Summary: The worst part about this whole time travel thing is how inconvenient it all is. AU.
Warnings: Time Travel. Some swearing. Mentions of child abuse. Off-screen murder and domestic violence.
Disclaimer: I neither own nor am affiliated with Common Law in any way.
Little bit late because Life got in the way. Sorry 'bout that.
OOOO
Your Timing Is (In)Convenient
"Timing has always been a key element in my life. I have been blessed to have been in the right place at the right time."
—Buzz Aldrin
XXXX
The problem with time travel, Wes thinks as he stumbles into the park, is that it's so inconvenient. It never takes him after work, in the evening when he can actually spend time on his mission. No, it has to take him in the middle of the day…like during recess at court.
He checks his watch, then jogs along the path. He has twenty minutes to get back to court. It's not always a direct one-to-one correlation between the past and the present—he once spent half a day in 1973, and came back to his own time after three days with a missing person report filed on him. But the sooner he gets his task done here, the sooner he returns to his own time.
Now he just needs to find the person he's supposed to help.
He circles the area twice before he stops by the benches he appeared next to. Huffing, he puts his hands on his hips and surveys the area with a scowl. He always comes out near his target, that's the way this works. So where are they?
Something gurgles nearby. Wes's gaze swings around, and now he notices what he missed before—a small basket tucked under a park bench.
"Are you serious?" A lawyer for fifteen years and people still manage to surprise him.
The baby seems to be okay, staring up at him with bright blue eyes and gurgling happily. He even seems to laugh when Wes picks the basket up. Not that Wes knows much of anything of babies, but this one appears alright.
"Come on," he murmurs, tucking the basket onto his hip. "Let's get you somewhere safe."
He can't move as fast with a baby on his hip, but he still makes good time getting out of the park. And, lucky him, there's a fire station just down the street.
Wes carefully deposits the basket on the stoop. "You'll be safe now," he murmurs, smiling down. The baby gurgles again, tiny hands waving.
Taking a breath, Wes knocks on the door, then jogs rapidly across the street. With his hands in his pockets, he pretends he's just someone out on an evening stroll, but he watches the door open, and he sees the fireman pick up the basket and go inside.
Wes smiles to himself, and then his hands start to tingle. A moment later, he disappears back to his own time.
(He makes it back in time for court. Barely. So inconvenient.)
XXXX
Wes likes to do research on his targets, if only so he'll know the next time he's most likely to get yanked back. Unfortunately, without breaking into some very secure files, there's no way to find a baby abandoned at a fire station. Hell, even if Wes did have access, he doesn't know what year he'd been to, so it would still be a fruitless search.
He hasn't had many cases like this, ones where he can't research who he's supposed to help. But he has had enough to know how they go, and they're a pain in the ass.
All he can do is wait for his hands to start tingling again and hope he's prepared.
XXXX
He gets up for just a minute to go to the bathroom, and the next thing he knows he's got his hands in a sink in some family home.
"Dammit," he grumbles, hastily drying his hands and checking his watch. "She's going to think I stood her up."
He actually had a date with Kristen, a pharmaceutical rep he met at a bar, and now it's going to bomb because he got yanked back to the past. What can he say? "Sorry, I was really looking forward to the date but I unexpectedly traveled back in time." Yeah, that would go well.
He's already lost Alex because of this stupid ability. Is he just not allowed to have a love life?
Sighing, he slowly opens the door. The hall is empty, which is a relief. Getting arrested in the past is nothing fun—especially when he just ends up disappearing from the back of the cop car. Technically that happened ten years ago from his time, but he'd still like to avoid it happening again.
There are harsh voices coming from downstairs, but up here it's silent. Wes creeps down the hall, wondering what he's supposed to be doing. There's always a purpose, always a specific person to help.
A door creaks behind him. Wes freezes, heart pounding, and slowly turns. From the last door on the left, two pairs of eyes peer out at him from waist-height.
A gentle tug in his gut tells him that's where he needs to be. He casts one more look at the stairs, where the shouting is escalating, then creeps down the hall.
"Hi," he says gently, crouching down by the crack in the door. "My name's Wes. Who are you?"
Slowly, the door eases open, revealing a boy and a girl. They look about six, seven at the most.
"I'm Travis," the boy says, voice wobbling. "This is Marcie."
Wes smiles gently. "It's very nice to meet you, Travis and Marcie." The yelling downstairs goes up another notch; the two children flinch, and Wes forces his smile to stay steady. "Do that always fight like that?" he asks carefully, glancing at the stairs.
Travis shrugs, shrinking in on himself. Marcie starts sucking her thumb and nods, eyes wide.
"Do they ever get mean?" Wes asks carefully. "Hit each other? Hit you?"
Their reactions just confirm his suspicion, and his stomach twists. To hurt children… this must be why he's here. To get them out of here and into a safer environment.
