everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Pablo Neruda, "If You Forget Me"

There was a timeline in which she never stopped teaching.

She was coming home late one night, a meeting about her courses and schedule for the next year having been continuously pushed back, and she hit the steering wheel in frustration when she remembered she needed to go to the grocery store. Dammit.

The place was packed, because of course it was, and she took to the aisles with purpose and an agenda, a conquistador in the dairy section, her phone buzzing with reminders and teases from her sister (if you forget the cream cheese I'll kill you, one said. And why can't you get these things for yourself? she sent in reply).

Later she'd blame this on Amy (thank me, you mean, she'll fire back), on the gif her sister just had to send her as she rounded the corner, a woman on a mission, walking fast, her head looking down to phone just for one second when – collision.

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," she said, her eyes as wide as saucers, her hand somehow still touching his arm, the contents of her basket strewn across the floor. He attempted to pick them up, and she was mortified, quickly coming down to his level, attempting to help a situation he clearly had under control. "Really, I'm such an idiot, I'm so sorry."

He stood, looking her up and down. She could actually get a good look at him for the first time and her mouth dropped open a bit, her heart kind of clenching in her chest in a way she couldn't explain (love at first sight, Lucy, I never thought you were the type, her sister will tease. I'm not, she'll reply). He looked so achingly familiar, his eyes, his smile, the way he stood, it cut through her like she'd seen a ghost, like she was having deja-vu. She would think she was crazy, she did think she was crazy, except there was the way he was looking at her, kind of slack jawed, saying nothing, looking like he was running through a rolodex in his head trying to place her.

The feeling of being in a Twilight Zone episode only intensified when he spoke. "No problem, ma'am."

"I'm such a klutz," the words tumbled out of her mouth.

He smiled and shook his head. "My fault, ma'am."

And it was like she was on auto pilot, the words stringing together and falling out without her even trying. "Lucy," she said, then cleared her throat. He raised an eyebrow. "It looks like we're about the same age, so no need for the ma'am, it's Lucy. My name." And she felt so awkward as he looked at her with gorgeous summer sky eyes, a ridiculously handsome smirk, and she wanted the floor to open up under her and swallow her whole, save her from her fumbling, bumbling self; and yet at the same time she felt this undeserved confidence, like he knew what she's going to say before she said it, like he already liked her and she knew it.

"Lucy," he repeated, like he was trying the name on for size, and the cacophony of noise around her seemed to quiet a bit, his name on her lips as familiar as church bells. "It's nice to meet you, Lucy." He extended his hand.

She paused a bit, almost nervous, then she took it, his hand in hers, and she felt warmth, kindness, a rush of something comforting. "Wyatt," he said, not letting go of her hand, and she nodded a little, taking in a big breath of air, and she was standing on her own two feet in a grocery store on a Tuesday night but she felt a thousand miles away, and if she ever read this in a book she'd close it, because things like this don't happen in real life (what is happening to me, amy, she'll ask with fifty watt smile as her sister laughs oh my gosh you're in love).

Then he dropped her hand, and the hustle and bustle around her seemed to shake her back to her senses. He stared at her a moment, almost looked like he wanted to say something, and she was screaming inside for him to say more, to keep this moment going, to touch her again, someway, somehow. But instead he nodded at her, then moved to her right, going to leave. "Well, see you around, Lucy." And her mouth opened to say something, to stop him, to ask him if he felt this, feels this too. (maybe you're soul mates, her sister will giggle. god, shut up, you're insane, she'll say).

He smiled as he passed, and then he was out of her sight. And she felt her phone vibrate in her hand, still holding it, the screen lighting up, a lifeline to reality. She turned and saw him walking down the aisle, away from her forever, and all at once she was terrified. And she couldn't explain it, years from now she won't be able to tell you what happened, what came over her (amy will roll her eyes, honestly you're like a freaking nora ephron movie, it's gross). But she held her breath for a second then made a decision, leaned into the uncertainty for the first time in years, let herself fall with the strange, unjustifiable confidence that he'd catch her.

"Wyatt," she called out. He stopped. Turned. And he gave her a look she will remember always, a look she'll play over and over in her mind in sharp technicolor that night and the night after, one she'll tease him about later wrapped up in rivers of sheets, one she'll see every day when she comes home from work.

He looked relieved. He looked like he was waiting for her.

There was a timeline in which it worked, and Jessica never died.

