A/N: Wyatt's thoughts while he's in the secret detention area during The Lost Generation. Some harsh language and hot-button issues (abortion rights, domestic violence) talked about here. A nod to "Thank You." (And spent altogether too much time looking at freeze-frame images of Wyatt's research in Atomic City.)
Oh it's so long, I'm sorry. Love to hear your thoughts about this cycle. May do one more chapter as a tag bringing Lucy & Wyatt together. Need some lightness after all this angst! Thank you so much for the reviews and favorites for my first set of stories. You've been so kind and supportive!
[updated 4/24/2017: No changes here. But instead of a tag, there will be a few chapters following up with Wyatt & Lucy, called Talk to Me. Will post soon!]
Chapter 4: Wyatt
I thought I would never see her again after everything went wrong when I tried to save Jess. I may never see her, or any of them again, now.
After leaving Jess on the road, that night I went to Lucy's is the stupidest moment of my life. Well, actually, it's more like a string of them isn't it? Telling Lucy. Leaving Lucy behind. Going to that bar. Not listening to Rufus. Stalking Gilliam's mother like a maniac. Chasing that poor man in the rain...
I could feel it happening. You ever get that feeling when you're making the wrong choice, that it just doesn't feel like you anymore? Like you're on some kind of ride and it's taking you places that you don't want to go, but you can't get off? Moments happen like that in a firefight. It's going way too fast for you to think, to react. To feel with your emotions—instead you must react, react, react. But it's just snap-see it, make a choice-shoot/run/yell, react again... If I did take time to think more deeply, I'd be dead.
But I didn't think, and now he's dead.
I've killed a lot of people. Not just in war. From that first henchman of Flynn's in the warehouse in New Jersey, to Santa Anna's men at the Alamo, to Henry Holmes, Mudget whatever Lucy said his real name was. In each of those moments I knew, they had to die. To defend my friends, to stand with people I respected, to protect the innocent, to correct the balance of time, even. But to avenge deaths? Did I have that right? Does the fact that we have this tin box with a slinky on top that takes us through time, and this insane mission that comes from—who really? Agent Christopher? Homeland Security? Rittenhouse? Does all that power give us the right to fix things by killing?
Maybe they needed someone like Bass Reeves, not me, to be their soldier. I've even put that on Lucy now. Beautiful, caring Lucy. Who stood down an enraged, armed and homicidally dangerous Flynn to protect a child from him. A child who may even be the founder of what threatens her and all she loves. She killed Jesse James for the mission, and for me. So I didn't have to.
Lucy, who was there for me even when I asked her to stand by and let me go make the stupidest mistake of my life, as I tried to fix the deepest mistake of my life—letting Jess walk away from me that night in San Diego. "Sure, Lucy, here, just let me go possibly get myself and Rufus killed." I was leaving her where she was "safe" (as if that has any meaning with the way Rittenhouse gets into people's lives). But really, where I didn't have to worry about her. As if I was helping her get her sister back by taking our best friend and pilot into an unknown situation and risking who knows what penalties myself. I hope Rufus forgives me some day. (Jiya would never have forgiven me if he'd been hurt, or worse..) But then what did Lucy do but try to protect me and defend me to Agent Christopher? And then she has to face down her own father who turns out to be Rittenhouse. Alone.
I let her down. I let the team down. I let Jess down.
I've felt that way before. That feeling that everything is on auto-pilot and I'm out of control. After I came home from Syria. I felt like I was in an echo chamber. I could hear what people were saying around me, but none of it made sense. I couldn't feel any of it. Just tried to drag myself through every day. Trying to make it all right for Jessica.
I never did get what she saw in me. She was amazing in high school. We met during that fight at the abortion clinic, but I knew who she was long before then. Top of the class, head of the debate team and on the cheer-leader squad. Her life was like a rocket taking off. Our school was small potatoes but she would have stood out anywhere. She had so many hopes and dreams for what she could accomplish. Of course. And she would have if only..if only that rotten chance and my poor choices didn't get in her way.
I fell for her in a moment. Picture this: a huge crowd of people in an El Paso parking lot, pro-life protesters, women and their families trying to make the hardest decision in their lives, or just get health care, and in the middle of it all this a slight, determined blonde 16 year-old determined to save the world one person at a time. She was helping my old friend Ray's sister, Polly. Just walking with her to the door, talking to her calm-like and helping her navigate through the crowd. Many people on both sides were reasonable, unreasonable, everything in between. But suddenly this tall, middle-aged fellow with a salt-and-pepper beard and one very badly fitting blue suit sees that Polly and Jess are getting close to the door. He pushes his way over to them. His sign said "Defend Life." Sure, buddy.
