Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

7th October 2016
(Now)

     Lucy is halfway to her mom’s house when her phone buzzes. It’s probably Noah. She’s going to ignore it, but it just keeps going off, vibrating in her back pocket over and over again. If he’s calling this many times in a row, Lucy feels obligated to answer.

     So, against her better judgement, she pulls the car over on the shoulder of the road, parks, and lifts her hips off the seat to reach back and fish the phone out.

     It’s not Noah. It’s not even Agent Christopher, which was the other option Lucy had guessed at.

     No, it’s Wyatt Logan. His name on her phone, his bored, unimpressed face flashing up on the screen. He hadn’t wanted to smile when Lucy asked for a photo, just rolled his eyes and told her that she was being stupid. Lucy can’t help it if she likes to be organised. She takes photos for her phone contacts - it’s just what she does. Matching a face to the name.

     She slides her finger along the screen to answer, puts him on speaker and says, tentatively, “Hello?”

     “Lucy?”

     “Yeah,” she says, and then, irrationally, “Wyatt?” like he might be someone else.

     “It’s me,” he confirms. “Listen, I, ah...” his voice trails off.

     Lucy waits, just in case there’s some reason he’s pausing. Dramatic effect, or maybe someone else is feeding him information, because this has to be about work, right? It’s got to be work. She can’t think of any other reason for Wyatt to call her - when they’ve known each other for less than a week, and she’s pretty sure he doesn’t like her. Not after that last mission to Las Vegas, 1962, when they’d butted heads over and over again.

     He’s still silent. It’s going on a little long now, Lucy thinks.

     “Wyatt?” she prompts.

     “Sorry,” he says. “I’m still here.” He sounds exhausted; drained. Lucy can’t blame him. Not after he’d tried, and come back and found an empty space still where his wife should be.

     She only wishes she could come back and find Noah’s disappeared. The second she has the thought, Lucy hates herself for it, guilt swelling up in her chest. God, how could she wish that on him? On anyone? When she knows how it feels, missing Amy. When she’s seeing firsthand what it’s doing to Wyatt.

     “Are you okay?” she asks, in case that’s why Wyatt is calling. Not for work, but just to talk? To commiserate with one of the only other people who understands?

     “No,” he says, and then he exhales on a shaky breath and says, “Lucy, I… I really need your help.”

     He texts her an address, and Lucy plugs it into her phone’s GPS, lets the cool female voice talk her through the twists and turns. Her heart is thumping with anxiety, and she tries to slow her breathing and calm down. It doesn’t work. There’s too much to worry about. Wyatt wouldn’t tell her what he needed help with, but he’d said it was urgent, and not to tell anyone. Not anyone.

     All sorts of irrational thoughts chase their way through Lucy’s brain. He’s accidentally brought back some historical artefact - although, she can’t imagine what. Or maybe Jessica was alive, but not with Wyatt, and he’s kidnapped her - oh, but he’d been looking at the news articles, Lucy remembers. So his wife is definitely still dead.

     Her mind keeps sticking on what he’d said. He needs her help? And he’d sounded so embarrassed to ask for it, too, and she wonders why he couldn’t ask anyone else. Does he have anyone else? She doesn’t know anything about him beyond Jessica - and he was a soldier, she knows that. Soldiers are supposed to be good in a crisis. Why had Wyatt sounded so close to panic on the phone?

     Lucy parks outside the apartment block when the GPS tells her to. She takes a moment in the car… just sits, and breathes, and wonders why.

     And then she unbuckles her seatbelt and grabs her purse off the front seat and slides out of the car, closing the door firmly behind her.

     It’s still early, and there isn’t anyone else in the parking lot. Lucy hits the buzzer for number 14. Even though there’s a speaker beside the numbers, she doesn’t hear anything. Just the click when the front door unlocks. She pushes it open and makes sure it latches properly behind her before she climbs the stairs.

     Wyatt is leaning on the wall outside his apartment. Arms folded, chin to his chest, one leg bent up with his foot against the wall behind him. He looks tired. Lucy’s tired - it’s been hours since she’d last slept. Way, way too long. She’d gone to a hotel last night, after she'd left Noah. Before she went to see Mom, and the inevitable arguments that would go along with that. Lucy hadn't been able to sleep anyway. She'd just had to lie there, thinking. Worrying. About Amy, mostly, but Noah too. A total stranger in her bed, in her life, who seems to think he loves her? It’s not right. Messing with reality like this. It can’t lead to anything good.

     “Wyatt,” Lucy hisses.

     His head comes up, but he doesn’t smile at her, or even smirk. “You made it.” There are dark circles under his eyes.

    “Yes,” she says, “I did. So now are you going to tell me what this is about?”

     Wyatt looks around, frowning at the number 15 apartment opposite. He mumbles something that Lucy can’t understand.

     “What?”

     “Something’s changed,” he says, quietly. He won’t meet her eyes. “In the timeline.”

     “Jessica?”

     He nods, slowly, and says, “I don’t know what happened.”

     “That telegram you sent,” Lucy says. “It must have been. Right? If she’s still… here.” If Jessica’s still alive, why would Wyatt need Lucy’s help? Her mind jumps back to kidnapping. Oh, she really, really hopes that’s not it.

     “She’s not,” Wyatt says. “It’s not Jess, it’s someone else. Someone new.”

     “Your family?” Lucy asks. “Or - do you have another partner? Like Noah?” That might explain why they’re standing out in the hallway right now, instead of going inside his apartment.

     “It’s not a partner,” Wyatt says. “It’s…” he sighs, brings his hand up to cover his eyes and then runs it through his hair. His face is taut; pained. “It’s a kid.”

     Lucy gapes. Her mind whirls and she tries to find something to say, but seriously, what can she say to that? “A kid?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Your kid?”

     “Yeah,” Wyatt says, and then he frowns, a line appearing between his eyebrows. “I mean, I assume it’s my kid. If it’s not, I’m going to have some serious explaining to do.”

     “And - the mother?”

     “No idea,” Wyatt says. “There’s just this kid, and I have no fucking idea what to do.” He finally meets her eyes. “So. Help me?”

     Lucy says, “Oh.”

Chapter Text

7th October 2016
(Four Hours Earlier)

     There’s a Dallas Cowboys cap on the front seat of his pickup, and Wyatt doesn’t remember putting it there. The team is right - he’s always barracked for Cowboys. The team colours are right, but the cap itself is white with a navy star. Not Wyatt’s style. And just sitting there on the seat, it looks kind of… small.

     He’s too exhausted to spend long thinking it over. It’s not the longest he’s gone without sleep, or the worst mission he’s ever been on, but he can’t seem to stay awake. He’d nearly fallen asleep at Mason Industries, in the hard chair in front of the laptop he’d used to search Jess.

     That’s the part that makes him feel the most exhausted. It’s the emotional kick in the gut that he gets every time he time travels. Because it’s so close, the technology, so close to what he needs. It’s almost magic - it might as well be magic, with how little Wyatt understands about it. But it doesn’t matter where he travels, or when. He can’t get her back. He’ll never get her back.

     There’s a white sock patterned with sparkling silver stars beside the cap. A small sock. Like the small cap.

     Timeline change. It’s gotta be. Wyatt doesn’t care anyway. It doesn’t matter what stupid little things change in his life when he knows - he knows - that Jess isn’t here. That he won’t find her in his bed tonight, gloriously warm under the sheets, her skin soft and her hair smelling like coconut and vanilla.

     He drives slow, windows down in spite of the late night chill in the air. Or early morning chill, really, given that the clock on the dash says that it’s after 2 a.m. now. He slings an arm out of the window and spreads his other hand on the top of the wheel, letting the cold air and the darkness shake him out of Las Vegas. Out of soldier mode, out of the anger which has been dominating him for the past fifteen hours.

     All Wyatt wants is to catch Garcia Flynn and be done with this disaster of a job. He hates it. He hates it, every day, getting into that time machine and coming back to… nothing. The same old shitty life.

     He snatches up the Cowboys cap when he’s pulled into his space in the basement parking lot. Just in case it is his, in this timeline, and he needs it for something. There’s a stuffed animal under the cap. Some sort of a cat, with rainbow fur and black spots. A leopard? A rainbow leopard? It has huge, sparkling pink eyes.

     Wyatt tucks the toy under his arm. He must have given someone a lift to work in this timeline, that’s all. Lucy? Would Lucy carry a stuffed rainbow leopard around with her? Somehow, he doesn’t think so.

     Maybe in this timeline Wyatt’s just a freak who collects plushies. It’s not the worst thing he could imagine, but it’s close. Still, he carries the toy up with him in the elevator, and the cap, and the lone sock. He fumbles with the key in the door and shoves it open with his knee. Right away, he trips over a pair of shoes in front of the door. They’re not his shoes. Sparkling silver Converse sneakers are really not his type - and they wouldn’t fit, anyway. He tries not to wonder why there are tiny shoes in his entryway and kicks them aside, where they slide into a pile of more tiny shoes; purple velcro sneakers, and black ugg boots.

     Wyatt pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers. He toes off his own shoes. He drops the cap, sock and toy on top of the bureau in the entryway, along with his keys and wallet, in the same old spot as always. Stepping out sideways into his lounge is another challenge, because the TV is in the wrong place and there’s a red blanket patterned with love-hearts on his sofa.

     Whatever’s gone wrong here is something that Wyatt is too tired to dig into tonight. It’s not Jessica. That’s all he knows. That’s all he cares about. His vision is blurring with the need to sleep, and he takes his shirt off as he walks down the hallway. He shucks his pants in his room, and thinks about a shower, but the bed is right there. It’s just too appealing.

     There’s a stuffed toy horse in his bed, which Wyatt discovers beside his pillow. He doesn’t think about that, either, just chucks it off the side of the bed and closes his eyes.

     Wyatt’s always had that soldier’s ability to sleep no matter what’s going on around him. He can shut down the turmoil in his head and his heart and beat back some of the fatigue that’s holding him down.

     But he wakes up at 6AM, like he always does, and sits bolt upright and stares into the darkness of his bedroom.

     “Oh my god,” he says. A pause. Wyatt blinks and everything he’d ignored floods back into his brain. “Holy shit.”

     He’s wrapped his legs in blankets while he slept, but he kicks them off vigorously, springs out of bed and lurches for the bedroom door. It’s warmer in the house than it usually is; the thermostat, when Wyatt goes to check, is turned way up. There’s that blanket on the couch. More pillows than he remembers. There’s a blue plastic bowl and matching cup in the sink, and a tiny spoon with a teddy-bear on the handle.

     And on his fridge… a picture. A photo inside a magnetic frame. Wyatt walks towards it without meaning to, his face drifting closer and closer until it’s right in front of his nose. And even with the dim light in here cast by the lamp across the street, aided by the glowing digits on the microwave, Wyatt can see that there’s a baby in the picture.

     His heart thumps, and he grips onto the kitchen counter to hold himself up, squeezing painfully until his fingers buckle. This is wrong. Something has gone very, very wrong. He could flip all the switches; he could flood the rooms with light and run from wall to wall, documenting every change, seeking out every picture. But all Wyatt wants to do is leave. Just walk out of the apartment, straight to Mason Industries, and demand they fix it. They have to fix it. He can just get right back in that time machine and-

     -and what? Jesus, Wyatt doesn’t even know what caused this. How could this possibly happen? When Jess is… Jess…

     He blows out a long, long breath. “Okay,” he says to himself, running a hand backwards through his hair. He stops, at the back of his head, and digs his fingernails into his scalp. “Okay,” he says again. Because there must be something he can do. Someone he can call.

     Oh. Oh.

     Lucy.

(Now)

     Lucy’s eyes are wide with shock and her lips are parted but she’s not saying anything. Wyatt wants to shake her; to snap her into action. He needs her to say something. To tell him how this could have happened. How he can make it end.

     He waits, instead. Watches the knowledge filter, slowly, through her face. There’s a kind of horror in her expression and Wyatt thinks that he probably looks the same way. He feels the horror. It’s deep; visceral, this idea that he might have a kid, a kid that he doesn’t know. That he never created. Not his kid. Some sort of an alien; a parasite, stealing his life.

     God. He’s really not dealing with this well.

     “Lucy?”

     She blinks. Shakes her head. “Sorry,” she says, “but just… wow.”

     “How do I fix this?”

     “What?”

     “With the-” Wyatt glances around the empty hallway, and lowers his voice a little, “-the time machine.”

     “Fix this?”

     “Make it so it never happened. Get rid of the kid.”

     Lucy is staring at him like she’s never seen him before. “I don’t… know.”

     “You have to,” Wyatt says. “You figured out what went wrong with your sister - with Amy. You have to help me figure this out so that I can put it right.”

     She just shakes her head, slowly. “How old is… he? She?”

     “I don’t know,” Wyatt says.

     Lucy frowns. “You don’t know the age?”

     “Or the gender.”

     “Oh.” She stops to think about it. “Have you actually seen the kid?”

     “A photo,” Wyatt says. “On my fridge.”

     Lucy’s whole body relaxes. The tension slips out of her face and she says, “Oh, well in that case.”

     “In what case?”

     “Wyatt,” she says, and she’s even smiling now, “it’s probably not your kid.”

     He hates that smile on her face. “There’s crap all over my apartment. Kid crap.”

     “But there’s no kid?”

     “I don’t know,” Wyatt says. “I haven’t checked in my office.”

     “Why not?”

     “Because it’d be asleep,” Wyatt says. “I didn’t want to wake it up. Then I’d have to - you know. Look after it and shit.”

     Lucy gives him a look which Wyatt interprets to be a comment on all the swearing. He ignores her. It’s not her business, anyway - and it’s not her business if he’s looked in the office or not, or if he’d stood outside the door for a half-hour, palm pressed to the wood, his pulse rapid in his throat.

     “Wyatt,” Lucy says.

     He meets her eyes for a moment and there’s raw emotion there; sympathy that he thinks might actually be pity. He breaks her gaze, stares at his feet instead. “What?”

     “I think that maybe you’re grieving,” she says. “And maybe it’s making you… react a little more strongly to certain things. Like photos.”

     Wyatt wants to laugh in her face. Like he doesn’t know what grief is - like he hasn’t grieved enough times to have it down to a science by now. After Jess, he’d just been numb. Numb for months; for years. He still feels a little numb on the inside. An open wound that no-one can heal.

     “I’m not grieving, Lucy. I’m a fucking father.”

     There’s that look again. That I’m disappointed in you look. Wyatt throws his hands up and turns his back to her. He doesn’t know why he’d thought she’d help. Obviously, the experience with her sister and her new fiancé hasn’t made Lucy an expert on all this. Wyatt’s been fooling himself.

     “Okay,” she says, “I understand how you feel.”

     Yeah, right. “Okay,” Wyatt mumbles.

     “But I just think that-”

     And then, beside him, the apartment door opens.

     Wyatt turns. He stares at the gap in the door - and Lucy stares too - and there’s a little touseled blond head there, just about as high as Wyatt’s hips.

     The child lifts her face up towards him and smiles, sweetly, showing two neat rows of white baby teeth. “Hi, Daddy.”

     Wyatt considers running. Or just flapping his mouth like a fish gasping for air, which is what he seems to be doing already. He swallows, hard. Forces himself to say, “Hi,” and hopes that the kid doesn’t notice his voice shaking. Or Lucy. He doesn’t want her to notice either.

     Fortunately, the kid doesn’t seem to think anything is wrong. She looks over at Lucy next, and says, “Hi!” and then, “Are you coming in?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, either, just slips back into the apartment and leaves the door swinging open.

     Wyatt looks at Lucy. She looks at him.

     “It’s a girl,” he says.

     She grimaces, and whispers, “Sorry.”

     Wyatt nods. “It’s okay. I wouldn’t have believed me either.” Not quite true.

     “She’s so real,” Lucy murmurs. “And little.”

      There’s a sick swooping feeling somewhere in Wyatt’s middle, like turbulence in a plane. Gamely, he pushes open the door to an apartment which doesn’t feel much like his anymore. He says, “Come on in.”

Chapter Text

7th October 2016 
(Now)

     Stepping into Wyatt’s apartment feels more intimate than Lucy had expected. She isn’t sure if it’s the apartment itself, or the way Wyatt’s hand drops to the small of her back as he ushers her inside.

     Or maybe it’s the little girl sitting on the floor, her knees together and her bare feet pointing outwards to either side. She’s got a short line of toys in front of her, and she leans forward as Lucy watches, adjusting the position of a white teddy bear.

     There’s so much about her to take in. The little pink tongue poking out of the side of her mouth in concentration. The way she uses both hands to push her wild blond hair out of her face.

     Wyatt is frozen in place, just staring. Not moving. Hardly breathing. Lucy pokes his shoulder, and he turns towards her. His face is blank and his eyes hard, like chips of blue marble.

     She hisses, “Introduce me.”

     “Oh,” he says. “Right.” He turns towards the girl. “Hey, uhhhh… kiddo? This is Lucy. My friend from work.”

     There’s a part of Lucy that hates the qualifier from work. That just wants to be friend. But there’s another part of her that’s just grateful he didn’t say colleague, so she focuses on that part as she steps forward and crouches down.

     “It’s nice to meet you,” she says, smiling. She holds out a hand. “What’s your name?”

     The girl glances up, eyes darting from Lucy to Wyatt and back again. She considers for a brief second before she slips her tiny hand into Lucy’s and shakes enthusiastically. “I’m Marley,” she says. “Do you work at Daddy’s special job? Or at the army?”

     Marley. Everything she says just makes her more real. This is impossible. This is insane. Still, Lucy fights to keep the smile on her face as she says, “The special job. It’s very nice to meet you, Marley. How old are you?”

     “Four,” Marley says. “How old are you?”

     “Thirty-three.”

     “Oh. That’s old.”

     “A little,” Lucy agrees.

     “Same as Daddy,” Marley adds.

     Lucy turns to look at Wyatt over her shoulder and he shrugs, one corner of his mouth tipping up slightly. He still looks like he’s seen a ghost.

     She doesn’t want Marley to notice. Lucy isn’t even sure where the thought comes from, but it’s sudden and very, very strong. She doesn’t want this little girl to wonder why her father is pale and shaky and won’t speak to her.

     “What are you doing here?” Lucy asks, gesturing to all of the toys set out. She drops onto her knees from the crouch, and sinks back on her haunches. Getting comfortable.

     Sure enough, Marley launches into an explanation that is long, complicated, and hard to follow. Lucy smiles, and nods, and says, “Uh huh,” or “Wow,” when there’s a pause for breath. And Wyatt just keeps standing there. Staring.

     He doesn’t move until Marley breaks off her description to address him directly. She turns, and beams, and says, “Daddy, you found Dotty!”

     Wyatt startles, like someone coming awake, and blinks. “Huh?”

     Marley lifts an authoritative hand and points. “Can you get her for me? I can’t reach.”

     “I don’t-” Wyatt starts to say, and then he turns, and spots something that Lucy can’t see from this angle. He reaches to the top of the bureau and pulls down a rainbow-coloured toy.

     “Where was she?” Marley asks, holding out her other hand as well. When Wyatt delivers the toy to the little girl she wriggles with happiness, clutching the spotty animal to her chest.

     “Just, uh, in the car,” Wyatt says. “With the - the Cowboys gear.” He watches the girl closely. “Did we take it to the game?”

     “Yeah!” Marley exclaims. “Dotty came to watch with us, remember? When we beat the Niners, Daddy!”

     That startles a laugh out of Lucy. Wyatt looks at her and she shakes her head, swallowing her smile.

     “What?” he asks anyway.

     “…I’m a Niners fan,” Lucy admits.

     Marley’s mouth drops open. “Oh no.”

     “Sorry,” Lucy says, still chuckling. “My dad was a big fan, and he got me into it.”

     The thought hurts her heart a little, because, of course, he wasn’t her dad. Not really. Amy’s dad, but not hers. She wonders if he knew. Surely he knew. But he never gave any sign… he never played favourites with Lucy and Amy. He was always there for her. Maybe he hadn’t known after all.

     Lucy isn’t sure which one hurts worse.

     “Daddy says we can’t be friends with Niners fans,” Marley says.

     “I think that’s probably a joke.”

     “Oh.” Marley turns towards Wyatt for confirmation. “Was it a joke?”

     Wyatt looks like he has more things than football on his mind. “Yeah,” he says, hastily. “Yeah, it was a joke. I’ll be right back.”

     Lucy watches him walk down the hallway, taking a turn into what she assumes is a bedroom. He shuts the door behind him.

     Marley frowns. “Is Daddy mad?”

     “No, sweetie.”

     “Was it a hard day at work?”

     “Yes,” Lucy says. “Very hard.”

     Marley nods, accepting the answer easily. “Okay.”

     Lucy wants to ask more - about the girl’s mother, about her life. She wants to ask everything, but she doesn’t want to scare Marley. It’s easy to look at the aftereffects from time travel analytically when it’s just history that’s been changed. Reading words on a screen telling her that Lincoln’s assassination will never be the same - that’s one thing. But this? This is a child. A person. There’s suddenly so much more at stake.

     She settles for something simple. “So, what did you do yesterday, Marley?”

     “Um, I just went to school.”

     “Yeah? Are you in Kindergarten?”

     “Not yet,” Marley says, “but soon. Daddy promised. But right now I am in Pre-K, which stands for Pre-Kindergarten. That means before Kindergarten.”

     “Oh,” Lucy says, “right. Was school fun?”

     “Yeah, it was fun.”

     “What did you do afterwards?”

     “Jackie picked me up, of course,” Marley says impatiently. “Jackie always picks me up when Daddy has to work his special job. Because he never knows when he’ll be back.”

     “That’s true,” Lucy says. “Who’s Jackie?”

     Marley shrugs, losing interest in the conversation. “She put me to bed and then went home, because Daddy is almost always back by morning times.” The girl leans forward, setting the rainbow cat down with the rest of her toys.

     “Dotty,” Lucy remembers. “That’s a cool name. Did you pick it?”

     “Nope. It’s just her name. Look.” Marley grabs Dotty again, and opens the tag dangling from the animal’s ear. “See? It says Dotty. And her birthday, that’s June sixteenth.”

     It’s an easy enough segue into the next question Lucy has. “When’s your birthday?”

     But Marley’s distracted now, and she says instead, “Dotty is a Beanie Boo. I’ve got three more. You wanna see?”

     Lucy hesitates. “Yes?” she says after a moment, uncertainly.

     Marley scrambles to her feet. “Okay! I’ll go get them.” She runs from the room, the dark pink hem of her nightdress swirling around her knees.

     The door where Wyatt had disappeared is still closed. Lucy looks at it, tensing her thighs, half-preparing to get up from where she’s kneeling on the floor and go to him.

     She doesn’t. Partly because she doesn’t think Wyatt would appreciate it. Mostly because Marley comes charging back in and drops a load of colourful toys in Lucy’s lap. White unicorn, black dragon, blue owl.

     “That’s Pegasus, and Anora, and Oscar. You wanna know their birthdays?” Marley is already reaching for the tags. “It’s June and August and November. None the same as me.”

     Maybe she had been listening earlier. “When’s your birthday?” Lucy asks again.

     Marley grins. “Halloween. It’s such a spooooky birthday.”

    “Oh, that is spooky,” Lucy says quickly, forcing a smile. “Are you going to turn five?”

     “Um, yeah.”

     Lucy does the maths. Counts months and years in her head, and brings it back to January or February. Early 2011. That’s when it changed, whatever it was. That’s when Marley started.

     “Are you going to keep playing here?” Lucy asks. “I’m just going to talk to Wyatt.” She hesitates. “To your dad.”

     “Yeah, okay.” Marley reaches forward to pull the toys off Lucy’s lap, her hands scraping down Lucy’s legs with no sense of personal space. “Are you staying for breakfast?”

     “I don’t know.”

     “I’m very hungry.”

     “I’ll let him know,” Lucy says, and she stands up and wipes her suddenly sweaty palms on her jeans and hurries down the hallway.

     She hesitates. Outside the door, she stops, and her hand hovers above the handle, and she can’t bring herself to break down that last boundary. She hardly even knows the man. It’s his bedroom.

     It doesn’t matter anyway, because the door swings open and Wyatt stares out at her, and then he steps back and says, “Come in.”

     “Er,” Lucy says, stepping gingerly around him, folding her hands in front of her and twisting her fingers together. “Marley says she’s hungry.”

     “Oh,” Wyatt says, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “I didn’t think of that. Jesus, I have to feed her. What do they eat? Kids?”

     “The same as us, I expect.”

     “Sorry I left you with her,” Wyatt says, waving a hand out of the door. “I just needed a minute.”

     Lucy says, “I know,” as gently as she can. “I understand.”

     Wyatt nods. “Yeah.”

     “She’s four years old,” Lucy says, “but she’ll be five at the end of the month. I make that out to be early twenty-eleven.”

     “January,” Wyatt says.

     “Or February.”

     “I can’t think of anything around then. I - I was still with Jess, we were… we were happy, but we didn’t want kids.” He pauses, and his frown deepens. “She wanted kids. I wanted to wait. She kept trying to talk me into it, but I…” he trails off, closes his mouth and stares at the floor.

     Awkwardly, Lucy glances around the room. It’s fairly sparse; bed, bureau, door that she supposes leads into an ensuite. There’s a clothes horse in one corner, strewn with t-shirts and boxers and child’s clothing, too, small and brightly coloured.

     “The telegram you sent,” she says. “When did you send it to?”

     “February. Two-thousand-twelve. The day Jess died.” Wyatt shakes his head, says, “It didn’t work, I checked. She still died on the same day.”

     There’s an idea at the edges of Lucy’s mind. She waits for it to come closer. “When in February?”

     “The eleventh. That was when she died.”

     “February eleventh,” Lucy murmurs. The idea solidifies in her mind. “Zero-two-one-one.”

     “What?”

     “The date. When you write it, you get zero-two-one-one.”

     “Yeah, and?”

     “Marley was conceived in twenty-eleven,” Lucy says. “Two-zero-one-one.” She shrugs. “I don’t know, Wyatt, it just seems awfully close to me.”

     “You think they delivered the telegram to the wrong time?”

     “Uh huh.”

     “And somehow that… what? Gave me a kid?”

     “I don’t know,” Lucy says. “Maybe it changed your mind. Made you think about things a different way.”

     “You think… me and Jess?”

     “I don’t know, Wyatt.”

     He runs his hand backwards through his hair, making it stand on end. “She looks a little like Jess. Maybe. I’m not sure.”

     “She said someone called Jackie picked her up last night,” Lucy adds, suddenly remembering. “Does that sound familiar?”

     “Jess had a sister,” Wyatt says. “Jacqueline. That could be it. But she didn’t live in San Francisco.”

     “That wouldn’t be the biggest change of the day,” Lucy says.

     Wyatt blows out an unsteady breath and takes a step back. He drops down to sit on the end of the bed. Springs creak beneath him.

      “What,” he asks, “do I do now?”

     Lucy takes a moment. Considers it. And there’s a lot to consider - a lot - but she can’t get around the reality that, no matter what happened in the past, the child is here now. She’s here, she exists, and there’s no guarantee that she’ll be going away any time soon. And if that's the case, then Wyatt can't keep relying on Lucy to be his guide. He can't use her as an emotional crutch.

     She takes a step away from Wyatt, creating that psychological distance, and then she reaches for the bedroom door and pulls it open. “I think you’d better cook breakfast.”  

Chapter Text

7th October 2016
(Now)

     Wyatt cooks on autopilot. He keeps sneaking glances over his shoulder at the kid. Marley. He can’t say that he’s ever thought about the name before, but it sounds all right. Kinda nice. Lucy sits at the table beside the kid, and Marley talks and talks and talks. Wyatt isn’t even listening, and he’s exhausted. He doesn’t know how Lucy keeps sitting there, with that look of polite interest on her face. She even manages to ask questions, sometimes, and they must be the right ones, because Marley beams at her.

     He really doesn’t want Lucy to leave after breakfast. He can’t be left alone with this kid.

     The eggs are fried and dished out onto plates sunny-side up, and the bacon is sizzling and nearly done when Wyatt hears the very distinctive sound of a key in his door. He whirls straight away, bringing the hot pan with him.

     There’s a gasp, and Lucy shrieks, “Marley!” and she’s hurtling forward out of her seat, grabbing the kid by the shoulders and tugging her backwards. Wyatt fumbles the pan, almost drops it, catches it with one hand under the hot base and juggles it instantly onto the countertop.

     He hisses, pulling his burnt palm in close to his chest. Lucy is sprawled on her butt on the ground, clutching Marley to her chest. Wyatt ducks down in front of them. “Are you both okay?” he asks.

     Lucy brushes hair back from her face and looks down at Marley. “Sweetie, are you hurt?”

     Marley chews on her lips and shakes her head.

     “You’re sure?” Wyatt checks. He runs his good hand over her hair and down her cheek. Shit. Stupid of him. He hadn’t heard her come up behind him - hadn’t heard her little bare feet. He could have hit her in the face with that pan.

     “Sorry, Daddy,” Marley whispers, and she reaches out for his bad hand, his burnt hand. Wyatt pulls it back automatically and tries not to see the hurt flash across the kid’s face.

     There’s a clatter of keys on the table and an almost heart-wrenchingly familiar voice says, “Wyatt, are you okay?”

     He twists his torso to look up at her. She looks like Jess, with the light from the kitchen window making a halo around her head. They’d always had the same face-shape, the same voice, the same laugh.

     Jackie is younger. She has red hair and freckled skin and a gap between her front teeth. She and Wyatt have never gotten on - in fact, the worst eight months of his married life came when Jackie moved in right before their first anniversary.

     “I’m fine,” he says, using the kitchen counter to lever himself back up to his feet. He steps towards the sink and flips the cold tap on full, gritting his teeth before he thrusts his hand under the faucet.

     “I was just checking in to make sure everything went okay last night,” Jackie says. “When did you get home?”

     “After midnight,” Wyatt says, his attention still on holding his hand under the water and not yelling with the pain. The burn is already a shiny bright red mark on the fleshy pad under his thumb.

     Jackie bends down towards Marley, says, “Hi, gorgeous,” and then turns her attention to Lucy. “I don’t think we’ve met?” Her voice has cooled considerably.

     “I-I’m Lucy,” Lucy stammers. Wyatt turns to look at her, and she gives him a look which screams help!

     She has no idea who Jackie is, he realises suddenly. “Thanks for looking after Marley last night, Jackie,” he says, hoping that’s enough to clue Lucy in.

     “You know I love spending time with her.” Jackie is smiling at Marley, holding out her arms for a hug. Marley gets up and goes to her, slow and subdued. “It’s okay,” Jackie tells her, “Daddy’s just silly. He’ll be more careful next time.”

     That gets on Wyatt’s nerves. Everything Jackie says gets on his nerves. He looks back at the stream of water.

     Fortunately, Jackie says, “I’d better go, I’ve got work. Text me if you need another pick-up tonight, Wyatt. Bye, gorgeous.” She kisses Marley on both cheeks, taps a hand against Wyatt’s shoulder in a gesture that he thinks is meant to be friendly, grabs her keys from the kitchen table and sweeps towards the door. Right before she gets there, she calls, “Nice to meet you, Lucy!”

     “Uh, yeah!” Lucy calls back, but the front door is already closing.

     Wyatt sighs. “So that was Jackie.”

     “Right.” Lucy gets up from the floor, too, and she has the presence of mind to tip the bacon out of the still-hot pan and onto a plate. “I don’t think she liked me.”

     “She says Daddy shouldn’t bring ladies home,” Marley pipes up.

     Geez, Wyatt had forgotten that the kid would be listening. And understanding, which is worse. He tries to remember if he’d sworn when he dropped the pan. He doesn’t think so.

It seems like Lucy's forgotten the kid can understand, too, because she goes all stiff and tense and then turns to put the bacon on the table and says, with false cheer, “You want some bacon, Marley?”

     “Yeah,” Marley says. “Daddy, your hand?”

     “It’s fine.”

     “Okay.” She comes closer to him, rubbing her head against his hip like a cat, twining her arms around his middle for a hug. Wyatt tries not to stand too uncomfortably. He thinks about dropping his good hand to… pat her back? Or her head? Obviously he spends too long waiting, though, because Marley steps away looking disappointed.

     Somehow, Wyatt doesn’t think he’s doing a good job so far.

     Marley skips off into the bathroom after breakfast, which seems to be something she can handle by herself - god, Wyatt hopes so. He corners Lucy in the kitchen.

     “You gotta stay,” he says.

     “Wyatt, I can’t. I have to get back to my mom’s place - I’ve got stuff to drop off there, and a conversation to have about why I’m leaving my fiancé, which isn’t something I’m looking forward to, and-”

     He cuts her off. “Please.” It sounds so close to begging, but Wyatt can’t think of any other way to get his desperation across. Except, he adds, “I’m desperate,” and that’ll probably do it.

     “There’s nothing I can do!”

     “But you’re good with her,” Wyatt says. “You know how to talk to her. She likes you. You understand kids.”

     “I don’t - not really.”

     “More than me.”

     Lucy sighs. “I was seven when Amy was born. I remember a lot. And some of my friends have kids. But kids are easy, Wyatt. All you have to do is listen to her. Take her seriously.”

     “How can I take her seriously? She’s five! And she’s not even supposed to exist, for crying out loud!”

     Lucy presses her lips together into a thin line and fixes him with those dark eyes. “I don’t think this is something that’s just going to go away.”

     “So?”

     “You’ll have to learn to talk to her sooner or later.”

     Wyatt doesn’t think that. He’s pretty sure that if he can just get back in that infernal machine, whatever time they go back to, this situation will resolve itself. He’ll come back and everything will be the way it was. That’s the simplest option - that makes sense. For once, he can’t wait to get a call about Garcia Flynn.

     “At least help me get her dressed,” Wyatt says. “I don’t know how to do that.”

     Lucy stares at him. “You know how to put clothes on a child.”

     “Not a little girl! It’s… I don’t know… inappropriate or something.”

     “She’s your little girl! How is that inappropriate?”

     “I barely know the kid!”

     “Right,” Lucy says, “but I’m actually a stranger to her. It doesn’t matter what you know, Wyatt. She’s known you her whole life. She only met me today. You tell me who she’d be more comfortable with.”

     Wyatt starts, “I can’t-” but it doesn’t matter anyway, because Marley comes out of the bathroom shaking water off her hands.

     “Daddy,” she says, “is Lucy going to come to the park with us?”

     “Uh,” Wyatt says.

     “I don’t think so,” Lucy says.

     Marley pouts. She’s got a very good pout, sticking out a fat lower lip and making her chin wobble. “Please?”

     “We’ll see,” Wyatt says. “You’d better get dressed.”

     “Okay.” She holds out her hand towards him. “Come help me.”

     Wyatt resists. “Can’t you get dressed by yourself? You’re a big girl, right? You’re five?”

     Marley stares at him, huge, round blue eyes.  “Daddy, I’m four.”

     “Right,” he says, quickly. “Just rounding up.”

     “Don’t do rounding up! I hate it!”

     “Okay, okay.”

     “I hate it!” She turns away from him and crosses her arms over her chest.

     Wyatt stares at Lucy. Lucy widens her eyes at him, tips her head towards the kid. Wyatt sighs. He inches closer to Marley, and puts a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Marley, I’m sorry.”

     She shrugs her shoulders, up and down. “Okay.”

     “Let’s get you dressed,” he says, “and then we’ll go to a park. Okay? Whatever park you want.”

     That perks her up a little. “Yeah,” she says, “and take my kite, Daddy! Can we?”

     “Um,” he says. Turns to look at Lucy over his shoulder. She rolls her eyes at him, and nods, very pointedly. Wyatt says, “Yeah, sure, your kite,” and ushers Marley into the bedroom.

     It’s easier than he’d thought. She picks out the clothes she likes; a blue t-shirt with the Superman symbol, a crazy pair of zigzag patterned black-and-white leggings, pink underwear and socks. All Wyatt has to do is help her wiggle in and out of them. He holds the leggings for her to step in, helps slide them up her legs, then pops the t-shirt over her outstretched arms and head.

     Marley giggles when her head comes through, messy hair floating like a cloud around her face. “Remember, Daddy, I’m stuck?”

     He has no idea what she means. “Yeah. Uh, nice Superman shirt.”

     The laughter slides off Marley’s face so quickly he’s not sure it had ever been there. Her mouth turns down and her lower lip wobbles and even though Wyatt swears she’s doing this on purpose, he thinks he can see actual tears glimmering in her eyes. Jesus. Can kids cry on command?

     “Supergirl, Daddy,” she whispers.

     Obviously this is important. Wyatt fights the feeling that he’s just fucked up beyond repair. She’s five, right? No, four. She won’t remember crap like this. Not that it matters, anyway, when the kid won’t be here after his next time jump.

     “Sorry, Marley,” he says. “I meant Supergirl.”

     She sniffles and turns away from him. Okay, so this one isn’t so easily apologised for. Wyatt rolls his eyes and rises to his feet. Lucy will probably cheer the kid up.

     Except, when he steps out of Marley’s bedroom, Lucy is gone. Totally gone, because he spins a quick 360 and then pokes his head into his room, and she’s nowhere. The bathroom door at the end of the hall is wide open, so that’s a dead end too.

     Wyatt groans. Great.

     He’d left his phone charging on his end table, so he heads back into his room to grab that. He sits on the bed heavily and reaches for the phone. There’s a photo on the end table. A framed one. It’s new, and Wyatt doesn’t know why he’s never seen it before. He frowns, and leans in closer.

     It’s a baby. Marley, he assumes, and there’s a woman holding her. Side-on to the camera, with her dirty blond hair braided back, and green studs in her ears, and her lips pressed to the baby’s cheek in a kiss. Jess. Even with half of her face obscured by the baby, even with studs instead of the golden hoops Wyatt is used to seeing her with, he knows her. Intimately. Everything about her. He knows that white shirt she’s wearing, the straight line of her nose and the high arches of her eyebrows and the way she’s got her eyes half-closed as she kisses the baby. Like a smile, but without her mouth. Her eyes always smiled. Wyatt can remember it so clearly.

     He reaches out and flips the picture face-down on the end table. Why would the Wyatt of this timeline even keep that here? To remember everything he’s lost? The perfect life he’ll never get back? Blankly, Wyatt looks down at his phone. There’s a text from Lucy, which he’d expected, because she’s not the type to just cut and run. She’s too polite for that. He’d meant to read what she’d sent, and maybe send an angry reply demanding to know why she’d left him with this kid when he’d asked for her help-

     The photo of Jess has gotten Wyatt all bent out of shape. Especially seeing her with the baby. Loving the baby. She would have been like that with their child.

     Well. This is their child. Sort of.

     Wyatt sighs and presses his hands down on his knees as he stands. “Marley,” he calls. No answer. She’s sulking somewhere. “Where are you?” He’s not surprised when that one doesn’t work.

     Okay, so it’s like hide-and-seek. But not the fun kind. Wyatt slips his phone into his pocket and gets down to business.

     Marley’s not in his room. She’s not in the kitchen, or the bathroom, or the lounge, or the linen closet. The hiding places in his apartment are actually seriously limited, now that Wyatt thinks about it. She’s not in the cupboard under the sink, and she’s not hiding behind any doors.

     He steps into her room and goes down on his hands and knees, then reaches out to lift the trailing bedcovers.

     Yeah, she’s under the bed. Good call, Wyatt. He wishes he hadn’t walked around the rest of the house first. He also wishes she hadn’t wriggled so far back, pressed against the wall on the far side of the bed. It’s almost impossible for Wyatt to reach in and drag her out. His arms are long, but not that long. He has to stretch half of his body under the bed instead, and then Marley screams and kicks when he touches her.

     Wyatt jerks up and bangs his head on the underside of the bed. “Fuck,” he says.

     Marley twists to look at him with big eyes. “Did you just say the F-word?”

     “No,” Wyatt says. “Can you come on out?”

     She shakes her head. “Uh-uh.” Tears well up in her eyes again. Sheesh, she’s definitely doing this on purpose.

     “I’m really, really sorry I said Superman instead of Supergirl, okay? It was just a mistake.”

     Marley hunches further away from him. Okay, so she doesn’t want to be apologised to. Fine. Whatever. Wyatt rolls his eyes, because his head hurts, and it’s dusty under this damn bed. Why the fuck is he wasting his time trying to talk the kid out of here anyway? If she’s under the bed she’s not getting into trouble playing with sharp objects or - or sticking forks into electric sockets, or whatever the hell kids do.

     He backs out and sits on his heels, looking around Marley’s room. And there’s Jess again.

     She’s still not looking at the camera. Her face is turned towards the baby, but this time Wyatt can see the side of her smile, the long pale sweep of her hair over one shoulder. Half of the photo is taken up with the Christmas tree, close enough to be out of focus, dark branches and bright lights. The lights play over their faces, too - Jess and the baby - and they’re both wearing red. Jess has a Santa hat. The baby, Marley, is so small.

     She’d been born in October 2011, Lucy had said. And Jess had died in February of 2012. How much time did they really have together, mother and child? How long has the Wyatt of this timeline been doing it alone?

     He almost feels like he owes it to Jess to crawl back under there. Try and talk the kid out of her tantrum. Take her to a park or whatever. But Wyatt doesn’t have the energy. He’s exhausted. He’s emotionally drained. This isn’t even his kid, for chrissakes. He gets to his feet and walks out of the room, throws himself down on the couch and turns on the TV. He flips through channels until he finds a soccer game, and then he thumbs the volume right up.

     It’s so loud that Wyatt doesn’t hear his phone. He feels it buzzing, though, against his leg, and he swipes it out of his pocket and answers without looking and says, “Yeah, what?”

     He’s sort of half-heartedly expecting it to be Lucy. Instead, the woman on the other end has a hint of an accent - something Eastern-European, Wyatt thinks - and she asks uncertainly, “Mister Logan?”

     “That’s me,” Wyatt says.

     “Ah, okay, sorry. You sounded… different.” There’s a hesitation. “Is this a good time?”

     He’s still got the TV blaring in the background, Wyatt realises. He hits mute and says, “Sorry, go ahead.”

