A/N: My sincerest apologies for the extremely long delay in updating this story (I'm looking at you, Adriana - LOL!). it was never my intention to leave this hanging. However, my best friend passed away over the summer, and that naturally put me in a dismal place, which started to bleed through into my writing. Thanks to a dear fellow writer and friend (you know who you are!) I realized I needed to set this fic aside until I was in a better place. As always, thanks for all the follows/favorites/reviews - they mean so much to me - and most especially, thank you for your PATIENCE! And now, back to your previously scheduled story! :-)
Fists, eyes, and jaw clenched as tightly as possible, Rufus waited in dreadful anticipation of his own grisly demise. Two minutes later, he was still waiting…and waiting…and waiting. Finally daring to crack his eyes open, he surveyed his surroundings. Something was definitely not as it should be. Either the afterlife looked remarkably like the interior of the Mothership, or he was still alive. How in the world had that happened?
Every other attempt by Mason Industries to send someone back to a time where they'd previously existed had thus far proven disastrous (spectacularly so). So why had it worked this time? As a scientist, Rufus wanted nothing more than to spend the next several hours pouring over the ship's data in hopes of figuring that out. However, given that Mel was, once again, pointing a gun at his head, his research would obviously have to wait. Damn her!
"Thought you said we were going to die," the Rittenhouse agent taunted him, a gloating sneer plastered to her face.
"Yeah well, the day's still young, so don't go making any plans for tomorrow just yet," Rufus grumbled. As terrible as it was, he'd sincerely hoped that their jump to 2012 – a year that, according to every known law of the universe, they had absolutely no business revisiting – would cause the woman's head to explode into a thousand pieces (or more). Bummer!
"Let's go," Mel abruptly commanded, ignoring Rufus' facetious remark altogether. Pressing the door release button, she waved him towards the open hatch.
Having no other choice at the moment but to comply, Rufus stepped past her and scrambled to the ground below. Expecting to emerge into the bright sunshine of a southern California day, he was startled to find that they'd arrived in the middle of a rather chilly night instead. Even more surprising, however, was the discovery that they'd landed directly alongside a well-lit, double-lane road in what appeared to be a light residential area. Based on the total lack of vehicles on the road, and the darkened windows of the scattered houses, Rufus concluded that the hour must be pretty late. Still, day or night, early or late, it was a rather risky place to park the Mothership, wasn't it?
"So, I take it that you're not at all worried, then, about someone spotting us out here and, you know, calling the cops or something?" Rufus asked. "Because even in California, a giant, white, metal orb with flashing lights appearing out of nowhere on the side of the road isn't exactly an everyday occurrence."
"We won't be here long enough for it to matter," Mel stated dismissively as she, too, clambered from the time machine. "Besides," she gestured to the police uniform that she was currently sporting, "If there's any sort of problem, I am 'the cops'."
"OK then." Rufus couldn't exactly argue with her logic. If nothing else, he supposed that Mel could (and, no doubt, would) simply shoot anybody who came along asking questions that might jeopardize their current mission. "And where, exactly, are we supposed to find whoever it is we came here for?"
"Right here," Mel replied. Leaning casually against the side of the Mothership, she raised her wrist to check the time on her watch. "She knows where to find us, and should be along any minute now."
"Well that's convenient. And, like, totally not weird at all." How would this supposed 'wedding guest' that Carol Preston had ordered them to pick up know when and where to expect them to be, or even to expect them at all, Rufus wondered. It wasn't as if Rittenhouse could simply pick up the phone and make arrangements with someone six years in the past, was it? Even if they could, why would they bother? Unless, perhaps, this mysterious 'she' didn't exist in the present? So, what – he and Mel were here to taxi some dead woman to 2018, then – just so whoever-she-was could attend Lucy's (absolutely bogus) wedding? "Who exactly did you say we were here to get?" Rufus prodded, trying to make sense of it all.
"I didn't. Guess you'll just have to wait and see," Mel replied somewhat cryptically.
She winked at him then, a wide, knowing sort of 'Cheshire cat' grin spreading across her face that sent actual chills up Rufus' spine, and set alarm bells to ringing inside his head. Who the heck were they there to meet, and why did he get the distinct impression that he wasn't going to like the answer to that question?
With nothing else to do now but wait, and needing to somehow calm his rattled nerves, Rufus allowed his thoughts to drift back to the question of how exactly he and Mel had survived the trip to 2012.
