Choice

By: MajorSam

This fic literally came to me in a dream. I woke up, walked about in a daze at work thinking about it all day, then spent the rest of the night feverishly writing the entire thing in one fell swoop. I haven't stayed up so late writing in possibly years. The dream will be described in a note at the end, for anyone who's interested! This is a 2-shot story.

Set several months after Season 2 finale, after Rufus is saved.

"So what'll it be, Princess?"

If looks could kill, Emma Whitmore would be in pieces on the ground. Instead she continued to stand there, smirking, a simple goblet held in her hand.

"One last time. You? Or him?"

Lucy looked at the phone in Emma's other hand. The live camera feed glowed in bright HD. Lucy still didn't understand how she'd managed to make Skype work in 1978 but couldn't care less at that moment. The only thought on her mind was of what the phone was showing. Wyatt. In a room eerily like her own.

Except Wyatt had a gun pressed to his head.

Emma raised the goblet in front of her.

"You. Or him."

2 hours earlier

"Why the hell would Rittenhouse want to stop the Jonestown Massacre?"

Lucy threw her hands up in the air in frustration as they trudged towards the compound. "I told you, Wyatt, I have no idea. But that's the main thing that happened on November 18, 1978, in Guyana, which is exactly when and where Emma went."

"Well if she's trying to stop it, I say let her! We could save over 900 people."

Lucy closed her pinched eyes and rubbed a hand over her forehead. "Please, Wyatt. Can we not get into this moral debate this time? Not again."

"Why the hell not? There are lives at stake here, and-"

"So we really think she's trying to stop it?" Rufus loudly and pointedly cut in. "Not, say, make it even worse?"

Flynn snorted. "How could she make it worse? Somehow recruit a couple more hundred cultists to be gathered up for mass murder/suicide?"

"For the last time, I have no idea!" Lucy shouted. "I don't have every goddamn answer every goddamn time, okay?" She took off in front of the group, grateful she was able to wear pants for this mission.

The men passed around surprised looks. The historian had been getting edgier and edgier of late but had never blown up like that before.

"You guys track down Congressman Ryan at the airport," Wyatt commanded quickly. "I'll take Lucy and find Jones. Meet back at the lifeboat."

The solider hurried after Lucy, matching her pace but not speaking a word. She glanced over at him several times, waiting for him to break the silence, but he didn't.

She finally broke, huffing "Just spit it out!"

"Spit what out?"

"Whatever it is you want to say so badly."

"I don't want to say anything. Seems you might have something to say though."

"Oh do I?"

He shrugged. "You tell me."

She let out an exasperated growl. "All I have to say is let's finish this mission and get the hell home."

"Didn't you say something like that last mission too?"

"Yeah, well, missions lately suck, so…"

"Haven't they always?"

She shrugged half-heartedly. "Not always…"

He studiously avoided meeting her eyes as a quick slideshow of memories flashed unbidden through his minds eye. No, they hadn't always sucked. They used to be, perverse as it may seem, fun, exciting, fulfilling.

Romantic.

But ever since Rufus died, then came back… things were different. Everyone was tense, all the time, strained and brittle. They were all so happy that Rufus was back, but they'd all had to bottle it up, afraid to show it because Rufus didn't remember dying. He didn't and couldn't know what all they'd gone through. It freaked him out when he caught them staring at him, when they touched him more than they used to, just to make sure he was real. No one was sleeping well, especially Jiya, too afraid she'd fall into a vision of him dying again, of finding out it was inevitable, and all had been for nought. Emma continued to ravage time, never giving them a break, her actions unpredictable and seemingly without pattern, driving them all to epic levels of frustration and Jessica… the whole saga just continued to drag on. Wyatt hadn't had a moment alone with Lucy except on missions where a talk, a real talk, was not possible. In the bunker she'd grown more and more distant before finally avoiding him entirely. He could tell.

And he didn't know how the hell to fix it. Any of it. The team was breaking, if not already broken, and they'd all just let it happen.

