#timeline zero

(Love is a fickle thing. Not that it’s always been difficult for him—with Dominic it was simple, best friends crashing together in wartime and refusing to let go, and even if Flynn hadn’t known how Dominic felt, his own feelings were easy enough to name. With Lorena, he started falling the moment he bumped into her in the streets of Dubrovnik, when she flirted boldly enough to make him tongue-tied and dizzy, and by the morning after their first time, when she kissed him and said he was the best man she’d ever known, he knew. He just knew.

Lucy was different. Lucy was difficult. Between the version of her he met in Brazil, the journal, and the Lucy he finally came to know personally, there was something almost Austenian in loving her. He was in the middle before he knew he’d even begun. But even then, even when he realized, it took months, years even, for the two of them to come together that way, for him to accept that perhaps she really could love him in return. And now, when they finally have, when he’s settled and sure and he loves her, not just the grieving shade who gave him hope, not just the legend in a journal, but the real her...she’s gone.)

The air shifts next to him and Flynn hears the scuff of shoes against the floor before someone settles next to him.

“Did you know this would happen?” He’s not angry—part of him wonders if he should be, but he’s spent years using anger as a substitute for grief and gotten nowhere—resignation is all he can muster. There’s a raw ache in his chest, the loss like an open wound—he may not survive this one, but the feeling at least is an old companion by now.

Jiya shakes her head. “I had a vision right before the Lifeboat appeared,” she admits. “That’s why I wasn’t in the room. But I didn’t—I wouldn’t have told her to go if I’d realized…”

“Realized what?”

There’s a pause, a silence that stretches on long enough that Flynn almost repeats himself, but then Jiya sighs.

“There are so many universes out there,” she says. “So many time streams. You all know the basic mechanics by now, that if you change something in the past, it changes the future, or at least a future, but that’s not the end of the story.”

“No?”

“No. It’s like…” Jiya plays with her fingers as she searches for the words, staring at the far wall as though she’s seeing something else entirely. “...a tapestry. And each color represents a different...parent universe so to speak. And all the threads of that color are all the different timelines that came out of a single starting place. When Lucy and Wyatt showed up to help us save Rufus, they weren’t from the future—our future—they were from a different universe. A completely separate set of threads. If we’re yellow, they were blue, does that make sense?”

“Enough,” Flynn agrees, tipping his head back to rest against the wall. “But that doesn’t explain what happened to Lucy.”

“She’s the original. Lucy Prime if we’re going to get Trekkie with it.” Jiya glances over, her eyes refocusing as she looks at him. “Usually, when something changes, it just creates a new thread. But those changes aren’t being made from a time where we already exist. When they are, the universe has to course correct to adjust, like a rubber band snapping back after it’s been stretched too far. If it’s what I think, she went back to give you the journal and there was nowhere for her to come back to, so when she tried, at the same time our Lucy went off to do the same thing—snap.”

Flynn flinches at the metaphor. Snap.

He thinks back to São Paulo, back to the memories that serve as just another piece of evidence that Lucy—his Lucy—didn’t make it there. Because his memories are full of a Lucy dressed all in black, who put on a strong front but couldn’t hide the grief that lingered around her like a shroud. Grief for him. For the Garcia Flynn she lost. The Garcia Flynn she loved.

”What did I say? When you decided to do this?”

”Nothing. You didn’t say anything.”

(In fact, he had. In this timeline, he had. They argued about her going—he tried to say it was over, it was done, Rittenhouse was gone, she didn’t need to take the risk, but she thought it was important. Just in case. In case she’d created some sort of time loop that would undo all their hard work if she didn’t go back to give him the journal—Jiya and Rufus couldn’t say definitively what would happen, so Lucy insisted. He begged her not to go, ice in his veins, because he couldn’t lose her, he couldn’t—

You won’t, she breathed against his lips when their respective frustrations boiled over into sex. You won’t lose me. And finally, he acquiesced despite his misgivings, because the last thing he wanted was for her to leave mad at him.

They couldn’t have predicted this.)

If the Lucy lying in the med bay talking to Rufus is really the Lucy he met in São Paulo...there’s a sick irony in that. Because that Lucy, journal Lucy, he did love her. He loved her first. She saved his life, she gave him hope, guidance, everything—how could he not love her? But she wasn’t real—after that night, he couldn’t see her, couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t touch her—and the all too real version he kept running into across time couldn’t stand him. He had to let go, he had to do better, because he couldn’t afford to fuck up the chance of having at least some connection with the Lucy in front of him.