     “We were just wondering if Marley was going to be coming in today,” the woman says. “Is she sick?”

     “What?” Wyatt glances at his watch. It’s twenty past nine, and - oh shit, today is a Friday. He’d forgotten. The stupid time travel had put him all out of whack, but don’t kids have school on Fridays? “Right,” he says, hastily. “Oh, right, okay. Sorry, we were just… um, just running a bit late.”

     “That’s fine,” the woman says. She gives a polite little laugh, and adds, “Just wanted to check in, sorry to bother you. We’ll see you soon?”

     “Yeah,” Wyatt says. “Yeah, definitely.” He has no idea where the fuck this school is. Is it Kindergarten? “Um, would it be okay if you guys, uh…” what? Tell me what school my child goes to? “…just send me the... map? So I can send it to my… friend? She might be picking Marley up soon?”

     “Of course, Mister Logan. Just make sure you remember to put your friend’s name down on the approved list, as well. Is it this afternoon that she’ll be picking Marley up?”

     “Uhh,” he says, and hates how stupid he sounds. God, she must think he’s an idiot. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll put her on the list though. Don’t worry.”

     “Okay, great. See you later.”

     “Yeah,” Wyatt says. “Bye, uh…” he doesn’t know this woman’s name, “…uh, bye.”

     He hits the red button and ends the call and then drops his head into his hands. This is not going well. This is so far from going well.

     Wyatt turns the TV off. “Okay, kiddo!” he yells out. “You’d better come out, because it’s time to go to Kindergarten!”

     There’s a wail from somewhere in the vicinity of Marley’s room, and a little voice says, “Pre-Kindergarten, Daddy! You know it’s Pre-Kindergarten!”

     Wyatt drags a hand down his face and groans. Fuck.

Chapter Text

7th October 2016
(Now)

     Lucy’s exhausted by the time she gets back home. She feels a little bad for leaving Wyatt, but ‘daughter-from-an-alternate-timeline’ turns out to be one of those out of sight, out of mind things. It’s easy to forget about Wyatt’s problems when Lucy’s got dramas of her own.

     Mostly Mom. They fight when she arrives, which Lucy had expected. It goes for longer than usual. She’d forgotten how intense Mom can be at full strength. Briefly, Lucy wonders how she coped in this timeline as an only child. Imagining all that attention focused squarely on her makes her shudder.

     Then Mom calls Noah, which is a pain, because Lucy has to listen to him blurting apologies for imagined slights down the phone. And she can’t explain - she can’t possibly - why she’s so cold, and distant, and uncomfortable with both of them.

     By the time she’s finally allowed to go upstairs to her room and Mom leaves her alone, Lucy’s too wound up to sleep. She’s exhausted, but she flops onto the bed in her clothes and lies there for an hour with everything rolling around in her mind. Everything she hasn’t quite had a chance to process over the past week. Time travel. Amy. Time travel.

     Eventually she digs a book out from her bag and starts reading and of course that’s when she finally falls asleep.

     When Lucy wakes up there’s a page plastered to her face and her phone is ringing. She grabs it, blearily. Puts it to her ear. Says, “Hello?”

     It keeps ringing. She’s forgotten to answer. She squints at the bright screen, thinks she makes out Wyatt’s photo. “Hello?”

     “Lucy?”

     “Yeah?” she says. “Are you okay?” She struggles to sit up, brushing wisps of hair back from her eyes and rubbing drool from her cheek. She feels slow, and thick, and stupid, like everything’s underwater or wrapped in cotton wool. Sleeping in the middle of the day in her clothes isn’t something Lucy does. Ever.

     “Did I wake you up?” Wyatt asks.

     “Uh huh.”

     “Damn, sorry.”

     Lucy yawns hugely against the phone, covering her mouth even though Wyatt can’t see her. “Is it Mason Industries?”

     “No,” he says. “Just… Marley.”

     Oh. Oh. Lucy snaps to attention, sitting up straighter. “Is she - did something happen?”

     “She’s still here,” Wyatt says, which wasn’t really what Lucy was asking. “But I don’t really know how to - well, how to do anything, really. I was hoping you might be able to come help again. Please.”

     The please almost tips her over, but Lucy is so exhausted. Her mind is foggy and blank. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But I’m too tired to drive, and I don’t think asking Mom is a good idea right now.”

     “You’re at her place?”

     “Yeah,” Lucy says, yawning again. “Couldn’t stay with Noah. Look, Wyatt, maybe call Jackie? I’m sure she’ll help.”

     “I’m sure,” Wyatt repeats. He doesn’t sound happy about it.

     “Call me tomorrow,” Lucy says. “Night.”

     She hangs up, her eyes flitting over the time on the phone. 7pm. That’s close enough to bedtime, Lucy thinks.

     The phone buzzes again on the nightstand while she’s stumbling around the room, throwing on pyjamas. Her hair is a hopeless mess and she combs her fingers through it, glad that it’s still so short. Genius decision.

     She checks her phone while she brushes her teeth. It’s just a lengthy - oh, god, so long - text from Noah. Lucy isn’t sure why, but she gets a vague sense of disappointment from it. Like maybe she was expecting it to be from Wyatt. Which is stupid, because he doesn’t owe her any texts. Not after she hung up on him like that.

     Lucy downs two glasses of water and then plugs her phone into the charger in the bathroom. She steps back into her bedroom, draws the curtains, and topples into bed with an exhausted, relieved sigh. The sheets are cool against her skin, the mattress is soft and the quilt is puffy and she pushes her feet right down to the end of the bed and closes her eyes.

8th October 2016

     It’s a restless night, and Lucy gets up for good just before 6:30AM. She throws the curtains wide and stares out into darkness. The sun won’t rise for almost an hour, but Lucy’s awake. Properly awake, and there’s energy thrumming in her veins, and she wants to do something.

     And also get out of the house. Avoid Mom for as long as she can.

     She dresses quietly in her dark room, leggings and sneakers and a red hoodie over a long-sleeved top. Lucy doesn’t mind the cold, not much. She prefers winter to summer. It’s something that Amy was always arguing about with her. Amy was a summer baby through and through. It was all about the sunglasses and the spaghetti straps and the tanning with her.

     Thinking was hurts. Lucy creeps downstairs and takes a banana and a chocolate bar from the kitchen before she leaves the house. She eats slowly while she walks, warming up. Gradually she pulls into a loping, steady jog, and then increases the pace, bit-by-bit.

     She used to run all the time. Especially when she was studying - she’d run late at night, and Mom would always warn her about muggers and kidnappers and god knows what else. But it’s not a bad neighbourhood, and Lucy knows the streets.

     When Mom got sick is when she stopped, she thinks. And it’s funny, because that’s when she needed the time to herself most. She wanted time to think, to process, and to grieve. But being alone felt wrong, when Mom was sick. Being with Amy felt right. Sitting on the couch, legs curled up and pretzeled together, the two of them leaning over to read from each other’s phone screens, or Lucy telling a story about work and Amy laughing, her face bright and happy.

     Lucy's feet slap against the pavement and it’s a solid, satisfying sound. The locket bounces on her chest and that’s solid, too. It’s real.

     By the time she gets home she’s panting and her legs are burning with lactic acid. She slumps over at the front door, bent double to try and ease out the stitch that she’s got. Wow, she’d lost fitness fast. And with this job, fitness should probably be a priority. They’ve been out three times and every trip has been more dangerous than the last.

     Lucy steps inside and Mom is there straight away.

     “Where were you?”

     “I went for a run.”

     “Without telling me?”

     “It was just a run,” Lucy protests.

     “Lucy, I’m worried about you,” Mom says, and there’s that anxious-parent look on her face, the one which always makes Lucy feel guilty and irritated at the same time.

     “I’m fine,” she says, as gently as she can. “I’m going to go and have a shower. Okay?”

     There’s so much to do at home - unpacking her suitcase and refamiliarising herself with a room which has changed seemingly overnight - and then finding out that the rest of the house has changed, too. Lucy doesn’t realise that Wyatt hasn’t contacted her until after 1pm.

     She calls him, but there’s no answer, so she texts as well.

     Everything okay?

     He doesn’t reply to that, either, and Lucy gradually stops checking her phone as she drifts back into learning the ropes of her new-old life.

     She’s a little bemused, though, that evening, when there’s still no answer from Wyatt. Briefly, she wonders if he might be at Mason Industries - the cell reception there is always terrible - but no, surely not. They wouldn’t call Wyatt in without her. Would they? Lucy wants to text Rufus and check, but she doesn’t have his number. It seems stupid, but when she thinks about it, they’ve only known each other for a few days. It’s been less than a week, all of it. She’d first been called in on Monday - or, well, early Tuesday morning, really. And today is Saturday.

     Still, Lucy resolves to get Rufus’ number when she sees him next. And she sends another text to Wyatt before she sleeps.

     Was Marley all right today?

9th October 2016

     It feels kind of strange, now, to go almost two full days without a call from Mason Industries. Lucy runs again on Sunday morning. Wisps of hair keep escaping from her braid and blowing into her eyes, and she brushes them back impatiently. She’s not as early this morning, and there are a handful of other people on the streets. Lucy watches them and wonders what they’re doing. What’s happening in their lives?

     At any moment, Garcia Flynn could set off a nuclear bomb in the past and these people would just… what? Vanish? Their atoms coming apart and blowing away like dandelion seeds? How does it happen? Do they feel it?

     Lucy hopes not. The anxiety makes her restless, and she wants to do something productive, so she digs out the history books when she gets home and leafs through them. Page after page after page, names and dates and events that she’s studied so intently that they hardly seem real anymore. More like a scene from a movie that she’s watched one too many times.

     Lincoln’s blood on her dress, on her face, that was real. That’s what sticks in Lucy’s head while she reads.

     She’s eating a bowl of cereal with books spread out on the table in front of her when she gets a text. It takes her a little while to drag her eyes away from the pages for long enough to look at it.

     It’s from Wyatt.

     Really sorry about last night and everything I said. Let me make it up to you? Come over for lunch?

     She’s being invited over for lunch now? Lucy gapes at the message. She was fairly sure they weren’t at this stage in their - what, partnership? Friendship? Team… building? But then again, maybe him calling her over to investigate his newly arrived four-year-old has changed the dynamics a little.

     Except then Lucy reads the first half of the text again and she frowns. Dropping her spoon into the bowl, she writes back, What happened last night?

     There’s a pause. Three little dots pop up in a speech bubble on the screen; Wyatt’s writing something. Lucy waits, tapping her fingernails against the phone case.

     Wyatt says, Don’t check your voicemails!!!

     Okay, and now she really wants to know. Lucy hesitates, fingers hovering over the keys. Obviously Wyatt assumed she’d already listened to them, but she hadn’t noticed the missed call notifications earlier. Now, though, she can see the glaring red number on the phone icon. 4 missed calls. All overnight.

     Another text comes through. This one says, Srsly, don’t. I was drunk and really rude. There’s a Cowboys game on at 2 & Marley wants to see you.

     It wouldn’t be the first time Lucy’s receieved angry messages from a drunk. She stares at the missed calls for a moment longer and then makes her decision. She’ll ignore them. She’ll be the bigger person, she’ll do the right thing by Wyatt, and it’ll make their team bond stronger. Or… whatever. Something like that. Really, though, Lucy just doesn’t want to hear whatever he’d said in those messages. If he feels bad enough to be pathetically inviting her over to watch football, it must have been awful.

     She says, How is Marley? How are you?

     I’m shit. Marley hates me. Pls come.  

     Lucy looks at the books scattered over the table. There are still five hours until 2pm - plenty of time for her to keep reading. And it’s not like she hates watching football, because she doesn’t. And if Wyatt’s still struggling with Marley… well, she’d promised to help him yesterday and then she hadn’t. She’d left him in the lurch on Friday. And even if she wants to act like this isn’t her problem - because it isn’t - she can’t help feeling a surge of pity for the man. Or, not quite pity, but sympathy, definitely. Empathy. Something.

     She texts back. Two letters. OK.

     Marley opens the apartment door. She’s all decked out in the Cowboys’ navy blue and white, and she grins when she sees Lucy.

     “Daddy said you’d come to watch football with us.”

     “Yep,” Lucy says. “I’m ready. But I don’t have any Cowboys clothes.”

     “I’ll get you a hat,” Marley says immediately, and she backs away from the door and vanishes deeper into the apartment.

     Lucy is left to let herself in, which she does, closing the door carefully behind her. And then she just stands, a little awkwardly, jingling her car keys in one hand. She thinks about calling out for Wyatt, but what if he’s in the bathroom, or something? And Lucy’s interrupting?

     It’s stupid. She’s being stupid. She slides the keys into her back pocket and takes half a step out from the entrance and into the rest of the apartment.

     Marley reappears, skidding over the wood in her socks, clutching a navy ball cap and a scrunched up t-shirt. “Here,” she says, holding out the cap. “And I got you the special shirt too.”

     “Oh,” Lucy says, and she’s about to ask if there’s somewhere she can change, but Marley holds the shirt up proudly and it unfolds.

     The white letters emblazoned on the navy shirt read; I MARRIED INTO THIS, and Lucy feels her heart catch. It’s a woman’s shirt.

     “Do you like it?” Marley asks.

     “Where did you get it?”

     “From my room.”

     “Marley, I don’t think I should wear this one,” Lucy says. She takes the shirt, gently, and holds it against her chest. “Why don’t we put it back in your room?”

     “Why?”

     “I’m just - not sure it’ll fit me.” The lie is clumsy, and Lucy knows it. She shakes her head and says, “It’s better just to have the cap, okay?”

     Marley’s eyes narrow. “Why?” she repeats.

     “Where’s Wyatt?” Lucy asks, and then she pauses and corrects herself. “I mean your Daddy.”

     “He went across the hall to see Jackie.”

     That’s a relief. Lucy doesn’t want to talk about this while Wyatt’s here. She can feel the softness of the shirt in her hands; she can picture Jessica wearing it. “I think this was your Mom’s shirt,” Lucy says.

     “Oh. It was?”

     “Yeah. I think so.”

     “My Mommy died,” Marley says.

     “I know. I’m sorry.”

     “It was when I was a baby, so I don’t remember. Is it really her shirt?”

     “Yeah,” Lucy says, crouching down so that her head is on a level with Marley’s. She holds the shirt out. “Do you see the words? They say, I married into this.”

     “What does that mean?”

     “It means that your Mommy married a big Cowboys fan.”

     “She married Daddy.”

     “Right, so when she got married, she became a Cowboys fan too. That’s what the shirt means.” Lucy watches Marley’s face, waiting for the spark of understanding.

     The little girl is frowning. “She didn’t like the Cowboys before she got married?”

     “Oh, sweetie, I don’t know. But I know this was your Mommy’s shirt, okay? So it’s not right for me to wear it.”

     “Because Mommy would get angry?”

     “Um.” Lucy wonders how to field this one. She’s an atheist, but she doesn’t know if Wyatt is. She doesn’t know what the Wyatt of this timeline might have chosen to tell his small, motherless daughter. “Mostly the reason is because Daddy might get sad.”

     Marley considers it. “Yeah,” she says, “I think he would. Did you know he hid all the pictures?”

     “Did he?”

     “Uh huh. He found all the pictures of Mommy and he took them away.”

     Lucy winces. She wonders how that had felt for Wyatt - coming face-to-face with the woman he’d failed to save, over and over again. Only having Marley here as some sort of perverse reminder that he’d changed history, but not in the way he’d wanted. Not necessarily for the better.

     Except there’s this little sweet-faced girl looking up at Lucy with rosy cheeks, and golden curls, and a bright spark of life in her blue eyes.

     “It sounds like he’s feeling sad,” Lucy says. “Where was this shirt?”

     “At the very bottom of the drawer.”

     “Do you think you can go and put it back, then?”

     “Okay,” Marley says. She plucks the shirt out of Lucy’s arms and adds, “But you gotta wear the hat!”

Chapter Text

9th October 2016
(Now)

     The kid is good at watching football. Wyatt’s got to hand it to her. It’s not always the easiest sport to watch, or the most exciting, but Marley keeps herself entertained. She’s made a little nest on the couch with the pillows and the stuffed toys, and during ad breaks or slow parts of the game she whispers to them. Acts out little scenarios.

     She’s good at drawing her attention back to the screen when something important happens, too. She watches Wyatt to see how he reacts and then she copies him. And yeah, okay, he has to admit. It’s not that bad. She’s not a bad kid.

     He could even like her, if she was someone else’s kid. He’d probably be kinda entranced with the way she cheers when the Cowboys score a touchdown, or the way she moans at the referee after every call he makes. She even complains about the good calls, and Wyatt finds himself thinking about shuffling a little closer to her and explaining what they actually want the ref to say.

     But she’s not someone else’s kid, is the issue. She thinks she’s his kid. And Wyatt can’t handle that. He stays where he’s sitting and he only watches Marley out of the corner of his eye.

     Lucy, to his surprise, seems to follow the game easily. It’s not that he’d been assuming she wouldn’t get football - except, yeah, that’s exactly what he’d been assuming. Not because she’s a woman, either, but it’s just the... she’s just Lucy. Part historian, part librarian, part teacher who’s always scolding him like he’s going to fuck up the timeline.

     It’s entirely possible he’s going to fuck up the timeline.

     But she laughs and leans forward to watch the screen with rapt attention, comments on the plays to Wyatt and asks Marley questions about the players. The third quarter ends, and the Cowboys are 28 points up. The Bengals still haven’t scored a single point, which Marley has been increasingly gleeful about. It’s been almost two hours, which is a long time for a kid to watch a football game.

     It’s a long time for Wyatt, too. He gets to his feet and stretches his arms over his head.

     “Bathroom break,” he says. “You ladies want any drinks?”

     Lucy shakes her head politely. “I’m fine, thank you.”

     “Juice, Daddy,” Marley requests.

     Wyatt hates being called Daddy. Hates it. “Yeah, okay,” he says.

     The bathroom is the only room in the house where Wyatt hadn’t found any pictures of Jess. That’s not to say it hasn’t changed in this timeline, though. There’s a new tiny green seat on the toilet which Wyatt has to remember to lift out of the way. The bath is literally full of toys. He’s not sure there’s even room for Marley in there among the ducks, and the dolphins, and the mermaid-tailed Barbie dolls, and R2D2. There’s a step stool in front of the sink and a pink butterfly-shaped cake of soap.

     Wyatt dries his hands on his pants as he steps out of the bathroom. The fourth quarter has just started, and Marley is laughing at something. Lucy is talking in a low, murmuring voice that Wyatt can’t hear, but the kid clearly finds it hilarious.

     He steps into the kitchen, deliberately not looking at the pictures on the fridge, and tugs it open to get the apple juice. Wyatt doesn’t actually like apple juice, but apparently the kid does. She also likes ice in it, even though it’s October. Forgetting the ice in her drink had been one of the many, many things Wyatt had done wrong yesterday.

     Marley had cried after he’d put her to bed. He’d heard her little hiccupping sobs, and then her soft voice talking to her toys. Telling them that it was okay. God, Wyatt had felt like such an ass, standing outside the door and listening to her. It wasn’t like he’d done anything that bad either, but clearly she was devastated.

     The feeling had stuck with him all the way through the night. The familiar combination of guilt and anger, and the strange new sensation of… disappointment? In himself? At least, Wyatt thinks that’s what he’s been feeling. Really fucking disappointed by what a shitty father he’s turned out to be.

     But she doesn’t feel like his kid.

     “Juice,” he says, carrying it through the kitchen and over to the couches, “and I got you water, Lucy, just in case.”

     “Oh.” She looks a little startled. “Thank you.”

     Wyatt grins at her. “You’re welcome.” How messed up is it that he finds socialising with Lucy easier than socialising with the kid?

     “We’re going to win, Daddy,” Marley says.

     Automatically, Wyatt flicks a glance up towards the score. Still 28-0. “Yeah, I think so,” he says. He settles down in his armchair and props his feet up on the coffee table.

     Marley drains her apple juice and chews on the ice cubes. Lucy takes a careful sip of her water. On screen, the Bengals’ wide-receiver makes a touchdown and Wyatt groans. Marley copies him. A second later they groan again when the kick is good for the extra point.

     “Are we still going to win?” Marley asks.

     Only ten minutes left in the quarter. “Looks like it.”

     And then Marley crosses the room and crawls up into the armchair and Wyatt freezes. He suddenly has a kid snuggling up against him - she’s sitting in his lap and leaning back against his chest, and she even reaches one hand up to play with the collar of his shirt.

     “I hope so,” she says.

     Wyatt can’t think of anything to say. Or do. She just seems so comfortable here; so natural. She’s brought the stuffed leopard toy, tucked safely under her arm, and she worms her little socked feet down between Wyatt’s knees.

     Awkwardly, he twists his head sideways to look at Lucy. She shrugs.

     “Do you want some more apple juice?” Wyatt asks. If Marley says yes, he can shake her off and get up to retreat into the kitchen.

     “No thanks.” She turns sideways into him, so that her head rests against his shoulder. “Is it nearly finished now?”

     “Yeah,” Wyatt answers automatically. He squints back at the screen. The Bengals have called a timeout. Five minutes left in the quarter. “Not too long.”

     “What are we having for dinner?”

     “I don’t know.”

     Marley squirms further over and looks at Lucy. “Are you staying for dinner?”

     “I’m not sure,” Lucy says.

     Wyatt stares at the screen until it blurs in-front of him. Marley is so small, but so heavy. And warm. Like a little hot-water-bottle, or a weighted comforter. Flyaway strands of her blond hair float up around Wyatt’s face and tickle his skin. She smells like juice and fresh grass and something that he can’t identify.

     His dad had been such a shithead. It was why Wyatt had been against it, when Jess had told him she wanted kids. The reason he’d always put it off. Not yet, not now, not ready. All those excuses when the truth was so very simple. He hadn’t wanted to risk it. Biology and genetics and bad blood and a bad upbringing. It all came together; it could all contribute. And Wyatt hadn’t wanted to risk it. He hadn’t wanted to risk hurting a kid.

     But she’s here now, soft and warm in his arms, and the skin of her arm is so smooth under his hand. He can’t imagine hurting her. Ever. He can’t imagine letting anything else hurt her.

     Fuck. He never asked to feel like this.

     The Cowboys win and Marley cheers. Wyatt seizes the opportunity to turf her off his lap, setting her on the ground and standing up.

     “I’m making dinner,” he says, when she turns around to glare at him. Never mind that it’s only quarter past five. Kids can eat early. “Want to play with Lucy?”

     “Can I watch TV?”

     “We just spent three hours watching TV.”

     “No,” Marley says. “I wanna watch kid shows.” She stares up at him.

     “Okay, whatever. Watch some kid shows.” Wyatt hands over the remote. “You know which channel?”

     “Yeah, Daddy, I know.” She settles cross-legged on the ground in front of the screen.

     Wyatt’s going to pick his battles. Also, he doesn’t think that her getting bad eyes from watching TV is really a top priority right now. He beckons Lucy into the kitchen with him and she pushes stuffed animals out of her way as she stands.

     “Are you okay?” she asks him, softly, when they’re mostly out of earshot of the lounge.

     “No,” Wyatt says. Of course he’s fucking not.

     “I’m sorry.”

     He shrugs. “It’s not like there’s anything you can do about it. Not until we get back in the Lifeboat.”

     Lucy opens her mouth and then stops and closes it again, chewing on her lip. Her dark eyes slide away, refusing to look at Wyatt.

     “What?” he asks her.

     “Nothing.”

     “No, seriously, what? If you’ve got an idea, tell me.”

     “It’s not an idea, Wyatt. I’m just - I’m not so sure it’ll be that simple to fix this.”

     “I made her,” he says. “I can take it back.”

     Lucy sighs, sliding her hands into her pockets. Wyatt’s hardly ever seen her in jeans before, he realises. She looks nice - well, not nice, casual, he thinks, if casual is nice. He turns away from her and tugs the fridge open.

     “Don’t tell anyone about her,” Lucy says. “Not yet.”

     “What?”

     “At Mason Industries. Just - let me talk to Jiya first.”

     “Jiya?”

     “Yeah. I trust her.”

     “What do you mean, you trust her?” Wyatt can’t find anything decent in the fridge. He pushes the door closed and turns to the pantry instead. “Do you not trust the rest of them?”

     “I don’t know,” Lucy sighs. “I’m sorry. I must sound crazy.”

     “Just a bit, yeah.” Wyatt pulls down a box of bowtie-shaped pasta. “But it’s time travel. We all sound crazy now, right?” He looks over his shoulder at Lucy and she gives him a little smile.

     “We do.”

     They’re just about finished with dinner when Wyatt’s phone rings. He doesn’t hear it at first; he’s too busy watching Marley carry the bowls over to Lucy by the sink, the kid looking so proud of herself.

     When he does hear the phone and grab it to check the screen, he rolls his eyes and then says, “Lucy.”

     She looks over. “What is it?”

     Wyatt holds the phone up and waggles it at her. “Work.”

     “Oh,” Lucy says. She looks down at Marley. “Shoot.”

     Wyatt answers the call and wonders what he’s supposed to do with the kid. Jackie isn’t going to be back until eight, at least. From the knowledge he’s gleaned so far, it sounds as though he usually leaves Marley sleeping here alone. The thought doesn’t really sit right with him, but with Jackie literally right next door…

     It’s not a mission. Or, not the regular kind of mission. It’s the old kind - the ones Wyatt used to do. It’s a raid.

     “They’ve found the Mothership,” he says to Lucy, hanging up. “I’m going in with them.”

     Her eyes go wide as she stares at him. “Flynn?”

     “He’s there,” Wyatt says. “As far as we know.” He shrugs and then says, “Can you do me a huge favour?”

     “Um, sure? What?”

     “Can you stay here with Marley until me or Jackie get back?”

     “They don’t need me? Or - or Rufus?”

     “Not yet,” Wyatt says grimly. “Not unless I screw up.”

     “Okay. Yeah, okay, I can stay. It’s fine. Not a big deal.”

     “Thanks,” Wyatt says. “You’re a lifesaver. Just put her to bed if it gets late.” He almost goes to hug Lucy and stops himself, because it doesn’t feel right. No matter how kind she’s being to him about all of this, she’s still a colleague. A new colleague. He arrests the movement halfway and gives her a friendly clap on the shoulder instead.

     “When will Jackie be back?” Lucy asks.

     “Eight, I think.” Wyatt rubs a hand over Marley’s head. “Bye, kiddo.”

     “Where are you going?” she asks, hanging off the fridge door.

     “Work. I’ll be back late. Lucy’s going to put you to bed.”

     “Oh,” Marley says. She closes the fridge and folds her arms over her chest.

     Wyatt waits, but there’s nothing else. She just stands there. He leaves.

Chapter Text

 29th February 1836
(The Future In The Past)  

     The last time Marley had been in the time-capsule she’d puked. It’s not an inspiring memory. She’d also completely failed her mission, gotten lost for two days in the desert, and had to use an Intervention to get herself water and a map. Embarrassing is really an understatement.

     Still, that was her first mission. This is going to be her second. She’s wearing appropriate 1830s clothing but she’s got a gun strapped to her thigh and two Interventions tucked down the bodice of her dress. It’s worth being prepared, no matter how stupid she’d feel if she needed to use another one.

     Jett leans in through the door and passes over the coin and the book. “Okay,” he says. “Yoyo’s set, so if you miss the window, you’ll have to wait in Texas until official business is over.”

     Marley shrugs. “I know. I won’t miss it.”

     “Six hours,” he warns.

     “I’ve got it, J.” Marley leans back in her seat and settles her head into the cradle. The buffers inflate until they’re pushing against her cheeks and temples. She drops the book in her lap and folds her hands on top of it, twisting the coin between her fingers, and waits.

     Jett closes the door and Marley closes her eyes. She swallows, hard. She’s not going to puke this time.

     The world twists around her, unravels and rewrites suddenly and violently, and Marley shakes in her seat. The straps hold her body down and the cradle keeps her head and neck still but she still feels the impact through every part of her.

     And then the door slides open and a sick brightness bleeds through Marley’s eyelids and she barely has time to drop the buffers and release her head from the cradle before she has to lean forwards and puke.

     “Damnit,” she mutters, wiping her mouth on her sleeve and opening her eyes. The sunlight is already settling into a more acceptable yellow spectrum, and the sharp spike of pain in Marley’s head eases off quickly. She hits the release on her straps and then she crawls out of the seat and rolls out of the capsule.

     The door closes once she’s out, fitting seamlessly into the smooth metal oblong of the capsule. Six hours, Marley thinks, and she tucks the coin down the side of her boot, pressing it against the bone of her ankle where she’ll feel it buzzing with her final warning.

     It’s a shorter walk than she’d expected. Marley tugs her skirts up in both hands, holding them around her waist. After all, it’s not like there’s anyone around to see. The flat plain is empty for miles - except for the dark smudge on the horizon which is the Alamo.

     Getting in doesn’t take much effort. Marley walks inside. It’s that simple. And then she walks up to the first man she sees and asks him how many strangers he’s seen in the last few days.

     He laughs. “One,” he says, “and that’s you.”

     “No one else? You’re sure? Two men and a woman,” Marley says. “One of the men is black.”

     The guy shrugs like that doesn’t mean anything. “Lady, I’m no bookkeeper, but ain’t nobody new coming to help us.”

     “Right,” Marley says. “Okay.”

     She’s early. And the walk had taken her nearly two hours. There’s no way she’s making it back before the window closes.

2nd March 1836    

     Over the past three days, the coin tucked against Marley’s ankle has buzzed and fallen silent no less than twenty times. Jett’s putting a real effort in to try and get her home safe, and she appreciates it, but she also can’t leave until she’s done. Plus, she’s got the Interventions, and Jett must know she’ll use them if she needs to.

     It’s not like there’s nothing to do around here. Marley’s good at blending in. She fetches water and chops wood and entertains children and eats more beef and corn than she really wants to. There’s a time and a place for beef and corn.

     She also really, really hopes that Jett hasn’t been suicidal enough to tell her parents where she’s gone. Or when.

     They walk in on the afternoon of the third day and even though Marley’s been expecting them, the sight still sends a shiver down her spine. For a second, she thinks they’re from her time, and they’ve come to yell at her. A second look changes her mind. They’re young. Younger than she ever remembers them being. Older than her, sure, but still so young.

     Marley had joked about this with Mom before. Asking questions like, would we have been friends, if we were the same age? And Mom had never given a straight answer, which made Marley think the answer was probably no. But Mom hasn't shied away from talking about how much of a pain in the ass Dad was. There’s a darker truth hidden under the whining and the jokes, too, that Dad was kind of broken during this time. They’re not Mom and Dad here. They’re Lucy and Wyatt, and Marley barely knows them at all.

     It doesn’t matter how messed up Wyatt is, because he’s not the one Marley needs to talk to.

    3rd March 1836

     She catches Lucy writing the letter.

     “Lucy,” Marley says.

     The dark head jerks up. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

     Marley laughs. “Not really. I know you, though.” Nothing to do except lay it out straight, Marley thinks, and so she smacks the book down on the desk, puts her palms either side of it and leans forward. “I’m a time traveller too.”

     That’s enough to make Lucy jump up, fear washing over her face. “You’re with Flynn.”

     “No,” Marley says. “You’ve come from twenty-sixteen. I’ve come from twenty-thirty-two.”

     Lucy’s mouth gapes. “Are you - you’re serious,” she says. “Wow. Really? Wow.” A crease appears between Lucy’s eyebrows; smaller and fainter than Marley is used to. This Lucy has smooth, unlined skin, and no scar slicing through her eyebrow, and darker hair pulled loosely back from her face.

     The coin buzzes against Marley’s ankle. She stops herself from groaning. Another window missed. “We don’t have much time,” she says. “Here’s what you need to know-”

     “Why are you here?”

     “I’m trying to explain,” Marley says, rolling her eyes.

     “How did you get here?”

     “I-”

     “Is this something to do with Rittenhouse?”

     “Stop!” Marley snaps. “Just take the book. Okay? Take it back with you.”

     Lucy shakes her head. “Why would I do that?”

     “It’s important,” Marley says. She pulls her lip between her teeth and worries it for a moment and then she says the magic words. “I’m trying to save my sister.”

     “Your sister?”

     “Please,” Marley says. “Take the book. And make sure Wyatt leaves with you. He can’t stay here.”

     “Wyatt stay? Here?”

     “Yes! Don’t let him stay.”

     Lucy just stares at her. The pen shakes in her hand, dripping ink on the desk. The candle flames waver. Everything is waiting.

     Outside the walls of the Alamo, the music stops. The attack is coming now.

     “There’s no time for this,” Marley says. She pushes the book across the desk. “Take it with you. Don’t tell anyone I was here.”

     She leaves while Lucy is still frozen and staring.

     No Intervention required this time. Marley sits at the rendezvous through the night hugging herself against the cold with her back up against a tree and her mind whirling. She won’t know until she gets home if it’s worked, and the waiting feels like an eternity.

     The coin in her sock buzzes an hour before the capsule appears and Marley takes the chance to make herself comfortable. She tugs the pins from her hair one at a time, letting it fall down over her shoulders. She unbuckles her stupidly tight boots, too, and sets them on the ground beside her.

     There’s a dull boom of misplaced air when the capsule arrives and Marley grimaces, rubbing at her ears. She waits until the capsule is settled and then she grabs her boots, opens the door and crawls inside. Straps across her body, head in the cradle, eyes closed tight, mouth closed tighter.

     With some really, really supreme self-control, Marley manages to keep everything inside her roiling stomach this time. It helps that she hasn’t eaten for a day. She’s still dizzy when the door opens, but the look on Mom’s face really snaps her out of it.

     “Oh shit,” Marley says, tugging her head free of the cradle and hanging from her straps to peer past Mom. There’s Jett, standing behind her, and he shrugs and holds up his hands helplessly. Marley rolls her eyes.

     “The swearing? Really not helping you out here, Marley.” Mom’s got that look in her eyes, and her lips are pressed together into a very thin line.

     “Okay,” Marley says, “but before you tear me a new one, can you at least tell me if it worked?”

     “It didn’t work. I didn’t take the book.” Mom reaches forward to hit the button on the straps and, released of their support, Marley slides out of her seat and onto the floor.

     “I can try again, Mom, I can make it work-”

     “No,” Mom says, sharp and fast. “No more. Messing with time is never worth the risk, do you hear me? Never.”

Chapter Text

   19th October 2016
(Now)

     They all wash the dust of 1830s Texas off their skin at Mason Industries. It’s a relief for Lucy to get back into jeans and a sweater. All her stuff is in her locker, just where she’d left it. She leans sideways into Wyatt’s locker when he flips open his wallet and he runs his thumb over the little picture of Marley tucked inside.

     “She’s still here,” he says.

     Lucy glances over her shoulder and then slams her locker shut. “We should watch that James Bond movie,” she says. "You know. From the Germany mission?"

     “Weapon of Choice?” Wyatt asks.

     “You’ll have it in your apartment,” Lucy says. “You have all the other ones. We should watch it there.”

     Wyatt stares at her and she stares back meaningfully, willing him to understand. He says, “Uh, sure. Rufus?”

     “Sounds good,” Rufus says. “Where’s your apartment?”

     “Give me your number,” Lucy says. “I’ll text you.” She slides her phone out of her pocket and Rufus recites his cell number. When he’s finished, Lucy says, “Bring Jiya too, okay?”

     “Oh.” Rufus frowns. “Okay. Tonight?”

     “Tonight,” Lucy confirms.

     It’s a lot easier to show Rufus and Jiya, instead of telling them. Once they see the toys and the pictures they understand. Wyatt opens Marley’s bedroom door to reveal the little girl tucked beneath her blankets, one arm flung out and her mouth open in sleep. She looks small and vulnerable and it’s a lot easier to explain why Wyatt and Lucy have been trying to keep her away from Mason Industries. Trying to hide her. Hoping she’ll be safe.

     “You’re sure you didn’t have a kid before?” Jiya says.

     Wyatt says, “No.”

     “It really does change like this,” Rufus adds. “Just… not for the people who stay here. Like the movie.” He gestures at the TV screen, the DVD menu playing on mute. “It never existed for us before. But you remember it.”

     “Well. Not really,” Jiya says. “I don’t like James Bond. But I get what you’re saying.”

     Lucy almost grins at the look on Wyatt’s face. Almost. But there’s too much weighing her down. Marley isn’t the only bombshell they’re going to have dropped on them tonight. She clears her throat and says, “I have to tell you something.”

     It takes her almost an hour to explain the story properly. Lucy talks about the blond woman, the book that she’d dropped in the aqueduct on the way out of the fort, and 2032. Wyatt and Jiya interrupt with questions and Rufus just sits there and frowns. The TV turns itself off and none of them make a move to switch it back on.

     “You’re sure she wasn’t with Flynn?” Wyatt asks.

     “I’ve told you I don’t know.” Lucy blows out a breath. “She did look familiar, but I just don’t know.”

     “Why would she try to meet you at the Alamo?” Jiya wonders. “If she’s from the future, why not just come back to now and give you the book?”

     “I don’t know.”

     Rufus is very quiet. Very quiet. Lucy finds herself watching him while the other two talk. There’s something bright and fearful in his eyes.

     “What about Rittenhouse?” he blurts suddenly.

     “I asked her,” Lucy says. “She didn’t say anything about them.”

     “We don’t even know if Rittenhouse is real,” Wyatt points out. “I think it’s just Flynn’s excuse.”

     Rufus frowns down at his hands. “Oh, they’re real,” he says.

     There’s a frozen silence in the room and then the three of them turn to Rufus. Lucy finds herself clenching her fists in her lap, fingernails digging into her palms, and she forces herself to relax.

     “Rufus?” she says, hating how her voice wavers. She can trust him - she does trust him, after everything they’ve been through. He’d thrown himself on her side wholly and completely to keep Wyatt on the team. Lucy knows that. She does. But her heart pounds when Rufus looks at her and she wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake.

     “Connor asked me to do him a favour when we first went after Flynn,” Rufus says heavily. “He wanted me to record the missions.” He looks down at his hands. “You guys, specifically. Record you guys. Your conversations.”

     Revulsion crawls in Lucy’s gut and she has to swallow the sick feeling which rises in her throat. She shifts uncomfortably in her chair and glances over at Wyatt. He’s tense, half-out of his seat, hands curled into the armrests so tightly his knuckles are white.

     “I’m sorry,” Rufus says. “I’m really, really sorry. I told Connor I wasn’t going to do it anymore - that was after Germany - and then something weird happened.”

     He explains it as quickly and simply as possible; the way his car had mysteriously stopped working, the encounter with the other man. Connor Mason trying to protect him. Like Rittenhouse was something Rufus needed protection from.

     It’s what Flynn’s been saying all along, and a tight coil of stress fills Lucy’s chest. And there’s something else, too. A thought that’s been nagging at her for weeks - a suspicion that she’s been ignoring.

     “Why me?” she blurts out into the pause after Rufus’ story.

     He stares at her. Wyatt does, too.

     Jiya curls her legs up into the chair and says, “What do you mean?”

     “I mean, why would Agent Christopher and Connor Mason come to me?”

     “Because you’re the historian,” Wyatt says. There’s an implied duh in his tone.

     “Right,” Lucy says quickly. “I am the historian. And maybe I was the best one they could find in San Francisco, okay, sure, but what about this timeline? The timeline where my mother isn’t sick?”

     “Why you,” Jiya says slowly. “Why not your mother?”

     “Exactly.”

     “Maybe you were just the better historian,” Wyatt suggests.

     Lucy shakes her head. “No. Not possible. My mom is way more qualified than I am. She’s older, she’s smarter, she’s published more, she’s taught more. I can’t think of any reason - any good reason - for them to choose me and not her.”

     “You think it’s all connected,” Rufus says. “Connor making me record you and Wyatt. You being picked for the job. Wyatt being picked for the job.”

     Lucy shrugs. “I’m not sure about anything but it just - it makes sense.” A sick kind of sense. The coldness in the room creeps over Lucy and she shivers and huddles deeper into her sweater.

     Wyatt shifts in his seat. “All right,” he says. “So we’re back where we started. We don’t know anything and we don’t know who to trust. Great.”

     Talking doesn’t get them any further. Just round in circles, asking the same questions again and again until they all get sick of it and Wyatt puts the movie on. That’s a little easier. Watching the jazzed up, vastly less terrifying recap of their adventures in Germany is distracting enough for Lucy to let her mind switch off. Just for two hours.

     By the time the credits roll, Lucy’s whole body is pleasantly numb. She’s had more wine than she probably should’ve, and she’s too exhausted to feel scared, or confused, or unhappy. She’s just tired. She wants to stretch out on the couch and sleep.

     There’s a little gentle ribbing about the Lucy of the movie, who had, inevitably, slept with James Bond before going back to America. Even that’s not enough to perk Lucy up. She laughs a little and it’s all amusingly fuzzy and she’s definitely very buzzed and possibly slightly drunk.

     She dozes while Rufus and Jiya leave, resting her head on her arm. It’s warm and the yellow light shines against her eyelids. The couch is soft underneath her and she can hear murmurs of voices in the hall, or maybe in the kitchen.

     Wyatt shakes her shoulder and she raises her head. “I only closed them for a second.”

     “You were asleep,” he says. “You’re too far gone to drive home, huh?”

     “Little bit,” Lucy admits.

     “Yeah. Come on.”

     She stands up when he pulls at her, and lets him lead her down the hall. “No spare room,” she says, when they pass Marley’s door. “Uh oh.”

     “As long as you don’t puke on my bed.”

     “Not gonna,” Lucy says, because she doesn’t feel sick, just tired. So, so tired. Everything is heavy and thick and she wants to put her head down somewhere.

     Wyatt says, “Whoa, hey, not here.”

     “What?”

     “It’s a laundry hamper, Lucy, come on.”

     He tugs her away and she follows him, sits down when he tells her to. It’s a bed, and it’s unfamiliar but it’s soft. Lucy tips over sideways until her head hits a pillow and then she sighs out, deep and relieved. This is what she needs. A proper sleep, so that everything gets sorted out in her head and the thoughts can stop spinning.

     Wyatt says something before he leaves but it’s too quiet for Lucy to understand.