"Is there a phone up here?" Wes asks. Travis nods, pointing towards the stairs. Wes holds out his hand. "Will you show me?"
After a second, Travis slips his tiny hand into Wes's. Marcie clings to the boy's other hand, and they shuffle quietly down the hall, an awkward train.
Wes is slowly easing open the door to a home office when a gunshot rings out. Marcie instantly starts screaming, and Wes drops to his knees, tucking them both close. "No, no, you have to be quiet. Shh!"
Too late. There's already a belligerent voice drunkenly shouting for the children, moving towards the stairs.
Now Wes knows why he's here.
"Come on, come on." He ushers them back down the hall towards their room. "Here we go." Shutting the door behind him, Wes shoves the dresser in front of it, blocking it off. It's cheap and light, it won't last for long, but it should give them enough time.
"We're going to go out the window," Wes says, pulling up the sash. The screen pops out with an easy kick. Of course there's no handy tree outside, but there's a drainpipe in easy reach.
The door rattles against the dresser.
"Marcie, you need to climb onto my back and hold on as tight as you can." He crouches down, so she can scramble on, and Wes looks Travis straight in the eye. "Travis, as soon as I get on the ground, you need to jump out. You need to be brave, and you can't stop. Do you understand?"
There's no way he can get safely down carrying both of them. But he he's a pretty fast climber, and he can manage with Marcie. But he needs Travis to be prepared to jump.
Travis casts a fearful glance at the door and nods.
"Good boy. Remember, don't stop." With Marcie hanging fiercely to his neck, Wes scrambles out the window, practically sliding down the drainpipe. He leaps down the last five feet, depositing Marcie on the ground and turning to the window.
"Travis!" The boy's head appears, chocolate skin blanched. Wes holds out his arms. "Jump! Don't stop!"
Wes hearts the door burst open inside the room. Travis gives a little yell and launches himself out the window. Wes steps back, getting under the boy, and when Travis slams into his chest they both tumble to the ground.
As he rises to his feet, a second head pops out the window. Angry, and mean, and drunk, and he's holding a gun.
Wes grabs the children's hands. "Run!"
The gun goes off, missing wildly, and then they're around the corner of the house. He can already hear sirens down the street.
He can also feel his hands tingling.
"Marcie! Travis!" He brings their hands together, releasing them. "Run! Don't stop until you see the police!" He slows, watching them race down the street.
As the red and blue lights wash over them, Wes can feel himself getting pulled back to his own time, and he smiles.
XXXX
It takes four days to find the story on such little information, a half-page article in a paper dated June 6th, almost thirty years ago. Two killed in domestic incident, the headline reads.
"Last night at 9PM, police were called to a scene of violence and tragedy. William Arnett, 48, was gunned down during a confrontation with police after shooting his own wife, Clarissa, 44."
The next few paragraphs are all about Arnett's life and past. Wes skips all that, looking for mentions of the children. He finds it at the end of the article.
"The Arnett's two foster children managed to get out of the house before they were harmed. They were found by police on the street outside."
"When asked, the girl (name withheld), said a man saved them. 'It was an angel,' she declared. 'An angel saved us.' "
Wes snorts, leaning back. "An angel, huh? That's a new one."
XXXX
He still doesn't know anything about the kid he's supposed to be saving. Travis is the one, obviously—Marcie's skin was much too pale to be the baby he'd rescued from the park. But the foster records are sealed, and Wes has no legally valid reason to go poking around in a thirty-year old homicide just to find the full name of one foster kid. And without the kid's name, he can't look up anything else about Travis either. He's just going to have to wait until he's yanked back again.
The waiting is the most frustrating part.
XXXX
Wes doesn't know why he can do what he does. He doesn't know if someone up high is making it happen or if it's a random quirk of nature. He just knows that one day he climbed into his car and found himself on a park bench in 1995, saving a young woman from being mugged. Almost a dozen 'cases' later, he's getting the hang of it, but it still seems to happen at the most inconvenient times possible.
Like now, for instance. He's in his pajamas, flossing, when his hands begin tingling. He doesn't even have time to put the floss down before he finds himself barefoot in the middle of a midnight street downtown.
He takes his hands out of his mouth and turns, and that's when the cars come screaming around the corner. Drag racing, his brain supplies, right before he realizes he's right in the middle of the road.
Wes jumps to the left, the teenager in the black car jerks the wheel to the right, and the asshole in the blue car keeps going.
There's a horrendous cacophony as the black car spins into a storefront. Wes is on his feet in a second, rushing toward the accident. Picking carefully through broken glass and splintered wood (seriously, he couldn't have arrived here wearing shoes?) Wes gets to the driver's door. Yanking it open, he leans over and unbuckles the boy's seatbelt.
"Come on, Travis," he says, because who else could it be? "Come on, out of here."
