Darling, So It Goes

by Iambeck

It's a world she only wishes her war-torn, future-self could have seen, if only to be assured that her five years of desolation and hardship were not in vain. - All of the missing moments between 2019 and 2023. Co-written with IBYAA.

(Co-written with IBYAA)

Darling, So It Goes

Some things are meant to be.
Take my hand, take my whole life too.

Jan 2019,

Wyatt

Out of place isn't ever a feeling he's allowed to rule him. Whether he's stationed on a sand dune in the middle of Afghanistan or sorting through Carol Preston's personal bathroom, he takes it all on the chin and does his duty.

Bing Crosby's crooning drifts from a distant corner of the house as he tips half-empty bottles of shampoo and toothpaste into the trash. His mind wanders to Lucy holed up in her mother's bedroom, sifting through trinkets and garments as the record dies with a crackle.

She's been a little quiet since they started upstairs, and tales of skinned-knees and failed class president campaigns had trailed off the moment she stepped over the threshold to Carol's room. The aftermath of France and Chinatown still lingers like a limpet sadness, draining her on the days they dare to deconstruct the Preston mantle.

The longer I wait, the longer she haunts my future, Wyatt.

He leaves her be, waiting at the sidelines in case the facade she's put up comes back down. She's always been a master in concealment - a trait that would serve her well in the army - but sometimes she's too tired to bother and he makes sure to standby with tea refills and a sturdy shoulder.

A profanity rips across the hall the moment he turns and walks into another box, one of Lucy's many non-strategically placed efforts.

"Lucy, do you mind not leaving the boxes in the middle of the room?" he gristles, only half-joking as the sharp throb missiles through his toe.

He hears the staticky tear of packing tape and a thready giggle as he slowly pads across the hall and pokes his head around the door jamb.

"After the third time, it's not my fault, Wyatt. I've established my routine."

He watches her compile jade necklaces and several copies of co-authored biographies in the same Uhaul box. She has no sense of order as they all tumble into a haphazard pile, stacking over emptied photo frames and unused office supplies until it's brimming with Carol's leftover history.

She plays his entrance off as if she hasn't heard him, maneuvering the boxes into a pattern of chaos to playfully spite him.

Goddamnit if he didn't love her.

"I'm already rubbing off on you…" she throws over her shoulder as she stacks the final box, a punkish smile pricking at the corner of her mouth.

He leans on the frame, watching her precariously place the final box on top of a budget version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

He gives her his best coquettish smirk, "I wish."

"You're the worst," her hands find purchase on her hips, "we're literally in my dead mother's bedroom."

He takes the elbow to the gut in his stride and follows her downstairs through a labyrinth of obstacles. One hand finds a perch on her shoulder, sailing up and down her arm as she sinks into his flank.

"We made progress today."

She hums agreement into his bicep as they take in the empty shell of the house.

The idea of a full-time occupancy in this hollow structure was as tragic as the thought of returning to an apartment once used as an amateur detective agency for his dead wife. It was hard to envision ever building a life over and around the murderous legacies that ran through the floorboards and plaster.

The military base housing he manages to pull with Denise and a few old contacts is more than enough for a short reprieve. Anything these days beats blisteringly cold showers and the scurrying along the water pipes in the bunker.

A lowly rumble from his side reiterates what he's been feeling for the past couple of hours.

"Salerno's?" he proposes, though he knows her answer before her ensuing nod even confirms it, "number four and some garlic dip?"

"I'll order it," she slips from his side, trailing her fingers over his stomach as she slips her hand into his pocket and fishes out his cell, "you go find me the highest percentage of wine my mother left behind."

"Sure thing, Ma'am."

It a choice between Malbec and a vintage Cabernet Sauvignon, so he brings her them both, not yet confident enough to validate her wine choices single-handedly. She's busy rifling through a cutlery donation box so he places them on the counter and digs for his wallet to grab a twenty dollar bill for the delivery.

Two wine glasses tentatively clink onto the marble countertop, the noise drawing his attention away from the newly placed photo tucked into a card slot.

He loses focus for a second, missing what she has to say until the silence draws him straight back in.

"Did you say something?" he questions, slipping his wallet back into his pocket.

Her voice is low, barely perceptible under the weight of the sudden lump in her throat,"where did you find this?"

"It was in the back next to the Merlot...why what's wrong?" he notices an involuntary recoil rip through her. Her eyes focus off into the distance, reminding him of those post-traumatic fears he's witnessed on men post-war, including himself.

She thumbs the label of the Malbec idly, and it's as if the bottle takes a pin to the bravado that she's been clinging to since walking over the threshold. Their newfound victory isn't an impenetrable salve, the cuts still ooze and time finds a way to bring back the past in countless forms.

She glances up at him with a muted despondency, almost leveling him.

"My mom got this in the night we came back from DC…"

And it was six weeks before he ever saw her again.

There's a lot yet to still unpack within each other. The whys and hows of unspoken choices and moments. Triggers that upend the stability they strive for every day. Since hunkering down in their military housing he's learned some invaluable lessons about life with Lucy. Those six weeks are one thing he can't fix, nothing Salerno's and cheap beer in front of a black and white movie will erase.

In these moments it's just about him being present.

He removes the paper plates from her hand and deposits them on the side behind him, slipping between the counter and her rigid position to block the offending wine from her vantage point. It's instinctive, the pad of his thumb that rises to sand the plane of her cheek, reeling her back to him with a gentle tug.

"Come on, let's go home," he coaxes, "all these boxes will still be waiting for us another day."

He awaits her resistance because she's never one to back down, even in these depths.

"I'm fine. There's still so much to get through, and we've just ordered."

He drops his hand and swipes the twenty off the counter, making an executive decision.

The house is just a black hole of energy at this point.

"We'll go by the restaurant and pick it up. The house will still be here tomorrow, Luce... we've got time."

Time.

It's all they've got now.

A commodity once so scarce it's hard to believe that the open road is all theirs.

His hand migrates to hers, interlacing their fingers until she's anchored with him. He awaits her surrender, and with a momentary soft squeeze, he knows.

Let's go home.

---

April, 2019

Lucy

The clink of her fork aggravates the headache burgeoning in her temple as she scrapes away an inedible microwave meal. She realizes how spoiled she's become since living with Wyatt; her old San Franciscan haunts become a thing of her past and the microwave is seldom used unless he's away on a case.

It's been aimless living for the past couple of weeks and his time at home has been sporadic, hence the gloopy concoction she'd pulled from the freezer and nuked within an inch of its life. A part of her worries whether she's formed some sort of codependency with his kitchen skills because while he's away she throws away her meals more often than not.

Time feels incredibly slow now that she's not whirling through the centuries in stolen clothing with a borrowed backstory. While Wyatt's career has remained on a linear path hers comes to a screeching halt the moment she opens a textbook and realizes that the rippling effects of altered history.

Books she had authored are rewritten in her tone, but with information that doesn't correlate with the history she was taught. Every jump ramification remains the same; Grace Humiston still rises against the 19th amendment, Hedy Lamarr's technology company has fixtures in her own home, but the knock-on effects scatter beyond her scope.

Could she ever really be a history professor again?

Her stomach roils at the thought while she strains her teabag against her mug.

Take your time. Study. Do whatever you need to do. We're not exactly strapped for cash with the hazard pay, Babydoll.

Letters from several distinguished colleges pile on the kitchen counter, coffee-ringed and discarded while she wades through her period of uncertainty. Her mother's name has international reach and since she's returned from her sabbatical the academic community are waiting with bated breath and cloying for her expertise. Stanford has already reached out a handful of times and she's rebuffed some offers of appointment, even at the expense of some hefty benefits.

Stanford is sullied. A department built by her mother's hand, chaired by the political machine masquerading as her ex-boyfriend...it's a soap opera waiting to happen and worse than The Housewives of Beverly Hills at that.

Even the community college in Palo Alto sends her a letter of speculation regarding her sabbatical.

It isn't the highest contender on her list - if there's a list at all - but the offer remains firmly on the counter rather than in the trash can with a handful of other options. The impetus for that isn't clear, considering it'd mean a move just after settling in Oakland, but there's a relatively small history department just crying to be loved.

It's a chaotic web of complexity and it frazzles her brain on the best of days.

Then there's that, she thinks, scanning the paper pharmacy bag poking out of her tote.

For someone who barely had the option to live a few months ago, she's got nothing but opportunity on her plate.

One brave leap later, after circling the kitchen table like a vulture, dumping shoddy dinners in the trash makes a whole lot more sense.

It's a relief on the codependency angle if she's being entirely honest with herself.

The Kardashians scrape her through another listless hour, and in doing so keeps her from checking her cell, so it's a surprise when the handset vibrates around her feet with a text.

Just been discharged. Want me to grab dinner on the way home?

While she's beyond ecstatic to have him home for however long Agent Christopher's team allows, it's a mad dash around the house to pick up laundry and grab empty glasses she'd been too lazy to clear. If anything, she's learned you can take the man out of the army, but you can't take the army out of the man.

He irons his socks, Jiya. His socks!

It's almost all in vain once the key turns in the lock, his entrance bypasses the formalities that were once a military necessity. His shoes are flung in the corner, the coat she bought for his birthday barely hanging on the hook as the door slams behind him.

His needs are clear.

Her feet are whisked from the floor in a flurry as he unceremoniously twirls them around the kitchen, clumsily knocking them into a chair leg or two.

She bursts into rapturous laughter, his own throaty chuckle pressed into her sternum with a muffled roar.

"Did you miss me?" she purposefully slides down his torso, tangling her fingers around the nape of his neck as he allows her feet to touch solid ground.

"Only for approximately 336 hours" his arms tighten around her, their lips a hairsbreadth apart until they conquer the last laugh over their fortnight of mutual pining.

"Wait, what is that," he pulls away from her kiss with a sense of indignation.

"What's -,"

"Have I taught you nothing?" he slips past her and snatches the Kraft mac 'n cheese box off the counter, raising it like a scolding parent, "Lucy, this is insulting."

"You left me, Logan...I've been fending for myself out here."

He sidles up to her, with a swagger that makes her snort, until she's pressed firmly against the kitchen counter.

"Well we can't have that now can we, Professor?"

They trade fortnights and steal kisses over a pan sauteing garlic; while hers is undeniably more mundane than his, he listens intently and lets her vent about the inaccuracies of Dartmouth's latest online seminar concerning H.H. Holmes.

It bleeds into the frequent question about her next career move. Has she made one? Berkeley? Stanford?

"I know you've been agonizing about it for weeks now."

It's almost embarrassing to her that her only response is that she's wasted her entire fortnight on the same back and forth. She bypasses the wine he offers with little fanfare, weighing the levity of her most recent news while he strains the tagliatelle.

"I think I've whittled it down to two options," she backtracks to the letter postmarked from Palo Alto stretched out for him to take, "it's no Stanford."

He drops the letter back onto the side with a heavy sigh, challenging her with a resoluteness she's only ever seen back in 1919.

"Luce, you're a damn good professor. What was it Denise called you? World class? It doesn't have to be Stanford. Hell, you could teach Pre K and I'd support you. In fact, I'm banning you from Stanford. There. It didn't deserve you when you worked there and it doesn't deserve you now. Carve out your own destiny. Not the shadow of your mother's."

"I don't even know if I want to be a teacher anymore, Wyatt, how can I stand in front of a room full of students and teach an unfamiliar past? I feel like a fraud."

"You know you're capable. I watched you spend hours scouring journals and encyclopedias after our jumps. You never let it get the better of you. And what about the things you learned? Don't you have a responsibility to teach the truth? Who will speak for Alice Paul and Abiah? Who tells the world the Lone Ranger was black and Ernest Hemingway was a useless drunk? No one will believe me if I get up on that podium."

It's all valid, isn't it?

But there is a second choice...and she's been rather quiet. It burns in her pocket like a hot poker, preventing her from being able to volley back a cohesive argument.

It speaks for itself, really.

She hands him the test she'd taken earlier. "Or there's this."

The momentum shifts. It's not as though either of them has been exactly careful every time. Even back then, in '41 and 2018 they'd played with fire. It's an inevitability they'd danced with for the past few weeks, marginally reckless on both their parts, but the deed is done now.

Wyatt's internalization lasts all of five seconds and he hands her back the test.

"Well. Those are two fine options, Luce."

Her shell of anxiety crumbles into fine ash. The man who'd faced this news only a few months ago is nowhere to be seen.

She blinks a little comically.

"So much for wasted time, huh?" his face cracks into a megawatt smile. It's reassuring ribaldry she needs, but the joy is tentative, clenched tightly against her chest to protect it from that natural order. This isn't how she envisioned their first few weeks home, nor the option she thought she'd be leaning on.

"You'd think the universe would give us five minutes. At least let me get to a job before it throws diapers and rash cream at me."

