Author's Note: I tried to plug up a couple of holes I felt this episode and a few others had. If you are an avid viewer, you'll figure it out. I tried to do a little research about cancer treatment in the 1980s, but don't count this piece as being completely historically accurate.

Chapter 3 – Paralyzed by Fear

"Rittenhouse?" Denise exclaimed. "Why the hell would Rittenhouse go back to San Diego? What would that have to do with Jessica? How would that bring her back?"

"Wait, wait," interjected Jiya. "How is it possible for Emma to pilot back to 1980? Wouldn't that be awful close to her timeline? You can't travel back to your own timeline, that's the rule!"

Flynn scoffed. "Seriously, aren't you supposed to be the smart one? You didn't realize that Anthony had calculated how someone could travel back and forth safely, once you learned he had been in Houston at the moon landing?"

Conner shouted, "I knew it!"

Wyatt jerked his head up. "What does it matter? Jessica's alive! Shouldn't we, I mean, they could hurt her. We have to get to her before they do." He surged up from the chair. "We have to get to her now!"

Denise stepped in front of him. "Wait, just one moment. Let's think about this. Maybe it's something that you did in 1941, or maybe its something Rittenhouse did in 1980. Either way, in my timeline, you have been working with us for months, and they haven't hurt her yet. I think we are okay to take some time here."

"Take some time?" Wyatt exclaimed. He couldn't believe this. He had wished for this for years, hoped for it, and his dreams had finally come to life and he was being told to take his time? "What do you want to do, Denise? Do you want me to sit on my hands and just twiddle my thumbs and wait for something to happen? No way!"

"Think, Master Sergeant!" Denise shouted! "I want you to think! How do we determine if this is a threat?"

"A threat?" Wyatt ran his hands threw his hair, yanked on the ends. "Its my wife! How could she be a threat?"

"Look through her file. We should look through her file, see if Wyatt identifies any anomalies," came a tiny voice.

Wyatt slowly closed his eyes, and silently cursed whoever in the universe could hear his thoughts. Fuck. Fuck, he had completely forgot. He dropped his head, and then looked to his left at Lucy. Of course it would be Lucy who would think straight through all of this.

Wasn't that why he was falling in love with her?


Lucy's mind was racing. She recalled the arguments about time travel, throughout her time with the team as well as before Connor Mason had dared to bend the folds of time. Butterfly wings, she thought. An action in one time, just the brush of butterfly wings, could have catastrophic repercussions years away. But whose butterfly was the cause of this repercussion? Was it something they did to bring Jessica back? If so, then it was an absolute miracle, one that she should not, could not interfere with. But if it was Rittenhouse? Well, after months with her mother and Emma, she knew it certainly wouldn't be out of the goodness of their hearts. But how could they really determine….

"Look through her file. We should look through her file, see if Wyatt identifies any anomalies. If there is anything alarming, it could mean Rittenhouse played a role."

She watched as Wyatt's head turned and looked at her. The blues of his eyes swirled with pain, with misery, with hope, and she wanted to just grab his face and tell him she needed him, just like at the Alamo. But she couldn't. Not with this.

Denise nodded. "Lucy's right. Every time Rittenhouse changed history, we've found proof in the files. Let's see what we can do. Jiya, print out copies of Jessica's file so you and Wyatt can go through it together. I'm sorry Wyatt, but we have to do it. Lucy, you look through your history books to decipher if there was another reason Rittenhouse would have gone to 1980 in San Diego. Conner, try to figure out how Anthony added the capability to move within your own timeline."

Lucy nodded. She would research, but she knew that nothing that would have historical importance occurred in San Diego in 1980. Of course, then again, she had also known that Jessica Logan had died at the hands of a murderer, so who knew how things had changed?

"What about me, guys? What's my school project?"

Lucy's mouth gaped as she swung around to look at Flynn. Flynn smirked and shrugged. "What? Can't I lighten the mood a little? I just got out of a jail, I got to live a little."