He got kicked off the team, which they knew would happen, and she was fairly confident he spent some time in a dark, windowless room. But he didn't end up in prison, at least that's what she heard. She wasn't sure why, stealing the time machine seems like a pretty good reason to do some hard time, but no one would really tell her what happened, so she stopped asking questions. She told herself she knew enough.

She didn't hear from him, which shouldn't surprise her, why would she? He got what he wanted, got the wife he risked everything for, the wounds of years of missing her needing time to heal, and he was probably so caught up in the reality of his now living wife why would he think to call her, his coworker? So she wasn't surprised when she never got a text, she really wasn't, and she told herself what she had was enough; memories of a partnership and the seedlings of a little something more, maybe. She thought she'd hear from him eventually, just not now, she knew.

It hurt a little though, little pinpricks of pain right below her breastbone, when she saw something that reminded her of him but he was not there; when she wanted his advice, but he was seemingly out of her life. It followed her around, this tiny phantom of feelings, irrational she knew, unhelpful and distracting, but ever present. She couldn't shake it, no matter how much she threw herself into her work, and she felt the cracks in her heart grow deeper, longer, like the thin ice of a lake right below her feet, threatening to drop her down into a rush of stabbing pain at any moment. She wasn't prepared for this.

The missions were worse without him. They scared her more, made her more jittery. She could feel his name in her throat when she went to cry out for help; she was knocked out once, a swift hit to the head sometime in the 1930s, and when she came to it was his name on her lips, a soft hopeful "Wyatt?" and then Rufus's sad, knowing face.

"Why does it feel like I've been abandoned?" she asked Rufus after that mission, one too many glasses of wine coursing through her system. He didn't answer her, at least not directly, looking at her with a raised eyebrow, a smile laced with a pity she hated.

She didn't think she would feel so left behind, dejected, broken up with, because she wasn't, and he just did what she knew deep down he always would do. She would do the same, wouldn't she? If she could? She knew there is no other way this ends, not with that machine right at their fingertips, a magic wand that could bring back their loves, their past, fix their pain. This was coming, always, the soft whistle of a distant train getting closer every day, and she wanted it for him so badly, wanted this happiness for him, but yet it still hurt, when that train hit her.

But then one night he showed up. Unexpected. No call, no text. Just him. "Wyatt?"

He invited himself in and it all felt so familiar, the dark house, her unkempt hair, the way he looked like he was about to confess something to her. She felt it, that magnetic pull, the desire to move closer to him, it tugged at her when he came near. She asked if he was alright, if something was wrong. "I don't know," he said. "I wanted to see you," he said next.

And then it came out of him like thread unspooling. Said life was like coming home to a house that's been gutted. It all looks the same, so familiar, but it's all out of place, odd, off.

She shook her head. "It's an adjustment period, it's been five years, of course it's odd."

"No," he told her, said it feels like more than that, things don't match, their memories are off, he's not sure how to talk to her, what to say, and she's different, they're different than he remembered. "There's no one, literally no one I can talk to about this, Lucy," he said with a little urgency; there's no therapist, no counselor, no one who could offer him advice on how to adjust or react to this, and she understood that, she really did, no other person understood like she did, which is why he was there she supposed, why he sought her out like this.

"I can't even be honest with my wife, I have to keep all these things from her." And he sounded so lost, so small, and her heart broke a little bit more, sunk a little deeper into what she knew by now must be love.

"This is what you wanted," she told him, soft but with an edge like annoyance, that he'd drop her all these months and then come to her in the middle of the night to tell her what? What was he trying to tell her?

"I know," he said, a crack in his voice. "I'm happy she's alive."

"You're happy," she told him.

He said nothing to that, and the silence that yawned between them was screeching, so piercingly loud she had to look away, close her eyes against the image of his broken, confused face.

"I miss you," she heard him say, his voice so quiet it was barely a whisper.

She wanted to break, to sit down on the floor at cry, to throw something at him and storm upstairs, to do all of that and everything at once. Instead she breathed in, clasped her hands in front of her. "You should go home, Wyatt." Her voice was cool, calm.

He took a step closer to her. "Lucy," he said, his mouth hanging open, words mercifully catching in his throat. He'd been pushing her resolve so she fortified herself, because she missed him with the fierceness of a summer storm, but she won't let him know that now, not in the middle of the night at the foot of her stairs, his wife back home in his bed.