Maybe this is the universe’s way of getting back at them—he died, Lucy went back in time to save his life, and it let her. For a price.

Do they not get to be happy? Do they not deserve to be happy? Haven’t they suffered enough? Apparently not.

(Lord knows his sins are many and varied, his hands soaked with enough blood he’ll never wash the stains off, but Lucy—Lucy’s no angel, he knows that, but her hands at least are far cleaner. She deserves better to have the rug yanked out from under her again—or his Lucy would have. He supposes he doesn’t actually know this one.)

“I’m sorry,” Jiya says quietly.

Flynn shakes his head. “You didn’t know. I believe that.”

“Still.”

Down the hall, the door opens and Rufus steps out, stopping short when he sees the two of them.

“You put it together then,” he says. It’s not a question.

Flynn nods once, unable to make himself ask what Lucy said to him.

“For what it’s worth, she still remembers. Everything. It’s not Lucy, but it also...kinda is? She has her memories of her timeline, and then all of ours, it’s just sort of...jumbled up right now.”

(Flynn doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse. Possibly worse.)

“She wants to see you,” Rufus offers, as if unsure what else to say. Flynn can’t blame him—what is there to say? “She thinks the two of you should talk.”

“No.” It’s a visceral reaction, not a conscious thought. Flynn hardly realizes he’s speaking until he’s already said it, and then he’s pushing himself to his feet. “No, I can’t. Not right now.”

(He would give her anything. Anything. But something in him cracks and he can’t—he can’t see her without shattering and that’s the last thing he’s prepared to do at the moment.)

“Flynn—”

“Let him be,” Jiya interjects, and Rufus closes his mouth. The silence echoes in Flynn’s ears as he walks away.

Back in his room—their room, his and Lucy’s—Flynn collapses on the bed with a shuddering exhale. Lying back, he scrubs his hands over his face and tries to feel less like he’s bleeding out. And yet, all he can think of is Lucy. Lucy, and when his eyes catch the string of photo booth polaroids on the bedside table from their first official date, Gettysburg.

Or rather, what happened after.

The first time Flynn kissed her may have been in a favela in São Paulo, but the second time was years later, in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, after almost getting shot hours before.

When he closes his eyes, it’s the only thing he can see.

”That was a really stupid thing you did today,” Lucy says. It’s late—everyone else has long since gone to bed, but Lucy insisted on making sure he was okay for the umpteenth time.

“I was protecting you,” Flynn argues. “You could have died.”

“You could have died!” Lucy throws down the antiseptic she’d been reapplying to a scrape on his face and crosses to the sink to wash her hands. He can’t see her face, but her voice is clear enough—she’s angry with him, although he’s not sure why.

“I’m a soldier, it comes with the territory,” he replies.

“That’s not—” The water shuts off and Lucy is as quiet as she’s been the whole evening when she picks up a hand towel.

“Not what?” Flynn asks.

“Who protects you?” When Lucy turns around again, any frustration he may have felt dies in his throat at the look on her face. “You protect all of us, but who protects you?”

“Lucy…”

“I can’t lose you.” Her voice cracks, but she doesn’t look away, and that look alone pins him in place.

“You’re not expendable,” she adds, stepping close enough that she can rest her hands on his chest. “Not to me. Garcia—”

Flynn swallows hard, barely breathing as she tips her face up.

(They’ve been dancing around something since Chinatown, since an almost-confession that neither of them were ready for. But she’s the one who started this, and unlike all the other times, there’s no hesitation on her face.)

“Garcia, please.” Lucy shifts up on her toes, her hands moving from his chest to twine behind his neck and pull him down. He doesn’t resist. And when he doesn’t stop her, when he doesn’t ask questions, her mouth finds his and it’s everything, everything, everything—

No, he can’t go see her. Not yet. Guilt weighs heavy in his stomach, knowing everything this other Lucy risked, what she did to save him, how grateful he is for all of it. But he can’t. He needs time.

Just time.

