Garcia looked at the journal in his hands as the Lucy Preston of 2023 walked out of the bar with Wyatt and Rufus. He flipped through some of its pages before allowing himself to drop the charade of misery and a slow satisfied smile spread over his face. Two years older than the last time she saw him and she hadn't realized it. It wasn't difficult playing his part. He had truly grieved the loss of his wife and daughter once so all he had to do was call on those memories; even if their events were nonexistent in this timeline. He had saved them and set the stage of their "murder" well, before putting them into hiding.
Lorna hadn't been all that upset when he told her it would probably be a long time before they could see one another again. The last two years of living in his former self's shoes had been a challenge. One that he hadn't surmounted. His wife and daughter had noticed the massive change in him, Even though he was there for them everyday and did nearly everything he could think of to make them happy, there was a disconnect that he simply couldn't do anything about. His very demeanor, small actions and mannerisms made his daughter distrustful of him and Lorena felt as though she were living with a stranger. On top of that, he hadn't made love to his wife in those two years. He was too in love with Lucy and it would have felt like a complete betrayal to both women.
What he had to do to accomplish taking up his old life still haunted him. Even if it started by accident...
Looking in on the 2012 version of him and his family had been bitter sweet. He could feel the effects of being in his own timeline ravaging his body and pretty soon he hadn't been able to stand anymore. He'd fallen on his back making the garbage cans on the side of the house clatter. The noise drew the younger Flynn out of the house and when he came across a man whose face was shadowed seemingly having a heart attack, he knelt down to help. The moment he touched his older counterpart's face to get a better look is when everything changed.
Simultaneously both Garcias felt paralyzed. Their bodies were frozen but their minds and souls seemed to collide. It appeared that the laws of nature would dictate that the version belonging to the time period would survive while the one who did not belong would perish but with the physical contact of hand to face, a battle had begun. It was a loophole that he hadn't expected.
The elder of the two could feel the surge against the other and knew he felt it as well. The time traveler hadn't meant to combat anyone but it was as though his spirit was constantly in warrior mode and out for blood no matter whose it was. The two were nearly of equal strength but this was not a fight of muscle. It was a war of will. The one thing that Garcia Flynn had gained in the years since his family died was an existence of determination and savagery his younger self knew nothing of. The past few years had seen him torn apart and beaten almost to the brink of death and the man who came out on the other side was one he viewed as monstrous. In this moment he could feel the weight of that truth.
The younger Garcia was a strong man but internally too gentle, too untested, even with his service in the military and work as an asset for the NSA. He was wholly unprepared for this encounter and as it continued, he began to lose. The man who had felt just moments ago that he was dying now had the sensation of building energy. Their point of physical contact held and the fight intensified; both using all their strength in this motionless brawl. A force of life being drawn out of the man who belonged and into the man of the future. Like a hunger, it wouldn't be satisfied until only one was left. Even though he was horrified by the exchange and seeing his younger self visibly weaken, Garcia couldn't stop. It was like an involuntary muscle reaction. He had fought too hard, for too long to do anything but win.
The pain was receding, being replaced by the syphoned strength. His lungs were soon able to fill as the breathing of his near identical opponent shallowed. Future Garcia took hold of the other man's forearm, feeling that his weakening was about to cause a physical disconnect. He wasn't sure what would happen to him once his past self was eliminated but he'd realized a possible window of opportunity if he survived that he simply couldn't let go.
"I am truly sorry," he quietly rasped as tears pooled in his eyes, "but it appears this world isn't big enough for the two of us and you haven't lost what I have. I can't pass up the chance to get it back. You don't know how to save them," he groaned in exertion, breathing heavily. "You have no hope of protecting them." He felt his rage build at his former inability to guard his loved ones. "But I do."
2012's Flynn convulsed into a fit of a final attempt to survive but in the end, he went limp. The figurative light drained out of his eyes and in moments he was staring lifeless into his own guilted gaze. The victor took a shaky breath, sat up and was hit by what just happened. His younger self passed and yet he remained. The spark of an idea had panned out. Dropping the now dead arm, he began his practiced skill of detaching himself from the situation to take care of the business at hand. He could fall apart and analyze later.
Iris calling to her mother from inside sprung him into action. "Mommy, when is Daddy coming back inside?" He knew Lorena would soon come to investigate so he did the first logical thing that came to mind. He took the clothes from the body in front of him. Swiftly changing and carefully avoiding looking at his own deceased face, he then hid the corpse in the bushes until he could attend to it later.
By the time Lorena did come outside, Garcia was walking up to the house. "Is everything okay?" She asked, noting the blood on his face and his previously neat hair now in disarray.
"Everything's fine. Just a squirrel knocking over the trashcans. Little bastard came out of nowhere" He offered her a humiliated grin hoping that would explain his appearance. As fortune would have it, she believed him and gave him a pitying smile as and they walked inside.
His heart wept being in their presence again. He was no longer in love with his wife but he did love her very much. He felt like he was going to burst when his daughter jumped into his arms and it was all he could do to not fall into a mess of tears holding her. His little princess would now get to grow up because she finally had a version of her father who knew how to subvert the danger. He had two years to figure out a way.