"Go home, Wyatt, go home to your wife." He nodded and turned to walk away, just like she knew he would, because despite the confusion on his face and the desperation in his voice he's a good man with a good heart, and that's why she was so far gone with him, that's why she was in so deep.

"Go home," she told him, and he did.

Two days later he came back.

There was a timeline in which she came home to nothing.

She stepped off the lifeboat and into the bunker to familiar faces looking at her unfamiliarly and new faces she didn't recognize at all. There were rapid steps to her, tense, raised voices. "Who the hell is this?" they'd asked, fingers pointed at her, guns gripped tightly. Her hands were in the air before she knew it, before she understood an iota of what was happening, her palms clammy, her heart pounding, a stammer in her voice when she said "oh my god."

She was led to a room before she could get her bearings, tripped over her feet as she was practically pushed forward, Wyatt and Rufus trailed behind her, their voices harsh and firm, yelled about their timeline and changes and Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. "Wyatt," she heard herself say, her voice a little shaky. "Wyatt what is happening?" and she saw his face briefly before the hard unforgiving clank of the metal locking shut in her face, saw the confusion etched into his brow, saw the harried, frenzied fear in his once calm, cool eyes.

This was her room, but not her room, clearly. She sat on the edge of her bed, but not her bed, her hands shook, her stomach a boulder; she felt the bitter, acidic bile in her throat and she thought she might vomit, might pass out right there, and so she squeezed her eyes shut, willed herself to breathe, to be still. "What is happening?" she heard herself say again, suddenly feeling more suffocated, more stifled, than she had ever felt, the decent size room feeling as tight as a coffin. "What is happening?"

Time passed, she wasn't sure how long, and eventually she heard footsteps in the hall, his footsteps she could tell. The door creaked and cracked open and his face appeared before her. "Wyatt," she said, and she wasn't crying but she was close, taking steps towards him, wrapping her arms around his neck, gasping for him like she'd broken through to the surface. She felt him bury his face in her hair, breathed her in and out, squeezed her hard against him like he was afraid she'd disappear.

"What is going on?" she said, her voice muffled against him, though she figured she already knew.

"Lucy," he said, his voice a quiet quiver. He pulled her back from him, studied her, his eyes were wet with worry. He guided her to the bed, his hand not leaving hers. "There's no record of you." He sounded defeated, cracked, and she felt the bottom drop out from under her, felt the ground sort of open up to blackness, and when he followed it up with "you don't exist here" she understood fully what he meant and knew she'd finally been pushed into that yawning abyss of oblivion, the black hole of nothing.

He said some more, about her parents or grandparents, someone dying before they were supposed to, a chain reaction down the line that resulted in a Lucy-less world; it was all a blur, his words a muffled staccato, and before she knew it he was telling her they agreed to let her stay here, that they were going to get her paperwork, identification. Make her a real person. Because she wasn't one.

The more he talked the tighter she gripped him, her nails dug into his shirt, crescent moons marked his skin. She felt his hands on her shoulders, her neck, his heart pounding against her. "Lucy," he said, almost like a question, because she'd been silent the whole time, hadn't said a word.

She looked up at him. "Was this us? Did we do this accidentally? Or –" she shook a little, breathed out. "Was it them?"

They don't know, he told her, they're trying to figure it out. He pulled her against him, or maybe she leaned into him, and she half expected to fall through him, to turn to ether, mist; she was a ghost of time travel, a zombie, both living and not.

"They've won," she said and pulled away from him to look into his big, terrified eyes. "They won." And then it came out as a cry, and she let him go, leaned backwards against the bed as her hot, fat tears quickly wet her face.

He sat there almost stunned before his face hardened a bit, determined. "No, no, no," he said. "Lucy, no."

"I'm no one. Everything I've ever done, my whole life, it's nothing."

"Oh God, Lucy," he said, and then he was hovering over her, his hands gripping her, trying to chain her to life, to sanity.

"I'm nothing," she repeated, and it was like she's finally been dealt the knock-out blow, finally hit the ground with a crash and a thud. This was what it felt like when you actually, literally, lose everything, and all the heartache leading up was just a dress rehearsal.

