A/N: Just (finally) finished Season 1...gosh it's such a sweet show and I ship these two so much. I thought a scene-filler was needed for their reunion after Lucy stays in 1954 for a bit.
If things go wrong with Ethan Cahill, Wyatt knows, history could change.
Rittenhouse could triumph all the sooner; war could break out—
Maybe the world ends.
Or maybe he never sees Lucy again, and that's when he should know, because it's that last possibility that haunts him most.
.
She looks beautiful and brave when she waves him away. And Lucy is always both, she always has been, even when she didn't believe it herself.
Wyatt goes with Rufus to the hospital. Jiya's condition is stable; Rufus isn't exactly calm, but he's breathing again.
And Wyatt? Wyatt would go and drink himself to oblivion if there wasn't a danger of missing the moment.
He should know it then, too. He should know it because his hands are shaking and his heart is racing and he wants her back, he's wanted a lot of things in life but he bargains that this one is fair, fair to the world, because the world needs Lucy—
And so does he.
.
He should have known it a hundred times, but it doesn't hit him until his phone rings, in the only year that matters, 2017, and he hears Lucy's voice—"Wyatt—Wyatt—I'm back."
She's waiting at the warehouse. He texts Rufus, still at Jiya's side. Of course, Rufus never had any doubt. It makes Wyatt wonder—did he have doubts? Doubt in Lucy, never. But fate has been cruel to him, to the ones he dreams of. He trusts nothing until she's in his arms.
And he keeps knowing.
.
Jessica filled his whole heart. Generous. Kind. Warm. Everything he never quite could be, though he tried for her (not quite hard enough). There isn't a day that he doesn't think of her, there isn't a world he wouldn't give to have her back. But Jessica is gone.
And Lucy is here.
He crushes her against him, all pale blue wool and a feathered fascinator and her thick, curling hair against his cheek—she's still in her fifties' garb—and she laughs softly against his shoulder.
"Wyatt, I told you. I'm a historian. We're always the ones that make it."
They've been hugging a lot lately. There have been so many near misses and close calls and sometimes they're the only thing that lasts, the only ones left. And Wyatt doesn't know when her eyes were the ones he looked for, when her voice was the one that sprang out in every crowd.
"Still," he says, holding on. "Just making sure."
She steps back, dusts off his jacket. A very Lucy gesture, all business with that faint, unconsciously coy smirk that makes him weak at the knees without even trying.
"You can be sure," she says, soft.
He already knows.
And he's a blockhead, quicker with return fire than realizations. But if this is knowing, then maybe it's been in his bones a long time.
Wyatt loves Lucy, and he's learned enough about the past to know that the present tense is all that matters.