Lots of internal Lucy dialogue. Nearly all of it sad. Sorry. Song: The Chain by Ingrid Michaelson.
the sky looks pissed
the wind talks back
my bones are shifting in my skin
and you, my love, are gone
Wyatt's lips on hers felt like a dream.
He gasped and shifted, his strong hands at her lower back, pulling her in to him, his skin flame-hot against her own.
"Wyatt," she tried to murmur, putting a hand on his chest. The sky was eerily dark and they had to get inside.
He ignored her, his hands sliding just barely under the hem of her blouse, fingers skimming her midriff. Now, it was her turn to gasp.
A bolt of lightning struck nearby, shattering an enormous oak tree as well as her attention.
"Wyatt, let go," she grunted, but still he did not relent.
Something was wrong.
"Wyatt!" she finally shouted, and shoved him away.
He stumbled backward and she finally saw that he wasn't Wyatt at all, but Noah. He grinned like a demon and advanced on her again.
"Wyatt?" she cried, panicked, whipping around in the tornado-like winds, desperately trying to get away from Noah, but he grabbed her roughly by the arm.
And then she was suddenly blinking up at a fuzzy, smiling Jiya.
"Wyatt?" she asked again, and Jiya told her he was on a mission.
"He went without me?" she croaked, but she didn't really listen to the answer. Of course he had gone without her.
She was alone, and the ghost of not-Wyatt's lips on her own felt more like a fever than a dream.
my room feels wrong
the bed won't fit
I cannot seem to operate
and you, my love, are gone
Lucy had never been a good poker player. She had been an inept liar all her life – a skill in which Amy had always excelled and found her lack thereof hilarious – and wasn't the most attentive observer of body language. Facts written down in books? Those were simple. She soaked them up quickly, able to recall them at the drop of a hat. People were always more difficult.
Except for Wyatt.
Wyatt was easy for her. Her mind seemed to catalog him effortlessly, filing away the various sets of his jaw, the different postures of his shoulders, the emotions in his eyes – all of them were like neon-bright beacons to her.
She once mentioned this to Rufus and had gotten a quizzical look for her trouble.
"Easy to read?" Rufus replied, brow furrowed. "Wyatt?"
"Yeah," said Lucy, suddenly unsure of her assessment. "Don't you think?"
Rufus laughed. "Sure, he's easy to read when he wants you to know he's pissed off. Or when he's not in soldier mode, which is, like, all the time."
Lucy made a non-committal noise in faux agreement and Rufus let the subject drop, thankfully, because her cheeks were starting to burn. Maybe it was just her. Maybe she was just paying too much attention – a weird amount of attention – to Wyatt.
Several months later, however, she knew the truth.
Yes, she definitely paid more attention to Wyatt than she should.
And that ability – coupled with a fiery drive to bring down to Rittenhouse – was one of the only things that convinced her to get out of bed every morning, knowing she would have to face Jessica wearing her husband's clothes in the bunker kitchen as she made coffee for everyone.
She never allowed herself to bring Jessica down, even inwardly, but she couldn't help but carefully file away the way Wyatt said her name when it was just the two of them: softly, delicately, with feeling.
She made note of his awkward attempt at banter as he tried to make conversation about JFK and Marilyn Monroe.
And though she was frustrated at him for bringing Jessica to the bunker, she secretly cherished the expression on his face as he tried to apologize for doing so.
Lucy treasured up all these details in a small, carefully kept box in her heart. She fiercely wanted Wyatt to be happy – after a life of so much sadness, he deserved it. So did Jessica, after all, for putting up with a Wyatt Lucy would have never recognized. She deserved to have the best version of him.
However committed Lucy was to the happiness of the Logan family, though, she couldn't lie to herself. So when it looked like the two of them would head out to find JFK without her - just the teacher - she put her foot down. And every time she watched him look on Jessica with that glowing expression he used to bestow on her while they were on their manhunt, she returned to the box.
She was human, after all - not a saint.
so glide away on soapy heels
and promise not to promise anymore
and if you come around again
then I will take
then I will take
the chain from off the door
Wyatt was a very physical person, and his friendship had always been marked by touch. Whether he was buckling Lucy in, deliberately stepping into her personal space to straighten her SS uniform tie, pushing her against a wall so he could keep her safe from Flynn's thug entering the room during the Watergate trip, or pulling her towards himself to convince Bonnie and Clyde with his lips and hands that they were a real couple – it seemed like he was always touching her.
And for Lucy, an ascetic, studious person by nature, it was disconcerting. At first. But then she began to notice that his easy way with touch was working its way into her own personality, making her a more physical creature, too, and not just toward him. She threw herself into his and Rufus's arms upon finding them alive in the World's Fair Hotel and again in St. Mihiel; made it a regular practice to place a hand on Jiya's shoulder in comforting support; took Wyatt's arm without hesitation whenever he offered it, and sometimes when he didn't.
And when they slept together in Hollywoodland, she spent hours in blissful mental silence, overwhelmed and enthralled and content to just feel, a phenomenon entirely alien to her.