His signature smirk that's etched into her brain makes a cocky appearance, she sets the test on top of the letter he reprimanded her for as he takes a stride towards her.

"I don't think that's the universe's job, I think that's more on us...and that third bottle of red," he raises his eyebrows at her, and the phantom pain of the ache that racked her brain the morning after comes rushing back.

"Don't sass me, Logan," she warns, her muscles softening at his touch while she snakes her arms around the back of his neck. The cocksure grin simmers to something a little more serious, blanketing the moment with a reverent sincerity.

"Lucy, we've lived in countless versions of altered timelines, we fell in love before we were born… linearity isn't exactly in the Preston/Logan handbook," her arms loop tighter around him, "this is just us catching up."

Her heart is thrumming against her ribcage with an unfettered gusto.

"So...are you with me on option two?"

His eyes give away complete unanimity.

"Two it is."

---

Aug, 2019

Lucy

Little would they realize the poignancy of two.

Jiya and Rufus have the class not to question the rapidity of their choice to expand their little unit, though the inference is clear in Lucy and Wyatt's slapdash efforts to knit their lives together, that maybe it wasn't necessarily the plan.

The down payment on a Porsche is begrudgingly lost in favor of a Land Rover; wine expenditures quickly dwindle and herbal teas begin to stockpile in every available corner.

We have to change our washing powder too?!

They wanted a direct opposition to the life that was forged for them in the bunker. The months that follow surely live up to that request when the sonogram technician doubles their expectation.

Here's Baby A, and there's Baby B.

The life she envisions takes a drastic turn from the academic podium and straight into prenatal yoga at the local YMCA. If anything, she and Wyatt really begin to appreciate that flexibility once her second trimester hits.

It's hard to believe their lives once consisted of petty thievery and infiltrating Nazi territory when she's clutching the porcelain rim of a toilet, all because Wyatt had to use that goddamn cologne.

When she surpasses her twenty-fifth week, Wyatt puts in a request for a departmental transfer, drifting away from the intensity of Homeland's high-clearance operations. It's a comforting reassurance he drops into her lap one evening, following a jarring wake-up call that lands him in a hospital for three days.

The scar still gives her pause when she thumbs over it during idle moments in bed.

Lines of communication between them are left open within reason, aided by Denise's favor for the master sergeant with nervous, first-time dad anxiety. Most qualms borne out of the deep-rooted agitation of bygone bunker days evaporate. It works as well as it can, with room for improvement.

That is until the third Tuesday in August, when those lines of communication drop and she's left waiting outside of her Lamaze class without so much as a courtesy call from him. She blames a lot of her bouts of anxiety and tepid faith on the ball of neuroses her hormones sculpt her into.

However, the minute she hits voicemail for the third time a rivulet of dread fissures down her spine. It's an instinct more than it is an unfounded guess; his cell has had a near-constant charge since the doctors had diagnosed her low blood pressure.

Something doesn't feel right.

Her thumb hovers over Agent Christopher's contact. Resolve and rationalization crack with every minute she hesitates until she's pressing her cell to her ear with the rhythmic trill of a dial tone.

"Lucy?"

She injects a false cheer into her tone, biting back the urge to railroad the conversation with classic Lucy over-analyzation.

"Denise, hey, hi - I know you might not be able to give me much, but is there something going on in the office today?"

The office being the operative phrase. It's the furthest thing from coy she can imagine.

"...Lucy, sweetheart, you know if I could…"

Her free hand comes to rest absently over the ridge of her abdomen, a thumb oscillating over the movement of a wayward limb from one of the girls.

"It's just there was a class today, I know I sound like such a mom, but Wyatt's nev-..."

"I really can't say anything."

It's almost condescending. Almost. From a friend and a mentor no less.

"I know, it's confidential, our whole history is confidential," she snips back with growing irritation.

"I'll tell him to call you when he's free."

"He was given an early discharge, they released him last night and he was supposed to be on his way...is he even in Oakland?"

"Lucy, I only answered because it's you. I can't say any more than I already have."

Panic bleeds through her resolve, kickstarting a renewed ire...Wyatt's department isn't small by any means. It's hard to rationalize how or why they'd need his specific expertise, he's not the only Delta Force soldier pen pushing at the bureau now.

"You haven't said anything. This isn't me asking for a redacted mission report, Denise, I just need to know if he's okay."

The whole scenario feels oddly reminiscent of the day Denise plucked Wyatt from the bunker to infiltrate the deep recesses of Rittenhouse HQ. His casual leave, the manufactured distraction so as not to rock her oh so fragile world.

A mission she didn't even know existed until after the fact.

Her blood runs cold at the thought.

"Is it Rittenhouse?"

"Lu-,"

"Because none of this makes any damn sense," she snaps, sounding far too much like Wyatt.

Rittenhouse is the festering thorn in her side, the pinprick shiver that gooses her skin when she drives by the county jail that her father languishes in.

One of her greatest fears is that they never truly decimated the cult network.

"Haven't we done enough?" her voice betrays her bravado, "haven't we given you enough?"

Denise's silence is more than enough of an answer.

Persona non grata.

Before she drops the call she makes sure to twist the knife, "you know, we used to be on the same team."

She's in enough of a tizzy that she finds herself veering off her route to the base and pulling up outside of Rufus and Jiya's apartment building. The prospect of sitting in an empty house with a hailstorm of uncertainty plaguing her mind is the last thing her wiry nerves need.

Rufus' beaming smile is an immediate balm as he ushers her in from the hall. If he notices her jittery hands that cling to her purse like a lifeline he doesn't make mention of it.

"So what brings you to Casa Riya, Mama P?" he probes, helping her out of her jacket that has become a daily struggle since she expanded outwards.

"I was just in town…" she trails off, cringing at her own poorly spun lie. They're both bad liars, conspicuously so, but they share an innate ability to know when not to call each other out and she appreciates that more than he will know.

"Just one question?" Rufus halts them at the breakfast bar.

"Granted," she offers back with a wilted smile.

"Do I need to get Jiya to kick Wyatt's ass for you?"

In any other realm, it would have made her laugh.

"Who's ass am I kicking?" Jiya's voice pipes up from behind her, giving her a moment's reprieve from the encroaching tears.

"Lucy, you okay?"

She's powerless to stop the dam from bursting. Jiya reacts almost instantly, embracing her into the tightest hug that her stomach will allow.

"Okay, this looks like girl talk coming," Rufus excuses himself from the fray, "I'll let Jiya take the wheel... I'm gonna get you some tea, is this a chamomile day? Green? That one that needs a weird strainer thing?"

His support drags a tentative smile from her mouth.

"Chamomile will be fine."

Rufus gives her a mock salute and Jiya leads her over to the couch. She sinks into the cushions with a weary sigh, hissing as the pressure on her spine eases. The girls give her no respite and she breathes through a couple of sharp jabs to her ribs before Rufus reemerges with a steaming mug of tea.

"Are you still on the Flamin' Hot Cheeto train, or are we past that phase yet? Only because we're all out..." he admits apologetically.

A little chuckle bubbles from her chest despite the warring emotions under the surface, "It's alright, I had to go cold turkey for the heartburn."

"You're a brave woman."

Jiya waits until Rufus is retreating down the hall before probing further. She grapples with a moment of hesitancy, dragging her teeth over a raw bottom lip until she musters enough courage to ask the question that singes at her resolve.

"Do you still get them? The visions?"

The furrowing of Jiya's brow doesn't go unnoticed to her.

"Sometimes," she nods, cautious with her answer, "since we're not jumping they're less frequent."

The imploring look she gives in return urges further explanation, and Jiya obliges.

"I mean, they're pretty tame these days...last week I had a vision about losing my Rubik's cube…"

Persona non grata.

It mocks her.

"I know this," she strokes her swollen belly for emphasis, "makes me seem fragile, and people tend to tell me what they think I want to hear these days over what I actually want…"

"I've not had one since, Chinatown, Lucy."

"- how did you?"

Jiya shrugs, "I had a vision."

The pent-up fear all releases in one cathartic breath. No Rittenhouse visions.

"Believe me, I wish they were that deep. And yes, I never thought I'd say that again," Jiya wards off the foolishness she feels with good humor.

It's not a permanent fix for the anxiety coursing through her veins, but it lessens to a differently dialed intensity.

"Thank you," she musters, squeezing Jiya's hand affectionately, "really."

"No problem, but it's much easier when you can see it coming."

She swears it's almost as if Rufus' dramatic entrance is rehearsed.

"You're just in time for movie night. In your honor we have Star Wars or The Parent Trap. Pick your majesty or pick your cheese," he raises two DVDs into view.

Jiya rolls her eyes.

"It was these or The Shining, but someone had to be reminded that was early labor material."

She feels like a basket case as the tears well again, "I love you guys."

Even though she's missed her afternoon nap that becomes more imperative with every encumbering week, she attempts a Star Wars viewing, only to be nudged awake by Rufus twenty minutes in.

"Take our room, we'll let you know if Wyatt calls."

She doesn't fight the offer because her whole body aches for a respite. Even the twins have petered off wreaking havoc under her ribs long enough that she falls seamlessly back into sleep the moment she curls onto the bed.

It's hard to distinguish between lucidity and a dream when a familiar scruff sands across her temple. She blinks through the dusk-dim lighting with a bleary confusion until it socks her in the chest.

Wyatt.

"Hey…" a tentativity resonates in his voice, as the palm of his hand cascades over her cheek and stops in the crook of her neck, "you okay?"

His gall. It's astounding.

"Where were you?" she attempts to negotiate a sitting position where Baby B doesn't feel like she's pressurizing a vital organ. "No closed contact. No off-grid assignments. Those were the terms you laid out. You've never missed a class, Wyatt."

She does nothing to mask her disappointment and her tenor is an amalgamation of every second spent worrying. His jaw tightens with a growing sense of disappointment, but he stays silent, letting her expel her frustration.

"I had to ring Agent Christopher as if she was some personal secretary, trying to get through to you. We're not like other couples, we can't just pretend what happened to us won't affect what I think whenever you don't come home on time, or I get your voicemail."

He looks as ashamed as she wants him to feel. She's been through hell for the past few hours, whether he understands the weight of it or not.

One of his hands curls around her thigh with a whisper light tenderness, "I'm so sorry. It wasn't supposed - it was just a quick favor for Denise. In and out. No mess. I just felt like I owed her something…"

"What could we possibly owe, Homeland security, Wyatt? I already gave them Amy and Flynn. My whole family went down on that mission. They can't have you too."

A steadfast ardency carves itself into his jaw. "You haven't lost me. I told you that once before. I meant it, I'll always mean it."

"One half-assed mission and I'm right back in front of that burning building in North Korea. All I do is worry, every day, that someone or something is just going to tear this all apart…"

In true Wyatt fashion, he cuts to the chase quicker than she expects with a terrifying accuracy.

"Are we still talking about Homeland?"

"No," she replies bluntly, avoiding the piteous reflection in his eyes. She despises that it all still has a hold on her. Even now, at the peak of their happiness.

"Rittenhouse was a network. Dynastic. Everything they believed was written in blood. Cahill said it himself - it's him. Me. My children. What if I'm playing right into what they always wanted while they bide their time. This isn't just you and me anymore, this is our family. I need to believe its over. But I can't."

He studies her gently, internalizing the raw fear radiating from her every pore. It's a whole beat before he swallows back a similar lump in his throat, reaching to a depth of hope she envies.

"Believe that it's going to be the four of us kicking ass and saving the world. Believe I still pretend not to notice the empty microwave boxes in the trash when I come home. Believe that I will always protect what we've created here." He thumbs the underside of her abdomen, sanding a warm caress over the taught cotton.

Her hand sails down to meet his, interlocking with his fingers until they're rested against the girls.

"I can't promise you the overhaul of a bloodline, Luce. But what I can promise you is that this family will always be safe."

If the journal future Lucy had referenced this moment she doesn't know whether she could ever believe it. The love she feels for the man crouched at her bedside is so completely otherworldly to anything she's ever felt. The compass of her heart needs no directing as she tilts his chin upwards, palms framing his jaw in muted adoration until the tide draws them back together. She doesn't know who sighs with contentment before a harried few kisses are exchanged, but it matters none as they anchor each other for a time.

"Jiya said if I didn't break this up soon our bed will regret it," the announcement comes way after the entrance.

"No she didn't!" she yelps, pulling away from Wyatt's lips.

"Okay, technically not true, but it looks like I might have been right all on my own...The Parent Trap is going on, you guys gonna stay in there and keep staring at each other or you gonna come watch with the rest of the family?"

See, Wyatt's eyes glint at her with an inherent certainty, "let's go join the family."