Then he starts going on this rant about how she was murdering her baby. That God saw into her heart and was going to put her into a firey ring of hell where she would have to relive that moment for eternity if she aborted her child. Polly wasn't even pregnant. Jess was amazing. She tried to reason with him. Just put her open hand out and looked him in the eye. I could see the blood rising in his face. I got in between them in just the nick of time. He was raising his fist to Jess. He screamed at me to mind my own business and lashed out at me instead. The crowd was so close I couldn't dodge so he clipped me. I started getting swept up in his anger, and the shouting of the crowd so when I swung back I meant business. He dropped and I went after him, but Jess stopped me. In all of that, she said "This is not the way." She was right. I looked down at what I was doing, and I just saw my father there. That was the first night I spent in jail.
Jess tried to help me keep it quiet by getting her family to help, but I told Grandpa Sherwin when I got home. He understood. "Sometimes you have to break the rules to do what's right." I didn't tell him how it felt when I hit that man. I knew what he'd seen in the war. I told myself I'd never do that again. That I'd learned my lesson. But maybe I was lying to myself all these years.
When I stole the Lifeboat, I knew I was endangering everyone I now hold dear. And despite that, I know I'd do it again in a minute. Still, that is one of two things I will most regret in my life. Well, maybe one of three.
When I told her, told Lucy that anything was worth it to get Jess back, I knew I was grasping at straws. I knew my words to Lucy and Rufus about "not hurting anyone" were untrue. Just like I lied to Bass Reeves, I lied to them, I lied to myself. I knew my real mission and that I would do what was needed. No matter the cost.
I knew I would make myself into someone Jessica would hate. Just like Flynn. He didn't kill his child, Iris, but he would kill David Rittenhouse's child to get her back. I didn't kill Jess, but I would trade someone else's life to ensure that the man who did it would never exist. And saving those other girls—that was probably the best part of this scheme. But it was really just a way for me to smooth over the lie. Quiet their questions. And let me go so far over the edge of all things necessary that I found myself threatening an innocent man and woman at gunpoint to keep them from having sex. Her voice when he said he would leave: "Don't leave me!" I'd heard that voice before. My mom, me, afraid of my father.
I didn't mean to kill him. But I was willing to. Jess was so right, this is not the way.
I wasn't myself when I came home from that mission in Syria. I couldn't tell Jess what I'd been through, because I couldn't face it myself. Tried to make light of things. Forget about it. Work it through but quick with the psychiatrist. I knew the drill. I'd helped friends make it.
But I had no idea. I was in the bottom of the well looking up, but I didn't know it. I just kept sinking deeper and deeper. I couldn't..I didn't feel comfortable any more when Jess touched me. And that was so, just, wrong that I couldn't admit it. Sleeping in bed with her I'd stare up at the ceiling. I had to leave the bed to get any rest. And then I'd sneak back into bed before she woke up in the morning. Or that was what I told myself. Looking back now, of course she knew. She was just giving me space. What she must have thought.
And that night in February...it wasn't the first time that I had blown up like that. Jealousy? What was I thinking? I know now. It wasn't anything Jess did. Sure, we did actually run into an old boyfriend of hers that night, but it had been years since there was anything between them. They dated during our break, when she first went out to college. And they were broken up already by the time she and I got back together. I was way out of line. I, honestly, was not in my right mind.
That psychiatrist who worked with me after Syria was all right. She did what she could and was keeping with me. We still talked once a month right up until... But I was keeping her on the outside. Waaay, outside. Just like I was doing to Jess. It just hurt, way too much to go anywhere near what I was really feeling.
And it was only when I lost Jess that I came anywhere close to seeing what I'd been hiding from myself. I wasn't just distant and out of sorts when I came back. I was suicidal. I was terrified. I was full of rage. It was all I could do to keep a lid on it. I started drinking more, and when I drank, it came out. Yes, my fear and guilt about surviving in Syria. Yes, the damage that battle took on my mind, and the incredible regret I felt about being the one to make it out. But more than that...it was my guilt and pain at surviving my father. At not being able to protect my mother from him. And the anger...that was the worst of it. I didn't just want to get back at my dad, I wanted to BE my dad. The one in control. The one everyone was afraid of. The one who called the shots. The one that everyone had to listen to. The one who knew best for everyone else.
But that is not me. That is not who my mom and grandpa raised me to be. That's not who Jess loved. And I pray that's not who my friends care about now. No. The single gift that losing Jess gave me was making me hit bottom and making me face my demons squarely. It was deal with them or die.
When Jess disappeared, the police talked to everyone we'd seen that night. They took me in for questioning, careful not to call me a suspect, but I had to call Jess' sister from the police station. When she and her parents arrived I was still in the interrogation room. And from there, it was talking with the press, working with the police on any leads, and then, the next day, they found her...
You know, a strange thing? Flynn got that wrong. He got so much wrong about her death, actually. We ate at George's at the Cove. And she wasn't missing for two weeks, just a day. Maybe it was that other Lucy who wrote about it, maybe she was from another timeline where it was even worse? I can't imagine how it would have been if we'd had to face that kind of suspense. Jessica's family just shut me out. If only we'd been able to connect right away, but they never got to see my grief. And I lost them, too.