    20th October 2016

     It’s a little girl’s voice which wakes her. Lucy struggles up out of sleep and it’s hard, because there’s a pounding in her head and a fuzz on her tongue which makes her uncomfortably aware she’d had too much to drink. Her jeans button is pressing into her middle and she shifts to take the pressure off.

     When she rolls to her side and slits her eyes open she sees a cloud of blond hair.

     “Marley?”

     “What are you doing in Daddy’s bed?” Marley asks. She sounds way too bright and cheerful. Lucy has never been a morning person.

     “I was too tired to go home last night, so I slept here,” she says, hoping that’s enough to stall any further questions.

     “Oh,” Marley says. She climbs up onto the bed, kneeling beside Lucy, and pushes her hair back with both hands. “Why?”

     “Why was I tired?”

     “No. Why did you sleep in Daddy’s bed?”

     “Um. He said I could?” Lucy tries. It doesn’t sound like a very compelling reason, even to her.

     “Where’s Daddy sleeping?”

     “I’m not sure.” And there’s no way Lucy’s ever going to feel comfortable enough to fall back asleep - as much as she wants to - in last night’s clothes and Wyatt’s bed. She sits up instead, pushing the blankets down to her waist. “Should we go and find him?”

     “Okay, yes,” Marley says, putting a hand on Lucy’s shoulder to balance as she scrambles backwards off the bed. “Why did you sleep in your clothes?”

     “I didn’t have any pyjamas here.”

     “Why didn’t you borrow some of Daddy’s?”

     “I don’t know,” Lucy says. Her shoes are gone, and she doesn’t remember taking them off. “I guess we didn’t think of that. Hey, Marley?”

     “Yeah?”

     “Do you see my shoes anywhere?”

     Marley gives the bedroom a cursory glance. “Uh, no. Isn’t there enough room in Daddy’s bed for two people? I always ask if I can share after nightmares. Didn’t you want to share?”

     Shoes can be found later, Lucy decides. Right now she’d rather get Marley to Wyatt before the girl asks any more complicated questions. “Come on,” she says. “I bet I know where Wyatt - I mean Daddy - is sleeping.”

     Marley bounces ahead of Lucy out of the room, her hair in tangled waves around her face and her feet bare. She looks like some sort of wild child, especially when she turns around to grin and flashes sharp little canines.

     They find Wyatt on the sofa. He’s stretched out with a cushion under his head, a blanket wrapped around his legs and an arm thrown up over his eyes. Lucy pauses when she sees him, suddenly unsure of herself. She isn’t absolutely sure he’s asleep, but it seems wrong to wake him. Or disturb him. Embarrassment floods her when she realises he must have practically put her to bed last night - in his own room, no less - and she glances around for her shoes with renewed interest. She’ll get her shoes and get out now, before this gets any weirder.

     “Daddy!” Marley takes a run-up and launches herself straight at Wyatt. She lands solidly on his chest with a thud that makes Lucy wince.

     Wyatt jerks and then he’s sitting up and his arm shoots out, toppling Marley sideways off his body and onto the floor. She lands hard and there’s a taut, frozen moment.

     Marley breaks first. Her face crumples and tears spring to her eyes. Lucy thinks it’s from shock as much as from pain, but the girl definitely knows how to turn on the waterworks. Her mouth opens and she wails, and the tears burst from under her tightly closed eyelids and spill down her cheeks.

     It takes a little longer for the other two to react. Lucy wants to go to Marley - she almost does. She takes a half-step forwards and then stops herself. It’s not her kid. It’s not her business. She should get her shoes.

     Wyatt groans and rubs his forearm over his eyes. “Marley,” he says. “Hey, Marley, come on. It’s okay. I’m sorry, you just startled me, okay?” He reaches down for her where she’s kneeling on the floor and tries to lift her to her feet. She’s limp and resistant to his efforts; intentionally, Lucy assumes. Wyatt gets a firmer grip under her armpits and Marley wails again, louder.

     “Ow!” she shrieks. “Ow, ow!” Now she does get to her feet, scrambling, and she turns away from Wyatt and bolts into Lucy.

     Suddenly there’s a sobbing, crying child clinging to her thighs. Marley’s face is pressed up against Lucy’s hip, and her arms wrap around and curl into Lucy’s jeans. The little girl’s got a tight grip. Her body shakes with the force of her sobs and there are words mingled in that Lucy can’t understand.

     “Hey, hey,” she says, rubbing Marley’s back and making helpless eye contact with Wyatt over the girl’s head. He shrugs, defeated, and scrubs a hand backwards through his hair.

     There’s a repetitive note to the cries Marley is making. It reminds Lucy of a long time ago, when Amy had been about seven. She’d start crying crocodile tears about every little thing - really convincing ones, too. Usually it was to try and get Lucy in trouble. Lucy would say something, or do something, and Amy would start crying and run straight to Mom or Dad. God, it had driven her crazy.

     “Hey,” Lucy says, pushing gently at Marley’s shoulders until the girl releases her legs. “Marley, hey. Have you ever been ice skating?”

     Marley raises a small, tear-stained face to Lucy. “What?”

     “Ice skating.”

     “I don’t know,” she says.

     “Would you like to try?” Lucy asks. “It’s a lot of fun.” She reaches around into her back pocket and fumbles her phone loose. “Here, why don’t I show you some videos, okay, and then you can decide.”

     Marley holds out both hands for the phone and says, “Okay.”

     Lucy finds a figure skating video quickly - something from Stars On Ice, with an upbeat, catchy tune and flashy costumes. The phone sucks Marley in and Lucy walks the girl to the couch and sits her down. The tears have vanished as quickly as they’d appeared.

     “Thanks,” Wyatt murmurs.

     “It’s fine.” Lucy’s ears feel hot. “I’m sorry about last night.”

     He turns to stare down at her. “What do you mean?”

     “I shouldn’t have stayed here.”

     “No, it’s okay.”

     “It’s not,” Lucy says. “And you shouldn’t have given up your bed.”

     Wyatt half-laughs. “I can sleep anywhere. Military perks.”

     “Even so-”

     “Lucy,” he says. “It’s not a big deal. Okay?”

     “Okay.”

     “Are you staying for breakfast?”

     It’s all starting to feel a little too… domestic. Too much. Too good to be true. Something like that. And it’s Wyatt, which is part of the problem. He’s too funny. Too kind. Too good-looking. Lucy trusts him, implicitly, to keep her safe. It’s a little much to ask her to feel all that and not start to hope for - or wish for - impossible things.

     She doesn’t want to feel anything for Wyatt beyond friendship. The idea of it seems wrong. He’s still mourning Jessica - and now they have a kid together, which isn’t making anything easier - and Lucy is not prepared to risk a partnership just because she can’t keep herself in check. It’s better for her not to feel anything.

     “Maybe not today,” she says. And hesitates. Because there’s Marley, on the couch, clutching Lucy’s phone with tear-tracks still on her cheeks. “But, um, Wyatt?”

     “Yeah?”

     “Do you know how to ice skate?”

Chapter Text

     22nd October 2016
(Now)

     Daddy is good at skating. He can even go backwards.

     “You should be a figure skater,” Marley tells him.

     “Uh,” he says. “Thanks?”

     “I’m going to be a figure skater.” This is a new idea, but Marley loves the ice skating place. She likes how cold it is - so that her breath comes out in dragon puffs and her nose and ears feel so so cold and she gets to wear her brand new gloves.

     Lucy touches Marley’s shoulder. “What else do you want to be when you grow up?”

     Marley has to think about that one. She wants to be a figure skater now, so she’s forgotten the other stuff. Except not really, because then she remembers. “A football player. And a zookeeper. And a submariner.”

     “A submariner?”

     “Yeah,” Marley says, “to study octopuses.” She takes a few ice-steps closer to Lucy. “Can you go backwards?”

     “Not anymore.”

     “Oh.” Marley hangs onto Lucy’s hands and twirls around in a circle. “Skating is fun, huh?”

     “It is fun,” Lucy says.

     Daddy says, “You’re doing good, kiddo.”

     Cool. It feels good. Marley stretches out for Daddy, taking ice-steps across to him. She wobbles and her arms balance her, which is a good skating skill. When Marley is a figure skater, she’ll always use her arms for balance.

     She reaches Daddy and says, “Let’s go fast together, okay? I’ll hold your hand.” She grabs it with both of her hands. Daddy’s hand is big enough for Marley to hang on like that, with two fingers in each of her hands. And he’s not wearing gloves. Silly Daddy.

     There are lots of people here, which Daddy says is because it’s a Saturday. They have to be careful not to crash into anyone. Daddy can pull Marley really fast and she grins and narrows her eyes because they make a wind when they go fast. It blows her hair. When she turns to look behind, Lucy is really far away. She’s slow at catching up.

     “Don’t leave Lucy,” Marley says, tugging on Daddy’s hand.

     “We’ll circle back around, don’t worry.”

     “Is it okay if I be a figure skater?”

     “Yeah. Totally.”

     Marley frowns. “You’re supposed to say no because I have to be a cowgirl.”

     Daddy looks down at her and his face looks all scrunchy and confused. “Really?” He’s slowed them waaaaay down.

     Marley lets go of his hand, because he’s too slow. She puts her arms out for balance and skates to the edge, where there’s a wall to grab onto. Daddy forgets a lot of things now. He forgets things all the time. He doesn’t even remember to sing her a song to go to sleep. And she hasn’t asked, because maybe songs are for babies and Marley is about to turn five which means she’s a big girl now. But she misses the song.

     Lucy catches up to Marley by the wall. “You’re so good at this!”

     “I know,” Marley says. She glares over at Daddy, who is still standing in the middle and watching her. “Daddy’s being mean.”

     “I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose,” Lucy says. “Remember what we talked about?”

     “No. What?”

     “How Daddy’s very busy at his job, and it makes him very tired?”

     Marley remembers now. “Sometimes tired people are grumpy,” she says with a sigh. “He’s not grumpy, he just forgets everything.”

     “Do you ever forget things when you’re tired?”

     “I guess,” Marley says. Except she’s never really tired so she doesn’t really know. She moves her shoulders up and down in a shrug and then says, “Hold my hand and we’ll go back to find Daddy.”

     Lucy is much slower at skating, so Marley can’t just hang on to her hand and get pulled along. They both have to skate together. Step, step, step, slide. Step, step, step - and then Lucy yanks her hand away and Marley turns towards her and she’s wobbling a lot and she falls down right on her butt.

     Daddy skids to a stop beside them and crouches on his skates. “Are you okay?”

     “Fine,” Lucy says. “Injured pride.”

     Marley wonders where a pride is and if it’s something that can break. “Sorry you fell over,” she says.

     Daddy puts both hands down and Lucy grabs them and Daddy hauls her up, quick as a wink. Quick as a flash. Quick, quick, quick. He wraps his arm around Lucy’s middle to hold her still and says, “Are you sure?”

     “Thanks,” Lucy says. “I’m fine.”

     “Okay.” Daddy lets her go.

     “What are other things that can be quick?” Marley asks him.

     Daddy touches the top of her head and says, “Huh?”

     “Like a wink?”

     “Uh, I dunno.”

     He looks confused again, like he doesn’t remember their game. They play with words, because learning words is good for when Marley starts Kindergarten. That’s only one year away, so it’s very soon.

     “Come on,” Marley sighs, and she skates away. Step, step, step, slide. She looks over her shoulder once to check if Daddy’s following. He’s holding onto Lucy’s arm. Smart move, Marley thinks. Now Lucy can’t fall down again.

     Stopping for fries and a milkshake is only the third favourite part of Marley’s day. Second was ice skating. First was when she and Daddy and Lucy walked through the park and Daddy lifted Marley up and put her on his shoulders so that she was so high up. She could see over everyone’s head, and all the orange fall leaves on the trees and on the ground and flying through the air.

     It’s been a long time since Daddy let her sit on his shoulders. He’s been so sad that he’s hardly even talked to Marley, and they haven’t played any of her favourite games for a really long time.

     Lucy is nice. She makes funny jokes and sometimes Daddy smiles at them even though he’s sad. Marley likes that. She decides that she’s going to invite Lucy to her birthday party, which is really soon.

     “Daddy?”

     There’s a pause before Daddy says, “Oh. Yeah?” like maybe he forgot Marley was talking to him. He’s so forgetful.

     “Have you got my birthday present yet?”

     “Not yet.”

     “Promise it’s coming soon?”

     “I guess so.”

     That’s not the same as a promise. Marley frowns.

     “It will definitely be here in time for your birthday,” Daddy says quickly.

     Lucy leans across the table to steal one of Marley’s fries and she laughs and snatches it back. “Hey! Lucy!”

     “Sorry,” Lucy says. She’s smiling. She doesn’t look sorry. “Hey, Marley, what do you want for your birthday?”

     “A puppy or a baby sister.” Marley stops and thinks about it, because when she first told Daddy what she wanted he said that he couldn’t make a baby sister all by himself because he needed a girl to help him, and Marley said that Jackie was a girl and she could help, and then Daddy coughed up his coffee all on the table. But Lucy is also a girl. “Lucy, can you help with my baby sister?”

     Daddy coughs again. He’s probably nervous about having another baby. Marley isn’t nervous. She’s going to look after her baby sister and sing songs to her and give her plenty of cuddles.

     “I don’t think so,” Lucy says. She looks a bit sick.

     “Did you have too many fries?” Marley asks. She knows all about that.

     Daddy and Lucy look at each other like they don’t understand the question. Marley rolls her eyes. It hurts, which Jackie says is because she hasn’t mastered it yet. She has to keep practicing.

     “Also a giant horse I can ride on,” Marley adds. “For my birthday, I mean. It doesn’t have to be a real life horse because I know they can’t live in apartments.” She kicks her legs against her chair and for once Daddy doesn’t tell her to stop. That’s funny. “But I’m going to name it Candyfloss or maybe Sugar…” Sugar what? Marley can’t remember, but it starts with a P. She swings her chair back, holding onto the table edge and balancing on two chair-legs while she tries to think of it. “Sugar Peach,” she decides finally, rocking the chair, “and I can ride on her and be a cowgirl, so I might also need a hat. I can whoop like this.” Marley lifts one hand off the table and raises it over her head and tries to whoop but her chair slips.

     Her chair slips.

     She falls right backwards, just like Daddy and Miss Ledford always said would happen and Marley’s head hits the table behind - bang - so hard. It feels like thunder and lightning all inside her head and then it goes black.

     The lights come back on and Marley starts to cry.

Chapter Text

22nd October 2016
(Now)

     She feels small in his arms. Really fucking small, and she’s still crying so much. There are tears and snot and blood on Wyatt’s shirt and on his skin and he doesn’t even care. He would hold Marley even tighter, if he could. Even closer. If he could take her inside his chest and keep her safe there then he would.

     Lucy is keeping pace with Wyatt and he’s not exactly sure how she’s managing to stay alongside him, pressing a wad of napkins to Marley’s head and opening the doors to the ER at the same time, but he’s glad she’s here.

     “It’s going to be okay,” she says to him.

     “I don’t know any of her details,” Wyatt says back, suddenly horrified. “I don’t know her middle name, or if she has any allergies, or…. anything. Lucy.”

     “I know,” Lucy says. “I know, but we’ll figure it out. Just bluff our way through, right? We’ve done that before.”

     Wyatt pulls Marley in towards him and says, “I’ve got you, kiddo,” low and soft. He isn’t sure if she can hear him over the crying. She’s going to be okay. He’s going to make her be okay.

     The nurse at the intake desk speaks to him so calmly and sounds so detached that Wyatt wants to slap her. He doesn’t know how she can be so casual when his daughter’s head is bleeding fucking buckets. Without Lucy’s cool hand on his arm, he isn’t sure if he would’ve been able to hold it together. But she squeezes his wrist and answers questions that Wyatt doesn’t remember the answer to - Marley’s birthday, how long ago she fell, whether she blacked out, if she’s spoken since.

     There’s nothing to do after that but wait. Wyatt cradles Marley in his lap and feels, for the first time, like she’s his kid. Except it’s not like she belongs to him. It’s more that he belongs to her. That he’d do anything to keep her safe.

     “It’s my fault,” he says. “I fucked up.”

     Lucy is stroking the damp hair back from Marley’s forehead, over and over again in a soothing, repetitive rhythm. “It’s okay,” she says. “This is new for you. It’s new for all of us.”

     Wyatt hadn’t realised. He hadn’t thought about how vulnerable the little girl was. She’d been so loud, and confident, and full of anger and temper tantrums and bossing him around when he got her the wrong juice, or the wrong shoes, or drove the wrong way to Pre-K. It had been so easy to forget that she’s four years old and there are things in life that she doesn’t understand. Dangers that she doesn’t know how to avoid.

     Protecting her until she gets old enough to learn - that’s what he’s supposed to be doing. It’s not just about getting her dressed and brushing her teeth and carrying her plushies around and answering a billion stupid questions every day.

     God, he’s been hating this ‘father’ thing for two weeks and he’s only now realising that it’s the same job he’s been doing all along. Keeping them safe. It doesn’t matter if it’s his fellow soldiers, or Rufus, or Lucy, or Marley. It’s the same thing.

     “Daddy?”

     “Hey,” he says, looking down at her. She’s finally stopped crying. “You’re okay, baby. You’re going to be okay.”

     “It hurts,” Marley whispers.

     “I know. You’re being so, so brave.”

     “Will the doctor fix me?”

     “Yes,” Wyatt says. “Absolutely, the doctor will fix you. I’m gonna make sure of it.”

     Wyatt drives on the way home, while Lucy sits in the back with Marley’s head in her lap. There’s still blood on Lucy’s jeans from the drive to the hospital, when they’d done the same thing. Now, Marley has six neat black stitches parting her blond hair and her eyes are closed. She’s exhausted from fighting the doctor - struggling and screaming while Wyatt helped to hold her down and tried desperately to reason with her.

     He glances at them in the rear-view. Lucy’s stroking Marley’s hair again. He can hear her humming something.

     “Thank you,” Wyatt says.

     Lucy lifts her head. Their eyes meet in the mirror. “What for?”

     “Being here today.”

     “It’s nothing.”

     “No, it is,” Wyatt argues. “It helped. A lot.”

     Her lips curve up. “Then… you’re welcome.”

     Wyatt parks in the underground lot. He takes Marley out of the back and carries her, while Lucy follows with instructions for wound-care and a pamphlet on concussion symptoms and warning signs. It’s a lot of advice, but Wyatt’s got experience in this area. Plenty of it. That’s not what he’s worried about.

     Doing it alone, now that’s terrifying him. He isn’t sure if he would’ve been able to keep it together today without Lucy. And Wyatt is trained to keep it together. It takes a lot for him to lose control.

     He wants to ask Lucy to stay again, the way she had on Wednesday night. Just in case anything happens. In case he needs her. But admitting to needing anyone feels wrong, and with Lucy it just feels like too much. Wyatt can’t use her as some sort of emotional back-up all the time. That’s not her role - not in the team, and not in his life.

     Whatever way he looks at it, they’ve been through a helluva lot together. Wyatt wants to ask her to stay.

     He doesn’t.

     The elevator doors ping open and Wyatt steps out. His keys are tucked in his side pocket, and he tries to shuffle Marley in his arms to reach down for them. She’s heavy in sleep, hard to manoeuvre.

     Lucy touches his shoulder. “Which pocket?”

     “Right.”

     She reaches in, slender fingers brushing his leg through the fabric. “Which key?”

     “Square top,” Wyatt says, and then, “no, the other one,” when she dangles them in front of his face.

     Lucy steps around him to open the door, holds it while he carries Marley through and then follows him inside. She walks straight to Marley’s bedroom and opens that door, too, without being asked. Wyatt is as gentle as he can be when he sets Marley on the bed.

     “She’s got blood all over her shirt,” he notices. “Should I change her?”

     “Better to let her sleep.”

     “If she’s got a concussion-”

     “It’s only been a few minutes,” Lucy says. “You can give her a little longer before you wake her.”

     “Yeah,” Wyatt agrees. “Yeah, okay.” He tugs at the velcro straps on Marley’s little sneakers and then slides them off her feet. When he stands up, Lucy is right there, and they’re suddenly face-to-face. There are flecks of hazel in the darker brown of her eyes. Wyatt’s never noticed before.

     There’s a moment where the air in the room is still, like neither of them know what to do. Lucy breaks the deadlock. She steps out of the bedroom and Wyatt follows suit.

     “I should go home,” she says.

     Wyatt swallows hard to stop himself from saying anything to the contrary. “Okay,” he manages instead. And then pathetically adds, “You could come back tomorrow.”

     “I will,” Lucy says. “To check in on Marley. But maybe not until the afternoon.” She chews on her lip. “I was thinking of going to look for my father. Now that I know where he is.”

     It’s another sharp reminder that whatever weird shit Wyatt has going on in his own life, Lucy has stuff to deal with too.

     “Be safe,” he says.

     “Of course.” She smiles at him then, soft and sweet. “Come here.”

     Wyatt steps forward into the hug. He drapes his arms loosely around Lucy’s waist, feels her own arms weave around his shoulders. It’s good, for a second. It feels supportive. Safe. Like he’s not in this by himself.

     “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Lucy says into his shoulder, his shirt muffling her voice.

     Wyatt steps back. “Yeah,” he says. “See you tomorrow.”

     He walks her to the door and watches her down the hall until she’s out of sight. When she’s gone, Wyatt heads back inside. He toes off his boots, shrugs out of his outer shirt and goes to Marley’s room. She’s still asleep, mouth slack, face stained with the sticky residue of tears and blood. With an exhausted sigh, Wyatt drops down onto the bed beside her.

     “Marley,” he says quietly.

     She grumbles something that he can’t understand and rolls towards him, slinging an arm over his thigh and hanging on. Like she wants him to stay close to her.

     Wyatt puts his palm on her back, spreading his fingers across the t-shirt and feeling the warmth of her skin and the little knobs of her spine. “It’s okay,” he says to her. “You’re safe now.”

     The blank spot on the wall where Jessica’s picture had been draws his eye. He should put it back, Wyatt thinks suddenly. He got it wrong. It wasn’t about him. It was never hanging up there for him.

Chapter Text

7th September 2032
(The Future)

Marley goes to the rink. It’s what she does every time she’s mad, ever since Connor bought it for her fourteenth birthday. Some present. Hey, kid, here’s an entire ice rink from your slightly insane super-rich 'uncle'.

     It’s crazy, how weird Marley’s life is and how little she ever questions it.

     She turns on the bare minimum of lights, sets the sound system up with one of her playlists, and then digs her skates out from the bottom of her bag and pulls them on.

     Marley’s not a figure skater. She can do a couple of easy spins, and a couple of easy jumps. Nothing serious. But what she loves about it isn’t the sport. It’s the speed, and the coldness of the air against her face, and the sound of her blades on the ice. Something about it helps her get her head on straight.

     Like everywhere else in the world, she wishes she could share it with her sister.

     When Marley finally gets off the ice it’s nearly one in the morning and she’s got two missed calls from Mom and a text from Jett.

     I got in trouble. U owe me.

     She rolls her eyes. Jett takes stupid risks on his own anyway. It’s not like Marley forced him to set her up in the capsule. Briefly, holding the phone, Marley considers calling one of the people she usually goes to when she’s unhappy. Denise, or Jiya. They’re her emotional support. Jackie and Mom are the ones Marley asks for advice, and everyone else in her life is just a bonus, really. She’s lucky. She’s surrounded by family.

     It’s early, though, and she doesn’t want to wake anyone up. In the end there’s only one person Marley wants to see anyway.

     She locks up the rink and hops into her car, turns off the GPS and the Bluetooth and switches off her phone. Once she’s double and triple-checked that anything which could possibly used to track her has been shut down, Marley starts the engine and heads south. It’s a little over an hour’s drive, and everyone will definitely be asleep by the time she arrives.

     Still, at least Marley will be there for breakfast.

     “Marley!”

     Marley opens her eyes. She’d crashed in her old bedroom last night so that she didn’t wake anyone up. Apparently her late arrival hasn’t been as much of a secret as she’d thought.

     “Hey,” she says, opening her arms wide. “Come here, kiddo.”

     Kaity crawls onto the bed and into Marley’s arms, snuggling in tight. She’s small for eleven, only half of Marley’s height and a skinny kid. Bony elbows and knees and gangly limbs.

     “I missed you so much,” Kaity says. “Why did you come home so late?”

     “I was out,” Marley says, and reminds herself suddenly and viscerally of her teenage years, when she’d had a harder time sneaking out than other sixteen-year-olds. Most of them didn’t live in a secret bunker. “What about you, what have you been up to?”

     “I finished Harry Potter!” Kaity announces, like she’s just been waiting to reveal that news. She wiggles in Marley’s arms. “Are you mad?”

     “What, that you didn’t listen to me when I said it was too scary?” Marley considers. “Nah.” She grins. “Did you like it?”

     “Loved it,” Kaity says.

     “Better than Percy Jackson?”

     “Uh, I dunno.”

     Marley brushes strands of Kaity’s hair away from her face. “Which one was your favourite?”

     “Number five.”

     “You like the Order, huh?”

     “They’re a big secret. Just like us!”

     Oof, and that hurts to hear. Marley uses both arms to pull Kaity in close, dark hair and big eyes and narrow little shoulders. She can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her. She can’t imagine Kaity ever doing anything to warrant all this attention. The kid’s had assassins after her since before she was born, and she’s still just a ball of sunshine and light.

     “Missed you, Kaity.”

     “You should come home,” Kaity says. “To live, not to visit.”

     “I will. I promise, okay? I’ve just got one thing to sort out first.”

     “Secret thing?”

     “Secret thing,” Marley says.

     “Okay.” Kaity squirms out of Marley’s arms and bounces onto her knees on the bed. “Dad said to wake you up for breakfast. Are you hungry for eggs?”

     “No. Not hungry for eggs.”

     “How about French toast?”

     “Only if Emma makes it.”

     Kaity scrambles off the bed. “Okay! It’s a deal. I’ll go find her!” She’s gone in an instant, bare feet slapping the concrete, dressing gown flying out behind her like a cape.

     It doesn’t matter how many posters they stick on the walls down here, or how many toys they bring Kaity. It doesn’t even matter that all of the adults in their strange but functional family rotate spending time down here with her. This place is still a prison. Marley is going to get her sister out.  

     Emma is walking into the kitchen at the same time as Marley. She raises her eyebrows. “Forgot to brush your hair again, I see.”

     “Harsh,” Marley says.

     “Are you the reason that Kaity walked in on me showering ten minutes ago?”

     “Nope. I tried to teach her that privacy stuff years ago. Is it my fault that it never took?”

     “I suppose not,” Emma says. “French toast?”

     “Yes, please.”

     “Okay. You should go talk to your dad.”

     Marley grimaces. “Uh oh. Why?”

     “I heard a rumour you’ve been time travelling again. I think he heard it too.”

     Far out. “Shit,” Marley says.

     “Swear jar!” Kaity’s little voice pipes up behind her.

     Marley turns around. “How much is it now?”

     “A whole dollar. Don’t skimp.”

     “Okay, kiddo.” She ruffles Kaity’s hair and drops a kiss on her sister’s head before leaving the kitchen again. “I guess I’m going to find Dad.”

     “Good luck!” Kaity yells after her.

     Marley thinks she’s probably going to need it.

     Over the past few years, Marley has read about dozens of versions of herself in slightly alternate timelines. Connor, Emma and Jiya are the ones who have done the research, visited the timelines and collated the information, but Marley thinks she’s probably spent the most time reading it all.

     The oddest thing is that when she looks at the differences between the separate versions of herself, Marley can trace most of the changes back to when she was twelve years old. Decisions she made when she was barely pubescent ripple through into the future and change… everything. Her family. Her health. Her work. In one timeline, winning first prize in an essay competition puts Marley on track to become a librarian. In another, a trip to the beach a month before she turns thirteen sets her up to be a marine biologist. Ironically, it’s not that version of Marley who loses her leg to a shark attack. Instead it’s cello-playing Marley, who saw the Nutcracker ballet for her twelfth birthday and was orchestrally inspired - and then when she was eighteen went surfing at exactly the wrong time and place.

     Marley doesn’t like to think about how early her path seems to solidify. She’d felt like her choices were wide open well up until she was nineteen, twenty - even now. She knows what she wants to do. She knows what she loves doing. She still feels like she could change her mind, if she needed to. But in all of the timelines, she’s very, very young when she makes that first crucial choice.

     Kaity is eleven and Marley cannot stop thinking about how long it will be until Kaity makes her vital choice. Until the decisions ripple along Kaity’s life and trap her into a future that she won’t have any say in.

     In every version so far, Kaity is locked away, either in this bunker or one like it. Sometimes she’s with Rittenhouse. Sometimes she’s hidden in other countries. In one timeline - the timeline Emma comes from - she’s called Marian and she’d lived with Emma in Tibet for six years. That’s a weird one to comprehend. It’s the only reason they let Emma stay in the bunker, according to Mom. In Mom’s timeline, Emma tried to murder her. In Rufus’ timeline, Emma succeeded.

     They’re all coming at this from different angles. It’s one of the reasons Marley thinks they can’t see straight when it comes to Kaity. They’ve seen a hundred different versions already. Marley’s only ever seen it one way. Her timeline is linear, straight and narrow and the only one she remembers. There’s never been another way for her.

     Dad does his whole I’m not mad, just disappointed routine and it exhausts Marley just as much as it used to when she would come home at one in the morning and he’d be waiting up for her, face tight with worry, eyes sharp with anger. He is mad, even when he says he isn’t. Mad at her for putting herself in danger.

     Marley gets it, she does, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

     “At least I’m trying, Dad.”

     “You think the rest of us aren’t trying?”

     “You’re not trying to get Kaity out of here,” Marley snaps.

     “No, because we’re busy trying to keep her safe.”

     That’s the difference. Every time they have this argument, it boils down to the same old party line.

     Marley says, “I don’t want her to be safe, I want her to have a life.”

     “She can’t have a life if she’s dead,” Dad retorts.

     Marley rolls her eyes. “Wow, shocker.”

     Dad grits his teeth and sucks in a breath. “Okay,” he says. “Marley. I know you’re trying to help. I get it. But you can’t mess around with time travel. You can’t be going to the Launchpad and talking idiots like Jett into sending you off on some idiot mission that won’t change a thing. Do you get it? Telling me and Mom about the future won’t solve the problem. You have no training, no experience, and no understanding of how complicated this is. All you do is make things worse.”

     Ouch. That one stings. Marley presses her lips together and wills herself not to let any of it show on her face. Her ears feel hot and her chest is tight with anger. For a second, Marley thinks she might scream at him. And she thinks Dad might scream back. They fight a lot more now than they ever did when Marley was a kid.

     She takes a deep breath and makes sure her voice is steady when she says, “I’m only here to see Kaity. I’m going to stay for breakfast, and spend some time with my sister, and then I’m going to go. All right?”

     “That’s not what I’m saying,” Dad says. “You don’t have to leave.”

     “No, I do,” Marley corrects. “I don’t want to be here. And maybe stay out of my way until I go.”

     Dad folds his arms across his chest. “What, so you’re going to have a temper tantrum now because I told it to you straight?”

     “Leave me alone, Dad.”

     “If you do stupid things, you better believe I’m going to talk to you about it,” he says. “You’re my kid, Marley. It’s my job to let you know when you’ve screwed up.”

     They’re not getting anywhere with this conversation. They’re just talking around in circles, repeating the same hurtful things over and over, and still Dad won’t bother asking for Marley’s opinion. He won’t ask about the research she’s done, or the scenarios she’s investigated, or anything at all.

     “Okay,” Marley says flatly. “I’m going to eat.”

     She turns her back on him and walks away.

     Kaity hangs on around Marley’s waist at the door, burying her head into Marley’s t-shirt.

     “I don’t want you to leave,” she says, muffled. “Why can’t you stay for a long time? Like you did for my birthday?”

     “I will,” Marley says. “Soon, I promise. Maybe for my birthday.”

     “Daddy says twenty-first is an important birthday and you might not want to spend all day with us.”

     “Yeah, but Daddy’s stupid,” Marley says.

     Kaity giggles. “I won’t tell him you said that.”

     “Hey,” Marley says. She strokes a hand through Kaity’s hair; lifts the little girl’s chin until their eyes meet. “I don’t wanna spend my birthday anywhere except with you, okay? You’re my favourite person.”

     “I know.” Kaity squeezes her arms around Marley tighter. “When will you come visit again?”

     “A couple of days. Is that okay?”

     “Yeah.”

     “I’ll bring you a present,” Marley says. “What do you want?”

     “I dunno.”

     “A surprise, then?”

     “Yeah. A really good one.”

     “Okay.” Marley stoops into the hug, pulling Kaity in close. Strands of hair flutter against her face when she breathes.

     “Where are you going to go first?” Kaity asks quietly.

     “The fire station, probably.”

     “Oh. That’s cool.”

     “It is pretty cool.”

     “Can you take a video of one of the fire trucks for me?”

     Marley laughs, straightening up and stepping back out of the hug. “Don’t you have enough of those?”

     “I really like the siren sounds,” Kaity says, grinning.

     “You’re crazy,” Marley says. She kisses Kaity’s cheek. “I love you so much.”

     “I love you even more.”

     “I love you most, so I win.”

     Kaity giggles. “Bye.”

     “See you soon.”

     Opening the bunker door hurts. Stepping outside hurts worse. She catches just a glimpse of Kaity’s pale little face on the other side before the door blocks her view. The bang of the door slamming shut is one of the most awful sounds Marley thinks she’s ever heard. The door is locked, Kaity is ‘safe’ inside, and Marley’s left alone in a damp, dark metal corridor, with a 200-stair climb between her and the sun.

Chapter Text

    30th October 2016
(Now)

     Lucy wakes up on Sunday morning to a text from Wyatt. Actually, it’s a series of texts, sent in quick succession, and the steady buzzing of her phone is what draws her out of sleep.

     Help!

     That sounds more urgent than I meant. It’s not urgent.

     It’s semi-urgent. Can you come to the pre-birthday party?

     ASAP?

     Here’s the address.

     Lucy looks at the time and groans. It’s almost midday and she can’t believe that she’s slept so late. After spending all of yesterday chasing after the stupid Watergate tape, it’s not surprising that she’s tired. But this kind of stuff - sleeping all morning, not finding the time to go for a run, or even eat breakfast - she hates it.

     This used to be the normal after long nights spent up by Mom’s bedside. Lucy doesn’t like being reminded of that. For months, the smell of disinfectant had followed her everywhere. She can still hear the hoarse rattling of Mom’s breathing, or the bouts of bloody coughing which had left Lucy and Amy just as breathless with fright. 

     She texts Wyatt.

     I’m on my way.

     It’s some sort of a kids’ zone, when Lucy gets there. The kind of place full of slides and ball-pits and trampolines and foam-covered obstacle courses. It’s so loud that the sound drills right through Lucy’s ears and gives her an instant headache. A little boy runs past her and three more follow, pushing at her legs to get her out of the way. There are smashed fries and spilt drinks on the floor. Lucy steps over puddles and scans the room for Wyatt.

     She doesn’t even have to search hard. He finds her first, and calls out to her.

     “Lucy! Over here!”

     He’s sitting at one of the tables, and there are several women around him. They’re all completely unfamiliar to her.

     “Hi,” Lucy says when she gets over to them. She taps Wyatt’s shoulder lightly, wondering what he’d needed her for that was so semi-urgent.

     He reaches back and grasps her wrist, pulling her a step closer to him. “You’re finally here,” he says, but he’s addressing it to the others at the table, not to her. “I told them it wouldn’t take long.”

     Lucy says, “Um. Sorry.” She doesn’t know what he means by finally. And - have they been talking about her? Why?

     “This is Emily, and Casey, and…” Wyatt frowns. “Jill.”

     “Gillian,” the woman corrects. She leans over to shake Lucy’s hand. “Hello.”

     “Wyatt was just telling us about you meeting Marley for the first time,” the one called Casey explains. “How are you two getting on?”

     “Good?” Lucy says. “I think?”

     “Marley loves her,” Wyatt adds quickly.

     Lucy stares down at him. What the hell is going on? Wyatt won’t meet her eyes, but he squeezes her wrist. Telling her to calm down? To play along?

     “It is so hard doing it on your own,” Emily says. “I remember right after Jake left, I just had Jackson and Amy with me all the time. It was exhausting!”

     Lucy cringes when she hears the name. Wyatt squeezes her wrist again, like he knows. Maybe he does. Lucy takes a couple of deep breaths. Her arm tingles with gooseflesh. She’s probably just cold. It has nothing to do with Wyatt’s thumb stroking back and forth over the soft skin below her palm.

     “I’m really lucky that Marley’s aunt lives so close,” Wyatt says. “She had Marley all yesterday, which was great, because Lucy and I were at work.”

     In the 1970s. He doesn’t say that, which Lucy thinks is probably a good idea. She shifts awkwardly from foot-to-foot. Why is she here?

     “Oh, so you work together?” Gillian asks. “Is that where you met?”

     “It’s so hard to meet people outside of work,” Casey says.

     A tiny girl wearing fairy wings and a tutu comes running up to their table, wailing. Wyatt takes advantage of the confusion to stand up and pull Lucy a couple of paces away.

     “Wyatt,” she hisses. “What is going on?”

     “Sorry, sorry. They were all being so weird and clingy. I don’t actually know who they are. I had to get their names off the RSVP email chain.”

     Suddenly it clicks and Lucy starts to laugh. “Oh my god. They’re hitting on you.”

     “Shut up,” Wyatt says.

     “You’re the hot single dad.”

     “Shut up. Stop laughing!”

     Lucy tries to restrain herself, but little snorts keep escaping. “You got me to come here and pretend to be your girlfriend?”

     “It was an accident,” Wyatt says. He sighs. “They kept talking about how hard it was to be on your own and I said, ‘Oh, no, Lucy’s been a big help’ without thinking about it.”

     “You accidentally said I was your girlfriend?”

     “No, I accidentally said you were my co-parent.”

     Oh. Oh. And they have been, haven’t they? They’ve been doing this together. From the first moment, Wyatt had come straight to her for help. It’s a shared journey, Lucy realises, no matter which one of them Marley really belongs to.

     But she shouldn’t feel as flattered by it as she does. It’s Wyatt. His job is to take care of her. It doesn’t mean anything and she needs to stop imagining that it does. It’s Wyatt. It doesn’t matter that he’s crazy hot, or that his smile makes Lucy want to smile back every single damn time. He’s the person she trusts most in the world right now. She’s never going to do anything to jeopardise that. Never.

     If he needs her to play a part then that’s what she’s going to do. And any feelings she has aren’t even going to enter into it.

     “Okay,” Lucy says. “Let’s go and socialise.” She slides her hand down Wyatt’s arm and laces their fingers together. His hand is solid and warm wrapped around hers and she tries not to notice.

     He glances down. “Yeah?”

     “Just to get them off your case.”

     Wyatt smiles. His eyes are very blue. “Thanks.”

     “What are friends for?”

31st October 2016

      Wyatt’s apartment door swings open before Lucy’s even had a chance to knock. With that kind of enthusiasm, she’s expecting Marley, but it’s Wyatt who stands there, looking a little sheepish.

     “I saw your car,” he says.

     “How’s the birthday girl?” Lucy steps into the entryway, closing the door behind her.

     Wyatt rolls his eyes. “She finally came down off the sugar high this afternoon. It was a nightmare.”

     “I told you there was too much party food yesterday,” Lucy says.

     “Yeah. Did you talk to Rufus?” he asks.

     “Uh huh.” Lucy stumbles over a plastic toy horse on the floor and stoops to pick it up. “They’ll meet us outside at half-past five.”

     “Okay,” Wyatt says. “That should give us plenty of time, right?”

     “I think so.”

     “Great. She’s in the bathroom. Got your stuff?”

     Lucy raises the black makeup bag in front of him. “Never leave home without it.”

     “For disguise purposes?”

     She grins. “What, you think this is my real face?”

     “I knew it,” Wyatt says. “You’re secretly over thirty.”

     Lucy laughs. “You got me.”

     “Well,” he says, “you look great.”

     They’re standing too close. She’s aware of it suddenly. There isn’t enough space between them. She can feel the warmth of his skin and hear the quiet sounds of his breathing and smell whatever lingering cologne or body-wash or shampoo he’s used. Something subtle and familiar.

     Lucy steps back, fast. “Um,” she says. “I’ll go see Marley.”

     “Yeah. Good idea.”

     He’s blocking the hallway. Lucy has to turn sideways and make as though to squeeze past him, and then he jumps backwards like he’s been burnt. She tries not to think about it.

     Marley is wearing an orange jack-o-lantern shirt and a lacy black spider-web patterned skirt. She stands on her little blue stool in front of the bathroom sink, leaning forwards to peer into the mirror.

     “Hey,” Lucy says, rubbing Marley’s back. “Happy birthday.”

     “Can you see my head scar?”

     “Not really.”

     “It doesn’t look cool since the stitches fell out,” Marley says, pouting. “I wanted a big scar for Halloween.”

     “That’s what we have this for,” Lucy says. She sets her make-up bag on the sink. “Have you changed your mind about your costume since we talked yesterday?”

     “Hm, nope.”

     “Okay. Let’s get started.”

     “Of course your kid wouldn’t be something nice for Halloween,” Rufus complains. “What’s wrong with fairies? Or superheroes?”

     “She likes Supergirl,” Wyatt offers.

     “Right. But she chose to dress up as a horrifying clown instead,” Rufus says, folding his arms over his chest, his eyes on Marley and Jiya running ahead of the others.

     Lucy glances over at them too, grinning when she sees Marley’s painted face again. “I think it looks great,” she says. “Nice and scary for Halloween.”

     “I’m blaming you for this too,” Rufus tells her. “I’m going to have nightmares.”

     “What’s wrong with clowns?” Wyatt asks.

     “They’re creepy!”

     Jiya crouches in the carpark and turns around, and Marley clambers up on her back. They come laughing back to the group.

     “Are we going?” Marley asks.

