Rating: T
Words: 11,500
Spoilers: Set after the events of 1.16.
Warnings: Language, non-graphic adult situations, threats of m/m non-con.
Summary: Garcia Flynn is out for revenge and has a plan. Too bad it involves Wyatt Logan.
Disclaimer: Someday I will own Wyatt Logan.
A/N: So this is pretty much Wyatt / Everyone (sorry Wyatt), including - er - Flyatt (?) and Lyatt, although there's nothing graphic. Paper-thin plot to disguise the gratuitous Wyatt Abuse. Presumes Emma is still working undercover for Rittenhouse. Makes a couple of references to events of a previous fic In The Foxhole, but you don't need to have read that one to read this one.
THOSE WE CHOOSE TO REMEMBER
In all the time Wyatt had spent deployed overseas he'd been knocked out exactly three times.
The first time, he'd been in Afghanistan when half a house fell on him.
The second, his truck had hit an IED and he'd woken up three days later in an army hospital with no idea how he got there.
And the third was that time in Syria he didn't like to think too much about.
Since he started working for Mason Industries travelling through time in an effort to stop the nefarious schemes of Garcia Flynn to subvert time and reality?
He'd completely lost count of how many times he'd been knocked out.
Tasered, drugged, gassed, hit over the head with a telephone.
Yeah, even he couldn't believe that last one happened.
Case in point.
When he opened his eyes, he was in a warehouse.
Or maybe it was a church.
Or maybe it was just some bombed out building with fairly regularly spaced concrete pillars.
One of which he appeared to be tied to.
And that was another thing.
Not once had he ever woken to find himself tied up whilst deployed overseas.
Since the whole time travel thing?
He'd been tied up, handcuffed or variously restrained by everyone from Native Americans to French soldiers to shady government agents to Garcia freakin' Flynn himself.
This was getting a little bit old.
And he hated cable ties.
No matter how much you struggled, if your hands were tied behind you, you didn't have a hope in hell of getting out of the things unless you were prepared to dislocate your thumbs and / or rip your wrists to shreds.
Neither of which course of action Wyatt was particularly keen on taking right now.
And this time he was secured to one of the stupid concrete posts not just by cable ties around his wrists, which hurt like hell even if you weren't struggling like an idiot to get out of them by the way, but also by more of the stupid plastic torture devices around his ankles.
Now that just seemed like overkill.
Unless someone didn't want him kicking them.
Which seemed entirely possible considering Garcia Flynn was suddenly swaggering across the debris-strewn concrete floor towards him.
And Wyatt had absolutely no idea where he came from.
He thought maybe he heard a door close behind him somewhere over to his right, but since Emma Whitmore stole the Mothership right out from under them and bust Flynn out of a government stockade, Flynn had not exactly been the easiest guy to track.
And he sure as hell seemed pissed at Lucy.
"Master Sergeant Logan," Flynn said by way of greeting. "We have got to stop meeting like this."
Wyatt scowled at him. "What do you want, Flynn?" he asked tiredly.
This asshole was wearing on his last nerve and he really didn't feel like doing the whole verbal sparring thing that Flynn kind of seemed to get off on.
Flynn paused, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
"What do you think I want?" he asked.
"Well you sure as hell seem to have a thing for knocking me out and tying me up, so let's go with that, shall we?" Wyatt returned.
So maybe he did feel like doing the whole verbal sparring thing.
Just a little.
Unfortunately, Flynn merely sniggered at Wyatt's observation.
"Well obviously I want to tie you up," he said with a wickedly lascivious grin, which had Wyatt thinking back to that whole prison thing in 1963 when Flynn had stuck his tongue down his throat, made him pretend to be a prostitute, and almost gotten him violated by some old guy with a thing for blue-eyed pretty boys. (And didn't Wyatt just hate that description?) "But besides that."
Wyatt sighed again. "I have no idea," he said at length. "What do psychopaths usually want? Money? Fame? Notoriety? Daddy's attention? Mommy's attention? A bigger dick?"
To Wyatt's mild surprise and, he was forced to admit, more than mild alarm, Flynn chose that moment to grab him by the throat, slam his head back against the concrete pillar and grind his hips against him in a way that, firstly, left very little to the imagination, and, secondly, left very little doubt in Wyatt's mind as to at least one of the things Flynn apparently wanted.
"Oh, I don't think I have a problem with that last one," Flynn pointed out. "Do you?"
Wyatt grimaced as Flynn continued to press himself up against him, sucking in a breath as the fingers tightening around his throat threatened to crush his larynx and something hard and definitely not at all lacking in size by the feel of it was shoved insistently into his hip.
Head swimming, Wyatt tried to distract himself from what Flynn seemed intent on doing to him by trying to remember how the hell he got himself into this predicament.
With exactly zero luck.
He didn't recall a goddamn thing about where the hell he'd been before this.
Certainly not on a mission because he was wearing his street clothes.
Had he been at home? Travelling home? There'd maybe been a truck and a bang and he couldn't get out of his seatbelt and...
Flynn was touching his forehead above his left eye.
"That's a nasty cut, Sergeant," he said, rubbing at Wyatt's temple with his thumb, which came away bloody.
And it was only then Wyatt realized his head hurt.
"I told Karl not to hurt you, but he never listens."
Wyatt blinked. And that hurt, too. "You re-hired that asshole?" he asked sarcastically. "Wow, I guess good henchmen are really hard to find these days."
Flynn laughed again, before suddenly the fingers he had around Wyatt's throat were gripping his jaw and it was almost like déjà vu as he held him fast and pressed his lips against him.
Wyatt tried to turn his head away, but Flynn's grip on him was as solid as the concrete at his back as insistent fingers tried to prize open his mouth.
Okay, couldn't punch, kick or knee the bastard in the balls.
That only left headbutting him.
Wyatt was only partially successful, not improving his headache one bit, but at least getting Flynn's fingers, and, perhaps more importantly, his mouth the hell off of him for a minute while he tried to figure a way out of this.
Flynn grunted, wiping a trickle of blood away from the bridge of his nose before grabbing hold of Wyatt's hair and yanking his head back so it once again slammed into the concrete pillar behind him.
Wyatt did his best to blink away the birds suddenly twittering around his head like in the old cartoons he used to watch on a Saturday morning with his Grandpa Sherwin and refocus on the task at hand, namely, getting Flynn's fingers out of his hair and his mouth from off of his neck, where it had repositioned itself whilst Wyatt briefly flirted with unconsciousness.
"I told you back in 1963," he said with a grimace, "that if you wanted to kiss me you had to ask first."
Flynn snorted. "My apologies, Sergeant," he said, his mouth hovering uncomfortably close to Wyatt's ear. "But if I'd asked you, somehow I don't think you would have said 'yes'."
"Ya think?" Wyatt deadpanned.
Okay, how the hell was he getting out of this? Physical violence hadn't had much effect. So that only left…
"So are you going to tell me what the hell you want, you psycho sonofabitch, or do I have to guess?" he asked evenly.
Okay then. Talk himself out of the situation. He could totally do that.
Flynn didn't respond immediately, his mouth obviously far too busy with Wyatt's neck to spare the time to chat.
When his teeth sank in a little bit harder than they had any right to, Wyatt yelped and grit out, "Flynn! Hey! Asshole! Are you even listening to me?"
