Hiya. Fair warning - this is a 2x04 predict-it fic for The Salem Witch Hunt. I've gathered spoilers from two promos, a few NBC released pictures and some advanced reviews, which you may or may not want to be spoiled on. I'm doing my due diligence now so people can make up their minds. Obviously, this is going to be nowhere near what the episode will bring, and it definitely evolved into a character study during the course of writing. it may or may not become a multi-chapter predict-it series that link, but I'll decide closer to 2x05 whether I can commit to that. Consider it finished for the time being. For people who listen and read, You Are A Memory - Message To Bears is what this was written to. Enjoy!
Dear Wilderness, Be At Your Best
(A Salem Imagining)
dear wilderness, be at your best.
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress.
i know the rules: the weaker trees bend.
but make her immune
when your temper storms in.
Nobody broke in, they broke out.
The cold water douse chills her to the bone.
One…three…six…the first person she looks for in the room is the most glaring absence.
Wyatt.
For someone who usually comes flying around the corner when the octave of her voice rises, his absence solidifies the cold fear coursing through her veins.
Those five words had felt like a tempting of fate even when they were tumbling out of her mouth in jest.
Nowhere to go but down.
Her name is a mantra during the aftermath.
Bewildered eyes scour her as though she's the secret-keeper to the Houdini Wyatt makes of himself, cursory and disbelieving when she swallows the lump in her throat to tell them she has no idea what has come over the soldier. There's a thunderstorm in his wake and she's in an open field, a lightning rod for any and all castigation. Denise doesn't have to verbalize her suspicions, Lucy can feel the burning mistrust searing at her back as she follows the rest of the Silo back to the rec room.
A shimmering, mega-watt high of a moment suddenly feels like it's been blanketed in darkness, the light has been flipped off and she's desperately trying to put one foot in front of the other, fumbling for the switch.
I'll be right back.
Two ambushed guards are dragged in from the muggy heat and laid out in the infirmary while she watches from the shadows, hiding from the brewing storm of Homeland Security responding to the breach. Panicked fingers reach for her locket and curl it into her palm until it's indented painfully against her skin; the modicum of grounding running a thumb over the gold-plated face usually provides is tempered close to nothing, as her mind silently whirrs.
Poolside declarations and the whisper of fingertips along her naked spine in '41 are weak barriers against the tidal wave of anxiety thrashing against her sternum. There are very few things that Lucy knows that could offset Wyatt and push him over the line of Jekyll and into Hyde.
The list is but one name.
No one has yet dared to breathe it.
The government issued cell with the same dinging text signal as the one that wedged itself between their fragment of intimacy, is tucked in the waistband of her sweats, waiting for some kind of communication. There hasn't been a century since 1754 that Wyatt has left her flailing in the dark, relegated her to waiting in a harried state that leaves her bordering the fine line between wanting to tear after him, or to be proactive and begin the process of taking scissors to the fresh stitches in her heart.
Whatever the case, her cup of optimism tends to sit at half-empty these days.
"All of this commotion for someone getting abreast of this cesspool."
Flynn's self-insertion comes at the height of her inner battle between patience and self-preservation. There's a reason why she's skulking in the grimy backdrop of the missile-bunker laundry room, and it's not to be accosted by Flynn and his biting snideness. Though, if she's being completely honest with herself, the niggling, festering suspicion that he's cognizant of yet another piece of her future nestles deep in her mind. He's probably read about this development in her journal. The one wedged under her mattress at this very moment.
One she refuses to scour for an answer she's not sure she even wants.
"I know Master Sargent Logan had an…issue, with my being here, but this seems a little dramatic."
"Don't," she warns, teeth tearing at her bottom lip, "not today."
Four painfully slow hours later the bunker transitions from sleepy-detachment into unfettered chaos as the jump signal roars through the Silo. Lucy's forced to make a split-second decision, much to Rufus' protestation. Unfortunately, there is very little chance for a woman and an African-American man to stay incognito on a trip to Salem in 1692, let alone navigate the waters guarded by white male privilege.
Denise is incensed at the mere suggestion, "Absolutely not. We just broke him out of maximum security, and that's my ass on the line if we lose him on the mission."
"Are we really going to pretend like this is the worst thing we've done?" Lucy volleys back, frustration brewing, "he's proven he's an asset, we're…aligned…in our cause. Without him our hands are tied behind our backs, and let me tell you, 1692? Not the year for feminism and civil rights."