Lucy just shook her head, and turned back to Denise. "Let's get started," she said.


Wyatt stared at the file in front of him on the table. He had started with the end. Jessica was still a bar tender, just like she had been before. Just, now, she was, you know, alive. He was dazing out when suddenly he felt a soft poke into his shoulder. He started and glanced up to see Jiya looking at him from across her chair at the table.

"I know it's a lot," she whispered. "And I know you want to know about what she must be like, but if we want to see if Rittenhouse changed anything, it would be better to start at the beginning. If they were the ones that caused this, they started in 1980, before Jessica was even born."

Wyatt sighed and rubbed his hands over his eyes. "Yea, makes sense. Its just…" he dropped his hands and fiddled with his fingers. God, he had taken his wedding ring off. Of course, he had moved on to "new possibilities."

With that thought he stole a glance at the next table over, where Lucy sat with a laptop and numerous American history books surrounding her. She had done that thing where she lost track of her pens. She had one swept up in a twist in her hair, one in her mouth, and one in her hand as she wrote. She was wearing those sexy little black glasses of hers – oh God. No. No, he could not think of her, and sex, and the way she had moaned under him just a few nights ago as he had pushed into her –

"Do you want to know what you are like together?"

Wyatt jerked her attention back to Jiya. "What? Who?"

Jiya stole a glance at Lucy, and then back to Wyatt. "You and Jessica? Do you want to know what you are like?"

Wyatt swallowed. Did he? They hadn't always been the best. "Yea," he gasped. "Yea, I do."

Jiya nodded. "It seemed hard on you, and her. I mean, with the missions you had to take off at a moment's notice, and sometimes be gone for days. You said she was really patient, but that you worried she would think you were cheating on her. It seemed like you wanted to make things better for her, but it frustrated you because you didn't know how."

Wyatt nodded. "So, she didn't know?"

Jiya shook her head. "No, you and Lucy weren't allowed to tell your significant others."

Wyatt nodded, and then stopped. "Wait, Lucy's 'significant other'? Who was her 'other'?"

Jiya smiled. "Oh, it wasn't anything like Jessica. She went on a mission, came back and suddenly she was engaged to this guy named Noah."

"Oh." Wyatt closed his eyes a moment. Thank God it wasn't another one. "Yea, that was the same in our timeline."

Jiya's smile faded. "Yea, so…yea, you two were fine. Stressed but, fine. Its not like you were looking to, you know, sleep with anyone."

Wyatt swore he blushed. He never would have cheated on Jessica, but she was dead, and did it even count as cheating if your wife had actually been dead and then brought back to life? Wyatt gave Jiya a quick look. "So, start from the beginning you said?"

Jiya quickly looked back down at her notes. "Yea, the beginning."

So, back to the beginning of the files they went.


Lucy slapped the book closed. This effort was worthless. She knew, she knew nothing had happened in 1980 in San Diego, and her searching just seemed to confirm that. She rolled her neck, and through her lashes stole a glance at Wyatt. He hadn't so much said a peep directly to her since learning his wife had been resurrected. Wait, could you be resurrected if you were never dead to begin with, but only in this time line? A question for time travel philosophers.

With that thought, Lucy stood up and started walking towards the kitchen. Tea. She needed tea, and now. She opened a cupboard, pulled out a mug and the box of tea bags. It wasn't the good stuff, but at least it was some sort of black tea. God knew she needed it strong right now.

"Care to make me some too?"

Ugh. Just ugh. Not now.

Lucy looked over her shoulder to see Flynn standing behind her. "We didn't get a lot of warm tea in prison, after all," Flynn said.

Well, she couldn't deny him after that, could she?

Lucy went through the actions of making two cups of tea. She had done it so often, she hardly had to think about it. Which was good, because under the circumstances, she felt like she could hardly add two plus two. "Here you go," she murmured, handing him a large blue mug.