By the time Wyatt shook himself out of his musings he found they were already nearing their destination. They quickly blended into the crowd of Jones' followers and started subtly inquiring about a redheaded woman. They persuaded a troubled looking young woman into revealing that a new redhead had indeed shown up that day. She'd seen the redhead confer with Jones himself just a few minutes prior, offering the man a flask before they'd walked into a private room. The pair quickly found Jones, alone, and about to drink from the flask. A heated but silent argument occurred between the time-travellers before they finally stopped him from drinking from it. They left as quickly as they'd come, hoping to find Emma somewhere still in the throng.

She found them instead.

Not even Wyatt had heard them coming amidst the noise of the busy community, distressed by the visit from the Congressman. Before he or Lucy knew what was happening there were guns digging into their backs and whispers in their ears to keep walking like nothing was wrong. They were herded along until the group was free and clear of the compound before Emma gave the order to separate them.

"No!" Wyatt growled, trying to fight off the two men that grabbed his arms. Emma put a stop to his defiance with a simple raise of her arm, gun pressed to Lucy's head. They were each thrown into a 4x4, speeding away from the church's land. The drive was relatively short, less than ten minutes, and Lucy figured she had tracked the direction with relative accuracy. She could find the Lifeboat. She just needed to find Wyatt first. When she was pushed out of the car, however, the other was nowhere to be seen. She looked around wildly, trying to spot it in the distance.

"Oh he's close, don't you worry your pretty little head," Emma cooed. Lucy was corralled by a goon into a tiny room in a small, unmarked building.

"You don't seem too upset that we stopped Jones' death," the professor observed.

Emma shrugged. "Poison the poisoner. Would've been amusingly fitting, don't you think?"

"You're sick."

Emma shrugged again. "Oh well. He wasn't why I'm really here, anyways."

It dawned on Lucy in an instant. "It was all a set up. A lure to get us here."

The woman sauntered up and patted Lucy on the cheek in the most patronizing way possible. "Good girl. A+ for teacher!"

Lucy bit the cheek she'd patted until it bled, her fists balled at her sides to keep from striking out. She was outnumbered, and all too aware of how better a fighter Emma was than her. She wouldn't win this with force.

"So what's it to be, then?" Lucy stood tall, squaring her shoulders.

Emma reached into her jacket pocket and removed a flask, waggling it in the air. Lucy's felt a squeeze around her heart. A henchman suddenly produced a small, wooden goblet and handed it to Emma. She poured the contents of the flask into it. Lucy snorted.

"A goblet? Really? What is this, Indiana Jones? A bit dramatic, even for you."

"Oh I disagree," she shook her head. "You need something special to accompany this show."

Lucy's dread grew exponentially as she watched Emma hand off the goblet and take out a modern cell phone, one of the huge ones with the big, wide screens. She tapped the screen a few times and turned the phone to Lucy.

Wyatt. With a gun to his head.

"How the hell did you…" Lucy trailed off as the man holding the gun struck Wyatt on the head.

"No!" she cried out, stepping towards the phone.

Emma laughed. "Don't worry. That was just a little nudge. He's under orders not to kill him. Not unless you say so."

"Unless I say so?" Lucy repeated faintly.

"That's right, my dear." Emma grabbed the goblet back and walked to stand directly in front of her, towering above her. "You get to choose. Your life. Or his."

"Fuck you," Lucy spat.

Emma burst into laughter. "Lucy, I didn't know you had it in you!"

The historian ground her teeth together to stop herself from lashing out again. Or to stop herself crying. She wasn't sure which. A quick scan of the room resulted in the same conclusion as her first. There were no weapons, only the one door, and way too many bad guys in the way.

There was no way out.

She looked at the video. If she refused the drink…

A kaleidoscope of images assaulted her. The first time she'd met Wyatt, the look of his little smirk morphing into his wide, terrified eyes as she fought to save his life at the Alamo. Wyatt asking for her help to steal the lifeboat and save Jessica. Seeing him alive after 6 weeks of thinking he was dead.