---

Oct, 2019

Wyatt

The year closes in on them as though someone forgets to turn off autopilot and the holiday season trickles in. It begins with a few lanterns here and there, a plastic zombie on a porch until the whole neighborhood is lit up like the Texas State Fair.

Wyatt can manage the pumpkin-pie scented candles, even the copious amounts of candy corn littering their home, but he draws a line at the six-foot lawn reaper Lucy orders from Amazon. The piece of crap needs eleven pages worth of instructions to construct it and he begins to regret telling her to go wild with the credit card when he's knee-deep in faux cobwebs and string bat lights.

The setup involves a handful of curses and he gristles the three or so times he manages to hammer his thumb, but it's all worth it if only to see the glowing excitement radiating from her.

Lucy's enthusiasm for every holiday is a welcomed shift in what used to be a group determination to forget whatever festivity was approaching them in the bunker.

We almost didn't survive to see another holiday. If that's the excuse I have to use to bribe you all into celebrating with me, so be it.

Once the lights are strung and the reaper is assembled, he throws his tools under the sink and follows the sound of Dance Moms blaring from the living room. It's no surprise that he finds her curled into the couch coveting a bowl of candy corn and jelly bugs. The bowl perched on her belly is a bold move and he's certain he'll be picking candy out of the furniture for the foreseeable future; she's still as clumsy out here in this world as the one they'd left behind.

"You good there?" he teases, looming over her with an adoration that far surpasses his DIY-induced grouch.

"Just enjoying the view," she returns with a wink, then fishes a jelly eyeball from the mound of sweets and presses it to his lips, "make me feel less guilty?"

One playful moment of hesitancy and he surprises her by nipping it from her fingers. A peel of laughter bursts from her mouth and she draws his jaw down for a lingering kiss.

"You know, the fact that you're willing to lose that Delta Force muscle makes me love you even more, right?"

"A sacrifice I'm willing to make, Babydoll. You're the real soldier here."

That only earns him another drawn-out kiss, until she pulls back with a frustrated grunt, "if Rufus and Jiya weren't in town today…"

It's a sentiment he can wholly get behind.

Though the girls are getting closer to making their debut, Wyatt takes comfort in their ability to still just be Lucy and Wyatt. Truthfully, everything is still so extraordinarily new despite the hurricane of impending parenthood, that even the littlest moments of mutual appreciation and intimacy still blows his mind.

A lengthy knock he can only assume is the theme tune to some movie or TV reference draws him away from her with a sigh. No doubt the encouragement of Lucy's festive possession is about to hit its zenith.

"They're here!" Lucy sits up with a rare gusto, forgetting the bowl perched on her stomach, "- goddamnit."

He waves it off, and holds his hands out for her to grasp, "I'll get it later," he offers, tugging her to her feet.

It's usual for them to miss the new tech conglomerates now that they've established Riya industries. After a healthy injection of venture capital from Mason, RI seemingly established itself overnight. Weekly movie nights dropped off the map a couple of months ago while Rufus and Jiya committed to a search for prospective schools for their community giveback project. Having been out of town more than they were in, the last they'd seen them was just before they'd had their six-month scan.

"So, what the hell happened to that," Rufus throws a thumb at the Reaper currently looking worse for wear on their lawn.

"It's definitely "grim", we'll give you that," Jiya's face says it all. "I take it back. It may be possible to botch Halloween."

Wyatt can't hide the disgruntled look plastered on his face, "Have you ever tried to inflate one of those things? It's actually impossible."

However, his defense is in vain as Lucy's supersonic hearing leaves him the target for a quippy clapback.

"It wouldn't look like that if you'd read the instructions."

"In his defense, Lucy, you gave him that power," Rufus volleys, before entering the house.

Wyatt follows them in, shutting the door while fighting the urge to tear down the automated lantern he'd spent thirty minutes assembling.

"Wow, this really escalated quickly," Rufus pauses to marvel at Lucy's stature.

"You're telling me," Lucy responds, looking down at her bump, hands framing either side of her abdomen. His heart swells. A twin pregnancy hasn't been the easiest on her, but she's taken it in her stride the best she can, among the poking and prodding, numerous doctors appointments and shots.

Once they're in a familiar rhythm of trading news Lucy finds a fortuitous moment to unveil the project she's kept on the down low.

Twelve pumpkins.

Uncarved.

For the life of him, he has no idea where she's kept them hidden and it's as much a surprise to him as it is the suddenly out-of-depth tech duo.

Safe to say, no one can deny his seven and a half months pregnant girlfriend, so the buffet of candy on the dining table is dismantled and replaced with an easy-wipe splash mat. Much to all of their chagrin.

"Moving to Palo Alto turned you into a suburban mom overnight," Jiya grumbles as her carving tool veers off course.

"Yeah, it looks like Halloween threw up in here," Rufus grimaces, flicking another string of pumpkin off his hand.

Lucy glances at him from over the table, daring him to add to the fray.

His idea of Halloween with the Time Team was a little more Friday the 13th and some crude card games with beer, but he relents for his own wellbeing. It's something they'll share with their children one day and knowing her genetics he's going to have to get used to nurturing all three girls' abundant joy.

Rufus dismantles that awkward moment by holding up a phallic lantern.

Wyatt grimaces, "I not putting that on my lawn, Rufus."

"Why not?!"

"We just moved here. That's WW3 material."

Rufus balks in confusion, "Dude, it's a minion. Kids love 'em, don't they?"

He shares another disbelieving look with Lucy.

"Let's just say your art skills leave a lot to be desired," Lucy mediates while turning her own tragic imitation around.

Keeping it real as always, Jiya lets her poker wheel clatter onto the tabletop, "I think we can all assume we're not gifted in the art of pumpkin gutting." At the risk of carpal tunnel, Wyatt eases Lucy off the idea of carving the other eight, and four mangled attempts are dumped onto their porch to her utter delight.

Weapon of Choice is flung on for some background noise and in a few short minutes, they're back in the old days of the bunker. Jiya steals Lucy to exploit some of her expertise for a project and Wyatt and Rufus hang back in the kitchen to demolish the leftover pizza.

"So, Jiya told me you're falling back?" Rufus questions, eyeing him with a level of skepticism he doesn't expect. His stint back in August is still a touchy subject and that regret will hang over him for a while longer yet.

He shrugs, "Signed off on extended paternity leave last week. The girls are gonna be here any day now and Luce is doing the best she can, but it's getting to that stage where I can't be out on call; twins are notoriously early."

"Nothing like the days of Germany and North Korea, eh?"

"Nothing on this earth could make me miss those piss poor freeze-dried rations and Spaghetti-Os," he agrees, hunkering down on a pepperoni slice.

"And warm water is a plus," Rufus adds.

"A memory foam mattress. I've killed men for less."

The ribaldry dies out and he finds himself drawn to the history professor on the couch. Of course, none of it is worth it over the peace he's found with Lucy in their crazy ordinary, wonderful life. Crappy pumpkins and all.

Their partners have trailed off whatever topic brought them together and Lucy is gently circumnavigating Jiya's hand over her bump. Here, oh and this one gives me a lot of trouble at three am. The twins must be giving her a rollicking because Jiya stiffens in shock.

"This is insane!"

Intrigue emanates off Rufus and Wyatt can't help the lopsided grin the whole scene induces. It took him a little while to get over the awe, and it still throws him sideways when he sees one of his daughters' tiny feet or hands skim the surface of her bump.

"Babe, come feel this," Jiya throws over her shoulder, still magnetized to the rolling limbs jutting out from underneath Lucy's shirt.

"Go ahead, man," Wyatt urges, "might be your only chance to experience a Sigourney Weaver imitation."

"Wyatt!" Lucy scolds.

Rufus' commonly known aversion to Alien is a grenade he pulls out every so often, if only for the satisfaction of seeing him retch.

"Ignore him, come on, they're just babies...or so I've been told."

He almost gives himself whiplash in snapping his head over to her, laughter bursting from his chest with a mighty guffaw.

Shit, if that doesn't make him want to marry her.

Rufus takes all but three seconds and points at each of them in succession, "hates confined spaces, thinks Tupac is alive, is Delta Force but can't spell camouflage. Boom, roasted."

"That was one time during Scrabble and I was hammered," Wyatt grits out. Of course, he had been hammered because they'd all wanted to play Scrabble.

"I'm sorry, it's just so easy," Lucy admits through a peel of laughter, "come on, before they pretend they're settling for the night."

Rufus crosses the short distance to where Lucy is holding her hand out, apprehension etched across his face. Wyatt smirks as she takes his hand and begins softly pressing Rufus' palm on her stomach.

"This should be Baby B if she's still in the same position."

Wyatt sees Rufus' face move from apprehension to awe, he lets out a hearty laugh while Lucy continues to move his palm.

"She's the kickboxer of the two."

"Dude, she's really Flynning It Up in there." The room erupts with laughter at the reference, so distracted by Rufus' wonder they barely notice his moment of pause.

The idea sparks in his mind like a lightning bolt. It's an epiphany he can't share until later that night, something that eats away at him during the final scenes of the long forgotten Bond movie. If Lucy notices she keeps quiet, but he catches a lingering stare or two that allude to his cover being blown.

When Wyatt had decoded the underlying message of what Future Lucy had so insistently shoved into his grasp, the answer to what was needed to be done to reignite Rufus' life, he had been willing to sacrifice it all. He would have given every part of himself that he could to give his team a fighting chance.

The fact that Garcia Flynn had beaten him to it had turned into an indescribable blessing. Flynn had erased his failings, drawn a line under his mistakes, and resorted to a timeline when all Wyatt had ever done was choose Lucy over and over again. Flynn had made him the man he so desperately wanted to be from the start; sacrificing it all, sacrificing himself, for their future to be lived. Accepting never being able to save his family; something Wyatt couldn't even fathom.

Though he and Lucy both remembered an alternate past, he had paved the way for Lucy's and his life to become what it is. Crazy and ordinary.

Lucy had had to accept that, though it may have been possible to save Amy, she wasn't willing to risk what had been subsequently forged in her unnecessary erasure. Thus Baby A's name had been settled upon the minute the doctor informed them that a baby girl was on its way. Baby B's name had proven to be more difficult. Until now.

His musing bleeds through the rest of the night and follows him up the staircase, into the sanctity of their room.

"How amazing are Rufus and Jiya doing? I can't believe how far they've come, well, I can believe it -they've always been the brains behind it all, you know? I mean, remember when Rufus built that thing in 1754? Seeing them doing so well; it just makes everything worth it doesn't it? ...Wyatt?" her volumes increases, snapping him back to, there and now.

"Are you sure you're okay? You've seemed distracted most of the night?"

The words fall out of his mouth before he can prepare her, "What about Flynn?"

"What about Flynn?" she responds idly, as she makes her way around their room. She pauses picking up discarded shirts and used towels off the ground, fighting breathlessness at just the bending itself, eventually turning to toss them into the laundry basket. One hand comes to rest on her stomach, the other to settle on rubbing her lower back.

"I mean, what about naming Baby B Flynn?" he sees her stop in her tracks, hands frozen. She turns to him, stupefied by the suggestion.

He's sat at the top of their bed, playing with a frayed thread at the end of his pillow, gently toying with it, "I know Amy was always an inevitability. But maybe it's a sign, the two people we couldn't save, with us, part of us."

She lost in muted thought and he wonders if he's crossed a line. Her history with Flynn is richer than his and the sentiment of it all almost doesn't feel like his to choose. She wanders over to him, standing in between his legs, gently taking the sides of his face and oscillates a thumb along the stubble of his jaw with uninhibited reverence.

"I love you, Wyatt Logan," is the salve he needs at the moment and a breath he doesn't even know he's holding escapes; he'll never tire of hearing those words leave her lips.

"I love it. I love her. I love them, so much." She slowly brushes a kiss over his forehead, lulling him with a tenderness she only reserves for him. He feels her softly squeeze as he purposefully runs his hands up and over her lower back, coaxing her eyes closed and brings them around and forward, caressing her bump.

His gritty tenor brings her eyes right back down to lock with his.

"Amy and Flynn Preston-Logan," she lets out a watery chuckle.

He shifts closer to her stomach and dropping his gaze, he murmurs, "get ready for the world, ladies."

---

Nov, 2019

Wyatt

His life starts anew on November 5th, 2019 at approximately 12:06 am.

Then again at 12:24 am.

The moment he becomes a father the world falls out from underneath his feet.

No labor in Afghanistan or North Korea can prepare him for the seismic shift his life takes when they place Amy in his arms for the first time. Nor can it protect him from the tidal surge of devotion that knocks him sideways the instant Lucy Preston's arms are brimming with their future. It all serves to challenge his life's greatest victory, and 1950 falls from the pedestal in one fell swoop.

