Hello everyone! This is my Big Bang Fic for 2017, and I had so much fun writing this!

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, and if you review as you go I would love to hear what you think. With everything posted at once it's easy to just breeze through, but this writer still needs some validation! It's the only thing I get in return for putting the time and effort in to write and publish these things.

Hope you enjoy!

The funny thing was that she didn't even know how to shoot the damn thing. Heavy and odd in her hand it surprised her that she had even managed to squeeze the trigger. It didn't surprise her that the bullet flew somewhere that wasn't him, which ended up with her just alerting him of her presence instead of actually, you know, killing him. Boy, her mother would love hearing about this.

"Crap," she whispered under her breath, watching without lowering her gun as he, the enemy, turned around to face her with an eyebrow quirked in amusement. It was almost as if he was saying 'oh, me? I'm flattered' which almost tickled a laughter out of her at the absurdity of the situation. What had they been thinking sending her into this situation? She was an historian that was a terrible driver and regularly fell up stairs, putting her in the position of assassinating a terrorist was just absurd. Really absurd. It sunk in even further just how absurd it was as he kept looking at her and straight into the barrel of the gun.

She always thought that fight or flight was real, but in this situation she did neither. Her feet were firmly glued to the ground as she found herself incapable of moving even a fraction of an inch. All she could muster, this time fully realizing the crap situation she was in, was another "crap."

Garcia Flynn took one step towards her with a malicious grin growing on his face, his hand reaching underneath his jacket to pull his own gun out.

Present time - 14 hours earlier

"I'm not going," she said, wagging her finger at Noah who sat on the table in front of her trying to look casual. Trying. He was failing at it. She knew the moment Noah showed up at her door that something had happened. After all these years, she could read him like an open book, and she immediately knew that he was going to ask her something. Something big. She should've figured out it was this.

"Come on Lucy, you're the historian," he begged, reaching towards her to grab her hand as she jerked it away. It would be a lie to say that nothing had ever happened between them, it had once or twice because they'd known each other for years, were both married to their studies and then their careers, and they were both attractive… That, and they were supposed to be engaged. Even if they both knew it was a set-up from the start it didn't matter. Their families didn't leave much room for negotiation on the topic.

"And our engagement party is tomorrow night, so I'm not going. And mom's not getting any better, I don't want to leave her side." She didn't bother to pick up the file that he had placed in front of her. "Not gonna happen, nu-huh." She shook her head. "Amy needs me here."

"Lucy, Amy's not going to be here much longer if this Flynn guy gets his own way, and neither are you. He's going to erase us." His blue eyes were icy on her, pinning her down and reminding her of who they actually were. They were not ordinary people, they didn't belong to an ordinary family. She sank back into her chair, gnawing on her bottom lip as she regarded the folder on the table.

"He's already gone back, my dad gave me this when I left, and Homeland Security is coming knocking on your door in just a few minutes." He pushed the folder closer to her. "You know they aren't really asking."

"No, they are not." Giving up on resisting she picked it up from the table, and opened it, coming face to face with a dark haired man. Garcia Flynn, ex NSA, now a fugitive after murdering his wife and child.

"Flynn came sniffing after us, found out about our work with Connor Mason, and when some of our men visited him to bribe him into silence he turned hostile, started shooting at our men and his bullets hit his family instead of our men," Noah explained, "he blames us for their deaths."

"Sounds dangerous," she said under her breath, unable to tear her eyes from his on the paper. They were empty, bored, like most eyes on photos like these. The harsh light and the often rushed impersonal situation of look at the camera, click, next, stripped people of their humanity. They just became ink, a blank canvas so they can be identified in all situations. There was nothing the picture could tell her but that he existed, that in the moment this photo had been taken he had a rank and a meaning. National Security Agency, now something else. Now the enemy of all things now.

"He is, and you need to stop him if the soldier that they're sending, Logan, can't stop him." His icy blue eyes had always stirred something inside of her, a sort of warning in the pit of her gut that told her that nothing was what it seemed. With years of getting to know him that warning that been subdued, rarely rearing its head. Now, as his eyes bore into hers, it flashed again. A large and unavoidable billboard sign that demanded caution.

"Stop him?" She'd never been a good actress, hiding the trembling in her voice was an afterthought, but she felt safe enough with him to not cover it up. If there was anyone she could show her vulnerability to it was him, was it not?

"They will have a gun for you to take with you-"

"What?" she interrupted him.

"Lucy," he focused her on him, pulling her attention back to him by placing his hands on either side of her face, pulling her away from the thoughts that started reeling in her head. "You have to make sure he dies in 1937." He nodded his head in a way that demanded her to do the same. There was no choice, he'd already said it.

