Chapter Text
“Did you know a group of crows is called a murder?”
“I did not.”
The train doors open. Lucy and Iris step onto the open air platform which leads to the local park, the one with nice trees, plenty of space, and purportedly a large bird population.
“Some people don’t like it though,” Iris continues. “They say it gives them a bad reputation, that they’re really a family oriented species and they don’t deserve it, but I think it’s cool.” Iris grins and Lucy smiles too, more to herself then to Iris. Family, murder; the baby bird didn’t fall far from the nest. She even has her father’s smile, and her mother’s expressiveness.
They reach the sidewalk and Iris quickens her pace, half a bag of almonds clutched in her fist. “Just stay where I can see you!”
“I will!”
Iris slows in front of a cluster of trees. Lucy finds a bench, close enough to watch, far enough to not disrupt her, and sits down.
Over the three months Lucy has known her, Iris has adopted interests in wolves, emus, pufferfish, and axolotls. This week it’s crows, and at some point between dinner and breakfast, she came up with the idea of befriending a murder.
With her parents back at work full time, Lucy watches her after she gets home from school. Though, she mostly watches herself. So far that hasn’t meant anymore attempted visits to friends in different towns. Crucially, she hadn’t gotten the idea that independence will get her killed either, like Lucy feared.
She reminds her to do her homework or escorts her to the park. She doesn’t mind it, although the background noise that is a bullet aching her leg has gotten a little louder since they left the house. It is what it is.
How did her life get like this? She’s something worse then a ghost and she’s watching Garcia Flynn’s kid try to tame crows.
It’s October and she wants burgundy leaves pooled at her feet. She wants the rasp under her shoes from the year she spent in Chicago or from that day in Salem when she wasn’t hanged. No dice, autumn color won’t show itself in the Bay Area for at least another month.
Sometimes it does help to remind herself how she got here.
She takes her blank notebook out of her borrowed bag, one of two Flynn gave her when she first moved in, opens it, closes it. Something so perfect doesn’t deserve to be ruined with her ramblings, not today. She looks at Iris standing patient. She looks past her into the gray horizon.
To summarize is to put it in it’s place, to make it history, which is something she can understand. Again she tries to explain herself to herself.
October, two years ago, almost to the day, a homeland security agent rang her doorbell. She was recruited— no, recruitment implies she wasn’t whisked off in a car with tinted windows that same night. She wasn’t forced; she wasn’t drafted. Really, she could have said no, couldn’t she? What would’ve happened if she’d planted her feet, stood her ground, sensed she was on the brink?
So a terrorist had stolen a time machine. What an evening! And she was meant to act as the guide, to decipher him, to save history by helping Wyatt kill him (kill the man whose spare room she now sleeps in, what a thought).
Except he was right. Rittenhouse was America and America was Rittenhouse. They found their ways to the same side, the right side eventually, and— and Rufus was murdered, then he was alive. Her mother was dead, then she wasn’t. Things were looking up. One day in 1726 a 20 year old David Rittenhouse caught a stray bullet and when they got back that day in late June, their farm house was gone.
(She stared until Flynn touched her arm. Slack-jawed, eyes wide, skin blotchy, she didn’t recognize him. But she remembers feeling nothing; in retrospect a hint to his character, perhaps. At the time she thought something was wrong with herself, that’s what monsters do, they don’t care. The pressure of Flynn’s fingers curled on her bicep.)
They didn’t panic at first. They didn’t panic at all, because it was a good thing, because while it was weird their safehouse was gone all they had to do was call Wyatt or Denise or Mason and get the new address. They kept a phone in the Lifeboat in case of something this odd. Or if they had panicked, it was after that burning shot through Lucy and before she woke up on the ground with Flynn’s jacket balled up under her head.
They’d gotten too comfortable, Rufus said later. They’d all heard of the butterfly effect, they’d just gotten lucky before. Mostly lucky, he clarified with an apologetic look towards Lucy. His words rang hollow in the motel room.
