Things Dreamt Of

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They never did figure out exactly what happened.

It had been a mission like any other, only unusually casualty-free. Flynn had been one step ahead of them, but at the last minute Wyatt had managed to rally some civilians to their cause. Lucy was the first to admit - while she had the passion and experience teaching to a captive audience, Wyatt was the one with an uncanny, untaught ability to stir people's souls in the hour of need.

He had saved the day. Well, more or less. Flynn had escaped again, and a building still went up in flames, but it would have burned down within the year anyway from a lightning strike, so - well, it was actually pretty good, given their track record. Flynn hadn't managed to carry out his most recent historical assassination attempt, and the timeline remained mostly undisturbed, and that was enough.

History - that precious imprint of the fluid passage of time - was still safe for one more day.

They jolted back to the present, the Lifeboat wobbling slightly under the tremendous force of its rotating belts. Rufus grumbled under his breath, something along the lines of wear and tear and additional maintenance needed, but Lucy could tell he wasn't really cross; just relieved to be back safely. Wyatt's throat worked as he swallowed hard against the relentless nausea that came with being looped through time, but he grinned jauntily at the others and undid his seatbelt.

"Good work out there today," he told Rufus. "Saved our skins with that line you fed them."

Rufus chuckled breathlessly, flipping the switches to power down the Lifeboat, and Lucy couldn't help smiling too, even as she ducked her head to focus on unbuckling her own seatbelt. Wyatt stood, stooped to keep from smacking his head on the side of the curved ceiling, and moved toward the door as it opened.

Then his breath caught audibly, and Lucy looked up just in time to see Wyatt's knees give out completely, cracking against the metal flooring with twin thumps that left her wincing in sympathy. His face had gone dead white, slack in astonishment and undefinable emotion as he stared out the door at something out of Lucy's view.

Her heart clenched into a sickened knot. What on earth could they have changed that would make him look like that?

"Wyatt?" she asked.

He didn't even act like he'd heard her, because then he was on his feet again, scrambling out the door with a rush, falling down the five feet to the ground, not even waiting for the steps to be rolled up. Lucy scrabbled at her recalcitrant buckle until it gave, and she and Rufus made it to the doorway just in time to see their companion bolting up the walkway that led to the computer stations like a man demented.

"Wyatt?" she cried again more shrilly, worry clutching at her throat - and then she heard her own cry echoed.

"Wyatt?"

A young woman hurtled down the stairs from the observation platform, blonde hair flying as she rushed onto the walkway. "Wyatt, what's wrong?" she demanded - and then he reached her, slammed into her, wrapped his arms around her waist and shoulders so tightly that her feet came off the ground. With a choking gasp he buried his face in her shoulder, staggering in a mindless circle.

"Ohhh," breathed Rufus, as if suddenly realizing something. "Is - is that…?"

Overwhelmed, Lucy pressed shaking fingers over her mouth, glad tears stinging her eyes. "I think it is," she whispered.

Out on the walkway, Wyatt was still holding the woman as though he would never let her go - and he was weeping, stifled sobs shaking his shoulders violently, taking her with him as he sank to his knees. The entire room was silent, all the technicians staring at the reunion. Even Agent Christopher was frozen in astonishment, Connor Mason peering over her shoulder with equally wide eyes.

"What happened?" the strange woman demanded, looking up at Rufus and Lucy with alarmed concern. Lucy caught the gleam of a wedding ring on the hand that cupped protectively around the back of Wyatt's head, fingers threading through his hair as he shook in her arms.

"Um," Rufus started and then paused. Swinging his legs through the door, he slid out of the Lifeboat with more haste than caution, since the stair crew seemed as frozen as everybody else. He reached up a hand to help Lucy, but she barked her elbows on the edge of the metal belt anyway. "Are you - um." He tilted his head. "Would you be Jessica Logan, by any chance?"

The woman turned a shade paler, and then nodded. Lucy was struck by the sudden bizarre feeling that this woman - Jessica - knew them, perhaps even quite well, while they'd never seen her before except in the pictures they sometimes glimpsed on Wyatt's screen, or the smiling, well-worn photo he always carried over his heart.