But he seemed almost angry, his eyes filled with a confidence and determination. "You're not nothing," and he almost sounded hurt by her words, bitter. "Hey," he said, almost with a force, coming closer to her, moving his hand along her face, down her jaw. "You're Lucy Preston. And I know you. I know you." And he saw her chin quiver, saw the tracks of tears marking her face, felt her choppy, shaky breathing against him, a real, whole, complete person. And he kept saying it. I know you. Lucy, I know you, coming to lay beside her, his arm wrapped around her waist, his voice deep and warm against her ear. It was a litany, a prayer. I know you. And he was trailing feather light kisses down her neck, across her shoulder, his words muffled in her mess of hair but still clear and strong. I know you, Lucy mixed in with I love you, Lucy, and she felt her muscles soften, felt her breathing even out. Lucy, I love you, she heard again and again, her name in his voice a kind of reaffirming shibboleth, the familiar feel of his hands against her acting as a lifeline, tying her to him, to existence itself.

"We'll fix this," she heard him say. "We can fix it, we'll fix it." And he sounded so sad, desperation mixed with sheer force of will, and she felt his tears finally fall on her skin.

"Wyatt," she said a little shaky, pulling back to look him in the eyes, his face a roadmap of sorrow and loss and betrayal, not unlike her own. He was so solid, so steady against her, and he was looking at her like he'd jump in front of a train right now to save her, set the world on fire to fix this. She wanted to believe him, that they could do this, fix this together.

She had to believe him, she had no choice. He was all she had.

There was a timeline in which they didn't let him stay on the team.

Her pleas amounted to nothing, and while she threatened to walk without him he wouldn't let her. Your sister, he reminded her, hushed voices huddled closely in the confines of the locker room. She struggled to disagree, but he shook his head at her, quelled her protest. You've got to get her back.

So he hugged her goodbye, not too tightly, not too close, and then he walked away, her hand raised sadly in a pathetic wave farewell, and all of a sudden it was so quiet without him, a maddening sort of silence, so loud with loss and absence. Where will you go next, she had asked him, the sad little crack in her voice saying more than she intended.

He shrugged he didn't know, wherever they send him, that's the job. But it didn't matter, did it? It wouldn't be here, with them, with her, and it had only been a few weeks, a handful of missions, just another person who flicked into then out of her life, like so many of them before. But it gnawed at her in a way she didn't expect, on the drive home, as she fell asleep, when her phone buzzed its SOS to her the next day, the fiery heat of the brushes with danger in different centuries forging them closer together than she realized. It shook her more than she thought it should, the lack of him.

The weeks went by with the new guy and he was fine, dependable, a bit more cautious, which she uncharacteristically disliked. They mentioned him less, but she still thought she saw him sometimes in her periphery, still sometimes heard his voice in her head, words she didn't think he ever said to her but echo in her mind regardless, as real and clear as if he stood beside her. And she thought that it was the what-ifs that got to her, the feeling of something unfinished, incomplete, like the record got knocked off the needle too soon and she's left with an ear splitting scratch and feet that hit the floor all wrong, out of rhythm. Because she thought maybe he could have been her friend, a good friend, this other person seemingly defined by a loss, a heart with a missing piece; there was an understanding there, a symmetry. They both didn't seem to have a lot.

She pulled up his name in her phone so often, her fingers hovered over the buttons, typed out a greeting, hesitated on the send then delete, delete, delete. She shook her head. Stupid. What was she doing? What would she even say? Hey, I miss you in a way that is disproportionate to the amount of time we spent together and I thought maybe you did too, haha, so weird. She rolled her eyes at herself. She was chasing a terrorist through time, getting stranded in the past, getting shot at with every generation of firearm, her sister still erased, yet she sat at her kitchen table staring at her phone. Stupid.

Then all of a sudden it popped up, flashed at her, his name bright across her screen. Hey, said the little blue bubble. Then other below it. How are you?

She inhaled sharply. Her fingers twitched. Hey, she replied. I'm alright. How are you? He was in town, he told her. Could he come by? Yes, she typed, though she did not include the exclamation points she felt pounding against her heart.

And then a few minutes later he was there, he brought beer, and as they sat on the couch it was a little awkward, the space between them, the pregnant pauses, the things she knew they weren't saying; but it was also like meeting an old friend, the way her laughs came so easily, the way his smile seemed so soft around the edges. He told her about Pendleton, about the job they had him doing, or at least what he could. And she told him about the missions, about the team, at least what she could; and it didn't matter that they couldn't say much, that they were fuzzy on details, it seemed enough to be speaking at all. And when he clinked his bottle against hers with a cheers she thought I've missed this, despite the fact that they hadn't done that at all till now.

