Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change."
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
They had come across some pretty ugly moments in history. The French and Indian War, the Alamo, the Civil War, and they were all hell, but, to her, it was still history, something beautiful even in the horror of it all, but 1950s Korea is something she would never have touched with a ten foot pole if she had had a choice. At least in every other war they'd found themselves in, there were front lines to be wary of, and a lack of technological advances that made their chances of survival tip a little more in their favor. But this is a modern war. There are no longer clean cut front lines, attacks come from anywhere at anytime, and they all have to hope and pray that this abandoned church wouldn't find itself in ruins by the time morning comes.
Rufus and Jiya had huddled together in a pew near the back of the church, and she finds her own sanctuary in front of the communion table while Wyatt sits with his back to the stone wall right beside the door. His head is bowed forward, but she knows he's awake; his jaw is clenched, his fist shoved into his pockets, yet there's the visible outline of gun in his right fist.
He won't sleep tonight.
He hardly ever slept on missions before they lost Rufus, always feeling the responsibility to protect the two civilians entrusted to him, but it's been worse since that fateful night in 1888. It isn't just during missions that he doesn't sleep. She's stumbled upon him more times than one in the middle of the night in the bunker, watching a muted television, pushing himself through rounds of exercises, or, on the worst nights, just sitting, staring into an abyss known to no one but him, a vacant vessel of a man who felt he had only reason to press forward and feared to imagine what would be left for him once his mission was completed.
There was a time, God, it seems like a lifetime ago, where she would've sat beside him, put her hand on top of his, and joined him in the void. Not speaking a word, just offering him companionship in the infinite space of misery. God knows they both could have used it. But whatever soft voice beckoned her to reach out to him was drowned out of the roar of the agony, the heartache of being cast aside, so loud that she had found herself running back to her room and covering her ears to block out the phantom noise, begging to be free of the demons. Begging to be free of them.
From the moment those two horseman of the apocalypse stepped out of their Lifeboat, they'd cursed her with a relentless image of what would be. In the few hours they had occupied a paradox they had all deemed impossible, it became painfully clear, at least to her, that there was no future for her and Wyatt. The air between them crackled with electric tension, with unresolved hostility. Five years of anger and regret that they had either failed to reconcile or had just ignored it completely. Maybe her mind had exaggerated it, but it seemed like they physically recoiled from each other anytime their proximity inched too close.
The thought of becoming that is what pushes her away from him.
But tonight apparently it's what pushes him to her.
"I don't know if you're aware of this, but you've been staring at me for almost an hour." There's little emotion behind his voice as he sits down beside her. She never realized she was being so obvious. "So if I'm going to be the object of your fascination tonight, care to share what's on your mind?"
She glances across to him, unsure of where the casual manner of his approach comes from, but he's offering her companionship in the misery, something she's been too much of a coward herself to give.
"I keep seeing them, Wyatt."
"Seeing who?"
"Them." She emphasizes, hoping to not have to say it aloud. "Us."
"Oh," he huffs although she's surprised to hear a chuckle on the back end of his sentiment. "You mean the ghosts of Christmas Yet to Come?" She shakes her head in confusion.
"The what?" She laughs and it feels so foreign yet so instinctual, laughing with him.
"The Ghosts of Christmas Yet to Come," he reiterates. "The cautionary tale, the 'dead end' sign, the big, bright, flashing, neon sign that screams at you 'for the love of God turn around before it's too late." With each ridiculous analogy his words become more and more dramatic. "Is that who you're talking about?"
"Yeah," she responds, casting her eyes away from his, her back falling against the cross on the table. "That's them."
"I figured," he sighs, mimicking her position. "I think about them a lot too."
"As ghosts?"
"I mean not exactly," he chuckles. "I know they were very real, a very plausible possibility."
"I saw no possibilities there," she murmurs.
"Not all possibilities are good ones, Lucy." The words bite. She's not sure if this is him implying the possibilities they so briefly humored, or if it's just his path of logic, but, regardless, their truth stands.
"I don't think there are any good ones anymore." She raises the bet on pessimism
"You're wrong."
