A/N: A big thank you to my beta LadyRiesling and to Jo for all the inspiration.

In the Blackness We Find Peace

A Timeless Fan Fiction by Water4Willows

Things used to make sense. There used to be a yesterday, a today, and a tomorrow. Always in that order. But nothing makes sense anymore. Sometimes there are days when he wakes up in tomorrow, headed for yesterday, with a stop planned for today in there somewhere. Sometimes the logistics behind it make his head spin. And then suddenly, he's not sure of anything anymore.

But there's one thing Wyatt Logan will always understand. His military training has made sure of that. He knows guns and he knows ammunition and he is certainly no stranger to pain. Nor is he a stranger to what it feels like to have a bullet rip through your body.

It happens quite unexpectedly. One minute Jessica is just standing there near the entrance of the Lifeboat, gun trained in his general direction, multiple emotions at war behind her eyes. She pauses for a second, like she knows what she's about to do. Like she knows she's about to disappear into the vast expanse of time and take with her everything he had planned for them the moment she walked back into his life.

"I'm sorry," she says, and it almost sounds like she means it.

Jessica dives inside the lifeboat and Wyatt starts to follow. Betrayal burns hot in his gut and he's pissed. Rittenhouse has managed to take everything from him now, but he'll be damned if he lets them take Jiya, too.

He's a few yards away from the steps leading up to the Lifeboat when it happens, the sound of the gunshot echoing around the cavernous warehouse and stopping him dead in his tracks. Pressure pops his ears and his body is jerked back ever so slightly as the bullet finds a new home in his lower left abdomen. He looks down, surprised to find a growing red stain sprouting near his hip.

She shot him. Jessica actually shot him.

Wyatt lets his hand drift down to the wetness, unfazed by its rapidly spreading size, yet perplexed by the lack of pain.

He's lived this moment before, just maybe not quite in this same way. The last time he was shot, it was because of some random bad guy, not the suddenly-resurrected love of his life. (The love of his life whom he had, until quite recently, believed to be on his side.) Last time he had his friends with him, not these people he lives with who barely tolerate his presence at the moment. What will they think when they find him here, bleeding out onto the floor and utterly betrayed by the woman he talked everyone into trusting? What will she think when she sees him in this state? Will Lucy forgive him? Will paying for his sins in blood be enough?

Wyatt is a soldier first and foremost, so he draws on that military strength and takes a few stumbling steps forward in some pathetic, last-ditch effort to make things right. But it's too much and too late. The Lifeboat blinks out of existence and he's thrown back by the force of its exit. The pressure it exerts on his chest is immense. The air is forced from his lungs as he flies through the air and cracks his head painfully on the concrete floor when his body finally hits the ground. His ears ring and the world goes fuzzy but he can still hear them calling his name and rushing over.

Oh God. What has he done?

"Where's the lifeboat?"

"Where's Jiya?"

"What happened?"

"…Wyatt?" He stirs at the sound of her voice, a little piece of normalcy, a beacon of home, blinking out at him through the haze of chaos that has surrounded them for years. He realizes suddenly that he never wants to spend another minute of his life away from Lucy Preston's side.

"Wyatt!"

He tries to sit up, but the bullet in his side has other plans. It would rather see him writhe, listen to him scream. All he gives it is a strangled moan as the world sways and Lucy drops to her knees beside him.

"Wyatt, my god, what happened?"

"It's Jessica. She…" he chokes on his words and winces, covering the wound at his side with a hand. Lucy moves it out of the way and lifts his shirt to inspect the damage. He doesn't miss it when she stifles a gasp. "She got my gun," he finishes on the last of his air.

"Where's Jiya?" Rufus interrupts from above him, and all Wyatt can do is glance up guiltily at his friend.

Jiya is gone. He let Rittenhouse into their home and they took her. And it's all his fault. He's supposed to be their protection, the one who keeps them safe, and he's failed them. He failed them the minute he broke protocol and left the bunker to head over to that bar. The second he let Rittenhouse play him like the failure that he is… only he doesn't have the strength to admit that to the man standing over him. Rufus. His friend. The friend he let down when he let the enemy in on a smile and a kiss. It's a failure of the most reprehensible level and he can already see it in Rufus' eyes that this is not something they'll come back from any time soon, if at all. "They took her."

Lucy starts to say something, but it's like his head has been dunked under water. Noises muddle and his stomach churns and before he knows it someone is rolling him onto his side so he can painfully expel the contents of his stomach out onto the floor, rather than his front. The heaving sensation is intense and it aggravates his wound as stars burst behind his eyelids. It's a white hot searing pain that steals his breath and breaks a cold sweat out across his skin. Someone presses something soft to the back of his head but it doesn't help. His head is spinning and it feels a little like he's lying on the deck of a ship being tossed about by agitated seas. Lucy is still talking as someone rolls him back over and he tries to focus in on her words. They're muffled, but he can make out at least some of what she's saying.

