AN: This is what happens when I should be working. Also, I didn't mean for this to become a 2x01 tag, but stories tend to do whatever they want, so here we are.
The Reality of Days
For six weeks, she had believed that he was gone. Believed that she would never see those beautiful eyes light up with amusement, would never feel his arms around her again, would never know what it was like to wake up to him.
Day One had been terrible.
She'd refused to accept the news at first. Of course her mother and Emma were trying to separate her, to make her feel lost and confused.
And then she'd seen the newspaper. And the cable news reports.
Something inside of her had shattered.
Rufus, Jiya….Wyatt.
Gone.
Her team, the only people that were fighting against this secret evil, the only people that stood between Rittenhouse and literal world domination. She was the only one left.
She had spent the next five hours on the floor between the bed in her assigned room and the wall, tears running freely down her face, arms wrapped around herself, desperately praying that she was wrong, that Wyatt would break down the door at any second and carry her away.
He didn't, of course.
Because he was dead.
Day One had faded seamlessly into Day Two, and she had been forced to grapple with the idea that her friends, the man she loved, were gone, and that her mother was possibly psychotically evil.
Her father was too, but at least she'd already known that.
She was an empty shell, a fragile nautilus - nothing on the inside.
Sometime in the middle of Day Three, she made it to her feet, dizzy from not eating. Not that she had any sort of appetite.
The mirror in the corner of the room mocked her. It shower a person who looked like their entire world had been destroyed in one fell swoop, which she supposed was fairly accurate. Dark shadows were brushed under eyes. They looked like bruises.
Almost abstractedly, she studied her image.
Figure out what you're fighting for.
As clearly as if he had been beside her, she heard Wyatt's voice in her ear.
What was she fighting for?
Was she even fighting?
She was bothered that she didn't have an answer to the last question. Or rather, she had an answer, but it wasn't one she liked.
Would he have stayed locked away and grieved himself to death? He hadn't when Jessica had died. He had carried on, even though he'd told her he hadn't particularly wanted to.
She took a deep, deliberate breath.
Then another.
And another.
She was still standing. Shakily, that was true, but upright nonetheless.
It was time to be brave. As brave as Wyatt. As brave as Rufus, telling the Shawnee that they'd have to kill him, too, or telling her that he was willing to go on a mission by himself because it was the right thing to do.
An errant tear slipped down her cheek. Annoyed, she wiped it away.
There was no more time for crying. She had a job to do. At any cost.
Carefully, she adjusted her features in the mirror. The sense of despair that had enveloped her for the last few days retreated to a distant corner of her heart. She would have to fight it, she knew. Knew it would sneak up on her, sometimes in the dark of night, and sometimes it would have the temerity to find her in the daylight. Knew she would be suddenly assaulted by the memory of Rufus's laughter or the scent of Wyatt's cologne.
She tried a bland smile on. It didn't hurt. She didn't feel a thing, not now.
Her hands didn't shake as she turned the door knob.
Figure out what you're fighting for.
Well, she knew.
—
Why were things like armaments not clearly marked? She wondered, as she scuttled through a field camp in the middle of France. It would make her job much easier if there was a sign that read "big explosives here."
She did not consider that she was frighteningly eager to find the means of what would be her own destruction, if that's what it took. She was going to end this, and if that meant not ever going home, or even her death, so be it.
So wrapped up in her search was she that the movement behind her was entirely unexpected. She moved defensively without thought - she could not be stopped now.
And then she was stopped.
Wyatt stood before her, her soldier in uniform, though it was the wrong one. Her breath caught violently in her throat.
He was here, he was here, herehereherehere.
"You're alive?" she choked out.
He smiled.
"You're alive," he said back. It wasn't a question, and she suddenly realized that if he wasn't dead, she had been missing for six weeks.
She flung her arms around his neck. He caught her, held her fast, and she tried very hard to not go to pieces. The heat of his body was a shock, and she abruptly became aware that she had been freezing since she had left him that last time at Mason Industries.
His grip was too tight and she absolutely didn't care. He was alive. He had come to find her and bring her back. God, why had she ever lost her faith in his ability to protect her?
In another second, the tent flap opened and Rufus ducked inside. Her heart swelled again, and she reached for him with one hand, pulling him in. Absurdly, she realized she still had her fingers wrapped around a hand grenade.
She had her team back.
Her boys.
The sheer relief of not being the only one left made her giddy.
But then…she realized she needed to change her plans. Immediately.
It was one of the more difficult things she had done, walking away from Wyatt at that moment, when her every urge was to let him hold her for the next several hours.
The drawback was that she was starting to feel things again. The unexpected resurrection of Wyatt and Rufus had dealt a severe blow to the numbness she had been wrapped in for weeks.
Oh, God, she had killed someone.
Her knees threatened to buckle, but she held herself upright through sheer force of will. Now was no time to fall down and die.
The rest of the mission had gone badly.
But it had ended with Wyatt helping her into the Lifeboat, buckling her in, and holding both of her hands as they jumped. She closed her eyes. His gaze saw too much, made her feel too much. Vaguely, she realized she must've been in shock and she was now coming out of it.
The space in between time was no good for a breakdown.
That was going to come later.
Fortunately, she was able to pull her tattered cloak of numbness around her as she went through debrief with Agent Christopher, who, despite everything, she was very glad to see.
Wyatt sat at her side the entire time, his thigh brushing hers.