Garcia had accepted his impending death while peering in the window. He had sent the Lifeboat back to the team in 1848, planning to see his family one last time before the effects of being in his own timeline took his life. The note he left for Lucy was the best way to comfort her and let her off the hook as much as possible. Even after having seen first hand that what was written in the journal was sometimes unreliable, he still believed certain things from it were set in stone. He thought that even if he and Lucy had gotten involved, she would ultimately end up back in Wyatt's arms. Thinking his emotions for her were realized too late to act on with how far her relationship with the young soldier had developed, he didn't have hope that the full extent of his love would be returned. That is, until the events just outside the Flynn home that night in 2012.
To the best of his understanding, even though the timeline he was from would now never exist, this version of him could because he was an anomaly that travelled from that other world. Thus breaking the thread of continuity from his younger, currently dead, self to the future one. Had he thought about this before, he would have believed that the younger version dying would cause him to die too. Turns out that him being the one traveling saved him from being erased. Had he been in 2018 and someone killed the young Garcia, the present one and the reality he belonged to would be gone in an instant. Thinking about it too much boggled his mind but he accepted the outcome and moved on to planning. He knew he could choose what came to pass from that damn journal!
Later that night, when his girls has fallen asleep, he went out to deposit his doppelgänger's body on a beach. Afterward, he set to altering his dental records and finger prints in all government records and servers so that the body, when found, would not be connected to him. Just another John Doe in the dunes.
It took some months before he had a workable idea for how to proceed. He decided that to accomplish all he wanted to, some things had to happen as they originally did, or at least appear to. When the time came in 2014, Garcia took his findings of Rittenhouse bankrolling Connor Mason to his NSA contact. He knew he had four days from that point until the night they would come gunning for his family. He had told Lorena of the danger to her and their daughter. Even with the deterioration of the state of their marriage over the last two years, she saw reason and agreed to help him fake their deaths. They told Iris it was a game and the little girl had dutifully lain in a pool of faux blood just like her mother while Flynn took their pictures as a crime scene photographer would. He also took photos of them enacting being attacked. Iris wouldn't have been as good of an actress as Lorena but fortunately she didn't have to be. She'd been shot in her sleep.
Agents he knew he could trust were let in; mostly men he had found to help him steal the Mothership the first time around. With easily falsified reports and a carefully constructed scene in the house, everything was ready to go. No one from police to a coroner had to actually see the bodies for it all to look completely legitimate.
The night came and he sat in wait until he heard them almost soundlessly creep into his home. They had gone to his daughter's room first so that's where he began. Iris and Lorena were already smuggled out to their safe house and the step by step chaos he had so methodically mapped out ensued.
As soon as the would-be killers entered, Garcia flipped a switch and watched through his gas mask as the unnoticed concentrated deliriant fumes were released and soon filled the air. His teammates all had the same protective gear and went through disarming the hallucinating Rittenhouse squad. They'd lost control of their functions and Garcia's agents carefully stayed out of their eye sight in the dark, maneuvering everything. The projectors he'd set up with false images of his wife and daughter being slaughtered and then lying dead played across the walls in short flashes as the sounds of muffled gun shots filled their ears, increasing their inability to focus. It was all a process Garcia had to meticulously study before carrying out. The information garnered from the seedier experiments the government had conducted over the years were quite useful.
The incognizant team was led out into the night to their car that was well hidden yet parked at a good vantage point facing the house. When they gained back full awareness, it would be slowly and seamlessly as they sat in their vehicle. The call to the police from one of his neighbors who had heard a disturbance was rerouted to a fake 911 operator and men impersonating law enforcement showed up, eventually taping off the "crime scene" as the Rittenhouse agents watched with increasing lucidity.
The delirium had filled in the gaps in their memory so when they radioed in to report the job was almost complete, they genuinely believed they had taken out the Flynn family minus the head of the household who escaped in the mix. But that could be dealt with. Just like before, they framed Garcia for the two "murders" thinking that would take care of him. He then set off to Brazil. He knew the time and place to be.
Sitting in the bar now with the journal in front of him, he thought over the plan he'd just executed that had to go off without a hitch. It had its challenges but hindsight really was 20/20. Karl in particular had proved invaluable and Garcia was glad he'd gone to him in 2012 to get things going.
The wheels were set in motion. He knew his mistakes, the things that needed to change. He also knew the things that had to stay the same, both good and painful. He didn't relish the negative Lucy would have to go through but some of the bad things that happened made her stronger and more capable. They made her into a person she'd become proud of and he couldn't shy away from helping her achieve that. What he could do was help her see his side of things sooner. He could show her Wyatt's lack of awareness and his carelessness when it came to women he was involved with. But he would not make choices for her. She deserved the decency of him simply guiding her and revealing truths but not forcing her into anything. It was still her life and she needed to come to him on her own. He would do a better job of assisting in her journey, not choosing the destination. Garcia would also avoid killing people when he was able to. She had shown him a better way. He would live by her example of honor as best as he could.
Of course, Lucy would still think he was a terrorist at first but the road to earning her trust and forgiveness would be a shorter one. The Lucy who just visited him from 2023 would no longer exist by the time he was through. She deserved better than Wyatt and she deserved better from him. He could finally be that man for her. The man that wouldn't hinder her independence and growth. The man that would understand and love even her darkest of impulses and thoughts. The man who would respect her knowledge and capability and stand at her side while they won this fight together. If, after all that, she didn't want what he offered, he would accept it like before. But the connection they shared was too powerful for him to ignore and not give a full fighting chance.
Garcia would be off to Chechnya first to continue preparing. Some of the other people and supplies he needed were there in Russia. He finished the last of his drink and relished the thought of seeing her again in two more years.