So it didn't surprise her all that much when her first reaction upon entering John's hospital room was to forcibly push Jessica out of the way. It was what Wyatt would have done, after all, if he wasn't otherwise occupied. And she didn't hesitate to give in to her red-hot surge of rage and protectiveness by picking up the heavy metal tray and swinging it with all the force she could muster with one arm at Emma when she came near Jessica, hoping it would give Wyatt the distraction he needed to retrieve his gun.
It did, but she should've known better, of course. She realized belatedly that she was being more of a hindrance than a help when the edge of Emma's knife was pressed up under her chin.
Lucy coughed and opened her eyes to see Wyatt with his gun leveled at them. He stepped forward uncertainly, shakily shoving the rolling hospital table out of his way.
He looked panicked.
And it scared her.
"Ah, ah," sneered Emma. "I wouldn't, if I were you."
Wyatt stared at her, unmoving.
"Or maybe her life doesn't matter anymore, now that you have your wife back," Emma continued, taking note of this.
Lucy's mind, though numb, still took in everything about him just as it always did. He exhaled sharply, tightening his grip on the gun, and then tried to steel himself.
Fear climbed a few notches up Lucy's spine as he continued to hesitate.
"Do it," she commanded, voice low. He grimaced.
"She's their only pilot," Lucy reminded him, trying not to sound desperate. She paused and waited for him to cock his head to the side and take the shot, just as he had at the Hindenburg when Flynn had used her as a human shield.
But he didn't, and she saw the gun waver in his hands.
"Do it," she urged, now truly terrified.
But then she was being thrown forward into his arms. He caught her and exhaled her name once, twice, three times, so naturally that it seemed like the sound he made when he breathed.
"You alright?" he asked, kneeling down in front of her, and she was halfway through a nod when she realized Emma was getting away.
"Go, go, go!" she told him, and only then, almost as though he was waiting for her permission, did he bolt for the door.
Her brain was still in hyper drive as she followed him down the hall with the guard. He turned his head slightly toward the folder on the wall and she understood his meaning without even seeing his face. The sparks she felt when their hands touched as she slipped him the paper clip were an exhilarating and dreadful confirmation of their shared, unspoken language.
Later, when she was alone in bed, she replayed this sequence of events out in her mind. She breathed deeply, methodically, mentally working her way through her residual fear and guilt – a trick she had taught herself while her mother played ceaseless audio tapes of Rittenhouse propaganda at top volume during her captivity.
Breathe in the bad, hold it, let it shudder through, then breathe it out, she repeated to herself. In, hold, out. In, hold, out…
As she drifted off to a restless sleep, arm still burning dully with pain, her carefully guarded mental box was markedly fuller because of the day's events. Every single second of Wyatt's gentleness, anxiety, and understanding toward her from the last eighteen hours had been thoughtfully catalogued and saved there. She felt slightly guilty, indulging herself in the memory of him breathing her name into her hair as he caught her, but not guilty enough to stop.
If collecting these scraps was all that was left to her of Wyatt, she would hold onto them with both fists. Sure, it hurt, but she wasn't hurting anyone but herself, after all. Wyatt and Jessica could rebuild together while she kept quiet, lingering in her thoughts long enough to dredge up the strength to go on.
I'll never say I'll never love
but I don't say a lot of things
and you, my love, are gone
When they talked outside the bathrooms, Lucy could see that his mental guards were nearly back up to how they were before they talked in that jail cell in New Jersey.
That's probably best, she thought, trying to convince herself.
"The…the history that you two have between you – it's special. And," she added quietly, swallowing, "you deserve to finally be happy, Wyatt."
It only lasted half a second, but the corners of his mouth turned down, as did his eyebrows. The walls between them seemed to disappear as he sucked in a breath in some combination of surprise and hurt. He stepped forward and Lucy's heart leapt into her throat, convinced he was about to tell her something he really, really shouldn't – something along the lines of, "You made me happy. You make me happy."
She couldn't breathe at the imagining of it, but he seemed to change his mind mid-thought.
"I have no regrets," he said softly instead, his eyes bright like cloudless sky.
She remained frozen.
"Me neither."
And then the walls flew back up between them as he broke eye contact for just a second.
"Well, see ya around the bunker…baby doll," he said.
"See ya around the bunker…shweetheart," she replied, cataloging the way he smiled a little too sadly before she turned and walked quickly away, hiding her tears.
so glide away on soapy heels
and promise not to promise anymore
and if you come around again
then I will take
then I will take
then I will take
the chain from off the door
Perhaps she ought to label it "Lucy's Box of Masochistic Tendencies," because sitting dejectedly on the couch and watching "It Happened One Night" after her short conversation with Wyatt was definitely self-sabotage.
When Flynn sat down beside her, she couldn't even summon the energy to look at him. She mentally braced herself, expecting a sarcastic comment, but Flynn was silent. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him offer her the second bottle. She hesitated for only a second before taking it.
He watched the rest of the film with her quietly, only getting up for a second round for the both of them.
When the movie was over, he stretched and looked down at her, face as unreadable as it always was to her. As everyone's usually was to her.
Except for Wyatt's.
Of course.
"This, too, shall pass," said Flynn in an even tone.
She still didn't look at him as she took in his words. What would pass? Her heartbreak? The way she felt about Wyatt? Rittenhouse?
But before she could work up the will to reply, he left.