The month's leave I took turned into three months, turned into six. My buddies came around every so often and I tried hard to be dressed and sober when I met them. It was Teddy who found me the day I lost it. Blacked out from alcohol poisoning. I have no idea when I'd last eaten. He took me to the hospital, and then they kept a watch on me. Somebody checked in every other day when I got home. And It was Bam Bam who found me the shrink that stuck. He reminded me a bit of Grandpa Sherwin. Wouldn't take no for an answer. But he was kind, too. I was ready. I'd tried to let alcohol finish the job, but I didn't want to die. It took months for me to come out of the worst of it, but then I was ready to get back to work. Ready to get back into missions. I had so many regrets, I had make good somehow.
And I think I've found my chance now. Found it, then threw it away. Working with Rufus and Lucy just seemed like any other assignment at first. Yeah, sure, like any other assignment where I'd been tossed into a comic book or a Spielberg movie, maybe. But I knew the parameters. Get in, get out. Kill the target, protect civilians. Protect my team mates.
I was so wrong. There is nothing normal about this situation. I met and fought alongside Jim Bowie. I met, in the flesh (and lied my ass off to) George Washington. I held the hand of my friend to comfort her while she was covered in the fresh-spilled blood of Abraham Lincoln. She pulled me out of an emotional death spiral and literally saved me from dying at the Alamo. I have traveled through time with the very engineer who broke that barrier. Our moonshot.
There's nothing normal at all about this.
And coming back from it? I haven't been able to shake this obsession with getting Jessica back. Just having the temptation to use the time machines to go back and find some way to change things. It was like an opportunity on a silver platter to make good, finally. But that was just an illusion. Just like wanting to die at the Alamo. It wouldn't have brought back the men who died in Syria to let me go. And somehow even being responsible for Wes Gilliam's father dying didn't bring back Jessica.
I have to let her go.
I've let her go before. In high school, when we graduated. She was ready to take on the world. I had no idea what the world could offer me. Or what I could offer it. I'd kind of always figured she'd break up with me at some point. I lost track of how many times the football quarterback asked her out. Her co-captain in debate, Debby, was completely in love with her. No soap. Here she was with me, a no-good-Logan. I never got it. Of course she'd want to go. I couldn't face the idea of being in town without her. I decided to followed in Grandpa Sherwin's footsteps. Make him proud. Best decision of my life. I had no idea how much I needed a home like the Army gave me. A family. People to be there for. To trust. Even to fight with, but to be there. It gave me the confidence to track down Jess when I was on leave. Miracle of miracles, she was free—and she wanted to be with me! I still don't get it. Being with her in San Diego gave me the idea to go for Delta Force. It felt so right. Working towards Special Forces, learning so much. I felt like I'd been freed. Like I could finally be myself. And then come home to Jessica. I knew she'd be okay without me. She had so much she was going to accomplish. She never really needed me. Just...loved me. And shared her life with me like a gift I could never repay.
All that turned on its head when I came back home from Syria. All that trust I thought I felt, it was burned away. All I felt now was the distance. Couldn't understand why she was with me. Saw all the reasons why she would want to leave me. All my faults, all my flaws, all my shortcomings. I tried to bottle them up, but they came out. That night was the worst of it. I lashed out at her ex-boyfriend. I lashed out at her. Anything to keep from seeing who I really wanted to hurt. Myself.
Just like coming back from 1983. I can finally see how much I was throwing away. How much I'd risked losing. Rufus, Lucy...
You know that third thing? My other regret? Not kissing Lucy just once more. On the stair. What if the world we came back to didn't have her in it? What if she knew me but I was as little to her as that fake fiancé, Noah? What if she didn't care. Somehow, miraculously, she's still here. At this point, I may in fact never see her again, but I know she knows me. And I think she cares. In fact, if I'm completely honest with myself, I know she cares. I know she needs me. She as good as said that night, on the stairs. And then threw it back in my face, all her love and concern with that damned, "What do you need me to do?"
I think I need her.
I've tortured myself for losing Jessica. I pushed her away when she needed me. I think I pushed her away from the very start. But I've got to accept that the mistakes I've made are ones I have to live with. I think I can finally accept them.
Jess would want me to stop. She would want me to let her go. She'd slap me up-side the head and say: "Get a grip, soldier. You're alive. You've got a life to lead. Now live it." She tried so hard to help me come back after I lost so much in the war. She would want me to live and love now. Not follow her... I've got someone to love. Someone who needs me right now. PEOPLE who need me. If they can ever forgive me. What am I doing?
How many mistakes can I make and keep getting another chance? I think this time I have got to slow down. I've got to take the time to think and to feel.
I just hope it's not too late. I hope I wasn't dreaming that she kissed me back in Arkansas. If I can get out of this, somehow, I hope Lucy will let me be there for her. Like she's been there for me. This time, this chance if I get one, I'm going to take the risk. I'm going to slow down and trust. I cannot outrun my demons. But I can take a stand here, with my friends. And with someone I think, I know loves me.
