Prompt: For whatever reason, characters are trapped together in the midst of a quarantine.

Ok so a few things for this a/n:

This prompt is courtesy of the lovely people at Timeless Fanfic Prompts on Tumblr WHO RAN A SUPER AWESOME CONTEST THAT I WON :) Just needed to take a moment to say thank you so much to their team for maintaining those incredible monthly challenges. You guys are so generous! And besides the super sweet prizes, those prompts kept me going when I was fresh out of my own good fic ideas, so that's also mega cool. THANKS AGAIN. (And the contest may be over, but they're still cranking out weekly writing prompts, so check it out if you need inspiration)

Also... I hit a major wall while I was writing this fic, but I think it came together eventually..? Confession: It is a serious battle for me to concentrate right now because I don't want to write about season 2 anymore...I JUST WANT TO WATCH IT FOR REAL INSTEAD.

And on that note, this fic is already made obsolete by those bangin' promos, so don't expect this to follow anything that has been teased in the commercials. This is still completely my own stuff with the exception of one little thing that I borrowed from the info that's been released regarding the premiere. The fic takes place at some random point once the team is a few jumps in after what would be 2x01.

OKAY, enough rambling. On to the story!


It took everything Lucy had to keep her breathing even when the Lifeboat's hatch opened and her world narrowed to four very close - too close, way too close - plexiglass walls. This was supposed to be the moment she could finally relax, a reprieve from the hellish realities of whichever historical disaster they'd just escaped from, a safe haven after the inside-out nausea of time travel, and most importantly, a wide open space to quickly remedy the persistent terror of her claustrophobia.

But she'd prepared herself for this. She'd known the severity of the situation from the very beginning. This was temporary. She could handle it. Her hands were shaking and her lungs felt paper-thin, but goddammit, she could handle it.

"Lucy…"

Wyatt's hand rose and fell in an empty gesture. The hoarse sympathy in his voice rang out like a clanging cymbal, breaking over her with a nearly audible crash.

"It's okay," she said without any real conviction. "I'll be fine."

She met his wary look for a split-second, but that was all it took to read the overwhelming fusion of doubt and concern in his blue gaze. Lucy shook herself free from him for what felt like the millionth time, a renewed burst of resolve spiking through her. She couldn't afford to use him as a crutch now. There was no way she could cave so soon after the day they'd just had.

Their sad little cage really wasn't so bad once she'd work past her first ripple of panic. The walls were transparent, so she could almost convince herself that they weren't there at all. Agent Christopher had done her best to make the overgrown fish tank as comfortable as it could be, supplying them with three matching sets of cots, pillows, and blankets. Their cell phones were there too, along with a set of casual clothing for each of them, a curtained changing area, and enough food and water to tie them over until reinforcements could be brought in to assess the situation.

Once she'd settled into her cot with a bag of almonds and a soft pair of sweats, Lucy was amazed to find that she was going to be just fine. Her breathing was steady, heart composed, hands calm. It was more than a mantra, it was the truth - she really was handling it. Her first instinct was to turn to Wyatt and share the good news, but...no, no she wasn't going to tell him, because…

Because she'd created an irrevocable rift between them today, and she couldn't go back on that decision now. He wasn't going to be the first person she went to with the good or the bad, not anymore. Not even if she couldn't quit watching his tension-filled back muscles shifting from beneath his t-shirt as he paced back and forth like a caged tiger in front of his cot.

She tore her eyes away from Wyatt just as his head tilted sideways to flick a restless glance in her direction. She shoved a big handful of almonds into her mouth and chewed mechanically, tasting nothing but a bitter, aching sadness. The alternative view offered no improvement. Rufus was sitting on the floor with his face no more than an inch from the glass barrier, his phone pressed to his ear and his eyes trained on Jiya as they spoke to each other on either side of the makeshift wall. She was clutching her phone with a watery smile, clearly doing her best to remain upbeat in spite of the circumstances. It was unbelievably cute, so damn cute that it made Lucy want to cry.

"They look like they're discussing dates and times for the next conjugal visit."

Wyatt's sarcastic remark bounced over her from far closer than he'd been before, and as much as she'd hoped to mask her surprised recoil, Lucy knew better than to assume that she could ever evade his obnoxiously thorough observation.