She managed to hold herself upright during her quick shower. But the hot water made her realize how utterly she was exhausted, and making it to the narrow cot was an exercise in willpower.
She sat, shoulders slumped. If she could never move again, that would be alright.
And then Wyatt was there, and the breakdown she had been trying to hard to avoid happened. She wept for her mother, for the loss of a childhood that she now knew was a work of fiction, for the soldier she had killed in cold blood, for her own grief over Wyatt's death, and Rufus's. Everything had been taken from her, all the foundations that she had built her life around.
"You haven't lost me," Wyatt murmured to her hair, arms around her.
No, she hadn't, but she was still getting used to that again.
She couldn't ever remember being this vulnerable before. She was out of righteous anger and determination to hide behind. All she had was heartbreak and the exhaustion that came with hardly sleeping for over a month.
She wanted to kiss him, wanted the opportunity she had been afraid had been lost to her forever. His eyes were dark, and she saw worry in them. Worry for her, she knew, worry for her tears, for what she had been though, but also worry for himself. He wanted to kiss her, she could tell by the way his gaze kept flickering to her lips, but he was also afraid of what it would mean.
Jiya's interruption was both awful and welcome.
Later, she had stretched out on her tiny bed, one arm thrown over her face. A quiet footstep had told her that Wyatt was leaning against the doorframe.
"I'm okay," she managed to whisper. "I'll be okay." She wasn't sure if either of those things were true. In fact, she knew the first one wasn't, and she had a suspicion that she might not ever be truly okay again.
She heard him move, then felt the mattress shift as he sat. Gently, he pulled her arm away so he could see her expression. She did not have any idea what she looked like.
Wyatt didn't meet her eyes. Instead, he swept a tendril of hair away from her face with a fingertip. "I have been absolutely terrified for the past six weeks," he told her quietly. "I had no idea where you were, if you were hurt…" He touched her hair again. "Hell, Lucy, half the people here thought you were dead."
"Did you?" she asked quietly.
He shook his head. "No." Then he sighed. "I had to believe you were alive. And then I felt guilty as hell, like I was letting you down because I couldn't get to you."
"You were dead," she breathed. "I didn't expect you to come bursting through the door, guns blazing." In truth, she had desperately wanted him, but had gone to great lengths to not think about that scenario because she was afraid she would never be able to stop thinking about it.
Wyatt drew a finger across her cheek. "Don't give up on me so easily," he told her. It could have been her imagination, but she thought there was another layer of meaning in his words. Or maybe she just wanted there to be.
"I missed you," she dared to say.
His lips tilted up slightly. "I missed you, too. In fact, I'm thinking about locking you in a closet so I don't have to worry about you being kidnapped by assorted persons anymore."
It was her turn to smile, just a little. "Claustrophobia," she reminded him.
He shrugged. "Well, it was worth a try."
She yawned, and Wyatt took the opportunity to pull the dark green blanket over her. "Once, a long time ago, I got captured while on a mission. I didn't sleep very well. I don't imagine you did either."
"No," she admitted.
One look at Wyatt's face told her he was as reluctant to leave her as she was to have him go. She had spent six weeks thinking he was gone, and now he was literally in bed with her.
She hoped this wasn't some elaborate dream she cooked up.
Cautiously, she poked his chest. It was solid.
He arched an eyebrow.
"Just making sure you were real," she muttered, half-embarrassed.
The look he gave her was suddenly tender. He gently took her hand and brought it to his mouth. "I'm real," he promised, lips brushing her knuckles.
There was a long pause and God, she just did not want him to leave.
She avoided his eyes. "Will you stay here?" she asked. "For just a little bit. It's just…" She fumbled for words. "I have this stupid, unreasonable fear that I'm going to wake up and realize none of this ever happened. That you're still dead, that I'm still…" She trailed off. There were things she had done while with Rittenhouse that she wasn't prepared to discuss, not tonight.
And Wyatt, who she knew had seen things that he would never talk about to another soul, understood.
He nodded. "I'll stay." He still had her hand.
She scooted over as far as she could, the concrete wall cold against her back. Wyatt stretched out next to her, on top of the blankets, one arm behind his head, their fingers laced between them.
In another minute, she curled just a little closer, other hand wrapping around his arm, her cheek pressed to his bicep.
She felt the ghost of a kiss on the top of her head.
The bed wasn't particularly soft, the blanket was scratchy wool, but she wasn't sure she had ever been more comfortable. Wyatt was right - she hadn't slept, hardly at all. Instead, she had laid awake night after night, sometimes thinking, sometimes with her mind blissfully empty.
When she inevitably woke from a nightmare, it was a surprise to find herself where she was. Wyatt was still next to her, face relaxed in sleep. He had gone through hell, too, these past weeks. He had finally let himself go, let himself be vulnerable to her, for her. And then he must've wondered if he was going to lose her, too.
She thought maybe he hadn't slept very well either.
Worried he would get cold, she unwound the blanket from herself, then draped it across him as well. He shifted, eyes very slightly open. Just enough to see her. His lids lowered again, and in the next second, he pulled her properly into his arms, her head on his chest.
His embrace was warm, body language telling her he was still mostly asleep. Cautiously, she rested one arm across his waist. His faded t-shirt was soft against her cheek.
Sometimes, when she had been with her mother, she had been unable to keep her mind from wandering, especially as she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Her defenses had finally broken down, and she had desperately tried to pretend that the arms wrapped around her were Wyatt's and not her own.
But tonight, now, this was real. She didn't have to imagine.
Thank God.