That's when the knock came.

1937 - Now

As Garcia Flynn reached into his jacket for his gun Lucy thought of the million ways she could have said no to this assignment. Life always came with the risk of death. Death was the only thing that was certain about life, but she used to believe she had some say in when it would happen. She lived a safe and predictable life where she followed the rules and did good things. She rarely drank, and only ate food at places with a good reputation, and never ever jaywalked. The risks she took were small, until Garcia Flynn appeared.

This was a risk she never would have taken if she had a choice.

No matter how many ways she thought of to say "no thank you" to this assignment, they were all ridiculous since there was no way to actually say no.

The gun wasn't a gun, just a worn-out journal that tattled of countless hours of writing and flipping through the pages. He held it in his hand, but did nothing with it, just stared down at her with a touch of betrayal hinting at the corner of his eye. Fascination, betrayal, anger, and a soul wrenching tiredness mingled together, and it almost made her take a step forward. Instead he did, closing the distance with three long steps.

"It's time we talked." He clutched the journal to his chest, the silver initials LP glittered against the golden licks of light from the flames that engulfed the wreckage beside them. "You need to understand the truth about them."

She jerked back, scowling at him and his attempt of manipulation. "I understand that you're a psychopath trying to burn everything to the ground." Standing close enough to the flames that were of his causing made the statement both literal and figurative. "Burn my family to the ground." The threat he posed to them was reason enough to stop him, she didn't need any more justification.

"That depends on your point of view Lucy, who the bad guy really is." A smile pulled on his lips when she reacted to her name, the kind of smile that was pleased that she noticed. It had been deliberate, using her name, to point out who was holding the deck of cards in this game.

"How do you know my name?" It was a whispered question, almost a pant of shock. There was no reason for him to know who she was, but he'd had a lot of time since the death of his family to research them. Ice crawled through her veins. If he knew her name then he'd also known who she was, the very thing that was never supposed to happen. There were safeguards, contingencies on the contingencies, but here he was with her name on his lips.

"I know everything about you Lucy." He opened the journal to a page filled with handwritten text that looked - no, it couldn't be. Her hand reached out, fingers trembling to reach the pages before they were snatched away from her. She needed to make sure it was real. She recognized the sharp curve of the c's and the carless and uneven slope of the s, the almost triple arch of the m's that she had tried to work away but they always came back whenever she got lost in writing. Even the capital letters, the way she wrote key names in uppercase rather than lowercase…

"That is my handwriting," she reached for the journal again but he snatched it away, wrapping the small leather band around it like it was the tiny and useless lock she used to have on her diaries as a child. When he placed it back in his coat pocket she looked up at him again, at the disheveled man that hadn't had a haircut in months, with stubble from a hasty and sloppy shave left on his cheeks. "But I didn't write that."

"Not yet, but you will." Despite the chaos around them, the cries for help and shock, it was as if a lid closed over her ears and all that she could see was him. The gun in her hand doubled in weight, reminding her that this wasn't her role in this. She played a part, she'd done what was asked of her until now. She let Flynn save the people on the first Hindenburg, she was too late in stopping Flynn from bombing this second voyage. The people escaped but the Hindenburg was on fire. Failure. For a brief second she considered lifting the gun again, pressing it against his chest and pulling the trigger. Like a good daughter. She'd always been able to recognize earnest people. Sometimes it was clouded, sometimes she wasn't paying attention or didn't want to see it. With Flynn she couldn't look away.

"Time travel," she breathed.

"I know what you're really meant to do Lucy, and it isn't to be a pawn in their game," he took a step towards her. "You're meant for something greater than to follow in your mother's footsteps. Rittenhouse isn't your family, it's not your legacy, they're using you Lucy."

With words lost in her throat at the implications of what he was saying she couldn't get herself to move, couldn't force the words out of her. Questions gave birth to more questions, and she couldn't decide which one she needed to ask first. Instead, no questions were given room to be answered as he grabbed a hold of her and spun her around, pressing her back to him with the barrel of a gun pointed at her temple.

Wyatt. Some feet in front of her he stood with the steady grip of his gun that she never had, pointing it at the two of them. At this distance she couldn't see his eyes, couldn't see if he was scared or not. Didn't know what to make of the chaos that was spiraling out of her control. It felt like cold water against her fingertips, rising.

"I know for a fact that you're not gonna shoot." Flynn's voice was calm, despite it all it didn't even appear to faze him to have a gun pointed at his head. "I think you should hide yours," he whispered in her ear, reminding her that she had a gun no one had authorized her to bring. Quickly, hidden in the movement of Flynn pulling at her roughly, she hid it inside her coat pocket. "We'll meet again Lucy."