"Little busy right now, Sergeant," Flynn murmured against his neck, one hand slipping down to Wyatt's waist before suddenly grabbing at his ass and tugging his hips towards him to increase contact.
Thing was? Wyatt wasn't an idiot. Flynn hadn't suddenly turned gay for him back in 1963 and he didn't think this had anything to do with him suddenly developing a penchant for guys now either.
No, this was all about something else.
This was all about Lucy.
Wyatt, he was pretty sure, was just a means to an end.
Just like he had been in 1972.
Five hours. Don't hurt him.
"Is she watching?" he asked Flynn quietly, trying to twist to see more of what was behind him, but hampered by the cable ties, the concrete pillar and Garcia Flynn's wandering hands. "You figure this'll hurt her?"
Flynn paused for a second, considering, before slamming Wyatt back against the pillar and licking his neck from collarbone to jawline. "It's not her I want to hurt," he replied at length, grinning.
Wyatt grimaced, trying really hard to ignore the fact that Flynn's tongue was suddenly in his ear and his fingers were prying beneath the waistband of his jeans. "You sure about that?" he asked, causing Flynn to pause for a second. "'Cause from where I'm standing, the only reason you could possibly have to want to do anything like what you're currently trying to do to me is to get back at her."
Flynn pulled away slightly, gazing at him intently as he considered. "What makes you think I don't just want to have my wicked way with you?" he asked at length.
Wyatt shrugged as much as he was able. "Last time I checked, you weren't gay," he offered.
A lopsided smile tugged at the corner of Flynn's mouth. "Don't have to be gay to appreciate beauty," he offered.
Wyatt made an exaggerated retching sound. "Oh please," he said sarcastically. "This has absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with you wanting to make Lucy pay for betraying you after you decided to trust her."
Flynn didn't confirm or deny, just stuck a hand in his jacket pocket and began rummaging around for something.
"Which she didn't, by the way," Wyatt continued. "She had no idea Denise Christopher had a tail on her. She's a civilian, remember? She wouldn't know a tail if it was pinned on a ninety-foot purple donkey."
Wyatt wasn't quite prepared for the arm Flynn suddenly had across his throat pinning him to the concrete, or the knife hovering a half centimeter from his left eye.
When he blinked he felt his eyelashes touch the blade.
Flynn's mouth had twisted from an expression of detached amusement to one of rabid anger so fast it caused Wyatt to freeze completely.
And not just because he had a knife millimeters from his eye.
"I'm sure you've been told this many times, Wyatt," Flynn spat, "but you have very pretty eyes. It would be a shame if I had to cut one of them out, wouldn't it?"
Wyatt blew out a very slow breath and held as stock still as he possibly could. "You think this'll hurt her more?" he asked carefully. "Or less?"
Flynn grimaced at him. "More or less than what?" he demanded, his voice now gravel where previously it had been honey.
"Making her watch you force yourself on me," Wyatt replied succinctly. "Because you've got her watching, right?" he continued. "Somewhere?"
Tell me where she is, asshole...
Again, Flynn neither confirmed nor denied, merely moved the tip of the knife so it was pressing against the skin slightly below Wyatt's eye.
"Maybe I make you less pretty," he said. "Maybe I take out your eyes and slice open your face."
Wyatt swallowed.
A guy in Afghanistan had threatened to do something similar to him once. He'd gotten separated from his unit—only been deployed a couple weeks, eighteen years old, still wet behind the ears. Some insurgent with the biggest freaking knife he'd ever seen had grabbed him, dragged him into a half bombed-out building, thrown him on the floor, got on top of him and started screaming at him in Farsi about blue-eyed American infidels and how he was going to take their eyes and kill every last one of them.
To this day Wyatt wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to get to his sidearm and blow the guy's brains all over the wall.
And there was absolutely zero chance of him managing anything remotely similar in his current situation.
"You could do that," he said slowly. "But Lucy has a tendency to faint at the gory stuff."
The easy grin had returned to Flynn's face, but there was something else lurking behind it now, something dark and crazed that reminded Wyatt a little bit too much of that Afghani insurgent who'd threatened to cut out his eyes.
"Physical violence is often a useful motivational technique," Flynn observed. "I want her to see me hurt you."
"That much I figured," Wyatt agreed, gritting his teeth as Flynn slid the blade down to his throat, forcing his head back against the concrete as he made another attempt at violating Wyatt's mouth with his tongue.
Flynn's mouth came away bloody after Wyatt bit him, and he wiped away the blood with a sardonic grin on his face.
"You know how adorable you are when you put up a fight, Sergeant?" he asked, and Wyatt rolled his eyes.
"You ever hear of breath mints, dickwad?" he returned.
The knife was shoved harder against his throat and Wyatt was pretty sure he felt it nick the skin.
"How I hurt you doesn't much concern me, Wyatt," Flynn spat, his mouth right against Wyatt's ear. "As long as I hurt you. As long as…" he bit back the rest of his sentence, but Wyatt finished it for him.
"As long as you hurt her?" he suggested.
Flynn ground his teeth audibly. "She betrayed me!" he hissed.
"Not on purpose," Wyatt replied. "I told you that already!"
Flynn slammed his head into the pillar one more time, just for good measure. "You know what it's like in one of those black sites?"
Wyatt blinked at him. "You're kidding me, right?" he said. "Where do you think they took me after I 'borrowed' the Lifeboat to go get Jessica back? And thanks so much for that, by the way."
Flynn paused. "I didn't lie about that," he insisted. "Wes Gilliam killed your wife. And I can prove it."
"Then why isn't she here?" Wyatt demanded. "His father…died. And yet Jessica is still gone."
Flynn shrugged. "Just like my wife and daughter," he pointed out. "No matter what I do they're still gone too."
Wyatt swallowed. "And that's not Lucy's fault either," he said slowly.
Flynn blinked at him.
"You can't blame her for everything, Flynn," Wyatt continued. "I know you think she put you on this path—by giving you her journal. But she didn't kill your family. Just the same as she didn't betray you. She wanted to help you."
"Bullshit," Flynn ground out, suddenly grabbing Wyatt's jaw and forcing open his mouth again before shoving the knife inside and holding it there, the flat side of the blade pressed against his tongue.
Wyatt did his best not to gag—or breathe—and just waited for Flynn to get on with whatever he was going to get on with.
Flynn didn't move, just grimaced, teeth grinding together audibly, before his mouth was again at Wyatt's ear and he was hissing, "Maybe I take your lying tongue too."
Wyatt took a shallow breath, biding his time until Flynn finally removed the knife with a frustrated growl.
"You've still not seen the things I can do with my tongue," Wyatt managed to gasp out. "It'd be a shame to cut it out."
And Flynn actually laughed at that.
"Yes," he said, "so I've heard. I think maybe you owe me a demonstration, Sergeant."
Flynn's tongue was abruptly shoved back into Wyatt's mouth, and this time Wyatt didn't put up a fight, if only because Flynn's tongue was marginally preferable to a razor-sharp blade rammed in there.
When he'd done, Flynn pulled away slightly and just gazed at him for a couple of seconds, before suddenly bending down and slicing through the cable ties at Wyatt's ankles.
Wyatt briefly thought about trying to kick the bastard in the head, but figured he might end up with a broken leg for his trouble.
"What are you doing?" he asked instead.