For everything they've lost, of the souls that were taken from their universe, the balance instantaneously rights itself in the form of two five pound blessings. If there is a word for the guttural emotions he feels, he hasn't yet discovered it. If there is an explanation for how he could love Lucy Preston more than he already does, it's not written yet.

Adoration doesn't come close to describing how he felt watching her deliver their children. He's watched her voluntarily pilfer grenades to blow up the Mothership, seen her come back from a beating that knocked the living daylights out of her; he's witnessed an alternate version of herself risk mental insanity to save the world and alter the course of their future.

But this? This was by far her magnum opus.

As though the world knows the trials they've been put through, the girls only spend a night in NICU before they're wheeled into Lucy's room as permanent fixtures. The hours they spend curled up on Lucy's small hospital bed marveling at tiny toes and rosebud lips imprint on his heart. There's a certain tenderness in the way in which he holds Lucy, but cradling the girls is a completely different level, requiring a tempered delicacy that's only as old as they are.

He can still feel the featherlight kiss Lucy had pressed to his bicep that night, before momentarily shifting her eyes from Baby Flynn to find his. No words were exchanged, for the sentiment lingered in the air and in every caress of a newborn cheek.

It was so incredibly worth it.

It's a mantra he replays in his mind even while the girls are squalling all night, vomiting breastmilk down his back and blowing out of their diapers.

He takes to the military operation of handling twins as well as he can, bested only by Lucy who seems to just know. Though, neither of them can figure out why Baby Flynn hates her plastic cot from the early hours of two am to four-thirty; Delta Force may have prepared him for a multitude of scenarios, but parenthood is by far his most challenging mission.

By their discharge date, Wyatt likes to imagine they've got their shit together, literally and figuratively. T-minus five hours and they'll have the freedom of trying to keep their progeny alive in their own home.

The first hour is almost one of Lucy's Hallmark comedies, earning him his first Bad Dad award.

"Hasn't Amy just got the cutest nose?" he marvels, smoothing the pad of his index finger down the bridge of her button nose.

"Well, she has, Wyatt, but that's Flynn," Lucy shoots him a wry smile.

"What?!" he walks over to where Lucy is apparently holding Amy, switching his gaze back and forth between both babies. "Oh god, how do you even tell?"

"Mother's instinct I guess," she shrugs smugly.

Her smugness has a short lifespan.

By the second hour Amy is screaming relentlessly (at least Lucy tells him it's Amy). Lucy is attempting a rock and sway motion to no avail. The shores of exhaustion nestled under her eyes from the sleepless nights and dual feedings concern him. He removes himself from next to Flynn's sleeping cot and makes his way to Lucy, frazzled but focused.

He gently brushes a lock of hair from her forehead, following the strand all the way to the bottom and tucks it behind her ear.

"Why don't I try for a bit, babe?" his understanding of her limits is well established and she hands over Baby Amy almost immediately, thumping her head back onto the pillow with a relieved sigh.

Her eyes snap over to him when Amy stops fussing moments into his embrace.

"How did you do that?" she questions him, looking slightly annoyed.

It's a fluke most likely, the girls have been equally difficult with him, but he throws himself to the wolves if only to see her crack a smile. "Maybe I just have the power to put all the Preston girls to sleep? That's not a good thing."

Lucy snorts at his expense.

Mission accomplished.

"And that's your first Bad Dad joke, Amy."

The last hour of their stay is, in his eyes, newsworthy: both babies asleep, Lucy showered, packed and dressed - it is a triumph in itself. Though they're quickly dragged from that victory the moment Lucy chances one last feed with Flynn and the little girl projectile vomits down her chest.

Three baby wipes and an outfit change later, they pass their last moments waiting for a doctor to clear the girls' car seat tests. They slump against each other in new-parent delirium, invested in a diabolical game of Would You Rather to keep each other from passing out for a brittle sleep.

"Would you rather change Flynn's first diaper again or eat my meatloaf?" Lucy drags out through a yawn.

He may be delirious, but he's not stupid.

"Lucy, you know I love your-,"

"Answer the question."

"Flynn's diaper."

"I knew it!" she reveals her discerning suspicion and thwacks him in the knee, "I'll have you know I followed your recipe."

"Nowhere did I write that you were supposed to season it with mayo; it was a crime against humanity."

Her side-eye is searing.

"Change the topic before you get yourself on diaper duty for the next week."

"Fine, would you rather have to drink your own breastmilk for a year or accidentally get a little bit of Amy's shit on your finger every time you change her diaper?"

She crinkles her nose in disgust, "Under my nail or just on my finger?"

"Under the nail, of course."

"Guess I'm pumping for three then."

Dr. Crockett's entrance cuts their succeeding questions short, doing the Lord's work in saving him from trashing all future possibility with Lucy. In one horrifying moment of clarity, he realizes that while being discharged is a relief, the two car seats he carries through the bowels of the hospital now suddenly feel like unpinned grenades.

Nazis and The Alamo can take a backseat because this is real fear.

When it's finally time for them to make use of their newly purchased Land Rover, things don't go as smoothly as planned, but then again, when have they ever?

"How does this even work? Do you still have the instructions for this?" he queries, folding and clipping the right buckle for the fourth time. Every moment he'd spent cursing the heap of junk that was the Lifeboat now seems a lifetime ago as he struggles with 2019's restraint technology.

"I thought you were Master Sergeant Logan, King of the Buckle Up?" Lucy quips, leaning against the passenger side door while slowly rocking Flynn's car seat with her foot.

"Lucy, I don't think you understand the struggle of this right now," he regrets the words almost instantly, a burning glare zeroing on his back from outside the car door.

He cuts his losses whilst he can, carefully peeling back from the car seat to meet her eyes, "did I say struggle? I meant complete ease of a job compared to the heroic feat you faced delivering these precious humans."

She remains nonplussed.

"Just buckle the kid in, Wyatt."

A quick clip into the right belt clip (which he swears he did five minutes ago), and he's confident Amy is secure. "There we go...all done, can we go now...please?"

"Uh, Wyatt," Lucy points to Flynn in her car seat, 'you've got another one here."

He can't help the unfiltered exasperation that settles over his face, silently begging for a reprieve.

"Hey, don't look at me, you're the one who had to be the overachiever; two for the price of one, so hop to it, Sir," her arms cross over her chest, unyielding.

"Don't you call me Sir," he goes to work on Flynn's car seat, desperately trying to remember how Amy's had finally worked.

"Aha! Got it!"

"Finally…your age is getting to you, Wyatt; imagine going that slow in 1754, we'd be tied back up at the mercy of the French."

"Have you seen how tiny they are, Lucy? It's like trying to maneuver a Chevy with a blown transmission. I haven't felt this stressed since the bomb in Wendell Scott's car."

"Oh I don't know, Wendell's car was good to us in some ways."

She knows how to fell him even in the most unassuming of situations.

"Well, while that's true, I definitely prefer the modifications in this one," he glances back to his daughters, miraculously both sleeping.

"Welcome to the wide-open road, Ladies."

---

June 2020

Lucy

When exactly their house becomes an imitation of the bunker, she doesn't know. Shelves littered with historical trinkets and artifacts are interspersed with pacifiers and baby socks; her library merges anthropological texts with Goodnight Moon and they haven't seen the bottom of the laundry bin since the girls started cutting teeth.

No one is sleeping.

At this point, one of the girls is permanently attached to her while the other gnaws a finger laced with teething gel. Churchill for Kids and the once idolized reading voice she develops just for them loses its magic appeal far too quickly, and if she doesn't have at least three teething rings in the freezer at any one time, she knows it's going to be a bad day.

Her body feels like it's frequently been at the behest of another beating from Emma, minus the hideous bruising. Although, since Flynn cut her first tooth, her boobs would like to think differently.

Begrudgingly, Wyatt goes back to work once the girls hit eight weeks but stoically manages the two and six am wake up calls with minimal complaint. As long as she keeps the coffee pods stocked for his quad shot espresso for the commute, he's amiable more often than not. Their first six months with the girls are a true test of their partnership, more demanding than any mission back in history, and despite the humps along the way, infinitely more joyful.

The only exception being Amy's colic. That she would trade out for any mission.

It still awes her that this is her life eighteen months after their last jump. It's nothing she could have ever predicted, not for a moment, but the endless loss and disparity found over those years all seem so worth it for the eventuality of this.

Mistletoe in the bunker and incandescent night's in '41 be damned...nothing outpaces the labyrinth of choices they've made since the new year. It's a world she only wishes her war-torn, future-self could have seen, if only to be assured that her five years of desolation and hardship were not in vain.

I hope you have a family of your own one day.

And never does a day go by that she isn't thankful for Garcia's sacrifice, choosing to nurture rather than conquer the fearlessness his pudgy namesake exemplifies.

"Oh god," she groans, stretching contracted limbs until her joints pop. The movement makes whatever object is wedged under her hip stab her with prominence and she fishes out an offending set of plastic keys from Amy's midnight tantrum.

"Girl, you have to start sleeping in your own bed," she murmurs to herself, glancing over at the clock. She hasn't heard a peep out of the twins in a while and Wyatt's side of the bed is long cold.

8:14 am

There's a victory in that if she looks close enough.

Saturday mornings are her holy grail; initiated by Wyatt, she's gifted a short lie in while he dotes on the girls and makes up for the time he loses in the week. It means she can shower without having two bouncers stationed just outside the glass, and her boobs get a short amnesty from half-cut canines.

It's the closest she can get to an orgasm without actually jumping Wyatt.

Though, the first moment she dares to step out of bed and treads on one of his cufflinks is enough to send a ricochet of curses from her mouth. For as much as she loves and idolizes the man, he can annoy her to no end. A trip to the bathroom consists of an obstacle course of laundry he was assigned to put away, the toilet seat is up again and he's used her goddamn toothbrush to boot.

She snatches it from the side of the sink with quiet fury, the benefits of her morning rapidly dissipating with every footfall towards the staircase. She's no Martha Stewart, she's a flawed quasi-professor with a penchant for setting off the fire alarm on a regular basis, but there are lines in a partnership.

Their staircase is yet another roadmap of his efforts and she snatches up sleeper suits and baby towels from their morning bath, valiantly keeping her annoyance to herself as the sound of Amy and Flynn's babbling filters up to her from the lounge.

"Why in the world would you -," she trails off, thankfully unheard as she quietly stumbles onto a scene that makes her knees weak. A shirtless Wyatt Logan perched on a coffee table, dazzling the girls with intimate renditions of their history.

"...And that's when Daddy threw Mommy under the bus and made her get on stage by herself." Wyatt relays to the twins, scraping applesauce from a plastic bowl and spooning it into Flynn's mouth.

"But I'll tell you two a secret…" he adds, wiping the excess on Flynn's chops, " I think she secretly liked it."

Damn Delta Force.

"And since you seem to be such good secret keepers, I'll let you two ladies in on another one…I'm surprised you two didn't make an appearance sooner. '41? Hell of a night."

She can't help but smile, leaning in the doorway, one arm crossed over her the other holding her face. It would be mortifying if it wasn't so inherently true. While she was on birth control the jumps didn't exactly leave much room for exact continuity.

Waiting her turn for a spoonful, Amy lets out an impatient wail, a tell-tale sign a screaming match is about is about to take full effect. They both know the deal, once one starts, the other joins, and nothing sleeps through that. She silently laughs - how his calls into action have changed.

"No, no, come on now, Honey," he says affectionately, nudging her bouncer, "we need to let Mommy have a lie in, even if it's fake sleep to get time away from your grouchy faces. And we all know she's a good fake sleeper. You remember the first story Daddy told you about the nasty, old silo?"

The vividity of a kiss from years ago, so delicately pressed to her forehead comes trickling back to her.

"Mommy needs her lie in. What do we say, girls?" He bops both of their noses.

The mundane duties he neglects seem so trivial and pointless all of a sudden, the baby laundry and her toothbrush lesser crimes than she'd initially made them out to be. She's thankful for moments like these to give her pause and remind her that life could be worse. Because it could, right?

There was a time I barely remember now, before all of this... I have to remind myself what it was like then, when I had a mother I could trust, a sister I adored, a life that was familiar. Safe.

That had always been her cautionary tale.

Laundry and chores are all useless cogs in the grand scheme of things, beneficial to have oiled and greased on a regular basis, but her world won't crumble into a post-apocalyptic hell if they miss a day.

All that really matters is the blued-eyed-not-so-fresh face dad, bouncing their daughters and attempting to diffuse their own minor cataclysm.

All for her.

"I'm so gonna marry you one day," she exhales blissfully, the words giving away her position on the bottom stair.

Wyatt turns to look at her over his shoulder, a cocksure grin plastered on his face under a pile of wild bedhead.

"Well, what if I marry you first?"

He extends an open arm to her through their joint laughter, drawing her into him in that magnetic way she's so often fallen prey to without thinking. A bicep loops around the back of her knees and she tries to keep a cool head over a topic that's been a looming specter in their partnership.

