A/N: So sometimes when you think you've moved passed something, something happens to remind you the wound is still a bit fresh. This happened to me tonight after rewatching 2x03 for the fifth time. I found myself suddenly so very sad and angry. For myself and on behalf of Lucy. I couldn't get myself out of it and I couldn't write it out. It was frustrating, so I took a break, came back and then tried again. And this happened. I connect to Lucy Preston right now on a very raw emotional level and I feel a bit ridiculous because of it. She's a fictional character but at the end of 2x03, she's me. I've been there. The girl left standing alone wondering what just happened.

So, I thought I'd progressed to feel accepting of the episode until suddenly I didn't. But I look at it like this, we all relapse over something, don't we? This was mine. I was devastated with the ep, then fine with the ep, and then devastated again. I am not sure how I feel about it at this exact moment but I'm sure in the morning I'll be "fine" again until I'm not. Basically, this love triangle is going to make me a basket case of emotions on behalf of one brave and broken Lucy Preston.

This was cathartic. Hopefully it is for some of you too.

Happy reading!

angellwings

PS. Spoilers for eps 2x01-2x03.

Signs

by angellwings

"You haven't lost me."

Until she did.

Really, it was predictable and all too miraculous. She should have seen it coming. From the very beginning, she should have seen it coming.

And, honestly, maybe she did. She definitely felt like it was inevitable while they were working at Mason Industries. He'd talked about Jessica enough, he'd vowed to save her more times than she could count. She'd been very aware that his focus was elsewhere. And while she'd felt a few pangs of longing, she'd kept them at bay. Happy to be his friend.

But then he'd kissed her in a cabin in Arkansas in 1934 and goddammit she'd felt something. That was the first crack. The first push toward something less platonic. The cracks kept piling up. Flynn taking her, HH Holmes almost killing him, seeing his face when he talked about meeting Jessica's murderer.

She'd dealt with losing him once before. When he knocked on her door in the middle of the night and said he was going to get Jessica back. She'd been halfway to feeling something for him, against her will, and he was leaving. She'd cried then, but managed to pull it together because he needed or help. Or he said he did. She wasn't convinced she really bought him that much time. He'd come back broken and another crack formed.

What followed after that were a series of cracks and fractures that grew and spread so rapidly she hardly knew they were happening. Seeing him again after he'd been arrested, seeing him smile when she was happy about getting Amy back, the anger and worry on his face when McCarthy's men declared they were going to hold them in separate rooms, his reluctance to leave her with Flynn, the relief on his face when she was safe and sound in the present again, and his unflinching support while they tracked down Ethan and his evidence. It all built up with in her. The cracks now looked like veins or rivers on a map. They trailed all over her heart and in every direction.

So much so that when he'd mentioned pursuing "possibilities" she hadn't known what to do with herself. How was she supposed to react to that? What was she supposed to say? Honestly, after the overwhelming joy that she'd somehow gotten a handle on, a feeling of worry set in. Just days earlier he'd run full speed ahead into a mission to save his late wife. He'd been desperate to save her and crushed when he couldn't. Was that still there? Was he really ready? Hell, they were in a world with time travel now, what would happen if Jessica was back in the picture? Did she risk it? Did she let the cracks in her heart grow any more than they already had?

Initially, she'd thought no. Not yet. Give him time. As she'd left Mason to go see her mother, she'd decided to take it slow with Wyatt. To not get too attached too quickly. She was going to keep her head.

But then the world had crashed down around her and keeping her head was no longer an option. No, the only thing that was save her from her mother and Rittenhouse and all they had planned for her was keeping her heart. Her cracked and weakened heart.

They'd told her Rufus and Wyatt were gone. Shown her the newspaper clipping about the explosion. Shown her artifacts from the charred hanger. One in particular had show what was left of Wyatt's Bowie knife. The one she knew he sometimes brought to work, don't ask how, to remind himself why he did the job. The one he never left in his locker overnight because it was too valuable, too important. But there it was, burnt and ruined, on the floor of what was once the Mason Industries locker room.

She'd held out hope until then.

She thought it was possible Rufus and Wyatt weren't there. It was possible they were far enough away to have avoided danger. But if Wyatt's knife had been there then so had he.

She'd crumpled and shattered and collapsed all at once.

Possibilities? What possibilities? There was nothing left for her. Nothing left but avenge those possibilities. To end it all so Wyatt and Rufus didn't die in vain. So, she'd pieced her heart back together enough to venture back out in to history. She'd resigned herself to the sacrifice required. Her sister was gone, her mother was evil, her friends were dead, Wyatt was dead. She could stop Rittenhouse and save the world. Or at least America. And if that meant not coming back then so be it. What did she have to come back to anyway?

Nothing. No one. Not a single possibility in sight.

And that's when she began to regret. Why hadn't she jumped at the chance when she had it? When he brought up that awkward vague conversation of possibilities why had she not said more? She hadn't told him. He didn't know. He didn't know that her heart that she'd shielded so carefully had been touched and weakened and cracked by him. She should have told him.