Flynn didn't reply, just proceeded to slice through the restraints around his wrists as well.
Okay, this was either a good sign or…this was really, really bad.
As Wyatt tried to twist his wrists out of Flynn's grip, he found himself being spun around and slammed face-first into the concrete pillar, and Flynn wasn't exactly gentle when he yanked his wrists up behind his back, slapped handcuffs on him, pressed himself the length of him and murmured into his ear, "Maybe I let you choose, Sergeant."
Wyatt took a breath.
The knife was hovering behind his ear, and Wyatt had a horrible suspicion that could be the part of him Flynn took off before he cut out his eyes or his tongue.
"Choose what?" he demanded, a little bit disturbed by the slight tremor in his voice.
Flynn shoved something hard into the small of Wyatt's back and he was pretty sure it wasn't a firearm.
"How do you want it?" Flynn asked. "Take your eyes or take your virtue?"
Wyatt swallowed. "I'll take door number three please, Monty."
Flynn snorted. "Maybe I choose. Maybe cutting you isn't enough. Maybe I want to make you beg. Maybe I want to make you beg me to stop." His free hand had circled around Wyatt's waist and was tugging at his belt as he spat each word, and Wyatt began to think maybe there were worse things than dislocating your thumbs and tearing up your wrists. "Maybe I want to make her beg me to stop."
Wyatt took another breath. Tried to concentrate on what he needed to do rather than what Flynn was trying to do to him. Took in the position of the knife and how Flynn was standing—slightly off-balance with one knee raised and pressed into the back of Wyatt's thigh—in relation to how Wyatt himself was positioned; noted Flynn no longer had a grip on the handcuffs around his wrists now that his hand was busy fumbling with the fastenings on Wyatt's jeans; thought about the best way to achieve what he needed to achieve.
Took another breath.
And then hooked his ankle around Flynn's raised calf and yanked his leg out from under him.
Taken by surprise, Flynn went down onto one knee, releasing his hold on Wyatt in order to grab the pillar and steady himself, the knife slashing through Wyatt's shirt sleeve and nicking his upper arm as he fell.
Wyatt gasped out a surprised yelp before pretty much pirhouetting on the one foot still in contact with the ground, bringing the other in to aim a kick at Flynn's torso, which connected with a satisfying crunch as Flynn toppled backwards onto the concrete.
Finally able to see behind him, Wyatt spotted a window and a door and without even being able to see through the grimy glass he knew that was where Lucy was.
Flynn groaned at his feet, and Wyatt thought about going through his pockets to try and find the key to the handcuffs, but figured by the time he located it, Flynn's henchmen would be on him, and scrabbling in the guy's pockets might give Flynn a thrill, but really wasn't Wyatt's idea of a good time.
Instead, he tried to jump over the fallen would-be terrorist in order to get to the room where he was convinced Flynn was holding Lucy. He wasn't prepared, however, for Flynn suddenly grabbing at his ankle, which caused him to overbalance, and he would have landed on his face if he hadn't thought to roll onto his side in time.
Flynn was on him before he'd properly hit the ground, one hand around his throat banging his head against the floor while he straddled his hips and swore something at him in a language Wyatt thought sounded vaguely Eastern European in origin before the world faded to black and all he could hear was the pounding of his own blood in his ears.
The next thing he was aware of was a gun pressed against his temple and Flynn's hands fumbling under his shirt and tugging at his jeans again.
He found himself blinking up at Karl, the pasty-faced weasel Wyatt still needed to pay back for what he did to Bam Bam; but right now might not be the best time to do it, what with the guy shoving a Sig Sauer into his head rather insistently.
"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," Flynn murmured. "You don't get to be unconscious for the main performance."
Wyatt grimaced at him. "Threesome," he grit out sarcastically. "Lucky me."
Flynn snorted. "Well, this is an interesting position we find ourselves in, Sergeant," he observed.
"Is it?" Wyatt ground out. "Hadn't noticed."
Flynn leaned closer to him, the knife playing lazily down Wyatt's neck. "You don't notice when a man gets on top of you?"
Wyatt scowled at him. "Believe it or not, that's not something that tends to happen to me on a regular basis."
Flynn snorted. "If it wasn't for me, it would have happened a hell of a lot more back in Alabama in '63."
"You expect me to be grateful?" Wyatt burst out. "It was your fault I was there in the first place!"
Flynn nodded. "And here too, it seems. Thankfully, I don't have to fight off fifty men to get your attention here though. Maybe just Karl."
Wyatt glanced up at the henchman, whose expression was as blank and unreadable as ever. "Hey, Karl," he said sunnily, "never knew you cared, man."
Karl sniffed. "It was you who brought the word 'threesome' into the conversation," he pointed out. "If the boss wants me to do you, I can take one for the team."
Wyatt wasn't sure whether to be offended by that comment.
Flynn sniggered. "Lining up for you, Wyatt," he said. "Maybe I ought to just get on with it and let somebody else have a turn with you, huh?"
"You're an asshole," Wyatt told him, not for the first time.
"Yes I am," Flynn confirmed. "But I'm the asshole sitting on top of you with a knife to your throat, your wrists handcuffed behind you and your jeans half unfastened. It doesn't take a genius to work out what happens next, now does it?"
Wyatt gasped shakily as Flynn's left hand abruptly yanked at his jeans, getting them a good couple of inches lower on his hips than they had any right to be.
"I swear to God," Wyatt ground out, "you even think about going any further with that idea and I'll make sure to cut off more than just an ear, asshole."
Flynn grinned as he ran his hand over Wyatt's hipbone languidly, before moving on to his belly. "You know you brought this on yourself," he commented, threatening to drag his fingers lower.
Wyatt grit his teeth before grinding out, "And how the hell do you figure that?"
Flynn shrugged. "Back in that prison?" he said. "I think the phrase they use is, 'prick tease,' right?"
"I was playing a goddamn role!" Wyatt protested. "For you!"
"I'm not talking about with the old guy," Flynn said. "I'm talking about with me. You were flirting with me and you didn't even realize you were doing it."
"I was not—" Wyatt started to protest, but choked back the rest of the sentence when Flynn suddenly ducked his head and sank his teeth into Wyatt's hip.
Nope. Not happening. This is not happening.
He managed to bring his knee up between Flynn's legs pretty damn hard to say he had a knife pressed against his navel and a gun drilling into his head.
Flynn grunted in pain, his eyes briefly squeezing shut.
"How's that for a prick tease?" Wyatt demanded. "Now get the hell off of me!"
Wyatt didn't quite manage not to flinch when he heard the sound of the safety clicking off of Karl's Sig, and it didn't take long for Flynn to recover enough to backhand him across the face so hard he thought for one second the bastard might have broken his cheekbone.
"Okay, Wyatt," Flynn spat, grabbing the front of Wyatt's shirt and lifting him bodily off the ground before slamming him back down again. "No more Mr. Nice Guy. You asked for it, you're damn well getting it."
Wyatt wasn't entirely clear what happened next. He heard fabric tearing, which was either his shirt or his underwear or both, while Flynn pinned one of his thighs with his knee and began fumbling around with something Wyatt couldn't identify and really didn't want to think too much about.
"Wait," he said, quietly at first, but he could feel the panic building, just like back in 1963 when the old guy in the prison had him pinned to the couch and his hands all over him, and Wyatt had actually started to wonder whether he was about to get himself violated just to help Garcia freakin' Flynn out of a tight spot. "Wait!" he repeated a little more loudly.