"I don't see an exit wound. We have to get that bullet out of him." She's talking to Flynn. Besides Agent Christopher, they're the only ones left in the room with him. Rufus and Mason have probably gone off to search for the Lifeboat and Jiya. Flynn kneels beside him to inspect the damage for himself and it takes everything in Wyatt not to recoil. He's seen the way Flynn looks at Lucy and even concussed and gunshot, he can still recognize the bitter taste of jealousy in the back of his throat for what it is. A jealousy he has no business feeling, considering his behavior towards them both the past few weeks.

"Do you keep any medical supplies around?" Flynn asks Christopher. The CIA agent nods and the two of them head off to find what they'll need.

For a moment, Wyatt and Lucy are alone.

"I'm…" he begins.

"Don't," she interrupts him, sweeping away a few errant strands of his hair from his sweaty forehead. The gesture is tender, but something is different. Maybe it's the blood loss, but it feels like the empty space that has been growing between them the past few weeks has gotten impossibly bigger. And rightly so. He's fucked up worse than any of them could imagine.

"It's my fault. Jessica…"

"Wyatt, try not to talk," Lucy pleads.

But there are things that need to be said.

"She's Rittenhouse. I told her to leave…" but there's more, so much more to say. And some of them are things that can only be said when the threat of danger or death lingers in the air.

Why does it take getting shot for him to be able to admit anything?

"I'm sorry," he finally forces out. Sucking the air back into his starving lungs he tries not to be sick again as the world tilts and his head pounds. The wound on his side is throbbing dully, but the adrenaline that has been keeping the pain at bay is slowly burning off. Soon, there will be nothing separating him from the agony of torn flesh and internal bleeding.

"It's ok. It's ok Wyatt," she lies to them both. "Everything will be okay. And if it isn't, then we fix it." Her eyes are shiny with unshed tears but he just shakes his head. He loves that she can be optimistic at a time like this, but she doesn't understand and he doesn't have the air or the wherewithal to get her there. He's sorry for Jiya and for letting Jessica get the jump on him, but it's so much more than that. It's what he's put her through in the past year or so. The losses she's suffered, they've suffered, because of him. If only he had the energy to make her see.

Blood is pooling on the floor beneath him. He can feel it soaking into his shirt, and it's like he's seeing the world from the bottom of a well. A well he keeps sliding further down into. His body is humming with the growing pain of his wound and a slight tremor has taken over his frame as he tries to regulate his breathing. It's a tenuous grip he has on consciousness and he can feel himself slipping. Down, down, down. There's only ever been one direction in his life. It's down. It's always been down.

"Wyatt?"

He can feel rather than see the blood welling up from where both their hands are clamped over the wound. It slides down his torso and puddles on the floor, helped along by gravity. The blood is warm, sticky, and there seems to be way too much of it. He's running out of time.

"I messed everything up."

"Don't talk like that." She's not looking at him anymore, but rather watching the doorway Flynn and Christopher disappeared into as if willing them to reappear faster. He fumbles for her blood covered hand with his own.

"I messed us up."

There are tears in her eyes when she finally meets his gaze again, forehead creased like she doesn't quite know what to do with the information he's just given her. He chokes on something metallic at the back of his throat but keeps on going. "I love you, Lucy." Her tear stained face wavers in his field of vision, dark spots gathering at the edges of his sight. He can feel oblivion tugging at him, offering him a place to rest and an escape from the pain. "You don't have to say it back. I just should have said it a long time ago and I didn't, so I'm saying it now."

She stares at him but if she has anything to say about this deathbed confession, she doesn't get a chance to voice it. Christopher and Flynn arrive back a moment later and soon there's a rush of cold at the crook of his elbow. Pain meds, fast acting and powerful, course through his veins and suddenly he's floating, carried off into that promised darkness he was fighting so hard against earlier. He didn't give his permission, but whatever.

It's alright, he thinks. At least here it doesn't hurt so much.

\oO0Oo/

It's in the blackness, ironically, where he finds the most peace. Light and pain try to draw him out, but he hides from them in the darkness. Don't they understand? There's no one to betray here, no one to let down, so he stays.

Sometimes there are voices in the void with him. Lucy's panicked begging that he come back to her. Flynn's irritated rumble, barking out orders and calling him a sonofabitch for trying to quit.

He doesn't mean to quit. Not really. It's just… so much easier here in the darkness. Here at least he can close his eyes and finally rest. Here Jessica is still her old self and not a Rittenhouse spy, and Jiya is still in the bunker with them. He's not a screw up here.