Then, Wyatt pulled the trigger and there were no arms holding her tight anymore. No warm breath in her ear. Only the whooshing of her own heartbeat. Adrenaline pumped through her veins like a panic that sat across her chest. Then the realization like a slap of reality; Kate Drummond, leather jacket blonde, was lying bleeding on the ground.

Even knowing that she should have died the day before, crushed to death by the crash of the Hindenburg, seeing her there gasping for breath grew the crushing weight on her chest. Time moved slower than it ever had before as she crouched down next to her and Wyatt. He'd intended to save her the day before, ran out into the field where she was about to die, and grabbed her. To any onlookers, he seemed crazy. They didn't know what time travelers knew.

Instinct pulled her to Kate. She didn't know what to do, didn't know how to save anyone from a bullet wound. All she could think of was to rest her head on her lap, responding something to Wyatt as he disappeared away in the direction a bleeding and wounded Flynn had fled towards. She didn't register her own words, or even his, it was as if everything was happening somewhere else. Rittenhouse, he'd said, were the bad guys. She was supposed to help him, not kill him. Kate Drummond was bleeding to death in her lap.

It seemed like barely a moment had passed when Wyatt was back, saying something about how he couldn't find Flynn, something about that she should move because he wanted to help her. Help Kate.

There was a sadness far deeper than that of Kate Drummond's shuddering breaths as bright red blood seeped through Wyatt's fingers. She wanted to reach out to the two of them, correct herself and the wrong she had already done. Yesterday was the day Kate was supposed to die, but it didn't have to be. The changes Flynn made were supposed to save her too. It was easy to feel the injustices of time like a hand circling tighter around her throat. She could change things, she could make it for the better. It was already what they wanted her to do, it was already what she was supposed to do.

Could she not have saved one more life? Somehow it could have been done.

It went against everything she believed. The first time she'd heard about Mason's project her initial reaction had been to cuss out everyone in the room. History was unpredictable, there was no way to know the consequences of anyone's actions could be in the long run. Saving someone seemingly insignificant could lead to deaths of millions.

What was she supposed to do? Her life hadn't been her own for a long time. Not since the accident, not since… her mind wouldn't allow her to remember.

"Kate…" Whatever Wyatt was about to say died on his lips as Kate chest heaved with the effort to push air back into her lungs. "Kate," he repeated her name like a mantra, like a spell to cure her. This death was far more painful than the one destiny had in store for her. The death that had been intended for her was quick, this was anything but. Kate's eyes were unfocused, darting across Wyatt's face and the smoke filled black sky above them. The air tasted of ash as she fell to her knees next to Wyatt.

This would be her life now, wouldn't it? Following one disaster after another to watch it unfold. Scramble to try to minimize Flynn's wreckage, and then cause her own. Like Kate Drummond bleeding to death in Wyatt Logan's lap.

Death was quiet. She remembered her own dad's passing, her mother's screaming waking her up one morning 23 years ago. In the silence after, before she could hear the muffled crying from down the hall, Lucy knew what had happened. Death was always, somehow, surrounded by silence.

Present time

The hum of electricity was something she hadn't noticed in a while. It was usually after a power outage, or returning back into the city after a camping trip, that the ambient noise was noticeable. In the launch room the dozens of computers made the air almost vibrate with such intensity that it weighed down on her already heavy head.

It wasn't until she stood by a computer listening to Mason reading out loud from a wikipedia page on what had happened on May 7th 1937 that she felt the earth tilt just a little on its axis. Things had changed. They were supposed to change, that was her job.

To experience the change, to know a reality that was just slightly different from the one she'd grown up with, wasn't exciting. It wasn't scary either. Maybe it was the loss of Kate Drummond, that her blood has just dried on the wine-red skirt she wore, but it just felt sad.

They were each given a cot to sleep in for a few hours before being debriefed. Despite that the cot was barely wider than her she fell asleep instantly, and as far as she knew she didn't dream anything at all.

Even the threat of being charged with treason didn't keep her from wanting to tell Amy. She'd last seen her sister sitting by their mother's bedside, but she was swept away by Noah before they could talk. Lucy had heard her voice through the door as Homeland Security had whisked her away in a hurry. She'd been pleading to know why they were taking Lucy, and where. Noah hadn't let her out the door, becoming an immovable object, a wall between the two of them.