It always comes down to her historical analysis versus government brawn and it's a battle she's too tired to fight with Wyatt being awol. He should be here, and maybe then she wouldn't have to play peacekeeper between a rock and a hard place. It's not like she's gung-ho to have Garcia Flynn strapped in across from her, especially in a seat that belongs to someone she trusts unquestionably. How can any of them see it as anything but an act of desperation?
"Are we forgetting the time he tried to have Capone pop one in my ass?" Rufus interjects, an accusatory glare tossed over at Flynn for emphasis as his fingertips ghost over his left flank, then back to Denise, "you said you had guys on Wyatt?"
"So far he's been evasive."
Lucy has to hold back a snort. She wonders why the government are even bothering wasting high-expense resources on a Delta Force operative. If he's unable to tell her what's going on in his head, he's certainly not going to leave breadcrumbs for Denise's henchmen. Her cell remains silent against her hip, burning against her skin in irritating silence.
"Clock is ticking," Flynn drawls from his perch on the breakfast bar, casually snacking on a rice cake.
"We're aware of that, Rambo," Rufus snips, "but I'd rather jump back to 1937 Jersey solo than go anywhere with you and a musket."
Flynn remains undeterred, "Come on now, can't bygones be bygones?"
"Is he for serious?" Rufus turns to her incredulously, ignoring Jiya's plea to not rise to it, "I almost got smoked in Chicago."
She tries to ignore the pleading set of eyes boring into her and turns her attention back to Denise, "how long until the outfits arrive from the California Historical Institute?"
"Thirty minutes."
"Then Wyatt has thirty minutes to show up or we're taking Flynn. No arguments," Lucy orders, turning on her heel and vacating the talk-circle.
Everything is spinning and she can't find a quiet moment to catch her breath.
She finds a sliver of solace in her room.
Her bedsheets are still rumpled from the coupled movements of her nap with Wyatt, a black unknotted bow-tie slung over the railing of her bed-frame. They'd stumbled out of the Lifeboat bonelessly tired, a blend of coastal road-trip weariness and achingly ravished limbs. Quick, separated showers and a sly convening while Jiya and Rufus watched Star Trek led to a tangling under the covers of her cot, heady ginseng and black pepper soothing her into heavy-lidded sleep against the soldier.
They hadn't had those words yet, the have each other assurance, because it had been abundantly clear that nothing needed to be said in the moment. Not as his arm curled around her and tucked her into him, lips pressed to her crown with a satisfied exhale while her hands nestled for warmth under the hem of his shirt. For those few moments, everything had felt completely untouchable.
It's a moment to pause as she takes purchase on Jiya's cot, unable to bring herself to sully the picture before her.
She should have known it would be fleeting.
If it's an exercise in confidence she's losing, because the silent cell and the gut feeling in the pit of her stomach point to a much bigger picture. Rufus' furtive, pitiful glances - though borne from a heartfelt place - assume just as much as she has.
She's toying with the edge of Wyatt's shirt when a tentative knock sounds on the other side of the door, "Lucy?"
"You don't have to knock, Jiya. This is your room too," she assures as the techie slips through the door, awash with a fresh sense of condolence that Lucy interprets as a byproduct of a not-so-cool Rufus.
It's a meditative few seconds before she can gather her thoughts, but once she's through warring with herself Jiya blurts out an unlikely judgement, "I - um - look, don't tell Rufus, but you need to take Flynn to Salem."
She catches Lucy off guard. Jiya's not usually one to offer mission advice outside of the technical variety, and Lucy senses that there's something heavier weighing her shoulders down, but she doesn't have chance to pry further because Jiya is laying it out straight before she can ask.
"He was shot once with Wyatt. I can't think of what that would have been if Wyatt hadn't been there, Lucy. Even if Rufus and AC put up a fight. Take Flynn."
There's a resoluteness that Lucy can't argue with.
"He's one foot in the Lifeboat, Jiya," she confirms, reluctantly, "whatever Wyatt's up to, he doesn't want to be found."
As the room blankets itself in tender quietness, there's a moment right there, where she realizes that Jiya might have the answers that she's been avoiding in the journal. Was it the security guard's death? The sleeper? The hot-wired Chevrolet that left an owner stranded and bumping into a new love?
Just one question and it's all laid out definitively.
Jiya senses the shift, softening at the sight of her wilting at the foot of her thoughts, "Rufus told me that his wife was dead in the last timeline."
"Was?" Lucy's voice catches in her throat, a plummeting descent of melancholy dousing over her at the turn of phrase.