     Rufus shudders. “So creepy,” he mutters, turns his back on them and starts walking away. Jiya grins and jogs a few steps to catch up to him, Marley clinging to her shoulders.

     “I think you did a good job,” Wyatt says, as he and Lucy follow. “The bloody tears are a bit intense.”

     “Those were her idea.”

     “Oh.”

     Lucy chews on her lips, debating whether or not to tell Wyatt what else Marley had said while they were getting ready. If this was a normal parent-child relationship, she thinks, she wouldn’t dare. It wouldn’t be her place. But this is anything but normal, and everything over the past week, at work and at home, has just reinforced the idea in Lucy’s head that they’re in this together. All of them.

     “She said that she misses you.”

     “Who, Marley?”

     “Uh huh.”

     “She misses me?” Wyatt frowns. “What does that mean?”

     “I guess she thinks you’ve changed.”

     “I’ve changed.” He snorts. “More like the whole world’s changed around me.”

     “Yeah,” Lucy says, heartfelt. “Tell me about it.” She sighs heavily. “I’m so tired of all of this, Wyatt. All the secrets. We have so many damn secrets.”

     He bumps his shoulder into hers. “Your mom?”

     “Among other things.”

     “It’s okay, you know. Keeping secrets.”

     “It doesn’t feel okay,” Lucy says. “I feel like a terrible person. I’m keeping so much from… from everyone. I never used to do this. Even if I didn’t tell Mom, I’d always tell Amy. Always. Everything. Or - I don’t know, a friend from school, or a friend from work, or a boyfriend. I’ve never held everything in like this before.”

     Wyatt nods. “I get it. It’s lonely.”

     She blows out a breath. “Exactly.”

     “What are you keeping from me?” he asks.

     “Um.” Lucy stops and thinks about it. “Nothing,” she says, a little surprised at the admission.

     “So talk to me about the rest of it.”

     “I don’t want to just unload on you,” she protests.

     “Would it make you feel better if I went first?”

     He’s doing it again, Lucy realises, when she looks up at him. Exactly the same way he did in Germany. He opens up just a little bit and then she spills everything to him. It’s some sort of Army psych strategy, probably, but Lucy doesn’t even care. She needs to talk. And she wants to listen.

     “Okay,” she says. “You go first.”

     “I feel like I’m lost,” he says. “Since Jess died, I’ve just been drifting. And then there was this job, and this… time machine. I thought it was a chance. I got fixated again, on her murder, on finding out every last tiny detail, just in case I could change it.” He shrugs. “Now there’s Marley and I don’t know what to do. If I save Jess, do I lose her? Is it worth never getting Jess back just to keep Marley?”

     Lucy shivers, tucking her arms around her chest. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

     “I get it now,” Wyatt says. He shrugs out of his jacket. “I love her. I do. She’s a great kid. But I can’t imagine doing this for the rest of my life.”

     “I’ll help,” Lucy says, and then flushes. “I mean, we’ll help.” She waves her hand, encompassing Rufus and Jiya, walking ahead of them with the little girl. “All of us.”

     “Yeah, I know. But it’s not like you guys are going to be around for the next fifteen years.” He drops his jacket around Lucy’s shoulders. “I mean, realistically.”

     Realistically. Wyatt’s jacket is warm with leftover body heat and Lucy pulls it tight across her chest. Suddenly she doesn’t want to think about things realistically. She doesn’t want to imagine parting ways with Wyatt - not in the near future, not in the distant future, not ever. A wave of profound sadness washes over her at the thought and she drops her gaze to her feet. She wants him to stay. She wants to stay with him.

     She wants him.

     It’s a realisation sharp enough to make Lucy stop walking, her heart pounding in the hollow of her throat. The longing sweeps through her so hard that it hurts.

     “Are you okay?” Wyatt asks.

     “Uh huh.” Her voice is higher-pitched than it should be.

     “Do you want to talk about your stuff now?”

     No, she really, really does not. She’d lied earlier, and she understands it now. She has a secret from Wyatt. A stupidly huge secret.

     “I want to talk,” she tells him, “but later. It’s Marley’s night tonight. And we’ve got plenty of time.”

     “Sure,” Wyatt says. “Looks like the birthday clown’s getting hungry, too.” He juts his chin towards Jiya, who is toting Marley up the steps of their first trick-or-treat house. “We’d better not get left behind or we won’t get any candy.” He grins at Lucy, that stupid blue-eyed square-jawed smirk that takes her breath away.

     She slides her arms through the sleeves of his coat and wishes, fiercely, that she didn’t feel anything at all. “Right,” she says, and her heart stutters when he looks at her. “Candy.”

     Marley chuckles every time someone tells her she’s scary. She belly-laughs hard when another child sees her and screams. When Marley gets scared she giggles and squeals and runs, dodging around the four adults. She swings around Lucy, hanging onto the belt loops of her jeans, and hides behind Wyatt. She holds Jiya’s hand a lot while they walk, chattering away so fast that Lucy can barely understand her.

     It’s properly dark by seven, but it takes another thirty minutes before Marley starts to get tired. She passes her candy sack over to Rufus and drags her feet while she walks. Eventually Wyatt gets tired of her scuffing her shoes and he hoists her up into his arms.

     Marley puts her head down on his shoulder and sighs. “Daddy?”

     “Yeah?”

     “I love you.”

     Wyatt rubs a hand up and down her back. “I love you too.”

     Lucy has to look away and swallow a sudden lump in her throat.

     Mom is standing in the hallway when Lucy opens the front door. “Where have you been?”

     “At work,” Lucy lies. “Why? It’s not late.” She frowns, bending to unzip her boots. “Were you waiting for me?”

     “It’s Halloween,” Mom says. “I don’t remember the last time you went out on Halloween.”

     Actually, neither does Lucy. Or - no, she does. Six years ago, to that shitty party where some drunk guy slobbered in her mouth and dropped a tray of ice cubes down her shirt. He’d thought it would be sexy. It wasn’t.

     Amy had laughed until she cried when Lucy got home and told her about it.

     “I didn’t go out, Mom, I had work.”

     “Sorry,” Mom says quietly. “I just thought you’d let me know if you weren’t going to make it home.” She draws herself up a little straighter and wraps her arms around herself. “I’m going to turn in early, I think.”

     There’s a bowl of candy by the front door. Lucy sees it when she turns around to hang up her coat. Only the dregs are left, but she’s struck by a sudden wave of guilt. Maybe they usually stay home together and wait for trick-or-treaters. They’d done that before, after Lucy moved back in. Before Mom got too sick for it.

     This calls for an emergency Snickers. Lucy digs it out of her purse and chases down the hall after her mom. “Hey!”

     Mom has stopped in the lounge, and she turns around, leaning against the door frame. “Yes?”

     “I brought you a Snickers.”

     Mom’s lips curve up, just slightly. She holds her hand out for it. “About time,” she says. “I was starting to think you’d never remember.”

     They settle on the couch together and Lucy draws her legs up under her, sitting on her feet. “Mom, can I ask you something?”

     “Always.”

     “My dad,” Lucy says. It hurts, to say the words and think about another man - not Dad. “Did you… did you love him?”

     Mom shakes her head. “No.”

     At least she’s honest, Lucy thinks. “Did he love me?”

     “I don’t know, Lucy. I’m sorry. You’ll have to ask him that.”

     “He didn’t tell you?”

     “No.”

     “Was he happy, when you told him about me?”

     Mom sighs. “No.”

     Lucy hesitates. “-Were you?”

     “Yes, Lucy. Yes. I wanted you from the second I knew you were there, do you understand? I’ve loved you forever. I will love you forever.”

     She stretches an arm out and pulls Lucy in, and Lucy allows herself to go, burying her face in Mom’s shoulder and sniffling. She’s not even sure why she’s so upset, but the tears well hot in her eyes and she curls her body up tightly.

     The questions she really wants to ask are about Dad. Did he know I wasn’t his? Did he love me anyway? Would he have left me, if you’d told him?

     She can’t ask. Mom doesn’t even know who Henry Wallace is.

     God, Lucy hopes he’d loved her. She’d loved him so much.

Chapter Text

     13th November 2016
(Now)

     Wyatt has had too much to drink. He knows it. This isn’t the first time he’s used alcohol to wind down after a mission. It’s the long ones which take their toll on him. Being on alert twenty-four hours a day for days on end. He’s exhausted and the dip now in his stress and adrenaline levels isn’t helping. The crash after the high.

     Besides, he’s got his phone burning a hole in his pocket, full of venomously angry texts from Jackie. He’d left on Tuesday morning and hadn’t come back until Saturday evening. She’s furious. You couldn’t have called? Or texted? Or told me and Marley you were alive?

     He’d called her as soon as they arrived home but she’d refused to speak to him. Just informed him that Marley was asleep in Jackie’s apartment, and Wyatt could wait until tomorrow to see her.

     There’s no way to explain that he couldn’t call them because he was stranded in the distant past. Wyatt can’t even imagine how fucking ridiculous he’d sound. Sorry, but the French kept trying to kill us. Sorry, but we got captured by an ancient Native American tribe. Sorry, but we were lost in the massive fucking forest that’s Pittsburgh now.

     So he’s drinking. Even though he’s exhausted and hungry and he should be going home to eat and sleep. Rufus had left two hours ago, which was about when Lucy had stopped drinking. She’s still here, though, sitting in the booth across from Wyatt and watching him with her chin propped in her hand. They’re not talking, but the silence feels comfortable and safe. They don’t need to talk about the nightmare of the past few days. They lived it together.

     The minutes pass steadily. Wyatt nurses his whiskey and digs a fingernail into the grain of the wood tabletop. He keeps his eyes on Lucy.

     “It wasn’t your fault,” she says suddenly.

     “What?”

     “Getting stuck there. Any of it.”

     “I know.” It’s not blame that’s eating at Wyatt. He’d tell Lucy that, only he doesn’t think he can explain it properly.

     There’s silence again. Wyatt finishes his whiskey. Lucy tips her head sideways on her hand and watches him through heavy-lidded eyes. She looks tired. Wyatt feels exhausted. Somehow neither of them are quite ready to leave.

     At least, he thinks they aren’t, until Lucy clears her throat and gets to her feet and holds out a hand to him.

     Wyatt looks up at her. “What?” he asks.

     “It’s nearly two,” she says softly. “We need to go home.”

     “Not home,” Wyatt says, shaking his head. “Not yet.”

     “All right. But we shouldn’t stay here.”

     He takes her hand and lets her pull him up from the booth and lead him out of the bar.

     Both of their cars are in the parking lot. Wyatt had kind of forgotten that they’d driven here separately. He thinks maybe Lucy had, too, because her fingers tighten around his like she doesn’t want to let go.

     “I’ve had a lot to drink,” Wyatt says quietly.

     Lucy turns to stare at him like she knows exactly what he’s doing. “You probably shouldn’t drive,” she says.

     Wyatt shrugs. “I can always leave the truck here.”

     “Are you sure?”

     “One night won’t do any harm.”

     “Right,” Lucy murmurs. “I can drive you home.”

     “Not home yet,” Wyatt reminds her.

     “Okay. Not home,” Lucy says. “I think I know somewhere else we can go.”

     Lucy’s car is smaller than Wyatt is used to. He pushes the passenger seat back as far as it can go to make room for his legs. They pull out of the lot and Wyatt feels the keys of his truck in his jeans pocket. He thinks about how he doesn’t really want to leave it in the parking lot of some bar in the early hours of the morning. It’s just that right now, for some reason, he can’t bring himself to care.

     Lights from the road sweep through the car; glowing yellows, reds, and greens. Wyatt rolls his window down and lets the cool breeze rush over him, ruffling his hair and raising gooseflesh on his bare arms. Whenever they pause at stoplights, Lucy turns her face towards him and smiles like there’s some joke that only the two of them are in on.

     They don’t talk. There’s a fragile, soap-bubble feeling to the night, like maybe if they talk - if they start to wonder what they’re doing, or where they’re going, or why they’re not in their own cars going to their respective houses - then the whole thing could just burst and vanish. And Wyatt doesn’t want to be the one to break the spell.

     Lucy drives them up a hill to some lookout that Wyatt’s never seen before. He hasn’t really done much exploring around San Francisco - that was the sort of stuff he always did with Jess. Going hiking or driving on his own hasn’t even felt like a possibility yet. But wherever they are, it’s gorgeous. The lights of the city spread out beneath the winding road.

     The car bumps over gravel at the top of the hill and then onto grass. Lucy parks and turns the engine off and the silence rushes in through Wyatt’s half-open window. It’s practically deserted up here. The traffic at the bottom of the hill sounds so far away.

     Lucy gestures ahead of them. “The sea’s down there,” she says. “You can see all the way to the horizon. Just nothing but sea and sky.”

     It’s too dark to see anything outside the car right now and Wyatt doesn’t care. He reaches over and catches at Lucy’s hand, sliding his thumb over the smooth skin inside her wrist. “Thank you,” he says, “for bringing me here.”

     In the faint light cast by the car’s radio, Wyatt can see Lucy’s eyes. They’re wide and impossibly dark, pulling him in so that when he leans closer, it feels natural. His heart is thudding in his chest. It’s the good kind of adrenaline, this time. The kind that makes Wyatt feel breathless and light and more drunk than he really is.

     Lucy dips her head until their foreheads are almost touching. She whispers, “Wyatt.”

     Whatever she’s going to say next will break the spell. Wyatt knows it, suddenly and absolutely, and he can’t let it happen. He can’t let her do it. He’s not ready for this to end; for his real life to crash back in full of rules and responsibilities, fears that he can’t escape from and memories he wants to forget.

      So he leans in that tiny bit further - and Lucy leans too, that’s clear - but it’s Wyatt who closes the final gap and brushes his lips over hers.

     It’s only a quick, stinging contact. There and gone, and Wyatt pulls back when he hears Lucy’s sharp intake of breath. He lifts his hand to the side of her face carefully and pushes her hair back behind her ear. Her cheek is hot against his palm. Wyatt waits for her to say something or push him away. She doesn’t.

     She reaches a hand out for his shoulder and pulls him closer to her.

     This kiss is different. It’s desperate and needy and full of things that neither of them would ever say out loud. Wyatt’s eyes slam closed and his hand slides around to the back of Lucy’s neck. He drops his other one to her hip. She curls her fingers into a fist in his shirt and her tongue darts over his lips. Wyatt deepens the kiss eagerly, leaning further across the centre console. He needs to get closer; he wants her to come closer to him.

     Instead, she flattens both hands on his chest and pushes him back. Just a little. Just enough for their lips to separate. Wyatt opens his eyes. Hers are open, too, huge and deep. She’s breathing fast, chest rising and falling rapidly. Her lips are pressed tight together. She’s gorgeous. She’s beautiful. How had he never noticed before?

     He doesn’t want to say anything. He doesn’t want to take his eyes off her, either. He holds out his arms; a silent invitation.

     Lucy scrambles across the space between their two seats and spills into Wyatt’s lap. Her knees bracket his hips; her hands cradle his face. She ducks her head to kiss him again and her hair brushes his neck. She almost feels close enough.

     Wyatt holds onto her; one hand spread between her shoulder blades, another at the small of her back. He pulls her flush against him until she gasps into his mouth and her fingertips trace down his neck and settle into the hollow between his collarbones.. Wyatt can feel his heart there, thundering like crazy. He wonders if hers is doing the same.

     When he trails his lips down her jaw, Lucy tilts her head away to the side, leaving the long pale line of her throat exposed. Wyatt kisses until he finds her heartbeat, until he can feel the fluttering of life pulsing through her skin.

     It’s too much and not enough all at once. Lucy presses her hips down into his and Wyatt groans and fumbles at the hem of her shirt, untucking it from her pants until he can slide his hand underneath and find skin. He spreads his fingers across her ribs and Lucy sucks in a sharp breath and drops her forehead against his.

     He could have lost her today. Wyatt knows that. Or yesterday, or the day before - and he tries so damn hard to keep her and Rufus safe but his job is getting harder. It’s only a matter of time before he makes a mistake. What happens then? When she’s dead and it’s his fault?

     Lucy whispers, “Wyatt.”

     Her chest rises and falls against his own with every breath. Wyatt pulls his hand out from under her shirt and scrubs it through his hair instead. Lucy moves back so that she’s sitting on his knees and not his lap.

     “I’m sorry,” Wyatt says.

     She shakes her head immediately. “Don’t be.”

     “That was stupid, I-”

     “Me, too,” she says. “I mean, I was stupid too. We can’t do this.”

     “Right,” Wyatt agrees. “We work together.”

     “Exactly.”

     There’s a long, careful moment where they just look at each other. Neither one is brave enough to move. Wyatt presses his hands down against the seat and doesn’t even let himself think about touching her again. Lucy shifts uneasily on his legs.

     “I’ll drive you home,” she offers.

     “Yeah,” Wyatt says. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

     She lifts up awkwardly and starts to climb back across into the driver’s seat. Wyatt puts a hand on the back of her knee to steady her. When Lucy ducks her head to avoid bumping it against the roof, her hair swings into his face. He breathes in the scent of her shampoo; something sweet and fruity, like apples, maybe, or peaches.

     “I’m sorry,” she says.

     Now they’ve both apologised. Funny, that Wyatt still doesn’t know what they’re saying sorry for. He knows, logically, that it can’t be wrong - the way he feels, that can’t be wrong. Like she’s something rare. Something precious that he doesn’t want to lose. He can’t imagine what any of these missions would’ve been like without Lucy. It’s just so easy to turn to her and ask for anything; for advice, for history lessons, for highschool your mom jokes translated into French.

     Hell, look how quickly Wyatt had gone running to her about Marley. He’d barely handled that for a single day on his own. He doesn’t want to think about doing it without Lucy. Not any of it - the missions, Rittenhouse, Marley. He needs her. He needs her.

     And that’s exactly why he has to stay away.

     Mom isn’t awake when Lucy gets home and she’s ridiculously grateful. She creeps up to her room feeling guilty and exhausted and miserable. This night has been an unmitigated disaster. She’d promised herself that she could keep her feelings for Wyatt locked up inside. She’d been so damn sure that she wouldn’t ruin whatever friendship they had between them.

     So she’d driven him up to a scenic lookout in the middle of the night and made out with him in the car like she was sixteen years old. What a brilliant fucking plan. An absolutely genius way to keep her feelings under wraps.

     Lucy groans as she shucks her clothes and pulls on a sleep shirt and a pair of soft shorts. She should have just driven him straight home - or, better yet, let him drive himself. She should have left the bar when Rufus did. She should have kept herself under control and not melted the second that Wyatt looked at her with those eyes and leaned in that little bit closer. She should have-

     There’s a woman standing in the ensuite bathroom.

     The lights are turned off in there and Lucy can’t see much more than a silhouette, but she’s definitely real. She’s real. She’s here, she’s home.

     “Oh, my god,” Lucy says, rushing forwards. “Oh my god, Amy, oh my god.” She reaches out trembling hands for her sister and doesn’t even try to stop the tears which are welling up already.

     The woman turns around and Lucy freezes. She looks younger than Amy. The hair is wrong too; blond waves down to her shoulders. The face is unfamiliar. A straight nose, wide eyes and red lips curved up in an embarrassed sort of smile. Whoever this is, she’s not Lucy’s sister. She’s not supposed to be here.

Chapter Text

    7th September 2032
(The Future)

     Livvie is just shrugging off her turnout gear when Marley walks into the station. Her dark hair is pulled back into a long, curly ponytail and she grins when their eyes meet.

     “Hey, stranger.”

     “Hey yourself,” Marley returns, laughing. She lets Livvie pull her into a quick, tight hug. “You smell like smoke.”

     “Just a baby house fire. How’s you know who?”

     “She’s good. She finished Harry Potter. Oh, and she wants me to take a video of the truck sirens for her.”

     Livvie’s brilliant smile fades a little. “God, she needs to get out.”

     “Actually,” Marley says, “that’s why I’m here.”

     “Uh oh. What now?”

     Marley pretends to be offended. “Not uh oh, excuse you.”

     Livvie leads the way off the floor and into the station proper. “Jett told me you convinced him to let you use the Capsule.”

     “Yeah,” Marley admits. “Twice.”

     “If that didn’t work, what makes you think I can help?” They turn the corner into the bunkroom and both of them settle on Livvie’s bed with its regulation grey blanket.

     “Because Denise has the nocs,” Marley says. She meets Livvie’s eyes. “And you can get them.”

     “Marls, you’re kidding, right?”

     “Nope.”

     Livvie pulls out her ponytail, shakes her hair free and starts to finger-comb it into a braid. “You want me to steal the inoculations from my mom?”

     “Yeah.”

     “So that you can take another illegal, unsupervised, highly dangerous trip in the Capsule?”

     “Pretty much.”

     “Uh huh, and why would I do this for you?”

     “You’re my best friend?” Marley wheedles.

     “That’s because I used to be the only one with clearance to come visit you,” Livvie says.

     Marley shifts closer on the bed, bumping their legs together. “Um, no, it’s because you’re the greatest and I love you.”

     Livvie drops her head onto Marley’s shoulder. “Okay, okay,” she says. “I’ll see what I can do.”

     “Yes! Thank you! You’re amazing.”

     “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m just glad you asked me before you asked Mark.”

     Marley laughs. “He was gonna be my next stop.”

     Livvie rolls her eyes. “God, you’re a pest.”

     “But you love me anyway.”

     “I love you anyway,” Livvie repeats. “And you know she’s like my sister too, Marls. I’d do anything for her. We all would.”

     “I know.”

     Marley’s lucky. She’s always been lucky. Or, it feels that way. She’s got two parents who love her and so many surrogate aunts and uncles and cousins that it’s hard to keep track. She’s healthy and strong and smart. She’s got a job that pays the bills and a dream that she’s working towards. Plus, she’s cheated, and she knows how it ends. She goes to New York. Everything works out. The future is perfect.

     She just needs Kaity to be there with her. She needs it so badly that it hurts.

19th September 2032
(The Future)

     “Okay,” Jett says, leaning across Marley and inserting his key into the Capsule’s safety lock. “You’re absolutely sure you’re ready for this?”

     “One hundred percent.”

     Jett sighs. “Just don’t screw up.” He twists the key and then turns his face towards Marley. Hunched into the tiny space of the Capsule, Jett’s face is close enough for her to see the tiny smattering of freckles over his brown cheeks and the lights of the console reflected in the black-brown of his eyes.

     Marley pulls back a little; as much as the seat will let her. “Yeah,” she says. “I won’t.”

     “Marls, I’m serious. This is changing your own past now. You know that, right? Anything could happen.”

     For a second, the full weight of what she’s about to do settles through Marley and sinks heavy as a stone into her chest. “What happens to me,” she asks, “if I stop existing?”

     “I don’t know.”

     “Will I come back and no one will know me? Or do I just…”

     “I don’t know.”

     “Okay,” Marley whispers. She feels gooseflesh rising on her arms and she shivers.

     “So I’m gonna ask you one more time. Are you ready for this?”

     It’s her sister. There isn’t a single thing Marley wouldn’t do.

     “Yeah, J,” she says. “I’m ready.”

12th November 2016
(The Future In The Present)

     This time, when Marley spills out of the Capsule, she doesn’t puke. That’s a good start. Hopefully it means that her nocs have taken hold in the week since she got them. Inoculations are only supposed to be for essential personnel. They shield against the time sickness. It means that Marley can exist now - as an adult - and somewhere else in 2016 San Francisco as a five-year-old girl at the same time.

     She doesn’t recognise the house in front of her but the address is right. Jett hasn’t let her down. Somewhere in here is Mom - the younger, softer version of Mom. This time, there’s no mission for Mom to complete. There aren’t any dangers around them - it’s not the Alamo. It’s just Marley and Mom. All they have to do is talk.

     Marley straightens her shoulders and steels herself up for the conversation. She’s been rehearsing exactly what she needs to say in her head over and over for the five days that it had taken Livvie to get her the nocs and the week she'd had to wait afterwards. It’s all been carefully, meticulously planned out. There’s an answer for every question.

     Except the blond older woman who opens the front door isn’t Mom.

     Marley says, “Oh-” and then clamps her lips tight around the shit which wants to follow.

     Carol Preston looks bemused and a little concerned. “Can I help you?” she asks.

     “No,” Marley says. “I’m sorry. Oh, wow. I’m really sorry.” Her heart thuds in her throat and she hugs her arms to her chest.

     “Are you all right?” Carol asks.

     “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m sorry.”

     “You’ve mentioned.” The older woman presses her lips together thoughtfully. “Is there someone I can call for you?”

     Marley forces herself to get it together. She lifts her chin and straightens her spine and plasters on a smile which feels sharp and fake. “I’ve got the wrong address again,” she says. “Don’t worry, I’m always getting lost. It’s, like, so embarrassing.”

     Carol says, “Hm.”

     “I’m gonna go,” Marley suggests, and she backs away a couple of steps. She keeps that smile on her face but she feels as though she’s going to be sick. “Sorry again. Bye!”

     “All right,” Carol says. “I hope you find who you’re looking for.”

     The fist in Marley’s chest doesn’t unclench until the front door is shut tight again. Oh god, she hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t prepared herself - hadn’t even imagined the possibility. Technically, this woman is Marley’s grandmother. They’re not related, and actually Marley’s not even sure if they’ve ever met. She certainly doesn’t remember it. There’s no blood between them, but Lucy is Mom. Always and forever. And this woman is family.

     Marley knows how Carol had died, too. Mom had told her that. They’d snuggled together on the couch one evening and both of them had cried a little. Marley can remember lacing her fingers through Mom’s. She can remember the warm yellow light of the living room blurry through tears. She remembers Dad coming in with hot chocolate and kisses for both of them.

     They’d told her that time travel was dangerous and they’d told her that it was a risk that they would never let her take. That was back when they still thought they’d be able to shut down the program for good.

     The memory and the shock combined are almost enough to make Marley give up. She feels guilty and miserable. She also feels determined as hell.

     She starts down the street, glancing left and right for some sort of a park, or a bar, or maybe some convenient bushes. Sneaking into the Preston house will be easier if she waits for dark.

13th November 2016

     The bathroom is dim; only faint street light bleeds through the window. It's so late that it's spilled over from Saturday night into Sunday morning. There are tears trickling down Mom’s cheeks but her face is scarily blank as she stares at Marley.

     “Who are you?”

     Not Mom, Marley reminds herself. Lucy. “It’s okay,” she says. “We’re friends.”

     “What?”

     “In the future,” Marley says quickly. “I’m a time traveller too.”

     Lucy takes a fast step backwards. “You were at the Alamo,” she whispers. She brings her arms up to dash her sleeves over her face, wiping away her tears. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

     “Yeah,” Marley says. Now that the moment’s finally here, she’s so nervous that her hands feel clammy and sweaty. “I have to tell you something. It’s really important.”

     “Why are you here? In my house? How did you find me?”

     “It’s all in the past for me, remember? I know where you used to live.”

     Lucy tucks her arms in against her chest and shivers. “I know you,” she says. “Who are you?”

     “Okay,” Marley says. Better just to blurt it all out, right? Not waste any more time. “I’m Marley.”

     “Marley.” Lucy’s voice is flat and her eyes are dark and impossible to read.

     Maybe there’s another Marley. “Marley Logan. My dad is-”

     “Marley,” Lucy repeats. For a second, she looks like Mom, not some young, nervous stranger. But then she steps back again and says, “You can’t be. How can you be in twenty-sixteen? You’re already here. We can’t travel through a time we’ve already lived in.”

     “You can’t do that yet,” Marley says. “I promise, it’s me.”

     Lucy reaches backwards and flips on the light switch. It’s bright enough to make Marley squint. She tries to read Lucy’s face; to see any kind of recognition or familiarity or trust. There’s nothing there.

     “Why are you here?”

     “It’s about my sister. Like I told you before,” Marley says. “At the Alamo, I told you this was all for my sister.”

     Lucy sighs heavily. “Start from the beginning,” she says, and then she frowns and quickly adds, “Oh, hold on, wait. Let me call someone.”

     Shit, Marley thinks. “Not Dad,” she blurts. She just can’t deal with him right now - not the way he is in this time. Not after they’d fought when she was back home.

     “Dad,” Lucy repeats. She blinks, startled, and then she says, “I’m calling Rufus.”

     “Oh.”

     “Is that okay?”

     “Yeah. I guess so.”

Chapter Text

    13th November 2016
(Now)

     They sit together in the bedroom in uncomfortable silence until Rufus gets there, looking bedraggled and annoyed and surprisingly awake for 4AM. Lucy feels another stab of guilt for dragging him into this. It had been Jiya who’d answered Rufus’ phone, which had almost made things awkward enough for Lucy to just hang up.

     Instead, she’s called him over in the middle of the night because Wyatt’s daughter-from-the-future is here and Lucy doesn’t think she can handle it alone.

     The bedroom is dim with the low light from Lucy’s bedside lamp and they’re all talking in hushed whispers, because her mother is sleeping upstairs. They’re sitting on the floor, too. It feels like some sort of weird slumber party.

    “My sister’s name is Kaity. Kaitlyn Logan. She’s only eleven years old.”

     Lucy curls her knees up into her chest. It’s impossible to equate the graceful, self-possessed, serious young woman in front of her with the giggling, grinning, hyper five-year-old version of Marley. They can’t be the same. And yet there’s something familiar in those eyes - blue eyes, like Wyatt’s eyes - which makes Lucy want to believe her. To trust her.

     “Okay, Kaity,” Rufus says. “What happened to her?”

     “Nothing. It’s about what she’s going to do,” Marley explains. “In the future - like, the actual future, not where I come from - she’s supposed to be this great leader. There’s gonna be a big war or something, I dunno. My parents won’t let me look at the files. But Kaity’s the only one who can stop it.”

     Rufus leans forward, his eyes bright. “Like Terminator,” he says. “And your sister’s John Connor.”

     Lucy almost rolls her eyes. She nearly makes some sort of comment, too. But her mind catches on the words my parents and gets stuck. For the first time, she thinks about it. Marley has a little sister. Kaity Logan. Wyatt has another child. Marley has two parents.

     “You always say that,” Marley tells Rufus. “I don’t know what the big deal is, okay? I don’t know what happens in the war. But Rittenhouse has always wanted Kaity. Always. Like, what Emma told us was that they even tried to make Kaity exist by getting my parents together. They have this massive, complicated plan. Everything they do is about making ripples into the future.”

     Now even Rufus has noticed. “Your parents,” he says slowly. “Rittenhouse got them together?” He looks sideways at Lucy. She shrugs.

     “Yeah,” Marley says. “I mean not, like, together together. They just made sure my parents met.”

     “Marley,” Lucy says gently, “you know in our time your mother is… she’s not here.”

     “Oh,” Marley exclaims. “Right, no, I know. She’s my mom, but she’s not my mom. If that makes sense.”

     It doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense and Lucy tries furiously to squash the pathetic whisper of hope which is rising inside her.

     “She’s your half-sister,” Rufus realises.

     “Yeah,” Marley says, and then she looks straight at Lucy.

     Lucy shakes her head. She can’t hear this right now. Not after what had happened between her and Wyatt tonight. “No,” she says. What if Marley says it's some other woman? Some random called Tracey or Bethany or Louise. Someone else who gets to have Wyatt and Marley and a new little girl and all the things that Lucy has been working so hard, since Halloween night, to pretend she doesn't want. Even to herself.

     But what if Marley says it's her?

     Marley reaches a hand out towards her. “It’s okay,” she says, palm upturned expectantly. “It all works out in the end. I can tell you how it happens.”

     Lucy’s heart is pounding in her throat. “I can’t.”

     Marley frowns. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

     “I can’t do this. I’m not ready, I-”

     The doorbell rings; a melodic chiming echoing through the house. The sound drives Lucy to her feet and she hurries out of her bedroom without finishing her sentence. They’ll wake up Mom, Lucy thinks. Who would ring a doorbell at this time of night anyway? She races down the stairs and yanks the front door open before the idiot can ring again-

     -and nearly runs straight into herself.

     That’s her. Standing on the front step, one hand tucked into the pocket of her jeans, wearing a too-large man’s sheepskin jacket. Her hair is longer but her face looks older. There are lines around her mouth and eyes. She’s not wearing any make-up. Her expression is sharp and serious.

     But she’s Lucy.

     “Hi,” she says. “I’m really sorry about this.”

     Her voice is completely unfamiliar. That’s the slap in the face which gets Lucy breathing again. This other-her doesn’t sound right at all. She doesn’t even sound like Lucy does on recordings, although it's similarly disconcerting.

     “You’re from the future,” Lucy says dumbly.

     “That’s right,” Other-Lucy agrees. “Is Marley upstairs? My Marley, I mean.”

     Slowly, Lucy nods. “How can you both be here?”

     “It’s a long story. You’ll find out,” the Other-Lucy says. Even though her face is severe, her eyes are full of warmth and humour and there’s something incredibly comforting about it. This version of Lucy - she knows it all. She’s seen it all. This, for her, is history.

      “Is it going to be okay?” Lucy whispers. She's not even sure what she's asking about.

     Other-Lucy smiles. “Yes,” she says. “You don't need to worry so much.” Then she leans sideways to look past Lucy’s shoulder and her smile vanishes. “Marley Grace.”

     Lucy twists to see Marley coming down the stairs, looking suddenly very young and very, very guilty.

     “I’m sorry!” she exclaims. “I had to, I’m sorry, I had to tell them. I couldn’t just sit at home and wait around!”

     “That’s enough,” Other-Lucy snaps. “Lucy? What’s she told you?”

     “Um,” Lucy says. “Nothing, really. Just that she has a younger sister.”

     “Forget it,” the Other-Lucy orders. “Everything she said, forget it. It's got nothing to do with you, Lucy, okay? She made a mistake. Marley, come on. We’re going home.”

     Marley plods heavily down the last few stairs. She pauses, for a moment, next to Lucy and says, “I’m sorry for breaking into your house.”

     “Oh. Uh, that’s okay.”

     “Thanks,” Marley says. Her arms come up and wrap around Lucy’s shoulders and then she hisses into Lucy’s ear, “Flee.”

     “What?” Lucy murmurs back.

     Marley whispers it, her words dropping as heavy as lead. “You can’t trust him.”

Chapter Text

    13th November 2016
(The Future In The Present)

     There is technically enough room in the Capsule for two people. The second seat is only supposed to be used in emergencies, and it’s a fold-away without the same rigorous harness and protective padding as the permanent seat.

     The only thing Mom says is, “Get in.” She pushes Marley into the good seat, sits her down and buckles the harness for her, making sure it’s tight. There’s no eye contact. Anger radiates from Mom so strongly that Marley practically cringes back into her headrest.

     This is going to be bad. She can already feel the dull hurt of whatever her parents are going to say when she gets home. The sting of knowing that, no matter how old she gets and how hard she tries, they’ll only ever see her as a kid who keeps messing around and screwing things up.

     She’s trying to protect Kaity. It’s not like she’s been taking joyrides through time just for the fun of it. All Marley wants is to keep her family safe.

     The trip home is fast and violent and silent. It sets Marley’s head spinning and ringing so that when they finally stop, she slumps against the harness and moans with pain.

     Mom doesn’t ask if she’s okay. That’s not a good sign. She does lean forward and thrust a sick-bag under Marley’s face, though. A moment later Marley vomits until there’s nothing left in her stomach. The pain in her head triples and blossoms into a stabbing pain behind one eye, so bad that she can barely think. She can’t move. She can’t see. She feels, dimly, when Mom unbuckles her from the harness and slides her out of the seat. She hears someone shouting her name and Mom telling them to get the stretcher.

     For a long time after that, Marley just drifts.

    19th September 2032
(The Future)

     When she comes to, there’s a white ceiling above her and white sheets are cool and smooth against her skin. Mom is sitting beside the bed.

     “Hey,” Marley croaks. Her throat hurts and there’s a foul taste at the back of her mouth.

     Mom reaches out a careful hand and wipes hair back from Marley’s sweaty forehead. “How do you feel?”

     “Sick. What happened?”

     “We can talk about it later.”

     Marley struggles to sit up. “Why? Am I… am I okay?”

     “You’re okay.” Mom won’t meet her eyes.

     “What’s wrong? What happened?”

     “Later, Marley.” Mom’s hand cups her cheek. “Lie back down, sweetheart. Sleep a little more.”

     The sweetheart fills Marley’s chest with a warmth that makes it easy to sink into the pillows again and close her eyes.

     She hears them talking above her before she’s properly awake. She slits her eyes open a little into a blaze of white.

     Dad says, “I don’t want to explain it to her, Luce.” He’s loud; angry. He’s probably the one who woke Marley in the first place.

     Mom is softer. “It’s too late now,” she says. “Anyway, if we’d told her sooner…” she trails off, going too quiet for Marley to hear.

     Jiya says, “She’s getting some colour back. Oh, Rohan’s on his way. He just texted.”

     Mom says, “Rohan? Who’s Rohan?”

     There’s a strangled silence.

     “Oh, no,” Jiya mutters. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

     Dad says, “Stop it, I think she’s awake.” His face comes into slow focus above her. “Marley? Are you okay?”

     “M’ head hurts,” Marley slurs.

     “Okay. We’ll get you something, just hang on.”

     Dad’s face blurs and dissolves and Marley slips under again.

    20th September 2032

     The third time she’s really awake. Properly aware. She feels better, too, more steady and less dizzy. When she pulls in a deep breath her head doesn’t spin and her stomach doesn’t twist.

     “Hey, loser,” someone says. There’s a heavy weight on the side of the bed and a warm body against her leg.

     Marley squints up against the glare of the lights and sees the face of a man she doesn’t recognise. He’s got bronze skin and a mess of curly dark hair and he’s grinning down at her like an idiot. It’s the kind of huge grin which makes Marley want to smile back - except she has no idea who this guy is or why he’s sitting on her bed.

     “Hey?” she says uncertainly.

     The man squeezes her hand. He’s holding her hand. Marley twitches her fingers uncomfortably. The worst part is that there’s something frustratingly familiar about his face. He’s kind of hot, too, with a square jaw, bright brown eyes and a long nose. There’s a hint of dark stubble on his chin. Marley swears she should know him but she’s just staring and drawing a total blank.

     The guy’s smile fades just a little. “You okay?” he asks her. “You don’t look so good.”

     Marley hesitates, not sure what to say. Is it rude to admit she doesn’t know him? What if they’ve met before and she’s forgotten? What if he’s, like, her doctor now?

     He looks too young to be a doctor. Besides, she’s pretty sure this isn’t a hospital. Mom had-

     -Mom.

     “Can you get my mom?” she asks the guy. “I really need to talk to her.” She struggles to sit up, pushing the blankets down to her waist. Someone’s changed her into an old, big, faded grey t-shirt.

     “Yeah, sure,” he says. “Back in a sec.” He squeezes her hand again and then stands up and leaves the room.

     Now that he’s gone, Marley takes the chance to have a proper look around. It’s not a hospital ward, but it is a white-walled room with no windows and very little furniture. There’s her bed, and there’s a chair opposite the bed with her jeans and jacket folded on top of it. Nothing else.

     Tentatively, she sits up further. She pushes the covers aside and swings her legs out of the bed and then waits, anxiously, to see if her headache will return. Nothing. Moving carefully, Marley hops off the bed and stands beside it. She doesn’t feel sick or dizzy. She feels fine. Her legs are a little sore. The t-shirt she’s wearing is long enough to go down to her mid-thigh. Marley recognises it now as one of her PJ tops, which means that someone had brought it here from her apartment.

     She takes a couple of slow, measured steps before she’s reassured that she can walk fine. There are two doors in the room; the strange man had gone through one, so Marley assumes the other is the bathroom and heads towards it.

     God, she looks like shit. Washing her hands, she catches sight of herself in the mirror and winces. There are huge bags beneath her eyes coloured like bruises. There’s a starburst of blood in her left eye and her cheeks are unhealthily pale. She splashes her face with water and turns off the faucet just in time to hear Mom calling her name.

     Marley opens the bathroom door and says, “Hi.”

     “Are you okay?”

     They’re alone in the room, just the two of them, and Marley feels her shoulders slump and relax with the knowledge that she’s finally going to get some answers.

     “Mom,” she says, “what happened?”

     Mom presses her lips together thoughtfully. “Okay,” she says finally, tucking her hair behind one ear. “Sit down, Marls.”

     Marley sits on the bed. Mom sits on the chair opposite, puts her hands on her knees and blows out a long breath.

     “It’s okay,” Marley says. “Mom, just tell me.”

     Mom straightens up in the chair, like she’s steeling herself for the conversation. “You know how many timelines there are, right? People come from different ones and they’ve experienced totally different things.”

     “Yeah.”

     “For a really long time, we thought all of the timelines existed concurrently. Like right now, you and me are here, and another Lucy and Marley are in another timeline doing different things. It’s as if they were all happening at once, but separate.”

     “Uh huh?”

     “That’s not how it works,” Mom says. “The thing is, it turns out there’s actually a way history is supposed to be. Meant to be.”

     Marley wrinkles her nose, not liking the sound of this. “Like destiny?”

     “Kind of. Really it’s more like the original version - before everyone figured out time travel and started meddling. It took us ages to figure this out, but the time machines leave a signature. All of them - the Lifeboat, the Mothership, the Capsule. Every single one makes a mark on the events it changes.”

     “I don’t get it. We know history isn’t fixed or like pre-destined or whatever. We change history.”

     “Yeah,” Mom says, “we change it for our own perspectives. Human perspectives. It turns out they’re not the only ones that count.”

     Marley frowns. “So there’s some kind of higher power watching us change things and getting mad?”

     “What? No.” Mom purses her lips for a moment and then says, “It’s like everything in the world that we know is there, and it affects us, even when we can’t see it.”

     “Okay, so like gravity.”

     “Yeah! Good,” Mom smiles. “Time is like gravity. It’s a real thing with real effects on the world but we can’t see them without help. When we change stuff in time, we leave behind evidence that we were there. Theoretically - at least, this is what Jiya says - you could look closely at anything in the world; rocks, or plants, or buildings, or animals, and you could see if they’ve been changed by a time machine.”

     Marley scoffs. “Looking closely? Yeah right.”