He'd challenged her a lot over the years, questioning the moral integrity of preserving even the worst history had to offer, questioning her reasoning, questioning her motivations, questioning her methods, questioning her loyalty even, but never had the words 'you're wrong' fallen from his lips.
"What?"
He shifts his body until he's facing her more directly.
"You're wrong, Lucy."
Her gaze shifts to his out of the corner of her eye, and the piercing nature of his cobalt eyes catches her, preventing her from looking away.
"They're the cautionary tale," he reiterates. "Very real, yes, but not inevitable."
"Wyatt, they're us," she reminds him hopelessly. "That Lucy, she wrote the journal, she lived the same life I have. And that Wyatt, he chose Jessica, he chose her over everything." Over me. "And I don't need to go through all the apologies again, Wyatt; I get it. I understand why. But they couldn't even look at each other, they still had the anger of everything we've been through and God knows what else between them. And I just… with how I feel right now…" She shakes her head. "I don't see how anything could be different." His gaze instantly softens, and the corner his mouth lift just a little.
"Can I tell you what I saw?" He asks, and she shrugs, knowing there's probably no stopping him, but also desperately clinging to the hope that maybe he can make sense of all of this. "What I saw was two people who longed for each other far more than anyone should have to. Two people who let their anger and their pride and their fear of losing anything else get in the way of having everything they really want." She scoffs at that.
"Better turn to stone than risk getting stabbed in the back again, right?"
He huffs out a laugh of disbelief. He wants to wonder what led her to such a hopeless conclusion, but he knows.
"Did I ever tell you I was sorry, Lucy? For leaving when Jessica texted me? For not trusting you, my partner, when you told me something was off? For this—" His thumb brushes the cut on her lip and she can't stop herself from leaning into the touch. "For not dropping everything and running back to you when you called me? Because I bet that jackass didn't." When she hadn't pulled away from his touch, his hand moved to cradle her jaw. "He didn't deserve you. He, I, let everything get in the way of what I really wanted, but none of it is an excuse. I hurt you, Lucy. I wish to God I could take it all back. But it's just our luck that this is the one instance where we can't turn back the clock." That pulled a laugh out of her. Any horrible bad joke about their insane life as time travelers seemed to do that.
"I mean I'm not blameless—"
"No, no, Lucy, you are blameless in this," He interrupts, not able to listen for a second of her taking any responsibility for the shit show he'd put them in. "All of this." He gestures around them. "All of it, it's on me, but for once in my life I don't plan to let the responsibility of all that I screwed up screw me up. I've been there and I've seen where it leads. It leads to me growing a horrible beard and losing the love of my life to my own inability to actually learn from my mistakes. I've spent my life thinking that I forge chains with the sins I commit, and carrying them around with me… it's how I believed I could atone for them. But not anymore." He sees the way her eyes widen when he calls her the love of his life, but he said it, he meant it, and he's sure as hell not taking it back.
"Them, Rambo and Laura Croft, they're our cautionary tale because I don't plan on fucking up so badly that I lose you completely."
She has no clue what to say to him. Now, just like so many times before, he's taken her worst fears, and made them so small and so simple that she feels like she could crush them beneath her shoe. But then she remembers that there is something she wants him to know. Something they have to clear before anything can truly be forgiven.
"I am angry."
She looks back up to him, expecting him to look shocked or confused or anything other than amused.
"Let me have it, then, babydoll. The least I deserve is a good tongue lashing." He's giving her an open door to release every moment that she's used as justification to shut him out completely.
And she sure as hell is going to take it.
"I can't believe you just left when she texted you," she begins, but surprisingly she can't find it in herself to speak out of anger. Just disbelief and, honestly, some amusement of her own at the pure absurdity of it all. "Like we go from flirting in the hallway to you just bolting? Who does that?" And much to her relief there's as much humor on his face as she feels bubbling within her.
"I honestly can't believe it either." He relates. "I literally had everything I'd wanted in front of me in you, and just like that I was back to who I was before I met you. But, please, continue."
