Summary: Lucy is having a good day. She loves her job at Stanford University, she loves her fiance Noah, she loves her sister Amy and and she loves her mom. But she can't shake the feeling she's forgetting something... Oneshot, alternate timeline weirdness.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,400
Spoilers: Vague spoilers for Timeless season 1.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Kripke owns my soul.
A/N: Inspired by Kripke's revelation that Lucy shares a birthday with Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore (from Supernatural) and Mrs. Kripke.
CTRL-ALT-LUCY
"Sometimes I wish I never met you!" Lucy yelled, storming out of the Lifeboat so abruptly she almost tripped over her numerous petticoats as she navigated the narrow doorway.
Wyatt would usually have helped her.
But not today.
"Yeah, well," he yelled right on back, "Me too!"
Rufus sighed, finished powering down the time machine and turned to follow his teammates out of the Lifeboat.
When Wyatt finished stomping down the metal gangway, he made a point of storming off in the opposite direction to the one Lucy had taken, and Rufus briefly wondered what would happen when they realized they were both headed for the wardrobe dock.
He sighed again, stepped out onto the gangway and shrugged at Jiya as she turned a quizzical gaze in his direction.
"What's tangling their tractor beams?" she asked, frowning.
He shrugged. "If I recall correctly, Lucy called Wyatt a hot-headed idiot, and Wyatt called Lucy a bossy know-it-all in return," he explained.
Jiya frowned. "Oh," she said shortly. "That all?"
"Mm-hmm," Rufus confirmed, hitching up his britches for the six hundredth time today. "And you know who's gonna be stuck with them in a metal ball the size of your average phone booth for the next twenty years? Me, that's who. God, I hope Emma doesn't take the Mothership back out any time soon—"
A klaxon sounded behind them and Jiya glanced at the tablet she was clutching, before looking up at Rufus and smiling apologetically. "Guess what?"
Rufus shook his head. "Oh she had to hear me, didn't she?"
"What a beautiful day," Lucy murmured as she threw open the curtains and gazed out onto the sun-kissed roses in the garden.
The sky was painfully blue, not a cloud visible for miles, and Lucy got the feeling today was going to be a good day.
Sighing contentedly, she hitched her work bag onto her shoulder, picked up her purse and snagged her keys as she headed on out the front door, breathing in the early morning air that smelt of sunshine and summer.
Today was going to be a really good day.
Heading down the driveway to her car with a spring in her step, she felt suddenly lighter and more carefree than she remembered feeling in a long time.
Everything was going to be okay,
But she couldn't help feeling that she was forgetting something. Something important.
"Hey, beautiful! You forget something?"
A voice caught her attention from behind her, and she turned, laughing.
"Oops," she giggled, snagging Noah around the waist as he lowered his face towards her and kissed her gently.
He pulled away after a second, grinning at her. "Now there's that goodbye kiss I was waiting for!"
She melted briefly into his embrace, wishing she could stay there forever, but knowing she had to get to work; even if he was on graveyard shift at the hospital this week and could lounge around in the bathrobe he was currently barely covered by for most of the day.
"C'mon, just once," he cajoled her, squeezing her gently.
"No!" she told him, not exactly firmly. "I told you! I can't play hooky! I have a new class starting this morning!"
Noah sighed. "You know what all work and no play does?"
"Helps pay the mortgage?"
"Well, yeah, that too…"
Lucy disengaged herself from his arms and turned to get into her car. "Go save some lives, handsome!" she said, winking at him before lowering herself into the driver's seat and starting the engine.
She watched him waving at her in her rearview and briefly thought about how lucky she was to have a fiancé like him.
Life was good.
But still…
She couldn't shake that niggling feeling she was forgetting something.
Someone.
Something.
She glanced in the rearview again as she swung her car out onto the street, blinking as the guy standing on her driveway suddenly didn't look like Noah anymore.
She blinked again, adjusting the mirror.
And there was Noah. Just as he always was.
It was the early morning sunshine blinding her, creating an optical illusion, she thought, turning out onto the street and driving to the intersection as she fiddled with the radio.
Something jangly and summery came on, and even though she didn't recognize the song, she figured it was the sort of thing Amy would love. She'd tell her about it when she saw her later at Mom's house.
Pulling to a stop at the stop sign, she signaled to turn right even as she started to turn the wheel to make a left.
She stepped on the brake.
Why did she feel like she ought to be turning left? Her route to Stanford took her to the right, the same route she'd been driving to work for years.
But she ought to be turning left, she was almost certain of it.