Groggy blue eyes focus on him, and Travis starts slowly moving. Wes helps haul him out of the ruined car, slings an arm over his shoulder, and moves out of the wrecked building.
He can hear the sirens as he gently deposits Travis on the sidewalk. "You'll be alright, Travis," he tells the teen. "I mean, your drag racing career is probably over, but you're going to be alright."
Those dazed blue eyes blink at him. "Who are you?"
"No one important." Wes probes, "Who are you? What's your last name?"
"Marks," the boy mumbles, dangling his head between his knees. "Travis Marks."
Wes bites back a smile. Finally, a name. "Well, Travis Marks," he says, fingers tingling, "I promise you're going to be alright."
As the police cars round the corner, Wes darts for the alley.
He's back in his hotel before the first cop is out of the car, and he spends the rest of the night picking glass and splinters out of his feet.
XXXX
Travis Marks, Wes learns, was a young man who turned his life around after getting arrested for drag racing. He went to the police academy, where he graduated top ten of his class. And then…oh.
Seven years ago, he was shot and killed trying to negotiate with a man who'd robbed a convenience store, then killed himself—along with the clerk and two customers.
Wes leans back, nodding to himself. That's where he's going next.
XXXX
He's got a grocery basket of produce in his hands when he transports, and he finds himself standing in front of a rack of Hostess treats. See? He didn't even have time to prepare for a possible confrontation with a robber. Hell, he couldn't even put the grocery basket down. This stupid power is the most inconvenient thing in the world.
"Stay back! I said stay back!"
Wes peers over the top of the Hostess rack. At the front of the store, a man is pacing in front of the counter, waving a gun. Three people sit by the milk, hands behind their backs.
At least he knows what he's doing here. There's the clerk and two hostages, and any moment now Travis is going to walk through that door and everyone is going to die.
Goddammit. Moving slowly, Wes sets his basket down and starts creeping around the back of the aisles, avoiding the robber's gaze. The end of the aisle comes out by the beverages; one of the hostages spots him, and her eyes go wide, mouth opening. Wes holds his finger in front of his mouth, and she snaps her mouth shut, hastily dropping her gaze to her knees.
"I'm going to come in now," a voice says over a bullhorn. "I don't have my gun or vest, so I'd really, really like for you to not shoot me. Emphasis on not."
Travis, dammit, put your vest on, Wes thinks, peering around the shelf.
The front door opens, the bell jingling cheerily in counterpoint to the tense atmosphere inside.
Travis looks good, in Wes's first glimpse of the man, better than he had the night of the car accident. He's nervous, it shows on his face, but he's confident, too. He's sure he can make this all turn out okay.
If only.
"See?" Travis is saying, hands held out to his side. "We're all friends here. And if you listen to me, we can all get out of here without anyone getting hurt."
The robber lets out a breath. "You seem like a nice guy, for a cop."
Nodding eagerly, Travis says, "Yeah, I am, I'm a really nice guy. You can trust me."
The robber nods. "Yeah, I…I wish I could believe you." He brings his gun up and around, pulling the trigger.
Wes is already moving, launching into the open and leaping on the robber's back. Marks was shot mere moments after enter the building, the papers said, and Wes is here to stop that from happening.
The shot goes wild. Travis dives behind a rack, hollering for the men outside. With one giant heave, the robber throws Wes onto the ground, pointing his gun at him.
"Where the hell did you come from?" the man snarls.
Police in riot gear bursts through the door. The robber's finger tightens on the gun as he turns, and then he's falling in a storm of bullets, but it's too late. The robber's shot has already gone through Wes's leg.
It's the most painful thing he's ever felt. It's fire and ice and sheer agony, traveling up his nerves in white-hot streams.
He's vaguely aware of a face, leaning over him, bright blue eyes boring into his. "Hey, stay with me," Travis says, "stay with me." He does something incredibly painful to Wes's leg; Wes doesn't even trying holding back his scream of pain. "That was the most stupidly brave thing I've ever seen," Travis says, leaning over his face again. "What's your name, buddy?"
"W-Wes," he manages to gasp out.
"Wes? That's a nice name. What do you do?"
"D…DA."
"Oh? Then we're on the same side, my friend." Two paramedics rush up, but Travis continues smiling down encouragingly. "You're gonna be alright, Wes. Just stay with us."
He's loaded onto a gurney and hurried to the waiting ambulance. The driver climbs behind the wheel, and the other paramedic hops into the back with him.
He can already feel his hands tingling. Dammit. Would have been nice if that could happen after they patch him up.
The paramedic turns towards the shelves, and as soon as her back is turned, Wes disappears without a sound.
XXXX
Three years after Travis successfully apprehended a man who held up a convenience store, he joined forces with a coworker and stopped a serial killer. Travis Marks and David Paek caught the Gentleman Caller killer after six prostitutes were murdered. Six women lost their lives, but if Travis hadn't been there, who knows how many more would have died. Who knows if the killer would have ever been caught.