Then—
Lorena Flynn found them in the park the morning after. Lucy and Flynn were talking about all the ways life could go and she just... appeared, like an angel, or a reaper (by his eyes Flynn thought she was holy, anyway). Because she’s the sort of person who finds her husband when he goes missing. Said husband wasted no time and explained everything so badly that Lucy is shaking her head from October, not without fondness.
In the motel room they all pitched in and did their best to convince Lorena her husband wasn’t crazy. She listened politely and gently denied all of it. Lucy assured Rufus he did a better job then Mason. In the end it took Flynn pulling his shirt off to reveal unknown scars for the unease of belief to settle behind her features.
All in all, she took it surprisingly well.
It was as good a time as any to go their separate ways.
Flynn withdrew $500 from an ATM and placed it into Lucy’s hand with the promise of helping her craft a new identity whenever she was ready. Whatever she needed, he said, and they hugged, and she half expected to never see him again.
Rufus and Jiya went home, and after a few days of searching, so did Lucy.
She found the house she grew up in. It hadn’t been easy, the street has a different name and the house is a pale blue now, but it’s there. It exists. Through the internet, she found out her dad, Henry Wallace, lived a decade longer in this timeline then the last one, eight years longer then in hers. She found his grave, picked dandelions and left them atop the marbled stone. She felt silly doing it but the days were long, are long.
It took Jiya’s hacking to find anything recent on Wyatt. He’s alive, deployed on some top secret operation. Maybe it’s for the best Lucy can’t go and see him, but she’ll never know.
Jessica is dead in this timeline. Emma isn’t, or at least none of them could find a record of it. But they hadn’t seen her or Jessica or the goons for at least two hours before David died. Rufus and Jiya can’t find any signal for the Mothership despite persistent investigation. Nothing in Jiya’s visions either. She said it was like all the strings had been cut then thrown away. They should be as safe as anyone else. Still, they’ve been wrong before.
Iris tosses an almond into the air. It lands at her feat and a particularly daring squirrel gets it’s payoff.
When Lucy remembers the past two years, it’s a series of dark rooms, streetlamps, the smell of burnt gunpowder and horse shit. It had the most fulfilling work of her life and a whole lot of nothingness. The word blood raises to the surface, as blood aims to do.
She is a living history. She is a relic that will be destroyed, sooner or later, regardless of what she does or does not preserve.
There is comfort in that.
Iris walks towards Lucy, a skip in her step, almond bag crumpled in her hand.
“Did you make any new friends?”
She crinkles her nose bridge, looking seriously unimpressed. “It takes more then a day.”
“Of course.”
Iris frowns at her, then peers upwards. “Is it going to rain?”
The sky is textured gray with chasms of gold. “Either way, we need to head home.”
They walk together and Iris cocks her head at little brown birds in trees above their heads. What fuels her many short-lived passions Lucy doesn’t know, but Iris sees the world differently then she did yesterday, like stumbling out of the Lifeboat for the first time.
“Can we come back tomorrow?”
Lucy bites her lip. She can bring a book or something, one with words. “Probably.”
Raindrops tap their skin. In front of them, the train screeches to a halt.
This rail system didn’t exist in the old timeline. She’s grateful it exists now, but every time she boards it, every time she sits on the worn burgundy seats as she does now, she thinks of how Rittenhouse dug their fingers into everything.
She knew they had people in the auto industry, but she’d never considered how it shaped the infrastructure of the city she grew up in.
That’s what gets her: the unknowability. She knows why Amy disappeared, and she knows why, in a completely different way, she also stopped existing. But she’ll never see the wings that flapped this world into being. She’ll never know exactly what Rittenhouse held between it’s teeth.
Thunder rumbles. The downpour’s become vicious, like rocks pelting the windows. She texts Flynn to pick them up at the station on his way home from work. He replies with a golden thumbs up.
Over the loudspeaker, a barely comprehensible voice declares a stop that isn’t theirs, and Lucy smiles. It’s more nostalgic then it has any right to be.
Iris taps the window, imitating the droplets. She’s been awfully quiet since they got on the train.