     “Looking closely through scientific instruments,” Mom stresses. “Stop being a pain.”

     “Sorry. Keep going.”

     “Does it make sense so far?”

     “Yeah,” Marley says. “Everything changed by a time-machine gets like a special internal signature or something.”

     “That’s basically it. When you travel inside the time-machine, you produce the same signature. While we were in the past, right now, everything we directly impacted was being marked by our signature - the Capsule signature.”

     Guiltily, Marley thinks of what she’d told the past-Lucy. She imagines ripple effects spreading out from those words, marking everything that changes with some sort of Capsule-brand.

     Everything that changes.

     “Mom,” she says, urgently, “where’s Kaity? Is she okay? Did she - did anything happen?”

     “She’s okay. She’s at home.”

     “At the house?!”

     “At the bunker,” Mom corrects gently.

     Marley slumps where she sits. “So it didn’t work. Nothing changed.”

     “A lot of things changed, Marley. Mostly things that you didn’t intend to change, which is what always happens with time-travel. This is why we don’t want you just charging off with some half-baked plan. You have no idea how many things can be changed by one tiny action.”

     “I know, I get it, okay? People can disappear and it’s dangerous. I get it.”

     “People don’t just disappear, Marley. People just jump into existing. People who weren’t meant to exist.”

     “Mom…”

     “I’m almost finished. The time signature is the reason we can’t be in the same time as our past selves.”

     “I thought it was because two exactly the same people can’t exist in the same time,” Marley says.

     “But you’re not exactly the same as your past or future self, are you? Almost all of the cells in your body die and are reborn. Some of them die every few days.”

     “But your brain-”

     “Is constantly changing.”

     “So then how come the time signature messes it up?”

     “We don’t know for sure,” Mom says. “Like we don’t know for sure what happens if you cram too many people into one of the time machines. We don’t know for sure what gave Jiya visions. What we do know is that having a time-signature on you makes time-travelling worse. The bigger the signature, the sicker you get. Being in the same time as your past self means you’re changing your own history - it means you’re stamping a time-mark on yourself in the present and the past and the future all at once. That’s why you get sick. The closer you get to your past self, the sicker you get.”

     “But the nocs work, right?”

     “They work to try and hide the signature. Sometimes it’s too strong to be hidden. It’s why Jiya doesn’t time-travel anymore.”

     Marley shifts uncomfortably on the bed. She doesn’t like where this is going. “Mom. Why did I get so sick? What happened?”

     “It’s why we didn’t want you to time-travel,” Mom says. “Your Dad didn’t ever want to tell you.”

     Marley clenches her hands into fists. “Tell me what?”

     “You weren’t supposed to exist.”

     She just says it flat out, just like that. Marley’s heart thumps and she feels light-headed suddenly. What - what does that even mean? She wasn’t supposed to exist? She wasn’t supposed to? Like she’s somehow different from the rest of them. They’re real people and she’s… what. An accident? A mistake? An unintended side effect?

     “He didn’t want to tell me?” Marley explodes. “Why the fuck would you keep something like that from me? My whole life is just some time-travel error? Are you kidding me?”

     “Marley…”

     “Mom, what the fuck?”

     “Shut up and listen to me for a second,” Mom says. “If you’re going to get angry with us you might as well have all the facts.”

     Marley shuts her mouth. Her whole body is shaking with some weird combination of anger and shock. She digs her fingernails into her palms.

     “Your dad did it,” Mom says. “On one of our first trips into the past, he tried to send a telegram to Jessica. Your mom. She was murdered-”

     “I already know that.”

     “He tried to stop it from happening. It didn’t work. She still died, but she got the telegram. We think she got it a year early and, somehow, that led to you.”

     “Sorry, how does a telegram create a fucking person?”

     Mom twists her lips wryly. “Ask your dad,” she says. “But, actually, he doesn’t know either. He didn’t live through that. We came back from that trip and… there you were.”

     “I was just there?”

     “Yeah. Wyatt totally lost it,” Mom says. “He had no idea what to do so he called me for help.”

     Marley’s face feels cold and numb. She says, quietly, “How old was I?”

     “Almost five.”

     “Oh my god. You didn’t meet me until I was four? Dad didn’t know me until I was almost five?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Oh my god,” Marley repeats. “Mom, this is insane.”

     “This is why he didn’t want to tell you.”

     “I didn’t exist. I wasn’t meant to exist!”

     “It’s been sixteen years, Marley. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

     “It doesn’t matter? Is this why I get sick every time I get in the Capsule?”

     “Yes,” Mom says simply. “Please don’t do it again.” She stands up from her chair and takes a step closer, brushing Marley’s hair back and cupping her face. “We almost lost you this time, sweetheart.”

     “You should have told me, Mom! You should have warned me! Fuck!”

     “I’m sorry.”

     It’s a genuine apology and it kinda stops Marley short, blinking and shivering and feeling... she’s not even sure what she’s feeling. She’s surprised when tears spring to her eyes and her nose burns with the effort of holding them back.

     “This is your fault,” she rasps.

     “We tried to tell you not to time-travel.”

     “You said it was because I’d mess everything up! You didn’t say I could die, you just acted like I’d step on a beetle and change the whole world or something.”

     Mom sighs. She kisses the top of Marley’s head and then she says, “You did make a big change this time, Marls.”

     “What?” Marley asks, blinking away tears.

     “That man who was in here before me?”

     “Uh huh?”

     “He’s your boyfriend,” Mom says.

     “What?”

     “Your boyfriend Rohan. Rohan Carlin.”

     “What?”

     Mom squeezes Marley’s shoulders and says, “I know it’s been a big shock, but we’ve still got a lot to talk about, sweetheart. A lot.”

Chapter Text

13^th November 2016
(Now)

     It’s surprisingly satisfying to watch the Cowboys destroy the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday afternoon. He’s had enough of Pittsburgh to last a lifetime, whether it’s in 1754 or 2016. Wyatt leans back in his chair with one eye on the game and the other on Marley, who’s lying on her stomach on the mat, kicking her legs in the air while she colours. She’d been a little unhappy when he’d picked her up from Jackie’s apartment that morning, but he’d placated her surprisingly easily by explaining how sorry he was, and how difficult work had been.

     Jackie was another story. Wyatt found her even harder to talk to than he had done when Jess was still alive. She feels like she’s entitled to his kid and that makes her allowed to nose into his private life. Wyatt still barely feels like he’s entitled to his kid, let alone anyone else. He’s trying as hard as he can to stay civil and grateful for Jackie’s endless free childcare, but that doesn’t make her any less annoying.

     Besides, he’s had Lucy on his mind all day and he can’t shake her. Lucy’s hair, her eyes, her lips. It’s like part of him is still stuck back there, in that car, waiting for things to go a different way. End better.

     “Daddy,” Marley says, looking over at him, “I hear your phone.”

     “You do?” He mutes the TV and listens. It’s ringing from inside his bedroom, where he’d left it charging. “Huh. Good ears, kiddo.” Wyatt bends to ruffle her hair as he goes past and she beams at him. At least he’s getting some things right today.

     He misses the call and checks the log. Rufus’ number. Weird, and hopefully not work, because Wyatt’s so exhausted and emotionally drained that he actually might cry if he has to get back in the Lifeboat again. Not cool.

     Okay, he won’t cry, but he’ll complain. A lot. He mentally steels himself and calls Rufus back.

     “Dude,” Rufus says right away. “There’s some weird stuff going down and Lucy didn’t wanna tell you but I think you need to talk to her.”

     Wyatt frowns. What the hell has Lucy told Rufus? “Is this about… last night?” he asks.

     “What, she already told you?”

     Now Wyatt’s really confused. “Told me what?”

     “Okay. You gotta talk to her, Wyatt. I’m not kidding.”

     “Rufus…”

     “Gotta go. Jiya’s calling me,” Rufus says, and he hangs up.

     Wyatt drops the phone onto his lap and blows out a breath. So that was weird. He texts Lucy quickly: Hey what’s going on??

     “Daddy!” Marley hollers from the other room. “Game’s finished!”

     “Coming,” Wyatt calls back. He frowns down at his phone like a fierce enough glare will somehow make Lucy reply quicker. Nothing.

     Okay, fine. Whatever’s happening, they’ll tell Wyatt about it when they’re ready. He’s sure of that. And if Lucy was actually in trouble, surely she’d call him – unless what happened last night has ruined everything between them. God, Wyatt hopes not.

     He stuffs the phone into his pocket and heads back out to the lounge. “Okay, kiddo. What’s the plan?”

     “Can we go out?” she asks tentatively. “On our bikes, maybe? We haven’t done a bike ride in a really long time.”

     Wyatt didn’t even know she had a bike. Geez, poor kid. Stuck with a weird alternate version of her dad who doesn’t even remember to take her on bike rides.

     “Yeah,” he says. “We can absolutely go for a bike ride, Marley. I’d really like that.”

     It’s late when they get back and they’re both cold and tired, but it’s the good kind of tired. Marley is pink-cheeked and bright eyed and Wyatt feels clearer-headed than he has done in days.

     Marley leans against his side while they take the elevator up from the basement parking garage. She’s a little sweaty and has mud splashed up the back of her calves. Wyatt looks down and brushes the little wispy curls back from her forehead.

     “How about a bath tonight?” he suggests. “Let’s warm you up and get that mud off your legs, yeah?”

     She nods, pressing her chin into him. “Okay.”

     “Are you tired?”

     “Yeah, a little bit. I went really fast, didn’t I?”

     “You totally did.”

     Marley straightens up a bit and puffs out her chest at the praise. When the elevator doors open on their floor, she skips ahead of Wyatt and insists on being allowed to use the keys to unlock their front door. Wyatt has to lift her up to reach the lock.

     He gets them both a glass of water once they’re inside. Marley asks for juice, but she accepts it when Wyatt says no. He’s a little surprised at himself. Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t even have thought of saying no, just in case she’d had a tantrum.

     The bathtub is still full of toys. Wyatt clears them out in handfuls, sets them on the floor and kneels on the fuzzy bathmat to reach across and start the faucet running. He puts his hand under it to check the temperature and then turns around and flicks water off his fingers at Marley.

     She shrieks, “Daddy!” and then giggles hysterically.

     “Arms up,” Wyatt says. She lifts them and he lifts the sweater over her head and then the t-shirt as well.

     “Why’d you take all my toys out?” Marley protests, leaning over the edge of the tub.

     “You can’t have all of them in there,” Wyatt says. “Remember last time? You kept sitting on the dolphins.”

     “Oh, yeah.” She tugs her pants down absently, steps from foot to foot to try and get them off. Wyatt leans over to help her and she balances herself with both hands on top of his head, just casually trusting him to hold her up. It’s kind of amazing.

     “Pick five,” Wyatt says.

     “Because I’m five?”

     “Uh. Sure.”

     “When I’m six, I can have six toys in the bath?”

     Wyatt hesitates. She’ll have forgotten this conversation in a year, surely. “Um. Yeah.”

     “Great!” She bounces on her toes and then crouches to select her toys.

     Wyatt watches the water rise up the sides of the tub. Warm steam is already filling the bathroom and with the sound of the running water and the bright heating lights overhead he can feel tension slipping from his shoulders as he finally relaxes from the stress of the past week.

     Two mermaids, a Wonder Woman barbie and three toy horses sail past Wyatt into the water.

     “Hey,” he says. “That’s six.”

     “Oops.” She giggles, peering mischievously at him through her hair.

     Wyatt sighs. “Okay, cheeky,” he says. “Climb in.” He grabs Marley like he’s going to lift her over the rim of the tub and then he worms his fingers under her armpits and tickles her. She squeals and bends double, laughing and kicking. She lands a good blow on Wyatt’s thigh and he grunts.

     “No tickle monster!” she yells.

     “How many bath toys?” Wyatt demands, pausing in his tickling for a moment.

     “Six!” Marley shouts.

     He tickles her again and she laughs breathlessly and wriggles and kicks and finally admits that only five toys go in the bath, only five, and chooses a pink toy horse to remove.

     Wyatt lifts her into the water and then tosses the pink horse back in after her. “Just because you had such a good bike ride,” he says.

     “I was really good,” Marley agrees cheerfully. “I rode really fast and I did not even whine.”

     “That’s true. There was no whining.”

     “Play with me, Daddy.” She reaches over and hands him one of the mermaids. “This is Ariel and I’m Coral, okay?”

     “…Okay,” he says hesitantly.

     “Oh. Actually I’m Ariel. You can be Coral.”

     “Can I be Seaweed?”

     She laughs. “No way!”

     “Wave?”

     “Noooo.”

     “Octopus?”

     “Silly Daddy,” Marley says affectionately. “Her name’s Coral because she’s the big sister. And I’m Ariel the baby sister. I’m the one who sings.”

     Wyatt leans his arms over the side of the tub, holding Coral in the water. “Go on then,” he says. “Sing.”

     She does; ahh-ahh-ahhhhh – no words, but she’s got a surprisingly sweet, tuneful voice. She dives the mermaid toy in and out of the bathwater, splashing it up onto Wyatt’s arms.

     “What’s that song?” he asks.

     “It’s Ariel’s song!”

     “It doesn’t have any words,” Wyatt says.

     “From the movie, Daddy, duh.”

     “Oh.” What movie? He’s not sure if asking will trigger a tantrum – if this is one of the things he’s supposed to know – so instead he says, “You’re good at singing.”

     “I like singing.”

     “Yeah? That’s pretty cool.”

     Marley wriggles her shoulders happily and smiles at him so widely that her nose and eyes crinkle up with it and Wyatt suddenly thinks that he might actually be able to handle this parenting thing.

     He doesn’t have any texts from Lucy when he checks after putting Marley to bed. Or from Rufus, or anyone else for that matter. Wyatt thinks about calling Lucy, or Rufus, and demanding answers from whichever one cracks first. He knows something’s happened, he just has no idea what.

     The warm, relaxed feeling from the bath persists, though, and he doesn’t want to ruin it. When they’re ready to tell him they will. Wyatt trusts them. He hadn’t expected that, when he’d started this job, but he does. Implicitly.

     Instead, he pulls up the picture he’d taken of Marley after her bath, in her nightdress with a hairbrush stuck firmly in her tangled hair, her eyes wide and her tongue poking crazily out of the side of her mouth. Her whole body is a little blurry because she’d been laughing too much to keep still while Wyatt took the pic. It’s perfect.

     He sends it to Lucy. And then, anxious and uncertain but determined to do it before he can chicken out, he adds three words. We miss you.

     Wyatt’s almost asleep when his bedroom door creaks open. A small, nervous voice says, “Daddy?”

     It still takes him a minute to kick his brain into gear, to remember that he’s supposed to respond to that now. He mumbles, “Yeah?” and forces his eyes open enough to see Marley standing by the side of his bed, twisting her little hands together.

     “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” she whispers.

     “Huh?” Wyatt tries to wake himself up a little more; he levers up on one elbow and frowns at Marley, confused. “What?”

     “Can I sleep in your bed?”

     “Uh…” he manages to bite back the word no and instead ask, “Why?”

     She shrugs her skinny little shoulders. “I missed you so much when you were away.”

     “Why don’t I come and put you back to bed?” Wyatt tries. “Once you’re asleep, you won’t feel lonely.”

     Marley sighs; a really long, sad, hopeless sort of sigh. She hangs her head and her whole body droops and she gives a little stuttering sniffle which Wyatt knows by now is the precursor to actual tears.

     “Okay,” he backtracks quickly. “Okay, just tonight, come on.” Surely one night won’t hurt, right? And it’s not like there’s anyone else here in the apartment to judge his parenting. Just him and the five-year-old he’s only known for a month.

     Fuck, when did his life get so weird?

     Marley crawls over the top of the covers to get to the empty side of the bed and then she slides underneath them. She sets her head down and spreads out her arms and says, happily, “Thanks, Daddy.”

     She doesn’t have a pillow, she’s on the empty side of the bed an arm’s length away from Wyatt and she sounds grateful and contented and ready to sleep. Obviously this isn’t the worst idea ever, Wyatt thinks. It’s probably a smart move which has saved him from an hour-long temper tantrum when he was mostly asleep.

14^th November 2016
(Now)

     Marley wakes him up five times that night. She kicks him in the kidneys, sprawls herself across his chest, crawls over his face on her way to the toilet, bangs their heads together when she tries to share his pillow and, the coup de grace, falls out of bed at 4AM and cries about it for twenty minutes.

     Wyatt wakes up for good at 6AM like he always does and she’s sitting at the foot of the bed playing with her stuffed animals.

     “Morning,” he mutters.

     Marley beams beatifically up at him. “Morning,” she says. “Did you sleep good?”

     Wyatt gives a non-committal grunt.

     “Me, too,” Marley says angelically. “I slept way better in your bed. I don't know why you never let me share before!"

     Damn. Obviously his alternate timeline self has way more of a backbone, and Wyatt’s an idiot.

     They’re both halfway through breakfast when his phone rings. Wyatt drops his spoon in his oatmeal and fishes the phone out of his pocket.

     Lucy Preston.

     “Keep eating, Marley,” he says quickly, hastening down the hallway to take the call in his room. He’s not sure what Lucy will have to say, but he doesn’t want to risk Marley hearing his side of the conversation. Closing the bedroom door, Wyatt answers the call and presses the phone to his ear. “Hey,” he says.

     Lucy says, “Hi,” back. She doesn’t sound too bad – not like something is seriously wrong, anyway. Wyatt’s nervous anyway.

     “Are you okay?”

     “Oh. Yes, I’m okay.” She hesitates. “I got the picture you sent.”

     Wyatt smiles. “Yeah? You like it?”

     “It was cute,” Lucy confirms. Another, longer hesitation. Wyatt’s dying to just blurt out his questions, but he waits. And waits. Finally, Lucy says, “I was planning to go out for brunch.”

     “Oh.” Brunch? What the hell?

     “Want to come?”

     “Sure,” Wyatt says automatically. He doesn’t like brunch, but he assumes that’s not why Lucy’s asking him. She wants to talk and she’s scared to do it over the phone. “I’m dropping Marley off at school at nine.”

     “Okay. What if I meet you at half-past ten? At… you remember the coffee place we went after ice skating?”

     She doesn’t even want to say the name. What’s going on? Wyatt frowns as he says, “Yeah, I remember.” Of course he remembers the place where Marley had cracked her head open in Wyatt’s most severe (for now) parenting failure.

     “Great,” Lucy says. “I’ll see you there.”

     She hangs up and leaves Wyatt staring in perplexity at his phone screen. What the hell is going on?

Chapter Text

     14th November 2016
(Now)

     Don’t trust him.

     The thought swirls around and around Lucy’s head but it doesn’t matter how many times she says the words to herself. They don’t stick. Not in relation to Wyatt.

     She doesn’t get it – why Marley had warned her not to trust a mysterious man without revealing his name. How incredibly, unnecessarily cryptic and stupid. Surely any warning would be better with more than just a basic pronoun to go on. Right now, Lucy thinks it could mean anyone. Wyatt. Rufus. Connor Mason, Benjamin Cahill, Noah, that guy with the man-bun who has the desk next to Jiya and whose name Lucy keeps meaning to learn.

     It could be anyone but Wyatt is the one she’s closest to. Wyatt is the one who keeps reaching out to her outside of work; Wyatt is the one whose job is to protect her; Wyatt is the one she kissed. The one she wants to trust more than any of the others.

     She has to try and be impartial. Practical. Logical. Not follow her heart and spill everything to him immediately.

     Lucy gets coffees to go for both of them and then waits outside the front door watching the people walking past. She sees Wyatt before he sees her – in fact she recognises him immediately at a distance just from the way he walks. His posture and his stride have somehow become as easily familiar to her as his face is.

     He smiles when he sees her, one side of his mouth tipping up before the other. “Hey,” he says.

     “Hey.” It’s such a relief to see him that Lucy actually feels herself relax. She holds out the coffee.

     Wyatt looks down at it suspiciously, takes a sip and then looks up with comical surprise. “Wow!”

     Lucy laughs. “What, you thought I forgot how you like coffee? Seriously? It’s black, Wyatt. It’s not hard.”

     “Sorry I doubted you.”

     He’s got that smirk on his face and his eyes are soft, pale blue in the morning sunshine as he looks down at her and it’s so stupidly normal. It’s as if last night hadn’t happened at all – not the kiss in the car or the visit from the future.

     How can she not trust him?

     “Let’s walk,” Lucy says quickly, before she blurts out the whole story. She doesn’t want to risk anyone overhearing them. “How’s Marley?”

     “Happy I’m back,” Wyatt says. “Jackie’s still not speaking to me, though.” He shakes his head ruefully and takes another swig from his coffee. “Man, I really hope that we don’t get called in for a couple of days. I’m seriously starting to think she’s going to refuse to give Marley back if I’m gone for that long again.”

     Lucy doesn’t point out that a month ago, Wyatt would’ve been thrilled to have Jackie take his new daughter off his hands. She just smiles mildly down at her feet and says, “How about you?”

     “I’m fine.” Wyatt tucks one hand into the pocket of his jacket, drinks more coffee and then says, “Okay, Lucy. Are you going to tell me what’s happened, or are we only here for small talk?”

     She glances around them; no one is within earshot. She slows her walk. “You remember the woman from the Alamo?”

     “Yeah,” Wyatt says. “The future time traveller.” His voice drops low on the last two words.

     Lucy nods. “She was at my house last night.” She takes a deep breath and prepares to drop the bombshell, but Wyatt grabs the pause and runs with it.

     “Are you serious? What did she want? Are you okay? Did she try to hurt you? Why didn’t you call me?”

     The stream of questions is fired at her so quickly that Lucy stops walking to stare at him. Wyatt reaches out like he’s going to take hold of her shoulders and then looks startled when he bumps his coffee cup against her arm instead.

     “Wyatt,” Lucy says firmly. “I’m fine – listen to me. The woman from the future? She’s Marley. Your Marley. Grown up Marley.”

     He stares at her in horror. Opens his mouth like he’s going to say something. Closes it. Opens it again and manages, “What?”

     “She told me,” Lucy says. “She’s been travelling back in time from her future – our future – because she wanted to warn us about something. She’s trying to change the present so that it changes her future. Just like Flynn going back in time.”

     “Like Flynn?” Wyatt looks horrified.

     “No, I don’t mean it like that – she’s not a terrorist, Wyatt…” actually, for all Lucy knows, she might be, but she forges ahead and continues, “…she’s just trying to fix something.” Bombshell number two, primed and ready. “She’s got a sister.”

     Wyatt actually physically staggers. His face blanches white. He chokes getting the word out but he finally manages, “J-Jess,” like it hurts him to say it.

     Lucy feels it like a sucker-punch to the gut. God, she’s an awful, horrible, terrible person. She should’ve known he’d think that – she should’ve said something earlier, she’s an idiot, she’s so stupid and the pain is so clear in Wyatt’s eyes and it aches inside her own body.

     She rushes to say, “It’s not Jess, I’m sorry,” and her words trip over each other on the way out and she’s not even sure if he really hears her. “Half-sister,” she says, because that’s the only way she can think of explaining. “Wyatt, it’s her half-sister. They have different mothers.”

     He looks sick. Dragging a hand down his face he says, “I need to sit down.”

     Lucy clenches her hand around the coffee cup so tightly that the cardboard crunches and the lid bursts off. Splashes of coffee spill over onto her hand and she hisses and winces at the heat but that’s nothing compared to the way her chest hurts when she looks at Wyatt. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I should’ve thought… I’m so sorry, Wyatt.”

     He just nods.

     They start walking again in silence. People move past them; mid-morning joggers, elderly dog-walkers, mothers pushing strollers. Everyone who isn’t at work, for whatever reason. Lucy had gone running between classes, sometimes. Or just for a walk down to the nearest convenience store, to pick up a Snickers for her mom. Her life was so much simpler then. Funny, because at the time she hadn’t realised. She’d thought everything was too hard and too much and too stressful.

     Wyatt beelines for a bench when he finds one situated between two tall, leaning palm trees. Lucy detours past him to drop her mostly-empty coffee cup in a trashcan and then she walks back and sits down beside him.

     “I’m sorry,” she says again.

     “Why didn’t you call me?”

     “I wanted to.”

     “But?”

     “Marley asked me not to.”

     Wyatt’s jaw tightens. “But she wanted Rufus?”

     “I called Rufus,” Lucy admits. “I was… scared to hear it on my own.”

     “How far in the future?”

     “Twenty-thirty-two.”

     “She has a half-sister,” he checks.

     “That’s what she said.”

     Wyatt shakes his head. “I don’t – I can’t – who’s the mother?”

     Lucy feels the words rise up inside her. I don’t know but I think it’s me. I think we have a child together, in the future. I think we raise Marley together. I think we stay together. I’m terrified that I’m wrong.

     “I don’t know,” she says. “Marley didn’t tell me.”

     “What did she tell you? What did she want you to change?”

     Lucy says, “I don’t know,” again, feeling worse than useless.

     “What the fuck!”

     She cringes. “I’m sorry,” she repeats.

     Finally, Wyatt turns to look at her. His face is still flat white and devoid of expression but he says, “It’s not your fault.” He doesn’t look as though he really believes that.

     “It is,” Lucy admits. “I saw me, Wyatt. From the future. She came to get Marley back.”

     His eyes widen. “We can’t exist in the same time period as our past selves,” he says. “That’s, like, the only concrete rule Mason’s been able to nail down.”

     “I know,” Lucy says.

     “None of this should be possible. How could Marley even be here? She exists here, too!”

     “I know.”

     “You’re telling me you’re still time travelling sixteen years from now? Still? With my… with Marley?”

     “Apparently.”

     Wyatt stares at her and then he explodes. “How the hell are you so goddamn calm about this? You’re just sitting there, telling me all this like it’s no big deal? Why the fuck didn’t you call me last night? Or this morning? Or yesterday morning? Jesus Christ, Lucy, we’re supposed to be in this shit together.”

     And that’s too much and Lucy snaps and she yells, “I’m not calm, Wyatt, I’m absolutely terrified! You think I like knowing I’m going to spend the rest of my thirties popping back and forth in time? Always one step behind and trying to fix whatever new crisis Flynn or whoever else comes up with?” Tears well up in her eyes and Lucy tries to blink them away, does her best to keep her voice from shaking as she says, “History gets destroyed one piece at a time and I-I’m stuck in this insane job with unbelievably high stakes and every single time we get back, someone new could be here.” She sucks in a deep, ragged breath. “Or g-gone. And it’s k-killing me wondering who I’ll lose next.”

     She’s crying, by the time she’s finished speaking. Her voice cracks through her last sentence and her ears burn with embarrassment as hot tears gather in her eyes and trickle unsteadily down her cheeks.

     Wyatt says, “Oh geez, Luce, I’m sorry,” and he reaches out and pulls her in and suddenly she’s crying against his shoulder with his arms wrapped tightly around her, one hand at the back of her neck and the other looped across her waist, holding her close.

     This feels, bizarrely, more intimate than all of that kissing in the car. Lucy curls her hands into fists around the fabric of Wyatt’s jacket and leans into the solid wall of his chest. She ducks her head and presses her cheek into his shoulder, closing her eyes against the tears and giving herself a moment – just a moment – where this is all that matters. Where she’s safe and warm inside his embrace and they’re together.

     They walk again, later, without talking. Wyatt’s arm bumps against Lucy’s sometimes, when he gets too close. She wants to reach out and grab his hand but the thought of it has her frozen with uncertainty.

     Eventually, of course, they have to start talking again. There’s more that Lucy has to explain – about Marley’s sister, about the future, about Rittenhouse and why they might be watching.

     “Her name’s Kaity,” Lucy says, finally, and Wyatt shudders beside her.

     “Kaity?”

     “Kaitlyn.”

     He rubs a tired hand across his face. “It doesn’t mean anything to me,” he says eventually, looking exhausted. “Do you have any idea what this kid is supposed to do?”

     “None. Marley didn’t know, either.”

     Wyatt whistles, long and low. “It must be important,” he says. “Does Rufus have any ideas?” He’s trying so hard to sound normal, Lucy thinks, to act like this is any other mystery that their little Time Team can solve. There’s still a horrible blank coldness in his eyes and those tight little lines at the corners of his mouth.

     “No, but he made a lot of Terminator references,” Lucy says. Wyatt’s hand brushes past hers again and the temptation is almost too much. She stuffs both her hands in her jeans pockets and keeps walking. “The thing is, Marley said Rittenhouse made sure her parents got together. It sounds like… like they’ve been watching you for a while. Like they’re probably watching you right now.”

     Wyatt sighs. “And that explains why we’re meeting out here,” he says.

     “I know I sound paranoid but-”

     “What? No, Lucy, you don’t sound paranoid. We already know these guys are listening to everything we say when we’re in the Lifeboat,” Wyatt reminds her. “We know they can do shit with cars, like they did to Rufus. You were totally right to not want to talk about this anywhere private, okay? I mean, hell, it would be insanely easy to bug our cars or our apartments. We’re away all the time.”

     Lucy takes a deep, stuttering breath. “I think this is too much for me,” she mumbles. “I mean, time travel was… a lot, but this? Great big looming conspiracies? This is…”

     “Completely insane,” Wyatt finishes. “I know, okay? I know. But I’ve got your back. Rufus, too, and Jiya, so that’s four of us at least.”

     Don’t trust him.

     Lucy shuts her mouth on all the other words that she wants to say and she just nods, mutely, and forces a tight-lipped smile up at Wyatt and keeps walking like she actually believes it.

     “I don’t want to have another kid,” he says suddenly. “Or – or a kid at all, actually. I don’t want to be a dad.”

     “I thought things with Marley were going okay?”

     “They are. But she’s… different. I didn’t mean for it to happen and she’s a kid, right? She’s not a baby. I can’t exactly just drop her at a fire station now.” He shrugs, staring at the path ahead of them. “I never wanted kids. Me and Jess used to fight about it.”

     “Why didn’t you?”

     “I don’t know,” Wyatt says. “I kept telling her it just didn’t feel like the right time, you know? And there was my job, too, that was a big thing. But, really, I didn’t want to risk turning into my dad. I couldn’t stand the idea. He was so awful and I spent so much of my life hating the guy… the thought of making those same mistakes made me sick.”

     She wants so badly to find the right thing to say to reassure him. He’s very determinedly not looking at her, as though embarrassed, and Lucy loses her fight for control and slips one hand from her pocket to slide it through the crook of Wyatt’s elbow. “You’re great with Marley,” she says, softly.

     “For now,” Wyatt says hollowly.

     “Wyatt…”

     “It’s fine,” he says, shaking it off. He starts walking faster, briskly, and Lucy’s hand falls away from his arm. “I’m fine. We don’t need to talk about this, anyway. We need to talk about the important stuff, right? Should we get Rufus to meet us somewhere?”

     “I, uh, yeah. Maybe.” Lucy’s heart suddenly bangs in her chest as a nasty thought pops into her head. “You don’t really think Rittenhouse has bugged our places, do you? Because Marley – um, the adult one – she was at my mom’s last night.”

     Wyatt stops walking and turns to stare at her. “I think we should find out,” he says. “We need to know what they know.”

     “I’ll call Rufus.”

     Mom is out, thankfully, because Lucy isn’t keen to introduce her two new colleagues and she really doesn’t want to sneak them into her bedroom like she’s seventeen years old again. They don’t talk once they’re past the front door – they just climb the stairs in silence and then Lucy sits on her bed and watches Rufus run the bug sweeper around the room.

     Wyatt stands by her bedroom window and stares out, into the backyard, and Lucy watches him, too, and wonders what he’s thinking about. She wants to get up and go to him, or call him over to sit by her, but they shouldn’t talk and she doesn’t know what to say anyway.

     Quite apart from the paralysing fear that she’s wrong – that she isn’t with Wyatt in the future – she’s scared of being right. If them being together is what creates Kaity, this little girl hunted by Rittenhouse before she’s even born, then maybe they shouldn’t be together at all. Maybe Lucy has that power now. She could stop all this before it begins. If she stays away from Wyatt, that’s it. No Kaity, no big future, no way for Rittenhouse to win. They can’t force her into existing, no matter how hard they try.

     Another piece of the puzzle falls into place for Lucy then, too. Why had she been chosen for this job? Her, not her mom. Not any other historian in the Bay Area.

     She’d been chosen to meet Wyatt. And Marley had said that, too. They even tried to make Kaity exist by getting my parents together. And oh, it makes so much sense, it all works out, and Lucy still doesn’t want to let herself believe it. She can’t be the one who has this future. Her and Wyatt and Marley and their baby, their Kaity…

     “Nothing,” Rufus says.

     Lucy jumps, realising she’s been staring blankly at Wyatt’s back for the last several minutes while she plans their future together. Quickly, she turns towards Rufus. “Nothing?”

     “Nothing that this picks up,” he says, giving the bug sweeper a little shake. “I think we’re in the clear.”

     Wyatt moves away from the window and frowns. “I hope so,” he says. “Otherwise it’s not just us who’re in danger.”

Chapter Text

24^th November 2016
(Now)

     For the first time in five years, Wyatt doesn’t spend Thanksgiving alone.

     He’s surprised by how much he likes it. Jackie starts cooking early and Marley skips back and forth between their apartment and Jackie’s opposite, often leaving both front doors swinging open. Wyatt takes her out for a run just before midday, hoping to burn off some of her excess energy. They run together until she gets tired, and then Wyatt hefts the kid on his back and jogs with her, feet pounding the pavement, the strain on his arms and shoulders reminding him of training with sandbags or weighted vests.

     He sets Marley down again when she announces that her legs have rested enough, and she runs alongside him without complaint, sticking to the pace he sets. Wyatt’s actually really impressed with her stamina; the way she pumps her arms and grits her little teeth, pushing herself to keep going. By the time she finally admits defeat and stops a block away from the apartment, her shoulders are slumped and her feet are dragging.

     “You did awesome,” Wyatt tells her when he picks her up, swinging her onto his shoulders.

     She leans over his head and says, “Really?”

     “Yeah! You didn’t give up.”

     “I did at the very end.”

     “Right, but you didn’t whinge, did you?”

     “Nope!”

     “Plus, you’re pretty fast,” he adds. “You’ll be good at sports, you know. Which ones are you gonna play?”

     Marley does the little sigh that she does now every time he forgets something that his alternate self should know. At least there aren’t instant tears anymore. “Soccer, Daddy,” she says patiently, her feet dangling down against his chest. “To win the World Cup. Do you remember?”

     Wyatt’s not sure he’s ever paid much attention to soccer. “Sure,” he says, making a mental note to google it later.

     Jackie’s waiting upstairs and corrals Marley into helping her set the table while Wyatt goes to change his shirt. He switches from shorts to jeans, too, and his phone flies out of the shorts pocket when he takes them off. It clatters against the wooden floor and Wyatt stoops to pick it up. Automatically, he checks his messages and his voicemail. Nothing.

     Maybe it’s because Flynn thinks he’s left them safely hidden in 1754 – Wyatt doesn’t know – but whatever the reason, there have been no urgent calls from Agent Christopher and no trips in the Lifeboat for weeks. It seems like Flynn and his guys are having a rest, and so Wyatt, Lucy and Rufus get what feels like an incredibly well-deserved break.

     Neither Rufus nor Lucy have reached out to Wyatt, and so he’s been staying radio silent too, feeling like it’s probably the safest move at the moment. He knows for a fact that he’s being watched, and they’re fairly sure that Rufus is still being monitored, too. Keeping a low profile is their best option for now.

     It still feels strange not to see them; not to find any messages on his phone, not to have talked to them for over a week. Particularly Lucy. Wyatt’s gotten so used to having her around, helping him out with Marley…

     On a whim, he texts her. Happy Thanksgiving. Simple. Easy.

     Jackie, as it turns out, is a stellar cook. The food is great, Marley is chatty and happy, Wyatt manages to get along with his sister-in-law, and there’s a Cowboys game in the afternoon. Marley and Jackie play snap on the rug and the Cowboys lead for the whole game and win easily and everything is relaxed and simple.

     Wyatt still feels it – the pull in his chest which is Jessica’s absence, and the weirdness of being surrounded by this family that he’s known for barely two months – but there’s something incredibly soothing about the whole day.

     The unfamiliar sense of peace lasts him through into the evening, when he puts Marley into bed and she winds her arms around his neck and kisses his cheek and tells him, very solemnly, that she loves him more than anyone in the world. He sees Jess in her when she says it; in the tilt of her eyes and the upturned snub of her nose. The hurt feels a little less tender than he’s used to. A bruise, instead of an open wound.

     It’s been a good day. A great day. But there’s still a shallow sting of disappointment inside Wyatt when he looks at his phone before he sleeps and sees that Lucy hasn’t texted him back.

1^st December 2016
(Now)

     Wyatt texts Lucy several more times over the next week. He even calls her, but it goes straight to voicemail. When he tries Rufus, though, he makes contact right away.

     “Is Lucy okay?” he asks.

     Rufus sounds confused. “Yeah. I mean, I think so. Why?”

     “No reason.”

     But it bothers Wyatt. It niggles at the back of his mind, this fear that Lucy’s lack of contact isn’t entirely about Rittenhouse or the future Marley. It’s about Wyatt. It’s about those stupid, drunken kisses in her car that they haven’t talked about since.

     He picks Marley up from school that Thursday afternoon and she climbs into the backseat with her bag, clutching her toy unicorn and talking a mile a minute about the game she and her friends have been playing.

     “It’s where Pegasus is magical,” she informs him, waving her toy, “and I’m her owner and I have to be the one who makes her use her magic.”

     “Sounds good,” Wyatt says. He leans in to buckle Marley’s car seat harness, twisting awkwardly over her body.

     “Yeah, but Camila got really mad,” Marley says sadly. “She wanted to be Pegasus’ owner instead.”

     “Why can’t she have a turn?”

     “Because Pegasus belongs to me, Daddy. Duh.”

     “Oh. Duh,” Wyatt repeats, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He swallows it down and closes the door, walking around the car to get in the driver’s seat. “Hey, we’ve gotta go shopping on the way home. What do you want for dinner?”

     “Pizza,” she says instantly.

     “Yeah?”

     “And ice cream.”

     Wyatt laughs. “Okay, kiddo. I’ll see what I can do.”

     Except, as it turns out, there isn’t time for ice cream. There isn’t even time for shopping, because they’ve barely pulled into the parking lot when Wyatt’s phone goes off and he picks it up to see Agent Christopher’s name.

     Marley sits quiet in the backseat and watches him until he hangs up and turns around to her.

     “Duty calls,” he says, half-hoping she’ll laugh at duty.

     She doesn’t. “What about pizza?”

     “You can still have pizza,” he says. “You can have pizza with Jackie.”

     Her face crumples, eyes immediately welling with tears, her lower lip pushed out and her chin trembling. “I don’t want pizza with Jackie,” she whispers. “I want pizza with Daddy.”

     “Sweetheart,” Wyatt says, twisting so that he can see her, then reaching his hand into the backseat and squeezing her knee, “I’m sorry. I really, really don’t want to leave you, okay? But I have to go.”

     She sniffles. “To stop the bad guys?”

     “Um.”

     “That’s what you told me before.”

     “Yes,” Wyatt says, wondering how much his alternate self would’ve shared with the little girl. “I have to go and stop the bad guys.”

     Marley looks down at her lap, cuddling her little toy unicorn into her arms. Wyatt watches her for a second before he settles back into his seat and starts the car up again. He’ll call Jackie on the way back to the apartment.

2^nd December 2016
(Now)

     Wyatt catches Lucy’s arm as she walks out of the warehouse ahead of him. “Hey,” he says softly. “Wait a second.”

     “I can’t,” she says. She turns around but her eyes skate over his face and down to his chest, refusing to meet his gaze.

     She’s barely spoken to him since they arrived at Mason Industries yesterday afternoon. On the surface, she’d acted like everything was normal. She’d talked about the mission. She’d spouted historical moon landing facts like a textbook and answered Agent Christopher’s questions seriously and hugged Jiya before they climbed into the Lifeboat.

     Underneath, though, something is definitely wrong. She hasn’t smiled at Wyatt – she's hardly looked at him – and she asked Rufus to pick out her 1960s clothing and she'd buckled her own seatbelt both on the way there and on the way back.

     It’s stupid, but he feels like there’s this huge, impossible barrier between them and he doesn’t understand why.

     “Are you okay?” he asks her now. She still won’t look at him properly.

     “I’m fine.”

     “Then why won’t you talk to me?”

     Lucy shrugs. “We’re talking,” she says.

     “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

     Now, finally, she looks up at him. Her cheeks flush. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she says, flatly, and there’s a bite of anger in her words.

     “What do you mean? Why not?”

     “I listened to your voicemail.”

     Wyatt frowns. “Which voicemail?”

     “The one you left for me in October,” she says. “Where you called me an arrogant, patronising bitch?”

     It feels kind of like he’s been sucker-punched in the gut. “I-”

     “You were drunk, I know,” she interrupts. She presses her lips into a tight line. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

     Surely this can’t be all that’s wrong. Surely their relationship has evolved past the point where something this small could destroy it. “I didn’t mean it,” Wyatt says hastily. “I hardly knew you then. I was drunk off my ass and freaking out about Marley.”

     “It’s fine, Wyatt. I just don’t want to talk.”

     “Luce…” he says hopelessly. “I’m sorry.”

     She turns her back to him. “I’ll see you later,” she says thickly. Is she crying?

     Wyatt doesn’t get a chance to find out, because she walks away immediately, her heels crunching over the gravel between the warehouse and the parking lot. All he can do is stand there and watch her until she disappears into the pool of darkness beyond the warehouse floodlights.

4^th December 2016
(Now)

     Marley asks after Lucy on Sunday. They go back to the ice-skating rink, which Wyatt thinks is what prompts the question.

     “Why don’t we see Lucy anymore?”

     Wyatt says, “Um,” and then, “Would you like to see her?” in an effort to give himself more time to find a better answer than ‘I fucked up and now she hates me’.

     “Yeah,” Marley says. She grabs hold of both of Wyatt’s hands. “Push me backwards,” she orders. “I like Lucy. She’s fun.”

     “She likes you, too,” Wyatt says.