They've never spoken explicitly about marriage, she hadn't wanted a shotgun proposal full of obligation to make a half-assed attempt at making their life somewhat linear. However, if she was sure of anything since leaving the bunker it was that the rest of her life would be wrapped up in these three Logans... and she wanted in on the club.

"You've been thinking about it?" she continues through a bashful smile, smoothing her hand through the girls' hair in order to distract herself from the baby blues lingering on her.

He reaches for the fingers she's splayed over Amy's cheek, curling them in his own and guides her palm up to his lips. A moment of jest dials to a different kind of intensity, something a little more raw and honest simmering between them.

"Every day since 1941."

"'You're not hideous', if I remember correctly, huh?"

The quip sits on the tip of his tongue like a bullet, fired back at her so effortlessly.

"Because you know you're beautiful, right?"

She leans down and deposits a kiss with chaste intent, something he battles against as he grasps her hips and pulls her in tighter.

When they finally part, barely an inch of space between them, he smirks.

"Except maybe the two days before the girls came...I still loved you, but the idea of a binding contract between us was on the rocks."

She gives him a classic Lucy thwack for that, swatting him with her newly sullied toothbrush.

"Sorry, by the way," he's reminded by her weapon, "I had to use your toothbrush, Flynn dropped mine in the toilet."

Minor. Stupid. Cogs.

She brushes it off and pulls away gently, readjusting the laundry in her arms.

"You survive my wrath this once…but just to be clear, I will divorce you if you keep the toilet seat up one more time," she threatens him as she rears off to the kitchen, leaving a bellowing chuckle in her wake.

"Sure thing, Ma'am."

---

March 2021

Wyatt

He has a Code Red on his hands.

What should be a relatively systematized morning, with plenty of key preparation and a militarized sense of order, suddenly takes an unexpected nose-dive.

Straight into hell.

He can only cringe as a trail of vomit streams down the back of Lucy's brand new blazer. Throwing himself into action he wards off a flurry of panic, frantically reaching for the nearest cloth to stem the flow from spreading to her skirt.

"Ow, Mama!" Amy wails into her mother's shoulder, clinging onto her like a second skin.

"Wyatt, she's burning up," Lucy panics as he scrubs her back clean. Raising his eyes to meet Amy's pitiful face peering down at him he knows he's in for a full day.

"I'll dig out the baby Tylenol we used a few months ago with Flynn," he assures her, keeping a cool head despite the chaos. At the mention of her name, Flynn reignites her plea for attention from Wyatt, tugging at his jeans and motioning for him to pick her up.

"Not now, Sweetheart, Daddy's busy cleaning up your sister's puke," he gently rebuffs her.

Impatient, Lucy steps away and the blazer slips from his fingers, "I need you to take Amy for a minute."

"She's superglued to you, Luce."

"Then peel her off; I need to go change," she snaps back at him, instantly apologetic the moment it leaves her mouth, "I'm sorry, it's just...this is a lot."

He's been in the same boat after several near identical mornings, raw-boned with sleep and hankering for caffeine that they'd run out of, and she'd forgiven him every time.

"Don't be sorry, come on, Munchkin," he encourages, slipping the eighteen-month-old off Lucy's hip. At the sudden freedom, Lucy strips her jacket off and makes a dash upstairs, leaving him alone with the girls.

It's a chorus of tears and wailing the moment Mommy leaves and Wyatt has to wrangle Amy into sitting up after she flings herself backward, repeating a hiccuped mantra of "Mama." He turns his back to Flynn for a second to wet a new towel under the faucet to cool Amy, when a thunk echoes from the lounge. One screaming toddler becomes two and he almost craps himself at the sight of Flynn screaming on her front.

Vomit and a potential concussion from a coffee table.

This is not how his wife's first day back at work was supposed to go.

They'd been working towards this moment since the backend of last year after he'd woken to find her digging through old curriculum materials and seminar programs in their office. With a little coaxing and a shared midnight brownie, an inevitable pining to rejoin the ranks of her colleagues is something she admits to him after a tearful to and fro concerning the girls.

Every day I feel like I'm forgetting pieces of the history we were privileged enough to be a part of. That some bone-headed traditionalist is going to teach the world a falsehood...does that make me crazy?

No, it means you're ready.

In a no-brainer decision between Stanford and Palo Community, Lucy accepts a tracked tenure position with the latter. Personally, even entertaining Stanford is worth it if only for the communication Lucy receives from that douchebag, Lyger. A groveling email and an offer of dinner to make up for time lost serve as some comic relief the afternoon she comes home from her panel interview.

No one is laughing now.

"Lucy, come on! You're gonna be late," he calls from the bottom of stairs while coddling both twins on either hip. His shirt is streaked with snot and bathed in tears, but the screaming peters off as he rocks them both as much as their weight will allow.

Lucy re-emerges from the staircase with her satchel, half in tears herself. Now he has three out of three of his girls crying.

"Ladies," he breathes out in exasperation, "is this really what happens at the prospect of Daddy taking a sabbatical?"

His joke falls flat.

"I can't do this, Wyatt," Lucy sniffles as the girls screams ensue.

"Of course you can."

"I've lost my rings again, okay? Amy's sick. Flynn is..." she trails off at the sight of Flynn's blotchy face and the egg protruding from her forehead. Lucy's mouth falls open as she snaps her eyes from Flynn back to Wyatt.

"What? Oh my god, what happened to Flynn?!" she tries to scoop her into her arms with no luck; Flynn's arm is a death grip around his neck.

"This is just a disaster. It's fate; I'm not meant to go. Forget tenure, let's just sit. Lets just all sit down and stay indoors."

Self-doubt pools in her eyes and he can't help but feel at blame for the stress she's feeling. Of all the mornings to have a Preston-Logan household crisis...

"Lucy, look at me," he urges.

She avoids him as she takes Amy back off him. Wyatt shifts Flynn to a more comfortable position and the sniffles coming from all three of them makes his heart ache.

"Come on," he outstretches his free hand running the pad of his thumb over the plane of her cheek, "you rescued young JFK with one working arm and single-handedly helped to save the ratification of the 19th amendment. Get over the hump. This is just one more day in history."

She smiles, leaning into his touch.

"I have the girls, with the amount of crying they've done they're bound to pass out soon. I'll look in all the usual Lucy places for your rings okay? Just as long as you promise to let those horny sophomores know you're a badass married professor, we're good."

She brushes away the last salted trail running down her cheek. "You're really ready to be Mr. Suburban Dad?"

"Look at me, Luce. Practically made for it," he flaunts Flynn on his hip and takes Amy back off her, "now get out of here and go make my Ladies proud."

He puts on a brave face and his best military calm and quite literally pushes her towards her car. A twin precariously perched on either hip, he rallies whatever energy he has left, waving her off the drive with zeal, "Say goodbye, Mommy. Say "Go kick ass and teach 'em how we saved the world!"

"Wyatt!" he hears her shout from the open window. He simply laughs it off. It's going to be a challenge but he's survived worse, right? He's not so convinced by the twin blotchy faces or shuddering bodies collapsed against him. Suburban dad his ass. He's back in a war zone with two tiny terrorists.

His phone only survives one hour before it's being bombarded for updates.

Has Amy's fever increased?

Have you put ice on Flynn's head?

Have you called the doctor? And before you ask, yes, she does need one.

He fields them off like he's a star baseball player, hitting them out of the park with a photo update of Flynn and a bag of peas; a thermometer with a decreasing temperature and a screenshot of his call to the doctor. It stems her flow of anxiety and when he doesn't hear anything for the next few hours he assumes all is well.

With her fears allayed, her next update is brimming with excitement.

Wyatt, there are 70 students in here!

People still care about her interpretation of history and he can tell it humbles her. That in itself makes it all worthwhile.

He carts the girls upstairs with a full heart, thankful for the decision he makes to take a step back so she can take one forward.

It's a mission in itself, but he wrangles the twins onto their changing tables and snatches a few outfit options before either one of them can give him the slip again. Lucy would castrate him if Flynn got into another fight with the furniture.

"Okay, Amy, lookin' lovely."

He rounds up Flynn's outfit and settles it next to her, momentarily set back by the glinting jewel curled into her chubby fingers.

"Where'd you get that, Darlin'?"

He pries Lucy's engagement band out of Flynn's grasp, "please tell me you have the other one?"

Flynn beams up at him from the table and he melts; his kid looks cute even with a lump.

He lifts her for a diaper change and as quickly as that Lucy's wedding band unsticks from the back of Flynn's pudgy thigh, dropping to the table with a clatter.

"Flynn Alice Preston-Logan!" he feigns shock, adopting his best Texan sheriff voice, "I've caught you red-handed, Ma'am!" Giggles erupt from the toddler as he tickles her ribs feverishly, breaking down all earlier upset.

"Good work, Partner. Daddy should tie these rings around your Mommy's neck, then she'd never lose them," he informs the girls.

"Momma," Amy shrieks.

"Yes baby, they're Momma's," he scoops her up from her table and finishes buttoning Flynn's flannel shirt one-handed, "Momma needs to remember to pick them back up after changing your butts."

His chatter to the girls sparkes an idea deep within him. Maybe tying them around her neck wouldn't be such a bad idea with the right materials and sentimental additions.

When Lucy finally walks through the door later that night she seems fresh and revitalized.

"Hello, hello, hello! Where are my favorite Logans?"

"In here!" Wyatt calls from the lounge, mediating the twins' scrambled egg and toast dinner, "how was it? Did you kick patriarchal ass?"

She practically dances into the room, much to the twins' joy and he has to give Amy a hard pat on the back to dislodge a wayward piece of egg.

"Chew, girl. Chew."

"I'm sorry I'm late, the last class had so many questions about Salem and Abiah Franklin, I couldn't get away."

"Mama!"

"Hey, Ladies!"

A shrill tone interrupts their exchange of days and he has to excuse himself.

"Can you take over, Luce? Amy's insistent on giving me a heart attack." She takes the bowl of egg from him and crouches down in front of the girls, pulling faces at them to receive a toothy smile.

"Is that what you're torturing Daddy with today?" he catches as he rounds the corner to the office.

"Master Sergeant Logan speaking."

The topic of conversation turns to white noise.

2023. Lifeboat mission sanctioned. Approved. Inform Lucy Preston. Do you understand? Thank you, Master Sergeant.

"Thank you, Sir."

He slinks back into the living room in a daze. They'd always known 2023 would be an inevitability, but since 2018 it had been a distant enough concept that it had fallen off his radar. Their ability to commit to a jump five years from their future was much easier without hindsight, before the life-altering news of twins and a subsequent marriage.

The Wyatt Logan that had previously agreed to that wasn't the Wyatt Logan that now stood in his home.

Lucy clocks onto his fear immediately.

"Wyatt, what's wrong? Hey come on, come back to me," he feels her cup his cheeks with her palms.

"It was Homeland. Agent Christopher officially got clearance. For 2023, we are officially authorized and enlisted for that mission," he can feel his mind slipping back to the loss and the despair.

What if something goes wrong? What if it risks all they've worked for?

"Wyatt, it's okay. Hey. Look at me. We're gonna be okay, we knew this had to happen. I'm not scared. All of this exists only because of that. The enlistment endangers the crazy ordinary, wonderful life, but hasn't it always been in danger? Come on, get over the hump. This isn't some 1754 suicide mission - it's for them," she motions to the girls who are feeding each other from their highchairs.

He nods solemnly.

"I guess it's time to get my penmanship back. I didn't think my first dip back into writing would be so personal, but I'm sure it'll have some impact," she jests. She's trying her hardest to lighten the mood, but it's well and truly overcast.

There's one ray of light left in his pocket and he fishes out the purchase he made earlier in the day. He won't bookend her first day back at work with vomit and the risks of impending time travel.

"I love you, Lucy, maybe I need this more than you, but..." he dangles a gold locket in front of her, the two engagement and wedding bands threaded onto the chain.

"So you never lose them." He directs his eyes to the twins as he expels those words.

His meaning has duality: for their girls, for their life together... it's so he stops finding a diamond ring next to baby wipes.

Her eyes stay fixed on his. She encases his wrist holding the locket and gives an assuring smile, taking the chain and sliding the rings off and back onto her finger. The sentiment has clearly struck her in the heart.

"Help me put it on?" she asks, turning around and gripping her hair to one side so he can fasten it around her neck.

He presses a lingering kiss to her nape when it's all over.

Sleep is a little harder to come by that night.

---

Jan 2022

Lucy

Bringing Women To The Forefront: Two Steps Behind The Patriarchy

Presented by Professor Lucy Preston, Palo Alto College

19:00, 01/14/2022

It's starting to feel so real it's almost tangible, the realization of a dream she's harbored for just over half a decade. The caffeine from several espressos props her up against the exhaustion of two months worth of backbreaking work to bring that dream to life. She scans over the materials with a keen eye, triple checking every line for a typo or an unsourced reference.