But Flynn didn't wait.
And he wasn't stopping.
No, no, no this is not happening...
"Flynn!" he barked. "Stop, goddamn it! This isn't funny!"
"Not meant to be funny, Sergeant," Flynn murmured, mouth all over Wyatt's neck and shoulder. "Meant to hurt. Meant to hurt her..."
"Hey, c'mon, just—" Wyatt tried again.
"Stop!"
And this time it wasn't Wyatt protesting.
And Flynn stopped. Instantly.
"Lucy?!" Wyatt yelled. "Where are you?"
"Get off of him, Flynn!" Lucy's disembodied voice continued. "Whatever you want, you can have it! Just—just—don't—"
"Hurt him?" Flynn finished her sentence for her, his teeth scraping Wyatt's shoulder as he laughed sardonically. "We've been here before, haven't we, you and I?"
And suddenly Wyatt wasn't even part of the conversation, just a piece on the chessboard Flynn had apparently lost interest in the second he got the attention of the queen.
He stood, dragging Wyatt up with him, his grip on the arm he'd nicked with his knife causing Wyatt to hiss in pain.
"I think Lucy wants to see you," Flynn sing-songed into his ear. "You think her opinion of you will change once she sees you like this?"
Wyatt glanced down at himself, his jeans still halfway down his hips, shirt torn in several places, bleeding from his arm, his cheek, his temple and, apparently, his hip where Flynn had sunk his teeth in, still handcuffed, and he couldn't even see what mess Flynn had made of his neck, what with all the sucking and biting that had been going on down there.
"I'm guessing she can already see me, right?" he said, trying to keep his voice steady and under control, despite the fact that all he really wanted to do right now was scream his head off, punch something, preferably Flynn, and go take a very long shower. "You were making her watch. To hurt her."
Flynn snickered. "I'm a sick puppy, huh?" he said. "I thought she might get off on it. A little guy-on-guy action. Some women do, I'm told."
"You been reading fan fiction again?" Wyatt asked. "Wouldn't have pegged you for a Fifty Shades kind of guy."
"You wanna be my Anastasia?" Flynn asked. "Because I can totally make that happen."
"If you're asking to tie me up again, the answer's 'no.'"
"Oh, don't worry, sweetie. You'll be getting tied up again soon enough. And who knows, while the grown-ups talk, I might see if Karl still wants to take one for the team with you. It'd be a shame to disappoint him."
"You know, when I get the hell out of here," Wyatt said, "I am going to kill you a whole bunch of times."
Flynn sniggered as he manhandled Wyatt into the room behind the grimy window where Wyatt absolutely knew Flynn had Lucy stashed.
When she saw him, Lucy's expression told Wyatt everything he needed to know about what she thought of the state he was in.
She was sitting in a rickety metal chair, wrists cable-tied to the arms, the chair purposefully positioned in front of the window so that she would have had a VIP all-access view of what Flynn had been doing to Wyatt for the last few minutes.
In front of her was what looked like a dispatcher's desk, an old computer, a radio set-up and a microphone to her right, which was clearly how Flynn had been able to hear her pleas on Wyatt's behalf over the speaker system in the warehouse.
She looked pale, a little bit disheveled, and Wyatt had the almost uncontrollable urge to tuck an errant strand of dark hair behind her ear.
Unfortunately, that wasn't possible considering he was still handcuffed, Flynn still had a hold of him, and Karl was still lurking behind them pointing his Sig Sauer in the general direction of his head.
"Now that wasn't so hard, was it?" Flynn asked amiably, and once again it was as if Wyatt wasn't even in the room, just Flynn and Lucy and whatever it was between them that Wyatt still couldn't quite fathom.
At first, he'd thought it had been a weird kind of mutual attraction.
After Lucy completely failed to mention speaking to Flynn at the railway station prior to Abraham Lincoln's assassination, and how she seemed to have a habit of inexplicably bumping into him at the most inconvenient of times, Wyatt thought maybe they had some kind of love / hate thing going on that he just couldn't wrap his head around.
Then there'd been The Kiss, and pretty much everything Wyatt thought he knew about himself and about Lucy had gone out the window.
Sure, they'd been playing a role.
Except Lucy, apparently, hadn't, and Wyatt had suddenly realized maybe he hadn't either.
Which threw him.
If Lucy was interested in Wyatt, she couldn't be interested in Flynn.
Right?
So if it wasn't that, if it wasn't attraction, then what the hell was it between them?
Lucy just glared at Flynn.
And once again, Wyatt felt like he may as well not be in the room.
"I've brought your Ken doll back," Flynn commented easily, and Lucy's scowl deepened. "Although he must have gotten the deluxe upgrade because, from what I could feel, he's surprisingly anatomically correct, if you know what I mean."
Wyatt virtually growled at him, and it was as if Lucy suddenly remembered he was there, her attention now completely focused on him as she studiously chose to ignore Garcia Flynn.
"Wyatt, are you okay?" she asked, and she was looking at him in a way that suggested she knew exactly how not okay he was right now.
Wyatt chose not to answer that question directly. "What does he want from you?" he asked instead. "Did he hurt you?"
Lucy glanced from Wyatt to Flynn and back again.
"It doesn't matter," she said.
"I think maybe it does," Wyatt countered. "If you're going to give him whatever he wants in exchange for him not—not—"
"Raping you?" Flynn offered.
Wyatt grit his teeth. "You really think I would have let you get that far?"
Flynn snorted. "I don't think you would have had much of a choice, sweetheart," he said, grabbing Wyatt's jaw and planting a kiss on his rapidly-purpling cheekbone.
Wyatt pulled his head away angrily, and Flynn's smug grin widened.
"Leave him alone," Lucy said shortly. "I told you. Whatever you want, you can have it. Just don't—"
"Deflower him?" Flynn suggested. "Aw, Lucy, you're so old fashioned!"
"Flynn, for the last goddamn time, what the hell do you want?" Wyatt put in, and Flynn's grin morphed into something entirely more sinister.
He didn't say anything for a second, then just glanced behind him to Karl and inclined his head in Wyatt's direction.
Releasing the hold he had on Wyatt's arm, Karl took over Flynn's position, as Flynn swaggered jauntily towards Lucy.
"Time for the grown-ups to talk," he said, completely ignoring Wyatt's question, and suddenly Karl was tugging on his arm, dragging him off towards another door at the back of the dingy room.
"Wait, no!" Wyatt protested, trying to stand his ground, but failing miserably. Karl might seem pretty insubstantial, but he had a good couple of inches on Wyatt and was, apparently, a hell of a lot stronger than he looked.
"Where are you taking him?" Lucy demanded. "I told you I'd give you what you wanted! If you hurt him, you're not getting a damn thing from me!"
Flynn snorted. "Don't worry, Lucy," he said. "I promise not to hurt your boyfriend. Now you and I need to talk…"
And that was the last Wyatt heard of the conversation, as Karl dragged him first out into a dingy hallway, and then into what looked like some kind of janitorial supply closet, metal shelves empty of everything but the odd dusty container of something that might have been cleaning fluid at some point in its history lining one wall, and at least six mops that looked like they'd not been used since the 1950s propped up in a corner to the side.