     “So why won’t she come over?”

     “Well, she’s just been a bit busy.” He digs his skates into the ice to get some better traction, pushing Marley in front of him.

     “With work,” Marley says knowingly. “Your work is very busy. Jackie says you should quit because it makes you a bad daddy.”

     Ouch. Wyatt stops skating and they glide purely on momentum while he stares down at Marley. “Jackie said that?”

     “Uh huh.”

     “Well, I wish I didn’t have to work,” Wyatt says. Not true. There’s no way he’d ever give up his shot at using the Lifeboat to fix his own timeline.

     “So quit like Jackie says.”

     They come to a gradual stop. Wyatt pulls Marley with him to the boards, out of the way of the other skaters, and then he crouches down so their faces are on a level. “I can’t quit,” he tells her. “I’m sorry, kiddo. My work is really important.”

     “Because of stopping bad guys?”

     “When I go to work, I’m trying to keep everyone safe,” Wyatt says. Mostly true. “Especially you.” Sort of true, because there’s this niggling feeling reminding him that if he gets what he wants – if his timeline is fixed and Jess is brought back – Marley will most likely be erased. The thought sends his heart racing, suddenly, and guilt floods through him. He pulls Marley in close and wraps his arms around her skinny little frame.

     “I love you, Daddy,” she mumbles into the thick wool of his sweater.

     “I love you, too,” Wyatt replies, and the guilt increases tenfold, because it’s true. It’s true, and he does love her, and he doesn’t want to lose her – but he wants his life back, his real life, where he’s not responsible for an entire person. He’s already screwing up; he dumps Marley in Jackie’s lap at a moment’s notice, and it’s obviously affecting the kid. She’s going to be a total mess if he keeps this up.

     And he loves Jess and he wants Jess-

     -but he’d kissed Lucy and he’s spent all weekend wishing that she’d answer one of his calls so that he can have a chance to make things right between them.

     The long and short of it is that Wyatt has absolutely no idea what the fuck he’s doing anymore.

22^nd May 1934
(Now But Also Then)

     “…and she gives me a kiss that I will never forget… and then we look for the ring together and we find it.” Wyatt feels his jaw tense and fights to relax his face – to keep his eyes soft when he looks at Lucy and says, “You remember that, honey?”

     All they have to do is sell this for long enough to grab the key and get out. That’s all. But Lucy is shaky when she nods at him, and there’s a wetness shining in her eyes, and when she opens her mouth to say something, nothing comes out.

     Wyatt glances from her to Clyde Barrow, hoping that the other man won’t have picked up on the poorly disguised tension. Bonnie is sitting back, smiling at Wyatt’s story, but Clyde’s eyes are narrowed and his thin face expressionless. He’s not buying it.

     Kiss her. Or do something, Wyatt tells himself. If ever there was a time for unnecessary PDA…

     But when he turns back towards Lucy all he can think about is the last time he’d kissed her, and how royally fucked up everything has been since then. He can’t do it. He doesn’t want to.

     Clyde sits forward, dislodging Bonnie where she’d been lounging on his lap, and says, “How long’ve you two been together?”

     “Five years,” Wyatt says at once, the first number that jumps into his head.

     Except Lucy says, “Two years,” at the same time.

     Now Bonnie, too, is sitting up straighter. “Well, which one is it?” she drawls, half-laughing but also sharing a wary look with Clyde.

     Wyatt stares at Lucy and she blinks meaningfully at him and he can’t read her face at all. She’s got one of the most revealing faces he’s ever known; emotions scroll across it like words on the page of a book – and yet right now, Wyatt has no idea what she’s trying to say. Go with his lie? Go with her lie? Let her take the lead? Take it himself, like he had done for their false engagement story?

     He hesitates too long. Clyde stands up, tipping Bonnie off of his lap into the seat beside him.

     “You know what I reckon?” the man says menacingly, his gun back in his hand like it’s always been there. “I reckon y’all are lying to us.”

     “No,” Wyatt says, but he can feel the weight of his own gun in the back of his waistband and his hands itch for it.

     “We’re just… nervous,” Lucy gabbles. “We’ve heard so much about you and-” her voice tails off in a little squeak when Clyde swings the gun to point at her.

     That’s too much for Wyatt. He stands up, so sharply that his chair clatters to the floor behind him. Clyde turns the gun back on him.

     “We don’t want any trouble,” Wyatt says, slow and careful. He holds his hands up, palms out, fingers still burning to go for his gun.

     “What’s your game?” Clyde asks. “You tryin’ to rob us? Or maybe you’re working with the cops?”

     “We’re not,” Lucy says quickly, “but Henry Methvin is.”

     Bonnie frowns. “Now how would you know a thing like that?”

     “She’s lying,” Clyde says with relish. He swings the gun back to Lucy. “Go get your gun, baby. I can’t cover both of ‘em.”

     He’s an idiot, telling her like that. Now Wyatt has a very, very clear window of opportunity. He watches Bonnie slide under Clyde’s outstretched arm, disappear around the corner of the wall. Clyde is still pointing his gun at Lucy, although his eyes are on Wyatt.

     “Tell him, Lucy,” Wyatt says quickly. “Tell him what you know about Henry.”

     “He’s planning an ambush with the police,” Lucy says. “Tomorrow morning.”

     Clyde can’t help it; his eyes slide sideways onto Lucy. For a split second, he’s distracted.

     Wyatt has never pulled his gun so fast in his life. The grip slaps into his palm and his arm swings up and his finger is curling around the trigger just as Clyde looks back at him.

     They fire almost at the same time – so close together that Wyatt only hears one shot. He sees Clyde’s gun buck, though, and then a rose of blood blossoms across Clyde’s chest and he goes backwards while Wyatt spins around, frantically, seeking out the other bullet. Somewhere in the other room, Bonnie screams, and Wyatt knows that he’s out of time but Clyde had shot at something-

     -Lucy’s got her hand pressed to her side, face ghostly pale, her eyes huge and dark and fixed on Wyatt.

     “Where?” he says, rushing to her, and then he sees the blood starting to spill out over her fingers. “Fuck. Lucy…”

     “Bonnie,” she chokes out.

     Wyatt spreads his arms when he turns again, shielding Lucy behind his own body. He can hear her breath hitching with pain and he feels sick when he wonders what damage the bullet has done. Lodged in a rib? Punctured a lung?

     He’s ready to fire again; to drop Bonnie beside her lover, but he doesn’t have to. She falls to her knees by Clyde’s body instead, clutches his shoulders as she starts to sob. It gives them time. Barely enough time.

     “Go,” Wyatt says, “go, go,” and he’s pushing Lucy in front of him out of the cabin. They’re across the porch and down the steps before he hears Bonnie’s footsteps on the creaking wood of the porch. He reaches back with his gun and fires blindly behind them as they round the corner of the house.

     “Wyatt,” Lucy gasps.

     “I know, I know,” he says. She’s flagging, struggling to run, one hand still pressed to her side. Wyatt doesn’t hesitate. He pulls her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest. Hot, wet blood coats his hand and Lucy whimpers as she’s jostled. “Sorry,” Wyatt says.

     “It’s… okay.”

     He can’t run fast while he’s carrying her but it doesn’t matter. By now they’re well outside the little circle of light cast beyond the cabin windows. The dark, empty land hides them from Bonnie – if she’s even still after them – and Wyatt eventually slows to a walk.

     “Lucy,” he says.

     She shifts in his arms. “Hurts.”

     “I know. I’m going to put you down and take a proper look, okay? Get ready.”

     He goes down onto his knees in the wet grass before he lowers her as slowly and gently as he can, the muscles in his shoulders straining. She cries out anyway.

     “Your side?” Wyatt asks.

     “Yeah.” She pulls his hand around, guides it to her right side, over her ribs.

     Blood has saturated the thin fabric of her dress. In the darkness, Wyatt can’t see how deep the wound is or whether the bullet is still inside. He does the best that he can with his fingers, finding a rip in the side of the dress and tugging it wider.

     “There… buttons,” Lucy murmurs.

     Wyatt shakes his head, then realises she can’t see him. “No time,” he says. She’s got something else on under the dress, some kind of slippery fabric, and he fumbles around that until he finds a second tear and yanks at it until it stretches far enough for him to get both hands inside.

     Her skin is slick with blood. Wyatt moves his hand up searching for the wound, finds the swell of her breast instead and says, “Sorry,” quickly as he slides his hand back down.

     Lucy sucks in a sharp breath when his fingers fumble from intact skin to raw, wet flesh. It’s a groove, he finds quickly, not a hole. The flesh has been gauged right out of her side.

     “It’s good,” Wyatt says. “It’s a graze, it’s mostly external.” He runs his fingers along the ragged edges of the wound anyway, probing for the bullet, just in case it’s still there.

     Lucy makes a strangled kind of cry, like she’s choking back a sob or a scream. Wyatt bites back the apologies that want to spill from his lips. They won’t help right now. He needs to be laser-focused on this task.

     The groove starts low, closer to her back, and moves higher. It’s deep enough for him to fit his finger inside, right up to the first joint, but he doesn’t feel anything other than blood and tissue. There’s no bullet and no metal fragments. The blood trickles evenly from the torn skin and shredded flesh; no spurts or gushes indicating that a major blood vessel might have been nicked.

     Wyatt breathes out. “You’re okay,” he says to her. “You’re okay.” Moving more confidently now that he knows what to do, he loosens his tie and pulls it off over his head, then sheds his suit jacket, too, giving himself more freedom to move. “Come on,” he says to Lucy, and he gets his hands under her body and helps her to stand. His back strains with the effort, but they both get to their feet. “You can walk,” he tells her.

     “Hurts,” she whispers. She starts to shiver against him. It’s from shock more than cold, Wyatt knows, but he still doesn’t like it.

     “I know,” he says, “but you can walk. Come on. We just need to get a little further away.” Stooping, he picks his jacket up off the ground and then puts it around Lucy’s shoulders, helping her to slide first her left arm and then her right through the sleeves. She cries out when she moves her right arm and Wyatt holds her wrist steady, pulling her arm all the way. He buttons the jacket, too, and then wraps his arm around her, getting a firm grip on her uninjured side. “I’ll help you,” he says, “but you need to walk. We have to go.”

     “I can’t.”

     “You have to.”

     She’s shaking violently now, but Wyatt holds her tightly and, slowly, she takes a trembling step.

     “There you go,” he says softly. “I’ve got you.”

     They walk together into the darkness.

Chapter Text

20^th September 2032
(The Future)

     Marley’s neck twinges when she leans over to crank the window open, letting in a rush of cool air and the smell of the rain. Over the horizon, the setting sun sends shafts of golden-orange light spilling through gaps in the clouds. Marley has dragged the room’s single armchair over to the window, and she curls up in it now, tucking her bare feet beneath her and staring out over the Agency’s well-manicured green lawns.

     She hears the door close softly and twists in the chair to see Mom smiling at her a little hesitantly.

     “Are you warm enough, sweetheart?”

     Marley says, “Yeah,” but Mom’s already grabbed the grey blanket off the edge of the bed and is walking over to the window.

     “The Agency wants to keep you overnight for observation,” Mom says, leaning down to spread the blanket over Marley’s knees. “I need to go home and be with Kaity – is that okay?”

     “Yeah, of course.”

     Mom comes around to the front of the armchair and crouches down so that she’s looking up into Marley’s eyes – the way that she used to when Marley was a kid. She says, “Dad’s going to come with me.”

     Something aches in Marley’s throat. She swallows hard and says, “That’s okay.”

     Mom’s eyes soften. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. He’s not – not ready to talk to you, yet. He will be. I promise, he will be.”

     “Yeah,” Marley says. She fights to keep her voice light; her face calm as she adds, “I know. I get it.”

     She doesn’t get it. Which one of them is the adult here? Well, both of them, technically, but she can’t believe that Dad’s too mad to even speak to her. To even come and see her – except for when he’d thought she was asleep.

     Mom reaches out to brush messy strands of Marley’s hair away from her face, tucking them gently behind her ear. “Hey. Are you feeling any better?”

     “A little.”

     “How’s the head?”

     Marley shrugs. “Okay, I guess.”

     “Not feeling sick?”

     “No.”

     “No blurry vision?”

     “Nope.”

     “Okay.” She swipes her thumb over Marley’s cheek. “I love you so much, sweetheart.”

     “I love you too, Mom.”

     “Rohan’s offered to drive you home tomorrow morning. Is that okay?”

     “Uh, I guess.”

     “I’ll tell him.” Mom stands up, smiles, and drops a kiss on the top of Marley’s head. “Try and get some sleep.”

     “I will.” Marley watches Mom gather up her coat and handbag and then suddenly, when Mom reaches the door, Marley remembers the question she’s been meaning to ask. “Mom!”

     Mom turns. “What?”

     “Is Jett still here? Can I see him?”

     Mom shakes her head; doesn’t meet Marley’s eyes. “They sent him home, Marls. His clearance has been revoked.”

     Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

     “Can I have my phone?”

     “You know the Agency’s rules on phones.”

     “Yeah, but – please? I have to talk to him.”

     “Tomorrow, Marley.” Mom opens the door and takes a step outside.

     “Mom!”

     “What?”

     Marley hesitates. “Can you check on him for me? Please? Can you tell him… I’m sorry? I’m really sorry.” She feels almost sick with the strength of her guilt. Jett’s been working towards this job for years. Being a part of the Agency – getting to work with time-travel – it means everything to him, but he’d risked it for her anyway. God, she’s an awful friend. She’s a terrible person.

     “I’ll tell him,” Mom says.

     “Did Livvie-”

     “Marley. Stop.” And now Mom looks actually mad for the first time. “If this is about how you somehow managed to get yourself inoculated, I don’t need to know. Understand?”

     Marley blows out a relieved breath. “Yeah,” she says. “Sorry.”

     “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

     “See you tomorrow,” Marley repeats. She watches as Mom finally leaves the room; the door closes behind her and Marley just… deflates. She slumps into the armchair and stares out at the grey, rainy drizzle of an evening. The gorgeous sunset has vanished behind the clouds and the breeze that comes in through the window is cold, now, and brings with it the decidedly un-relaxing sounds of distant traffic.

     She’s fucked everything up.

21^st September 2032
(The Future)

     Marley sleeps badly. She's out of bed and getting dressed the second the clock on the wall ticks over to 7AM. In the bathroom she washes her face, trying her best to scrub away the remnants of make-up from two days ago which is still clinging to her skin and eyelashes. Her mouth feels fuzzy and gross. No one has thought to bring her a toothbrush or toothpaste. Marley sticks her head under the tap and rinses her mouth out with water. She attempts to finger-comb her hair to save it from the wild mess it’s turned into, but has to give up after a few minutes. The skin around her eyes is puffy and swollen, dotted with dozens of red pinpricks. The sclera of her left eye is completely red with blood, contrasting sharply with the ice-blue iris.

     Someone knocks at the door.

     Marley calls, “Come in,” as she steps out of the bathroom.

     No one enters. Someone does knock again, loudly, on the other side of the door. It sounds more like banging than knocking, and Marley steps forward and yanks it open before the noise can get any louder.

     Rohan’s standing there with a mason jar in each hand and a sheepish expression. “Hi,” he says. “Sorry. I couldn’t turn the handle.” He thrusts one of the jars at Marley; the contents are aggressively pink. “I got you a strawberry milkshake.”

     “Oh. Uh, thanks?”

     “Apparently you’re not supposed to have caffeine.”

     Now it makes a little more sense. Marley smiles at him and takes a sip of her milkshake.

     “How is it?” he asks.

     “Not bad.”

     “But not coffee?”

     Her smile feels a lot more genuine, suddenly. “Exactly,” she says.

     “Right – you’re ready to go, then? Do you have, like, a bag or something?”

     “Nope.”

     “Okay. Let’s get outta here.”

     It’s easier, now that she knows, to see his parents in his face. Mostly Jiya’s features, but his skin is a darker brown and he has Rufus’ irrepressibly broad smile and the same round black-brown eyes. He shortens his stride and ducks his head while he walks alongside her, like he’s trying to pretend that he’s not pushing six foot two.

     He’s got Agency clearance, too, Marley notices. He uses his own lanyard to get them out of the main doors and into the carpark.

     “Are you a pilot?” she asks him.

     “Huh? Oh, no. God, no. I don’t have clearance to work with any of the machines – I’m just a researcher.” He glances down at her and then says, “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

     “Sorry,” Marley says. She means it, too. “I didn’t mean to do… any of this. I’m so sorry.”

     “Hey, I don’t mind existing.” He tries for a grin, but it’s half-hearted at best. “You apologised to me before you left, too.”

     “I did?”

     “Yeah.” He points towards the row of cars ahead of them. “It’s the blue one down the end.”

     “Uh huh,” Marley says. She follows Rohan to the car; waits for him to palm the handle to unlock it and then climbs into the passenger seat.

     “You kept panicking you’d, like, erase me from the timeline or something,” he says when they’re both seated, closing his door with a thud. “There were a lot of apologies but – you know – it was for Kaity. I get it.”

     “At least I didn’t erase you,” Marley offers. She tries to make it sound like a joke, but it doesn’t. It just sounds pathetic. “I really am sorry.”

     “I know,” Rohan says, starting the engine. “I know. And we knew this might happen, okay? And you went ahead anyway.”

     Marley drops her head heavily back against the seat and sighs, staring blankly out the window as they drive out of the carpark. Rohan has to use his lanyard again at the main gates, and then they’re out on the streets. San Francisco, at least, looks exactly the same as it had two days ago. The changes Marley’s made aren’t quite that insane. “I didn’t even fix anything,” she says, miserably. “Kaity’s still… you know.”

     Rohan reaches over and squeezes her thigh, just above the knee. Marley freezes up. She’s not exactly opposed to the contact but – she only met this guy yesterday and he’s acting like he knows everything about her.

     He glances sideways at her and then says, “Shit, sorry,” and yanks his hand away. “Sorry, I’m not trying to be creepy. I just – did your mom tell you we were together? Because we were together. I mean, like, dating. In my timeline, obviously. I mean, I’m not saying we’re still together, or anything. Sorry. I’m rambling. Sorry.”

     “It’s okay,” Marley says, trying for a smile. “She told me.”

     “Right.” Rohan drums his long fingers against the steering wheel. “Oh! Hey. I grabbed your phone off your mom last night. I thought you’d want it. Check in the glove box.”

     “Seriously? Thank you!” Marley leans forward, pops the glove box and grabs her phone out. At least this is one problem she can start trying to solve.

     She messages Jett. I’m so, so sorry. I’ll do anything to fix this for you.

     Marley drops the phone on her lap. The guilt in her chest squeezes so tightly that she feels sick. She’s selfish, that’s what it is. She asks people to do these things for her and she never thinks about the consequences. Not for anyone but herself – her family.

     “Thank you for driving me,” she says to Rohan, suddenly feeling her guilt swell to include this as well. “I mean, you didn’t need to do that.”

     “Oh,” he says. He glances sideways at her and then back at the road. “Actually I’m, uh, picking up my sister. Leia.”

     A sister. Another child for Rufus and Jiya, too, and that’s another layer to Marley’s guilt. The Rufus and Jiya that she’d known had never wanted kids. If she’s changed that much about them, what else in their personalities could be different? How much damage has she done to their lives that they don’t even know about?

     “Your sister’s at the bunker?” Marley asks.

     “Yeah. She’s twelve – she and Kaity are best friends. They drive us crazy. Uh, mostly you, actually. You think Leia’s a bad influence.” He laughs.  

     The words sink in slowly. Kaity has a friend – a friend her own age – a friend who’s allowed to visit her in the bunker. A best friend. And Marley did that. A little of the weight lifts off her shoulders and a tiny pocket of lightness opens up inside her.

     It isn’t until they reach the bunker that Marley sees the full extent of her changes. Rather than a dingy, unobtrusive warehouse tucked away on an empty street, there’s a glass skyscraper with a billion windows towering above them. Marley winds her window down to lean her head out, crane her neck back and stare.

     “What is this?” she asks Rohan.

     “You don’t remember the Needle?”

     “No?”

     Rohan shrugs. “You’ll see,” he says cryptically. And unhelpfully. Marley rolls her eyes.

     She checks her phone again as they get out of the car, but Jett still hasn’t replied to her message. Marley stares at the screen for a little too long; it isn’t until the phone switches into sleep mode that she jerks her head up and notices that Rohan is almost at the imposing glass doors of the building. Marley jogs after him to catch up.

     “Are you okay?” he asks her.

     Marley manages a tight smile and a quick nod. It obviously isn’t very convincing, because Rohan gives her a worried frown and then reaches out to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers brush her cheek and Marley fights not to step backwards.

     Something of it must show in her face, because Rohan says, “Er, sorry,” and pulls his hand back. “I’ll go through security first.”

     “Security?”

     His frown deepens. “You really don’t remember any of this, do you?”

     It’s not about remembering, Marley wants to say. It’s about reality – this reality isn’t hers – and Rohan seems to think that she’ll just settle back in, slide right into place where the old Marley used to be. Like he doesn’t know, yet, that this timeline's Marley is gone for good.

     She’s not exactly sure what she expects ‘security’ to be – something average, like maybe a metal detector or a couple of locked doors. She’s definitely not expecting a large, wood-panelled foyer with a dozen black-clad security guards stationed at intervals around the room. Each one of them holds a gun. Not basic issue handguns, either; they’re cradling assault rifles in their arms. They’re wearing helmets and dark glasses and thick, padded vests.

     “Rohan,” she starts, but he turns to her and shakes his head sharply, placing a finger over his lips. Marley closes her mouth.

     At the far side of the foyer is a black doorway behind a metal arch that looks more like what Marley was expecting. There are another three security guards stationed there, and they lift their rifles as Marley and Rohan approach.

     There’s still an eerie silence over the whole room. Rohan leans forward for one of the security guards to raise a handheld scanner to his eye. A light flickers and then turns green with a beep that echoes across the foyer. A second guard steps up, holding a small steel box. He opens the lid and Rohan places his phone inside before he crosses through the arch. Green light. On the other side, the third guard holds out a flat white machine and Rohan places his palm on it to receive his third successful green light.

     Then they all turn towards Marley.

     This is insane. The whole thing is bizarre; a mute routine that everyone except her has memorised. A little nervously, she tries to copy Rohan; leaning forward and keeping her eyes open. They scan her iris, put her phone into the lockbox, send her through the archway and then scan her full handprint. Finally, the door at the back of the room slides open with a pneumatic hiss and Rohan and Marley step through.

     The corridor on the other side is a cold white. When the door has closed behind them, Rohan turns and smiles at Marley.

     “Sorry,” he says. “No one’s allowed to speak in the entryway.”

     “Why not?”

     He looks surprised that she’s asked. “I don’t know. It’s one of the security measures.”

     “What’s dangerous about speaking?”

     “Maybe it’ll distract the guards?” Rohan suggests, unhelpfully, and then he shrugs. “Come on. Let’s go find Leia.” He holds his hand out to Marley, wiggling his fingers, and then catches himself and drops it back to his side.

     The white corridor is so sterile and unfriendly that Marley almost wants to grab his hand anyway. Instead, she walks alongside him, hands tucked into her pockets and shoulders hunched, feeling uncomfortably out of place. They don’t see any other people, but they pass a series of white doors, so flat and neat that they almost blend into the walls completely.

     “So,” she says to Rohan, trying to distract herself, “what was your Marley like?”

     He looks sharply sideways at her. “Well, she’s you,” he says flatly.

     “Not really.”

     Rohan shrugs. “You seem the same to me.”

     “Right, but-”

     With a complete non-sequitur, Rohan interrupts. “I don’t think your dad will let us stay for breakfast today.”

     “…Oh.”

     “I’ll just take Leia home,” he says. “See you tomorrow?”

     “Uh…”

     “I’ll message you, so make sure you go outside to check your phone some time, okay?” He points down the corridor. “Just keep going straight for now. The stairs to the bunker are right down there.”

     “But where are you going?”

     “I told you,” he says. “To get Leia.”

     “Isn’t she in the bunker?”

     Rohan grins, the corners of his eyes crinkling, like he thinks she’s made a good joke. “Of course not!” He tips his head sideways towards one of the half-hidden doors. “She’s in G-wing.”

     “G-wing,” Marley repeats, mystified.

     Rohan reaches out and squeezes her shoulder, quick and friendly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He pushed open the door, slipped inside, and disappeared so quickly that Marley was left blinking dumbly behind him.

     “But-” she starts, and then stops. She’s alone.

     Clearly, bringing up the old version of herself had been a mistake.

     The endless concrete stairs are just the same as Marley remembers. So, too, is the massive concrete slab of the bunker’s main door. The two armed guards outside it, however, are new.

     “Pass?” one of them asks her.

     Marley’s not sure if he wants a password, some kind of permission slip, or just her verbal confirmation that yes, she would like to get past him.

     “Um,” she says.

     “No pass?”

     “I’m… Marley. Logan. Can I go in?”

     “Not without a pass.”

     “Are you serious?” The painful throbbing has started up again behind Marley’s eye.

     “I’ll call the General,” the second guard says soothingly. “He’ll come and fetch you, no problem.” He lets his gun hang by his side and reaches for a round, plastic-coated device on his belt. Both thumbs move rapidly over the tiny set of buttons before he looks up and gives Marley a reassuring smile. “He’s on his way.”

     Marley is only somewhat reassured by this. She wonders who the General is. Dad, presumably. At least this means he’ll finally have to speak to her. Marley leans against the closest wall, the stone cold and hard against her back, and watches the door.

     She doesn’t have to wait long. The wheel mechanism in the centre of the door starts spinning after only a couple of minutes, and the two guards step aside as the perfectly-weighted slab swings open easily. Marley moves forward, mentally preparing herself for Dad’s grilling.

     Except it’s not Dad on the other side of the door. It’s an extremely tall, dark-haired man with an aquiline nose and a thin-lipped smile. It’s a man that Marley has never met before, but she recognises his face from half a dozen photos and a few grainy CCTV captures. She knows his name. She knows his crimes, too – she’s read the mission reports.

     And, most importantly of all, Marley knows that in her timeline this man is dead.

     Adrenaline floods her body. Her head throbs horribly behind her eye and she swallows hard, takes a step backwards and clenches her hands into fists. “You-” she starts to say, but she doesn’t finish. She doesn’t say you traitor or you bastard because Mom has appeared in the space behind the man and, eyes fixed on Marley, is slowly shaking her head.

     Marley closes her mouth. Even though every instinct is screaming at her to lash out, or to turn tail and sprint back up those flights of stairs, she forces herself to stay still and presses her mouth into a stiff-feeling smile.

     Garcia Flynn holds both arms out towards her and says, “Marley! Welcome home.”

Chapter Text

22^nd May 1934
(Now But Also Then)

     For the longest time, all Lucy knows is pain and darkness. She can’t breathe through the agony in her side and yet she does. She can’t keep walking and yet she is, stumbling, putting one foot in front of the other with Wyatt’s steady, careful presence always by her side. From time to time he reminds her in a low, quiet voice that she can’t give up, and so she doesn’t. She walks. She breathes.

     She wakes up on the ground with Wyatt’s arm around her shoulders, holding her head up, and she cries out at the shock of it.

     “It’s all right,” he says. “You blacked out. You’re okay.”

     He helps her up and they keep walking through a darkness that’s so complete, Lucy can’t believe it’ll ever stop. It’s never this dark back home – in the city there’s always light and noise and life. Out here there’s just… nothing. It’s empty. They’re alone.

     Wyatt tightens his arm around her waist like he knows what she’s thinking. “It’s all right,” he repeats.

     The pain in her side swells and recedes with every step. Sometimes it’s so bad that Lucy has to stop, panting, and she thinks she might throw up. Other times it eases off until she’s almost walking normally again, until she forgets that it’s there and wonders why she feels so strange, dizzy and off-balance and exhausted beyond all reason.

     She doesn’t know how Wyatt is doing this – how he’s navigating or where they’re going – but she trusts him. She walks blindly until his gentle pressure on her arm tells her to stop.

     “That’s far enough,” he says.

     Again, Lucy doesn’t know how he’s making that judgement, but she sits when Wyatt does and finds herself in the lee of a massive tree, her back to the trunk. She leans against it and shudders when the movement sends a red-hot spike of pain lancing through her body.

     “Okay?” he asks.

     “Yeah,” Lucy whispers.

     He puts his arm around her and she shifts closer and settles her head on his shoulder. It hurts, but she can feel him breathing and that helps. It’ll be all right, Lucy tells herself. They’ll find Rufus in the morning and then they can go home and she’ll be okay, she’ll take some Tylenol and she’ll be fine. She wasn’t seriously shot and she’s not going to die and it’s fine, they’re safe, it’s all good.

     She sleeps fitfully, drifting through a haze of pain, her dreams replaying strange variations on the scene in the cabin. Clyde shoots her. Clyde shoots Wyatt. Clyde shoots her again. Wyatt shoots her. Lucy wakes up from that one and thinks, don’t trust him but Wyatt’s arm is tight across her shoulders and her cheek is mashed against his collarbone.

     She sleeps again and sees Flynn plucking that strange necklace from Bonnie, turning and handing it straight to Lucy. Somehow, Lucy knows what to do, because the necklace is a key and it unlocks the door to Wyatt’s apartment. When the door swings open, it’s Amy who steps out.

     This time Lucy wakes crying and alone. She senses it immediately; feels the lack of Wyatt’s solid warmth beside her and panics.

     “Wyatt?” she calls out, her voice rough with sleep. “Wyatt!”

     She feels his hand go over her mouth – knows somehow that it’s his hand, not anyone else’s – and he hisses into her ear, “Shh, Lucy. Stay quiet.”

     She doesn’t understand why it matters until she glimpses the light flickering through the trees in front of them. It bobs and weaves in a way that seems decidedly unnatural to Lucy. She watches it with breathless fear even before she kicks her sluggish, exhausted brain into gear and realises that it’s probably a flashlight.

     They watch the light for a long time in silence before Wyatt starts to move. His lips brush the shell of Lucy’s ear when he whispers, “Stay here.”

     She shakes her head but he’s already standing up and stepping away from her. She hears his quiet footsteps for only a moment before even that soft sound fades and he’s gone, leaving Lucy alone. She pulls her knees up into her chest, remembering too late the wound to her side. The stab of pain is duller now than it was before, but still fierce enough to make her gasp involuntarily. The sound is uncomfortably loud in the stillness of the forest and the flashlight abruptly stops moving. Lucy presses her own hands over her mouth, muffling her breathing, horrified that she’d made such a stupid mistake. Her heart thuds painfully.

     The flashlight winks out.

     Lucy stops breathing. There’s a long, long silence until finally her lungs can’t take it anymore and she sucks in a shallow, careful breath through her fingers.

     A man shouts in the distance, sudden enough to make Lucy jump. She sees more flickering lights appear and then vanish between the trees, and then hears more voices calling out. They’re too far away for Lucy to understand any individual words.

     Footsteps crunch behind the tree. She tenses, curling her hands into fists, wondering what on earth she thinks she can possibly do to protect herself.

     “Lucy.” It’s Wyatt’s whisper as he comes around the side of the tree and crouches beside her again. His hand closes over her shoulder and then slides up her neck until he puts a fumbling finger over her lips.

     She gets it. She nods, big enough that he can feel the movement, and then they sit together again, watching the faraway flashlights and waiting in silence.

23^rd May 1934

     Lucy wakes up slowly. For a long moment, while her eyes are still closed and her mind is still within the haze of sleep, she doesn’t realise that anything is wrong. It isn’t until she tries to move that she feels the scratching of dirt against her legs, the sickening tugging pain in her side and the cold air that rushes over her as she dislodges her… blanket?

     She opens her eyes. Not a blanket. Wyatt’s jacket, and her head is pillowed on his thigh. Wincing, she struggles to sit up.

     “Easy,” he says, putting a hand on either side of her shoulders to steady her. He manages to aim a tired-looking smile at her in lieu of his usual smirk. “How are you feeling?”

     “Okay,” Lucy murmurs. Above the trees, the sky is dappled pink and pale blue; a slightly washed-out sunrise. When she drops her gaze to Wyatt she finds his eyes red-rimmed and the stubble on his face darker than she’s used to. “Did you sleep?”

     He shakes his head. “No, but it’s fine. I’m used to it.”

     Lucy remembers the flashlights in the night. “Who was looking for us? Flynn? Or the police?”

     “All of the above,” says Wyatt, “plus Rufus. Luckily, he was the only one I walked into.”

     The relief that spreads through Lucy is a heady rush. “Thank god,” she says fervently. “Where is he?”

     “I sent him back to the cabin.”

     “You did what?”

     Wyatt shushes her quickly. “The cops are still nearby, Lucy.”

     “But-”

     “I thought he had a shot at getting the necklace off Bonnie.”

     “Bonnie?”

     Wyatt nods, his face sombre, his hands still tight on her shoulders. “I think I shot her while we were running out of there. That’s why she never came after us.”

     Lucy frowns. The events of the night before are a pain-filled blur. “You think? So you sent Rufus there alone?”

     “Yes.” He meets her gaze. “You were pretty out of it, Luce. Someone needed to stay with you.”

     Lucy can’t quite make herself look away from those clear blue eyes, the serious, steady focus on his face. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, she thinks, and the way he’s watching her now… she swallows. “I’m fine,” she says.

     “Are you sure?”

     “I’m sure.”

     Wyatt shakes his head. “God, when I saw him shoot…” The horror in his voice conveys the emotions of the moment all too clearly. His hands slide up from her shoulders to cradle her face, thumbs brushing her cheeks. “I’ll never let it happen again. You hear me? Never.”

     She believes him – of course she does – and she trusts him. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop herself trusting him. His hands are warm on her skin and his eyes flicker across both of hers, searchingly, like there’s something he’s hoping to find written in her face. He leans closer, just the slightest movement, and it takes everything Lucy has to stop herself from meeting him halfway.

     Instead she sits rigid, she whispers, “Wyatt, don’t,” and she watches as he realises what she’s saying, as he snatches his hands away from her as if she’s burnt him.

     Oh, god. All she wants to do is forgive him – tell him it’s not about the stupid voicemail; that he hasn’t done anything wrong. Lucy reminds herself that she’s made a choice for the future and she has to follow through. She can’t just let Rittenhouse throw the two of them together like this. She’s not going to do what they want.

     It doesn’t matter what Lucy wants. That’s not important. All she needs to do is stay away from Wyatt.

     Knowing what she has to do doesn’t make it any easier when he murmurs, “Lucy, I’m sorry,” with the misery so plain in his eyes. Suddenly, all Lucy can think about is the Alamo. The way she’d caught his face between her hands and begged him to come home with her.

     You’re the one that I trust.

     “Wyatt, it’s not your fault,” she blurts. “I – there’s something I should’ve told-”

     “Wyatt! Lucy!”

     Even from a distance it’s unmistakeably Rufus’ voice - he's okay - and yet somehow it doesn't ease Lucy's mind as much as she'd expected.

     Wyatt doesn’t look away from her. “What?” he asks, tone low and urgent.

     Lucy shakes her head. “Nothing.”

     “Luce…”

     “Later,” she says quickly, because Rufus is almost upon them.

     He appears through the trees and stops in front of them, bending over with his hands on his knees and breathing heavily. “Police are everywhere,” he pants. “Flynn’s guys, too. We gotta go.”

     Wyatt scrambles quickly to his feet, holds a hand down to Lucy without looking at her. “Bonnie?” he asks.

     Rufus shakes his head. “Not in the cabin. Clyde’s body was there but no Bonnie.”

     “Damn!”

     Lucy takes Wyatt’s hand and levers herself up to stand, sucking in a sharp breath when the pain catches her in the middle. She presses a hand to her side and grimaces as the wave recedes slowly.

     “You okay?” Rufus asks her.

     “I’m good.”

     “Where’s the car?” Wyatt demands.

     Rufus points through the trees. “This way,” he says.

     He leads and they follow, walking with the rising sun at their backs. Shafts of light hit the forest around them, making the leaves shine in vivid hues of green. When Lucy looks down at herself she finds that the red bloodstains on her dress are just as bright, just as striking in their contrast with the pink fabric. It’s a lot of blood. Lucy feels her gorge rise and she forces her chin up, staring straight ahead.

     Wyatt must notice, because he looks over at her and then holds out his jacket. “Put this back on.”

     Lucy thinks about arguing, briefly, but there’s a gaping tear in the dress as well and she’s sure that plus the blood will draw more attention than wearing an ill-fitting man’s jacket. She puts it on and buttons it up. 

     “What happened?” Rufus asks nervously. “How did Clyde end up shot?”

     The answer, Lucy thinks, has something to do with her and Wyatt both fucking up, too busy worrying about each other to worry about the criminals they were sitting across from. She doesn’t say that.

     Wyatt doesn’t, either. He says impatiently, “It doesn’t matter, does it? He was supposed to get shot today anyway.”

     Historical inaccuracies flash through Lucy’s head and she bites her tongue against all of them. Wyatt throws her a terse glare in spite of her silence, like he knows exactly what she’s holding back.

     She looks towards Rufus instead and says, “What happened to you?”

     “After you abandoned me in the middle of the city to go joyriding with bank robbers?”

     “Sorry,” Lucy and Wyatt say at the same time.

     And they should be sorry, Lucy reflects, because this has been another fuck-up. They’re the ones who are responsible for messing with history this time, not Flynn. If the ripple effect from this causes any changes back at home it’ll be their fault.

     She sneaks a sideways glance at Wyatt and wonders if he’s thinking about Marley or if Jess is still the focal point of all his hopes and dreams about the alterations they’ve worked into the future. Maybe as long as Jess is there, nothing else matters.

     Lucy had been wrong earlier. She shouldn’t tell Wyatt, no matter how much she wants to. She shouldn’t drop that extra burden on his shoulders – god knows he’s already carrying enough. He doesn’t need to know that Lucy thinks Rittenhouse is playing matchmaker. He doesn’t need her to tell him how Future Lucy had said Marley Grace like a parent. He doesn’t need to hear about the way Future Marley’s lips had rounded in the shape of a silent Mom before she’d stopped herself from saying it out loud.

     Lucy doesn’t need to tell him any of it.

5^th December 2016
(Now)

     The seatbelt straps dig into Lucy’s side so painfully that she has to squeeze her eyes shut and grit her teeth so that she doesn’t scream. As soon as they’ve landed Wyatt is there, crouching in front of her, unbuckling her seatbelt and helping her to stand.

     “You’re okay,” he says; meets her eyes and stares until she believes him.

     “Yeah. I’m okay.”

     He holds both of her hands as he helps her down from the Lifeboat anyway. He trails anxiously behind her as she’s whisked away by the medical personnel, holding the ruined pink dress together with both hands.

     Somehow he even wrangles a seat in the corner of the room while they’re inspecting her wound. Lucy thinks, vaguely, that it should feel more awkward having him there. She’s sitting on the gurney in a strangely triangular 1930s bra, after all, with an itchy white hospital blanket wrapped around her from the waist down. It’s not her best look and she feels unpleasantly vulnerable sitting there, trying not to shiver while the wound is examined and irrigated and thoroughly disinfected. Wyatt’s eyes never leave her. He leans forward on his chair, propping his elbows on his knees, white shirt still stained with her blood and his gaze fixed on her and it’s… grounding. It’s something solid and warm and safe and so Lucy stares back at him through the stinging of the disinfectant and the soft press of the gauze on her skin.

     When it’s done; when the gauze pad is taped firmly into place against her side and she’s clutching a blister pack of painkillers and a printed sheet of warning signs, Wyatt walks with her to the changerooms. He’s already dressed and waiting outside her curtain by the time she finishes. They still don’t speak, but he follows her to the lockers and then holds out his hand for her car keys.

     Lucy drops them into his palm even as she says, “I can probably drive.”

     “I don’t mind leaving the truck here.”

     No more words are exchanged. They walk out to the carpark together and Lucy wonders if he’s following her around to try and make sure she keeps her promise. Maybe he’s scared that if he lets her out of his sight, she’ll clam up again and won’t spill the beans.

     Well, he’s too late. She’s already decided not to tell him. He can stay at her side for the rest of the night, if he likes, and she still won’t tell him.

     They both climb into Lucy’s car and the doors close with simultaneous quiet thuds, cutting off the outside world. They’re alone; safely sealed away in their own little bubble, and Lucy expects him to say it now. Tell me.

     He doesn’t. They sit there in silence.

     Wyatt’s hand hovers over the key but he doesn’t turn it. Lucy pictures them driving through the night; tracing the familiar roads to Wyatt’s apartment. It feels strangely inevitable – of course she’ll go to the apartment with him. It’s just past 7pm. Marley’s probably finished dinner, but she’ll have dessert with them. She’ll be eager to see Lucy again and over-excited that Wyatt is home. They’ll let her stay up way too late and then put her to bed when she finally crashes. When the apartment is dark and still Lucy will curl up on the sofa and Wyatt will bring her a glass of water so that she can take her painkillers. He’ll sit on the other end, facing her, and then she’ll tell him everything – all of it, this time – and this impossible weight will lift from her shoulders.

     The path unfurls cleanly in front of her and Lucy stares down it and sees how neat and simple things could be. It’ll be her and Wyatt and all she needs to do is let it happen. Just… follow along.

     She says, “Wyatt, stop.”

     He twists his head to stare at her. “What?”

     “I can drive.”

     “Lucy…”

     “I mean it. You take the truck home.”

     Wyatt tightens his hands on the wheel. “You don’t get to do this,” he says. “You promised to talk to me.”

     “Not tonight.”

     He turns sideways in his seat and looks straight at Lucy. “I’m sorry,” he says abruptly. “I’m so, so sorry for everything, Luce. I let you get shot-”

     “That wasn’t your fault,” she interrupts automatically.

     “-and I’m sorry for all this drama that I started with that stupid telegram. Christ, I’m so sorry for that.” He drags his hand backwards through his hair, messing it until it stands up in rough spikes that Lucy suddenly longs to smooth back down. She even half-lifts her hand to do it before she gets control of herself and clamps down on the movement. She won’t touch him. She won’t let him touch her, either.