Jiya is quick to reassure.
"He never mentioned a Jessica, Lucy."
It's not enough, but the thought of not being a harlot sleeping with a married man eases the confusing pain she's wading through. There's comfort in that somewhere. Though, as of late, she's learned not to build up too much hope in fear of the shattering heights a downward spiral could lead her.
"Preston!"
Her name echoes down the Silo hall, prompting her to jump to her feet and blindly grab a few hair pins and oddments.
Jiya's hand reaches out to settle on her forearm in earnest, "Just…be careful?"
She promises nothing but to try her best.
She's pulling off Wyatt's shirt and debating on returning it to his room when Jiya curls back around the doorframe, halting her exit.
"I read that if bullets are flying, run in a zig zag and you're less likely to get hit."
Lucy's brow knits in confusion, a question burning on her lips but Jiya is back through the door before she can explore that tidbit.
Thirty minutes set to zero and the third component of their time-trio remains unaccounted for.
Rufus flicks and punches the buttons with a passive-aggressive muteness, anchoring the eye of the Lifeboat in dangerous tension she hadn't felt since their trip to the Alamo. She's sitting across from Flynn, fumbling with her buckle as he casually drops into Wyatt's chair, self-assured and not the least bit phased by his new traveling arrangements. His knees bump into hers, a gangly few inches taller than Wyatt, and Lucy hasn't the choice but to ignore the contact of Flynn against her shins.
It's all off kilter.
"Cheer up kids, this is gonna be fun."
"You know, I've never felt more slavey, this is officially the worst jump by a mile," Rufus grouses as he twists and contorts in his patchy, thick-weaved linen peasant smock.
She wants to volley back with the fact that she's in another corset that makes it hard to breathe, seven awkward under layers that have to be tied, weaved and laced until she's imprisoned in something she can't get out of by herself, but 1692 is going to be rough for him. The frustration she feels ebbs at the want to sling back a retort.
"We should start at the jailhouse, find out who of the original five women are incarcerated. I wouldn't put it behind Rittenhouse to tamper with the executions," Lucy suggests as Flynn joins them in the barn after a perimeter sweep, noting the frustration etched into his brow, "though the relevancy is…unclear."
It's a decision that Rufus and Wyatt wouldn't even have thought to undermine, favoring her historical analysis over blind stupidity. Where she led, they followed, with inputs along the way.
But Flynn is a dog with a bone.
"We're going to the tavern," he dismisses her with a stalwart decisiveness preened into a thin-lipped challenge, "unless there's a reason to start doubting your own directives," he flounces a torn corner of the journal in her face as a reminder of his dedication to her supposed future self.
Beadle's.
"And when exactly were you planning on telling us you had information?" she feels her frustration rebuilding, hands suddenly rooted on her hips. It occurs to her that Flynn is still playing her in any and which way he can, biding his time.
He brushes past her, "consider yourself told."
"So we're just gonna go chill with some beer and dudebros?" Rufus snarks, "or is it because your dudebros might have a weapon?"
It was Agent Christopher's one condition. No guns.
"We're going to the tavern, you can gristle on the way," Flynn snaps.
"Nope, not happening, full disclosure or I walk," Rufus stands his ground, "we're not in the Flynn show. You travel in the Lifeboat, you respect the team. Just because you wormed your way onto the mission because of a technicality doesn't mean you get to override Lucy."
"Well then, it's probably a good thing that we don't need a slave."
"You bastard," Lucy hisses at the ex-NSA agent, incensed.
"No, you just need me to get you home," Rufus retorts.
She's tired of the alpha male defiance, and on another day, in another world, she would have fought with every feminist bone in her body to stand by her educated opinion, but she's far beyond wanting to bicker in a barn during gale force winds and sheet rain. She relents, against her better judgement and hitches up the scarlet hem of her puritan dress, before trudging across the swampy back-yard and towards the main gate, leaving Flynn and Rufus to follow in her wake.
She has to choke back her shock when Flynn waltzes them into the tavern as his wife and stable boy.
"Couldn't have gone with sister?" Rufus snips as he settles beside her on the tavern bench.
She brushes it off, "just keep an eye on who he interacts with, any exchanges - he's a snake."
Her attention isn't enough for both Flynn's babysitting and scouring the tavern for a Rittenhouse ploy. Resentment towards Wyatt's absence grows at the thought of the freedom she would have if she had two trusted members of her team to cover the floor, wary of every pocketed hand and musket-wielding man in the heart of the tavern.
