So, Twitter listened to me rant about how I don't do chaptered work but I had this fic I've been sitting on since October of last year. So, I'm going full Eggplant (come find me on twitter pretty_dire to find out what that means) and posting. This fic is officially six months old and written before we even knew S2 was airing, but a lot of love and care went into it so...I hope it sees some light of day and someone enjoys it for what it is.
Prologue
Her spine fuses with her seat, forcing her into some breathless choking fit, as the compression and force of their turbulent ricochet through time divests her lungs of oxygen.
She remembers this feeling.
The barrage of panic and disorientation hits as fast as the memory, and suddenly she's drowning in her car, clawing frantically at a jammed buckle in some visceral effort to reach the air pocket that's quickly dissipating with every sinking second. The groaning submerging of her car is the clang of C4'd metal, murky river water the leaden pressure against her sternum, and it all ignites her most guttural fear.
They might die today.
She can't see, blinded by the fear of malfunctioning CPU lights she's clamped her eyes shut, tethered to her team only by the ironclad grip of her fingers around theirs. Their sweat-slickened palms are married in the last vestiges of hope and it's the one thing that separates her from the solitary nature of her last near-death experience.
Although, this may not be as miraculous as her last.
Her meter has been running on empty lately and the universe owes her very little.
With every shuddering revolution of their endless loop, she feels her grip slip. The Lifeboat isn't going to make it. The atmosphere inside the machine is burning quickly, the friction against the unnavigable time loop building to such a crescendo that they'll surely combust. One in a billion to impossible. Their protocol message was probably buried under a ten storey parking lot in Pittsburgh and Jiya would be too late.
Some small, terrified part of her wonders if staying in 1754 and succumbing to smallpox, or dying in childbirth after being captured and pawned off to a French soldier would have been preferable as she feels a subduing throb blanket her brain, but she doesn't have the time to spend on that regret as the Lifeboat churns into a nauseating spin.
She tries to hold on but Rufus' hand slips from hers and there's an instinct to scream, but she's imprisoned by the pressure and the ribbed corseting caging her chest, and nothing fills the cabin but the shuddering racket of the Lifeboat being battered by intangible forces. It's a kaleidoscopic blur of technological failure and she uses every ounce of energy she has to grab onto Wyatt with two hands. She's straining, but she'll be damned if she's slipping again; she trusts he'll never let her go.
Lucy knows it hasn't worked.
They should have been home by now, stumbling from the hatch into a heap on the floor, kissing the concrete in that grateful buoyancy they felt after surviving The Alamo. Fourteen seconds, that's what Rufus had told her. It had never taken a pilot longer than fourteen seconds to navigate the Lifeboat or the Mothership home.
Until today.
Wyatt's fingers tighten in hers and for one, infinitesimal moment she forgets that they're spiralling into an inevitable combustion. In a hurricane of blaring alarms, self-imposed darkness and the smell of burning rubber, her skin against his is the only comfort that prevents her from giving into the druggy waves of unconsciousness.
"-ucy"
It's a miracle she hears him at all over the jarring din of pelted metal.
She commits to the bravest act in her lifetime, and against all instinct, opens her eyes, because she'd be an absolute liar if she couldn't admit that she would rather go down swinging with Wyatt, rather than the darkness.
She wants to tell him that she doesn't want to die.
There's a moment where it all drowns out, the metallic crushing, the alarms, the heat - it's all slow-motion now, as though a second has become a minute and time doesn't function the way it has in her thirty-two years. She's heard that in moments of death the adrenal release forces the brain into a state of reminiscence, that your life flashes before your eyes in blinding succession. She'd been pulled from the river too soon for that, or too late depending on what day you asked her, but in the last few moments as she holds Wyatt's gaze the images begin to flutter.
Amy. Her mother. Henry Wallace. Sandcastles. Churchill the dog. Birthdays. Christmas. Prom. College. Benny & The Band. The Crash. Henry's death. Carolyn and cancer. Fighting for tenure. Snickers bars. Lincoln. Rufus. Ian Flemming. Wyatt. Yes, Ma'am.
She grits her teeth as the compression threatens to crush her, feeling utterly spent. The Lifeboat can't take many more revolutions without being anchored and they're in their final moments. She hopes they burn bright, brighter than the sun so someone, somewhere can awe in their final attempt to save humanity. 1754. 2016. She doesn't care who.
Wyatt's fingers unfurl in hers as they fight the impending unconsciousness. She feels a warm trickle stemming from her nose and catches two rubious trails pouring from Wyatt's before the darkness returns. Now, everything is silent. All she wants to do is just fall asleep.
Yes, ma'am. Bonnie & Clyde. Possibilities. Chocodiles. James Bond marathons. Rings. Christmases. Birthdays. White lace dress. Little toes.
She dreams.