Now she never could.

Honestly, she hadn't been thinking much beyond how much destruction she could cause when she walked into that artillery tent. She did a quick analyses of what was available and formed a plan based on that. Kill the soldier, blow up the Mothership, or both at one time. There was no one else who could do it. Only her. The thought struck hard and pushed her forward. Only her.

But then it wasn't only her and he was there. She froze as she whirled around to face him and thought this was another one of her mother's cruel mind games, at first. But it wasn't. It wasn't a game. It was real. He wasn't dead. She'd grieved and mourned and shattered but none of it mattered because he wasn't dead.

Jumping into his arms was the best thing that had happened to her in six weeks. Forget cracking, her heart had exploded. And in its place was another heart, that had no armor or shielding of any kind. It was wide open and aching and feeling almost as if it was the first time. That new heart couldn't go through with her plan. That new heart had people to live and fight for. A home.

The resignation was gone and with it her determination to risk losing Wyatt again. Her apathy faded the moment she'd seen his face. He was important. He was safety. He was home. He was life.

The possibilities were back and the world seemed bigger.

The new heart failed to stop Rittenhouse when it had the chance because Wyatt Logan was alive and had resurrected her hope.

The safety and hope and possibilities didn't drown out the betrayal, though. Her mother had chosen Rittenhouse over her. Her mother had left her behind. It hit her when she was standing in front of that tiny cot in borrowed sweats exactly what had happened. Her mother left her. She no longer had a family. The option to get her sister back was now gone too, her real father had passed years ago, and Ben Cahill was out of the question.

Wyatt found her then. Talked some of it through with her. The soldier she'd killed, the fact that she failed at her plan, the fact that her mother had failed her. The tears came and so did Wyatt. He was by her side so quickly that she'd barely seen him move.

What happened next shouldn't have happened at all. She was emotional and vulnerable and she'd missed him so much. She'd mourned him and grieved him and regretted not saying more for six weeks. He made her feel secure and stable and god did she need that right then. Her need had her leaning toward his lips when she knew she shouldn't be, but he wasn't pushing her away. No, he was looking right at her and looking as though he needed it just as much as she did. Like he'd missed and wanted her too.

But they were interrupted.

She should have taken that as a sign. She certainly should have taken it as a sign when they were interrupted a second time while opening up about their families in a cramped smuggler's hold. Those had been warnings she realized now.

Back up. Think it through. Guard your heart.

But she was so focused on having him back and on those possibilities she thought she'd missed forever that she didn't see the signs. Or maybe she willfully ignored them. It was hard to tell. On some level, she'd sensed the timing wasn't right, but then they'd been standing by that pool and he looked at her with those warm blue eyes and that soft smile and said exactly what she'd been feeling since returning from 1918.

"I sorta stopped caring, but not anymore."

She knew that feeling well. God, did she ever. She understood. The fear of regretting those possibilities like she had for the six weeks she thought he was dead pushed her forward. Pushed her to tell him that she felt the same. He'd saved her life. She stopped caring and then he found her in that tent. He found her.

From that point forward that night was an intentional conscious decision to let him have her new unguarded heart. The one that had jumped into his arms in 1918 and had nearly felt his lips on hers in 1955. That heart, she firmly decided to let him have. She trusted him more than she trusted herself, if she were honest. He could have it and keep it and she wouldn't mind one bit. It didn't scare her. The idea of meant to be and fate and lightning bolt out of the blue no longer seemed ridiculous because that night, for her, felt like all of those things.

She'd never been in love. Not really. She'd dated, she'd been attracted to people, she'd even felt the thrill of natural chemistry before. But love had never been a part of those equations. She had no frame of reference for it. But what she felt for Wyatt felt like nothing she'd felt before. It was bigger, more intense, deeper…

Unconditional.

It had to be love. She knew it had to be love.

And given her luck lately, that should have been her final warning.

Fate seemed to want to break her. Let her come close only to rip it away. Time after time after time. Tenure, Amy, her mother, stopping Rittenhouse…

The finish line kept fucking moving.

She should have known Fate wasn't done screwing with her yet. Fate had been waiting. Waiting for her to let her guard down, to give her heart away completely, to consciously decide to fall without a net.

The minute she did he'd gotten a text.

And then he was gone. Down the hallway, out of sight, out of the bunker, and back to Jessica.

Back to where he was meant to be. Back to his bolt of lightning. Back to the person he'd originally given his heart to.

None of those roles were filled by her. No, they belonged to the woman who came before her. The woman who'd met and loved him first.

She'd known from the beginning that this would happen but she'd left herself fall anyway. How could she blame him when she did this to herself? She'd tricked herself into believing she could be happy and it would be easy.

When was anything she did ever easy?

So yeah, "You haven't lost me." What a laughable concept.

Because honestly, she'd never really had him to begin with had she?