Heaps of Guilt

Lucy-

Lucy pulled her hat over her head in the attempt to keep Wyatt and Rufus from talking to her anymore. She doubted she would get much sleep. Not just because she was on the cold, hard ground of Missouri, but because of the situation as a whole. Her dream about Amy and missing her birthday had shaken her up more than she'd wanted to admit to herself earlier. The guilt she felt over beginning to forget Amy was now compounded. Her life had become so complicated she could barely keep track of her thoughts anymore. So Lucy had turned to what she best since returning from Chicago.

Feeling like it was best to be prepared as they could on these missions, Lucy had started researching big events in history, hoping that it might be one of the places they were headed to next. St. Joseph, Missouri and the now non-murder of Jesse James had not even crossed her mind. She had absolutely no idea what could be in the Bluffwoods Flynn could want. Then again, they hardly ever knew until it was almost too late what he wanted. She was further dismayed at the fact that Jesse James was still alive and had killed more people who hadn't been fated to die today.

Yes, it was despicable that Bob Ford had shot James in the back of the head for money, but James was a bed person. At least if he'd died today like it had originally happened, he wouldn't have been able to kill more people. Besides, Bob Ford spent the next decade of his life in almost constant misery until he was finally shot and killed himself in what seemed like poetic justice to Lucy. So, in her opinion, it all balanced out. But then again, she was just a normal person, who was she to judge if it was fair that Bob Ford was killed specifically because he'd shot James like a coward?

She thought on the lives of the Ford brothers after originally committing the murder. For the first couple of years after killing James, the Ford brothers were famous. Bob earned money posing for pictures as "the man who killed Jesse James". Both brothers also spent a year touring theaters all over the country re-enacting the murder. It was very popular at first. Soon after the first year though, their popularity began to wane and people began to turn their opinion the other way. Bob became known as a coward for shooting James while his back was turned and the brothers were looked down upon for betraying their leader for money.

About two years after the murder, Charley was suffering from tuberculosis and was addicted to morphine. He committed suicide on May 4, 1884. Bob moved around the country for the next eight years opening and closing saloons. The day after Christmas in 1889 an assassination attempt was made when someone tried to slit his throat in Kansas City, Kansas. It's unknown if it was related to James's death or not. Then, on June 8, 1892, a man named Edward O'Kelley entered Ford's tent saloon in Creede, Colorado with a shotgun. He fired both barrels at Ford, killing him instantly. The man then became known as "the man who killed Robert Ford". The inscription "The man who shot Jesse James" was put on Bob's grave marker.

As neither brother were involved in criminal behavior after being pardoned for the murder of James, Lucy felt they were an infinitely better choice to still be alive than James. That couldn't be helped now, though, so all they could do was try to catch up to Flynn and James, find out the objective, attempt to stop it, capture James and put him away so he couldn't kill anyone else. Lucy just hoped he didn't find a way to escape prison. She would feel responsible if he wasn't stopped.

Lucy agreed with Wyatt that James shouldn't be allowed to continue killing people whenever he felt like it, but she agreed with Rufus more that killing for them, the "good guys", should be harder than it was for the "bad guys". She knew how much it haunted Rufus that he'd killed someone. Yes, he'd done it in self-defense, but she knew that didn't make Rufus feel any better. And she couldn't help but remember what she'd thought after coming back from Chicago, that her and Rufus weren't used to death like this. She also knew that Wyatt wasn't as unaffected as he claimed. It was understandable that he tried to pass it off like it wasn't a big deal anymore, he was in Delta Force and it was part of his job, but she'd seen the look in his eyes when Reeves made his comment about seeing the men he killed everyday. It was obvious Wyatt, while necessary, felt the lives he took deeply. She was glad, it made him human and made her respect him all the more for it.

Lucy's thoughts rolled back around to her feelings of guilt. There were so many reasons to feel guilty that she felt there were piles of guilt heaped upon her. There was guilt that they hadn't been able to prevent all the changes that had been made to history. There was guilt for the people they had lost, even though most times it was beyond their ability to save them. There was guilt that by wanting Amy back would mean her mom would be dying again. There was new guilt because she thought she was beginning to forget about Amy. There was guilt about lying to her team about her night with Flynn.

And therein lay the problem for Lucy. The guilt she felt the most was the fact that she didn't feel too guilty for what happened with Flynn. Guilt because she was glad that it had happened. She'd been so wrapped up in trying to forget about her confusing feelings surrounding Flynn that she'd pushed almost everything else out of her mind. That's part of what she attributed to why she forgot about Amy's birthday. No matter how much she'd tried to forget, she couldn't. She'd found that every so often during her research her mind would drift to a little hotel room in Chicago, to how it'd felt to have Flynn's body against her own, the way their bodies had rocked together until finding mutual ecstasy. Just thinking about her night with Flynn, even days later, still made her body tingle with desire.

Lucy's cheeks warmed in embarrassment. She was eternally grateful that her hat covered her face. She was sure there wasn't enough firelight for the others to notice anyway, but there was always a chance one of them would. She also became acutely aware Wyatt was sitting only a few feet away from her. There was a small part of her that couldn't help but feel like she'd betrayed him. Until that moment, she'd successfully denied the voice whispering that. She knew it was stupid to feel that way. Wyatt had made it brutally clear that he did not return her view of their relationship having romantic possibilities.

Lucy cringed as she remembered their talk after coming back from Arkansas. That was the night she should've firmly put a stop to those feelings. There was no way she'd be able to compete with the paragon that was Wyatt's dead wife. She knew that Wyatt and Jessica had had their problems, as all married couples did, but that didn't negate the fact that he was a loving husband. There was also no doubt that he would've been a wonderful father, if given the chance. Any woman would be lucky to have Wyatt as their significant other. Lucy knew that woman would never be her though.

Lucy adjusted her body, trying to find a more comfortable position. She gave up, knowing it was futile. She was infinitely glad she'd taken the corset off when she'd changed into "men's" clothing. So at least there wasn't that factoring into her discomfort. The cold, hard ground of Missouri was unforgiving and she suspected that neither she nor her companions would get much sleep that night. Hoping to force herself to get some rest, she began counting down from one hundred. It worked as she'd hoped and somewhere in the mid-thirties, she fell into a thankfully, if not entirely restful, sleep.