     “I’m just tired, Wyatt. I can’t do this now.”

     “Then when?”

     Lucy sighs out, long and heavy. “I don’t know. I just… I need time, okay? And – and space.” Because she can’t think when he’s this close to her. Because she’d spent the night in his arms with the safe, solid warmth of him wrapped securely around her and she’s scared that if it happens again she’ll never be able to give him up.

     Because she thinks she’s in love with him and it terrifies her.

     He drops his face into his hands then and says, muffled, through his fingers; “I’m sorry about the voicemail.”

     “It’s not about the voicemail.”

     The nasty words are already fading from Lucy’s head. She’s said dumb things before, too. She’d thought plenty of unpleasant things about Wyatt during those early missions. Especially their first one, when he’d presented as a bland, unimaginative military grunt who was vaguely obsessed with blondes. It had taken her a minute to get past all of that, to realise how quick-thinking and loyal he was underneath that messy broken heart.

     Wyatt pulls the keys out of the ignition. “Okay,” he says.

     His fingers brush her palm when he drops the keys into her hand. “Okay,” Lucy repeats.

     “Time, huh?” Wyatt looks at her and then he nods to himself and gets out of the car.

     Lucy stays inside for a minute longer, so that she doesn’t have to watch him walking away across the parking lot; so that there’s no chance he’ll see the tears spilling over and rolling soundlessly down her cheeks.

6^th December 2016

     Lucy wakes far too late on Tuesday morning and finds herself grumpy and sore. Her pyjama top is bunched around her chest and her legs are cold where she’s kicked the blanket away. She pulls it back over herself, up to her chin, and huddles into the warmth to try and recapture sleep, but it’s not happening.

     Normally she’d get up and go for a run but the throbbing in her side tells her in no uncertain terms that it’s not happening. Instead she rolls out of bed, changes into a pair of sweatpants and yesterday’s sweater, opts to skip any kind of make-up or hair-brushing and stomps downstairs.

     Mom is in the kitchen, impeccably dressed and looking unnecessarily glamorous as she sips her coffee. She turns around and raises a single eyebrow in Lucy’s direction.

     “Don’t,” Lucy grumbles. She’s all too aware of how awful she probably looks but she just can’t find the energy to care.

     “Don’t what?” Mom asks.

     “Don’t give me that look.”

     “I wasn’t aware that I was giving you any look.”

     Lucy groans. “Whatever.”

     “What a pleasant way to start the morning,” Mom says. “I love a good cup of coffee and my daughter arriving without warning and acting like she’s a teenager again.”

     “I didn’t arrive,” Lucy says, ignoring the ‘teenager’ part of the sentence because she knows it’s true. “I’ve been here all night.”

     “You arrived without warning last night, then,” Mom clarifies. “I thought you’d be staying with Noah. You know, at the apartment that you actually live in?”

     “Mom… stop, all right? It’s not a good time.”

     “It never is these days,” Mom says succinctly, but she does drift out of the room with her coffee and her superior expression.

     Lucy makes toast and her own coffee through a haze of fatigue. She carries the plate and mug back upstairs and takes more painkillers with the coffee. Standing at her bedroom window, she eats her toast and watches the dreary, grey morning outside.

     She tries to remember, briefly, what she used to do for fun before all this. Nothing comes to mind. Mostly, fun had been with Amy, and that hurts too much to think about. Lucy drops her forehead against the window and sighs out, watching her breath fog on the glass.

     A toddler wearing a knit hat and gumboots rolls slowly past on a balance bike, followed by a watchful-eyed woman in a blue peacoat. Lucy’s stomach knots and she turns her back to the window so that she doesn’t have to watch them pass, but that’s a mistake. Her eyes fall on the end table beside her bed where she’d dumped her jewellery last night – including a certain engagement ring that had nearly gotten her and Wyatt killed.

     Remembering that she still needs to break up with Noah is the final straw that kills her appetite. Lucy carries the left-over slice of toast and half-full mug of lukewarm coffee back downstairs, and then leans against the kitchen island while she searches Bonnie and Clyde on her phone. They have a new story; Bonnie had been shot by police on the 23^rd of May while Clyde had been murdered the night before. Theories about his murderer are popular, with the most oft suggested being that Bonnie had done it herself, although no one can think of a rational motive for why she’d stick around and engage police afterwards rather than escaping with the loot.

     They’d died apart. No blaze of glory; no deadly love story. They’re still dead, and nothing’s really changed, but the whole thing feels different now. It feels like less.

     Lucy touches a hand to her side, feeling the bulk of the gauze pad beneath her sweater. An inch to the left could’ve changed her own story completely. She thinks about that black forest and how stupidly, irrationally safe she’d felt just because Wyatt was with her.

     She’s so deep in thought that she jumps when Mom says, “How did dinner go?”

     “What?”

     “Dinner,” Mom says, dropping the newspaper she’d been reading onto the counter. “With Noah?”

     “Oh.” Lucy thinks back, hastily, to a night that she’s already almost forgotten.

     “Did it not go well?”

     “No, it was fine.”

     “Hm,” Mom says knowingly. “Just fine?”

     “I don’t know, Mom.” Lucy sighs. “What do you want me to say?”

     Mom steps around the counter island to reach Lucy, brushing back the tangles of hair from her daughter’s face; messy remnants of the carefully curled 1930s bob. “Sweetheart, I can see that something’s wrong. I used to have to beg you to stop gushing about Noah. Now all you can manage is ‘it was fine’?”

     “I-”

     “Lucy. Has he done something to hurt you?”

     “No! No, Mom.”

     “Is there someone else?”

     Yes, Lucy thinks, and then is immediately horrified at herself. Horrified, too, when she looks up and sees that Mom has read the answer in her face. She wants to deny it, immediately and vehemently, but she can’t find the words and then her phone starts buzzing incessantly in her back pocket. She says, “Sorry,” and steps backwards away from Mom to check the caller ID.

     It’s Wyatt’s name and face on the small screen and Lucy waits for the flood of emotions that she’s come to associate with him recently – the oppressive guilt and fear – but all she can feel is that ever-present rush of fierce affection and it catches her completely by surprise. She’d forgotten how uncomplicated that feeling could be.  

     “Is that him?” Mom asks. There’s a strange kind of eagerness in her expression and something a little too knowing in her voice. Lucy frowns, thinking of Mom and Benjamin Cahill and torrid love affairs.

     “No,” she says. “It’s just a work friend. Hang on.” She turns away from Mom and walks out into the hallway before she answers the phone with a quick, “Hey.”

     The first thing Wyatt says is, “I’m sorry.”

     “What?”

     “I know this isn’t giving you time but I – I need you.”

     And now Lucy catches the knife-edge of panic in his voice, the thinly veiled tension and she hurries to say, “What happened? What’s wrong?”

     “It’s Marley.”

     Lucy freezes, breath catching in her throat, her hands clamping down too tight on the phone, pressing it to her ear. Oh, god. She can imagine what he’ll say next, hears, she’s gone echoing around her head and thinks no, please, no. Not now. She can’t do it; she can’t help him go through this when she’s barely handling it herself.

     “We’re at the hospital,” Wyatt says.

     The air whooshes out of Lucy’s lungs. “The hospital?”

     “She’s okay but she fell. They’re saying her arm’s broken and they’re going to need to set it. Jackie’s at work and I can’t… I can’t do this on my own.”

     His voice is rough and a little choked up and Lucy doesn’t even stop to think about it before she says, “Which hospital?”

     “Uh – UCSF Children’s. The ED.”

     “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Lucy promises.

     “Really? Okay.” There’s a brief pause, the hiss of Wyatt sighing on the other end of the line, and then, quietly, he adds, “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

6^th December 2016
(Now)

     She’d only been at school for two hours. That’s what Wyatt’s thoughts snag on. He’d only just dropped her off – she’d been fine, skipping up the front path beside him, still excited because he’d wrangled her golden curls into two messy bunches, the first time he’d done her hair ‘properly’ since October.

     The bunches are still there, framing Marley’s red, tear-stained face. Her eyes are puffy and there's snot running down over her upper lip again. Gently, Wyatt swipes a crumpled up tissue under her nose, a move that’s become all too familiar in the past half-hour. She whines a little, leaning her head away, but she’s too exhausted and doped up to do anything else. The fight against the IV port that they’ve placed in the crook of her left elbow has taken all the strength out of her. She’d sobbed hysterically when she’d seen the needle, clinging to Wyatt with her good arm so tightly that her nails pierced his skin.

     In the end, it had taken the doctor and two nurses to pry her away and pin her down onto the bed, sliding the cannula into her arm while Wyatt said, helplessly, “It’ll be okay, baby,” and she stared at him with horror-filled eyes.

      Just remembering the way she’d looked at him hurts. Seeing her now hurts, too, with the hospital gown gaping and leaving her shoulders bare, the electrodes on her chest trailing wires over the side of the bed. She’s so small that her skinny legs stretch less than halfway down the gurney. Her little socks are mismatched; one pale blue and the other grey, and Wyatt gets lost staring at them, trying futilely to remember whether she'd picked out her own clothes that morning or not.

     The sound of the door sliding open jolts him out of his daze. He stands up, turning, and then quite suddenly Lucy’s arms are around his neck, her hair brushing his cheek and the faint, familiar scent of her perfume surrounding him.

     “Hey,” she says softly.

     A desperate sort of relief floods Wyatt – she’s here, she came – and he brings his own arms up to hold her closer, dropping his face into her shoulder.

     “Thank you,” he mumbles into her coat.

     “Always.” Her hand curls at the back of his neck. “Are you okay?”

     “Yeah,” he says, even though they both know it’s a lie. Why else would he have asked her to come here?

     Lucy steps back, gazing over Wyatt’s shoulder at the gurney. “Is she okay?”

     He turns to look at Marley as well. Her nose is running again, her eyes half-lidded and fixed on the TV screen on the far wall, which has been playing colourful children's cartoons the entire time they've been here. Her cheeks are flushed and her long eyelashes caught in spiky clumps from all the crying.

     “They did her x-ray,” Wyatt says. “They’re just deciding now whether she needs, uh, an open or closed reduction.”

     “What’s the difference?”

     “Open is surgery.” He lowers his voice for the last word, even though Marley’s not listening.

     Lucy takes a deep breath. “Well,” she says, “how bad does it look?”

     “Her arm’s shaped like a Z.”

     “Jesus.”

     The exclamation is loud enough to catch Marley’s attention and she starts a little, twisting her head around to stare at them. She can’t move either arm; they’ve put a thick, pink bandage on the one with the IV to make sure she doesn’t accidentally knock it, and she’s sitting stiffly with her broken arm propped on a pillow by her side. The doctor had tried to cover it with a blanket, in case the twisted forearm scared Marley, but Wyatt’s little gremlin had said she liked looking at it.

     “Daddy?” she asks now.

     “Yeah, baby?”

     “Is Lucy here?” She lisps more when she’s tired; it comes out as Luthy.

     Lucy gives him a crooked little smile and he just about manages one back as he says, “Yeah, she’s here.”

     “Hi, Lucy,” Marley says a little dopily. “You wanna see my arm?”

     “Um, no, thanks.”

     Marley looks a little surprised – after all, everyone else who’s come in here has wanted to see her arm. She says, “I broke it.”

     “Yeah, I heard.” Lucy steps closer to the bed, crouching down until she’s eye-level with Marley. “How are you feeling?”

     “I had to get a needle.” Marley thrusts her lower lip forward petulantly. “It hurt so much.”

     “I bet you were brave.” Lucy reaches up to brush some of the hair back from Marley’s forehead and Wyatt catches the flinch as she lifts her arm. It’s not a big movement, but it’s enough to bring back the mingled smells of gunpowder and blood.

     He steps forward and touches her shoulder. “You okay?”

     She twists to smile up at him and now Wyatt sees what he hadn’t before; the bags beneath her eyes and the sickly pale tinge to her cheeks. Her hair is mussed around her shoulders, the end of her nose is red and her lips are chapped and bloodless.

     But she says, “I’m fine,” confidently, turning straight back to Marley. “What’re you watching?”

     “Paw Patrol.”

     “It looks like fun.”

     “Yeah,” Marley says. “Guess who’s my favourite?”

     “Hmm.” Lucy frowns at the screen for a moment. “There’s no sound.”

     Wyatt winces, says, “Uh…” but is too late to stop her. To his surprise, though, Marley just gives a tiny little shrug.

     “That’s okay,” she says. “I know this episode off by heart anyway. The pups have to rescue the super-pup from the spider king, except… you want me to tell you the end?”

     Lucy nods, while Wyatt gapes. He’d fielded a fifteen-minute crying jag, at least, because the TV had no sound. He’d been the one who told Marley she knew the episode by heart – although it had been a different episode then – which at the time she’d yelled was stupid and wrong and he was bad and mean.

     But apparently she’s perfectly happy now, as she stage-whispers to Lucy, who bends her head closer to hear, “It’s actually all a dream.”

     Wyatt looks at them together, the dark head and the fair, and something twists inside his stomach; a feeling that he can’t identify. He wants to simultaneously move forward and step back. It’s not exactly an unpleasant feeling, but it’s not one he wants to dwell on, either. Instead, he focuses on other, more pressing needs.

     He clears his throat and Lucy glances over her shoulder. Wyatt says, “Will you two be all right here for a minute? I’m gonna find the restroom.”

     “Sure.”

     “Anything from the vending machine?”

     He’d directed the question to Lucy, but Marley says, “I want chippies,” with her eyes still fixed on the TV.

     Oops. He shouldn’t have mentioned it. “You can’t, sweetheart. Remember? The doctor said nothing to eat or drink just yet.”

     Tears are already welling in Marley’s eyes when she turns her wan little face towards him and says, “But I just want chippies,” in a voice that threatens a full-blown tantrum just around the corner.

     Lucy shuffles closer. “Hey,” she says. “I think I know your favourite character.”

     Marley turns her teary gaze reluctantly to Lucy. “Who?”

     “The Spider King.”

     “Noooooooo,” Marley wails miserably, and Lucy frowns.

     “Huh,” she says, feigning confusion, “really? I totally thought it was him!”

     Reluctantly, Marley giggles. “No way. He’s the bad guy.”

     “Aw,” Lucy says. “Now I'm gonna lose. How many more guesses do I get?”

     “Uh, three. No! Two!”

     “Okay,” Lucy says, and she puts her hand behind her back and gives Wyatt a thumbs up. “The dalmatian. What’s his name?”

     “Marshall. Wrong! Only one more guess and then I win!”

     Wyatt smiles to himself as he sidles out through the privacy curtain. Lucy’s lost already – Marley’s favourite character isn’t in the episode they’re watching. He’s a little startled to realise he knows that.

     He skips the vending machine in the end; it seems cruel to come back with food for everyone except Marley. He does wander the halls a little after finding the restroom, though, trying to snatch a few minutes of time and just enough headspace to get his balance back. He thinks back over all the events that had moved too fast for him – getting the call from the school, the horrible drive to the hospital with his girl wailing in the backseat, sitting helplessly in the waiting room with Marley curled against his chest and then seeing the shape of her arm when they cut the sweater off her.

     And mustering the courage to call Lucy with the knowledge in the back of his mind that, this time, she might say no. That he might really be in this alone now, the way he should’ve been from the beginning but somehow never was, because he’d panicked and called a woman he’d known for barely three days and she’d dropped everything to help him.

     He still doesn’t understand why she’d done it. He hadn’t told her on the phone about Marley – he’d just said he needed help and asked her to come over. She hadn’t even had any questions. She’d just shown up, at half-past six in the morning, ready to do anything.  

     Wyatt had called her that day because he’d thought she might be the only one who’d understand, because of her sister and her spontaneous fiancé and the way she’d looked at him right after she caught him sending a telegram from 1962.

     But today? Today he doesn’t have any excuses. He’d just… wanted Lucy, and he can’t explain why.  

     The hospital room is a lot fuller when Wyatt slips back inside than it had been when he’d left. The doctor he’d spoken to earlier is there, along with a male nurse and the portable X-ray machine they’d used before. Lucy is standing by the bed, her hand on Marley’s shoulder, thumb stroking over the skin. She shoots Wyatt a quick, slightly guilty look that he can’t interpret.  

     “You’re back,” she says with obvious relief. “Doctor Jakilet was just telling us about-”

     “We’ve decided to go with a closed reduction,” Dr. Jakilet interrupts smoothly, turning to Wyatt. A tall, brown-skinned woman with a thick braid of black hair and an inscrutable expression, she reminds Wyatt a lot of his old drill sergeant, albeit without all the yelling. She has the same capacity to command the attention of an entire room – even Marley’s eyes have slid away from the cartoon and onto the doctor.

     “A closed reduction,” Wyatt repeats. “That’s – that’s good, right?”

     “Yes,” the woman confirms. “We’ll still need to sedate her to set the bones, so we’ll put the cast on while she’s sedated, to make it easier. It shouldn’t take long.”

     “Okay,” Wyatt says, because he can’t think of anything better. Dr. Jakilet is looking expectantly at him, like he should be asking intelligent questions, or something, but his mind’s a roaring blank.

     Lucy says, “Will the cast go over her elbow?”

     Dr. Jakilet does an abrupt about-face to turn her stare on Lucy. “Yes, unfortunately,” she says. “It’s usually necessary when both bones in the forearm are broken.”

     Lucy nods. “Okay. And… how long do you think-”

     “I’d like to have a look at the bones once the arm is set before I give you a firm time limit, but I’d estimate two months, at least. That’s fairly standard.”

     “My arm’s gonna be broken for two months?”

     “No, sweetie,” Lucy says quickly, squeezing Marley’s shoulder.

     Dr. Jakilet steps forward and bends down until her face is on a level with Marley’s. “Your arm will be healing for two months,” she says seriously. “It takes time for bones to mend, but when it’s finished, you will be just as strong as you were before. What things do you like to do?”

     “Uh. Play with my toys?”

     “You’ll still be able to do that. Anything else?”

     “Riding my bike?”

     “That’s going to have to wait for a little while. But you can still see your friends, and you can still go to school – are you in Kindergarten?”

     “Pre-K,” Marley says.

     “You can go back to Pre-K as soon as you want to.”

     Marley pouts. “But no climbing,” she says sadly. “Because I fell off the top of the jungle gym.”

     “Yes,” Dr. Jakilet agrees. “No climbing for a little while. But after your arm is better, you can climb again.” She straightens up again, looking between Wyatt and Lucy. “We’re just waiting on Doctor Marks – he’s the anaesthesiologist – and then we’ll get started. Will you want to stay in the room?”

     Wyatt says, “Yes,” and hears Lucy echo him a second later.

     “All right,” the doctor says. “You’ll need to wear lead aprons for the X-ray. I’ll be back with those in a minute.”

     After she’s left, it feels as though the whole room lets out a breath. The nurse looks up and grins at them, Marley goes back to watching Paw Patrol, and Lucy sidles over to Wyatt’s side.

     “She’s… intense.”

     “No kidding. Thanks for asking the questions.”

     Lucy shrugs. “It sounds like we’re going to be here for a little while.”

     Instantly guilty, Wyatt hurries to say, “Oh, yeah, you don’t have to-”

     She cuts him off. “I’m going to stay, Wyatt. I just meant that there’s a cafeteria downstairs and I think we could both use a coffee.”

     Wyatt’s a little startled by how relieved he feels. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah. Yes, please, I mean. God, I’d love a coffee.”

     Lucy smiles at him, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and for some reason Wyatt notices that she’s not wearing any make-up; that it makes her eyes look lighter than he’s ever seen them, with flecks of green and gold appearing in the brown.

     “What?” she asks.

     “Huh?”

     “You’re staring.” She doesn’t sound like it bothers her.

     “Am I?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Sorry,” Wyatt murmurs, but he isn’t. He likes looking at her face. It’s stupid, but there’s a rush of affection and gratitude welling up inside him and it doesn’t matter what’s been going on between the two of them lately, because she’s here and she’s staying. He’s trying to find the words to properly thank her for this, but he only gets as far as, “Lucy,” before there’s a clatter behind him.

     Lucy starts and Wyatt swivels and Marley says, “What was that?”

     “Sorry,” the nurse apologises. “Dropped my clipboard.” He smiles down at Marley. “Did I scare you?”

     “Nah.”

     When Wyatt turns back around, Lucy won’t meet his eyes. She smiles in his general direction and steps around him before he can say anything else.

     It’s an obvious dodge, and it reminds Wyatt again of the things she isn’t telling him. He frowns, watching her disappear behind the privacy curtain, and wonders what it is that Lucy’s so desperate to hide from him. She trusts him. He knows that she does, so what would keep her silent about something that she clearly wants to share? She’d started to tell him last night – god, was it really only last night?

     For a second, Wyatt wants to chase after her and ask all the questions that are piling up inside his head. He even takes a half-step forwards, but he suddenly feels Marley’s presence in the bed behind him so strongly that it’s almost a physical sensation; like she’s reached out and tugged on the back of his jacket to stop him.

     He turns around. She’s still watching the TV, but her eyes flicker across to him like she knows he’s looking at her.

     “Hey, Daddy,” she says.

     Wyatt takes the few steps to the chair beside her and drops back into it, the plastic hard and unyielding beneath him. “Hey, kiddo. How’re you doing?”

     “Okay,” Marley says. “I’m kinda cold.”

     “Yeah?” Wyatt reaches down for the white blanket crumpled at the end of the bed, where she’d kicked it off last time. He snaps it out and drapes it over her, right up to her chin. “Better?”

     She grins, shuffling around a little beneath the blanket. “Can we go home soon?”

     “Pretty soon,” he says. “You’re being really brave, you know that, right?”

     “Yeah. Can I get a treat?”

     Wyatt smirks despite himself. “Maybe.”

     “Maybe yes?”

     “Maybe yes.”

     Marley gives a satisfied sigh and turns her head back towards the TV. “Is Lucy bringing me chippies?”

     “Nope. She’s bringing coffee, which you don’t like.”

     “Yuck,” Marley agrees. “I want her to come back so I can show her this episode. Look, see? Everest.”

     Wyatt glances up at the screen and smiles when he spots Marley’s favourite husky dog. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “You can show her.”

     But Dr. Jakilet beats Lucy back into the room. She’s swapped her white coat for a long, navy blue smock and she’s carrying two other similar-looking smocks, one dark red and one purple, which she thrusts into Wyatt’s arms. They’re heavier than he’d been expecting.

     “Purple’s for you,” she says. “Is your… partner coming back?”

     Wyatt hesitates over partner, wondering whether to correct her, but she raises a single eyebrow and fixes him with an arched look and he hurries to say, “Yes, she’ll be back.”

     “Red is for her,” the doctor says unnecessarily. She turns towards the bed. “How are you doing now, Marley?”

     “Okay?” Marley says uncertainly. A bit of fear creeps back into her voice; she probably senses something is about to happen, Wyatt thinks, and he dumps both lead smocks in the chair and steps closer to squeeze her shoulder.

     “It’s all right,” he says.

     “I’m going to give you some medicine to help you fall asleep,” Dr. Jakilet explains, “and then I’m going to put a big white cast on your arm. When you wake up, it’ll be feeling a lot better.”

     Marley frowns. “I’m not actually very sleepy,” she says. “I don’t really want a sleep.” There’s a high, tense note to her words that tells Wyatt they’re on the verge of tears and tantrums. He rubs her shoulder again until she looks up at him.

     “Hey,” he says. “It’s a really quick sleep, okay? Only a few minutes.”

     “But I just don’t want a sleep!”

     Wyatt stops, thinking, and then he makes a decision. “All right,” he says. “I’m going to explain it to you properly, okay? Like you’re a big kid.”

     She fixes him with those huge blue eyes, purses her lips seriously and nods. “Okay.”

     “You know how your arm looks gross?”

     “Yeah,” she says proudly. “Like a scary zombie arm.” She glances down at it and then frowns when she notices the blanket. “Hey! I can’t see it anymore.”

     Wyatt reaches across to twitch the blanket aside. Marley grins. Wyatt says, “Okay. Your arm is gross now because the bones inside are in the wrong place. Got it?”

     “Uh. Sort of.”

     “Doctor Jakilet is going to have to move the bones to fix your arm.”

     “She’s gonna take my bones out?”

     Wyatt smirks. “No. She’s gonna move them inside your arm. The thing is, you gotta be real strong to move bones.” He rolls up his shirtsleeve while he’s speaking; when he’s finished, he holds his forearm in front of Marley’s face, gripping it with his other hand. “See? No matter how hard I push, I can’t move the bones. Right?”

     “Uh huh.”

     “When the doctor moves your bones, it’s gonna hurt a lot. You remember how much it hurt when you got to the hospital?”

     “Yeah. I cried.”

     “Right. Moving the bones will hurt even worse than that.”

     Marley frowns, lower lip jutting out. “I don’t want to.”

     “Exactly,” Wyatt says. “So you get to go to sleep instead. But those are the only two options here, baby girl. Either you have to have a quick sleep and when you wake up, it’s all done, or-”

     “Okay,” she interrupts. “Quick sleep.”

     Wyatt smiles, rubbing her shoulder. “Atta girl.”

     Dr. Jakilet nods sharply. “Good,” she says. Then she fixes Wyatt with a fierce stare. “Please put on your apron.”

     Wyatt puts on his purple apron.

     The anaesthesiologist, Dr. Marks, and a second, female nurse both arrive before Lucy gets back. By the time she returns with two takeaway coffee cups, the room is a hive of activity. Wordlessly, Wyatt holds out the red apron. Lucy sets the cups down, puts her arms through the apron and lets Wyatt settle it on her shoulders, then turns for him to fasten the velcro straps at the back. There's no discussion between them; it's just second nature for Wyatt to help her now, the same way he fastens her seatbelt in the Lifeboat. 

     “How’s she doing?” Lucy murmurs, but Wyatt doesn’t have time to answer because Dr. Marks looks at him.

     “Dad? You wanna come over here and hold her hand?”

     “Uh, yeah,” Wyatt says. “Sure.” He steps closer to the bed, smiles down at Marley’s tiny, waif-like frame and her little pale face. They’ve draped another of the lead aprons over her body and both of her arms are still immobilised by her sides, so there isn’t much to hold. He drops his hand onto the top of her head as compromise. “I got you, kiddo.”

     “Thanks, Daddy,” she whispers.

     The anaesthesiologist says, “Marley, can you count to ten for me?”

     Wyatt nods at her when she looks up at him; she wets her lips and starts to count. She’s gone before she reaches six, her eyes rolling back and her face going slack. Watching it feels worse than Wyatt had thought it would.

     He feels Lucy’s hand settle between his shoulder blades. It helps. He swallows and steps back.

     She hands him his coffee. He only manages a couple of sips, but the warmth of it feels good in his hands, almost as soothing as the steady presence of Lucy beside him, so close that her hip brushes his. The doctor manipulates Marley’s arm like she’s a rag doll; the nurses slide an oxygen mask over her face, lifting her limp head up and down.

     It takes two attempts for the arm to be set; each one followed by an x-ray to ensure that the bones are positioned correctly. Afterwards, the male nurse holds Marley’s arm in the air while Dr. Jakilet puts the plaster cast in place.

     “It’s a split cast,” she tells them when it’s finished, and she’s holding it and waiting for the plaster to set. “It doesn't allow movement, but these openings on the sides will provide a little room for swelling. I’d expect plenty of swelling over the first couple of days.”

     Wyatt nods, his mouth dry. Lucy says, “Okay.”

     “We’ll book you an appointment with the clinic in a week or two to get her fibreglass cast put on.”

     The whole thing takes maybe twenty minutes. The male nurse stays with them when it’s over, while the female one gathers up the aprons and leaves with a smile. Dr. Jakilet goes too, promising to return with a prescription for painkillers, and Dr. Marks heads off not long afterwards, when he’s assured them that Marley will be awake soon and only a little groggy.

     And then she is; she’s awake and talking – well, whining, really, because she’s decided she wants apple juice and nothing can stop her – and Wyatt releases the breath that he’s been holding for the past several hours.

     There’s still a lot to do after that; the sling to position, the IV port to take out, the prescription to collect. An attempt is made to put Marley’s sweater back on, but that doesn’t work out. Instead, Wyatt carries her out to the parking lot wrapped in his own winter coat, her arm held securely across her chest. All up, it takes them probably another ninety minutes to get out of there. Lucy stays with them for the duration of it, even trailing Wyatt to his car carrying Marley’s sweater and the blue teddy bear wearing a cast and sling that she’d picked up in the hospital’s gift shop.

     She helps out when they get to the car, too, taking Wyatt’s coat off Marley and setting it in the front seat along with the rest of their stuff. It isn’t until Wyatt’s finished buckling Marley into her car seat, when he’s closed the door and straightened up and met Lucy’s eyes, that he realises just how long she’s been with them. He’d called her almost five hours ago.

     “Are you-” he starts.

     “Should I-” she tries at the same time, and then she laughs. “You go.”

     Wyatt gestures to her side. “Is it okay? I mean, are you okay?”

     “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s good,” she says. “Thank you. Not for asking, I mean – thank you for, you know… for yesterday. In nineteen thirty-four.” She tries for a smile but it comes out a little pained.

     “Always,” Wyatt says. She shrugs and he adds, “I mean it.”

     “I know,” Lucy says.

     They both hesitate, for a second, and then Lucy raises her arms and Wyatt steps forward at the same time, catching her up and pulling her close to him. His two hands span the width of her back; he can feel every breath she takes. Alive. Safe.

     “Promise me you’ll never get shot again,” Wyatt says into her hair.

     She exhales on a laugh. “Promise me you’ll never get shot again.”

     “Deal.”

     “Great.”

     And then it goes on for just a moment too long – where they should both have let go and neither one of them seems able to – until they both step back very hastily. Wyatt clears his throat. Lucy stares at the ground.

     “Thanks for coming,” he says a little hoarsely. He glances at her face and then away, glancing in through the car window. Marley isn’t watching them, thank god, because that hug was… Wyatt doesn’t know what that hug was, but it was too much.

     “It’s okay,” Lucy says. “I’ll see you soon?”

     Wyatt doesn’t look at her. He nods, “Yeah,” and turns towards the car. He hears Lucy’s shoes ringing against the concrete as she walks away from them and then he steps around the hood to the driver’s seat and climbs inside.

     The little voice pipes up right away. “Daddy?”

     Oh no. She’d seen. Visions of her telling Jackie flash through his mind and he winces as he says, “Um. What’s up?”

     “Can I have apple juice?”

     Wyatt slumps in his seat as he says, “Yeah, sure,” and tries not to think about exactly why he doesn’t want Marley telling her extremely nosy aunt about him hugging Lucy. They’re friends, aren’t they? It shouldn’t be a big deal.

     “Now?”

     “Nope, because we’re in the car,” he says, starting the engine. “But when we get home you can have apple juice with ice. Deal?”

     “Deal. Daddy?”

     “Yep?”

     “That doctor thought Lucy was my mommy,” Marley says.

     A jolt of sudden clarity hits Wyatt like lightning. His hands clench fiercely on the steering wheel, knuckles going white, and he stares blankly through the windscreen. All he can see is Lucy telling him that he’d have another daughter in the future. He remembers asking her who the mother was; remembers the hunted look that had flitted across her face before she’d said, “I don’t know.”

     Rittenhouse made sure her parents got together. That was suddenly clear too – they knew Rittenhouse had their hands in Mason’s company, lurking behind the scenes. Who was it really who’d decided to employ both Wyatt Logan and Lucy Preston? They’d made sure Rufus was recording them… why? To find out what they were saying on the missions? To find out what they were saying to each other?

     The adult Marley had gone to Lucy first. Repeatedly. She’d found Lucy at the Alamo and she’d gone to Lucy’s house and that had just made sense to Wyatt because he trusted Lucy, so of course Marley would too. Of course she’d find Lucy first.

     Except, would she really? If Lucy were just one of her father’s old colleagues? She knows Lucy and she’s comfortable with Lucy and she wanted to talk to Lucy and that’s more than just a friendly, familiar relationship.

     “Why aren’t we moving?”

     Wyatt sucks in a breath so sharp that it hurts and twists around. Marley smiles innocently at him.

     “That’s weird,” he grits out.

     “What is?”

     “That the doctor thought that.”

     “Oh. Yeah,” she says easily, settling comfortably back into her seat.

     Wyatt forces his breathing to even, feeling the tension drop away from the rest of his body in response as his heartrate slows. He can’t tell Lucy. That knowledge is immediate and visceral. If he tells her, she’ll feel compelled to be with him just to make sure the future plays out, and that thought makes him feel sick. He’d never force Lucy into anything. God, this is a mess.

     He glances over his shoulder at Marley again, trying to picture those chubby cheeks fading into Jess's high, elegant cheekbones. Trying to see the woman of the future in the round-eyed, dimple-chinned face of the child. He wishes the adult Marley had been a little more forthcoming with her information. What the fuck is Wyatt supposed to do now? What kind of risks might Rittenhouse take if it becomes clear that playing matchmaker isn’t working? How far are they willing to go? They’ve already pushed things a lot further than Wyatt could have imagined.

     “Can we go home now?” Marley’s watching him, her eyes still a little glazed from all the medication, her good arm cradling the sling protectively.

     Wyatt pushes away thoughts of a brown-haired, brown-eyed little girl with a stubborn streak a mile long. “Yeah,” he says. “We can go home.”

Chapter Text

8th December 2016
(Now)

     Lucy needs to stay away. She knows she does; knows that she needs a break from Wyatt if she’s ever going to get on top of the feelings that flood her chest at the sight of him. It doesn’t matter how she feels. If Rittenhouse wants them to be together, then they can’t – and even if there’s no fate or destiny or strings attached, Wyatt’s still in love with his dead wife. Lucy can’t fault him for that.

     All she needs to do is not see him for a while, until she forgets about the crooked curl of his smile and the stupid way he says ma’am and the steady pressure of his eyes on her in the Lifeboat, giving her something to hang on to when she feels the walls closing in.

     It’s simple. It should be easy. She spends the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday resolutely not thinking about Wyatt, or the solid warmth of him folded around her in the hospital carpark. She texts him once, to check on Marley, and promises herself that’s it. She’s taking a break. She’s only going to see him at Mason Industries when there’s no other choice.

     But Wyatt calls her on Thursday to invite her to the park with them and Lucy says yes, even though all she can think about are the reasons why she should say no. She berates herself in the car the whole way there, and then she gets out and smiles at Wyatt and gets a stupid thrill when he grins back. She spends the best part of an hour chasing Marley around the park, trying to stop her from doing anything too active, and then she lets Wyatt talk her into going to get lunch with them at a nearby diner that has ‘the best’ milkshakes.

     It’s the complete opposite of what she’s supposed to be doing. She doesn’t want to be sitting in a booth, warm and happy, fighting back a smile as she watches Marley and Wyatt compete over who can blow the best milkshake bubbles. It feels too simple. It feels too safe, when Lucy knows that this situation is anything but.

     She just can’t seem to tear herself away. As the three of them are leaving she blurts out, “Are you watching the football this weekend?”

     “Yeah, are we, Daddy?” Marley asks, bouncing around their legs like a puppy. She’s back to normal; the trauma of the hospital wiped away by two treat-filled days off school, although Wyatt had still given her ibuprofen with her diner burger.

     “We are,” Wyatt says. “Got a standing date with the TV.”

     Marley grabs Lucy’s hand and hangs from it, heavy and insistent as she says, “Will you come over to watch with us? We can have cookies!”

     And Lucy, the idiot, says, “Yeah. I’d like that.”

     “The football or the cookies?” Wyatt asks, that smirk creeping across his face.

     “Both.” Lucy hesitates and then she adds, in a rush, “And the company,” looking down at Marley so that she can pretend she wasn’t talking about Wyatt as well.

     She’s not supposed to let herself feel like this.

11^th December 2016
(Now)

     Lucy isn’t exactly sure how she expected cookies and football to go, but she definitely wouldn’t have imagined they were simultaneous activities. Wyatt spreads baking paper over the coffee table and dumps a mixing bowl on top while Marley goes back and forth from the kitchen to the lounge carefully carrying ingredients with her good arm; milk, eggs, flour, chocolate chips.

     “We’re cooking in here?”

     “Yeah!” Marley says. “It’s a thing we do now!” She beams, skipping back to the kitchen for more.

     Wyatt shrugs when Lucy looks at him. “It’s a thing we do now,” he mimics. “I’ll just wipe the floor down after.”

     It’s a wooden floor, so she guesses it’s not too bad. And it’s kinda fun to settle down on the floor with Marley beside her and start cooking with one eye on the game. Wyatt’s apartment is devoid of measuring cups or tablespoons, so they make rough guesses with the ingredients in one of Marley’s old sippy cups. The little girl insists on stirring by herself. She's clumsy, using only her non-dominant hand, but as enthusiastic as ever, a combination which sends a spray of flour out across Lucy’s face and hair.

     “Oops,” Marley giggles, and Lucy looks down at herself and laughs.  

     Wyatt leans back in his chair and says, “Are you sure you don’t need my help?”

     “No, Daddy! I’m doing it!”

     She stays determined to do everything by herself even when it’s cracking an egg into the bowl one-handed, which leaves egg on Marley’s shirt and pants and shell in the bowl. Lucy picks the pieces out while Marley tries again. The second attempt is also unsuccessful, but the girl is giggling and Wyatt’s looking over from the game to laugh at them and Lucy feels lighter than she has in a long time.

     The third egg is a success, with the barest minimum of help from Lucy. They splash in milk and take turns stirring every time Marley’s arm gets tired and Wyatt swipes chocolate chips and teases Lucy about the 49ers loss earlier that afternoon.

     “You know they haven’t won a game all season?” he says, ostensibly to Marley, but grinning at Lucy.

     She shakes her head. “Not true.”

     “No?”

     “They’ve won one game,” Lucy says, and laughs at the look on Wyatt’s face.

     By the time the cookies are finally in the oven, the lounge is a mess. Lucy surveys it with her hands on her hips, taking in the flour on the floor, the damp patches of egg and milk on Marley’s clothes and the drips of batter on the table.

     “You know,” she tells Wyatt, “I think I can see why this isn’t a thing you used to do.”

     “Yeah,” he says. He grins down at Marley. “I used to be a boring dad, but now I’m a cool dad who does a lot of extra vacuuming.” He looks Marley over. “Fresh clothes for you, please, before you sit on the couch.”

     “Okay!”

     “And do you wanna show Lucy the bathroom so she can get that flour off her face?”

     “Yup!” Marley says, and she grabs Lucy by the hand and tows her down the hallway. “You wanna get changed, too?” she asks.

     “I don’t have any spare clothes here.”

     “Oh. My clothes won’t fit you.”

     “That’s okay,” Lucy says. “My shirt’s dry, it’s just… floury.”

     Marley tugs Lucy sideways into her bedroom. “You can help me,” she says. “I can’t get dressed by myself until my arm’s better.”

     “Uh, sure. Do you pick out your own clothes?”

     “Yup! I’ll show you.”

     She’s deft at yanking the drawers open, rifling through the clothes one-handed and tossing her selection onto the bed. It isn’t until they’re all in front of her that she hesitates, looking from her arm to the clothes and back again.

     Lucy crouches in front of her. “The sling comes off first, I think,” she says. She slides Marley’s elbow out carefully and then lifts the sling over her head. “Then arms.”

     Marley wriggles her own good arm out of the t-shirt and then squints her eyes shut when Lucy pulls it off her head. Working it around the cast takes a bit of careful manoeuvring but they manage it. The leggings are easier, both coming off and going on. The new ones have a pattern of blue and purple mermaid scales.

     “You know,” Lucy says, holding the waistband so that Marley can step into the leggings, “my sister would’ve loved pants like this when she was your age. She wanted to be a mermaid so much, I think she would’ve worn them every day.”

     “Is your sister a kid?”

     “No, she’s grown up now.” A lie, but Lucy tells herself it doesn’t matter. It had been true and it will be true again. She can’t let herself stop believing that.

     “So now she’s a grown-up, she can buy her own mermaid pants!”

     “Maybe she will.”

     “Or you could get them for her!” Marley exclaims. “For Christmas!”

     “I could,” Lucy says quietly. Christmas without Amy is a little too much to contemplate right now. She takes Marley’s new shirt and frowns at the cast. “What’s first? Arm or head?”

     “Head.”

     Lucy works the neck hole down until Marley’s rosy-cheeked face reappears. She looks from the shirt’s sleeve to Marley’s wrist and the little girl lifts her arm hopefully, but there’s no way it’s going to happen. Not while the arm is trapped in that 90-degree bend.

     “Nope,” Lucy says, tugging the t-shirt back off. “Not head first. Arm first.”

     “Have you done your Christmas shopping already?” Marley asks while Lucy slides the sleeve up past the cast.

     “Hm, not yet. I’m cutting it a bit close this year.” She works the shirt back over Marley’s head.

     “You could go Christmas shopping with me!” Marley says eagerly, emerging in a cloud of mussed golden hair.

     “With you?”

     “Yeah! Then I could buy presents for Daddy that were a surprise!”

     “Maybe he doesn’t like surprises.”

     “Oh no, he does,” Marley says confidently. She tries ineffectually to push her hair out of her face with only her left hand and then blows it away from her eyes in exasperation. “I need a ponytail.”

     “You want braids?” Lucy asks.

     “You can do braids?”

     Lucy nods. “French braids, Dutch braids… any type you want.”

     “Two braids!”

     “Easy. Do you have a hairbrush?”

     “Yeah! In the bathroom.”

     Lucy follows her in, glancing in the mirror and rubbing the flour off her face while Marley collects a brush and hair elastics and then following the little girl back into the lounge.

     The floor is clean and Wyatt’s still wiping down the table. He straightens up as they come in and says to Lucy, “You want cider?”

     “Yes, thanks.”

     “Okay. Marls, apple juice?”

     “With ice, please!”

     “Got it,” Wyatt says. He moves to step around Lucy and then he stops, frowning at her.

     “What?”

     He murmurs, “You’ve got…” and then trails off, bringing his hand up to her face. His fingers brush her neck as his thumb smooths over the soft skin just beneath her ear. “Flour.”

