"There's one less box of tea in Boston Harbor, but otherwise the party went more or less the same as it should have." Had Lucy not been so focused on exiting the Lifeboat without face-planting (her stolen skirts were no joke), she might have noticed how the entire room stilled. Wyatt noticed, though, as he peered around her, waiting for her to clear the hatch.

"What's wrong? They didn't already jump again, did they? Damn nuclear battery. Hey, Rufus, why don't we have a nuclear battery?" Wyatt and Rufus snarked back and forth a bit about stealing nukes and treason as Lucy finally managed her way down the steps. She stopped in front of Flynn and presented him with her box (okay, not an entire box, those things were big) of tea straight from the Boston Tea Party. Her joking smile faded as she took in his expression.

"Why do you look like you've seen a ghost?" She looked around the room, taking in Agent Christopher's, Mason's, Jessica's, and Jiya's expressions in turn. "Oh." Maybe they had seen a ghost. "Am… Am I not alive this time?" She had no idea how that worked. Sure, they'd at points changed things drastically enough that people never existed (Amy), or hadn't died (Jess), but was that the same as if she came into a timestream where she'd existed at one point but didn't any longer? How did that even work? Whatever they (or Rittenhouse) did in Boston must have eventually led to her death here, but she was just coming from 1773 now, so… There's the migraine she was expecting, accompanied by a mild panic attack that she might drop dead or fade away at any moment.

Flynn must have had the same worry, because he pulled her into his arms so tightly that she wasn't altogether sure she'd be breathing for much longer. (And wasn't that new in and of itself?) "Flynn," she mumbled into his chest, "what happened?" Flynn pulled away from her. Well, he loosened his grip enough that they could look at each other, anyway. He didn't seem to be able to speak, just moved his gaze over her face over and over again, as if as soon as he looked away she'd be gone, so he needed to memorize every inch right then. For all that he'd always been gentler (well, less gruff) with her than anyone else on the team, he'd never looked so… vulnerable.

Wyatt made his way to Jess. "Seriously, what's going on?" Jess was staring open-mouthed at Lucy, as well. The two women had gotten over the initial awkwardness that apparently goes hand-in-hand with a woman meeting her husband's girlfriend from while she was dead (or her boyfriend's no-longer-dead wife), and were maybe on their way to being actual friends before they'd jumped, but Jess was looking at her like her best friend had just risen from the dead.

Rufus, for his part, checked in briefly with Jiya and then delved right into the digital history archives to get some answers. "Lucy… You died."

"Yeah, I'm picking up on that. When? What happened?"

"Um… You got away when your mom tried to abduct you, and you warned us before the bombs went off at Mason Industries, so we were able to back up the systems and get people out, but we still lost the building… We were… working with Flynn already? I guess he never got arrested... There were a few jumps before World War I, uh… Jess came back after one of those and Wyatt took some time off…" Rufus shook his head to clear it, as if he could just slide the discrepancies into place. Major changes in history were not nearly so weird as changes in recent personal events, as it turned out.

"Flynn was with us on the battlefront and in Darlington, but otherwise those went pretty much the same… Someone shot you while we were getting back into the Lifeboat after Citizen Kane. Stomach wound, tore through a couple of organs and nicked an artery. You bled out before we even jumped back."

"That doesn't make any sense. It would have to have been because of something we did in 1773. We. How can I be here if I died because of something I did?" She was finally able to tear her gaze away from Flynn, who was still looking at her like she had just saved him from drowning. It was kind of weird, in her opinion, but then so was having been dead. She could finally sympathize with Jessica's half of that drama. "Wouldn't I have… I don't know, faded, or something? Entering a timeline where I don't exist anymore?" Flynn's hands had made their way to her shoulders, and his grip tightened at that supposition. She looked back to his face and had to grab onto his wrists to keep herself steady. He had an expression of… if she had to pick only one word, terror would probably be the closest, but it was nowhere near sufficient. She ran her hand up his forearm as reassuringly as she could before prying his grip from her shoulder. "Hey, I think you and I need to talk," she told him softly, not letting go of his hand. He swallowed and jerked a nod, having yet to say a word since she'd arrived. "I'll be back in a little bit… Fill me in then?"

She didn't wait for Rufus' response before leading Flynn out of the control room, pulling him down a hallway into a small lounge. Well, as lounge-like as a rundown underground government facility can get. It had a couple of chairs, at any rate, and she gently pushed him down into one while she took the other. "Flynn," she started, and she couldn't help but notice how he tensed at his name. "What happened?"