They don’t stay in the bar. After an hour occupying a table without ordering anything else, they start attracting irritated looks, and Lucy isn’t exactly jumping at the thought of having an audience. She’s too sensitive to the weight of strange eyes on her, too wary about all the things that could still go wrong, whether they’re likely to or not. For what it’s worth, Flynn seems to feel similarly and doesn’t argue when she asks if they can go back to wherever he’s staying.

(She’d explained the basics, the broadest strokes, still unsure about what she should or shouldn’t say. She’d answered some questions, but there are still plenty of things that still need saying by the time they leave.)

“You really do hate them. Rittenhouse,” he says, breaking the silence once they’re half a block away from the bar. His hands are in his pockets, but he still looks at her like she’s a puzzle he can’t quite figure out.

“So do you,” Lucy points out.

“Yes, but I know why I do.”

Lucy turns that over in her head and bites the inside of her cheek as she considers her response.

“They’re evil,” she replies. “The way they think about people, the type of power they want to have, the things they’re willing to do to get it—they’re evil.”

“That’s not why you hate them though.”

Lucy narrows her eyes at Flynn and he merely raises a brow in response, daring her to say he’s wrong.

(She should have expected this after earlier. Flynn is still Flynn—he hates not having all the answers and given the number of personal details she made clear she knows about him, it’s only reasonable that he might want to level the playing field. Not that she doesn’t say plenty in the journal, but he hasn’t read it yet, and besides, there’s a difference between words on a page and being able to confirm someone’s honesty with your own eyes.)

“Rittenhouse took everything from me,” she says. “They manipulated my whole life before I ever even knew they existed. And then, when I learned, when I decided to fight back, they took my sister. Later, they took others. The woman who was basically my surrogate mother. And finally, they took—”

“No!”

You.

Lucy clears her throat and blinks hard, not looking at Flynn for fear that she’ll see blood spreading across his chest.

Get it together.

“I hate them for the same reasons you do, let’s leave it at that,” she finishes.

“And you think coming here, giving me that book you have there, will change anything?” Flynn asks. “Will it bring the people you love back? Will it bring my family back? From everything you’ve said, I get the impression we aren’t exactly winning—”

“I think I had to try,” Lucy snaps. “Because after everything, I still believe that somehow, some way we can save the people we love. And because there are things in life that are worth fighting for even if you don’t win. You know who I learned that from?”

“Who?”

“You.”

It’s Flynn’s turn to look away, shame and exhaustion echoing in the slump of his shoulders. And as quickly as her flash of anger had come, it dissipates.

“I know you’re tired,” she says, gentling her tone. “I know you’re grieving. And I know you’ve been fighting wars for most of your life—you’re not eager to jump into another one, I get it.”

Lucy links her hands behind her back so she won’t try to touch him again. (God, she wants to.)

“But Garcia, this is bigger than you. It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than any of us. And you won’t—you won’t be alone.”

He still doesn’t look back, but the corner of his mouth ticks up. “Because you and I are, what was it you said? Quite the team?”

“Yeah,” Lucy replies, relaxing a fraction for the first time since she arrived because maybe, just maybe, this might actually work. He’s listening. He believes her. “Yeah, we really are.”

Flynn stops by a dilapidated staircase, flaked paint and splintering wood leading up to a set of what she assumes are equally run-down apartments. Exactly the kind of place she assumed he would be staying—out of the way, somewhere no one is likely to spend too much time looking at or around—but there’s a pang in her chest nonetheless.

He does look at her then instead of immediately starting up the stairs, and there’s genuine curiosity in his expression instead of suspicion.

“What did I say?” Flynn asks. “When you decided to do this? You said it was dangerous, and I—Lucy?”

When he’d asked his question back at the bar, Lucy had been unprepared to give an answer. This question, she did prepare for. At least, she prepared an answer.

She didn’t prepare for her own reaction. She didn’t expect it to feel like—

Like a gunshot to the chest?

Lucy knows it shows on her face, knows that’s the reason Flynn cut himself off and is staring with concern. Swallowing back the bile that threatens to rise, she pulls herself together to give him an answer.

“Nothing,” she replies, her voice shockingly steady to her own ears. “You didn’t say anything.”

She can see the moment it clicks for him.

(It was the one thing she swore she wouldn’t let him know. And yet...she can’t bring herself to regret that he knows.)

“I see.”

Flynn opens his mouth to say something else, but immediately thinks better of it, turning to go up the stairs. And Lucy follows, because well...her job isn’t done yet.