"Seriously though, why are we wasting time here?" Rufus asks her as two drunk blacksmiths stumble into their table, sloshing ale down his jerkin.
"Sometimes they would conduct pre-trial examinations of accused witches here," Lucy shrugs, "it wasn't a streamlined system, it just built into a mass hysteria and each town did things a little differently to the others. Salem Town used the courthouse for the majority, but then they'd also stoop to drunken public condemnations."
Rufus scoffs,"white guys."
"Yup," she sighed, scanning the crowd again.
Agitation grows as the room begins to come to life, a chant of "witch" filling the room as a sea of people flood into the belly of the tavern. She catches Flynn's eye and they share a moment of reckoning, then flit back to the growing unrest as two jailers wrangle a woman from her seat across their table.
"I thought you said all of the women are already accused and jailed…" Rufus swallows.
Her breath hitches, "they are."
"Then who is she?"
"Abiah Franklin, you have been accused of witchcraft!"
Lucy's stomach drops. This feels dirtier and more calculated than their last two jumps.
"I'm taking this as a bad thing, right Lucy?"
"That's Benjamin Franklin's mother; if she's hanged today Benjamin Franklin will never be born."
"Holy shi-,"
It's a cataclysmic explosion of events as the jailers drag Abiah out of the tavern to the stunned faces of the townspeople, bursting into a flurry of chaos when a familiar voice penetrates the hushed whispers.
"There she is! The one you're looking for - she's a witch!"
The barest whisper of "Mom" tumbles from her mouth before two separate jailers burst through the tavern doors and swoop her up against Rufus' best efforts to hide her behind him. A cocked gun finds purchase in the middle of Flynn's chest, and Lucy feels the sinking regret of listening to Agent Christopher as he watches resignedly while they usher her through the crowd with Rufus at her heel.
The townspeople are roaring.
It's a blur as she's dragged through the village, a scarlet thorn in a sea of puritan browns and black.
They chant and sneer.
Hang the witch.
Rittenhouse has made sure of a straight conviction. Condemned by a populace three hundred years removed.
Hang the witch.
Recognition strikes her like lightning at the sight of blonde and red huddled outside of the jailhouse. Two voices from the present in harmony with the frenzied crowd.
Hang the witch.
Bathsheba Pope, Abiah's sister condemns the Franklin matriarch in court.
Carol takes the stand to accuse Lucy.
Within a span of five minutes both women are trialled, convicted and secured away in an underground cell, with Rufus and a reverend still to be trialled back at the courthouse. Her stomach is in knots as they whisk her past the pilot, a shared glance of resignation the only moment they're able to communicate before she's lifted from her feet and trailed across town, the toes of her boots snagging on the rocks pitted along the earthy road.
There's no sign of Flynn.
She should have known the bastard would flee. She thinks he's probably halfway back to the Lifeboat with a handful of stolen muskets and ammunition…but if they're trapped, he's trapped too…it's a very slight feeling of satisfaction that lessens that blow.
Concrete and straw are the first things she meets when she's tossed into the cell, rough enough to send her flying with two fists to break her fall. The left twists and crunches painfully when she catches herself. She musters enough gumption not to curse in front of the several women waiting for their execution and scurries over to the wall to cradle her arm. A litany of falls and past tumbles gifts her enough knowledge to know it's a bad sprain and not a break. Though, she's been wrong before.
"You don't look familiar," one of the women breaks the silence, "we know most folk around here."
Her cover is easy enough to muster from a couple of years worth of on-the-spot inquisitions,"I'm from out of town. My…husband and I are visiting from Plymouth, he's thinking of bringing naval construction to Salem."
That earns her a little respect from the women, the illusion of new labour and an economic boost to the impoverished coastal town on the horizon.
"Your husband should talk to Judge Sewall, it'd be an almighty shame if your hanging is to become the reason for a lost economic opportunity," another lady inputs, "forgive me, Alice Parker," she introduces herself as an afterthought.
"Lucy Preston," she follows suit.
The hopelessness she feels at being slighted by her mother dwindles as the women bring her into the circle. Mary, Anne, Dorcas and Martha are a mixed bunch of puritan stoics and she soon learns that her choice of dress is a little too ostentatious of her, better to wear black or brown if you're to settle here - red tempts the devil.
But it's Abiah who steals the spot in her heart.
Benjamin Franklin's mother becomes more than a name in a history book to Lucy, a driven, beautifully passionate idealist who stands behind every conviction she has.