But in that other place, that other place where they demand too much of him, where he has to focus on things like filling his lungs with air and keeping his heart from sputtering out... Well, that's not a place he wants to be right now. Simple tasks like breathing are becoming harder and harder to accomplish, but he never fully retreats. Something tethers him to the present, a nagging feeling that he doesn't have the right to go quite yet. Yes, he's made mistakes, but he doesn't get to just up and die to get out of facing their consequences. He has to make this right. He has to fight.

So he exists in that place between waking and death where his moments are either spent in the cool, welcoming darkness of oblivion, or caught in the clutches of unfathomable agony where hot pokers are stabbed into his side and the rough hands of his demons hold him down. He fights so hard against them, but they always win. "Take it easy," they whisper to him. "We're only trying to help."

Sometimes he burns so hot there are flames licking up his skin and other times he's so friggin' cold he worries that he may be entombed in ice forever. They alternate like the confused currents of a battery and he can do little but ride out each assault as it comes and hold on for dear life. There's no break in the agony, though he does try to escape from it. Mostly he huddles in the darkest recesses of his mind, clinging to disjointed memories of a time before pain and bullets and betrayal and time machines. A simpler time when all he had to focus on was getting through basic or his next tour of duty. When the enemy had a face he could point his gun at. That's the battle consciousness finally decides to pull him up and out of and plop him back into the present with all the grace of a Lifeboat trip.

His vision is fuzzy and his head pounds like mad, but he knows he's still in the bunker, albeit a part of the structure he's never been in before. It's a makeshift infirmary as far as he can tell, and a bag of IV fluids hangs from a pole above his head. He tries to sit up, but an intense pain, barely checked by lingering pain meds, has him immediately abandoning that plan. He closes his eyes against the headache pounding away at the inside of his skull and rests a hand over the heavy bandages he can feel covering parts of his lower half. The tape is itchy and tugs at the sensitive skin near his navel when he shifts.

"I don't think you'll be going anywhere for a while," a soft voice says from beside him, and Wyatt jolts. His eyes fly open, but it's the worst possible thing he could have done. His stomach lurches and for a moment he's lost in a white hot haze of fog as his insides attempt to become his outsides. He has no idea how long it lasts, but when it's done, Lucy helps him to roll back over and a cool cloth is pressed to his forehead.

He keeps his eyes closed, just willing the nausea to settle and the swaying to abate. "What happened to me?" he asks.

"You almost died," she replies stonily, as if she's just read the diagnosis from one of her history books to a classroom full of disinterested post grads. "Concussion, infection from where Jessica shot you… it was pretty touch and go for a while there.

"What about Jiya, what…"

But Lucy just puts up a hand to stop him. "We're working on it. Right now you just need to focus on getting better." She pulls the cloth from his forehead and rewets it, making it perfectly clear that she is uninterested in carrying this conversation any further than it's already gone. And while Wyatt is all kinds of uncomfortable at the moment, he needs answers.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you need to heal!" She answers shortly.

"That's not…" he pauses, wincing as wounds stretch and stitches pull. "What do you mean by 'we're working on it'?" God, he can already feel exhaustion tugging him back towards the dark place, but he fights against it with all he has.

"Rufus and Mason are on it."

"Have they found anything yet?" He's breathless as he tries and fails to sit up further in the bed. He needs more pain meds, but he'll be damned if he asks for them. He deserves this, after all. He deserves everything he's been through and everything he's about to go through.

"Can you just come down off soldier mode for half a second?" Lucy snaps at him. "I nearly lost you." We, she meant to say We. He can see it in her eyes the moment the word comes out, like she wants to clamp her hand over her mouth, or draw it back somehow. Maybe they've both been fighting against this thing for far too long. But does he get to have a chance with her after everything that's happened? Jessica's betrayal still burns. Can they really go back to how they were right before? The answer, he realizes with a sinking feeling that has nothing to do with his concussion, is no.

"I'm ok," he promises weakly and convincing no one. "I'm not going anywhere." But he is headed somewhere. He's being dragged kicking and screaming back towards sleep and he's pretty sure nothing he tries next will be able to keep him conscious long enough to start trying to fix all this. His body is betraying him. He's conditioned it to resist exhaustion, but bullet wounds tend to change the rules of the game. Nearly dying tends to put him into territory he's unfamiliar with, on rough terrain he's ill-equipped to handle. And he's just so friggin' tired.

"Just… try and get some rest. Flynn and I will fill you in on everything that's been going on in the morning."

Flynn and I. She might has well have poked him in his bullet hole. It's a reminder that everything is a mess. And that he's at the center of it. Their own personal Hurricane Wyatt.

Wyatt fights against the exhaustion that is pulling at his eyelids. He needs to stay, but the tug of sleep is just too strong. He drifts off to the sound of a clock ticking somewhere in the distance and Lucy's soft exhalations beside him, unsure of what tomorrow might bring, but thankful for the opportunity to be around to try and repair some of it.

FIN