Hollywood.

Jessica's return. Jessica, who was pregnant.

Then Lucy saw herself, the path her life had taken the last few years, what she'd become...

"So what'll it be, Princess?"

If looks could kill, Emma Whitmore would be in pieces on the ground. Instead she continued to stand there, smirking, the simple goblet held in her hand.

"You or him?"

Lucy looked at the phone in Emma's other hand. The live camera feed glowed in bright, colourful HD. Emma raised the goblet in front of her.

"One last time. You. Or him."

There wasn't even a choice to be made. Not really. The answer was obvious. With a final, defiant glare, Lucy grabbed the goblet and brought it to her lips, gulping it back in one, long drag. When finished she threw it to the ground, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Happy now?"

Emma grinned ferally. "You have no idea."

Lucy raised her eyebrows pointedly at the phone in Emma's hand. The redhead raised it up and spoke. "Let him go."

Lucy watched with bated breath as the gun against Wyatt's head was pulled away. The hand holding it jerked it to the side, telling Wyatt to leave. The soldier frowned and stared suspiciously, but swiftly exited the room. The knot in Lucy's heart loosened.

"Go," Emma nodded at the door, 100% sure of her success. "Enjoy your last precious seconds with him. I know I enjoyed ours."

"Fuck you, Emma."

The woman laughed. "Oh my, Professor. Such harsh words for ones that may be your last."

Lucy scowled and again debated the risk versus reward of punching the woman. She decided getting the hell away from her was a better idea.

"We'll see," Lucy growled before slamming the door behind her.

She met up with Wyatt in the woods some twenty minutes later, both heading back to the lifeboat as per the standing orders if anyone ever got split up.

"Lucy! You okay?"

She slowed down to greet him, taking longer than should be needed to even her breathing before replying. "Fine. You?"

"Fine."

She nodded, still trying to suck in deep breaths. "Let's go then." She started off but was stalled after only a step by Wyatt's hand on her arm.

"You sure?"

She looked up into his blue eyes, peering down at her with a strange look in them.

"Of course," she said shortly.

"Cause you don't actually look so good."

She frowned, a hand rising to her chest to feel her rapidly pounding heart. "Just winded."

"You look flushed."

"Well I have been running for the past twenty minutes." She rolled her eyes and got going again. He let out a frustrated sigh but ran to catch up with her, jogging easily at her side. They ran for five more minutes before Wyatt stopped her once again.

"Okay Lucy, seriously, what's wrong?"

"Wha… what're you talking about?" she tried to brush him off but she was having too much trouble breathing to put much force into it. Nausea was starting to churn around her stomach.

"You've been steadily slowing down since we began. We're barely power walking now."

"I'm just… tired."

"That's a load of crap," he barked. "We've been through way worse than this. Now I need you to tell me what's wrong so I can figure out how to fix it."

She puffed out a breath of air and darkly muttered "Too late for that."

"Excuse me?" his face was etched in a deep frown now, stepping right up into her personal space. She lifted her eyes up to his and with a glare repeated herself.

"I said it's too late for that!"

"What the hell does that mean?"

She sullenly looked away, staring at the trees, a branch on the grass, anything but him.

"Lucy," he said softly, true worry seeping into his voice. "What have you done?"

"I did what was best for the team."

He was silent for a long moment. So long that she finally dared to look up at him. She wished she hadn't.

Fear. His face was steeped in it. Pure, raw, fear.

"Lucy," he whispered. "What did you do?"

Her bottom lip trembled as the words started bubbling out.

"I drank it."

"Drank what?"

She looked away. She couldn't bear to see his face as he realized. "The stuff. Whatever the hell it was that Emma tried to kill Jones with. I drank it."

Hearing his choked exhale was almost as bad as seeing his face.

"You… what?"

