He tells her he loves her sitting in that hallway because he has nothing left.
No hope, no love, no friendship.
He tells her because she deserves to know. He was right when he said he should have told her a long time ago. The tears choke him as he thinks of all the things he should have done differently, could have done differently.
But he didn't, so there they sit in that hallway.
With no hope and no love and no Rufus.
"I can't believe he's gone." she whispers.
He can't speak so he takes her hand in his and offers the last little bit of comfort he has left. She squeezes his hand and he thinks he might be getting a little comfort in return.
The lamp collides with the wall until it's raining shards.
Three mugs join the ceramic warfare.
He trashes it all. Everything within reach.
He pauses for the barest of seconds, the cell phone she had left in her haste weighted in his palm like a brick. Their joint smiles glower up at him from the homescreen, a recent shot of his second chance at life with her. The second chance that had been nothing but smoke and mirrors.
A lie that costs him everything he holds dear.
Memories of his Jessica will be forever tainted by the brush of Rittenhouse.
Lucy's trust in him must look like the fragments land-mined across his floor. A grenade to their burgeoning relationship. It's all debris now.
Rufus - the ultimate loss. The awkward techie that became the closest thing he's ever had to a brother, to a family that loves unconditionally and without question. If something happens to Jiya, I don't think I could ever forgive you.
His arm shoots forward, the phone splinters against the wall.
He feels the need to purge her from existence. From his mind, his heart.
The glass she had kept by the bed. Her clothes, his clothes. He rips the sheets off the two twin beds they had pushed together the night he had brought her here.
It burns in him like a rabid fire. Everything that is her stoking the flames.
He flips the mattresses off the bunks, lifts the frame of one tiny cot to slam it against the wall over and over that American Flag painted on the wall he loves so much. I can't be married to a State Secret.
How ironic. She was the one no security clearance could ever access.
Boy or girl?
Then we're your family!
I'm going to protect my baby.
He slams and throws until he is shaking with rage and grief and so much hurt, he can't stand anymore. He slinks down the wall, a crumpled shell of the man he painstakingly built up from the ground the last time he lost her. The man Lucy helps him to create is gone, shredded by the consecutive lies that cascade down on him from all angles.
It's all too much to bear.
He closes his eyes against the multitude of memories and flashes of the past that flicker before him like a bad John Hughes movie, complete with the soundtrack of all his failures. His head hits the wall with an almighty crack but he doesn't feel anything. Nothing matters, not anymore.
He doesn't realize he isn't alone until a small hand touches his face, fingers weaving through the moisture on his face. It's too small to be Lucy's, the touch too hesitant to be Agent Christopher. He opens his eyes and sees Jiya kneeling in front of him with tears running down her own face, shining with such loss and forgiveness it makes him sick.
"It's okay, Wyatt."
He recoils from her, flattens himself against the wall. She shouldn't be forgiving him for anything. "No! No! It's my fault. This is all my fault. If I hadn't brought her here-"
Her arms come around him anyway, pulling his head to her chest. "No! This is Rittenhouse. It's on them, not you."
He puts his own arms around her then, squeezes his eyes shut and listens to the pounding of her heart. The one thing he did right today. She was proof of that. "She was never real. It was all a lie. I lost everything for something that was never real."
"You haven't lost me."
He remembers saying that same thing to Lucy and having it end up being the biggest lie he has ever told in his life.
But he takes the lie because he's weak. He takes it because it's better than nothing.