"I think it's sweet," she answered without looking up at him.

"Sure," he snorted in return, tossing another snide comment over his shoulder as he crossed back to his side of their collective holding cell, "and I think we're all going to be stir crazy within the hour."

Lucy clamped her teeth together and slid down into her sleeping bag, keeping her eyes trained on the ceiling. Let him be surly and pessimistic. She was exhausted in every sense of the word, so surely sleep couldn't be too far off for her…and it would be pretty impossible to go stir crazy if she was knocked out by a numbing wave of fatigue, right?

So she curled up beneath her blanket, released a deep sigh, and waited for sleep to come along and erase the stinging edge of pain in her heart, if only for a few meager hours of pardon...a few hours where she didn't have to actively block out thoughts of Wyatt.

Yes, just a short window of time where Wyatt Logan didn't exist; for the sake of her sanity, she needed to be free of Wyatt, free of mosquitos, free of fever.

Oh, God...please let them all be free of fever.


8 Hours Earlier


1793. It just had to be the summer of 1793 in freaking Philadelphia.

If there had ever been a question of whether or not Emma was operating with any soundness of mind - which there wasn't, of course - then that question would have been officially tossed out the window with this one. It had been easy to see that Rittenhouse was desperate, frantic even, to recover lost ground ever since Ethan Cahill blew their organization wide open, but this...this was potentially suicidal.

Lucy felt Wyatt's eyes drilling into her long before she made it over to the platform, so it was no surprise when he stepped into her path before she could climb up into the Lifeboat. His face was all business as he approached, shoulders strained and voice low.

"Anything you'd like to tell me before we leave?"

"Yeah," she breathed back with a shaky smile. "Straighten your collar and comb your hair back. Sloppiness isn't cool in the 18th century."

Wyatt's expression remained unchanged. "Very funny. Let's try this again - is there anything you'd like to tell me specifically in reference to that discreet side-meeting you just had with Agent Christopher? I don't like flying blind, Lucy. We all deserve to know what we're - "

"It's not like that, okay? I told you everything I know about the social and political conflicts of - "

"Fine, whatever you say," he broke off with a dismissive sneer, disappointment radiating off of him with a palpable heat. "Let's go."

"Wyatt - "

His eyes flashed cruelly. "You know you're a piss poor liar, Lucy. Why even bother when you know I'll see right through it?"

If he expected an answer to that question, he sure wasn't waiting around for her to provide one. Wyatt devoured all three steps up into the time machine in what felt like a millisecond. She followed him after a beat, keeping her eyes down as she told herself over and over again that earning his approval wasn't her number one priority.

With Wyatt pointedly ignoring her usual bumbling clumsiness with the damn seatbelt, that sentiment was failing to take root in her mind.

When she was buckled in at last, Rufus flipped a switch and the door to the outside world creaked shut. Lucy felt a wash of anxiety flooding over her as they were sealed off from Mason Industries, from 2018, from everything that represented their modern standards of safety and certainty. She held her breath for a moment and felt a crushing weight lock around her shoulders as she tried to remain calm.

Someday...someday Agent Christopher was going to push too far, act too fast, bend them beyond any reasonable breaking point. With the Lifeboat lurching through another rickety takeoff, Lucy couldn't suppress the dark thread in her mind that suggested someday might in fact be today.

They'd been picking their way along the rutted streets of Philadelphia for maybe five whole minutes before she broke. A man stopped on the sidewalk right in front of Rufus and doubled over with a long, rattling cough. Lucy froze immediately, her heartbeat thrashing up into her ears. This was a mistake, a terrible mistake, and she wasn't able to keep it to herself for a moment longer.

Wyatt's hand fell over her arm in a warm, familiar gesture...a gesture that bore no resemblance to the way he'd been treating her in 2018. "Lucy? What's up?"

She didn't bother with shielding the fear in her eyes from her teammates. She nodded towards the opening of a nearby alley and allowed Wyatt to steer her toward it. The three of them huddled together on the cobblestone street, shoulders wedged together on a tight circle as Lucy fought off another wave of crippling dread.

"It's...we're less than a week away from the first reported case of Yellow Fever. There's a massive outbreak this summer, and the epidemic pretty much ravages the whole city. The disease spreads from infected mosquitos, so contrary to the belief of the time, it's not actually contagious from person to person, but..."