"We shall not die today. If we do, then there be no Lord who is just. It is not a sin to teach your daughters arithmetic, nor punishable to seek freedoms above our station."
It elicits gasps from half of the circle, Dorcas explicitly muttering witch under her breath, but Lucy is inspired by her stalwart nature. In those moments she wants this woman to know who her future son becomes, the power he wields and bears in her honor, but she remains quiet, and listens to Abiah with rapt attention.
She mentally promises that she'll write a book on her if she ever survives this entrapment.
When dusk approaches her hands begin to clam. Flynn is still absent from duty and she hasn't heard from Rufus for hours. All research showed the executions on September 22nd would be complete by nightfall, and the sun has already dipped below the horizon. With each passing minute her resolve weakens and she begins to fear the impending march to the hangman's noose.
How did being wrapped up in blissful ignorance in Hedy's sheets feel worlds away from where she was now? Had it even been twenty four hours since they'd slinked into the guest house and spent hours in cycling between power naps and orgasms? The friction of her cotton slip against the burns on her inner thighs deduct more than she can by reading the stars.
They're thoughts that border the tightrope of saving her from the deadening tedium of religious monologues or threaten to push her into a deeper depression. It awes her to think that it's two hundred and forty-nine years before that night becomes a blinding reality, a moment she decides she wouldn't change even if the diary had explicitly warned her to guard herself.
She realizes now that the diary would never have foretold the events of that night. If she knows herself, if she's true to what she feels as much as she is in this timeline, she'll have kept it all vague.
Let the ship sail itself.
It's a wonder where she'd be right now if Wyatt had been the one to accompany them on the trip. She likes to think that they would have followed her initial plan and avoided Carol's accusation altogether.
It turns into a waiting game.
Flynn manages to deliver a dagger in the form of a beggar child, who is quickly shooed by the guards once she slips the blade under her white-cuffed sleeve. It's not much, but it's a sign that Flynn is staying loyal to their cause and working silently behind the scenes, a notion she shouldn't have dismissed so quickly given his rabid tenacity.
The plan for the dagger isn't clear while she's locked in the cell, something she mulls over while she's biding her time until the hangman's assistants arrive for the gallows walk.
With the bravado of someone who has saved a Delta Force soldier at least two times, she chooses the moment they escort her from the cell to cuff her hands to bring the dagger soaring into the jugular of the jailer who manhandles her. It gives her the upper hand to lock the second jailer in the cell while he's rounding up the other women, all of whom now see her as the devil incarnate.
Including Abiah.
But it's a cross she can bear if it rights history.
Instinct tells her to search for Rufus, sidelining Abiah's rescue for when she's not a solo criminal in a dress that sticks out like a sore thumb in Salem. The second set of cells are empty, sending a panic up her spine at the thought of being too late to rescue Rufus.
Flynn would make amends for Chicago. He had to if it meant he had any chance of altering the fate of his family.
That spurs her onwards.
Freedom is at the tip of her fingers when she stumbles through the jailhouse door. The yanking of her bonnet rips her to the floor and she braces herself again, crying out at the shooting pain that radiates the length of her injured wrist. Hairpins loosen and she frantically swipes at her loose tendrils until a leather boot pins her ribcage to the floor.
"Where do you think you're going, Princess?"
Keynes was curious why you've been given so much room to be an anarchist free spirit, Princess. He wants your Momma to prove her allegiance after your rebellion, he was…surprised…that your nepotism had earned you preferential treatment over people who have suffered and perished for much less. Unfortunately, royalty doesn't hold much sway when you're threatening his magnum opus. So, tonight, you're gonna hang.
She tells Rufus that she loves him when they're brought out onto the knoll.
"Hang the witch!"
The wind howls in a rage so she's not even sure he hears her.
Eleven muskets guard the gallows.
Flynn is outnumbered even if he manages to find a weapon.
"Hang the witch!"
Her name is posted to the last spot on the roll call thanks to the brewing hysteria of the murder she's committed. If there's a spectacle to be had she's the starring act of the night. Appropriately donned in the devil's dress.
She closes her eyes and tries not to wretch as Alice and Mary are handed their fate.
It's more terrifying and guttural than anything she's ever read.
"Hang the witch!"
Her wrists burn against the rope restraints when the next person they come for is Rufus. She screams like a woman possessed.
One…two…three steps.
They pause and wait.
Something shifts and she's being wrought from her hysteria and kicked up the same staircase, stationed next to Rufus and measured up for her own rope.
Two birds, one stone.