"Lucy!" Wyatt yelled over his shoulder, but Karl had already slammed the door shut and was busy corralling Wyatt towards a line of lockers, one of which Wyatt suddenly found himself slammed up against as Karl gripped him around the throat in a disturbingly similar manner to the way Flynn had grabbed him earlier.
Wyatt did his best to keep his breathing even, despite feeling like his windpipe was being crushed.
"Wait, wait!" he managed to gasp out. "Whatever you're planning on doing, you really don't need to do it!" he protested. "Lucy's talking to Flynn. She's doing what he wants. You're not supposed to—"
"Hurt you?" Karl offered, maintaining his grip on Wyatt's throat with his left hand, while with his right he drilled the Sig Sauer into his neck just below his jaw, pushing his head back against the locker behind him. "Funny thing," he continued, and it occurred to Wyatt this was probably the most he'd heard Karl speak in the year the two of them had been chasing each other through time. "I'm not Flynn. He doesn't actually want to hurt you, Wyatt."
Wyatt thought about that for a second.
"He's all about the leverage," Karl added. "Your girlfriend?"
"Not my girlfriend—" Wyatt started to protest.
"Don't really care," Karl interrupted him with a shrug. "Flynn wouldn't have gone through with it. What he was trying to do to you. All for show. All for the little lady you two seem so obsessed with. That's the difference between him and me."
Wyatt swallowed, and Karl moved his mouth right up against Wyatt's ear.
"He doesn't really want to hurt anybody."
Wyatt took a breath, eyes sliding sideways slowly. "And you?" he asked hesitantly.
A sly smile leeched lazily across Karl's mouth. "I'm a little bit more straightforward than he is," he explained. "What you see is what you get. I get paid to do a job and I do it."
"Like trying to strand us in 1754?" Wyatt asked. "Killing my friend in Paris in 1927?"
Karl chuckled softly. "Poor fake replacement soldier guy," he said. "He got me back before he died though."
"His name was Dave Baumgardner," Wyatt said tightly. "And he was a good guy who didn't deserve to die like that."
Karl's sardonic grin widened, and he pushed his face even closer to Wyatt's. "You gonna punish me, soldier boy?" he asked. "Get your revenge? 'Cause that might actually be fun."
"Jesus, breath mints, people!" Wyatt snapped, as Karl briefly caught the lobe of his ear between his teeth, before slowly pulling away a little.
Hey, fire, Wyatt thought. Great to meet you. Your friend frying pan was just telling me all about you…
"You know, just because I have to hurt you," Karl began with a shrug, "doesn't mean you can't enjoy it."
Wyatt frowned. "Wait, wait," he said. "I told you. You don't have to hurt me! Lucy is—"
"Lucy doesn't have to know what goes on in this room," Karl told him shortly. "What goes on tour stays on tour."
Wyatt swallowed. "Okay, look. For all his faults, Flynn strikes me as the man-of-his-word type. I don't think he wants you to—"
"Don't care what he wants," Karl snapped. "He told me I could do what I wanted with you while he chats up your lady friend."
Wyatt took a breath. "You like poker?" he offered. "We could totally play poker. Or—or—I Spy. Bet you're real good at—"
Karl cut his sentence short by grabbing his jaw and forcibly closing his mouth.
Which in some ways was preferable to Flynn trying to force it open to insert things into it.
"Quiet," Karl growled. "Don't wanna hear you yammer no more."
Wyatt did as instructed while Karl stared at him unnervingly.
"You remember 1972?" he said at length. "When we tasered you and tied you to that chair and you had on that god-awful pink shirt?"
Wyatt teetered halfway between impressed and horrified that Karl remembered what he'd been wearing that day.
He nodded mutely, Karl's hand splayed across his jaw and cheekbone kind of making it hard to say anything anyway.
"When your five hours was up?" Karl continued. "I kinda wondered what Flynn was gonna do to you."
Wyatt started to speak, but stopped himself abruptly as Karl's Sig was shoved harder under his jaw and his head slammed back against the locker for a second time.
He was so gonna have a concussion after all this head slamming.
"Told you he doesn't really want to hurt people, right?" Karl continued. "But he will if he has to. And he has. You know that. You've seen. Anthony Bruhl. Abraham freakin' Lincoln. A dozen Rittenhouse assholes you and your little girlfriend probably don't know anything about. And, like you said, he's a man of his word. He promised your girlfriend he'd hurt you if she didn't deliver. I thought maybe he'd cut you. You might have noticed he likes knives. But he likes guns too. Said he might shoot out your kneecaps."
Wyatt winced despite his best efforts not to.
"Or cut out those baby blues." Karl shrugged. "I thought it'd be a waste to off you without having a little fun first."
Wyatt tried really hard not to think about what Karl's idea of "fun" might entail but didn't manage it for much longer than maybe two seconds.
"You looked kinda hot handcuffed to that chair."
Wyatt grit his teeth and set his jaw and not for the first time that day wished for the days when he only had to deal with your everyday, common or garden psychopath who just wanted to kill you. This whole "I really want to torture the crap out of you and / or pleasure myself with you first" thing was getting a bit annoying.
"I'm sorry I missed that."
Wyatt was so intent on figuring out a way to get Karl the hell away from him that he never even heard the door open.
A hot redhead was standing behind Flynn's minion, her hand on her hip and an appraising smirk on her artfully crimson lips.
With Karl's grip on Wyatt's jaw keeping him pretty much switched to mute, the redhead continued to look him up and down appreciatively, which made his skin crawl almost as much as when Flynn or Karl did the same thing.
He might not have met her in person before, but he knew exactly who she was.
"Master Sergeant Logan, I presume?" the redhead said, taking a step toward him until she was standing at Karl's shoulder.
Karl, Wyatt noted, did not seem entirely pleased by the interruption.
"I don't think we've been properly introduced," the redhead continued. "Karl, where are your manners?"
Karl grimaced in a very unfriendly way at her.
Okay, maybe something Wyatt could work with there...
"Emma Whitmore," the redhead introduced herself. "Maybe you've heard of me?"
She pushed Karl's hand off his jaw helpfully, and Karl's scowl deepened considerably.
"Sure," Wyatt said. "I saw the trail of corpses you left behind you. Not exactly a fan of your work."
Emma grinned at him. "Come on, Sergeant. Even you've got to admit it's not easy stealing a time machine or busting someone out of an NSA black site. You and I are in a pretty exclusive club, having ticked both of those things off the bucket list, don't you think?"
She cupped his cheek with one hand, and Wyatt rolled his eyes to feign extreme boredom.
"Jeez, now I gotta put up with the both of you? How come Lucy gets the organ grinder and I just get the monkeys?"
Emma laughed. "I like you," she said. "Mouthy in times of crisis." She looked him up and down again. "And that's before you've even shown me what you can do with your tongue."
Wyatt snorted. "Oh you heard that, huh?"
Emma shrugged. "Little Lucy Locket out there might not get off on watching Flynn feeling you up, but I found it pretty entertaining."
Wyatt shook his head. "Of course you did."
"You know," Emma continued, leaning in towards him so she mirrored the position Karl had him in, but on his right side, while Karl occupied his left, "some girls kinda get off on the beat-up look too." She ran a finger over the cut to his forehead, before pressing her fingertip into it none-too-gently.