This woman in front of them wasn't smiling now, though. She looked worried, alert and defensive, every inch a soldier's wife.

Rufus blinked, cleared his throat, scratched the back of his head, looked to Lucy for help. She stared back, hands fluttering, for once at a loss for words.

"Well - you died," the engineer finally said, rather more abruptly than he'd meant. "Five years ago. Uh. For us, anyway."

Jessica's eyes widened, understandably shocked at the sudden realization that her husband had no memory of the last five years of their marriage - and then her gaze grew distant, sharpened, and she caught a sudden breath.

"Five years - oh Wyatt, honey." She turned her head, smoothing both hands through her husband's hair and across the shoulders of his period coat, trying to lean back far enough to see his face. Her southern accent was a trifle more pronounced than his, softening her words. "It was San Diego, wasn't it? It's okay, I'm okay."

Wyatt shook his head and then pulled back, gripping her shoulders fiercely. He was practically vibrating from head to toe, face wet, tears clumping his eyelashes together. "I'm sorry," he choked, eyes devouring her face as if this was the last time he would ever get to look at her, the last words he would ever get to say. "I'm sorry. I love you. Forgive me, Jess."

"You came in time." Jessica was crying too now, but that great, bright smile that they'd seen in her photographs shone through her tears. She cupped his face in her hands, smoothing his wet cheeks with her thumbs. "You came in time. It's a long time ago, now."

He lifted a hand to circle her wrist and leaned into her touch hungrily, almost involuntarily, but continued to shake his head. "I didn't," he rasped, voice increasingly hoarse and tight, almost pleading. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and years and years of haunting guilt, exhaustion and desperate loneliness drenched his confession. "I didn't. I drove off and I left you and I couldn't find you and it took two weeks…"

The rush of words ended in a shuddering breath as Wyatt reached up to touch the unscarred skin of Jessica's throat. His mouth twisted and Lucy suddenly realized that the last time he had seen his wife had probably been to identify her dead body, laid out on some coroner's table, cruel ligature marks scored deep into her brutalized flesh.

No wonder he used to drink on nights when the team wasn't together. How could any man find rest with such an image in his mind's eye?

Jessica clasped her husband's face more tightly, thumbs smoothing away the dampness beneath his eyes. "But you found me in this time," she whispered intently, and then leaned in and kissed him right there in the middle of the walkway to the Lifeboat, completely disregarding the array of security personnel, technicians, and engineers looking on. And as for Wyatt Logan - well, he wrapped his wife in his arms again and kissed her back with all the trembling, hungry, passionate intensity of a man who has loved and lost and then regained the love of his life against all probability.

Lucy blinked, dabbing at her eyes, and turned to Rufus with a watery smile. The tender-hearted engineer looked about ten seconds away from blubbering like a baby, but he scrubbed at his face with his sleeve and nodded back at her in silent agreement. This reunion was far, far too raw and emotional and sacred to be on public display - the couple needed their privacy.

Apparently Agent Christopher had the same thought, because she took control of the situation then, ordering the room to be cleared. Connor Mason, inquisitive to the last, showed no signs of departing with the rest of the reluctant employees, so the agent took him by the shoulders and began steering him out by force.

"You two," she said, indicating Lucy and Rufus with a jerk of her chin. "Get out of those costumes and come straight upstairs. I want a full report."

They obeyed, although not at once. For some reason it felt right to stand watch until the last of the employees had left the room, until Jiya turned off the flashing yellow lights and blaring klaxon. Then, and only then, did they carefully step around the embracing couple still kneeling in the middle of the walkway, and climb the steps to the computer platform.

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"So you're saying Jessica Logan was killed five years ago?" Agent Christopher shook her head in disbelief. "I don't even want to imagine what that did to him. They're both strong-willed and hard-headed, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a more attached couple. She comes every time to see him off, just in case..."

Lucy nodded, the many endings to the unfinished sentence reeling through her thoughts. In case time changes - in case he dies protecting us - in case something like this happens. She had known for a while that the soldier was carrying a world of hurt behind the facade he wore so smoothly, though she'd only seen it crack a few times - and then today the burden had been lifted and the sudden relief had sent one of the strongest men she'd ever known to his knees.