You've heard of a woman's glory / Being spent on a 'downright cur' / Still you can't always judge the story / As true, being told by her - Bonnie Parker, 1932. A series of public seminars highlighting the lifetime work and accomplishments of eight trailblazing women through history. Who were they? What was their impact on history? How would the world look without their input? An in-depth examination spanning four centuries and two continents, Professor Preston constructs a whirlwind tour of history's unsung heroes: Abiah Franklin, Bonnie Parker, Hedy Lamarr, Josephine Baker, Marie Curie, Grace Humiston, Harriet Tubman, and Katherine Johnson.

It's a synopsis she knows by heart.

While it's her profession and an expectation of her job to teach history in the classroom, she makes it her duty to broaden her scope and provide an open forum for the community. It takes a while to push through the relevant channels, especially given her recent appointment, but her name has a lot of weight behind it and she eventually triumphs.

People will know their stories, she'll make sure of it.

An hour until her program debut and the nerves are curdling her stomach. The Dean and HOD had stopped by her office only half an hour ago to confirm their attendance, which only adds to the ever increasing list of her peers and fellow academics. She's already been made aware of research funding opportunities and grants for the department if she can maintain a momentum over the series.

Not that she's feeling the pressure at all.

She's practically lived in her office for the past week while finalizing prep. Her hair curler is plugged into one of the sockets usually reserved for her laptop and her desk drawer has amassed a terrible selection of vending machine sustenance. With her success comes a certain level of compromise she's reminded by the framed picture of Wyatt and the girls on her desk. She's been a sporadic fixture in their family for the past week and despite the victory of a dream coming to fruition, it's overcast by the guilt she feels about that fact.

Wyatt assures her they're all fine, missing her, but keeping occupied. She gets a few videos sent through the week of their exploits and messages for Mommy, which alleviates the ache in some ways and deepens it in others.

You're teaching the girls to work for their dreams. This is not a bad thing. Tell Mama she's a badass, girls.

Badass, Mama!

Her eyes drop back to the stacked keynotes with a smirk and grabs a post it to tab a seminal talking point. A few more alterations and she will have a near perfect inaugural seminar structure.

However, that falls to the wayside the moment she hears several sets of footfalls squeaking across the linoleum down the hall from her office.

"Pew, pew, Daddy!"

"Ow, Sheriff Amy, right in my gut."

"Daddy, bang!"

"And Lady Flynn takes out Daddy's knee, oh no!"

Her pen clatters onto her desk the instant Flynn trips through her office door with finger pistols held aloft.

"Stick 'em up, Mama!"

"Flynn!" Wyatt's roaring laughter follows her through the door, Amy hot on his heels, "we don't make Mommy stick 'em up, just the bad guys."

"What are you doing here?" she blurts out in awe and the girls race to her encase her legs with their arms. Her hands fall to their hair, slowly scratching the tops of their heads as Wyatt trips through the door laden with bags and...blankets?

"We're here for a sleepover!" he announces, dumping bags and pillows on the floor next to her office couch.

"You are?!" her mom voice croons and she glances away from Wyatt to the two little bodies wrapped around each of her legs, "that's so exciting!" she switches back to her original tenor to address Wyatt, "and I have questions, but okay."

"Peep-over, Mama!" Amy bounces with a bunch of her dress fisted in her fingers, one of her brunette little pigtails flicking into Flynn's eye. It's a flurry of activity all at once and Amy quickly finds magic in Lucy's desk, while Flynn runs off to grab a toy poking out of one of the bags.

"We've got sleeping bags, extra fluffy blankets and edible food," he points at her trash can filled to the brim with coffee cups and Twinkie wrappers.

She swears he can sniff it out.

"Seriously, Professor, you need to talk to the catering staff."

"The girls have everything they could possibly need...including three different colors of the same sock. That seemed particularly important to Amy," he shrugs.

"You have everything?" she challenges him.

"Yep, no stuffed giraffe or red panda cuddly left behind." He mock salutes.

Her left eyebrow raises, she can barely hold in burgeoning laughter creeping up from her chest. "Wyatt, where's Flynn's other shoe?"

Their daughter's ability to lose any and every kind of footwear has been a reoccurring nightmare ever since baby socks and soft-soled booties.

"What?!" he drops his eyes to Flynn's feet, one with a perfectly laced shoe, the other with a white sock half dangling over the ball of her foot. "Damn this kid, I swear she could give Harry Houdini a run for his money. Okay, we have everything except for Flynn's right shoe...ninety-nine percent accuracy, that's not bad, Luce."

How can she feel anything but giddy at the prospect of her husband doing something so absolutely thoughtful? Just the laughter from the twins and Wyatt's proud smile are enough to siphon whatever guilt still exists within her. They're making it work again.

She leans against the edge of her desk with a coy flirtation, "missing me more than you let on, huh?"

Wyatt drops his gaze for a split second, shaking his head before beginning to saunter over to her. Lucy pitches her legs out in front, only to pause when she sees Amy climbing high on her office chair out the corner of her eye, grabbing for her Abraham Lincoln bobblehead.

"Amy, baby ju-" but her warning is too late and the entire stack of keynotes for her seminar slip off her desk and fan across the office floor. All thirty-six pages.

"Uh-oh," Flynn sings from her perch on the office couch.

"Amy Lucille Preston-Logan! What did I say about being careful?" Wyatt admonishes her, sternly.

Amy climbs down from the chair, and begins to cry, running to Lucy's legs and buries her face in her dress.

"Damn, I'm sorry Lucy," he apologizes, quickly trying to rectify the mess and reorder her notes. "Is this okay? I know you're stressed about this and we can go but, you just seemed so sad about missing bedtime, so we decided to bring bedtime to you."

Lucy pauses, the weight of disbelief settling on her chest like a concrete block. It makes her feel as fragile and emotional as the sobbing little girl reaching to be picked up from the floor. How did she ever get this lucky after being so incredibly unfortunate?

We choose each other again and again for a reason.

She has to sit before all of it overwhelms her in that typical Logan thoughtfulness.

She pulls Amy onto her hip and away from the mess, swiping the bobblehead on her way while Wyatt focuses on his task, "let's go sit with Flynn, huh?" Amy nods quietly against her shoulder and she sandwiches herself between the girls on her couch and it's seconds before they're curled into her, arms and legs thrown over her torso while she brushes away brunette wisps from their faces.

"This is Abraham Lincoln," she holds the desk toy up for the girls to see, "one of Mommy's favorite presidents. Like your storybook, Mr. Lincoln."

"Turtle!" Amy perks up from her left shoulder.

"Well remembered, he's the one who really liked to help the turtles," she smiles down at them, letting Flynn take the toy to examine it. The girls carefully share it between them for the moment and she glances back up to Wyatt, "someone was a little jealous of Mr. Lincoln's son, though."

The snarky clapback she expects in retaliation never comes.

Her brows furrow in concern at the fixation he has with one of her sheets, "I put page numbers on them," she offers, "ignore the post its, I went overboard."

"I - uh," he swallows, raising page three of her notes and she feels a blush creeping onto her cheeks.

"You weren't supposed to see that."

The moment is clear between them. It's a look they've shared through the centuries.

"You never rehearsed this bit with me," he says, an appreciative smile crinkling at the corners of his eyes.

She shrugs, a little coy, "your ego is already big enough as it is."

A little voice brings them back to reality.

"Mama, I hungry" Flynn sighs dramatically, flopping against Lucy's shoulder.

"Come on then girls, dinner at Mommy desk, no more climbing, Amy" Wyatt rallies as the girls disentangle themselves from Lucy's lap.

She's astonished, "you brought dinner to me?"

He starts removing Tupperware from a thermal bag and then hoists Flynn and Amy onto her office chair, setting two cartoon placemats in front of them.

"Homemade Logan lasagne!" he announces proudly, "Whaddya say? Think you can stomach it?"

She pushes herself up from the couch, making her way over to the desk now transformed into a makeshift dinner table, paper plates and plastic cutlery dotted around the surface. A man who once forgot to put diapers in the diaper bag has come further than she ever imagined.

"What kind of question is that?" she feigns insult.

She reaches Wyatt, running her hand across the length of his shoulders before settling by his side, "By the way," she whispers sultrily into his ear, "you're definitely getting some tonight."

He pauses scooping lasagna and turns his head, nipping at her lips for a kiss. The girls whine and they laugh, pulling apart as she grabs her own paper plate.

"Dinner is served, Ladies."

---

She's mic'd up. The locket Wyatt had gifted her lays flat against her sternum as her heart thrums with pre-lecture nerves.

It's now or never, Preston.

She takes a deep, sedative breath; and then...

"I am a wife, I am a mother, I am a professor," her voice echoes through the lecture hall.

"Why are these facts important? Why are they in some ways not so important? None of these facets make me superior or inferior to anyone else on this planet, however, the minute I say I am a professor, I am placed two steps ahead.. when I tell someone I am a mother, those two steps are removed and when I tell someone I am a wife, I am automatically placed in a shadow."

"We live in a world where the names and faces of our Founding Fathers and presidents are commonplace. Every time you go to buy a coffee with a five dollar bill, Abraham Lincoln oversees the exchange. Mount Rushmore stands a testament to the patriarchal success of the times. It's so ingrained into our lives that we neither question it, nor have the opportunity to forget it."

"I don't see a fair representation of women in my role. My professional field is as dominated as the history I teach." She crosses over the stage, gripping her slide controller.

"As a woman to two powerhouse daughters, it's important for me to put myself present myself as a woman of confidence and strength. Showing them how to do the things that the world will attempt to tell them they cannot. Informing them of the women who paved the way."

Her devotion to Amy and Flynn ricochets off the walls.

"I am lucky to be a wife to an incredible husband, one who has always encouraged my goals, insistent upon my success. He supports me if I falter and never entertains the thought that I could ever be lesser than him...unless you're asking about the cooking, because I will proudly take a back seat on that one."

"We could say the same about Bonnie & Clyde, a duo where the woman comes first." It elicits a laugh that reverberates throughout. She smiles along with them, her uneasiness melts away.

She flicks the title slide onto a picture of the infamous duo, in front of a car Lucy remembers being pumped full of bullets, Clyde's arm under Bonnie's legs, his hat dangling at his side. Bonnie's arm slings around his neck, the other placed on his chest.

She pauses. Might be robbers and killers but can't say they're not in love.

"But who was she without Clyde? What if we do what they tried to make impossible? Separate the duo and place Bonnie in the forefront?"

"This is where start today" flicking the slide to a lone picture of Bonnie "Bonnie Parker. Born in 1910."

---

July 2022

Wyatt

Drinks one and two are civilized. Discussions of recent days and potential schedules, a clink of cheers to Denise for taking the girls for one night. Drinks three and four come on the heels of Team Delta Force, the intensity of meeting old buddies sends his wife off to the restroom, only to return with a sway in her hips and her ponytail pulled loose.

The well wishes pour in from friends who have served while he's been back, and those he hasn't seen since his Pendleton days.

"It's so good to see you happy, man."

"You got yourself twin girls? Congrats, Dude."

"Jesus, Logan, how the hell did you land this one?"

It's a welcomed change from the piteous check-ins he's used to.

Drinks five and six are when things get dangerous. Stories of past debauchery and indiscretions elicit bubbling laughter from her and she effectively uses him as a leaning post. Her hand is a permanent fixture on his thigh, lips constantly on the shell of his ear seductively whispering her approval at what the others have to say about him.

What else don't I know about you?

His arm is slung over her shoulder, massaging the bare skin that appears after her wrap slinks behind them in the booth. Her hand mimics the same movements on his thigh, climbing higher or lower depending on the level of wine in her glass.

He daren't look at her for too long, the looks they do share linger longer than they should in a public place… a public place with company at that. They're being so incredibly obvious, but he can't quite bring himself to care. She scrapes her nails a little too high, the turn of his head meets her eyes and this time it earns him a passionate kiss… and a handful of peanuts thrown his way.

"Alright, Logan, save it for home will ya?" he feels Lucy laugh into his neck, hiding her rosing face.

"Twins, Mike. Twins." He deadpans, throwing a few peanuts back the way they came.

Her face leaves the crook of his neck and he gets wrapped up in her all over again. His Delta Force buddies appear to take pity on them, moving onto a new a target the table.

"You look so good tonight," he mutters in her ear.

She bites her lip at him, looking down at her dress and reaches for her wine. "Really? Mission was to get you all hot and bothered, Soldier."

He groans and lets his head fall forward to her shoulder, Damn it, Preston. She lets out a thunderous laugh at his exasperation.