Wyatt hissed through his teeth, but otherwise did his best not to show her she'd both surprised and hurt him.
Karl, Wyatt noticed, was glaring at her with an intensity that could have melted steel.
"Hey, don't mind me," Wyatt said. "You two wanna take your frustrations out on one another you go right ahead. Just pretend I'm not here."
Emma snorted. "He's just sore Daddy always makes him share," she said, sliding the finger she'd prodded into Wyatt's wound down his cheek to run along his lower lip.
Wyatt had to fight back the urge to bite. He was a gentleman after all, and no matter how many times he'd gotten beaten up by female enemy combatants or sparring with his own female squad mates, he still had an aversion to inflicting any kind of violence on a woman.
Didn't mean he couldn't talk Karl into it, though.
And while he might have flirted with Flynn without knowing he'd done it, flirting with Emma to achieve his goal was also something he had no aversion to.
"My first girlfriend was a redhead," he lied smoothly. "You remind me of her."
"Oh yeah?" Emma shifted her weight slightly so that her left hip pressed against his. "In a good way?"
Wyatt shrugged. "Wasn't meant to be," he said. "Ran off with the star quarterback and got herself pregnant by the time she was seventeen."
"Are you calling me a tramp, Sergeant?"
Wyatt shrugged again. "I dunno," he said. "Need to do more empirical research on the subject." He glanced sideways at Karl. "Maybe ditch the help and you could show me?"
Emma actually laughed at that, while Karl practically growled at him.
"I dunno," Emma continued. "I'm not sure you could handle me. You're a little vanilla for my tastes."
"Vanilla's the new chocolate chip cookie dough," he told her.
"Oh really?" Emma returned. "Smooth going down, huh?"
Karl cleared his throat pointedly at that juncture, and Emma glanced at him as if just remembering he was there. She straightened slightly from the position she'd been in slouched against Wyatt's hip. "You know, I wasn't really paying attention earlier, but did I hear someone mention the word, 'threesome'?"
Karl grimaced at her. "What makes you think I wanna sleep with you?" he asked.
Emma raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think I wanna sleep with you?" she returned.
Wyatt glanced from one to the other before putting in, "And I don't particularly wanna sleep with either of you."
Emma smirked at him. "Well I think you might be shit out of luck, son," she said, affecting a perfect southern drawl. "And funnily enough," she continued, her tone suggesting Wyatt wouldn't find this funny at all, "the only person in this building you actually do want to sleep with is the one person you're too much of a gentleman to admit you want to sleep with."
Wyatt blinked at her.
"Don't worry, honey," Emma added, a mischievous grin playing on her lips. "I'm not talking about Flynn."
Okay, this wasn't how this whole, "taunting your enemies into turning on one another" thing was supposed to go down at all.
"Wait, I don't—" Wyatt began to protest, before Emma silenced him with a hand to his lips.
"If you're about to say, 'I don't want to sleep with Lucy,' then you may as well save your breath, sweetie," she said. "Because the only person who currently believes that is you. And possibly Lucy. She must be all kinds of confused with the mixed signals you're throwing her way."
"I do not—"
"First time I've met you and even I can see you're the master of the mixed signal, Sergeant." She shifted her weight so that she was leaning against him again. "For example, you were only flirting with me to try and figure a way to get you and Lucy out of this, right?"
"Uh—"
"And you only flirt with Flynn because it pisses him off."
"Why would—?"
"Because he genuinely likes you, Wyatt! And not just in a 'let's be best buds' way!"
"Butwhy—?"
"Does that piss him off? Not everyone's as secure in their sexuality as your or I, sweetie."
She patted his cheek. A little bit condescendingly in Wyatt's opinion.
He paused for a second, and she raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"What?" Emma asked.
"Just waiting to see if you're gonna let me finish a sentence."
Emma snorted and patted his cheek again. "I'm not sure talking's your strong point, honey. You just stand there and look pretty and we'll get along just fine."
Wyatt opened his mouth to protest, but when Emma made a move towards it with her own he snapped it shut abruptly and ducked his head to one side.
Okay, totally supposed to be trying to seduce her into slipping up and letting him go, but still not particularly good at the whole "seducing" part of the seduction process.
Emma paused and blinked at him, her scarlet lips paused a half inch from his own. "Do I have to ask if I can kiss you too?"
Wyatt considered. "Yes," he replied emphatically.
Emma nodded. "Can I kiss you?" she asked.
"No," Wyatt replied shortly.
Yeah, his seduction technique definitely needed some work.
"Hey, I was here first!" Karl suddenly reminded them of his presence at this point, and Wyatt glanced from Karl to Emma and back again.
"Thought you were taking one for the team?" Emma pointed out.
"Maybe I wanna take one for the team," Karl returned.
Emma smirked at him. "You don't say much," she observed, "but when you do it's kind of entertaining. You wanna share?" she added, inclining her head in Wyatt's direction.
And once again it was as if Wyatt wasn't even in the room.
Which was kind of advantageous, considering he'd finally managed to get the jagged sliver of metal he'd been trying to twist off of the dilapidated locker behind him while Emma and Karl were squabbling over who got to have their wicked way with him first into the lock of his handcuffs, making pretty short work of getting them to click open.
And the mop was just standing there.
When subterfuge and seduction fail you, go with the classics, Wyatt figured.
Violence it was, then.
It took him less than a second to crack Karl over the head so hard the mop handle snapped in two as he hooked the cuffs smoothly around one of the henchman's wrists as he collapsed in a heap to the concrete floor. Snaking the other bracelet around the metal shelving, Wyatt took the opportunity to sweep Emma's legs out from under her with the half mop handle he still had in his hand, grabbing one of her arms as she went down and snapping the other cuff around her wrist efficiently.
He stood back for a second, admiring his handiwork.
Emma looked royally pissed, yanking at the cuffs angrily, ostensibly, Wyatt figured, to try and jerk Karl back to consciousness.
Flynn's henchman groaned as he felt at the lump on his head with the hand not currently cuffed to Emma's.
"Sorry about that, ma'am," Wyatt said, sounding anything but sorry. "Got bored of standing around looking pretty."
Emma virtually growled at him, before her game face abruptly slammed back into place. "If you wanted to handcuff me you only had to ask," she told him, an eyebrow raised in invitation.
Wyatt sighed. "Y'know, the whole seduction thing didn't work for me, so I'm pretty sure it's not gonna work for you either, sweetie," he said, snatching Karl's Sig up off the ground where it had fallen.
"You're not gonna just leave us here though, right?" Emma asked plaintively, batting her eyelashes at him.
Wyatt shrugged. "Works for me," he said. "And much as I'd love to stand around shooting the breeze with the two of you, you obviously have some issues to work out." Spinning on his heel, he grabbed for the doorknob before turning back and adding, "Think of this as an opportunity to have a nice little chat, colleague to colleague. Iron out your differences."
"You know, we could have been exclusive!" Emma called out after him, and he found himself laughing as he ducked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him silently.
In another life, he would probably have liked Emma.
Taking a breath, he listened carefully, making out only the distant rumble of Flynn's voice and no other sounds of henchman about to pounce on him in his immediate vicinity.
Moving silently across the hallway, he stopped for a second at the sound of Lucy's voice, raised in something that could have been complete horror or bitter protest, or maybe a little bit of both.
