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He paces the wide space like a caged animal, back and forth in front of the Lifeboat, watching in agitated concern the lights slowly fade and throw shadows across the room. Every moment he spends walking the edginess off is a moment he spends thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong.
He shouldn’t have left her behind.
He berates himself, rubs his hands over his face and tries to think rationally. Swallowing in guilt isn’t going to make time tick faster or make Lucy appear quicker, but it’s certainly making his heart become heavier. It frustrates him to feel this way, helpless, desperate, as if the world is opening up under him and he has nothing to hold on to.
It frustrates him to feel this way towards someone else other than Jessica.
It confuses him to feel like he has something to fight for, something to lose after years of self-destruction. He had spent so long just existing that the hold Lucy has on him unfamiliar in a wonderful, strange way and it scares him.
He doesn’t have a wrist clock to check the hours, but he does it anyway, raising his arm until he realizes there’s nothing there. Should she be back by now? They didn’t really agree on meeting anywhere, at any specific time so maybe she isn’t in a hurry to get back.
Or maybe Flynn kidnapped her again for whatever crazy reason he needed her this time and if that is the case, he is going to kill him once and for all. He shouldn’t have trusted Flynn when he did nothing to earn his trust. It had been only Lucy’s pleading eyes and hopeful face that she could change things without any else being killed that he had agreed to leave her behind.
It’s horrible, he thinks, being so powerless to what happens to someone else’s fate, not knowing what happens to them, being completely dependent on someone else’s good will and going through all of this for several times since he met Lucy. It never felt quite this terrifying before, because unlike previous times he had left by his choice.
Since Jessica Wyatt had never expected someone else to find their way inside him, to break through his carefully built wall, but Lucy had done it. Somehow she had sneaked her way into his heart, slipping through the cracks of his wounds and fixing the scars with herself inside.
Now it’s too late to get her out. And he doesn’t find it surprising at all that he doesn’t want to.
When he hears the creak of the old double door of the warehouse Wyatt immediately reaches for his gun, stepping around the Lifeboat to hide behind some boxes. His heart beats double its rhythm in hope and anxiety, but the delta force soldier in him keeps him hiding in case it’s a threat.
The darkness gives away to a familiar form, bright blue coat and the soft clicking of heels. Wyatt lets out a breath in relief and holsters his gun again, making his way quickly to Lucy. “Thank God!” He isn’t able to hide the worry from his voice and even if he could, he probably looked too flustered.
“Sorry. Flynn landed the Mothership several miles from here.” She smiles in apology of something she didn’t really have control over and Wyatt feels the bottom of his stomach fall out. He’s so exhausted he can just collapse right there and thank the heavens she looked unharmed.
Instead he just steps closer and squeezes her shoulder, running a hand down her arm as if to assure himself she’s really okay.
In silent understanding, Lucy says “I’m okay, I promise,” and holds his gaze. There’s something there between them, hovering over their heads like dark clouds before a storm, gathering and gathering until it’s so heavy and so dark it has no choice but to finally fall.
And he’s a little afraid of when the storm finally comes because he knows it will be powerful and bright like a sea of light breaking through the hard glass walls of unspoken feelings, shattering it into a million pieces, making it impossible to be put together.
Sometimes, when he’s alone at home thinking of stupid he has been and how naïve he can still be, he realizes that he’s like a train wreck, making his violent way through people’s lives and Lucy is a curious by stander being hit by the remains of what is left of him. Sometimes he feels like he’s a ticking time bomb she manages to turn off and disable.
“Are you okay?”
She’s the one worried now, any pink in her cheeks and breathless hopefulness tempered with because of his mood. So he changes the subject back to her. “Fine. Did it work?”
“I think so. We need to go see him.” Then as a last thought, she adds “Where’s Jiya?”
“Rufus took her to the hospital.”
“I hope she’s okay.”
“She’ll be fine.” He tries to reassure her, but he isn’t sure. Rufus rushed out with an unconscious Jiya and they have no idea what time travel can do to a human being. How can any doctor treat her if they don’t know what’s wrong? So he tries to distract them both with what they can do. “You know where your grandfather may be?”
“No, but it can’t be too hard to find him. “
“So let’s go.” Wyatt tilts his head, motioning towards the door but Lucy doesn’t move, bites her lips and pulls her headband off.
“Thank you,” she says, voice low and honest, and she sounds tired herself, as if the weight of the world has been dropped on her shoulders and she’s doing her hardest to carry it.
His heart soars, grow wings and flaps them against his ribcage. “You don’t have to thank me. We’re in this together.” And they are, since the beginning, since she told him to stop calling her ma’am, since he watched her fumble with her seatbelt, since she looked at the Hindenburg with eyes so wide he could see the entire universe in them.
He realizes in the gaps of his breathes that maybe fate did play its cards, that she's light and he's life and they met halfway, one needing to learn how to live and the other needing to step back into sun.
A bossy know-it-all needing to loosen up and a reckless hothead needing some solid ground under him.
They leave together because it’s when they’re together they’re whole.