“Can you teach me the differences between crows and ravens?” Lucy has to speak up over the rain, which earns her a few blunt looks from the other passengers. “I can never tell them apart.”
“Well ravens are bigger, for one thing.” Iris shifts in her seat and stares at the carpet, her face contorting in thought. “Crows have funerals.” At first Lucy thinks she mishears. “Do you think they have, like, wars?”
“I can’t imagine they’d have anything worth that much death.”
She tilts her head back and forth, mulling it over. She leans forwards, her hands on her knees, with much heaver burdens then someone her age should bare and Lucy knows she’s messed up. “What’s worth it then?”
“Iris—”
“Would they kill each other for stealing from each other’s caches if they had guns?”
Iris looks at her like she expects an answer, like she hangs the moon. Lucy wants to scream, just a little. She needs to choose her next words very carefully.
“Iris I don’t know; you know more about crows then I do.” It’s a liberating phrase: ‘I don’t know;’ when not knowing isn’t going to get anyone killed. “But I don’t think you’re only thinking of crows.” She says it as gently as she can bare. “I think you’re thinking of what happened right after we met, am I right?”
“Not just crows,” Iris admits, tears threating their way out of her eyes.
“Do you want me to hug you now?”
She nods and Lucy pulls her in. They’ve hugged before, during happier circumstances, but the last time Lucy held her this tight was when a man pulled out a gun and shot the owner of the restaurant they were eating lunch in.
“Why would a person kill another person like that?”
“He was scared.” Lucy squeezes her shoulders and holds her even closer. That’s all she can do.
“He wasn’t scared.” There’s a bite to her voice, even muffled in Lucy’s shirt. “Why would he be scared?”
“Because it didn’t go the way he thought it would. He didn’t plan on doing what he did.” Lucy needs her to believe the man who murdered someone in front of her wasn’t a monster and that’s not an easy thing to convince a child of. But while she’s here she wants to install radical empathy in her, because one day she might ask what exactly those bad things her father did in order to bring her back to life were, and Lucy won’t be around to act as a witness.
Iris pulls away and gives her a hard look. “How do you know?”
“Because I talked to him.”
That gives her pause. “Before my dad found you?”
Lucy nods. “I tried to talk him into giving himself up.”
That lasted approximately two minutes after Iris ran out the door, but Lucy sees no need to share the timeline. After the restaurant owner’s heart stopped, neither of them saw a point in surrender. One murder sentence isn’t much better then two. Instead, she tried to convince him he could get away if he ran immediately, before the police cars multiplied, and before they could organize to force the entrance. He didn’t listen. He flailed his gun in her direction while he barricaded the back door, as if she could get up and throw herself at him again, as if she could even walk.
“They knew each other, him and the restaurant owner. I’m not sure how, but he said he was sorry, that it wasn’t meant to happen.” But it was meant to happen, wasn’t it? People are fated to die at certain times, although death need not always be permanent. If Lorena and Iris don’t prove that, Rufus does.
That night in the motel room Flynn found a photo of Iris on social media. His fingers caressed her digital face.
Less then an hour before the shooting, Lucy saw that girl alone on a train platform. She was so annoyed. What were the chances? Turns out Iris is, or at least was, the kind of kid who keeps plans with her best friend regardless of the distance or whether there’s an adult available to take her where she wants to be. But she chose that specific wrong stop to get off at, the one where Lucy was. If fate is real like she still believes it is, and if the universe hasn’t annulled her like she thought, what then?
“Why would he rob someone he knew?”
“I think he was owed money, or he thought his friend wouldn’t turn him in, but I don’t know. I wish I had a better answer for you.” She wishes she had an answer for herself, too, and she wishes Flynn had tried something else before shooting him. It’s all speculation now. She’ll die with question marks floating above her head.
“The gun was to scare him,” she continues, “but the restaurant owner— his name was Alex, did you know that?” Iris shakes her head. “He was scared too, and he pulled out his own gun. Sometimes people make bad choices when they’re scared.”