She didn't understand why. Or, maybe she did. Amy could have convinced her not to go, to refuse this assignment no matter what. In the end, Rittenhouse wasn't powerful enough to reign over their relationship. It would be like Amy to fight tooth and nail for the truth, and then refuse to let Lucy go. Amy had only been thirteen when Lucy found out about Rittenhouse, too young and too immature to understand the totality and importance of the organization. Even at 20 Lucy battled with the concept of it, but ultimately Rittenhouse was her family. There was no going around that.

Amy wouldn't accept something on the basis that it's family. It had more often scared than impressed Lucy how independent her sister could be, discarding herself of ties which went against her moral compass. To her the world wasn't the cogwheel and hands of a clock, it was an ever shifting form that was malleable and complex, and couldn't be understood by assigning people a purpose. When Amy was heading off to college, sending herself to New York instead of staying on the west coast like their mother, Lucy, and the entire Rittenhouse had wanted, Lucy knew that Amy's life was always going to be different. Distant. When their mother refused to pay for tuition Amy got a scholarship, too brilliant and intelligent to be thwarted by anything Rittenhouse could throw her way.

In the end, Amy did return. Not because of Rittenhouse power plays or manipulation, but because the two of them were sisters and they were missing in each other's lives. Ever since their mother's illness, the diagnosis that struck down like lightning from clear blue sky, they'd grown closer each day. Even though they were 7 years apart, they had the big moments shared between them - their father's death, her accident, and now their mother's illness - Lucy knew their relationship was as strong as if they'd grown up the same age. When Lucy was figuring out how to be a teenager, Amy was figuring out how to be a big kid in a big school, and when Lucy was rebelling against their mother at 20 so was a newly teenage Amy. They were at different ages yet somehow managed to be at the same place, anyway.

Now Amy was 26 and doing only whatever she wanted to do, and for the first time Lucy no longer felt like she understood her sister anymore. Lucy was chasing tenure and stability while Amy was doing anything but, living a dream Lucy once had but it had been cut off by an oil patch and an icy lake.

The house felt different as she entered it, not noticeably so. It was as if a picture frame had been shifted a few inches and threw off the entire feel of their home. Not thinking anything of it, she simply moved onward into the house, calling out her sister's name.

"Amy, I'm home?" the lack of answer was a bit odd, but she could have fallen asleep. "Amy?" She glanced up the staircase, but saw no movement up there. For a moment her imagination ran away with her, images of her mother lying dead in the morgue while her sister had to fill out papers on her own crashed through her head for a split second before she could reign herself back in.

The pictures inside of her head quieted as she rounded the corner. In front of her was her mother with her hair blonde and long, no longer a bald head wrapped in scarves to keep her warm. Cheeks flush and forehead shiny from the steam coming from the stove as she cooked. She looked just as she had two years ago, cooking dinner as if all was as it should be.

Thinking out loud, unable to censor herself in the rush of blood that pounded in her ears and in her body. Joy, fear, excitement, and utter confusion had her scrambling to make sense of it all. "How… how did the Hindenburg do this?"

"Hindenburg did what now?" her mother's eyes twinkled mischievously, as they did even when she was too weak to sit up in bed but she still managed to tease her daughters without mercy. "You have to tell me all about it over dinner, I'm making your favorite." She scraped the chopped onions off the cutting board and into a pan. "Did you get me a snickers?"

Lucy nodded, her mind somewhere else entirely as she placed the snickers on the counter. It didn't make sense how saving people on the Hindenburg meant that her mother didn't have terminal cancer. At least not yet.

"Was it you and Mr Carlin that posed as the Anarchist Black Cross? Because that was always something I thought was odd about the whole thing, I know we've discussed this, at least I discussed this with you, but... " she paused, and smiled at her daughter. "They reported to me that they've listened to the tapes and checked off on all the information on the drive you had with you, and you did a great job sweetie."

"That was quick," Lucy murmured, stepping closer to her mom to make sure that this was real, and pulling her into a hug that crushed her mother against herself just to make sure. She was warm, she could feel her breath against her head as her mother turned her head towards her, and she could feel her mother's lips as they kissed her. "This is real," Lucy breathed. "Where's Amy?" She couldn't wait to tell Amy about this amazing adventure she had been on, excluding just a few details. Time travel was the sort of thing Amy would have loved to be able to experience. She was always the sci-fi nerd in their family who would force Lucy to sit through hours of Star Trek marathons, and convinced Lucy to secretly record all the X-Files episodes so that Amy could watch them.

"Amy who?" Her mother almost chuckled. "Who's Amy?"