It isn't until she's tumbling down the scaffolding, Rufus' hand clenched around her sprained wrist and being ripped through the panicked crowd that she opens her eyes. A raging fire engulfs the entire gallows in blazing glory, as hot and searing as the night of the Hindenburg.
They run.
Wind rips through her hair. She stumbles. Twice.
Two hands drag her back to her feet.
Flynn.
"You're welcome, by the way."
Her entire being fills with a cathartic jubilance.
The gun in her peripheral doesn't even register until the first bullet whizzes past her right ear.
She zig-zags.
Her muscles scream in protestation as a fierce burning channels the length of her arm, clenched teeth a way to stem the traitorous crack of fissuring anguish from splintering her sternum.
Shot by her own mother.
The pain of injury both physical and mental combine in such a way that she barely thinks she can keep it together. She now exists in a world where the last familial thread has been severed, the ultimate sacrifice for a political cause.
"Lucy, sit back," Flynn urges, pushing her shoulders back until the bones of her scapula are pressed against the plastic seat of the Lifeboat.
She hadn't even known she was lolling forwards.
Her heart beats an erratic arrhythmia, whooshing so loudly it drowns out Flynn's barking as she submits herself to the greying edges of her vision. She's raw with exhaustion and defeat, willing the impending black-out to take her quick so she can just shut it all off.
Rittenhouse. Her mother. Wyatt.
Flynn tears at one of Rufus' ill-stitched sleeves, allowing the pilot's ire to fall on deaf ears as he tears the material into strips and tourniquets her bicep, then presses a wad of spare material against the wound.
She groans at the pressure.
"Come on Lucy, you've seen worse than this," Flynn's words pour out in cold comfort, "and it's about time you took one for the team."
"Go to hell, Flynn," Rufus booms over his shoulder, frantically flipping switches, "we're almost out of here, Lucy. Hold on."
For the first time someone other than Wyatt buckles her in. A timeless, unspoken tradition shatters as Flynn wrestles her dead arm under the restraint and he's neither careful nor warm in ministration. It's another hit that swipes at the fractured bough.
"Hold it," Flynn orders, grasping her free hand and pressing it over the cloth. Her fingers tremble as she tamps over the sodden layers, firing up a nausea she has to swallow back when Flynn's hand lifts off her in glaring russet glory.
Faint. Faint. Faint.
Her mental plead remains unanswered in conjunction with all of the recent traitorous happenstances in her life. The only relief she finds is in the shuddering revolutions of the Lifeboat as it whirrs to life and disengages with the 1692 timeline, leaving the bloody betrayal of her matriarch behind in Salem.
They land with a jarring rattle, eliciting a pained whine from her lips. She bats away Flynn's helping hand when the safety blinker glows green, the adrenaline quickly wears off and she doesn't need unkind hands jerking her around.
"We need a medic up in here!" Rufus rallies the ground through the hatch.
The bunker sparks into a frenzied flurry of action as Flynn helps her out of the Lifeboat, steadying her weight against his side when she sways at the top of the staircase.
"What happened?" Denise demands as Lucy clings to the railing, knees suddenly feeling weaker than she had been sitting down.
"She's been shot, not a through and through wound, it'll need debriding," Flynn offers an explanation, and she feels his hand tense around her uninjured arm as Wyatt storms his way to the bottom of the staircase.
"She's been WHAT?!"
Her memories become something of a hurricane of expletives, hushes and stolen moments of lips to her temples when she's whisked off her feet. Anything that happens between the staircase and being laid out on her cot for the medics to treat her wound is but a carousel blur of frenetic apology.
This should never have happened. I should have been there.
The medic explains the flushing and debriding process, though their words meld into the chaos and fall to the wayside as she closes her eyes against the organized panic. A cool rush of icy bunker air freshens up a renewed sting as they cut away at her costume and palpate the wound. It's all a little too much to bear and the traitorous welling in her eyes spills over into silent trails down her cheeks.
"Okay, M'am? We're going to give you some morphine before we take out the bullet."
She shakes her head frantically.
"No, please don't. Please."
"Lucy," Wyatt is at her side again, sliding fingertips through her wild hair while his eyes scour hers for explanation, "let them give it to you."
No. She refuses.
Memories of her loose tongue after the crash in her sophomore year of college assault her, unbidden truths leading to the disappointed conniption from her mother and the loss of her courage to grasp the first real dream she'd had for herself.
A loss of control.