"But someone could have it now and not know it yet, which means the mosquitos could already be a major issue."

Lucy nodded, immensely grateful that Wyatt had said the worst of it for her. "And maybe it's nothing. There's an endless list of reasons for a man to be coughing in 1793 - or in any time period, really - but that won't keep me from panicking every time I see someone who looks sick or - or if I hear so much as a damn gnat buzzing around."

Rufus cast a wary glance up into the air, hand twitching at his side as if he was already poised to swat at anything that would dare to come his way.

But Wyatt's full attention was still on Lucy, his eyes soft and words pitched low. "Agent Christopher…she asked you not to tell us, didn't she?"

"Distractions like that are too dangerous," she repeated pathetically. "That's what she told me. She was pretty emphatic about keeping quiet, but I - well, we all know I'm a piss poor liar, right?"

Wyatt took her hand in his, obliterating any of his earlier criticism with a crinkly-eyed smirk. "Sorry about that. It's definitely better that we know, Lucy. You did the right thing by telling us."

She sucked in a big breath, berating herself for allowing his sudden praise and the touch of his hand to spin her head so far off-center in just about two seconds flat. It wasn't the first time he'd quickly flipped through a dizzying range of emotion with her, and while she knew their job held zero room for grudges, it was still a little disorienting to ride out the ebb and flow of how he reacted to her from one moment to the next.

Lucy worked her fingers away from his and tried to smile in return as she deliver another round of unfortunate news. "Well let me do the right thing again then and give you guys a second heads up - when we get home this time, there's no way we'll be allowed to do the usual debrief and then go on our merry way. Homeland Security would be insane to let us walk out of Mason without a very thorough examination, maybe even - "

"No, no," Rufus was adamantly shaking his head before she could get the word out. "Don't you dare say quarantine."

"Okay," she said with an inadequate shrug, "...maybe even a temporary period of mandatory isolation, then."

He turned his puzzled eyes to Wyatt. "Did she not just tell us that this thing wasn't contagious? Did I not just hear those exact words come out of her mouth?"

Wyatt tilted his head with a grim look. "I'm assuming the main concern is that it will only take one damn mosquito inadvertently traveling back with us to screw over North America as we know it."

"It might not be quite as dire as that," Lucy answered warily, "but yeah, you're on the right track. The general idea is that they'll need to call in CDC to be sure that there's no chance of releasing any undesirable guests onto an unsuspecting - and unprepared - San Francisco."

Rufus mopped his hand across the line of sweat gathering at his temples, clearly growing more agitated with each passing moment. "So what happens when we get back? They just build a bubble around the launch site and fence us in like zoo animals until some freak in a hazmat suit has time to drop by?"

"I don't know exactly, but they...they were already discussing practical options for isolating the threat when we left."

Wyatt gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, his voice still impressively steady in spite of the circumstances. "Hey, we're taking it one problem at a time, remember? We'll deal with the present when we get there, but until then, stopping Rittenhouse is our first priority."

"Yeah, yeah that's…" Rufus shook his head like he thought he could simply clear the rest of his worries away, but his face caved before he could finish that sentence. "Sorry, but one last question about this whole fever epidemic thing before we go save the world again. Time traveling mosquitos aside, I think the real elephant in the room here is what happens if one of us gets bitten by a greedy little bloodsucker? It's not...it's not really that dangerous is it? Once we get home, I mean. There had to have been some serious medical advancements on all of this between now and 2018."

Lucy's eyes dipped down to regard the cobblestone beneath her feet. "There's, um...still no real cure or treatment for Yellow Fever. More than two hundred years have passed since the crisis in Philadelphia, but the best answer we have is to manage symptoms and limit complications."

"Complications? What kind of complications are - "

"That's enough," Wyatt interrupted Rufus' burgeoning tirade with a stern glare. "Look, there's no way Emma wants to be here any longer than what's absolutely necessary, right? So we find her, we stop her, we go home, and no one is contracting Yellow Fever while we're here. See a bug, kill a bug. End of story."

A skeptical glance flickered from Rufus to Lucy, but there was really no point in arguing. The job at hand hadn't changed and it did them no good to just stand around fearing the worst. So with Wyatt's somewhat mediocre pep talk ringing in their ears, they filed out of the alley like a uniform parade of brittle determination.