He came by again a few days later, they went out for pizza. He texted her the days in between. Then he was gone for a bit, but he came back, and she started to care less about things being classified or top secret, started to let him know when the missions were tough, when she was missing Amy too much, when the truth came out about her father, about her family. And he squeezed her hand, or pulled her against him, let her fall asleep in his lap, his fingers in her hair.

He got upset when she came back from a mission with bruises, said he hates that he isn't able to protect her; and she hated that he got shuffled off endlessly, that he couldn't speak to her for days, and she told him so, feeling more and more like her heart was outside herself now, walking around into minefields and machine gunfire, and she was not quite sure when that happened. The look on his face when she recounted to him the near deaths of her last mission told her he felt the same way. It scared her.

But he was mentioning Jessica less, or at least less sadly, mournfully, and she felt the tethers start to loosen, felt herself start to float away, and before long she was texting him things like "I miss you" and "come back" and he replied with "me too" and "soon."

He did come back soon, true to his word, and this time he kissed her, soft and easy and just what she hoped, and then she was up in the clouds, unsure how she got there.

There was a timeline where she let him back in.

He was beside her, sitting by the fire in the little camp they'd made out on the prairie in eighteen forty something, and when he approached her initially she stiffened a little in a way she hated, in a way she thought she was getting over, six months after the events of 1888, that night receding further and further into the past.

She softened, however, in the silence that floated between them, his presence beside her unobtrusive, and he said nothing, just sat by the fire, words seemingly all spent. She relaxed, sinking a bit deeper down into the ground, and her eyes got a little heavy, the sounds of the wide, uncharted prairie around her an easy lullaby.

But then he said "you know," and jolted her out of whatever half sleep she was nearing, his words colored with an amazed kind of wondering. "I always think I'm tired of these missions, and I am, but," she looked over at him, and he was almost flat on his back, face up at the sky. "You don't get views like this where we come from."

She turned her head away from him, back up to the bright black canvas above her, a feast of stars, the ribbon of the Milky Way, blues and blacks mixed with swirls of dark purples, a masterpiece of space and time, the universe as it was meant to be seen. She sighed a little, thought about it, and her eyes traveled the vast expanse across the heavens. "Yeah," she conceded a little softly. "It's nice." She paused, the air around her so cool and clean, the sky so bright and infinite above her, it was almost romantic if you wanted it to be. She broke the silence. "I do miss toilets though, those are pretty convenient."

He laughed out loud, a pretty big guffaw, and she turned and smiled at him, rolled her eyes at her own ridiculousness, refused to get too caught up in any romanticism of the fairly rough and difficult past.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," he said rather abruptly, putting an end to whatever she had just been thinking or feeling.

"What?" she asked, not because she didn't remember, but because she was confused.

"Yesterday, kissing you. I'm sorry."

Her mouth fell open a bit and she moved to sit up. "Wyatt…" she started, then drifted off. He looked over to her, held her gaze for a bit, then looked away. She shook her head a bit in disbelief because she knew what happened yesterday, knew what she did, what he did, and so his words, his apology, stopped her in her tracks a bit. "Wyatt, I kissed you."

He didn't respond as her words hung in the air between them, the memory of what amounted to just a few hours ago still fresh, her quick and hasty decision to reach for him echoing in her consciousness. The way she leaned into him, pulled him closer, her hands around his neck, along his jaw, melting into him, desperate for comfort and assurance, an earthquake in her heart; the way he hesitated, the way he went slowly, the way she wouldn't let him, rooting him to her. Then how it ended, stunned silence, red lips, his worried, thoughtful eyes, her walking away. What does he have to be sorry for?

"I shouldn't have let you, should have stopped." He took a breath. "You were upset, so was I, everything with Rufus, all these months of stress," he paused again and she felt her eyes prick a bit with tears. "I should have stopped you is all." And she looked at him and he looked so sad, so guilty, and she was just so tired of it, of seeing his eyes fill up with tears, of watching him strain under the weight of all the responsibility he piles on himself, of feeling her own heart breaking for him; it had all been too much for too long.

"No way," she said a little firmly, sat up a little straighter. "I made that decision, I kissed you, and it was the worst time and the worst circumstance but you have nothing, absolutely nothing to be sorry for. If anything I'm sorry." And she was a bit, even if she couldn't ever regret the feel of him against her; but she knew how he felt about her – or at least how he felt at one point – and she was being selfish in that moment, but grief and pain can do that to you, make you selfish, and for that she was sorry.