"Mission thoroughly accomplished, Ma'am," he quips back, nipping at her shoulder.

"Speaking of Missions, Logan," he pulls back and angles his body towards Dan, a recruit he served with for a short while back in 2012, "did you ever get back to Sarge about that boot camp assignment?"

Wyatt moves uncomfortably in his chair, watching Lucy's demeanor shift out of the corner of his eye. She sits up a little straighter against him.

"Boot camp assignment?" she queries, looking at Wyatt and then to Dan.

"Yeah, Pendleton was trying to sequester him," Dan explains, looking between the pair of them as if it's common knowledge.

He removes his arm from her shoulder and leans forward to grab his beer.

"Cheers Dan," he gestures his beer up to him. Dan looks over apologetically.

"Wyatt, what's he talking about?" her posture it standoffish.

Welcome back, Professor Preston.

"It's nothing, Luce, an old Sergeant Major of mine asked if I would be interested, I haven't given him an answer yet."

The table surrounding them is suddenly masterful in avoiding the elephant in the room. Lucy presses further and Wyatt almost regrets liquoring her up so fast.

"Is this why you've been avoiding taking calls?" she keeps up the interrogation.

"Lucy, can we talk about this tomorrow? I just want to have a good time with you. No Work. No Kids. Just us, please?" He pleads, knowing there's no way he's getting out this conversation fully. He hopes the wine she's drinking takes pity on him.

She picks at a spot on the table, before bringing her eyes back up meet his. "Fine, but we're not done talking about this," she threatens.

He nods, bringing his hand to her thigh for a soft squeeze, while her hand rests atop his. He drops a kiss to her forehead and she sighs, bringing her other hand to caress his cheek, fingers falling down to his lips and he bites at them softly, a raucous laugh escaping her.

He thinks he might have gotten lucky avoiding the war for tonight.

Final unlucky drink seven, however, deploys him back to the active war zone.

They call it a night, saying goodbyes and good lucks to Wyatt's team. They await a Lyft and loiter outside the bar, Wyatt's arm encasing Lucy, dropping lower on her back as they gently sway left to right, stealing quick pecks in between smiles.

Once in their car, he makes a beeline for her, pressing his mouth to hers with an intensity he'd held back from in the bar. What he thought would be the final round of foreplay is quickly quashed as she pushes his chest away and creates a distance between them.

"What?" he asks her, head falling to the headrest of the backseat with his hand still firmly wrapped around her waist.

"I just think we need to talk about this Bootcamp thing."

He throws himself backward in exasperation, "Lucy."

"I'm just saying, Wyatt, I thought we got past the shitty communication stage of our relationship, apparently I was wrong," she states, leaning forward to pop her heels off and tug her wrap back around her.

He scoots closer to her and pushes her hair to one side, running his finger down the side of her neck, "Babe, come on, we had a good night, didn't we? Let's not ruin it with something as trivial as this."

She snaps her head round to him aghast, "Is that what you think I feel about your career?"

He removes his hands and holds them up in mock surrender.

Both hands scrub over his face and he speaks to the ceiling of the cab.

"God, please, just one night."

"No use praying now, Wyatt," she snarks at him. The driver pulls up outside of their house and in an instant she's slamming the car door shut behind her, abandoning him.

They're in no state to be so mad at each other, he's learned that from several bad choices he's made in his past while up to his neck in alcohol. He snags Lucy's pair of discarded heels from the backseat and shoves a ten at the driver before striding after his barefoot wife.

However, he's also never learned exactly when to keep his size 11 boot out of his mouth.

"Luce, for God's sake, will you just quit being so dramatic. It was one offer."

He's suddenly cut off by her ramrod stance on the middle of their porch.

"Dramatic?" she whips round to face him, "I told you I wanted to talk about it after your buddy dropped you in it, Wyatt. I played nice even while the whole bar waited for me to pull the pin. You couldn't tell me back then. You couldn't tell me at the bar. You were practically Fight Club in the cab."

He pinches the bridge of his nose to stop the overwhelming stimulation of that last shot and the tension between them.

"Am I that much of a wrench in your plans that you just can't tell me? Why're you being a martyr?"

His answer just seems to take too long for her and she swings back toward the front door and fights with the lock. After several failed attempts he slips the bunch of keys from her hands and opens it for her, letting her march right on into the hall.

So much for a night off.

"I'm not being a goddamn martyr," he finds the strength to keep fighting his corner as she unhooks her hoop earrings and drops them onto the coffee table with a clatter, "I'm being realistic."

Her scoff isn't a sign she's at all convinced by that answer.

"There's no room for sweating your ass off with three hundred recruits in between ballet and bedtime stories. They'll want me for weeks. You've just gotten your research grant. Your book..."

The argument toes the line between his career or hers. This is exactly why he doesn't want to talk about it.

She looks at him like he's grown an extra head.

"It doesn't have to be a case of his or hers."

"Yeah, but the benefit of our fortunes was that someone would always be here to raise the girls. I made a promise to you and to them."

"A promise doesn't have to mean blind obligation. We also believe in compromise in this house, Wyatt," she softens, "I'm grateful for everything you've let me build this past year and I couldn't have done it without you. I don't want you to miss out on something equally great because we didn't communicate."

He shrugs.

"We'll talk about it, okay? I haven't really made my mind up. I don't know if I want to leave you all for that long. Six weeks in the bunker was enough to send me off the edge with a blowtorch to boot," he rubs a hand over the back of his neck.

"Rufus may have mentioned something like that."

"Just let me think about it? But for now, let's just keep doing what we're doing. We really don't get many nights to ourselves these days as it is."

She tilts her head to one side, eyeing him up and down.

Surrender at last.

"...I'm just saying, you're getting a bit soft - boot camp might be good for you. You know, maybe there will be a little truth to that version of you that dropped in on us from 2023?"

"I'm getting soft?" he plays the victim, slowing padding towards her. She stays stationary and feigns nonchalance. "Playing with fire there, Professor, when have I ever been soft around you?" he grabs for her hips and draws her as close as possible. Her arms roam up over his shoulders, settling around his neck until their noses are slightly brushing.

She playfully quirks a brow at him, "I'm just saying, Wyatt, we're getting closer to 2023 and while I'm happy to sacrifice the full beard…" she drags her mouth over his cheek, moving closer to his ear, "those biceps wouldn't go amiss."

His hands travel down her spine and further, cupping her ass. "Well, maybe I'll make you wait until my body meets your tip-top standards…." he squeezes, simultaneously sweeping delicate kisses up and down her neck, "...Ma'am."

"Don't tease me, Wyatt," she quivers, her head falling back. One of his hands travels further down her leg, hooking his hand beneath her knee and bringing it to hitch over his hip.

"What do you mean?" he teases breathily, kissing his way across her face, not giving into her incorrigible lean forward.

"I'm just getting army formalities back into my vocabulary… don't tell me it's effect has already worn off on you?" he squeezes again.

"I swear to God…" she whimpers, and she begins to rotate her hips into his.

"Will you? Go on, you know I like that," he retaliates, pushing into her motion.

"You are trying your hardest today aren't you, Master Sergeant?" she remarks, eyes fluttering shut.

He bends and grabs the side of other her knee, picking her up her and forcing them to tighten around his hips, pressing her against the wall.

"Hardest, Luce? I thought I was soft?"

With every ounce of pressure added between them, the crescendo of her gasps heighten.

His face is pulled to hers, one hand braces them against the wall as the other holds her steady, their kisses needy and incessant. He eventually pulls away breathlessly, but not before she runs her tongue across his bottom lip, gently tugging with her teeth.

"Think your stamina can handle carrying your wife to the bedroom?" she taunts from closed eyes.

He pushes off from the wall, both his hands now stabilizing her full weight and their lips meet for another desperate kiss.

"Lucy, I don't think you're ready for the level of stamina I have right now…"

She grinds against him again. He groans, his head lolling forward to her shoulder. She giggles.

"Onward, Master Sergeant."

---

Aug 2022

Lucy

I'd like to formally accept the Drill Sergeant position.

They manage a draft schedule with subject to change. Jiya, Rufus and Denise have to step up to the plate a handful of times, but they're pulling it off. Ballet is missed once, they eat a little more takeout than usual, but Wyatt makes it home most weekends and takes the burden off her.

After a long to and fro over the girls, they decide to finally enroll them in daycare. Their first day ends in a car full of tears, Wyatt makes his frustration known, leading to a hefty argument and near complete reversal on his decision. However, after the second day when Lucy has to pry Flynn off Josephine, one of the supervisors, Wyatt's groveling is accompanied by some rewards she definitely reaps the benefits of.

Their backyard becomes a simulation boot camp and the patio set she loves is set aside for borrowed army supplies and sandbags. There are also some benefits to that when she has a moment to peer out from the blinds to watch Wyatt's shirtless training.

His reassignment to the army doesn't detract from her own successes. The opportunities from her department head come towards her at an enthusiastic speed. Her seminar series becomes increasingly popular and enables her to extend the original eight-week stint to new subject matters and additional seminar slots. Representation is happening at Palo Alto College and she is the driving force.

At the time of Wyatt's acceptance she's also put forward to lead an extracurricular class for her department, and with the unspoken consensus being that it's a stepping stone towards tenure, she has no choice but to accept.

Today's her extended day and Wyatt's early finish in Pendleton means that he can take over until she gets home. She's halfway across campus after a quick dash for dinner when her cell rings.

"Is that Mrs. Preston-Logan?"

"Legally, yes, it also depends on how much I love husband today, who's speaking?"

"It's Jan from the daycare? It's a half hour after allocated pick up time and Amy and Flynn are yet to be collected, we've tried Mr. Logan with no luck."

Her blood runs cold.

"Really? He was supposed to be there an hour ago?"

"Josephine tried Mr. Logan three times before we had to call you."

She swallows back a lump in her throat, "Okay, no problem, I'm on campus right now, give me ten minutes and I'll be right there."

She rings Wyatt the moment she's off with daycare but his cell rings through. She has no choice but to plead a favor from her Head of Department to take over the extracurricular class, before hightailing it back across campus to the parking lot.

"Shit," she winces, spilling the coffee she'd been traipsing around with as she tumbles into the car. For once, baby wipes come in handy for something other than snot and sticky fingers. She makes it to the daycare with a few minutes to close, rushing in with apologies flying from her mouth as Jan hands her the kid's bags.

"I'm so sorry," she rambles, "this should never have happened. Wyatt was supposed to be back from Pendleton today."

She's highly embarrassed that there has been a breakdown in communication and that it looks like they forgot their kids.

"Amy...Flynn...come on girls," she calls, coaxing them from the few toys Jan had kept out for their entertainment. Weighed down with their backpacks and coats she leads them to the car, breaking up a fight over a plushie before they even manage to cross the parking lot.

"Mama, my tummy is empty," Amy whines as she buckles her into the booster seat.

"Me too, Mama!" Flynn pipes up from the other side of the car.

Against her better judgment, but for the sake of her mental sanity for the ride home, she drags the car through the McDonald's drive-thru and passes a happy meal to the girls, minus the toys. They seem content enough to munch on fries and nuggets that she thinks she's almost out of the woods by the time she drives off the freeway.

Then Flynn chokes.

One side of the road almost-Heimlich later and she's on her last mile, her nerves shot to hell.

Wyatt still hasn't called her back and her mind goes to some dark depths she hasn't been to in a while.

Though that's quickly rectified the moment she sees the Land Rover parked on the driveway.

"You've got to be kidding me," she hisses.

Flynn and Amy run into the house with a feverish excitement while she hangs their coats and backpacks up on the hooks. A noticeable clanging echoes from the kitchen and she lets it guide her.

"Hey! There are my girls," he coos picking both Amy and Flynn up, noisily pressing kisses all over their cheeks, " how is everybody doing?"

Lucy walks past him, dropping her keys on the side, turning around to face them as he lets the girls go, watching them run off to the living room to find the gifts he's brought back.

"We make some pretty cute kids, Luce."

There's no regret or admission in his eyes. Either he's being intentionally oblivious or he's playing coy. Neither of which she's in the mood for.

"Where were you?" she questions, leaning against the kitchen counter and unzips her boots while she waits for his answer.

Wyatt looks genuinely bewildered, "I was here sorting the house out?" he continues, looking at her with confusion, "Friday? Deep Clean Delta Force? You pick up the girls. I make sure this house doesn't look like 1950 North Korea post farmhouse explosion?"

"Wyatt," she sighs, "that was draft one of the plan; we changed it a week ago when I got the extracurricular schedule confirmed and you got your early finish accepted. The girls were still at Daycare until an hour ago."

The realization hits Wyatt and runs a hand across his face, landing to cover his mouth.