Lucy felt the just the barest brush of Wyatt's fingertips along the inside of her arm as they got swept up in the bustling motion of the crowded sidewalk. He was keeping her close, fulfilling his promise to protect her - or to never let her out of his sight again, as he'd more urgently put it on that first jump after her mother had dragged her to 1918 in the Mothership - but for some reason that effort was beginning to irritate her more than it comforted her.

She strode forward with her chin raised high and her heart thumping hollowly, feet carrying her faster until she was just far enough ahead of him to be out of his reach. The rest of the day followed in the same swirling pattern of stubborn annoyance. When it became evident that Wyatt wasn't taking the hint, she changed tactics and kept herself stationed on the other side of Rufus as they navigated the streets in search of Emma, shamelessly using him as a physical barrier to shield herself from the gravitational pull of Wyatt's touch.

That plan came with a short shelf life, though. The heat of the day had sweltered through the layers of her heavy skirts and lined her bodice in a thin sheen of sweat, which quickly cooled into a shiver-inducing clamminess as evening began to approach. Their only lead over the last several hours had brought them to a hole-in-the-wall tavern in a less than respectable section of town, but even here, it was plain to see that the establishment in question wouldn't be opening its doors to Rufus.

Dammit. There went her barrier.

"We should split up," she suggested as soon as they'd ducked through the tavern's double doors. Wyatt's brow furrowed with instantaneous disagreement, so she pressed on, working overtime to keep her voice from wavering. "We'll get answers much faster this way, and it's not a big room. You'll be able to keep an eye on me the whole time."

He didn't seem overly appeased by that answer, but she'd made an airtight case and she knew it. Lucy gave him a nod and took off for the far corner of the room, grateful to throw herself into the task of moving through a flock of strangers, asking the same monotonous questions over and over again without needing to think or process or analyze. She was sure that she could once again sense the heat of Wyatt's gaze bristling along the back of her neck, but before long, she was able to shut that out too as she pressed on in the hunt to find a scrap of useful information on Emma's activities.

Her progress was brought to an abrupt halt when the gaze that had been bristling across her neck turned into a solid hand sliding unexpectedly over her skin. Lucy spun around with a startled little yelp, her surprise melting into sizzling frustration at Wyatt's nonchalant expression.

"What the hell, Wyatt? Are you - "

"Relax," he murmured with his face bending closer to hers. "There's a perv on the other end of the bar who hasn't stopped gawking at you since we first walked in."

His hand curled possessively around the base of her neck from behind, a renegade thumb stroking through the twist of her swept-up hair. He used his other arm to drape over the bar behind her so that she was pinned in place, surrounded on all sides, caught up in his arms, his eyes, just him.

And it made her angry. Inexplicably, uncontrollably, flat out angry.

"So what's the plan?" she asked in a tone that stung with untapped sarcasm. "Just pose like this for as long as it takes to make him realize I'm off limits? Play the part until he gets the message? Or just until it's not fun for you anymore?"

"What?" His blue eyes dimmed, bewilderment marring the lines of his face. "I'm just trying to - "

"To protect me? To make sure that nothing bad could ever happen again, even if it's just the harmless town drunk ogling me from across the room?"

"I thought you'd - "

Lucy arched up on her toes and planted her mouth firmly against his, muffling whatever line of bullshit he'd been planning to say, forcefully absorbing his words with a sucker punch of a kiss. He took a faltering half-step backward until he could brace himself accordingly, but there wasn't an ounce of hesitation in the way his lips swelled into her. His fingers worked up into her hair and teased along the back of her head, surely destroying the carefully arranged style that she'd selected to suit the time period...

Because God forbid she did something blatantly stupid like wearing her hair the wrong way or initiating a scandalously expressive kiss in public, which would obviously turn heads and raise serious red flags, potentially exposing them as the imposters they were.

Shit.

Lucy fixed a stiff hand to the center of Wyatt's chest and pushed him away from her. His face was a jumble of contentious emotions, but he didn't utter a word as she inched her way out of his grasp.

"There...that should do the trick. Thanks for your help."

