Thank you everyone who read and shared their thoughts on my first Timeless fic. The Timeless FF-community is such a friendly, generous and encouraging bunch of people making everyone feel welcome.
This takes place after the S1 finale.
"Man we need our historian back! That was a close call, almost too close," Rufus exclaims when he opens the hatch of the Lifeboat. "Rittenhouse mother or not, I'm not going back one more time without Lucy!"
"I'm not the one you need to convince," Wyatt replies unclasping his harness.
"Gentlemen." Agent Christopher is waiting for them on the platform.
"Crisis averted. But Emma lives to fuck up history another day. I'm not doing this again without Lucy," Wyatt says and pushes his Union army uniform cap at Christopher. "Wardrobe needs to replace this, it has a bullet hole in it. Lucy could have stopped it."
"Lucy?"
"Things got a little out of hand. She would have seen it coming with her skills."
"Lucy would have seen a bullet coming?"
Wyatt sighs. "Yeah, you know how a historian knows the background stuff so can see things coming. 'Cause funnily enough what you tell us in the briefings doesn't always mesh with the situation on the ground. You sent us out pretty much blind without her."
"Was there something wrong with the briefing?" One of Mason's people gets up from behind his desk.
"Pal, I don't know who you are, but if you had anything to do with the briefing, then yes." Wyatt turns his back on the young man to address the agent again. "As capable as Rufus and Lucy are, they're civilians and even modern history is high risk. I can't do this without Lucy."
"You need Lucy," Christoper says as she absentmindedly hands over the cap to Jiya who has walked over to them.
"Yeah, I need our third team member. Who would have stopped us almost getting shot if you hadn't grounded her because of her mother." I need the bossy know-it-all who takes up half the space in the Lifeboat with her ridiculous hoop skirts. Who keeps it together and talks you down in the middle of the Alamo. Who hugs you as if she'll never let you go. Who makes you ask yourself if you could have stopped yourself from kissing her a second time if Bonnie and Clyde had not sat across the table.
Wyatt shakes his head to stop his thoughts from running on. "Help me out here, Jiya. What's going on? Where's Lucy? Has she been barred from the Mason building too?"
Jiya steps closer to put a hand on Wyatt's arm and her face tells him and Rufus a split second before she opens her mouth.
"Wyatt, who is Lucy?"
He feels like he's having a belated reaction to the time jump. He has to brace himself against a table to fight down a wave of nausea.
No.
No, it can't be.
It is happening.
He feels like he used to do in a not too distant past, when fell asleep with his mind muddled up after one drink too many. The past, present and future all tangled up into one and slipping from his grasp.
It has happened.
What the three of them know deep down but have never really acknowledged. Lulled into false security by the times it did work when they split up over time and they all rejoined. (Is he allowed to be pissed at Lucy for making him relax by turning up as promised after staying back in time with her grandfather?)
It's like an earthquake has made the earth shift. On the surface everything has slipped back to the way it was. Except a gap in time has opened up and swallowed one of them.
Wyatt takes a shuddering breath and straightens. He avoids looking at Rufus. If he sees anything of what he feels reflected in the pilot he won't be able to continue. One step at a time, just like he was trained. He'll hold on to his training, everything else seems to have disappeared. It's his responsibility. He protects them.
"Get the Lifeboat ready! We're leaving when it's charged."
"To go where?" Christoper calls after Wyatt's as he weaves his way between the tables.
"Anywhere but here!" he throws over his shoulder. "To some godforsaken place in the middle of a war or a giant epidemic if that's what it takes to get Lucy back. Rufus, get some shuteye!"
Squared away, everything tidy, folded or rolled up-Wyatt pulls out clothes and toiletries from his locker letting them land were they fall on the floor and reaches into a corner. His knees almost buckle from relief when his fingers close around her locket. It is still here.
In this timeline Lucy only exists in the minds and memories of Rufus and he. But there is a tangible object too. "Keep it safe for me," Lucy said when they jumped without her for the first time. The metal still warm from her skin as she gave dropped it into his palm. On this trip he let her down. Angry because Lucy was grounded from yet another time jump he lost his focus. He forgot to bring her locket.
Amy smiles at him from her portrait. His fingertip gently touches Lucy's face in the other tiny photo. The edges dig into his palm as he snaps the locket shut and closes his fist around it. No way he is handing it over to Mason just so he can be fascinated all over again as if it's only science that matters. As if the people behind it are just a means to its end.
He lies down on one of the uncomfortable benches. The ability he's picked up in the army, to sleep everywhere when there's time, eludes him. Wyatt sighs when he hears the door and hesitant steps. He doesn't have to lift his arm from across his eyes to tell it's Rufus.
"How are you doing?"
"How d'ya think?"
The bench opposite creaks.
Great. It's too late to pretend to be asleep. "It's my job to keep her safe, Rufus. To protect her. I let her down."
"Hate to break it to you, but you're not the master of the universe. You can't control things like this. I know you've probably been trained to kill enemies a dozen ways with a teaspoon, but that won't help now." Rufus pauses before he continues. "I don't know what would."
The air between them is weighed down with what Rufus doesn't say. Amy disappeared and they have yet to come back to a timeline she is in.
Wyatt sighs and sits up. "So what, we're just supposed to stay put? You risked everything to go back in time to help me save Jess, who you haven't event met, but you won't lift a finger to help me get Lucy back!"
"Wyatt."
"What?" He realizes what he's said. A glance at Rufus confirms it's not lost on him either.