She's lost so much already and the thought of masking one painful wound to open another tears at her. It's one thing she can control, and Wyatt's pleads are not going to deter her from that. Her answer is a resolute no. No anesthesia.
So she blacks out.
"Ouch."
Consciousness floods back once she's alone, splayed out on her cot and bicep debrided and wrapped. The whirlwind has died and a sense of clarity washes over her as she ruminates over the events of the day. Her scarlet puritan dress is still holding her hostage, one left sleeve missing and replaced with gauze and elasticated bandaging. She'd muddied and bloodied and in dire need of a shower and a strong coffee, but they're all things that can wait while she catches her breath.
"You're awake?"
That baritone kick-starts her heart.
"Wyatt?"
He's rumpled and flushed with sleep when he pushes himself up from Jiya's cot, exhaustion etched in bruised swatches under his eyes.
He looks about as rough as she feels.
"How're you feeling?" he mirrors her perch across the room and settles on the edge of Jiya's bed, keeping six feet of distance ravined between them.
After today it feels like a mile.
"Like I've been shot," she deadpans, lost in the air and space between those six feet, swathed in a looming sense of detachment that doesn't pull her to him like their magnetic draw the night before.
"What happened out there?"
The empty space evolves into a hazy sea as the hurt channels back up her throat, holding her response hostage until it bursts forth like an overflowing dam,"I guess my mother dropped the pretense."
Her resolve is bruised and battered after eight weeks of tortured anguish. She's built layer after layer of armor and guarded herself in any and which way she can, but time after time the blows rain down, over and over until she's tempered to the most fragile layer.
The hump feels insurmountable.
"My own mother, Wyatt," her voice tremors through quaking lips.
A laced corset and seven under layers begin to feel far too tight as her breaths begin to hitch under the weight of the stress. The mental fortitude it takes to calm herself before she's in full blown anxiety attack is too much pressure to shoulder and her free hand comes to clutch at the bodice.
"Lucy?" Wyatt tears across their six feet of no man's land.
"I can't…I…take it…off," she pleads, fingers scrambling for a tie.
He's there in all Delta Force command, calloused fingers divesting her of each scarlet and alabaster layer.
"You're okay," he ushers, into the shell of her ear while he frantically entangles himself in the complex lacing, "I'm here, I've got you."
The first unrestricted breath after Wyatt slips off the corset is like ambrosia.
Deja vu sweeps her up in the burrowing of his arms, forehead cradled in the underside of his neck as five o'clock shadow drags a friction across her skin like a kinetic salve. It's a sandpaper caress that bleeds through the despondency and a soothing reminder.You haven't lost me.
A recital of being paraded through the town to the noose falls from her lips and into his skin, ginseng and black pepper emanating from the warmth her words strike against his shoulder. A stray thumb oscillates over the curve of her spine as she wades through the terror of being sentenced to death, the feeling of being absolutely at her mother's mercy while they measured out her hanging difference.
"She's lost her mind, Luce. Lost her damn mind. That's her cross to bear, she'll take that with her to the grave and she'll regret it for the rest of her life."
"I doubt it," she whispers groggily into his clammy, breath-warmed skin.
He's quick to refute her, pulling away in gentle swiftness, eyes burning into hers with a ferocity she's only ever seen in the field, "I know it. You're a goddamn light, Lucy. Fierce. Loyal. A soldier for the right cause. Any mother who doesn't see that in you doesn't deserve you as a daughter."
Her last dredges of resolve drain away under the steadfast ardency carved into his jaw. The radiance from the beryl illumination of determined, earnest eyes drags her under.
Like muscle memory, her thumb finds purchase on his cheek, as once tentative lips bruise against each other in a desperate need for union.
But it doesn't last, on both parts.
There's still an unspoken elephant in the room and the pressure of prolonging that discussion keeps hearts from fully committing. They're in synch as the passion diffuses into uncomfortable sobriety.
She volunteers to take that swing.
"Where were you today?"
She realizes she's a sight, drowned in her gaudy shift and sniffling, but she's steelier than she looks. She may be stripped, beaten down and weary, but she can build it all back up.
His hesitancy incenses her, a protectiveness she doesn't need right now.
She just wants to hear it.
But Wyatt's eyes speak volumes more than he'll ever know.
Oh.
She instinctively slides off his lap and reinstates the distance between them, cradling her injured arm and wrist into herself as his head drops to trembling hands.
"She was just there, working at a bar downtown," he confesses, scrubbing the butts of his palms over glistening eyes.
"The text?"
His nod is laden with guilt.