He wasn't looking at her. "Wyatt," she said more sternly, drawing his attention. "Do not be sorry, okay?" Her eyes were wide, deliberate and pleading. He nodded his affirmation, and she was not sure if she believed him, but it was the best she had in the moment, so she took it.

They were quiet again, and though she was not looking at him she could see him a bit in the corner of her eye, his gaze flicking to and away from her. She thought about yesterday, the rush of emotions that propelled her to him, seeking him out with such need, such desperation, the affection and longing she had been denying herself coming uncorked all at once. The memory flirted with her, the feel of him warm and strong against her, his hair, his hands, his lips. All those things that pressed on her heart, filled her belly with heat, they sat just a few feet from her, he was right there, and yet she was trapped in this prison she'd built for herself; anger, confusion, hurt all locked her up.

"I liked it. Yesterday." she said so lightly, a whisper in the air. She turned to look at him, her voice drenched with fear and hesitance. He looked at her almost confused, like he was afraid to reply, afraid of what he might do. "I've missed you," she said, a hushed confession, then she smiled quick and small; and nothing had ever felt truer than that, the strange sensation of missing someone who lived with you, who you saw every day, who was sitting feet from you now. It was awful.

He went to speak, said her name, then stopped. Unsure of himself. She didn't blame him, couldn't expect him to say much, she knew how he felt, she saw how he'd tried so earnestly to make it up to her, to be there for her and with her, not pushing her, with no expectations. It was all up to her, she knew.

"I think," she started to say, took a breath and swallowed, screwed her courage to the sticking place. "I think I'm getting closer, I think I'm almost there." And she looked at him, his eyes kind of wide, and she was practically begging him to understand her meaning, to not make her speak more, and he seemed to, nodded a bit, and a small semblance of a smile appeared on his face.

"Do you think you could wait for me, a little bit longer?" She felt her throat tighten a bit, burn in that way when you're trying not to cry, and she didn't think she'd felt this exposed, this raw, and maybe this hopeful since she took that terrifyingly exhilarating leap into a brand new world months ago by the light of the fire in nineteen forty one.

But she did it again awash in the glow of a different fire, the light still carrying her closer to him; she shortened the distance between them, reached out, placed her hand on his and twined their fingers together, and when she looked up at him she saw on his face things so similar to what she saw then – awe, reverence, desire, and, miraculously, love.

He squeezed her hand. "I don't mind waiting."

There is this timeline now.

She had been sitting alone on the couch, but that never lasts long around here, solitude being a coy, elusive mistress in this hole they all share. As usual it is him that has found her, snapped her from her lonely little thoughts, the gravitational pull of her to him keeping them inextricably in each other's orbit, for better or for worse it seems.

He stands for a bit, waiting for permission to intrude, and she gives it with a slight, barely visible smile that he catches, as he always seems too. There's a buzz in her right now, and she knows he feels it too, that kind of frenzied, overwhelming tired that comes at the end of days full of too much to do, events too large to process all at once, her thoughts and feelings throwing a ticker-tape parade through her messy, cluttered mind.

She hears him sigh as they sit in silence, feels the weight shifting off of him, off of her, the burden of their lost friend and the race to get him back melting away slowly. "It's like nothing ever happened," he says.

She knows what he means without explanation, the two of them the sole memory keepers, burdened with the knowledge of what happened originally, unable to be granted the full pardon given to all the others by the changing of the past. It will stay with them always, their friend's dark, lifeless eyes, the cave in of grief that buried them alive in the hours later, it will stick to their heart like residue for eternity. They get no reprieve.

"That's a good thing," she reminds him, and he nods a solemn understanding.

Their visitors have left, gone as quickly as they came, leaving with no fanfare, which she imagines is exactly how they planned it. "What do you think they went back to?" he asks, his voice tinged with a confused curiosity.

"Oh, I don't know," she sighs a bit. "Whatever world they left is gone now, everything that happened to them won't actually happen, so, I don't know."

"So," he drags out a bit, musing aloud. "They basically cease to exist?"

She scrunches up her face a little. "Well, no, they're us. We exist. Just, that iteration of us, with their memories, yeah, I guess."

He makes a bit of a face, like a kid who has decided to mentally check out of math class, and she laughs a little, a chuckle in her throat. "You'd think I'd be used to this by now, things erasing and reappearing," he says.