Lucy squeezed her eyes shut as tears started to form. "Emma had a phone. I saw you, saw the whole thing. She said she'd let you go if I drank it. So I did."

He made a noise she'd never heard any man make before. Her gaze flickered automatically to his, reflexes too slow to stop herself. His eyes were wide, wet, horrified.

"W…" he could barely speak. "Why would you do that?"

"Because he had a gun to your head!"

"So what?"

"So wha… are you kidding me?"

"I'm the soldier, Lucy. I'm supposed to be the one with guns pointed at me! I'm the expendable one!"

"No you're not!" she yelled. "I am! Don't you get it?"

"NO!" he screamed back.

"I'm just a stupid, clumsy book nerd who's traveled through time and screwed so much of it up that I don't even know what the hell actually happened when anymore. I'm useless to the team now, just a walking liability. Plus I'm the one Rittenhouse wants dead. You'll all be better off, safer, without me."

"You don't actually believe that bullshit, do you?"

"It's true, whether you want to believe it or not. It was you or me, and I chose me." She turned her back to him.

"But Lucy," he grabbed her arm forcefully. "You-"

"I what?" she wrenched her arm away but turned to fully face him. "Have so much to live for? Tell me, Wyatt, what are those things? What do I have?"

"You-"

"A sister who doesn't exist and probably never will, a dead, evil cultist maniac of a mother, her blood legacy that makes me, for the rest of my life, no matter what I do, the number one assassination target for said evil time travelling cult, who we probably won't ever stop… I'm a failure and a fugitive, in hiding, in a literal piece of shit hole in the ground-"

"Us!" he shouts through her tirade. "You have us!"

"Oh really?" her eyes were blazing with fury now. "Do I? No one even talks to each other anymore! Ever since Rufus came back we're all so caught up in trying to act normal and ignore how badly it screwed us all up that we can't even look at each other! Jiya's losing her mind from lack of sleep and fear of more visions, Rufus tries to pretend we don't stare at him like he's a ghost, Flynn, the ex-terrorist who used to try murder me every week is the only person I can kind of talk to but is obsessed with some parallel version of me he reads about in a book-"

"What about me?"

She threw her head back and laughed. "What about you Wyatt? You made your choice, and it wasn't me."

He opened his mouth to protest but Lucy had had it. If this really was it, there was no time for lies anymore.

"You made your choice, and I had to live with it. Live with you throwing confidentiality to the wind and telling Jessica everything, breaking her into the bunker, parading her around… drinking myself numb while trying not to cry myself to sleep every night as I listened to the sounds of you two fucking."

He winced as she spat the last word.

"I'm just... tired. So sick of it all. I really just did myself a favour," she declared and stormed off.

"No!" he cried out. "You can not talk like that."

"I don't take orders, remember, Master Sergeant?"

"Goddamnit Lucy! You can't do this to me!"

"Why not? You'll finally be free of me and all the guilt and pity that screams at me on the rare occasion you can even look me in the eye."

"I was wrong, okay! I was wrong, I know, you always knew it, hell everyone always knew it!"

"At last he says it out loud," she rolls her eyes sarcastically.

"But Jessica was never my choice, okay?"

She laughs bitterly. "Right."

"She wasn't! Maybe it seemed like she was but I swear to God, Lucy, in my heart I always knew."

"Don't do this," she shook her head, a tear finally breaching the wall of her eye and dripping down.

"You were always my first choice, Lucy, always. I was just too stupid and proud to admit it. And then when Jessica ran off…"

"No!" Lucy shook her head, tears falling steadily now. "You don't get to say stuff like this. Not now. It's too late."

"I thought we'd have more time," he pleaded. "I just… the stuff with Rufus… everything you just said was true. We're screwed up. I wanted to wait for things to settle, so we could start fresh and do it right this time."

"I don't believe you," she sobbed. Her knees were going weak and she could barely keep herself upright. "Don't say things when you don't mean them!"

"I do!"