She shrugged as she made the right turn she made every day, glancing over at a guy walking along the sidewalk who kind of...kind of looked like the guy she briefly thought she'd seen standing on her driveway.
It was Noah on the driveway, you idiot! she told herself.
The guy on the sidewalk was kind of similar-looking though, she mused, even as she followed his progress up the street through her side mirror. Slim, dark hair, good looking. A little shorter than Noah. Blue eyes.
She shrugged again, turning up the radio and putting the guy out of her mind.
Well almost.
She couldn't shake the feeling he looked familiar somehow.
She glanced again in the mirror, but he'd gone and she figured he must have turned up one of the side streets.
Except he hadn't passed any of the side streets and there were no houses or apartment buildings he could have gone into on that side of the road.
Good day but weird day, she mused, continuing her drive into work.
The new class went well, the students attentive and engaged, but all so terribly young they probably thought the Bay of Pigs incident was something to do with a protest at McDonald's.
Except one student.
She was slightly older, maybe in her early thirties, blonde hair tied back into a ponytail, pretty and petite.
She looked unaccountably sad, even when she treated Lucy to a bright smile as she headed towards her at the end of the lecture.
"That was so interesting," the girl said. "I just wanted to thank you for brightening up my day."
Lucy smiled back at her. "Oh, you're welcome, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Are you taking this class as part of a degree course, or…?"
The blonde smiled. "I know, I seem a little old to be a student," she said. "I'm—I'm trying to take my life in a new direction. See if I can change things."
Lucy nodded. "Learning something new is always a good place to start."
The girl twisted her hands in front of her, as if trying to decide whether to tell Lucy something. "I had—I lost someone," she said softly. "Four years ago now. It was—it's been...difficult. You know? Trying to let go. Move on. Explore other possibilities."
Lucy frowned. "I'm sorry," she said. "Loss and grief can be debilitating."
The girl nodded sadly. "Some days it's been hard just getting out of bed."
Lucy reached out and gently touched her shoulder. "Well I'm glad you're here," she said.
"I—I shouldn't burden you," she said. "My husband would—" She bit back the rest of the sentence, tears misting her eyes.
"You lost your husband?"
The girl nodded. "He died. It was my fault."
Lucy inclined her head slightly, suddenly aware of a prickling sense of déjà vu.
She was forgetting something.
Someone.
"I'm so sorry," she said.
"I shouldn't burden you, Professor…"
"Lucy. It's Lucy."
The girl smiled, taking a stuttering breath. "Jessica," she said. "Jessica Logan."
The campus coffee shop was bright and loud and full of students, and Lucy figured she and Jessica were probably the oldest people there.
She didn't know why, but she hadn't been able to just leave their conversation behind in the lecture theater, suggesting they go for coffee as neither of them had a class this period.
Jessica sat up very straight in the overstuffed armchair she was perched on, to the point where Lucy felt like she was slouching.
"So…" she began slowly. "Your husband. What makes you say his death was your fault?"
The girl sighed, once again beginning to twist her fingers in her lap. "It was stupid," she said. "He was on leave—he was a soldier—and we were out at this dive bar in San Diego one night. We—we ran into an old girlfriend of his. It was so stupid. I got kind of jealous because I thought he was flirting with her, and we had a big fight, and I stormed out of the bar. He—he followed me, but he'd had too much to drink, so he gave me the car keys and we got in the car and carried right on fighting. We were yelling at each other, and then he told me to stop the car, and he got right out by the side of the road, middle of the night, middle of nowhere. And I drove off. I just left him there."
Lucy swallowed, that weird sense of déjà vu once again prickling something at the back of her mind. "You left him?"
Jessica nodded. "I was just so angry at him, and I figured, y'know, he's a soldier. He can take care of himself. Took me twenty minutes to turn around and go back for him, but by then he was gone. And then he never came home that night. Or any night."
"That's not really your fault," Lucy said softly. "It was his decision to get out of the car." She gently placed her hand on top of Jessica's. "I'm sure Wyatt wouldn't blame you."
Jessica inclined her head slightly, frowning. "How did you know his name was Wyatt?"
Lucy blinked.
How the hell did she know his name was Wyatt?
"You—you must have told me," she stammered.
Jessica shook her head, glancing around herself nervously. "What is this? Did someone send you?"
Lucy shook her head. "It's—I don't know," she said honestly. "Do you—do you have a picture of him? Wyatt?"
Jessica paused for a long moment, before reaching into her purse and pulling out her wallet, carefully sliding a folded photograph out and passing it to Lucy.
It was old and worn, looked like it had been held and gazed at a lot, and Lucy was pretty sure she already knew what Jessica's deceased husband was going to look like before she even unfolded the paper.