"You heard Rufus. You died. You bled-" He hung his head in his hands. "You bled out. While I was holding you. I couldn't save you." He looked back up at her with red-rimmed eyes. "I didn't save you."

"Farther back." Lucy swallowed down every bit of compassion she had, because damned if there wasn't something she was missing here, and she wasn't going to get answers quickly by being gentle. And she needed answers; Flynn didn't look at her like that. Like this. Not before she went to 1773, anyway. He swallowed again.

"How far back?"

"You weren't arrested?"

He shook his head.

"But you gave me the journal?"

A nod.

She hesitated, because she wasn't sure why they'd still be chasing Rittenhouse around time if he'd given up the mothership like he'd said he would. "Were you able to save them?"

A small pause, a small smile, and then a faint "yes."

"But the mothership…" She sighed. "Emma."

Another nod. "We jumped back, killed the man that gave the order before he knew much more than the name Rittenhouse. I'm still not sure why she went along with that. He must not have been too important to them. When we got back, Lorena and Iris were alive. So I did what I said I'd do. Do you remember?" His eyes searched hers, begging her to have that memory still, to remember that he said he'd walk away. She nodded and he continued. "Emma took the mothership while I was checking on them. That was right around when the bombs at Mason Industries would have gone off, I think." He looked down. "I found you, to tell you, and you nearly ripped my face off because you thought I'd betrayed you." He gave a hoarse laugh. "Once we cleared up that… misunderstanding… we started working together." What little amusement his face held disappeared altogether. "I'm sure Rufus can fill you in on our missions."

"There was more than that, though? Between you and… her?" It didn't feel right to say between you and me. That was, after all, a different Lucy. One who hadn't inadvertently gotten Flynn arrested or been abducted by her own mother. This time there was such a long pause that she didn't think he was going to answer until he finally flicked his eyes up to hers.

"A month and half after our first mission, we jumped back to a French battlefront and ran into your mother." Lucy nodded. She remembered her one trip with her mother just fine. "You were- They grabbed you. They were going to bring you with them on the mothership. We'd already grabbed a few grenades, were going to destroy the mothership, or steal it and destroy the Lifeboat. When they got you onboard you tried to blow it, but you got a dud." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Lucy, you were going to die to take them out." She nodded again. She had certainly planned on doing the same thing during her timeline. He shook his head at her, as though she didn't understand. "No, you were going to-" his hands shot up and he gently framed her face before she could really even blink. "You were going to die." Oh. Maybe she hadn't quite understood. He rubbed his thumb across her cheek a few times before dropping his hands again. "Emma threw you out of the mothership when she realized what you were trying to do. She would have killed you then, but your mother argued. She hadn't quite given in when were finally able to get to you. They got away with Keynes." He chuckled humorlessly. "I yelled at you all the way back to the Lifeboat and through the jump back here. I tried to keep going once we were back, but I must have said more than I meant to… I think at first you kissed me just to shut me up. It was effective."

Flynn let out what she assumed was a string of expletives in Croatian and stood up. "It was weeks after that. Just weeks. Not even a full month that we had together before you-" she heard sobs creeping into his voice before he cut himself off. That was more than a we were casually sleeping together for a few weeks kind of sob.

"What were we to each other, Garcia?" she asked softly. She wasn't even sure if she used his first name purposefully. Given that it surprised her a little bit, probably not.

He composed himself as best he could before looking at her. "I loved you. You… felt for me. I don't know how deeply."

They regarded each other in silence for what was probably only minutes.

"We didn't-" Lucy couldn't think of any good phrasing for it. "It wasn't like that for me."

There was that dark chuckle again. "So I gathered. I heard something about me being arrested?"