To the best of his knowledge, he'd done nothing differently in setting up this jump than what the other pilots who'd tried traveling back into their own timelines had done. Yet not a single one of those other pilots had survived. Why? Had Rufus inadvertently altered one of the Mothership's operational equations? Could the other pilots, perhaps, have made fatal errors in their own coding sequences?
Regardless of the reason for it, Rufus felt incredibly grateful to still be alive. Aside from the obvious fact that he very much enjoyed not being a corpse, his survival meant that there was still a chance that he could somehow rescue Lucy from whatever dismal future Rittenhouse (including Lucy's own mother, for chrissake – Rufus was still struggling to wrap his mind around that one) intended for her.
Thanks to Mel's now-deceased (by Mel's own hand) partner John, Rufus now knew something, at least, of Lucy's predicament – namely that she was soon to be married. Though John hadn't specifically named Lucy's groom-to-be, Rufus had easily deduced that it was Noah, the same previously-unknown-to-Lucy fiancé who'd appeared out of nowhere after the failed Hindenburg mission. Given the fact that Lucy's mother had not only sanctioned but was also forcing the marriage, that must mean that Noah, too, was Rittenhouse (and, as Wyatt had insisted all along, a major douchebag). Rufus should really have let Wyatt shoot the man when he had the chance.
What Rufus couldn't figure out for the life of him, though, was the why of it all. Why was it so important to Rittenhouse that Lucy marry Noah, or anyone at all for that matter?
Compared to all of the morally reprehensible things that Rufus had come to expect of Rittenhouse, an arranged marriage seemed rather…benign. Not that he would ever wish that sort of thing on anyone – not against their will, at any rate. And since Lucy was in love with Wyatt, marriage to anyone other than Wyatt would most certainly be against her will. Still, it seemed to him that the marriage itself must just be a very small part of a much bigger picture.
Either way, Rufus needed to get Lucy away from Rittenhouse, before any part of that picture materialized. Though he still didn't have the first clue about how to do that, he did know one thing: as Wyatt had recently taken to saying, it was "one problem at a time." And right now, Rufus' most pressing problem wasn't Rittenhouse holding Lucy captive, but rather the trigger-happy Rittenhouse agent currently holding him captive. In other words, he had to ditch the witch, and soon. Again, though: how?
Rufus was so caught up in his thoughts of how he might possibly rid himself of Mel that he completely failed to notice the arrival of their mystery guest until she squealed and pulled him into a hug.
"Rufus Carlin, as I live and breathe! Did you miss me, sugar?"
Rufus' breath hitched almost painfully in his chest at the sound of a voice that he hadn't heard (outside of his nightmares) in three years. He quickly backpedaled, freeing himself from her grasp. "A-A-Amanda?" he stuttered as he gaped, wide-eyed, at the blonde-haired apparition now standing in front of him. "But…b-but how? You died! I…I saw you die!"
And Rufus had – over and over again, in high-definition detail, courtesy of the in-flight video recorder that had captured every gut-wrenching second of her doomed jump to the year 2000. Amanda Carlisle, super genius and by far the youngest member of Mason Industries' original time travel research team, had been the very first pilot to attempt to travel back into her own past. She had also been the first to fail in the worst possible way, or so Rufus had believed for the last three years.
"Surprise – I got better!" Amanda joked, reaching for him again and rubbing his shoulders affectionately. "Seriously, though, how are you, Rufus? How's the rest of the team at M.I.? Lord, I can't even begin to tell you how much I've missed y'all. This whole 'secret agent' thing wasn't half as much fun as Carol Preston led me to believe it would be." She chuckled ironically. "Can you even imagine it, Rufus – me as a soldier's wife? Most days it was all I could do to keep from eating my own gun out of sheer boredom. But hey, orders are orders, and if this is what was necessary to repair the loop, then it was totally worth it, right? So come on, don't hold out on me, sugar – did we fix it?"
"Umm…." Between the shock of learning that his supposedly deceased friend was very much still alive, and the crazy mix of disturbing and outright baffling things that she was now saying, Rufus' mind was spinning in far too many directions for him to even consider putting a coherent sentence together. Luckily, Mel chose that moment to interrupt, saving Rufus from having to answer whatever befuddling question Amanda had just posed.