The guy from the driveway. From the sidewalk. Dark hair, good looking, blue eyes. In the picture, he had his arm around Jessica and they were both smiling.
Somehow, Lucy felt like she'd seen this picture before.
"Did they ever figure out what happened to him?" she asked quietly, still staring at the photograph distractedly.
She'd forgotten something.
Forgotten someone.
Jessica shook her head. "They found his body two weeks later. Looked like a robbery gone wrong. He'd been stabbed and his wallet was gone. All that was left was this picture. It looked like maybe he'd tried to fight them off but they got the better of him. I don't know."
"Did they catch who did it?"
"No. It's hard to let go when something like that happens. There's no closure. I'll never know what happened to him. If he was scared. If they hurt him before they killed him. If he suffered after or if he died right away."
Jessica brushed an errant tear from her cheek, and Lucy quickly handed her a tissue.
"I'm sorry," she said, and she meant it. "I can't even imagine. Losing someone like that. If something like that happened to my sister…. I'd never let go. And I'd go to the ends of the earth to find the person responsible."
Jessica smiled sadly. "And the thing is, I was so desperate for us to have kids together. I always wanted a little boy. And he would always say, 'Relax! We've got all the time in the world!'"
Lucy swallowed, her mind for some reason wandering to an open fire and ropes and battle cries and she blinked, shook her head, looked up and saw him standing there.
Wyatt.
Jessica's husband.
He was just standing there looking at her, two feet away from where Jessica was sitting.
"You forgot something," he said suddenly.
Jessica didn't even turn around. Didn't react in any way. Almost as if she didn't hear him.
"You forgot something," Wyatt repeated.
Lucy blinked at him. "What—what did I forget?" she asked hesitantly.
He smiled lopsidedly at her.
"You forgot me."
Lucy glanced at Jessica, who was still gazing down into her coffee, apparently oblivious to the conversation Lucy was having with her dead husband.
"I don't know you."
"Sure you do. I'm the hot-headed idiot, remember?"
Lucy frowned minutely. "And I'm the bossy know-it-all?"
Wyatt grinned at her. "Only if you say so, ma'am."
Something broke in her on his last word.
Something fundamental.
Something tethering her to a world where she loved her job and loved her fiancé and loved her sister and loved her mom.
Something broke.
And so did she.
"Lucy? Lucy! C'mon, Lucy, wake up for me! Please!"
"Noah?"
She was blinking up into a bright light, which for a second was eclipsed by a silhouette moving in front of it.
She was lying on her back and he was leaning over her, between her and the too-bright strip light, and he looked scared and worried and kinda rumpled and she wanted to reach out and touch his face, but when she tried he guttered and flickered like interference on an old TV and suddenly he wasn't there anymore.
"Lucy? You with me?"
"Noah?" She reached out again to touch him, blinking in the bright light, unable to make out his face.
"I think she's still hallucinating," an oddly familiar voice said. A voice that wasn't Noah's. "Lucy? Can you hear me?"
"I can't believe she's even awake," another voice said, also familiar. "Anthony was out of it for weeks."
"Lucy?" The silhouette leaning over her moved slightly, bending closer towards her, and as before, when she tried to touch his face she couldn't.
Once again the image in front of her eyes seemed to lose coherence, and for a second she saw Noah, and in the next second he was gone.
And she saw someone else.
The guy on her driveway. The guy on the sidewalk.
You're forgetting someone.
"Wyatt?"
Jessica's husband. The soldier who died.
He smiled at her, relief crinkling the corners of his eyes. "There she is. Knew you were too stubborn to stay unconscious for long."
He was holding her hand.
It was weird, for an hallucination he felt pretty damn solid.
"It...where…?"
"Hospital." Another figure drifted into her line of vision.
He had a kind smile.
What was his name again?
She blinked at him as he took her other hand.
He felt pretty real too.
"Rufus?" she murmured, and she wasn't sure how she knew his name any more than she knew Wyatt's.
"Live and direct," Rufus said with a grin. "How ya feeling?"
"I…" she murmured. "I don't…"
"It's okay," Wyatt said softly. "Don't talk if you can't. You've been through a lot."
She swallowed, and suddenly he was brushing her hair from off of her forehead, causing her to squeeze his other hand even tighter. "Not...dead…" she finally managed to slur.
Wyatt frowned. "No, thank God," he said. "You're fine. You're here."
She tried to shake her head but couldn't. "Not me. You."
Wyatt's frown deepened. "Huh?"
"She's going to be disorientated for a while," Rufus told him. "Anthony said he had some crazy dreams while he was unconscious."