"So you know each other? You still met?"
"We did."
Each admission is another puncture to her tattered heart. What had she said about hope?
They reverse, Lucy kneeling before his resigned form, hands coming to smooth over clenched fists in that reciprocal way of theirs. No matter the circumstance.
Her voice is whisper soft, "why didn't you tell me?"
It was the one piece of the puzzle that made no sense to her. Way back, when they'd only been platonic, wishy-washy friends and he'd had the chance to save Jessica, he had come and told her. Said his goodbyes. Jiya had said that if someone loved you enough, they'd tell you something like that.
Hollywood had felt a lot like love on her part.
But she couldn't speak for him.
"I wanted to. Once I was out there," he swallowed back the hesitancy, "everything just went from zero to one hundred in a matter of a minute and I just lost it, Luce. It's just a hair-trigger being pulled in your face. Someone shoving you off a cliff. You don't know any of it is really happening until you've hitchhiked ninety miles to a bar stoop."
"And then…how do I tell you that?" he shakes his head.
It's simple to her, having been on the end of a silent cell for half of her day.
"You pick up the phone, Wyatt."
"I pick up the phone and tell you that life got turned upside down, my dead wife is two feet in front of me and she thinks we're still married?" he snaps, but quickly falls to apology when she flinches, "I'm sorry, I'm really trying not to be an asshole. I thought all of this was impossible."
The lump in her throat returns.
She reads Wyatt well enough to know what this all means for her before he even knows it himself. It's an awful, ill-timed clashing of two timelines and hers falls short on the spectrum of dedication. A brief, fleeting night of whiskey kisses and orgasms against a revered wife nearing a decade of marriage? It's a dagger to the heart to sell herself that short, to relegate herself to second place, but Wyatt would never be the one to call it what it is.
Brooding, surly Master Sergeant Logan would rather grind himself into a reckless time-bomb and get himself killed in the process.
Her arm burns in tandem with this fresh, painful realization. An all-encompassing ache that washes over her in devastating clarity. The stars have never seemed fated for them, dividing and jarring them at every sunrise. But they'd tried, hadn't they? Swooned under the twilight sky in '41 and traded ruby-red kisses while mapping each other like undiscovered constellations? Basked in the uninterrupted glow of choosing each other, even if for a moment? They'd given it their best shot and it's something she'll never regret, not in the face of any opposing force.
She had truly felt loved, and if that love were to reign true to who they were, this had to be their swan-song.
He reads her just as well as she does him.
"Luce?"
Her eyes must be red raw, a perpetual fountain of misery as of late, but she can't help but to mourn the loss of those halcyon days with nothing but the open road ahead. Open to possibilities. You're not hideous. Yes, M'am.
She loved him. In ways that words could never express.
But in goes the knife.
"This is where we put the breaks on, Wyatt."
They're in a labyrinth and she doesn't know whether there will ever be a path back to each other.
She holds herself strong as he processes those few words, a mutuality bridging between them. They could fight and declare feelings until they're blue in the face, but time is a fickle foe and their situation isn't commonplace. Wyatt can't do what she did to Noah. She wouldn't let him.
Their silence is unbearable.
The compass of her heart tells her to break away and turn on her heels before her knees give way, but that motion is all Wyatt needs to snap out of his stupor and embrace her like he should have during their last Jessica-related goodbye.
"Just show me one more time," she nuzzles under his chin, the tip of her nose trailing up his throat while his fingers pinch at the skin at the nape of her neck.
And he does.
Last minute caresses blend into a fervor of clumsy, forceful collisions of lips and tactility. It's a war over who will break first as her back meets the wall, the cautionary, careful minding of her arm tossed aside in favor of a frantic, eleventh-hour goodbye. It had meant something. It would always mean something.
They slowly dial down, hands slip from hair and unclench, sailing down hips and forearms until they part from their last kiss and foreheads remain the only connection.
It'll never be enough.
She already knows it isn't when he finally walks out of the door.
Back to his wife.
When she meets Amanda she can't even find it in herself to dislike her.
The bunker is enamored.
No one would ever know under the surface that the last stitch in her heart was tearing.
Fin
Sorry not sorry.
In my world it's a mutual decision. It DOES NOT make Lucy a second choice. I'm not one for pitting women against each other for a man, and I will not let Wyatt be the sole maker of that decision. It's going to be a bumpy, crazy ride for these two, but I hope I did some of it justice. My Lyatt ship sails itself, we're just coursing around a large iceberg is all.
Love to you all.