A/N: Lucy's thoughts while they are traveling through time to Chicago 1931 in Public Enemy No. 1. Continuing angst. Heading for some resolution with Wyatt next. (Lyatt all the way)

Chapter 3: Lucy

I thought I would never see him again after he left my house to save Jess.

If you'd asked me before he walked in the door that night, I would never have admitted it but I knew. I knew how much I cared about him. Almost losing him at the Alamo. That kiss in Arkansas... But then when he told me he was going to get back Jessica and he wouldn't let me help. When he said how much he would sacrifice—I couldn't deny it to myself any more. From the first moment we met, he was not just any hired gun. "The soldier." My soldier. My guy. Damn you Garcia Flynn, but yes, my Wyatt.


I trust him, depend on him. This insanity of chasing Flynn, who chases Rittenhouse, who chases world domination across time has bound us all together: me, Rufus, Wyatt. When you step across that threshold coming home and know that anything could have happened. Any of our loved ones may be gone. Any of us could be erased from existence. We're only beginning to understand the full repercussions of this machine. Rufus and Wyatt are the only two fixed points in my chaotic universe right now.

So fine. Rufus and Wyatt are my guys. Like best friends from kindergarten and college, crossed with army buddies and fellow ex-con old-timers all in one. There's really no one else that knows the world we know. I would do any thing for Rufus. He's put himself in danger for me and Wyatt, and used that brilliant mind to save us all. We've all gone to the wall for one another, many times over.

But I want something more from Wyatt. That thing I've watched Rufus and Jiya find together. That bolt of lightning I had pretty much given up on. No time for it with my career, caring for my Mom, watching out for Amy. Pushing so hard for my career to take me down the road my Mother had laid out for me. Living up to her reputation, growing up in her shadow. No time for myself. Losing that chance at tenure wasn't just losing a job. It was failing. Failing her and failing what I'd worked so long for. What was the point of it all?

My head is spinning from all the changes. Losing Amy. Gaining a fiancé I've never seen before. A poor innocent in all this whose dreams I'm destroying. Finding my Father at long last. But he's not just a your everyday dead-beat Dad—he seems to be a modern day Machiavelli. Threatening my friends, using us all in some centuries-spanning game that ends in..my bloodline ruling the world? My Mother, is blessedly healthy. At least I have her back, but if I save Amy, will I just lose Mom again?

We all could have died so many times. Wyatt, fighting for us, could have died so many different ways. Watching David go down made that real. Just a moment's error. I honestly can't believe that I can open my eyes right now and see Wyatt sitting there right across from me. Getting nauseous like usual but full of confidence and assurance for Rufus and me, like the whole secret apparatus of the US government and Rittenhouse wasn't after us. Like he wasn't just saved from being disappeared into black site detention.

The steady stream of alternately solid and scary replacements they provided for Wyatt since he stole the Lifeboat has really driven it home. In Paris, I kept half-turning to ask him something. Then I'd remember that he was who knows where, locked up by the government. For trying to do what anyone would in his position—just try to rescue the person he most dearly loved in the world.


What am I doing anyway. Having feelings like this for a man that will never return them, when against all reason, I suddenly have a man ready to devote his life to mine. If only I could stand letting Noah touch me, or bear to be with him for more than a few moments. I just freeze up every time he gets close to me. And when he kisses me... I don't understand. I can see in his eyes how much I mean to him. He's attractive, accomplished, caring. He has been so patient as I've pushed him away and taken space since everything changed. How can I tell him that the whole life he's built around our...relationship is just gone. I have to do the same thing to him that's been done to me. Crush all hopes of the life he thought he could lead. How can I? But then, how could I?

Noah's been so understanding. Far more than my Mother has been. She can't stop hounding me to talk to him, go back "home" she says, go back where I belong. How can I explain to her that my home is gone? Or how could I possibly tell her that home to me means a world where she's terminally ill? Where I have a sister she's never even met. I want them both back. I'd give anything to be able to go out to the cabin again and play cards with my Mom and Amy, both healthy and happy. But that would be some world that has never existed. What right do I have to manipulate time and space, other people's lives, just to get what I want. If Wyatt can't have his wife back, despite all he did to save her and those two other poor women, how could I possibly ever expect to have my family together?

My whole life I've been walking this path laid out before me. Learning to love history from my Mother. Looking up to her and seeing what a difference I could make by following her lead. Opening up people's eyes to how important the past is. How it forms us and shapes everything about our lives. How one person can make such a difference, and how people acting together can literally change the course of the world.

My father and Amy would chide Mom sometimes for pushing me so hard, but I loved it. She never put the same pressure on Amy. I always imagined it was because my sister just didn't take to what my Mother loved so much. Amy didn't know what she wanted to do, but that never seemed like a problem. She was the one who helped me relax and kick back. Take time for myself, which was so hard to do when I had so much to measure up to. My Mother got a double masters by the time she was 21, three PhDs by the time she was 27, and was the youngest—and the first woman—to head the history department at Stanford. The insights she had into so many periods of our past. The pieces she's been able to bring together from such varied and disparate evidence. She's opened up whole new fields of inquiry. I was going to follow up and do the same kind of ground-breaking work she did. How could I let her down by doing anything else? How could I let go of my own passion to continue this work?