"You leave me alone to go on a mission with Flynn? Flynn? Let me just remind you that that was the first mission I got a direct injury, and that's not a coincidence. And then you actually bring her into the bunker? Our government secret bunker, you decided that that was the best place to bring your suspiciously undead ex-wife? Like c'mon, Delta Force." They're both trying to be quiet, not wanting to wake Rufus and Jiya or bring any unnecessary attention to themselves, but they're both near bursting at the seams.
She thought she had found catharsis in her nights spent crying and drinking, but this, laughing at the ridiculous, practically Shakespearean, drama they had been thrown into is like being bathed in sunlight after years in the darkness.
"I honestly have no idea what I was thinking," he tells her, every laugh that escapes his lips with a tail of steam. "It was so stupid."
"So stupid," she emphasizes. "And what was with her never putting on a freaking jacket? It was always freezing in the bunker and she was dressed like she was ready for the beach. It always just pissed me off.
"And then the mess with JFK? You didn't trust my judgement when I told you to go to the hospital. And then she manipulated me into telling her to stay. And then all that crap you pulled in 1919. You don't get to run off with her and then get mad at me for being friends with Flynn or tell me you won't let me get hurt…" It doesn't occur to her that tears had been building up in her eyes until one falls, the cold air around them making it feel like a glacier cutting through the skin of her cheek. But she's not sad, not really, it's the feeling of resolution, of making peace with her past, and of Wyatt, his hand suddenly back on her face, wiping at her tears. "You made it so hard to get past the heartache. You would make me so unbelievably angry with the jealousy and the rashness, and then you'd turn around and look at me like I was… like I was just everything to you, and I couldn't…" She moves away from his touch, once again seeking distance from the honesty she could no longer mask.
"I was so lost," he whispers, his voice raspy from the cold. "Just as lost then as I was before that day you walked in to Mason Industries. She came back into my life and I turned back into that same broken man. My actions were mine, and I'll gladly bear the blame for them, but I've seen who I am without you, and I never want to become that again." Her forehead falls against his, and the steam of their breath mingles.
"Some atonement I need, huh?" He sighs.
"Well I can't think of a better place than in a church in front of a communion table," she quips, letting her hand reach up for the lapel of his jacket.
"Eh, God and I made our peace with each other while I was in the Army," he chuckles. "It's someone else I've done wrong that I need to ask for forgiveness from." He pulls back abruptly, framing her face in the warmth of his palms.
"Lucy," he barely breathes. "Can you forgive me?"
Neither of them have ever been fans of vulnerability. The worst things she knows of his past are things she only heard as an outsider. She was hard pressed to tell him about her car accident, and she's still never revealed to him the horror Rittenhouse put her through. In their darkest moments, it felt best to isolate, to commune alone with the darkness because the moment you invite someone else in, someone who cares about you, someone who loves you, they'll challenge you to fight it.
Resignation is the armor of those with too much to ever conqueror, if she wanted to view it romantically. But realistically, she knows it's nothing more than an excuse. Resignation is weakness, a coward's way out.
And, so here he is, every piece of armor, every brick around his heart, removed, bared open for her. Opening yourself to love is one thing, but opening yourself to forgiveness… how do you go on if it's not given? How do you ever heal?
He never got to ask Jessica, his Jessica, or the men he feels like he failed in Syria, or every life they haven't been able to save since they started this mess, for forgiveness. But she's still here, she's the only one who can offer that tangible confirmation of vindication. Maybe it should feel difficult to give it away, to forget every way he shattered her heart… but this is the lightest she's felt since that morning before he left, and it's all because of him, because he was the one to say 'no more,' no more ignoring, no more avoiding, no more denying the greatest thing they have to hold on to.
'Yes' feels like a weak response to such a question, so she does what Lucy Preston does best, launching herself into his arms, eliminating every distance that's kept them apart for so long,
"I won't let us be them," she promises. "I can't. I can't lose you like that." His arms wind around her back, pulling her even closer.
"You haven't," he tells her with his lips pressed against the shell of her ear. "You never will."
She untangles herself from his embrace just enough so they're face to face, the tips of their noses brushing. He took the first leap tonight; now it's her turn.