"Look, it'll be hours before the Lifeboat is ready. I'm going to get out of this reenactment costume and go home and get some rest."
Thankfully Rufus interprets his words as a hint to leave.
"Rufus, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to take it out on you."
"S'okay. I get it."
When Wyatt is alone again he wonders if Rufus realized before he did himself. How he feels about Lucy.
Wyatt is not sure why he even bothers to lie down. As if he could sleep. After half an hour of turning and staring at the ceiling he is more tense and restless than when he lay down. He rises to fill the coffee maker.
It turns out he doesn't have to argue his way to another time jump. Emma has jumped to July 20 1969. It's a weird feeling, almost being grateful to Emma.
"Even I know this one. You're on Rufus, your thing, space and planets."
"I'm an engineer."
"Close enough. Science stuff."
The young man from before comes up to them.
"Yeah, did you want something?" Wyatt asks.
Rufus suddenly looks uncomfortable. "Er, Wyatt, Jiya told me he's our historian."
"No, he's not. We already have a historian. Let's go find some polyester shirts."
Disaster averted they return. Russia won't put a man on the moon first after all. Wyatt's fingers are shaking when he unbuckles his harness. (Is this what it's like for her with the buckles every time they jump?) Wyatt can't get out of the Lifeboat fast enough and at the same time he wants time to slow down. Before Rufus opens the hatch there is every reason to believe Lucy will be on the other side of it.
Rufus must be reading his thoughts. "You ready?"
Wyatt scans the rows of desks for a pair of brown eyes and dark hair. It's as if the air leaves his lungs when he comes up empty. It becomes clear how much hope he'd pinned to this trip. How he was practically elated picking out the ugly ass shirts and bell-bottoms with Rufus.
"So, where are we going for a drink?" Rufus asks when the two of them are making their way to the exit.
Wyatt comes to a halt. Is Rufus joking? Has he invited Jiya too, the third person of their post time travel-drinks replaced just like that?
"You'd have to give me a ride though. I said Jiya could take my car home. We came into work together this morning. This morning present time, not this morning in Florida, obviously. We haven't moved in together. But sometimes I stay at hers. Jiya's going home. To her place I mean. Yeah, so the place on the corner?"
Wyatt is trying to break into Rufus' rambling with a "Thanks, but no thanks" when it clicks. Rufus is doing this for him. What he saw earlier, Rufus talking to Jiya, it was not him asking her to go for a post time jump-drink with them. It was Rufus telling Jiya to leave without him as he'd go for a drink with Wyatt.
He still wants to say "Thanks, but no thanks" but what is does he have to go home to? More confusing thoughts going round and round in his head? More tossing and turning and looking at the ceiling?
Rufus may have been rambling, but he's didn't pick the bar at random. They've been here before, the three of them. But not often enough for there to be a favorite booth or the staff asking "the usual?" and if Lucy will be joining them later.
"You go ahead and find a table, I'll get the drinks. Beer?" Wyatt says by way of thanks.
"Sorry it didn't work out this time," Rufus says when they are both seated. "I don't want to break out the clichés, but I know this must be difficult for you."
"For you too."
"Yes, but it's not the same thing is it?"
"No?"
"Lucy is my friend and I miss her. But she and I don't have what you two have."
Wyatt sighs. "I've been an idiot. I thought there would be time. We did talk, kind of."
"You figured she'd be around so you could continue the way you have. Talk some more later."
"Then Emma decided to step in to screw up history and Lucy found out about her mother and Rittenhouse."
"I can't imagine what it must be like to find out the parent who raised you, who you trusted and looked up to, is part of Rittenhouse. It must suck. Big time."
"Yeah, I guess that's one way of putting it"
"But you, you need to tell Lucy. How you feel."
"Why are we even talking about this, Rufus? Lucy is not here."
"You owe her that. And yourself."
This is where Lucy would have said something to make them all feel better. Or something really annoying. Either way it would have taken their minds off the current mess for a few moments.
"I'm not blind you know. I've had a front row seat to your budding romance?"
"Our what?" Wyatt almost chokes on his beer. "Where do you even pick up expressions like that? And what do you mean by 'our romance'?"
"Oh, come on. This time jumping thing hasn't been a picnic for anyone of us, but as irritated as we've all been with each other, who gets to you the most? Me or Lucy?"
"I... I mean, she's... you know."
"Yeah, I know. Why do you think that is? Why do you think you let her get to you in that way, let her under your skin, Mr keep-calm-under-pressure-special-ops-guy?"
"Because she's..."
Life lesson, if the woman you... Oh, let's be honest, let's be brave here, you've faced IEDs. If the woman you love is swallowed up in time, admit your feelings and do something about it.
Rufus saves him. "Because she's special. And if I, who waited months to ask the woman who for some reason saw something in me to dinner, can see it loud and clear, you'd be an idiot not to own up to it. Not to have the guts."
Before Wyatt has a chance to reply Rufus continues. "In the first few weeks it was the grown-up version of you pulling her pig tails. Then I just got used to it. How you'd both always walk into Mason's with that look of expectation, looking for someone. Once you'd laid eyes on each other things could move on. We could focus on saving history."
"Oh."
"Oh, indeed. I kind of envy you, it must have made you the only two people ever to look forward to Monday mornings."
For reasons he can't explain it kills Wyatt to know that Rufus has always been aware that Lucy and he laying eyes on each other after the weekend, their innocent chats in the break room, he buckling her seatbelt in the Lifeboat, grasping her hand or brushing his fingers across her cheek when history has imploded on them, is all they've ever allowed each other.
TBC