As quietly as he was able, and he was pretty damn able when it came to the stealth stuff, Wyatt pushed the door open just a crack, peering into the room to see Flynn crouched down in front of Lucy, who had an expression on her face that Wyatt had seen twice before: When she first found out she lost Amy and again when she found out her mother was Rittenhouse.
"No!" Lucy was protesting. "No, you can't ask that of me! You can't."
Flynn shrugged dispassionately. "It's a simple choice, Lucy," he said. "And you promised."
Lucy scowled at him. "I never promised that!" she burst out. "I won't do it. You can't make me."
Flynn reached out towards her, tucking the errant strand of hair Wyatt had noticed earlier behind her ear gently.
Lucy flinched, and Flynn held up both hands to demonstrate he had no intention of hurting her.
Wyatt wasn't entirely sure he believed him, his fingers curling around Karl's Sig Sauer while he waited for Flynn to make his next move.
His next move was to stand, leaning one hip against the desk Lucy had been positioned behind.
"You know," he said slowly, "my friend Karl could be doing absolutely anything to your Wyatt in there. The longer you take to decide what you're going to do, the more chance Karl might...lose his patience."
Lucy swallowed. Visibly. "You promised me you wouldn't hurt him," she protested, her voice lowered.
"And you promised me anything in exchange."
Lucy shook her head, gazing down at her own lap. "Please don't," she muttered softly, and when she looked back up at Flynn there were tears on her cheeks. "Please don't make me choose."
Flynn shrugged, apparently unmoved by Lucy's display of emotion. "We can't always have everything we want, Lucy."
Lucy clenched her jaw, fire returning to her eyes. "But that's exactly what you're trying to get for yourself here, Flynn!" she spat. "I understand you want your wife and daughter back, I do, but why does it have to be at the expense of the people I love?"
Flynn's jaw tightened. "Because this is all your fault, Lucy!" he growled. "If you hadn't given me that stupid journal in the first place, none of this would have happened!"
"But your wife and daughter would still be dead!" Lucy pointed out. "What makes you think my doing this will bring them back?"
Flynn sighed. "Honestly?" he said. "I don't. But I've tried everything else. At least this way I get to end my own life and join them. Before I destroy so many other lives around me. Which is what Future You stopped me from doing."
Lucy swallowed again. "You don't know what will happen if I promise not to give you my journal when I'm older," she said. "It could make things worse."
"Or it could make them better," Flynn countered. "Think about it. You don't give me the journal, I never steal the Mothership, never mess with time. Never alter the course of history. Never change what happened to the Hindenburg." He took a breath. "Never erase Amy."
It was Wyatt's turn to suck in a breath.
Flynn was offering to give Lucy her sister back?
Then why the hell was she hesitating?
This was what Lucy wanted. This was everything Lucy wanted.
Wyatt didn't get it. He didn't get what was happening.
Why was Lucy crying?
"Please," Lucy murmured plaintively. "Please don't make me choose."
Flynn crouched down in front of her again, his expression almost sympathetic.
"I'm not doing this to hurt you, Lucy," he said, before inclining his head to one side and shrugging his shoulders. "Well not solely to hurt you. You've always been about getting your sister back, right? Even had a deal with Agent Christopher?"
Lucy looked up at him sharply.
Flynn smirked at her, rising to his feet again. "Oh, you didn't think I knew about that?" he asked. "Tell me, how did Wyatt take it when he found out?" Wyatt swallowed again. "No one ever offered him a deal to save Jessica, right? Because he's always been the expendable one. Why do you think he was the one I threatened to kill back in 1972? Because if I killed you or Rufus it would have been a big deal! I kill Rufus, you're stranded and Connor Mason gives Rittenhouse everything he has in order to hunt me down. I kill you, your daddy goes medieval on my ass."
Lucy frowned at him.
"Oh, I've known who your father is a lot longer than you have, Lucy," he told her. "The only one of the three of you I could have killed and no one would have cared—or at least, no one who mattered would have cared—is Wyatt. Soldiers are two a penny. Look how quickly they replaced him after he stole the Lifeboat. Not a single eyelash batted."
Wyatt grit his teeth, but couldn't even find it within himself to get angry about what Flynn was saying because he knew it was true.
"I would have cared," Lucy said quietly.
"Aw," Flynn cooed sarcastically. "And that's another reason he was the one I threatened to kill. I know how to motivate people."
Lucy sniffed. "You think this is motivation?" she demanded.
"No, I think it's carrot and stick. You do what I want, you get your sister back. End of story. End of this story. Everybody wins."
"But Rittenhouse get to rewrite history unchecked and I—I—"
Flynn sighed. "It's not like you'll know anything about it, Lucy," he said. "One minute you'll remember, the next you won't. And you'll have Amy back. You'll have your old life back."
Lucy glared up at him angrily. "Yes, I'll have Amy back. But my mom will be sick—"
"She's Rittenhouse!"
"And I'll have my life back, my friends back. My job. But—" she shook her head, eyes suddenly downcast and fingers digging into the arms of the chair she was still tied to, "—but I won't have him!"
Wyatt frowned.
Him who? That doctor guy, Noah?
He wasn't entirely sure he was following this conversation anymore.
Flynn shook his head. "You won't remember," he said.
"Exactly!" Lucy burst out. "I won't remember him! At all! I don't give you my journal, I don't set you off on the path to stealing the Mothership...I never meet him. Never know him. How is that any different than Amy being erased from existence?"
"He'll still exist," Flynn pointed out. "You just won't ever know him."
"I don't want to never have known him!" Lucy burst out. "Please," she added, a note of pleading in her voice as she choked back a sob. "Please don't make me choose."
Flynn straightened. "That's the offer, Lucy," he said shortly. "You agree never to give me your journal and you get Amy back."
"But I lose Wyatt."
Oh.
Oh.
Wyatt blinked.
Sucked in a breath.
Realized his hand was shaking before he started to grip the doorknob so tightly it hurt.
"I can't do that," Lucy was saying. "I can't choose between Amy and Wyatt. I can't. Certainly not just on a whim so that you can see what happens on the off-chance it might bring your family back to you."
"It will bring your family back," Flynn said. "Guaranteed."
"You don't get it, do you?" Lucy burst out. "Wyatt is my family! Maybe he's not blood like Amy but...l don't want him erased from my memory any more than I want Amy erased from existence!"
Wyatt swallowed. Okay, this was...unexpected.
How could this even be a choice for Lucy?
Flynn was offering her everything she wanted! The one thing she'd spent the last year fighting for.
A straight choice: Amy or Wyatt.
It wasn't even a question in Wyatt's mind.
Lucy needed her sister.
She needed to get her back.
Amy was the one thing Lucy loved most in the world.
Right?
Wyatt was just...expendable.
"Lucy," Flynn was saying quietly. "Take the deal. Do as I ask. If you promise never to give me the journal, everything will go back to the way it was, the way it's supposed to be." He took a breath before continuing on a sigh. "Tell me you're not going to give me the journal," he said. "Tell me and mean it. Because if you mean it, if you do it, the timeline will reset and we won't be here anymore. If you don't do it, I'll know because nothing will change.
Lucy's head shot up. "How do you know how things are supposed to be?" she demanded. "Maybe...maybe I was supposed to lose Amy. Maybe everything was supposed to happen exactly the way it has because..."
She paused.