There's always an endpoint to these 'cases', a reason Wes is sent back to save these people. And this…this is why Travis Marks had to live. This is why Wes was sent back to save him.
Despite having been shot, Wes sits in the hospital bed beaming down at his phone.
XXXX
As he's hobbling down the steps of the DA's office, a voice politely says, "Wes Mitchell?"
"Yes?" Wes turns, and his crutches almost slip out from under him.
Travis Marks smiles, hands tucked into his pockets. "Hi."
Wes has to discreetly check his surroundings to make sure he hasn't accidentally traveled without realizing it. But no, everything is still as it should be, which means this is present-day Travis. Wes…isn't quite sure what to do with this. He's never met any of his 'cases' after everything is done.
He clears his throat. "Can I help you?"
"Maybe I can help you," Travis says with a grin. "I think I owe you a basket of groceries." His eyes trail to Wes's leg. "And probably a lot more than that."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Wes blusters, but he's never been that great at lying.
Travis smiles again, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Oh, I think you do." And there's something about his posture, something that radiates stubbornness, and Wes just knows that it won't be that easy to brush Travis off.
Wes swallows, making his slow way down the steps. "Come on. I know a pretty decent café nearby."
XXXX
"For the record, I was mugged," Wes says, easing into a chair.
"Oh, I know." Travis plops down opposite him with an ease Wes irrationally envies. It's not like he's going to be on crutches forever. "I read the police report. You got mugged three nights ago. The mugger didn't take anything, just shot you in the leg. Right?"
"Right."
"Uh-huh." Travis makes a face, leaning in and lowering his voice. "Only I think you got shot in the middle of a convenience store robbery, seven years ago."
Shifting uneasily just makes his leg flare painfully, so Wes fiddles with the sugar instead. "You're mistaken," he says without conviction. "I was mugged."
(He's never been the best liar, and he never thought to prepare for this eventuality.)
Travis stares at him a moment longer before he leans back. "Let me tell you a story," he says. "Once upon a time, seven years ago, I was involved in a robbery at a convenience store. I went in, and I was about to get shot. But then this guy comes out of nowhere, jumps on the robber, and he gets shot instead. In the leg, as a matter of fact."
"What a coincidence," Wes mumbles to the table.
"Isn't it though?" Travis's voice says, I've got waterfront property in the desert if you think I buy that. "So this guy—who happens to look a lot like you—he says his name is Wes, and he works at the DA's office. Only, then he disappears, which is impressive for a guy with a gunshot wound in his leg. So I go to the DA's office, just to thank this guy. But there's no one named Wes working there."
Wes winces. Seven years ago was before he joined the DA, when he was still working at his old firm. He hadn't done the math when he'd been lying on the convenience store floor, too in pain to think that clearly.
Travis sees his face. "I know, right? It's hard to keep track of these things. I didn't think much of it. But then a few years later, a new guy joins the DA's office, and his name happens to be Wes."
The other male leans back. "I figured, if my suspicions are correct, you'd show up eventually with a gunshot wound in your leg. And here you are." He holds out his hands in a 'ta-dah' motion."
Wes swallows, stilling his hands. "And what are your suspicions?"
Travis takes a breath. "You, Wesley Mitchell, are a time traveler. And you keep saving my life."
Wes doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what to say. He told Alex about his ability, back when he first started doing this, and she thought he was crazy. Even after he proved it to her and she finally believed him, it eventually became too much, and she left. None of his other cases have found him.
No one else has figured it out.
"You don't have to say anything. Just…" Travis leans forward, reaching out to grip Wes's hand. "Thank you."
Wes has to swallow hard before he can speak, and still his voice wobbles a little. "No problem." Clearing his throat, Wes asks, "How did you figure it out?"
Travis laughs lightly. "I'm a detective, dude. You showed up three times in thirty years to save my life and you never aged a day. You were either a vampire or a time traveler, and the evidence pointed to the latter." He leans forward conspiratorially. "Can you tell me about it?"
Wes licks his lips, thinking that it would be awfully nice to have someone to talk to.
Travis has had his suspicions for years now, and the building isn't swarming with police and government agents trying to find out his secret. He can probably trust Travis.
"Well," he says, getting comfortable in the chair, "It started almost ten months ago…"
From the beginning, Wes has always thought this was nothing more than an inconvenience, dragging him out of his life at the worst possible times. But maybe, looking at Travis listening with wide-eyed wonder, maybe he ends up right where he needs to be every time.
OOOO
Wes's time travel ability is based on a one-season NBC series from 2007 called Journeyman. I really enjoyed it and thought the way the series utilized the concept of time travel was really interesting.
Wes is the time traveler in this one because I've already written a story where Travis is a time traveler.