The inside of his apartment is dark, the only light from a streetlamp filtering through cracks in the blinds. Flynn is clearly used to it, but Lucy’s foot catches something when she steps inside—a stray nail, maybe an uneven floorboard—and instead of passing easily over the threshold, she falls forward, wincing as she prepares to hit the ground. But the impact doesn’t come.

Flynn catches her, one arm curving around her waist while his other hand cups her elbow for additional stability. They’re perfectly innocent touches, and for a perfectly innocent reason, but it doesn’t matter—she’s still in Flynn’s arms, close enough that there’s little for her hands to do other than rest against his chest, and being held by Garcia Flynn in any capacity is...overwhelming.

(He’s not hers. Her Flynn died in Gettysburg and even if this works, even if she’s able to bring him back, she doesn’t realistically expect him to be the same as the version she lost.

But, god. God. He smells the same and his arms are the same and Lucy can’t breathe—she can’t breathe because she’s spent two weeks holding back, focusing on this mission, barely keeping her head above the ocean of grief that threatens to drown her at every turn. Two weeks on a Hail Mary that they all used to think was impossible, but it worked and she’s in his arms—)

“Lucy?”

She doesn’t realize she’s closed her eyes until they open again at Flynn’s quiet rasp of her name. When he starts to pull away, she’s struck with a sudden, cold panic, and her fingers curl tightly in the front of his shirt.

“Wait—“

(Drowning, drowning, drowning, just like she had been years ago when her car went over that bridge. And just like then she can’t help clinging to him, because he’s the only lifeline she has.)

He stills.

“Lucy, wait,” Flynn says as she tugs him to his feet. “We don’t even have music.”

(Three years in and they’re all riding high on a solid win for once, although Rufus and Jiya have long since vanished off into their room for a more private celebration and Wyatt begged off before the last round to get some real sleep. Lucy is giddy, still in stolen clothes, although her hair has fallen from its carefully pinned curls, and even Flynn hasn’t been able to stop smiling.)

“So?” Lucy replies. “You promised me a dance back in 1945. I want to see those moves you claimed to be so proud of.”

His chuckle washes over her like a wave at low tide, warming her from the inside, and Lucy bites her lip as she looks up at him.

“Come on, Garcia,” she coaxes. “Dance with me.”

“You’re drunk,” Flynn points out, but he twirls her after and it’s Lucy’s turn to laugh.

“Not that drunk.” She betrays herself by catching herself a little too hard against his chest when she spins back into him. “Okay, maybe a little.”

The vibrations from his laugh buzz through her as he slips his free arm around her waist to steady her.

“How about a slow one?” Flynn suggests. Lucy lets him pull her closer, resting her head on his chest and humming absently as they sway together.

(If she closes her eyes and listens to the steady beat of his heart, she can almost pretend that this means more than it does.)

Eventually, her humming slows, then stops, and Flynn stops swaying. But he doesn’t let go. Lucy opens her eyes, looking up at him, and swallows hard. Her head is spinning, she’s too warm, but the longer she looks at him, the more she can’t think of a reason why she shouldn’t—

Her kiss lands at the corner of his mouth and Flynn shivers.

“Lucy…” His arm tightens around her for the briefest of moments before he releases her and steps back. “It’s late.”

“Not that late,” she replies.

“Late enough.”

“Garcia—” Lucy catches the sleeve of his suit jacket and he closes his eyes for a moment as though praying for strength. “Would it be so bad?”

Am I so bad?

Flynn’s next laugh is hollow as he swipes his free hand over his face.

“No,” he admits, because even now he won’t lie to her. “Which is exactly why I can’t. Lucy, you deserve—”

He cuts himself off and gently extracts his arm from her grasp.

“I’m sorry. Goodnight, Lucy.” he says.

It’s selfish. God, it’s so selfish. But it’s like she doesn’t have control over her limbs anymore. One of her hands spreads out across Flynn’s chest, her fingers splaying wide—she doesn’t look up at his face, can’t bear to see the same gentle rejection she’s seen a hundred times before in even younger eyes, but she can’t stop touching him either. He doesn’t stop her though. He lets her stay close, lets her touch—

He’s not yours. Not yours.

Lucy’s hand slides up his chest, his throat, her fingers curling around the back of his neck, into his hair. She leans up on her toes, but stops herself before she actually tries to kiss him. It’s a bridge slightly too far—she didn’t come here for this, to be rejected again. She didn’t come here to put that on him either.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes.