"No you don't!" she shrieked. "How can you say that when you and I both know the second Jessica shows up again, you'll abandon the mission and run straight to her? Just like you do every single time."

"If I follow her it doesn't mean I love her!"

"Then what the hell does it mean?"

"I…"

Lucy brought shaky hands up to her face, digging shaking palms into her eyes, trying to stop the flow of tears. She felt so sick, light-headed, her heart pounding too fast and a ringing growing louder in her ears. Wyatt was still speaking but she had to fight to hear the words and make sense of them.

"-It's like if Amy came back Rittenhouse. You'd still try to help her every time you saw her, wouldn't you?"

"Amy wasn't my wife," she retorted. Had her words just slurred?

"The Jessica we know is not my wife," he said vehemently. "She never was. I've accepted it. I don't love her, Lucy, I never did. But…"

"But she's going to be the mother of your child," Lucy finished softly. Wyatt went quiet. She looked up at him. "And that's why it had to be me."

He shook his head and she realized tears were falling down his cheeks as well.

"You're going to be a father, Wyatt." She couldn't help the faint smile that crossed her face. She'd once, in a moment of pure, foolish hope, let herself imagine what that would be like. Wyatt as a dad. A beautiful child with his blue eyes and her dark hair. "You're going to be a dad, and that's why I had to drink it." She slowly approached him, a trembling hand rising to caress his cheek. Her thumb wiped at his tears.

"I couldn't let that child grow up without a father. Without you. I just… I couldn't."

"Lucy," he choked, bringing both his hands up to cup her face. The flush had left her cheeks. She'd gone unnaturally pale, her skin coated in clammy sweat. She smiled at him briefly, that beautiful, coy, thing he loved.

Then her eyes lost their focus and her hand suddenly dropped to her side.

"Lucy?"

She tried to look at him, her mouth working open and closed as if to speak but her body started curving into itself and a small noise escaped her.

"Lucy, what's happening? What can I do?"

The sound she was making grew louder and her body started to shake. He wrapped his arms around her and helped her to the ground, chanting her name.

"Hu… hurts," she gasped, one hand pressing above her heart while the other dug into her stomach.

"What can I do?" he asked again, frantic.

She looked up at him with frightened eyes and no answers. The big, brown eyes suddenly slammed shut, body jerking as her head tipped back.

She screamed.

She was dying in his arms and Wyatt had no clue what to do, no way to help her.

"Lucy, please," he begged. "Just hold on! Please, you have to. You have to give me a chance to fix all this, please, Luce. I love you!"

He didn't know if the sounds she made were from physical or emotional pain. He tried to pick her up but her body jolted wildly as she screamed again. This time she didn't stop. She felt like she was on fire, burning from the inside out, every nerve doused in flame. Wyatt tried to settle her down, adjust her body into the recovery position, thrust his fingers down his throat to try to get her to throw the poison up but nothing worked.

Then he heard footsteps, running right towards them. He panicked, gathering Lucy up tightly in his arms, protecting her body with his as he looked around the forest floor for anything he could use as a weapon.

"Wyatt!"

He looked up, dazed with shock as Rufus and Flynn burst out from behind a large tree.

"We heard screaming, what the…"

"Oh my god, Lucy!"

They rushed forwards, dropping to their knees besides the huddled figures just as Lucy started coughing. Strangely coloured foam bubbled up from her throat and dribbled out of her mouth. Was she choking, drowning, suffocating? Her eyes rolled back in her head and suddenly she was convulsing wildly.

"Help!" Wyatt screamed.

The men held her down as gently as they could, trying to stop her from hurting herself further. After what seemed like hours but was only minutes her body went abruptly still, sick, gurgling screams cutting off like she'd been muted. The harsh breathing of the men was all that filled the space for a few seconds before Wyatt was flying to his feet, Lucy in his arms.

"MOVE!" he roared.

They made the three-minute trip to the lifeboat in less than one. There was no way they could have made it so close just to lose their professor now.

To Be Continued...