She left him, speechless and unmoving, there at the bar. They had work to do, a secret society to take down, an entire world to save. She wasn't wasting another precious second of time on useless anger or childish mind games.

He was close at her heels as soon as they'd finished making the rounds, his hand circling her wrist before she could make it across the street to where they'd promised to meet Rufus.

"Wyatt, c'mon, we need to keep - "

"He can wait another damn minute," he said tightly as he tugged her into an alcove between two storefronts. "You and I need to clear the air first. I can't take any more of this weirdness."

"You - you can't take...oh my God." She was nearly laughing with acidic disbelief, too stunned to formulate a better reply. "Unbelievable."

That reaction sparked raw anger in his narrowed eyes. "What the hell is going on with you? You've been avoiding me, barely speaking, acting like - "

"I just need some breathing room, okay?" Her outburst had come without much planning, but the words kept bubbling out of her and she wasn't going to start crushing them back down this time. She raised her hand and shook him off of her wrist with a pointed look. "This, Wyatt. This is what's going on with me. I feel like I'm on an excruciatingly short leash every time we jump lately. I know you have some pretty valid reasons to be concerned about my safety, but your version of concern is suffocating."

Thunderclouds gathered ominously across his face, but he said nothing as he folded his arms rigidly across his chest.

Lucy steadied herself, softening her voice just in time to keep it from wobbling out of control. "I need you to back off a little while we're working. I can't keep going like this, can't do the job I was brought in to do, not with you constantly micromanaging my every move. I need space."

The venom in his expression was giving way to an unbearable bleakness. "But looking out for you is my job, Lucy."

"I know that," she conceded with a twist of dejection. His job...jump after jump with his hands seeking her out, his arms wrapping around her, his body crowding close to hers...he was just doing his job.

"So how is this supposed to work? How am I supposed to keep you safe from a distance?"

She squared her shoulders and tightened the reins on her stupid, worthless feelings. "You have my full permission to do whatever it takes if there are bullets involved - or a bomb, a grenade, whatever… but other than that, just...err on the side of more space."

"More space," he echoed flatly. "Got it."

They crossed the street in a haze of dreadful silence, Lucy following a half step behind him as they trudged toward the appointed meeting spot. It felt like the air had been zapped from the sky above them, leaving an acute emptiness in its wake. That feeling was compounded when they found Rufus ambling toward them from the opposite direction, his mouth crumpled in exasperation. "She's already gone."

"What?" Lucy's head swam momentarily at the thought of another defeating blow. "The - "

"Mothership," he confirmed with a short nod. "A black man in Philly has always gotta look busy doing something in every decade. Just standing around on the corner was earning me no favors, so I went back to check on the time machine just for the hell of it...the computer says she left for home."

"Great," Wyatt snapped in a tone that conveyed anything other than greatness. "What are we waiting on then? Let's get out of here."

He stalked off down the street, setting a breakneck pace back to the Lifeboat. Rufus tilted his head to the side and sent Lucy an imploring look...an imploring look that she chose to steadfastly ignore.

An awkward hush enveloped them like a thick fog all the way to the time machine, then broke so severely that it almost gave Lucy whiplash.

Rufus saw it first. He was moving past Lucy to unlatch the Lifeboat, but stopped dead in his tracks and flapped his arm in a wild uproar of panic, unable to get a coherent word out as he flailed for her attention. She watched Rufus in a daze, her head lagging behind as she failed to grasp what the hell was wrong with him. It was Wyatt who came to the rescue, pushing past Rufus with a stony grimace and flicking a firm hand across the width of her shoulder, nearly dragging the fabric of her dress down over her arm with the ruthlessness of his sudden onslaught.

Lucy flinched away from him with a gasp, wide eyes jumping up to tangle with his icy blue resolve.

"Mosquito," he muttered darkly. "From what I'm told, that's about as good as a grenade in 1793."

She searched his impenetrable gaze for a long moment as her breath returned to her in uneven spurts. "Yeah...good call. Thanks."

His throat bobbed with a heavy swallow. He nodded once before turning away to hoist himself into the Lifeboat, once again leaving her behind with Rufus' mystified face inspecting her like she'd grown a second head.

She offered a shaky, "let's go home," and climbed in after Wyatt, being sure to keep her eyes averted once more as she buckled herself in for the journey through time.