Let go, she tells herself. 3...2...1…

“Lucy.” When she meets his eyes, they’re soft. There’s still pain in them, pain that mirrors the pain she feels herself—grief, loss—but there’s gentleness too. And it’s her turn to freeze when he ducks his head and brushes his mouth ever so lightly over hers.

”I see.”

Everything.

Lucy doesn’t know if it’s pity or compassion—she’s not sure she cares. A desperate noise escapes her and her hand tightens in his shirt as she leans up on her toes and kisses him harder.

(He’s not hers, and god knows she isn’t Lorena, but for a few minutes, they can pretend. In their shared grief, their pain, they can do this. If his hands tug too hard when he pulls her hair out of its ponytail, if she tastes salt when she licks into his mouth and grips him too tightly, well. Neither of them care to comment.)

Flynn walks her back to the Lifeboat the next day, the journal tucked under his arm. Lucy figures after everything she’s said, it can’t hurt to let him see it. At least, not more than anything else.

(If nothing else, the sight of his wide eyes as he takes in a real time machine will be burned into her mind forever.)

“Lucy—”

She’s just about to hoist herself up into the machine when Flynn calls her name and makes her look back.

“Yes?”

“I—” He looks down at the journal, turning it over once in his hands before looking back up to her. “—thank you. For this, for—thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Lucy replies. “And...good luck, I guess.”

She’s just turned around when Flynn adds, “I hope you find everything you’re looking for.”

Biting her lip, Lucy nods once, even though he can’t see her face.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Yeah, you too.”

She doesn’t let herself look back again. When the door of the Lifeboat closes, her eyes burn with unshed tears, but she still refuses to let them fall. Instead, taking a few deep breaths, Lucy starts the sequence to bring the Lifeboat home.

Part of her doesn’t want to. If it didn’t work and she doesn’t open the door, she won’t have to find out. The last memory she has of Flynn now is of him alive, strong and determined, watching her leave São Paulo with the sun shining down on him. She can probably manage one more trip without charging the Lifeboat—she could drop herself somewhere in the past, start over, forget about fighting, forget about Rittenhouse, just live out the rest of her days with her memories. It’s unforgivably selfish, but for a moment she wants it more than anything.

(There was a night after Lucy lost Amy—after she came home from 1964 to find her sister’s body on the floor of their kitchen—when she considered the same thing. She broke down in Flynn’s arms that night, sobbing that she couldn’t do it anymore, that she needed to stop, to run away, to disappear, that she was a teacher, not a soldier, and she wasn’t strong enough to continue. He held her through all of it, for hours, without judgment or argument. And when she finally exhausted herself enough to drift off, he kissed her forehead and murmured a soft You’re stronger than you know. She still doesn’t know if he realized she wasn’t actually asleep.)

Ignorance is bliss, right?

But, no. She can’t run now. Just like she couldn’t years ago. And as much as she’s afraid to know for certain whether Flynn is alive, she also has to know. She has to know if it was worth it.

Swallowing hard, Lucy unbuckles her seatbelt and hits the button to open the door. Her legs are shaky as she makes her way to the opening, whether from nerves or aftershocks from the trip, she can’t be sure. But when she looks out, she has to catch herself on the edge of the door because her knees buckle.

Flynn.

There he is. Years older than the version she just left, but alive. Alive and standing there expectantly with his arms crossed and the smallest of smiles on his lips. And the look in his eyes—god, it’s open and soft and fond in a way that makes Lucy’s heart skip, and it’s directed completely at her. At her. As though he—

Loves her.

“Need some help?” Flynn asks, pushing off the wall and walking over to the Lifeboat.

Lucy’s mind goes blank, but her throat is dry enough that she’s not sure she could make words come even if she knew what to say. Is he—are they—?

Without waiting for a response, Flynn reaches up and grips her waist, lifting her gently out of the ship. Lucy’s hands settle on his shoulders for balance as she tries not to let her surprise show on her face.

For half a moment, she tries to rationalize the situation. She’s making assumptions based on—what? A look and a helpful gesture? But then, Flynn sets her on her feet and ducks his head and—oh. Oh.