"Lucy, I'm so sorry, I completely forgot," he expresses, walking over to stand in front of her and slowly tucks her lengthening hair behind her ear.

"I had to feed our children McDonald's." She looks up at him, disappointment in her eyes.

"Flynn choked on a nugget. Amy threw half it all over the car," she recounts, grabbing onto the hand that traveled to the back of her neck with both of hers, briefly closing her eyes.

"Not to mention I thought you might have wrapped your car around a tree."

Her eyes reopen to meet his, she feels the gentle circles he's rubbing on her neck and it releases some of the tension.

"Just answer your damn phone, Wyatt."

"Received and understood, Ma'am."

"And to top it all off," she says, moving from his grasp, picking her discarded shoes and putting them in the corner before turning to meet his eyes again, "I missed the lecture I volunteered to do and I had to ask the Head of the Department to cover for me. So much for a relaxing start to our weekend."

Her rambling stops and she looks him dead in the eyes, they're full of warmth and apology.

Damn those baby blues.

He walks towards her and engulfs her in a hug, the warmth reminding her that it's been a long and arduous week since she last saw him. She breathes deeply, the stress of the last two hours melting away.

"I'm sorry, Luce. We need to get a shared a calendar or something," she can hear the glint of teasing in his voice as he delivers his next sentence "or a damn time machine."

It extorts a snicker out of her that she can't stop.

"Not so easy without autopilot right?" he sniggers into her hair, squeezing her tighter.

---

May 2023

Wyatt

The offer of renewal flies into his inbox before his fixed term contract even expires. While personal training every morning, constant obstacle courses and mile after mile marches has fed a thirst, the schedule is grueling on the life he and Lucy have forged.

The six-hour drives back and forth do nothing for his mood and though the benefits of recent training have been extremely favorable in the bedroom, he finds himself missing Lucy and what now seems the simple life he was living just a year ago.

His hesitation in accepting a full-time position leads him to drop a courtesy call to Denise, placing feelers back into the world of Homeland Security.

No one else I'd rather have report to me, Master Sergeant.

It's a relief to hear, and right now as he plans his penultimate boot camp in their office, he wants to be back with the girls before they scurry off into the world of packed lunches and kindergarten spats. Homeland offers him that flexibility, drilling army recruits does not.

Due to the impending intake, Lucy has taken it upon herself to start a weekend project with the girls, distracting them from Wyatt for a couple of hours. He finds himself oddly jealous of the time they share, feeling guilty for not having to time to continue his own project of teaching the girls German.

"Knall, Papa!"

"Du hast mich, kinder."

Homeland. Definitely Homeland.

His musing is broken by a shrill shout from Flynn.

"Go away, Amy! Go away forever!"

The words send a chill down his spine and he's on his feet immediately, making his way out his office to the living room. He peers around the door jamb to find Lucy expertly beginning to diffuse an aching situation in uncomfortable territory.

"Amy, Flynn, come sit with Mommy a second." The two girls clamber onto Lucy's lap as she slowly pushes brunette locks behind their ears.

"Flynn is mean, Mommy," she whispers, hiding into Lucy's shoulder.

"No, I'm not!" Flynn blurts out, hands flying to her hips in a moment that reminds him so much of her mother.

Wyatt's heart pangs with a soreness. His little girls have always had a strong exterior, but they both know how to press each other's buttons.

"Ladies, listen to me, okay," she says softly, "some days you are going to have arguments and that's okay. But we can't be saying things like 'go away forever.'"

Lucy's pause tests his resolve not to back her up.

You got this, Babydoll

"How would you feel if Amy actually went away forever, Flynn?" she questions, sweeping her hand over Flynn's hair.

He can hear the tears catching in Flynn's throat as she mumbles her response. "Really sad."

"That's right, baby," she encourages, turning her head to Amy and bopping her nose before refocusing on Flynn, "really, really sad."

Wyatt gazes at the floor, it's all a bit too parallel to Amy. The sister who was literally gone forever. He can see the strength it takes for her to reiterate this to them.

"So," she affirms with a fresh perkiness, "we need to remember that in this house, in this family, no matter how angry and upset we get, we never say things like that okay?" she places a single kiss on both girls forehead, "all the Preston-Logans are sticking around."

Her voice hushes, "besides, we need to keep Daddy outnumbered."

He pushes off the frame to give her the reprieve she needs.

"Daddy can hear you, y'know?" he booms theatrically, turning every head in the room at his approach. Amy and Flynn erupt into giggles from Lucy's lap.

"Yes, we know," Lucy smirks up at him from the floor, "Daddy's big ears don't miss a thing."

She earns a wink from him for that.

His reflexes are put to the test the moment a boisterous Flynn snatches her project from the table and missiles right for his junk. "Your aim is as poor as your mother's," he mumbles, yanking her up onto his hip before the collision can be made, "what's Mommy teaching today, huh?"

Flynn shoves her work straight into his face with enthusiasm and he wrestles it from her to get a better view, smiling fondly at the artwork.

Amy and Flynn pipe up in perfect unison, "Family trees!"

He brings Flynn down with him to sit beside Lucy and Amy, also taking the time to fuss over Amy's attempt. Their own personal family history isn't something either of them holds any particular fondness for, but seeing his mother's name in Lucy's handwriting, and Henry's in place of Benjamin, he can't help but be moved that she's making room for the people they've lost.

"Why is the neighbor's dog on here, Amy?" he holds back a snort.

"Well, we also had a discussion about the people we choose to make our family. People who might not look like us, who might have had other families and the girls put down Aunt Jiya and Uncle Rufus, DeDe and 'Chellie...and Amy has decided that Barney is our next target."

"We're collecting family like Paw Patrol figurines now, huh?"

Lucy elbows him with her own stifled snort.

He can't help but to also mourn the two names that Amy and Flynn honor. The singular line of inheritance that filters from Henry and Carol to Lucy that should splinter off to her sister.

Everybody loses somebody that they love, and no matter how badly they want to they can't get them back, and in spite of that, they find a way to go on. That's everyone's history.

He meets her eyes, "you okay?", he mouths. She nods her head, pursing her lips in a kiss at him.

"Daddy?" his gaze is dragged downward.

"Yes, Miss Amy?" he replies, smoothing a finger down the bridge of her nose.

"Where's your Mommy?"

The question hits him like a bullet. He never talks about his mom. Before the girls were born he'd spent a night looping Lucy in on the Logan family history, from his Grandpa Sherwin and Grandma Charlotte to Diana, the mother he'd lost far too young. He doesn't have much to share with the girls in that regard, two badly-lit polaroids salvaged from the wreck of his father's' belongings before he shipped himself off to basic training. All he has is a name and a memory of her pouring him cereal one morning, but it'll be the best goddamn story he'll tell about her when the time feels right.

For now, he'll make sure his own girls will have a history to show for themselves.

Lucy gives him a sympathetic smile, before looking back at the tree with Flynn.

"We can't see Daddy's Mom anymore, Honey," he answers, a solemn smile perched on his lips.

Flynn's head whips up from where she's looking.

"Is it because you told her to go away forever?" Flynn pouts, exiting Wyatt's lap in an attempt to get closer to her sister.

"No, baby, no," he replies, running the pad of his thumb over her cheek as both girls cuddle into Lucy.

"It's just one of those things that happen when you grow up," the girls keep their eyes locked on him as Lucy presses kisses to the tops of their heads.

"You okay?" she mouths, echoing his own concern and he throws her a wink, "did you finish your curriculum?"

It's the perfect change of tone.

"I have! Who's ready for Baby Bootcamp?!"

The girls jump up from Lucy's lap, running out the room to the backyard in a flash of wild locks and squeals. He offers Lucy a hand and pulls her up, flush against him, searing the love and gratitude he has for her into a kiss.

"Nailed it, Momma."

"They'll have more projects and more questions one day," she warns him, slightly concerned.

"And we'll make it up as we go," he eases that fear, "we've had a lot of practice, Nurse Jackie."

"Of all of our aliases...it's like you picked that one on purpose…"

"Maybe I did," he shrugs, sliding his hands from her hips and holds them up in surrender, "or maybe tonight's our last night before I go back to Pendleton…"

"Dream on, Logan."

"Oh, I will," he chuckles, turning on his heel, "all day."

He takes his smile with him, carrying it down the hall with a jovial whistle.

It's not the mood he expected, but it's the one he's grateful for.

Walking past the framed picture of Amy he blew up from Lucy's locket picture he pauses on the way to the backyard, "good day, Ma'am."

---

Dec 21st, 2023

Lucy

The final revolution of their closed time loop hurtles towards them four days before Christmas.

It seems only fated that of all the days, her tenure meeting is scheduled for the same day as their last Homeland mandated mission. A bookend of tenure and a potential close to that loop as she sits outside of the Dean's office, waiting to be summoned.

"Professor Preston?"

It's a completely different meeting to her last. She's involved. The history department has gone up in rankings. They've received more grants and opportunities since her appointment than any previous year.

"With all due respect, Professor Preston, how could we deny you tenure?"

What're you torturing Daddy with this time?

I'm so proud of you.

As ready as I'll ever be

Overnight bags for the four of them are chucked into the trunk, the girls' enthusiasm to go to a super secret hiding den spills out of them as she helps Flynn climb up into her car seat.

"It's where Mommy and Daddy used to live."

Two four-year-olds with an uncurbed excitement is enough to calm the sense of panic that threatens to rise in her chest.

"Who's idea was it to give Amy cowboy boots? I mean, really," he asks exasperatedly after getting kicked again as he buckles her in. He shuts her door and climbs in the driver's side with another bruise to his rib.

"You, Mr. Texas," she responds idly, checking her calendar on her phone as he starts the car.

"Lucy, she's been wearing for them two weeks straight." Locking her phone she angles her body towards him, slinging a look over to Amy in the backseat.

"I saw her brushing her teeth in them… in her pajamas. She won't take them off."

She giggles. "At least she's still wearing shoes. I wish we could keep a pair on Flynn. How many left shoes can one four-year-old lose?"

It'll always be their mystery.

"Nothing changes," he glances at her briefly, before turning his eyes back to the road in comfortable silence.

An audible breath brings her attention back to him, his brows furrowed.

"Luce, this is gonna be okay right?"

His words are filled with dread. While Lucy has been increasingly worried about their impending trip and the detriment it could have on the life they've worked so hard to create, she can't help but clock that since they rang in the New Year, Wyatt had held her noticeably tighter, kissed her a lot harder and let the girls run a little wilder.

He's scared. They both are.

"Wyatt," her hand travels across the island separating them and sails up to the nape of his neck. It's an oscillation of comfort for the both of them as she steadily smooths her thumb to and fro while he drives.

"If I don't meet you at Mason, I'll meet you at a bar in 2016. If I don't meet you there, we'll run into each other in Salerno's the night I've had it with Jonas. I believe in meant to be. There is no time, no place, no universe where we don't end up back in this car, driving with our two daughters, okay? We gotta leave this one up to fate. Or choice. I know any version of me would choose you."

She catches his smirk in the rearview. "You know I'm still coming around to that idea."

"Whether we're in 1836, 1934, 1941 or back in 2018. We will always find each other."

"I love you, Lucy," he presses a kiss to the palm of her hand. Hearing those words is a drop of adoration into her heart daily.

"I love you, Wyatt Logan," she beams, taking her hand back and connecting her phone to the car's Bluetooth system.

If you're lost you can look and you will find me...

"Really?" he quirks a brow at her.

"Oh yeah, get ready for the karaoke, am I right, Ladies?" she flings over her shoulder to Amy and Flynn, their caramel brown eyes and massive grins lighting up the back seats.

Wyatt gazes longingly at her as she sings the chorus with the girls.

Time after time.

The look they share next is piercing. It's a slideshow of job insecurities and baby births, first-day nerves and flustered nights alone. Fear and loss revisited and legacies created to immortalize the fallen. It's the accumulation of five, crazy ordinary, wonderful years.

She lowers the volume of the song, as Amy and Flynn continue their tone-deaf rendition.

His trademark smirk makes a welcomed encore.

"Let's do this…. Babydoll."

Her confidence mirrors his.

"Sure thing…. Schweetheart."

---

The cautionary tale of two battle-scarred figures from an apocalyptic chasm in time remains just that. Those dark chapters are superseded by the unity she finds with Wyatt, the survival of their team, and the two little ladies who balm over the cracks the alterations leave behind.

If you're not happy with the history Flynn has predicted for you, rewrite it.

And so they do.

Five years sew together like one of Agent Christopher's scarves, with the ups and downs of a crazy ordinary life bobbling the thread. Though, their final product isn't something they'll ever keep shoved in the bottom drawer of their closet. They make the most of every sliver of time they're gifted, honoring the sacrifice made for them in every choice they make to move forward. To grow.

A house becomes a home. Two become four. The family she always wanted.

FIN