Lucy braced herself, not particularly wanting to rehash those first six weeks or so that were different. "When I brought you that flash drive, when you gave me the journal, I didn't know that Agent Christopher was following me. They arrested you before you could save your family. You blamed me. I didn't even think to check for a tail, so maybe you were right." She'd only recently come to that conclusion. Up until a month before, she hadn't been able to understand why Flynn would ever have blamed her at all, since Agent Christopher had admitted they'd been following her. "I didn't escape when my mom abducted me. Rittenhouse had me captive for six weeks, until Wyatt and Rufus found me on that battlefront. I didn't know they were there until Wyatt caught me stealing grenades. I was going to blow up the lifeboat with my mother and me in it, if that's what it took." Flynn flinched at that. Apparently, he really didn't like thinking about her dying. Given that he'd actually seen her die, she supposed that was understandable. She continued laying out her timeline as matter-of-factly as possible. "They'd only just gotten the Lifeboat up and running, since they didn't have more than a few seconds of warning on the bombs, so we didn't know about any of their earlier jumps until shortly before Darlington. You gave us intel for Darlington, and then Citizen Kane. When we were back in Hollywood, the prison you were in wasn't in use yet. We hid a package behind a brick in what would be your cell, and you used it in the present to break out. Jess came back after that; Rittenhouse made a trip specifically to prevent her death; we never found out why. Your first mission with me and Rufus was to the Salem witch trials. My mom tried to have me and Ben Franklin's mother hanged. You stopped it…" Flynn's looked so sad by this point that she made sure to emphasize the next few words. "You saved me… We turned the Salem Witch Trials into the Salem Witch Revolts. You've been a fairly regular part of missions since then… That was nearly six months ago for me."

If the progression of time was the same, that meant she had been dead in his timeline for about six months. She'd been dead in his timeline the entire time he'd been a part of their team in hers.

"And you and I-" he cut himself off, obviously already knowing the answer to that wasn't what he'd want to hear.

"We're friends, sort of." Lucy picked at a thread on her dress. She wasn't sure how to tell him that they hadn't even been much more than trusted teammates until maybe two months ago, when they'd gotten stuck for a week in 1952, so she decided it was irrelevant unless he asked.

"You and Wyatt?" Her eyes shot up to him. He was leaning against the wall for support, not even pretending it was a part of his usual swagger, with his eyes closed, obviously dreading the answer.

"No." His eyes opened at that. "We might have been, but he's been with Jessica since we found out she didn't die." He nodded.

"It was the same here, I think." Lucy recognized his expression, that sad I know I was your second choice that she'd worn herself a time or two (mostly in high school on the rare occasion she was invited to a dance). It was odd to see it on the overly confident, frequently arrogant, Garcia Flynn. She got up and closed the short distance between them slowly.

"Hey-" she made sure he was looking at her. "Hey, I don't know how different your Lucy was from me, but if we were even a little alike… I don't settle for anyone just to be with someone. She wouldn't have been with you just because she couldn't be with Wyatt. You know that, right?" He maintained eye contact with her, which she considered progress, but he didn't reply. "Please tell me you at least know that much." He regarded her in silence for a moment before giving her a short nod, presumably after deciding she was sincere.

She was devastated for him, that he'd never known how his Lucy had felt about him. He so obviously loved her, she'd be able to tell that even if he hadn't said as much, but this alternate her hadn't been able to say the same. That didn't necessarily mean that she didn't love him; Lucy was all too aware that she wouldn't have been able to vocalize that feeling even if it was there. She wasn't in the best place emotionally since losing Amy, and it had only gotten worse after learning her mother was Rittenhouse. For all she knew, his Lucy had been head over heels for him. It about killed her that she couldn't tell him exactly what he had meant to alternate-Lucy. AlternaLucy? Lucernate? She shook her head to clear it. Referring to herself in the third person, even a different self, was just confusing her.

After another moment of looking at each other, she spoke softly. "I should get back out there... Learn what else is different…" She tried to set a hand on his arm, but he flinched away. "Are you coming?" Flynn cleared his throat.

"I'll be there in a minute."

Lucy let Rufus and Jiya get her up to speed in the control room. Aside from her death and Wyatt reuniting with Jess a bit earlier, everything else seemed to have gone similarly. The missions were more or less the same, just with Flynn acting as their historian. He was even more knowledgeable about the past than she'd noticed in her timeline, apparently.

The man in question made his way back to them maybe ten minutes after she'd left him to his thoughts. Watching him try to hide the longing in his eyes, she knew it would probably be a long time, if ever, before he could look at her without first seeing the Lucy he'd loved. She also knew she hoped it was sooner, rather than later, because she was just realizing that, not only had his Lucy probably loved him too, but she'd been headed the same way ever since he spent their entire last day in 1952 trying to make her laugh instead of worry after he'd been shot.

Shit, I'm going to fall for him, aren't I?

A/N: I may continue this, but I'm marking it complete for now (given my track record with actually finishing a multi-chapter).