There’s no explaining away a kiss. Especially not one like this. It’s soft and sweet, over too quickly, too familiar to be anything but habit. The ease of it—he must have kissed her like this a hundred times, a thousand times maybe. She may not remember, may not have lived it, but she can’t deny the obvious conclusion that’s staring her in the face. Somehow, not only did her trip save his life, but it caused them to...be together.

“Welcome home,” Flynn says, one hand coming up to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

Lucy isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She was prepared for it to have not worked. She was prepared for him to have lived but for their relationship to be limited. She was prepared for the possibility of a miracle happening that also brought his family back.

She wasn’t prepared for this.

“I—” What is there to say? What do you say when the man you love comes back to life? What do you say when after years of pulling away from further intimacy, he’s suddenly the one initiating it?

He initiated it in São Paulo as well, but that was different. She has no illusions about what that was. And yet—was that the change that made the difference? Was it the journal?

(She feels oddly like she’s cheated, rigged the system in her favor—she was fine with it when the goal was to save his life, but she never expected—)

“Lucy?”

Lucy starts to take a step back, but a wave of dizziness crashes into her so hard that she can’t help tightening her grip on him for balance.

“Flynn—” It’s all she manages to force out before she’s rocked by a spike of pain in her temples.

The edges of her vision blur as background noise begins to fade away—she’s only vaguely aware of Flynn calling Rufus over. But her head—

It hurts. God, it hurts, why—

It’s a blessing when the world goes black.

May 6, 1937

“We need to talk, Lucy.”

With the air full of smoke and ash, the flickering of flame the only light cutting through the clouds, Flynn looks like the devil himself. And Lucy—Lucy is afraid. She doesn’t want to be. She hates that she is. But she’s a history teacher—just a history teacher—and here’s a man with a gun, who stole a time machine, who may have killed his family, and he’s pointing that gun at her, so yes. She’s afraid.

(The crash wasn’t his fault, that was just history. And as far as she can tell, he hasn’t actually done anything in the past. Yet. But that doesn’t mean he won’t. It doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous.)

“How do you know my name?”

Flynn’s brow furrows. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“You’re on a list,” he replies. “A list put together by Rittenhouse.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Lucy says. “I’ve never heard that name before.”

“No? Because they’ve heard of you.”

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a worn page, holding it up so she can see. It’s almost all dates and coordinates, typed neatly in stark black typewriter font, but there are a few with initials next to them. A BC next to a date from 1954, JR from back in the 1770s—and at the bottom, LP next to March 13, 2003.

“It’s funny,” Flynn says. “These other initialed dates, I don’t know what’s important about them. I’m not even sure where to start figuring it out. But this one...it could have been a coincidence, but I thought, what were the chances they would just happen to make note of the day I saved a young woman from drowning? So I looked up the accident report. LP...Lucy Preston. Historian. Professor at Stanford, very impressive.”

“Stop.” Lucy’s mind is racing—her eyes are still locked on the page, ice chilling her from the inside. She also wants to brush it off as a coincidence, but her birthday is earlier up on the list, and her mother’s. Then, the rest of his statement registers—

“Wait, you?” She asks. “The man who pulled me out, that was—that was you?”

(And yet, even as she asks, his voice is pulling up the memory, settling into the grooves of ”It’s okay, you’re okay” like a puzzle piece clicking into place.)

Flynn nods once, refolding the list and tucking it back into his jacket.

“So, why does Rittenhouse care about a random car accident?” He asks.

“I don’t know,” Lucy insists. “Like I said, I’ve never heard that name—”

“I believe you,” Flynn replies. “But you need to find out. I’m not the enemy here, Lucy, they are.”

“How do I know you didn’t make that list yourself? Why should I believe anything from a man who killed his own family?”

Flynn flinches as though she’s struck him. For half a moment in the flickering light, his face is raw and open, the pain written there too acute to be fake.

(She’s shaken by that look—because if he didn’t, then she’s been lied to. And if she’s been lied to about that—)

“Lucy!”

Flynn snaps into action at the sound of Wyatt’s voice, grabbing Lucy and pulling her tight against his chest as he turns his gun on the other man.

“Let her go,” Wyatt demands.

“Put the gun down and I will,” Flynn counters.

“You’ll kill me.”

Flynn tips his head. “Maybe. Maybe not. That’s just a risk you’ll have to take, isn’t it?”

Wyatt meets Lucy’s eyes, visibly conflicted. And she makes a split-second decision.