From her place in the conference room she could see out the large window overlooking the launch pad, though Wyatt and Jessica were just out of sight, still sitting on the floor of the walkway to the Lifeboat. They'd been there for a solid half-hour, but nobody was about to interrupt them.

A sudden clatter broke Lucy's train of thought as Rufus dropped the tablet he and Jiya had been skimming onto the table, shoving back and throwing his hands in the air.

"Okay, I have no idea how this happened." He gestured disjointedly at the tablet, at Lucy, at the window overlooking the Lifeboat launching bay. Behind him, Jiya looked equally mystified as he continued. "At least with your sister you had direct ancestors who were affected, but they don't. There is literally nothing we could have done back there that would just - cancel out her murder like that."

"It could have been anything," Lucy suggested. "A butterfly effect. Maybe someone was in the building when it burned down, or wasn't there when they should have been. Or the fire engine hit someone - or two people never met because Flynn stole their car in his getaway." She shrugged a little dreamily, lost in the possibilities. "We'll never know."

Agent Christopher nodded, expression thoughtful, but Rufus' voice jumped incredulously. "Do you have any idea," he demanded, "what the astronomically tiny chances of that would be? Statistically it's pretty much impossible, and I don't say that lightly."

Lucy didn't have to come up with a response to that, because Wyatt and Jessica finally appeared in the launching bay below, arms around each other as they slowly climbed the steps to the computer platform. Wyatt looked drained, swept with emotion, but there was a lightness to his step and a looseness to his shoulders that had been absent before, and his face was as radiant as that of the woman walking beside him. They made an incongruous picture, what with his period clothing and her modern dress, but nobody seeing them could doubt that they belonged together.

"Wyatt!" Lucy called, knocking at the window and waving excitedly. Rufus quickly crossed the room to stand beside her, looking down at their friend.

Wyatt's head whipped up at the noise, but he immediately relaxed at the sight of his friends above him at the window. The widest smile they'd ever seen spread across his face, and he punched his fist into the sky in a triumphant gesture of celebration, tugging Jessica into his side. Lucy felt an answering smile tug at her own cheeks as Jessica looked up and laughed, a frank friendliness in her bearing, a deep affection in her eyes as she glanced over at her husband's face.

Rufus grinned and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Go clean up and then get up here!" he hollered, gesturing in case his voice couldn't make it through the thick glass. Some of his meaning must have made it across, because Wyatt immediately responded with a thumbs-up, and turned to go.

As the happy couple headed for the dressing rooms, already deep in conversation again, Lucy's eyes drifted irresistibly back toward the Lifeboat. If she concentrated hard enough, she could almost feel the flow of time passing around them - an inevitable progression that they had somehow altered for the better. Her breath caught in her throat with the thrill of sheer wonder that she felt with each trip back into time.

"'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,'" she quoted softly, and then quirked a sudden half-smile at Rufus, standing next to her at the window. "God, fate - whatever you want to call it. Maybe they were just always meant to be together."

At the end of the launching bay below, Wyatt opened the dressing room door for his wife, and they walked through side by side. It would be a long road for them, especially with their sudden five-year discrepancy in memories, but Lucy was confident they would make it work.

"Yeah," said Rufus after a minute, quietly, almost wonderingly. "Maybe they were."

Lucy leaned sideways until her shoulder bumped into his, comfortable in their companionship. Beneath her shirt, her locket rested warm against her skin, a perennial reminder of her sister.

Thoughtfully, she raised a hand to touch it.

Somehow she felt more hopeful than she had in a very long time.

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Dagnabbit. I swore I'd never write fanfic for a TV show - and then Timeless came along. Apparently I have a thing for reuniting doomed couples.

Seriously, though - give me a man who's in love with his wife. I'm a complete sucker for that kind of character any day. :)

Much thanks to usa123 for encouraging me so much in the writing of this story. This chapter is specifically for you, hon! If you're looking for a good Timeless fic writer, you all should go check out their stories. Hands-down some of the best on this site. I'm not even kidding.

This story is written in conjunction with the Timeless Big Bang on Tumblr. There are two more chapters, which will follow shortly.

Lucy's closing quote paraphrases Shakespeare's Hamlet I.V.167-8.