     “I must have missed some,” Lucy says. She finds herself frozen in place, feeling irrationally as if any sudden movement might scare him away. The pad of his thumb is cool and dry as he traces it down the line of her jaw. He’s so close that she can see the darker ring of blue around the edge of his irises – close enough that she can see the movement when his eyes flicker down to her lips.

     “Hey, Daddy?”

     Wyatt’s eyes snap back up to meet Lucy’s, his hand falling to his side as he steps away. “Yeah?”

     “Lucy’s going to take me Christmas shopping.”

     “Huh. Is she?”

     “Apparently,” Lucy says. Her voice comes out a little breathy and she feels heat rush to her cheeks as she clears her throat. “I mean, only if you think it’s a good idea.”

     “It sounds fun to me.”

     “You’re not invited,” Marley pipes up. “It’s just me and Lucy.”

     Wyatt quirks an eyebrow at her and Lucy fights back a sudden hot prickling behind her eyes. She shouldn’t want this as badly as she does. She blinks rapidly, furious with herself for even thinking of crying – and over what? Nothing happened.

     But she’d wanted it to.

     These are exactly the thoughts she’s trying to avoid. She shouldn’t be here. She should make some excuse and go home right now and stay far, far away from him.

     “The cookies will be done soon,” Wyatt says slowly, like he knows what she’s thinking.

     “Lucy!” Marley singsongs. “My braids!”

     They’re conspiring to keep her here. That’s what she tells herself, because she isn’t ready to be honest. It would be too rude to leave right this second, anyway, because she’d promised to do Marley’s hair – and yeah, the cookies do smell good – and Wyatt’s watching her a little nervously, his hands now stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.

     Lucy manages a smile. “Thanks,” she says, even though she doesn’t know what she’s thanking him for, and she turns away and moves back to Marley.

     She stays for the rest of the game, sitting on the couch with Marley on the floor in front of her, back bumping up against Lucy’s knees. The braids are only slightly lopsided when they’re finished. Lucy’s a little proud of how good they look, considering how long it’s been since she’s done anyone else’s hair.

     “They’ll stay in until Monday, if you leave them overnight,” she says. “Then you can have braids for school.”

     “Oh, yeah!” Marley bounces up to her feet, beaming, and leans in to grab Lucy’s neck in a strangling, one-armed hug. “Thanks for my braids!”

     “You’re welcome,” Lucy says, wheezing a little. She glances at Wyatt over Marley’s shoulder and the raw affection in his eyes and slow smile makes her breath catch for a whole other reason.

     Against her better judgement, she stays for dinner – and after dinner, too, when they play Go Fish. It’s Marley’s idea, but she struggles to hold her cards fanned out with only one hand, so after a while she crawls into Lucy’s lap and the two of them play as a team, high-fiving every time they make a set and beating Wyatt soundly five games to one. 

     It’s late by the time Lucy finally leaves. She gets another one-armed strangle-hug from Marley and a quick, tight squeeze from Wyatt that makes her heart thud guiltily. When the door swings shut behind her Lucy feels almost cast adrift, cut off from the apartment’s warm yellow light and cookie dough smell. She stands in the hallway for longer than she should, blinking at the apartment door and silently promising herself that she won’t come back.

14^th December 2016
(Now)

     Seeing Marley is not the same as seeing Wyatt. That’s how Lucy justifies it, anyway. It’s a totally different thing. She's only texted Wyatt a couple of times since Sunday, and she barely speaks to him on Wednesday afternoon; they’re together just long enough for him to move the car seat from his car to Lucy's and buckle Marley in.

     Lucy spends the drive to the mall trying to pretend that she’s not even thinking about Wyatt. She helps Marley decide what to get for her Aunt Jackie, asks the little girl for advice on presents for Rufus and Jiya and manages to block it out right up until they're walking into Westfield and Marley says, “What about Daddy?”

     “Oh, yeah. I forgot about him.” Which is a lie, but it’s what Lucy wants to believe.

     “Well?” Marley asks, swinging their joined hands. “What things do daddies like?”

     “I, uh…” Lucy thinks about her own father and grins, for a second, at the memory. “Me and my sister used to get our dad watches.”

     “Watches?”

     “Yeah, you know,” she says, “to tell the time.”

     “I know,” Marley says. “But, you got him watches every Christmas?”

     “Well, not exactly every single Christmas – but a lot of them, yeah. He used to keep losing his watches, so he always needed new ones.”

     Marley shakes her head definitively. “Uh-uh. I don’t wanna get Daddy a present he’ll always lose.”

     “Fair enough,” Lucy says. She thinks again; not about Wyatt but just fathers in general. “A wallet?”

     “For holding money?”

     “Yes.”

     “No, that’s boring.” Marley skips for a couple of steps, clinging to Lucy’s fingers. “How about boots?”

     “Boots?”

     “Yeah!”

     “Usually you need someone to try on shoes, though,” Lucy says. “What if his boots were the wrong size? That wouldn’t be a very good present.”

     “Oh.” Marley screws up her face, thinking, and Lucy grins down at her. “We could get him… socks.”

     “Socks?”

     “Pretty ones.”

     “Right,” Lucy says, trying and failing to hold back her laugh. She drops Marley’s hand to fish her phone out of her back pocket and sends Wyatt a text.

     Heads up – we’re buying you pretty socks for Christmas.

     The three dots signifying his reply appear instantly, and Lucy grins and waits, telling herself firmly that this doesn’t count as ‘seeing Wyatt’. This is barely a conversation. He says,

     Great. Pls also get beautiful gloves.

     She laughs again and tucks the phone away, lifting her head. “Hey, Marley-” She cuts herself off, because the space beside her is empty. Lucy frowns, staring down at the place where Marley had been standing. She turns in a slow circle, her eyes scanning the crowds for the distinctive towhead or the bright blue of the sling. Nothing. She’s just… not here.

     It takes another few seconds of standing there before the reality kicks in and Lucy’s heart starts to pound. She knows, in an abstract way, that kids get lost in malls. She’s never experienced it herself – she’d never been lost as a kid. Mom had told her one scary story about a boy who was ‘stolen’ from a mall and that had always been enough to make Lucy stay close. Now, the same story echoes in the back of her mind. From the perspective of adulthood, it suddenly seems a lot scarier.

     Her skin prickles. She spins another slow 360, desperately searching for the familiar little shape. There’s a blond girl standing by the escalators and Lucy’s already taken several quick steps towards her before the child turns around and reveals a stranger’s face.

     It’s okay, Lucy thinks, it’s fine. She’ll just search around here. Marley can’t have gone far. Hastily, with every sense on high alert, Lucy retraces their steps. She walks back past the Foot Locker and leans over the balcony to peer down into the food court below. And then, stupidly, she looks up and feels her breath catch in her throat as she takes in the endless white, spiralling levels of escalators; the massive scale of this place, which has never bothered her before. It goes on forever and panic starts to rise, choking her.

     There must be somewhere else to look. The sign for the restrooms catches her eye and she hurries towards them, hoping that maybe Marley just took herself straight over there. She’s a smart kid. Lucy brushes sharply past another woman in the doorway. There’s no one by the sinks. Desperation overcomes her sense of shame and she steps quickly down the row of cubicles, ducking her head to glance underneath each door, trying to remember what colour sneakers Marley had been wearing. Red? Pink? It doesn’t matter; there are no children’s feet visible under any of the stall doors.

     How long has it been now? Five minutes? Six? How far from the mall could someone get her in that time?

     For the first time, Lucy thinks of Rittenhouse and forgets how to breathe. Rufus had said they’d threatened his family. What if…

     A toilet flushes and a woman emerges from the cubicle Lucy is standing far too close to. She stammers an apology and backs up, then turns and rushes from the restroom. She hovers outside for a second, her eyes on the door to the men’s, trying to gather the courage to go in.

     “Excuse me,” someone says behind her.

     Lucy steps aside and then thinks better of it and says, “Wait! Please.”

     The man turns around and offers her an uncertain smile. “Are you okay?”

     “Could you check – in the bathroom, do you think you could have a look for – I’ve lost my…” she can’t find the word. She can’t think of what Marley is to her. She can only think of what Marley will be.

     Daughter. Her lips shape it, but no sound comes out.

     Thankfully, the man cottons on anyway. He says, “Little boy?”

     “Girl,” Lucy corrects. “She’s five, she’s got blond hair.”

     “I’ll have a look,” he promises, and steps inside the door.

     Lucy waits, shifting her weight from foot to foot until the man reappears, shaking his head. No kids in the restroom. She thanks him anyway and then hurries back towards the main thoroughfare. What next? Does she call mall security? The cops? Wyatt?

     Too jittery to stand still for long, she walks quickly back around the level again; past a men’s clothing store, past a store that sells scented candles. It’s been at least ten minutes now. Lucy’s hands are shaking. She yells Marley’s name as she goes, beyond caring whether other shoppers are giving her strange looks.

     Outside Victoria’s Secret, she spots a security guard and makes a beeline for him. “Excuse me?”

     “Hey,” he says, looking down at her with a smile that fades quickly when she doesn’t return it. “Are you all right?”

     “I’ve lost my… little girl,” Lucy says. She quickly reels off the rest of the information; “She’s five years old, she’s got blond hair and a broken right arm in a blue cast.”

     The security guy jumps to attention immediately. He says, “Okay, ma’am,” and Lucy’s heart twists. “Can you remember what she was wearing?”

     “A – a green sweater,” Lucy says, “and, uh… black or dark blue pants, I think.” She can’t remember properly. She curls her hands into fists, nails biting into her palms, furious with herself. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure.”

     “That’s fine, ma’am,” the man soothes. “About how long ago did you lose her?”

     “I think… almost fifteen minutes?”

     “Right, and whereabouts did you see her last?”

     Lucy points. “We were just down there, right outside the Foot Locker.”

     “Okay. Ma’am, what I’m going to do is radio this in to my colleagues, all right? That way everyone will be keeping an eye out for her. What I want you to do is go right back to where you saw her last, understand? That way if she finds her way back somehow, you’re still there. Okay?”

     Lucy nods jerkily, her heart still thudding too fast. “Okay,” she repeats. “Okay. Thank you.”

     “Don’t worry,” he says seriously. “This happens all the time. She’ll be back before you know it.”

     Somehow, Lucy manages to nod again; she even tries for a smile, although it feels like more of a grimace. She turns and walks, robotically, back to the patch of tile outside the shoe store. Her legs feel heavier with every step. Standing there just makes her feel worse. All she can do is stare at the escalators, and how close they are, and imagine how far away Marley could’ve gotten in any direction by now. She shouldn’t be standing still, she should be doing something. She keeps picturing Marley somewhere, alone and afraid. Or worse, afraid because she’s not alone.

     The crowds part around her without seeming to notice or care. Two different mixes of Christmas carols drift out of the stores closest to Lucy, discordant and chaotic. Her head aches. How had she fucked this up so badly? She should never have let go of Marley’s hand. She should’ve just kept talking to her, instead of texting Wyatt. They’d been happy, they’d been chatting…

     Lucy sinks to her haunches, letting her head drop into her hands and trying to slow her breathing. She can feel herself spiralling out of control; the panic crushing her chest the way it had done back in that sinking car and the way it does so often in the Lifeboat, or in the past. God, she wishes Wyatt were here to talk her through this one.

     She sees it as she raises her head. The advertising screen on the level below them is visible suddenly from this low angle – Marley’s angle – and it’s displaying a massive, sparkling Gucci watch.

     Lucy sucks a sharp breath in. She doesn’t bother to think rationally, or even think at all. She just stands up and jogs for the escalators. She pushes past an older man on her way down, muttering an apology, leaps the last two steps and sprints around the curve of the level towards that advertisement. Her heart pounds in her throat and she thinks, please, please…

     The space around the screen is empty. Lucy slows to a stop, bends over with her hands on her knees and then hears from behind her a high, lisping voice.

     “Lucy?!”

     Lucy spins around and Marley is there, running at her with pigtails flying and Lucy bends and sweeps the little girl up into her arms, clutching her as close as she can with the cast awkward between them. She says, “Oh, thank you, thank you,” to nobody and crushes Marley against her chest.

     Marley is sobbing, “I thought you l-left me!” and clinging tight with her good hand, fingers curled painfully into the hair at the nape of Lucy’s neck.

     “No,” Lucy promises. “I didn’t leave. I’ve been looking for you all the time. Where did you go?”

     “Finding a watch for D-d-daddy,” Marley cries hysterically.

     A man clears his throat and Lucy lifts her head, trying to compose her features so that she looks at least slightly normal. A totally futile effort, it turns out, because she recognises the older man now standing in front of her, smiling a little helplessly. Benjamin Cahill.

     “I assume this is your little girl?” he says.

     Lucy fights to disguise her shock, shifting Marley in her arms so that she can see properly past the girl’s shoulder. “Um.”

     “I’m Benjamin.”

     She swallows back I know and says instead, “Oh. Uh, yes, this is my… Marley.”

     Cahill nods. “I found Miss Marley here alone, so I thought I’d wait with her. I suggested she stay in the same spot, so that you’d know where to look.”

     Useless, since Lucy had never been down here with her. She stares at the man – her father – searching his expression for some kind of knowledge, or recognition, or ulterior motive. She comes up empty. He looks perfectly, harmlessly pleasant.

     Marley is sniffling still, her face damp against Lucy’s neck. There’s still a rush of adrenaline throughout Lucy’s body and she’s starting to feel light-headed. The last thing she needs right now is to navigate the potential pitfalls of a conversation with Benjamin Cahill.

     “Thank you very much,” she says, “and sorry but I have to go and tell security that I’ve found her. Thanks for helping her out. Bye.” She hesitates, because it feels a little short, and then she adds, “Say bye, Marley.”

     Marley doesn’t lift her head. She mumbles, “Bye,” against Lucy’s shoulder.

     Lucy forces another tight smile at Cahill before she turns and walks stiffly away. She thinks she can feel his eyes on her back, but she doesn’t turn to check. Instead she pulls Marley closer and says, “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

     “Uh huh.”

     “Are you sure?”

     “I was just really scared,” Marley whispers. “And I thought you went home without me.”

     Lucy stops near the bottom of the escalator, unwilling to put Marley down just yet. “I’d never do that,” she says. “I’d never leave you.”

     “Are you mad?”

     “No, sweetie. I’m not mad.” She isn’t, which she’s a little surprised by. Yeah, it had been stupid for Marley to run off – but it was Lucy’s fault for not paying attention. The only thing she feels now is an overwhelming sense of relief and a surge of fierce affection for the girl in her arms.

     “I’m really glad you found me,” Marley says.

     “Me, too.”

     “I missed you.”

     That almost makes Lucy laugh. How long had it taken, in the end, this whole, horrible experience? Twenty minutes? She says, “I missed you, too.”

     “When you didn’t come to see us,” Marley reiterates. “I missed you then. I’m glad you came back to watch football with us.”

     Lucy turns her head and presses a kiss to Marley’s temple. She says, “I’m glad, too,” and is a little startled to find it's true.

     She’s really done it this time, she thinks ruefully. She’s wasted all this time worrying about falling in love with Wyatt and now she’s gone and fallen in love with his kid as well.  

Chapter Text

24^th December 2016
(Now)

     Christmas has landed on a weekend this year, which doesn’t make a difference to Wyatt, but it’s annoying Jackie no end.

     “Seriously,” she says, holding out her hand for the scissors. Wyatt passes them over. “They should compensate for it! It just means everyone loses two days of holiday time.”

     Wyatt hadn’t had a 9-to-5 job even before Mason Industries recruited him, so he’s got absolutely no stakes in this conversation. Still, in the spirit of Christmas and making an effort, he says, “You’re right, it’s absolutely unfair.”

     Jackie hums and then says, “Are you really putting more tape on that?”

     “What?” Wyatt looks down at the present he’s wrapping. “It’s coming apart.”

     “So you want to mummify it in tape? Marley won’t be able to open it.”

     “Sure she will. She just rips them apart.” He’d discovered that at her birthday party.

     “She’s five.”

     “It’s scotch tape, not steel.”

     Jackie rolls her eyes. “Fine,” she says, in a voice that clearly indicates it’s not fine. “If you say so.”

     Wyatt feels like this timeline’s version of his sister-in-law is just as annoying as the other one, but now there’s an undercurrent of gratitude running through every interaction. He knows how much she helps with Marley. He can’t imagine how much she’d helped when he’d been newly widowed with a baby.

     So he swallows his pride and tosses the present over into Jackie’s lap. “All right,” he says. “See if you can fix it.” Even though he’d find it hard to think of anything he cares about less than perfectly wrapped Christmas gifts. The paper is brightly-coloured and there’s a present inside – what more does it need?

     There’s silence while Jackie refolds the edge of the paper until it entirely covers the bright pink box of rollerblades underneath. Wyatt itches to take over Jackie’s final half-wrapped gift – they would probably have been done an hour ago if she was less of a perfectionist – but he sits still and thinks about Christmas and family and gratitude.

     Obviously Jackie’s thoughts are running on similar lines, because as she finishes the present she says, “I’m sorry about leaving you guys alone tomorrow afternoon.”

     Wyatt shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry. You’ll be here in the morning – and it’s good to spend time with Mike’s family too.”

     “Yeah,” Jackie says. She picks up the last present. “I was going to tell you… we found a place.” She looks up at him nervously, grimacing a little as she says, “We’ve made an offer.”

     A memory flashes through Wyatt’s mind; a conversation he and Jess had had during some completely innocuous moment. He doesn’t even remember where they’d been – sitting, walking, driving? – but he remembers Jess joking at the thought of her anal-retentive, perfectionist little sister ever moving in with a guy. She’d said that Jackie would draw a ‘don’t cross or else’ line down the middle of the bed, just like she’d done in the room she once shared with Jess. Wyatt had laughed and Jess’ eyes had sparkled.

     Remembering doesn’t hurt as much as it usually does. It’s not all-consuming and agonisingly painful. It’s just… sad. Impossibly sad, but also the first time in years that he’s been able to linger over a memory of Jess like that.

     “That’s great,” Wyatt tells Jackie. “I mean, we’ll miss you, but it’s great.”

     She sighs, looking relieved. “Thanks,” she says. “I know it’ll make things harder with Marley and your work.”

     “Doesn’t matter,” Wyatt says. “We’ll figure it out.”

     Jackie hands him the last present with a smile, and he places it in the bag with all the others. He’ll take them through to his own apartment and set them out under the tree.

     “Thanks,” she says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

     “Did we finish all of Santa’s cookies?”

     She grins. “Two left.”

     Wyatt reaches over to grab the last cookies off the plate, handing one to Jackie and biting into the other. He’ll eat the carrots for the reindeer later. Marley had wanted to set out a carrot for each of the nine reindeer, who she apparently knows by name, but Wyatt had talked her out of that idea. He’s only got two to eat.

     He takes the empty plate with him as he gets to his feet, hoisting the unwieldy bag of presents and feeling very much like Santa Claus as he slings it over his shoulder. “Merry Christmas Eve, Jackie.”

     “Merry Christmas Eve,” she echoes.

     Wyatt backs out of the front door so that he can pull it closed behind himself. The hall light flickers overhead and he narrows his eyes and reminds himself to email the building super tomorrow. It’s been flickering all week and-

     -Lucy is standing in front of Wyatt’s apartment.

     He stares at her for a second, startled at first and then immediately worried. It’s after ten, the night outside is pitch-black and freezing, and Wyatt can’t think of a good reason for her to be here. His eyes flicker over her; cheeks flushed from cold, nose red and eyes shining wetly under the stupid flickering light. She’s been crying.

     “Lucy?”

     “Hi,” she says thickly. “Sorry, I’m… it’s really late, sorry. I should go.”

     “It’s not that late,” Wyatt tries, but she’s seen the bag over his shoulder and starts backing away, shaking her head.

     “It’s Christmas Eve,” she says. “You’ve got presents. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” She takes a few more quick steps and starts to turn away from Wyatt, heading towards the elevators.

     Wyatt doesn’t even stop to think; he lets the bag of presents drop to the ground and hurries after Lucy, catching her arm and spinning her back to face him. “Hey,” he says, as gently as he can. “What’s wrong?”

     “Nothing.”

     She’s a terrible liar. It’s obvious that she wants to tell him. She stands there limply, shoulders slumped and eyes on the floor.

     Wyatt says, “Okay,” and then, thinking fast, “Want to come and eat Santa’s carrots?”

     That gets her attention. Her eyes snap up to meet his and she says, “What?”

     “I’m supposed to eat them before tomorrow,” he says. “For the reindeer. Actually, there’s also some of Santa’s whiskey left. I should’ve led with that.”

     She doesn’t smile, exactly, but there’s something brighter in her eyes when she looks at him. “Santa gets whiskey?”

     “Sure,” Wyatt says briskly. He slides his hand down her arm slowly, keeps talking while he folds his fingers around hers. “He’s got a long night ahead of him. The guy could do with a pick-me-up, don’t you think?” He takes a step back towards the apartment and then another, tugging on their joined hands until Lucy follows him.

     She stops by the bag of presents. “Don’t you need to-”

     “It’s just putting them under the tree,” Wyatt says. “It’ll take sixty seconds. The rest of my night is wide open.”

     “No, it’s not.”

     Wyatt pauses, trying to guess where she’s going with this. “Lucy…”

     “You’ve got to eat carrots,” she says, and then she gives him a tremulous, miserable little smile.

     It kind of breaks Wyatt’s heart, if he’s honest. He thinks about Castle Varlar, about the terror in Lucy’s eyes and the way she’d walked in there anyway. She tries so hard to keep that stuff to herself, and Wyatt gets that. He knows that he does the same thing – but it feels better to have someone to talk to, even if it’s just one person. It’s been a long time since he’s managed to trust anyone with the things he’s blurted out to Lucy.

     “Hey,” he says, stooping to pick up the presents. “You remember that talk we had on Halloween?”

     She nods, says quietly, “Yeah. I think so.”

     “Is there anything you need off your chest?”

     Lucy hesitates. She opens her mouth and then she stops and closes it again and shakes her head.

     And Wyatt gets it. He says, “Okay. Whiskey?”

     This time she answers quickly. “Yeah. Yes, please.”

     Wyatt pulls the keys out of his pocket and jangles them in front of Lucy. “After you,” he says, and then adds, because he can’t resist it, “Ma’am.” He flashes Lucy a wicked grin and expects a laugh, or at least a smile in return, but he doesn’t get either. Instead she just stares at him, her eyes dark and unfathomable and his gaze drops automatically to her lips and without meaning to he’s suddenly remembering what it felt like to kiss her, that night in the car up on the hilltop.

     He clears his throat and shakes the keys again, and Lucy startles a little and then grabs them, turning away from him to unlock the door.

     “I really don’t need to stay,” she says, voice low as they step into the entry. Wyatt kicks Marley’s shoes out of his way.

     “I want you to.”

     “You – what?”

     “I’d like you to stay,” Wyatt says. Then he backtracks quickly, saying, “For a drink. I feel like I owe you that, at least.”

     “You owe me?”

     “Yeah,” he says, closing the front door. “For getting you shot.”

     Lucy shrugs off her coat. “You didn’t get me shot.”

     “I let you get shot,” Wyatt says. His eyes stray down to her side, like he might be able to see straight through her pale purple sweater to the injury beneath.

     Lucy touches her hand to the same spot. “There’s barely a mark left,” she says. “I might not even have a scar.” Then, like she’s proving it to herself, she hooks her fingers under the bottom of the sweater and lifts it up, saying, “See?”

     There is a mark. Just below the white band of her bra is a puckered, half-healed line, vivid and stark pink against her pale skin.

     At first Wyatt doesn’t know what he’s going to do; and then he does know, and there’s a second where he could – maybe should – stop himself, but he doesn’t. His breath catches in his throat and he reaches out and traces the stripe that the bullet had left behind, his fingertips brushing over the scar and feeling the soft give of her skin around it.

     Lucy shivers, and when Wyatt looks up to meet her eyes he finds them wide and uncertain and for a moment he’s not sure…

     She steps closer to him, until their faces are only inches apart, and his fingers splay over her side. He can feel the rapid rise and fall of her chest. If he moved his hand only a little higher, he’d bet he could feel her heart pounding; find out if it’s thudding as hard as his own.

     And she’s still moving nearer, until she’s so close that Wyatt’s eyes drift shut of their own accord and he feels Lucy’s breath against his lips. They haven’t even had any whiskey yet, he thinks, but he feels half-drunk as the sack of presents drops from his nerveless fingers. Lucy’s hand slides up his arm and onto his shoulder and then she’s pulling him past that final fraction of space between them.

     Her lips are cool and soft, and the way they fit against his feels stupidly familiar, considering that Wyatt’s only kissed her once before. He recognises all of it; the very slightly sweet taste of chapstick; the curve of her neck and the fall of her hair; the way one of her hands curls around his jaw while the other fists into his shirt and tugs him closer.

     Wyatt spans his hand out across Lucy’s ribs and her fingers dig into his shoulder when they break the kiss, both breathing hard. Wyatt leans backwards enough to see her face without taking his hands off her. There’s no uncertainty in her eyes anymore.

     They don’t talk. They don’t need to. Lucy toes off her sneakers and Wyatt kisses her again, his fingers tangled in her hair as they stumble into the hallway. He moves his other hand around to the small of her back and holds her closer, feeling the soft press of her breasts and her hands at his hips, sliding up under his button-down.

     They’re clumsy but quiet, unable to let go of one another as they navigate the hallway and finally, finally, fetch up against Wyatt’s bedroom door. He opens it without looking, Lucy’s bottom lip caught between his teeth, but he breaks the kiss as soon as they step through. He reaches behind his head to pull his shirt off, closes the door as quietly as he can and turns around to find Lucy already out of her sweater.

     Fuck, she’s gorgeous. Wyatt’s mind goes pleasantly blank and he stares until Lucy hooks her fingers through his belt loops and pulls him back to her. Her bare skin is smooth and cool under his hands and he finds the clasp of her bra as her lips hit his jaw and slide down to his collarbone. Her hair is soft and mussed and he pushes his hands back into it, tilting her head up so that he can kiss her again.

     She pulls back and says, breathlessly, “Is this okay?”

     Wyatt can’t quite figure out why she’d be asking. He says, “Yeah,” voice rough, and then his brain catches up and he thinks that maybe he should be asking questions of his own. “You want to stop?”

     “No. Don’t stop.”

     Wyatt says, “Thank god,” fervently, and Lucy laughs until Wyatt presses his lips to her neck, and then the sound catches in her throat. Her hands come up and cling to him and he walks her backwards until they find the bed and tumble onto it together.

25^th December 2016
(Now)

     When Wyatt wakes in the darkness Lucy is warm in the bed beside him, her bare shoulder pressed against his, her breathing slow and even. He’s lying on the wrong side of his bed and her hair is in his face so that he’s practically inhaling it, her knee jammed up into his thigh and her hand squashed between his back and the mattress.

     It's stupidly uncomfortable, and yet when Wyatt takes a deep breath and lets it out in a rush he feels tension seep from every muscle in his body. This doesn’t feel like a mistake. It doesn’t feel like something he’s going to regret come daylight, or the total destruction of their friendship and their ability to work together. Despite all of his doubts, this doesn’t feel like an end at all.

     It feels like a beginning.

Chapter Text

25^th December 2016
(Now)

     Lucy wakes up when Wyatt gets back into bed beside her, his weight making the mattress dip. She slits one eye open, but the bedroom is still dark.

     “You okay?” she mumbles.

     “Yeah,” Wyatt whispers. “Just had to do the presents.”

     Right. They’d forgotten all about that earlier. There was something else that Lucy vaguely remembers was important, but she can’t quite catch the thought through the fog of sleep. She shifts closer to Wyatt, reaching across the bed until her fingertips brush his side. A strange kind of ache throbs in her chest. She’d tried so hard to stop herself from wanting this, and now that she’s here she almost wishes they could put things back to normal. Everything between her and Wyatt is suddenly uncharted territory and it terrifies her.

     “Wyatt?”

     “Mm?”

     But now there are a dozen questions chasing around Lucy’s head and she can’t figure out which one to ask first. What about Jessica? What about Marley? Does this mean as much to Wyatt as she thinks it means to her?

     For so long, Lucy’s life had revolved around Mom, around saying goodbye and letting go. There hadn’t been time for anyone else. She’d had Amy’s support and that was all she’d needed. But, now... well, now Mom is healthy and there’s no reason anymore for Lucy to be putting her life on hold and pretending that she doesn’t want something exactly like this. Love. Trust. Family.

     She has to tell him; about Rittenhouse, her theories about their future… everything. “Wyatt?”

     But this time there’s no answer, just slow, heavy breathing.

Four Hours Later
(Now)

     “Hey!”

     Lucy startles out of sleep, limbs jerking, her eyes flying open only to squinch shut at the bright light overhead. She says, “Huh?”

     “What are you doing in here?”

     Unmistakably Marley’s voice. Lucy fumbles for the covers and is relieved to find them already pulled up to her neck. She turns her head to the side and squints, seeing the bed there flat and empty. Wyatt’s gone.

     A stupid kind of panic grips Lucy until she remembers that this is his apartment and there’s absolutely no way he can sneak out to try and avoid her. Not without abandoning his daughter, anyway. 

     Lucy blinks a little, her eyes adjusting to the light, and lifts her head to see Marley sitting at the foot of the bed, dressed in pyjamas printed with large purple stars and with a chocolate stain at the side of her mouth.

     “Hi,” Lucy says.

     Marley lifts her eyebrows and looks suddenly very like Wyatt. “I said, what are you doing in here?”

     “Uh. Sleeping?”

     “It’s Christmas.”

     Oh crap. It’s Christmas. “Yeah,” Lucy says slowly. “Yeah, it is.” And Mom will be wondering where she is, and Wyatt’s sister-in-law will be coming over any time now, and Lucy is very naked under these covers with a five-year-old in the room.

     Marley bounces closer. “I got you a present,” she confides.

     “I got you one, too.”

     “What is it?”

     “Uh,” Lucy says, thinking fast. She just needs Marley out of the room for five minutes. “It might be under the tree. Why don’t you go and check? The wrapping paper is purple.”

     “You come and show me.”

     “No, I, uh…” Lucy can’t think of a good excuse. She can’t even think of a bad excuse. “Hey, where’s your dad?”

     “Making coffee,” Marley says, wrinkling her nose up. “It smells gross. I came in here to use the toilet.”

     “Oh.” Lucy thinks about that. “What about the other toilet?”

     “Daddy’s bathroom is way nicer. My bathroom is cold.”

     “Uh huh.” Lucy struggles to remember if there might be anything incriminating in Wyatt’s bathroom. And where the hell are her clothes? “Hey, can you do me a favour?”

     “Maybe,” Marley says doubtfully.

     “Can you go and ask your dad to make me a coffee, too?”

     “Why can’t you?”

     Good question. Lucy says, “Well,” and then stops, stumped again.

     “Just lazy?”

     “No, but-”

     The bedroom door creaks open and Wyatt shoulders his way in, holding a mug in each hand. He takes in the situation at a glance, his eyes roving over Lucy with the covers yanked to her chin and Marley kneeling on the bed beside her.

     “Hey, Marls!” he exclaims. “Guess what?!”

     The little girl bounces on her knees, already responding to the excitement in his voice. “What?”

     “You know that giant present under the tree?”

     “Uh huh.”

     “You know how it had no name on it?”

     “Yeah?”

     “I found the name!”

     Marley clambers off the bed, keeping her broken arm close to her side. “Who’s it for? It’s so big!”

     “Go see,” Wyatt says, and he tips his head towards the open door and Marley darts out of it, her little feet thudding down the hallway.

     Lucy lets out a breath. “Thanks,” she says. “That was great.”

     Wyatt’s mouth quirks into a half-smile. “I have my moments,” he says. “Well. Sometimes.” He sets one of the mugs down on the bedside table and then sits on the bed beside her legs. “Morning.”

     “Morning.”

     A thousand unspoken things fill the air between them and for a moment it’s almost stifling. Lucy stares at him; at the five o’clock shadow on his jaw and the clear blue of his eyes. She thinks about the way he’d looked at her last night.

     There’s too much to say, but she’s also pressingly aware that Marley’s absence might not last long. She needs to get dressed.

     She sits up, clutching the covers to her chest, and says, “I think I should-”

     Wyatt speaks at the same time. “I don’t want to-”

     They both break off and stare at each other, and Lucy feels suddenly sick. He doesn’t want to… what? Talk? Figure out whatever this is? Ever see her again?

     “I should get dressed,” she says in a rush. “And – and go home. I mean, it’s Christmas morning, right? You’ll be… busy.” If she’s leaving, she wants it to be on her own terms and not because Wyatt asked her to go. She doesn’t think she’s strong enough to hear that right now.

     He stares at her for a moment, and then he swallows hard and says, “Oh. Yeah. Sure.” He gestures to the mug on the bedside table. “Have coffee first. I mean, if you want.”

     He’d brought her coffee before she even woke up. A rush of warmth fills Lucy’s chest, but it drains away as she looks at Wyatt’s face. He’s frowning down at the floor, jaw tight and with that furrow he gets between his eyebrows right before he tells her something bad.

     “Wyatt?” she asks in a small voice.

     His eyes flick up to her and rove across her face. Suddenly self-conscious, Lucy reaches up to try and tame her sleep-mussed hair, smoothing it down and tucking it behind her ears.

     He says, “I don’t want this to be a one-time thing.”

     The words reach Lucy through a kind of fog of disbelief. It takes a moment for her to process. “What?”

     Wyatt shakes his head. “Just… hear me out. I don’t want to pretend nothing happened and everything’s normal. I’m not sure I can go back to just being coworkers. I know this is… complicated, and I come with a helluva lot of baggage, and I understand if-”

     Lucy blurts, “I think we end up together.”

     He stops, blinking. “What?”

     She’s said it. Her heart is thudding stupidly fast as she repeats, “I think we end up together. In the future. I think… Marley’s sister…” He’s shaking his head, and she wonders for a moment if he doesn’t believe her.

     Then he says, “Is that why you did this? Because of all the time travel destiny bullshit?”

     “What’s time travel destiny bullshit?” Marley’s voice pipes up from the doorway, sweet and innocent as ever. Lucy cringes, pulling the covers more tightly against her chest.

     Wyatt says, “Uh,” but the little girl has already moved on.

     “I lined all my presents up in a line and they go all the way past the TV!” she exclaims. “Come see!”

     “Sure, kiddo.” He doesn’t look at Lucy as he stands up, turning towards the door.

     Marley leaves first, her feet thudding as she sprints down the hallway, and Lucy grabs her chance, leaning forward as she says, “Wyatt, wait.”

     He stops, but he doesn’t turn around. “You shouldn’t have to be with me,” he says quietly. “That’s messed up, Lucy.”

     “You really think that’s why?”

     Now he half-turns, staring fiercely at her. “What am I supposed to think? You came here crying. Is this why? Because you figured it out?”

     “I was crying,” Lucy says in exasperation, “because I had a stupid fight with my mom and you were the only person I wanted to see.”

     He says, “Oh,” but Lucy’s not done. The floodgates have opened on the words she’s been holding back for weeks.

     “You’re always the only person I want to see, Wyatt. I think I’ve been half in love with you since the Alamo. I know I’ve been in love with you since Halloween and – and I haven’t said anything because it’s too much and too soon and we’ve got so much else going on and-” but she has to stop to breathe, her heart pounding anxiously.

     Wyatt’s face is unreadable, but he says, “How long have you known about the future?”

     Lucy shakes her head. “Since the adult Marley came to my house, but it's only a guess. I… that’s not why I feel like this, Wyatt.”

     He blows out a long breath, scrubbing one hand over his face and backwards through his hair, leaving it standing in spikes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

     “I wasn’t sure,” she says. “And – and I thought maybe it was a bad idea. Because of Rittenhouse. I thought I should stay away from you.”

     “That’s why you’ve been cold-shouldering me?” Wyatt exclaims. “Jesus, Lucy, I thought I did something wrong!”

     “I know.” Her voice shakes a little. “I’m sorry.”

     “Daddy!” Marley’s shout echoes down the hallway. “Daddy!”

     Wyatt points at Lucy. “We’re not done talking.”

     She nods, trying to muster as much composure as she can while sitting naked in his bed. “Okay.”

     He turns and leaves, closing the bedroom door behind him, and Lucy sags where she sits. She drops her face into her hands and groans.

     She gets dressed hastily, hunting around Wyatt’s bedroom and finding her clothes abandoned on the floor, her bra atop the dresser and panties kicked under the bed. Putting them back on makes her feel gross and she longs for a shower, but the time pressure looms over her. She wants to get out of here; it’s Christmas, and she’s already overstepping the boundaries of this brand-new… whatever this thing between her and Wyatt is.

     She finger-combs through her hair as best she can, splashing her face with water from the sink and flushing when she makes eye contact with herself in the mirror. There are bags under her eyes and an ugly spot of blood on her lower lip where it’s cracked from the cold – and the kissing. She’s got a tube of chapstick and a bit of concealer in her bag, but that’s still by the front door somewhere, and Lucy doesn’t want to venture out of the bedroom. Instead she waits, perched uncertainly on the edge of the bed at first and then eventually walking around the room, investigating the books and clutter on Wyatt’s shelves. She trails her fingers over the spines and reads titles; there’s a lot of Ian Fleming, which she’d expected, and Jules Verne, which she hadn’t.

     There are photographs on top of the dresser; Wyatt surrounded by a group of other guys, standing in front of a bar somewhere; Marley, as a baby and then a chubby-cheeked toddler and a bigger, recent photo showing her pigtailed and grinning at the camera. The final picture frame is lying face-down. Lucy lifts it up, and then wishes she hadn’t. Marley is very young in the photo. Her little baby face is solemn and serious, eyes wide and staring at the camera. Jessica’s eyes are closed as she presses a kiss to Marley’s cheek. Wyatt, on the baby’s other side, is looking right at his wife. The little half-smile on his face makes Lucy’s stomach ache.

     She lays the picture down again and goes quietly back to sitting on the edge of the bed. It’s not like she doesn’t know that Wyatt had been in love with his wife. He’s been very open about it. He’s still in love with her, Lucy thinks, and maybe he always will be – but she’s dead and neither of them have done anything wrong. Lucy doesn’t need to feel so… dishonest. Guilty.

     Wyatt does nothing to dispel that feeling when he finally steps back into the room. “Okay,” he says. “I’ve sent Marley across the hall to Jackie’s place, so you should be able to get out without either of them seeing you.”

     “Great,” Lucy offers, and is a little startled to hear how bitter she sounds.

     Wyatt frowns at her. “Are you okay?”

     “Yeah. Yes. I’m fine.”

     “Do you… want to stay?” he asks slowly.

     God, no. Lucy forces a smile as she shakes her head, saying, “I’ll see you soon. Merry Christmas.”

     “Right,” Wyatt says. “Merry Christmas.”

     He trails after her to the door, standing and watching while she collects her bag and puts her sneakers on. When she straightens up, Wyatt puts his hand on her arm and leans in. Lucy isn’t expecting it; she turns her head and their noses bump and Wyatt’s kiss lands more on her chin than her mouth.

     “Sorry,” he says.

     Lucy shakes her head. “It’s okay.”

     But he doesn’t try again. He reaches past her to open the door and smiles and Lucy smiles back even though it feels suddenly foreign, like a lie on her lips.

     Going home feels like running some sort of gauntlet. There’s a horrible tension hanging in the air; the house always gets this way when Mom and Lucy fight. It’s suddenly too small and too quiet and every move could be the one that triggers the next eruption.

     When Lucy had been a teenager, Amy had run interference. Seven years younger, she was always on Mom’s good side – she only got in trouble when she forgot to clean her room or feed the fish – and so when Lucy was wearing the wrong clothes, getting the wrong grades or just making the wrong choices (“Singing is not a career, Lucy!”) Amy would step in. She’d distract Mom and argue on Lucy’s side, or creep into her room afterwards and say, “Don’t worry, Lu. I’d buy all your albums.”

     Lucy longs for Amy now, when Mom appears, regally descending the stairs in her robe and looking down at her daughter. “Well?”

     “I’m sorry,” Lucy says. And she is; she shouldn’t have let herself get drawn into an argument last night. She should still be overwhelmingly, impossibly grateful for this strong, healthy version of Mom she’s been given.

     “Where were you? I called Noah.”

     “I – nowhere.”

     Mom looks a bit surprised, like she didn’t expect Lucy to resist the question. “I was worried,” she says, going straight for the emotional blackmail.

     “I’m sorry, Mom. Can we just forget about it?”

     The older woman purses her lips, but then she concedes, saying, “Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” as she reaches the bottom of the stairs and holds out her arms. Lucy steps into her embrace with relief.

     “Merry Christmas,” she murmurs.

     Into the side of her hair, Mom says, “You can tell me, you know. Whatever it is you’re going through, Lucy, I’m here for you.”

     “I know.” Lucy’s heart sinks with the lie.

     Mom steps back, her hands on Lucy’s shoulders, holding her at arm’s length and looking her up and down. “I mean it,” she says. “I don’t care if it’s about work, or Noah, or Wyatt. Just talk to me again, sweetheart. The way you used to.”

     “I will,” Lucy says. “I promise. I’m just… let me go upstairs and shower, okay? Then we can do presents and we’ll talk. Like always, right?” Except ‘always’ means Amy’s gingerbread and Dad’s old Christmas ornaments and a lifetime of traditions that don’t exist anymore.

     In the bathroom, with her shirt off and a towel warming on the rack behind her, Lucy pauses in front of the mirror. There’s a dark blot of a hickey just beneath her collarbone – she’s always bruised easily. She rubs over the mark with her thumb, as if she can just erase it along with all of her uncertainties about last night.

     It isn’t until she’s standing in front of the shower with water hissing down that Mom’s words actually sink in. The shower door is still open and droplets spray out, but Lucy ignores them as she tries frantically to remember her conversations with Mom over the past few weeks. She’d talked about work, she knows, and probably about Rufus and Wyatt too, but indirectly. She hasn’t given any details. As far as she can remember, she’s never mentioned their names.

     But Mom knows who Wyatt is.