“Put the gun down, Wyatt,” she says. “Please.”

“I can’t trust him,” he replies.

“Please,” Lucy repeats, because for some reason—maybe because he saved her life, maybe because she doesn’t believe he killed his family, maybe just because she has far more questions than answers and she’s wary of anyone having a government-sanctioned license to kill—for some reason, she’s far more inclined to trust Flynn than Wyatt’s information at the moment.

Wyatt looks away for a fraction of a second, but it’s enough of an opening. Flynn pushes her hard toward the other man, hard enough that she crashes into him and knocks him off balance. By the time Wyatt gets his gun up again, Flynn is gone, vanished into the smoke.

“Are you okay?” Wyatt asks. “Did he hurt you?”

Lucy shakes her head slowly. “No,” she replies. “No, he—we were just talking.”

“What did he say?”

Maybe it’s paranoia, maybe it’s reasonable suspicion, but either way, Lucy has reservations about revealing too much. Or...anything.

“Nothing. Just that he knew my name. We didn’t get very far.”

If Wyatt doesn’t believe her, he certainly doesn’t say.

“Let’s go home.”

(That night, she asks Amy if she’s ever heard of Rittenhouse.)

“What’s happening to her?”

Flynn’s voice breaks through the fog enveloping her, but it’s still distant, like he’s in a different room, or like Lucy’s underwater. She can’t open her eyes, can’t move, can’t speak—she’s just suspended in the moment, waiting to be swept away again.

“I don’t know.”

Rufus. Worried, anxious—Lucy hasn’t heard that particular tone from him except in regard to Jiya.

“You said this was safe.”

“I said that the tests indicated it should work. There were always going to be risks.”

“You—”

“Enough.” And that’s a new voice, one Lucy hasn’t heard in years. Denise? Could it really be— “Flynn, take a breath. Picking a fight won’t help anything.”

“I just—” A shuddering exhale, then the creak of a chair. “I can’t lose her.”

“I know.”

A stray thought filters through her mind—a fractured bit of memory, a joke that landed badly—

Who knew the guy who shot Lincoln could be so soft?

That doesn’t make sense. Flynn didn’t shoot Lincoln, Lucy thinks, arguing with her own subconscious. Although, even her thoughts are muted. Hazy.

That was—that was—

And then, as quickly as the thought comes, it’s gone, and Lucy slips back into unconsciousness.

“You think I’m here to make this worse?”

They’re in a train station in 1865, and Flynn’s tone is incredulous, his offense plain on his face.

Lucy’s brow furrows. “Aren’t you?”

“No,” Flynn replies. “In fact, if this works, it should hopefully make a lot of things much better. For a lot of people.”

Lucy takes that in, then freezes when it registers.

“You want Lincoln to live.”

“Don’t you?” Flynn asks.

“I—we can’t.”

“Why not?”

Why not?

The dreams—or memories, some of them are memories—come faster and faster. They slide from one to another almost too fast for her to keep up.

A desert shoot-out over a nuclear weapon—But we’ve never been to Vegas—

Nazi Germany—“You think I like helping these bastards? You think I sleep at night?”—

Russia, during the Revolution, that was real—“I take issue with the senseless murder of children—”

“She and I are going to be quite the team one day.”

“You have a choice right now!”

“What if he led you to me?”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

Please—

“Please, wake up, Lucy. Please.”

Flynn’s voice breaks through again, but this time the fog begins to recede. His hand is in hers, she can feel it—her fingers twitch and he squeezes tighter.

“Lucy?”

Her head is killing her still, although it’s different from before—a steady, throbbing ache rather than stabbing pain. It’s too full, her thoughts, her mind scrambled. She’s waiting for the dreams to fade away, these strange visions of Flynn and Wyatt and others—some of her mother even, oddly enough—and yet, they don’t disappear.

“Lucy?” Flynn repeats, his free hand gently stroking her cheek.

“I guess what I meant is that I’d like to get to know you.”

They don’t disappear. As if maybe they aren’t dreams at all. As if maybe—

Slowly, Lucy forces her eyes open.

“Thank God.”

Her heart squeezes at the sight of Flynn, but she also knows that’s a situation she can’t deal with yet. Not yet. She has too many questions, too much to sort through. And although her tongue is heavy and her throat like sandpaper, she manages to put one sentence together.