There were three times in her life when lightning had struck from blue sky. They all involved death, injury, and illness. They were events that altered the course of their lives forever, they were events that couldn't have been foreseen by anyone. They happened, and then they had to deal with it. This wasn't just lighting. It was a complete shattering that started from the inside of her chest and became a vibrating explosion like high tension glass that had been struck. Lucy had only had a panic attack a few times in her life, and they all involved tight spaces after the accident. The walls seemed to be closing in on her, growing taller and more ominous than before, her mother's face distorted in her vision as she tried to focus on her.

"No," Lucy shook her head. "No." This was her fault, this was all her fault. She let Flynn save the Hindenburg, and now she didn't have a sister. No, this couldn't be. This wasn't even death. There wouldn't be a funeral. There would be no one who knew she even existed. Someone like Amy couldn't be gone, not like that. Not someone as amazing, scary, and awe inspiring as Amy. No.

She left her mother in the kitchen, turning back towards the hallway. No. "Amy?" she shouted her name up the stairs. There was no way that she could be gone. Yet she was. "Mom," she called out again, seeing her mother standing in the doorway into the hallway she knew exactly what she had to do. "We have to fix this, we have to get her back."

"Get who back Lucy?" They didn't tell her, did they tell her? Lucy's mind was racing with thoughts. How could a mother not know about her own daughter?

"Amy, my sister. Your daughter." She ran a hand through her hair, holding it back as she paced up and down the hallway. "You have, had… have a daughter whose name is Amy, and we have this incredible relationship that… I have to get back my sister, we have to fix this."

"I'll call, and I'll talk to them about this, okay?" Her mother seemed unsure, but acquiesced anyway. Against her collarbone, she could feel the cool silver of the necklace she always wore. For the first time in a long time she could actually feel the locket against her sternum. she'd worn it so much that she rarely noticed its presence. It was the only thing she had left of her sister, a present Amy had given her for her 30th birthday when Amy had returned from New York permanently.

She opened it, to make sure it was real, to make sure it had actually happened. She had a sister. It was real. The memory wasn't a result of time travel, it wasn't fake. It was real. This was the reality that was wrong. That wasn't the way it should be. No one messes with time without facing the consequences, she thought. What was the price the others had to pay? Did she even want to know?

As she was about to call out to her mother, show her the locket and the wide smiling grin of her sister's that a decade ago had been all metal and awkwardness, but was now just happiness. Just joy. Completely and utterly Amy. But how could a picture convince her mother of the love she had? Would a picture be enough to stir the latent emotions that had been removed by time, or was it too late? Was it just a picture with no power at all? She suspected so. The phone rang.

Rittenhouse. She remembered that. Remembered how he'd known her when he wasn't supposed to. She was supposed to be anonymous, and he was supposed to be dead now. Instead he'd traveled back in time again, and she had to go chasing after him. It wasn't a request, or a suggestion. She couldn't turn it down. She would have to travel back in time again.

"Mom?" she called out after ending the call, wanting to know what to do. Wanting to know that her sister was just temporarily missing. Assurance. She wanted assurance.

Even from a distance she could see her mom's tight face as she listened to the person on the other end. It wasn't rare that her mother got angry, she and her sister had been raised on tough love and guidance, which meant that Lucy knew exactly what that scowl meant. It wasn't quite fury as much as it was indignation and hurt.

"You weren't going to tell me, were you?" her mother asked as she hung up the phone. Ice cold and calm fury that made Lucy take a step back. Before she was able to utter more than a single syllable in question, her mother continued. "That if we bring back this girl, Amy, then I die." A single eyebrow quirked in challenge.

"She's your daughter," Lucy started. She wasn't a mother, but surely anything would be worth sacrificing for your own child? It may have been cold, but Lucy had come to terms with her mother's passing months ago. They had made peace with it, as much as they could. Amy had just begun her life, was making something out of herself. She was the one who truly knew how to live her life, and do it well. Make life worth it.

"So you say, but I don't know this girl, and Rittenhouse won't allow you to kill me to save a girl we don't even trust to know our family legacy, come on Lucy, this is insanity." How did she know that much? She never even considered the information the drive contained. It was a 64gig drive, and there was no way that could fit detailed information about the time she'd come from, right? She didn't know much about technology, but it seemed wrong even to her ears.

"She's family, mom, she's my sister." She was moments away from getting down on her knees to beg for her sister's life when her phone vibrated again, informing her that a car was waiting outside to pick her up. She made a mental note to remind them that she could drive herself there from now on, at least if they gave her an access badge.

"No, Lucy." Her mother shook her head, a grim look on her face. "I'm not letting you kill me for someone I don't even know, and Rittenhouse isn't going to let you either. Whoever Amy is, she is gone now, and there is nothing that we can do about it."

There was, Lucy thought as she slowly nodded her head, wiping at the tears that had spilled on her cheeks. There was something she could do.