Then somehow that future fell apart. No tenure. I'm not in line to lead the department. How could my plans go so wrong? What did I do wrong? Was I just being arrogant, assuming it would all fall in my lap? But right then, after my whole world was shook, this completely unthinkable way of engaging history opened up for me. Don't just study and imagine the past, but actually be there. It fits like a glove. Rufus is right, aside from the danger this job has incredible allure. I get to speak to the people whom we revere and abjure for having shaped our world. Find out what their lives are like, how they think and feel. The small details that get swept away in the rush of time. Letters could never tell just how Lincoln hesitated over my hand when he reached out to hold it. The rush of heat from the Hindenberg. The love of the families at the Alamo. And those people behind the scenes who actually made things happen—Rittenhouse crawling like a spider through the shadowy corners of time—can be pulled into the light. Stopped, even. Not just seeing history, but making it ourselves.

Making history. Unmaking history. What hubris. What am I doing? Who do I think I am? How can I possibly not do this? How can I possibly continue?


So Noah. No. Wyatt was completely right. This can't work. (I can never tell him—he would be so smug.) But when Noah kisses me with passion it brings me to panic. Meanwhile, just having Wyatt buckle me into my rickety chair in this nightmare diving bell through time gives me such a feeling of safety and peace. Noah is a stranger. Wyatt makes places that used to terrify me feel like home.

And I have no illusions about the likelihood of any chance with him. The very first thing I learned about Wyatt of any substance was that he still grieved for his lost wife. I watched him risk his job, life and the unknown consequences of changing time to have a shot at saving a woman that just reminded him of Jessica. Poor, poor Kate. And the other night...he threw everything away for his only chance at saving Jess. Then he lost it. Lost her, inescapably. I can only imagine how he feels. How that rocked him to the core. It killed me to have to tell him that Jess was still dead. The way he looked when we told him, he seemed like a different person. How did he come back to himself? I do not understand how he looks so level. So confident and sure about the new direction we have to go in.

All that is against it, but I'm so totally lost that I don't care. My Mother always told me about how it was love at first sight for her and my father..her husband Henry. Seemed like a nice fairy tale. I always took it as that, she made everything such a good story. But now, I am struck. I met this reckless hot-head who somehow saw inside me right away. When I was losing it in Germany—impersonating spies, surrounded by literal Nazis, this wasn't me! I'm a teacher, a researcher. Not an actress or operative. How could I possibly do this? Even with the help of James bloody Bond, Ian Fleming himself.

Wyatt saw that right away. And didn't take me to task for it or try and force me to go outside of my comfort zone. He knew what I was going through because he'd been there and found a way to help me work through it. Noah, my fiance and presumably lover of years, doesn't see my unease, yet Wyatt who has known me such a short while is aware immediately. He really sees the people he's with. Rufus' worry. The courage of the people at the Alamo. Reassuring me about my Father after he'd just been detained. He is so present with the people around him. Despite his own fears and burdens. Wyatt has shared his gift with me so generously. He saw what was going on with me from the start. He SAW me. Not the me I'm always trying to be, but the scared part that couldn't be like confident like my Mom. That couldn't believe I could do it. That part I try so hard to never let anyone see.

But I did let him see. That night, on the stairs. I couldn't hide how I felt. I don't know what he saw, but this time Wyatt couldn't get me over the hump.

After Germany it just became so easy to rely on him. We all relied on one another so much. Rufus, Wyatt, despite all my knowledge about each place we travelled to, I never would have survived without them. And it felt so safe to turn to Wyatt. I can't believe I didn't see what was happening right away. That day I tried to get to know Noah, what timing. Only to end up in Wyatt's arms hours later "pretending" to kiss. Another engagement day I didn't recall. Only this time the pretence was so real for me.

And damn me, some part of me holds out hope that he felt something, too. That look in his eyes after he kissed me... Not that I've known consciously. I had just enough inkling to realize as he told me he was going to save Jessica—as he'd always planned to—and it laid waste to me. Blasted away the hope and love and desire and contentment I'd found with Wyatt. As my team mate. As my friend.

My friend that I would do all in my power to get back to the woman he truly loves. My friend who has devoted his life to serving others, even when he lost all his own hope of happiness. Who carries all those he left behind with him, always. And always, always saw the people we met in the past as living, breathing people. With lives and loves that they deserved to cling to. And has questioned every step of the way the orders he's been given, even while trying his best to carry out the mission.


*Sneaking a peek* Yes, he's still there. This is not some dream. Rufus will be landing the Lifeboat soon. One more time after Flynn, and then who knows. But I have this moment with Wyatt, this time with both of them. I'll make the most of it, and be grateful for the crazy friendship we all share. It's not nothing, and who knows how long we all have. At least Rufus and Jiya found one another. At least I had my moment to feel this kind of love. At least I can be there for them. And there with him.

And try not to hope for more.