"But that wasn't exactly the same thing, was it?" Wyatt asked. "What he went through?"
Rufus shrugged. "Don't know. We still don't really know what happened to him."
"What...what happened to me?" Lucy finally managed to ask, somehow moving her head slightly to get a better look at them.
Wyatt and Rufus exchanged a glance.
"Problem with the navigational system in the Lifeboat," Rufus explained. "It...we…"
"We somehow bounced into February 1983," Wyatt supplied. "Just for a second."
Lucy didn't understand, and Wyatt leaned in a little closer, reaffirming his grip on her hand.
"Where you already existed."
She blinked up at him, at the concern etched on his face.
"Wyatt and I were okay," Rufus added. "Neither of us were born then, but you—"
"Old lady of the team," Wyatt commented with a grin.
"Young people today," Lucy managed to croak. "No respect for their elders."
Wyatt sniggered. "My apologies, ma'am," he said with a lopsided grin.
"You were seizing," Rufus continued to explain. "We got you back as quickly as we could but…"
"How long was I out?"
"Two weeks," Wyatt said softly.
"Do you remember any of it?" Rufus asked.
Lucy shook her head minutely, causing what felt like her brain to rattle around in her skull. "No," she said, trying to concentrate. "I was...I remember being home. With Noah."
Wyatt's posture stiffened visibly, an involuntary spasm of his fingers tightening still further around her hand.
He glanced up at Rufus, who shrugged. "What else do you remember?"
"Going to work. At Stanford." She sighed. "Jessica was there."
Wyatt blinked at her. "Jessica? My Jessica?"
Lucy nodded. "She told me how you'd died. Said it was her fault."
Wyatt swallowed.
"Alternate timeline maybe?" Rufus mused. "Anthony said he saw all kinds of weird stuff."
"She was really pretty," Lucy murmured, even as her eyes slid shut and she couldn't see the expression on Wyatt's face anymore. "Jessica. I liked her."
"Me too," Wyatt agreed softly. She could feel his hand warm and real on her cheek.
"Why were we fighting?" she asked, opening her eyes again with a monumental effort of will.
"You remember that?"
"I called you an idiot."
Wyatt chuckled. "And I said you were bossy."
"I said I wished I never met you."
Wyatt didn't respond to that, just nodded slowly.
"I didn't mean it. I didn't like it. The world where I never met you."
"I don't think I would have liked it either."
"Personally?" Rufus put in. "If I never met either of you my life would be a helluva whole lot simpler. No time travel. No nearly getting killed every week."
"No Jiya," Wyatt pointed out. "You'd still be instant messaging her rather than talking to her."
Rufus inclined his head thoughtfully. "That's true, actually. Yeah, okay, I guess I'm kinda glad I met the both of you too."
"Don't make me laugh, it hurts," Lucy coughed. Then, "Why did I call you an idiot?"
Wyatt squinted at Rufus. "I shot a guy you said was gonna be a senator or a congressman or a judge or something. I don't remember exactly. Honestly? I kind of switch off when you start historyfying. You got real mad anyway. Said he was meant to do something important."
"Why did you shoot him?"
Again Wyatt glanced at Rufus. "He was Rittenhouse. And he had a gun. Pointed at your head."
"So you just shot him?"
"Yeah. I just shot him."
Lucy's eyes started to slide closed again. "To save me?"
"To save you."
"And I got mad at you."
"'We're supposed to preserve history you hot-headed idiot!'"
"'I was trying to save your bossy, know-it-all ass! And you're welcome!'"
Wyatt sniggered. "You don't remember what you said, but you remember what I said, huh?"
"Woman's prerogative," Lucy pointed out.
"And I guess I should respect my elders," Wyatt added. "Ma'am. That's why I call you 'ma'am', you know. In deference to the elderly."
She tried to swat him across the arm, but just ended up laying her hand on his bicep. "Well I think this old lady needs to take a nap," she said.
Wyatt chuckled. "Alright, we can take a hint."
"Wyatt?" Lucy tightened her fingers around his arm instinctively. "You're real, right? You're real and you'll still be real when I wake up?"
"I'm real," Wyatt assured her. "And so is Rufus. And so are you. And so is this." He kissed her gently on the cheek. "Go to sleep."
"You know that's not how the whole Sleeping Beauty thing works, right?" Rufus put in.
"You calling me Prince Charming?"
"No, I'm calling you the opposite of Prince Charming."
"What's the opposite of Prince Charming?"
"I dunno. Prince Valium?"
"That's so stupid…"
Lucy didn't hear anything else as she gradually drifted off to sleep.
The end