She shrugs a little, a smile pulling at her lips, because she decided a while back there is no getting used to the life they lead, and if she ever does get used to it that's probably a bad thing. "I figure this is what it must feel like to be a goldfish, just swimming in circles, new memories every few seconds."

He laughs a little and she shakes her head, reveling in the absurdity of their lives, altering history and raising the dead like a pair of emotionally damaged deities bending time and space to their will, to grant their wishes. "Do you ever think," he begins to ask then pauses to collect his thoughts, his voice tired, his face etched with exhaustion, "maybe there are lots of things we don't remember either, like that everything changed ten minutes ago but we'll never know it?"

And she sighs kind of big and dramatically, rolling her head away from him to look straight ahead at nothing, unsure if she's up for any sort of deep time travel philosophy right now, with the way her limbs feel like lead and her head swirls in a way where she can practically see cartoon stars orbiting around her. "I don't know, Wyatt," she says kind of quietly, then looks back over to him. "It doesn't really matter does it?" He raises an eyebrow, looks curious. She continues. "We only remember what we remember, this is all we really have." And her tongue burns with what she doesn't say, but she hears it in her mind anyway. We are all we really have, aren't we?

He seems satisfied with that answer, nodding a bit, holding her stare before looking away, down at his lap, turning away like the sun is too bright, like it hurt him to look at her for too long; and up until the moment he does that she had almost forgotten the way things were with them, the awkwardness and hesitance that had seeped its way so fully into the spaces between them, the still stinging pain of fresh wounds. The abrupt entrance and departure of their future selves and the hectic, emotional tumult of saving Rufus had mercifully pushed back the tidal wave of heartache that he brought into her life. But now, in the quiet aftermath, she feels the rumblings again.

"Did you mean it? What you said?" she says, not entirely sure where that came from, the words tumbling off her lips like she's drunk, loose with words, not herself. But she's none of those things, she's as much in control as she can be, and Rufus is back and their visitors are gone and nearly everything to distract her from the mountain between them is vanished or subdued so it comes out, the question.

He doesn't say anything, looking kind of stunned, so her eyes tick over as if gesturing behind her, to the wall eight feet to their left. "What you said, before they came? Did you mean it or-"

He cuts her off. "Why wouldn't I mean it?"

She sighs a little, shifting a bit, suddenly a lot more uncomfortable. And she's almost mad at herself for bringing this up, for filling the room with tension, for picking at this particular scab. But the way her heart kind of quivers when she looks at him, the way she felt herself split apart when he left her, the way she hears his voice in the long spaces of silence, it can all mean only one terrifying thing; and even though he sat beside her and said it, there is a very real and very prominent part of her that thinks well, not enough, not like this, not like her, and so she's testing the waters, giving him an out, her emotions perched precariously on a cliff.

Instead of saying all that she stumbles into a half-truth with "grief, anger, I don't know, a lot had just happened, you were upset."

"I meant it." He responds immediately, cool and steely, his eyes on her, not like before when two tons of despair and anguish pulled his eyes to the floor. "I mean it," he adds on, the change in tenses popping like a firecracker.

There's that kick drum to her heart again, that happy little flutter. She nods a little, doesn't look away, but doesn't say anything either, though she feels a step closer, thinks someday she might. Instead she smiles just a little, then clears her throat, pressing her lips together. She thinks of their other selves, their strange half look at the future, the hardened warriors who jumped into and out of their lives so quickly. She thinks beyond their quick reflexes and worn attire to something else, the way other Lucy's hand ghosted across other Wyatt's back when she passed him, the way their eyes met across the room in silent communication, the way her other self leaned into him just a little too closely to whisper something in his ear. She knows herself well. She knows what she saw.

"They seemed…okay," she finally says, breaking their strangely comfortable silence. She's handing him something, a little string of hope. She's making one for her too, tying them together.

"Yeah," he nods slowly, his statement lilting up with the tinge of a question, unsure what she is doing.

"I mean, they seemed, like it worked out." She holds his gaze, a half smile playing on her lips, a feeling of inevitability washing over her, warm and welcome, so she dips her toes in, because she's not sure she could outrun this, outrun him, even if you gave her a hundred year start.

"Yeah." He smiles, taking what she is giving him.

"So that's something," she says, her voice threaded with slivers of possibilities as faint but promising as the first quiet peaks of a sunrise, because darkness is always followed by light, and she thinks maybe she always would end up here with Wyatt at her side.

"Yeah," he replies, "that's something."

Fin.