Their lips meet in a far more cautious way than she had jumped at him earlier, so soft and still that she can feel the roughness of his cold chapped skin and the way it matches her own, but this brings a heat back into her blood, a remembrance of a warmer night so long ago. The glamour and near innocence of their romantic banter so far gone, leaving only two people so beaten and bruised that they know no other future than with each other.
That thought, the thought a life with him, fills her with courage, surging her forward, deeper into him; her tongue teasing at his cracked lips until he opens up to her although it doesn't take long. She's spiked with adrenaline as his tongue slides across hers, his hand grabbing at her waist like she's his lifeline, and maybe at this point that's exactly what she is. He sure as hell is hers.
"Too bad there's not a guest house for us to run off to this time," she whispers as her lips ghost across his jaw. A laugh rumbles deep in his chest, one she can feel reverberating throughout her body.
"You think I'm that easy, Preston?" A blush fans across her face at his words and she quickly finds her nose buried in the crook of his neck. "I mean don't get me wrong, I love the boldness, but this is all I need tonight." He guides her face back to his for another long drag of his lips across hers, but a thought dawns on her as she draws back.
"A Christmas Carol, Wyatt?"
"Hmm?" He hums as he leans back in, but she lightly pushes him back.
"You compared all of this to A Christmas Carol?" She laughs. "That's a level of cheesiness, and, honestly, literary prowess that I didn't expect from you."
"You insult a man, Luce," he laughs, feigning offense. "You have no idea the level of cheesiness I can bring to the table. And as far as the Christmas Carol thing goes, I'm very familiar with the story. A man who shuts out anyone who tries to give the one thing he truly wants, and it takes a kick in the pants from some ghosts to make him realize it and go after it."
She can't help but fall back into him after that, pouring out every emotion she'd never been able to say aloud, every ounce of lo—her lips break away from his with a gasp. The realization of it sucking the breath from her lungs.
"Lucy?" He asks cautiously. "What's wrong?"
"I love you."
She's certain he knows it; she didn't do much to hide it, but the words have sat at the back of her throat since Hollywood, threatening to drown her if she didn't release them.
"You're not the only one who should've said it a long time ago," she admits, pinching her eyes shut as a couple more tears fall. "I should've—"
"Hey, hey," he soothes, waiting for her eyes to meet his again before continuing. "You don't owe me an explanation, Lucy. I wouldn't have put it past you to turn me away after all the shit I put you through, but I meant it when I said it then, and I mean it now; I love you, Lucy. And I know now more than ever that it's only you."
She laughs in relief even while some lingering tears continue to spill over.
"So what do we do now?" She poses. "Promise to honor Christmas and keep it all the year?"
"I think we've had worse ideas," he grins, in a way she hasn't seen since Jessica came back into their lives. "But as far as tonight goes, I think sleep is what we should do now. We have a country to save tomorrow."
As if one cue, a yawn pulls at her mouth, and she nods in agreement.
"Sleep sounds good."
Her head nestles into the dip of his shoulder, knowing it's probably the most comfortable spot she'll be able to find tonight. He shifts beside her, and for a moment she fears he's moving back to his guarding position by the door, but instead his arm slips underneath hers to lace their hands together.
"I know you're not going to sleep," she whispers, squeezing onto his hand. "You never do." His lips fall onto the crown on her head for a moment.
"I can't when I have someone to protect." She turns her head up to find his lips one more time, the solid, warm contact fanning the flame in her heart, before succumbing to her exhaustion.
They cling to each other for warmth and the reassurance that this isn't a dream, that they've set themselves on a new course, one that leads them far from the nightmare they'd seemed fated to live. The past, the present, the future, it's all to them, a clean slate, an open road, a second chance.
"I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!"
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
I've just finished with the most insane semester of my life, so hopefully I'll be posting more stuff ESPECIALLY SINCE THERE'S LESS THAN TWO WEEKS UNTIL THE MOVIE.
MERRY TIMELESS CHRISTMAS, YALL
Drop a review in that lil' box if you're feelin' the Christmas love