"Begging your pardon, Ms. Carlisle, but there's been a development that…" Mel began, only to be shut down immediately.
"Did I give you permission to speak, soldier?" Amanda demanded loudly and severely of the other woman.
Squirming under the heat of Amanda's reproving glare, Mel lowered her eyes meekly to the ground. "No, ma'am."
Determined to make her point, Amanda reached for Mel's face and, with one finger, tilted her chin up until their eyes locked. "Consider yourself warned." With her free hand, Amanda deftly slipped the gun from Mel's grip, and pressed it to the other woman's temple. "I'm sure I don't need to remind you, of all people, of the consequences for talking out of turn, do I?"
The harsh exchange between the two women served to snap Rufus out of his stupor, drawing his attention to Amanda's apparent authority over Mel. On a certain level, it was immensely gratifying for Rufus to see Mel – the woman who'd wreaked such havoc on his life – firmly put in her place. Whatever fleeting satisfaction he found in that, however, was quickly overridden by the realization that Amanda was clearly Rittenhouse, and apparently even more psychotic than Mel.
"No, ma'am." Mel shook her head fervently. Rufus couldn't help but notice, however, the way that she continued to squirm, almost as if the words that she'd been ordered to repress were literally fighting to wriggle their way out of her mouth. In the end, the words won the battle. "It's just that Mr. Carlin isn't from the same…."
Just as casually as one might swat a pesky mosquito, Amanda pulled the trigger of the gun still leveled against the side of Mel's head, putting a permanent end to the other woman's insubordination.
Completely revolted and shaken to his very core, Rufus quickly turned away from the gruesome sight. While certainly no stranger to death or killing (protecting American history from a creepy psychopath bent on burning it to the ground had promptly seen to that), witnessing it never got any easier for Rufus, particularly in the case of coldblooded murder, which this clearly was. The fact that someone he had once considered a cherished friend had been the one to commit said murder only made it that much worse. Rufus felt certain that he would have nightmares about Mel's death for months to come, just as he'd once had about Amanda's.
Holding the instrument of Mel's death limply by two fingers as if it were a germ-ridden scrap of refuse that she couldn't wait to be rid of, Amanda handed the revolver to Rufus. Before Rufus could even process the fact that he was now in possession of the weapon, Amanda gestured towards the waiting time machine, and began to climb aboard.
"So…where were we, sugar? Oh yes – the loop!" she babbled cheerfully as she scaled the somewhat slippery exterior of the Mothership. "Did Master Sergeant Logan's behavioral modifications have the desired effect, or are we back to the drawing board? Please tell me we succeeded, Rufus, because I'm not sure I could bear it if…."
The rest of Amanda's chatter was completely lost on Rufus, his brain having seized at the mention of Wyatt's name in conjunction with the phrase 'behavioral modifications'. Though certain aspects of what Amanda had said earlier still made very little sense to him (loop – what loop?), the bulk of it was now exceedingly clear: Amanda had time-traveled to the year 2000, faked her own death, and (apparently on Carol Preston's orders –on Rittenhouse's orders) had undertaken an assignment posing as a soldier's wife. As Master Sergeant Logan's wife. As Wyatt's wife.
Wyatt's wife who had disappeared from the side of a road in 2012, never to be seen alive again. Wyatt's wife whose death had launched him into a six-year spiral of guilt, grief, and self-destruction from which the poor man had only recently begun to emerge. Wyatt's wife whose mere ghost had caused the man to deny and reject the very real, soul-deep, utterly 'meant to be' love that he and Lucy felt for each other. Wyatt's wife who was never, ever, in fact, Wyatt's actual wife, but rather a Rittenhouse plant of some sort – someone whose sole goal was, from what Amanda had implied, to break and bend the Delta Force soldier in order to serve some as yet unknown purpose.
As a generally easy-going, peace-loving man, and someone who abhorred violence of every sort, Rufus had never quite fathomed the meaning of the phrase 'murderous rage'. Yet now, as he contemplated the wholesale destruction that Amanda Carlisle had apparently wreaked on the life of his best friend – an intrinsically good man who hadn't deserved anything close to the sheer hell that she'd put Wyatt through – Rufus finally understood.
Tightly gripping the revolver that Amanda herself had placed in his hand, Rufus began his own awkward ascent into the time machine. One way or another, he would see to it that Amanda Carlisle – AKA 'Jessica Logan' – paid for her sins.