Flynn sniffed his mug delicately, and then delicately swallowed. "Hmm," he murmured. "Certainly not the best, but better than any garbage in the prison.

Lucy gave him a weak smile. "Yea, its not exactly homey here, but you know, we make do." She leaned against the counter and looked at the red mug she held between her hands. The mug made her hands warm, but it didn't seem to reach that aching cold pit in her stomach that had grown since learning the news about Jessica.

Flynn eyed her over the rim of his mug. "Perhaps this is what does it," he said quietly.

Lucy looked back up at Flynn. "Does what?" she asked.

Flynn look at her solemnly. "Makes you hard. Makes you write the journal. Makes you come to me. Maybe Wyatt's gain is your loss, and makes you finally snap."

Lucy stares at him. She wants to tell him he is wrong. That she is ecstatic for Wyatt. That Wyatt's wife coming back means maybe there is hope for Amy, hope for all of them.

But she knows she would be lying. And she fears that Flynn could be absolutely right. And then she realized. The journal. The fucking journal!

"It's here! In the file! It's her brother. Her brother is alive, and he shouldn't be."


Rufus was monitoring the control board. He felt useless. Wyatt was sitting there, trying to determine if his wife was really back in his life, Lucy was sitting there, forlornly trying to find a needle in the historical time-sack, and he could do nothing to support them. But he could support the Lifeboat. He knew how to do that.

"It's here! In the file! It's her brother. Her brother is alive, and he shouldn't be."

Rufus turned to see Wyatt stabbing the file with his pointer finger. Denise turned off her phone and came running to look over Wyatt's shoulder. "What do you mean, he shouldn't be?"

Wyatt leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms his chest. "In my timeline, Jess' brother died of cancer when she was almost 2. She never said many details other than that. They were incredibly poor, and back then hardly anything was known about child cancer."

Jiya leaned over and scanned the document. "But according to this, Jess' brother is alive. It says he was treated for Leukemia using breakthrough stem-cell research."

Rufus stood up and began walking towards the table, all while scratching his head. "Wait, stem-cell research? In 1980? Wouldn't that have been hell of expensive?"

Lucy walked up and stood next to Rufus. "Maybe not, not if he got into a research program. I mean, back in 1980 I didn't even think stem-cell therapy was a concept yet. At the time, a lot of focus was on the study of AIDS and HIV. Cancer research kind of got the shaft."

Wyatt shook his head. Then he slammed back from the table and began to pace. He turned to Denise. "What does this mean, Denise? Is my wife who I remember? Is she like Lucy's mom, once a kind mother now a crazy Rittenhouse person? What can I do here?"

Denise shrugged her shoulders. "I just don't know Wyatt. I didn't see this coming."

Rufus muttered under his breath, "I don't think anyone did."

"Flynn did."

Everyone turned to stare at Lucy. When they say her glaring at Flynn, everyone's eyes shifted to him.

Flynn crossed his arms and rocked back on his heals. "Pardon me?"

Lucy marched towards Flynn and stood toe to toe with him. "The journal. This whole time you've claimed you've known what Rittenhouse would do, what we would do, through that damn journal you claim I wrote. So prove it. What does it say about Jessica? Hmm?" At this point, Lucy lifted her hands and shoved Flynn backwards. "What does this supposed fortune-telling journal say about this? Did you know that she would come back?" Lucy continued to shove Flynn, hitting him in the chest and punctuating each of her questions. "Did you know all of Wyatt's dreams would come true? Is she Rittenhouse or not? What does it say, Flynn? What are you not telling us?!" Next thing Lucy knew, Wyatt's strong arms banded across her arms from behind, and pulled her off Flynn. "Lucy, easy –"

That's when the blares went off.

Rufus raced back to the control board. "September 22, 1962. The Mother Ship jumped to that time."

Lucy went limp in Wyatt's arms. "That's the Salem Witch Trials," Flynn and Lucy mumbled.

Rufus stared at Lucy and Wyatt. Goddang, they just couldn't get a break.