, however, after telling William to, as she put it, "Please never reach out to me again. Thank you," she felt a wave of relief wash over her.
"Hey," Wyatt muttered, "Let's get back to San Francisco," He declared before driving off.
"Jessica doesn't mind you driving out here late at night without her?" Lucy asked, she had been obviously hoping Jessica wouldn't tag along on Wyatt's drive to Sacramento, especially as if so that would even be the first time the two of them met, but half expected it. Especially with the time travel trips, she would expect that Jessica would want to be around Wyatt as much as possible at all other times. She would want to.
"Luce -" Wyatt started, the nickname catching Lucy off guard. Even with as much growing closer as they had, this was the first time he used that nickname again, "Jessica and I separated."
Lucy let out an, "Oh," while simultaneously taking out her phone, an attempt at a distraction for herself. It wasn't that the silence was uncomfortable. For some reason, it was completely comfortable just sitting in silence with him, and NASH FM 92.3 on in the background on a low volume.
There was no need for words, but Lucy would be lying if she said she wasn't relieved when Wyatt broke the silence. Especially as it was Wyatt, and not her having to figure out how to, "It wasn't anything big or explosive or anything. It's just she was gone for so long, I think I got over her and didn't realize it. And she knew something was off, it just wasn't our … What is it you call it? Fate?"
Remembering back to their conversation now nearly two years ago, she left out a small laugh before confirming whilst dragging her fingers through her hair, "Fate, yeah, fate."
"It wasn't our fate then," Wyatt nodded, "So, William wasn't your Ein und Alles, huh?"
"No," Lucy smiled, "But honestly I'm glad. I would have to fake being fluent in German the rest of my life if he was."
"So you're saying our lessons accomplished nothing?" Wyatt said, clearly sarcastically faking hurt as he took one hand off the wheel momentarily to put it across his chest.
"Nein," Lucy laughed as she leaned in close to him and said before going back into her own seat and laughing even harder at herself.
The time riding back was the fastest nearly two hours of Lucy's life. She could have sworn it lasted a total of five minutes, and even that she would think would be a gross overestimation.
However, what had happened before she got out felt it lasted five hundred years.
With the same amount of spontaneity and surprise on her part as there was in their kiss in 1934 Arkansas, Wyatt had their lips meet. The kiss felt longer than the entire time she spent, but not nearly as excruciating. Longer than the 35 years Lucy had spent on this earth, but not nearly as full of pain. It was lasting forever, but she had wanted it to last forever. It felt good and, even more than that, it felt right.
19 months. 18 days. 9 hours. 36 minutes. 2 seconds. That's how long it had been since their "possibilities" talk, and finally, something had happened.
A/N: What I believe I wrote was
French:
"Eh bien merci" = "Well thank you"
"Bien sur" = "Of course"
German:
"Wie heißt Du?" = "What is your name?"
"Ich heiße" = "My name is"
"Wie geht es dir" = "How are you?"
"Gut, und Ihnen" = Good, and you?
"Teils, teils" = "So-so"
"Ich muss fort" = "I have to go"
"Auf Wiedersehen" = "Good bye"
"Vielen Dank" = "Thank you"
"Gern geschehen" = "You're welcome"
"Ich muss mal" = "I have to go to the bathroom"
"Ich hole mir was zum Essen" = "I am going to get something to eat"