"Because you're supposed to be with Wyatt?" Flynn supplied.
And suddenly there was absolutely no air in Wyatt's lungs.
Lucy didn't reply. "I'm not choosing," she said instead. "I'm not losing Wyatt. You can't make me. You'll have to kill me."
Flynn shifted his position slightly. Took a breath. Sighed again. "Oh, I'll kill you," he said. "After I've made you watch what I do to Wyatt before I kill him." He straightened. All his attention on Lucy. "You'll regret this. You'll never see Amy again. And Wyatt—"
"Wyatt's right behind you, asshole, and he's not too happy about being described as expendable or erasable."
Flynn never even knew what hit him, Karl's Sig coming down hard on the back of his head causing him to crumple into a heap at Lucy's feet before he even had a chance to turn around.
Wyatt took a breath.
Lucy blinked up at him.
"Hey," he said shortly.
"Hey," Lucy replied in kind.
They remained there staring at each other mutely for a second, before Wyatt managed to find his voice.
"We should—uh—go," he said stiffly.
Lucy nodded, but didn't move.
"Before he—" Wyatt indicated Flynn with a jerk of his head, "and before they—" indicating Emma and Karl with another.
Lucy nodded. "Mm-hm," she murmured, gazing up at him blankly.
"So...okay."
Wyatt began rifling through Flynn's pockets until he found the knife he'd had against Wyatt's throat earlier.
Stepping over the fallen sometimes terrorist, Wyatt made to slice through the cable ties around Lucy's wrists, before pausing abruptly.
"Always supposing—" he began awkwardly. "Always supposing you want me to?"
Lucy didn't say anything, didn't even move for what seemed like an eternity but was probably half a second tops.
Then she nodded.
And he sliced through the cable ties.
And she still didn't move or say anything.
"Lucy—"
And then she had her arms around his neck and her tears were wet on his shoulder and—
"You better be crying because if you're wiping your nose on my shirt I'm gonna be pissed."
Lucy's grip tightened even as she half-laughed, half-sobbed against his collarbone. "Crying," she managed to hiccup. "No snot."
"Well that's a relief," Wyatt returned, tentatively wrapping his arms about her waist.
Neither of them moved for what seemed like another eternity, but was probably only another half second. Two seconds max.
"We should go," Wyatt murmured again.
"Mm-hm," Lucy agreed, her face still buried against his shoulder.
"Lucy—" he began quietly. "Maybe you should think about this. Amy—"
Lucy suddenly pulled her head away from him, one finger pressed against his lips. "Don't," she said. "Don't make this harder by being selfless and sacrificing and..." she trailed off, before adding, "And you."
Wyatt wasn't entirely sure what happened next.
One second they were standing there looking at each other, the next... Well it wasn't like what happened at Bonnie and Clyde's place, that was for damn sure.
She tasted the same. Her lips felt the same. Her hand was on his cheek in exactly the same place. And he thought back to that conversation they'd had while squashed together on that narrow bed. About possibilities and fireworks and there being somebody for everybody and it suddenly hit him that maybe fireworks were what Lucy had experienced that night, even as he was kissing her but thinking about Jessica.
Right now? He wasn't thinking about Jessica.
He was thinking about fireworks and possibilities and...Lucy.
He was thinking about Lucy.
When they finally pulled away from each other, Lucy's cheeks were flushed an interesting shade of pink and she seemed about to say something when Flynn interrupted by groaning loudly at their feet, which caused Wyatt to kick him hard enough to shut him up again.
"We should probably—" Wyatt started to repeat.
"Go."
"Go."
"Okay."
"Okay."
But still neither of them moved.
"Okay," Wyatt said again, throwing Flynn's knife down on the desk while reaffirming his grip on Karl's Sig. "Now if we can just figure a way out of here..."
Turned out they were in a condemned former warehouse in the Tenderloin, which was advantageous in that nobody looked twice at Wyatt, his injuries, or the state of his torn and bloodied shirt as they hunted down transportation.
They said absolutely not one single word to one another in the taxi ride over to Lucy's apartment, which made the reggae music being played a little bit too loudly by the driver seem even more deafening.
By the time Lucy got out of the cab without even turning to look at him, Wyatt was actually starting to wonder whether she'd reassessed her previous decision and had realized she actually did need Amy more than she needed him.
And he hesitated.
Did she want him to stay in the cab? Leave? Never come back? Allow her to go up into her apartment alone and determine she would never give her journal to Flynn so that by the time Wyatt got home he wouldn't remember where he was coming back from and, more importantly, he wouldn't remember anything about time travel or Garcia Flynn or Rufus or Jiya or Agent Christopher or...or Lucy.
He wouldn't remember Lucy.
He might even just fizzle out of existence, having been killed in some desert somewhere, some place he'd been deployed instead of being assigned to Mason Industries.
In some ways, he figured, that might be preferable to having Lucy completely obliterated from his memory.
And then suddenly she stopped, halfway across the sidewalk, one hand reaching for the railing alongside the steps up to her building.
And if time could stop entirely, it did.
Wyatt felt his chest constrict, not sure whether it was hope or dread or fear flaring there and then she turned back and was looking at him, a goofy grin on her face.
"I need to get money to pay the driver!" she explained. "Stay and be his hostage for a second."
And then she was gone into her building and Wyatt could suddenly breathe again, and the big Rastafarian taxi driver was chuckling at him in the rearview.
"Thought she was ditching you, huh, my friend?" he said.
And Wyatt nodded slightly. "You don't know the half of it," he agreed.
The driver nodded at him. "Thought maybe you two had a fight," he continued. "But she seems kind of tiny to be the one made such a mess of you."
Wyatt glanced down at himself. "Long story," he said, just as Lucy reappeared on the sidewalk, a fistful of bills in her hand, which she passed to the driver before turning to Wyatt.
"You coming?"
Wyatt nodded, but didn't move.
"You coming today?" Lucy added.
Wyatt nodded again.
"You coming up the stairs in the taxi?"
Wyatt swallowed. "Uh. No. I. Uh. No."
He managed to get out of the car without tripping over his feet.
Which was something at least.
The taxi driver was laughing at him as he drove away.
And then he was standing in the road staring at Lucy.
Her grin faded a little, turning into something else.
And then she was holding out her hand to him and he took it without thinking anything else until she led him up to her apartment and he was standing in her living room and he realized he'd never been here before.
Although to be fair, she'd only been living here since she found out about her mom being Rittenhouse.
"Lucy, maybe you should think about this—" he started to repeat, glancing behind him into the hallway as if he half expected Flynn or Emma or Karl to have followed them here.
He had his focus returned to Lucy by her fingers on his cheek angling his face back in her direction.
"Don't need to think about it," she said shortly, and while Wyatt wasn't entirely sure that was true, he was entirely sure Lucy needed to believe it was true.
"But if this is a way to get Amy back, then—" he began to protest, before Lucy's fingers were suddenly at the back of his neck and she was pulling him closer to her.
"Shut up and kiss me again," she ordered, sounding so completely opposite to the way she'd sounded when she'd been begging Flynn not to make her choose that it made Wyatt's head spin. Or maybe that was just her proximity. "Before I change my mind," she added with a soft smile.
He grinned lopsidedly at her, kicking the door closed before entwining his fingers in her hair and muttering, "Yes, ma'am," obligingly.
The End