Iris is quiet, her eyes still pick and puffy. Lucy has no idea if she’s said any of the right things. She doesn’t know how to talk to children. Before Iris, the last nine year old she knew was Amy. “Were you scared?”
Lucy blinks.
“You seemed scared but also like you knew what to do.”
“Thank you.” She can’t say throwing herself at the guy and clawing his face was just a distraction so Iris could get out, that she’d been ready to die. “And you’re night I was scared. Don’t ever do what I did.”
Iris stares at her, tries to understand her. She isn’t the only one. Lucy gives a man in a business suit an irritated look. She doesn’t feel remotely sorry he finds a child’s trauma inconvenient.
The train slows and Flynn texts her that he’s waiting. She suppresses a smile. As always, he has impeccable timing.
Train’s pulling up, she replies, and puts her phone away.
“So, a group of crows is called a murder. Do you know any other fun animal group names?”
Her eyes light up. “A group of owls is called a parliament.”
“That’s wonderful.” It really is.
They exit the train. Lucy clutches her bag in one hand and Iris in the other. The rain hurts their faces and soaks their clothes, but at least it’s not cold out.
They make it to Flynn’s idling car. Lucy drops into the front seat and silently laments getting it wet.
“Hey.”
Instead of a simple hello, Flynn raises his eyebrows and glances between her and Iris in the backseat. He has a water proof jacket on, the bastard. “Did you have fun?”
“There were a lot of crows at the park.”
Flynn has this easy smile on his face. He tries to catch Lucy’s eye, but she looks straight ahead. Things are different now. He’s married to someone else. To his credit, he gives her space, it isn’t like with Wyatt. Still, old habits die a slow and miserable death.
One of these days silence will become awkward for them. But not today, because Iris fills it with crow facts, mostly recycled ones. Lucy does learn that crows’ territories can span up to 32 square miles which is why she chose the park instead of staying closer to home, since that park appears to be a core piece of their territory.
Flynn parks in the driveway and Iris opens her door, slams it shut. “Be careful!”
But she’s already half way to the front door. Kids. Lucy probably couldn’t run like that again if her life depended on it. Hopefully those days are over.
Flynn puts his hood up, looks at her, opens his mouth and decides better of it.
She opens her door. The rain is as violent as ever. He saunters. She’s stiff as train tracks.
Not for the first time, she’s thankful for the first floor guest bedroom and bathroom, and the shower chair inside it. She melts into the hot water. This place has a seemingly unlimited supply of it.
Once upon a time, she’d taken that for granted.
It’s better this way, she used to tell herself. She became the person she needed to be for the missions to succeed. But why her? Why not someone better, more qualified?
It’s the blood in her veins, comes her answer. In the end it was a sleeper agent’s bullet and she did about as much as a houseplant. If someone, anyone, had to stand where she stood. Well, she deserves this more then someone better, someone who had nothing to do with any of it.
Lucy washes her legs, really scrubs at them, even the scar tissue on the outside of her thigh. It doesn’t help. She wants Amy back. She wants the beauty of a home that never existed.
Why is she still alive?
She flinches. Someone pounds at the door.
“Dinner’s ready.” She’d locked the bedroom door too, so Lorena’s voice has to really fight to make it through to her. “Do you want us to wait for you?”
“No.” Normal volume, too quiet.
“No! I’m not really...” ready to see people. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” It’s not even that she wants to be alone. If these were the days of the bunker or the farmhouse, she’d make her way to Flynn’s room and she’d drink or else she’d lay her head on his chest, over his heartbeat. “Thank you though.”
“We’ll save you a plate.”
It’s not her, either. Lorena’s amazing. She’s been far more accommodating then her supposed debt would require. And that is what it is, an obligation paired with kindness.
She knows that.
Her first night, she needed help covering her bandages so she could shower. Lorena helped her. She sealed Lucy’s thigh in plastic wrap and Lucy told her she didn’t have to do this, any of this. Gently, with a tight-lipped smile, Lorena said she did.
No, if anything Lucy likes her a little too much. It’s not her or Flynn or Iris. It’s the pressure of a table, the way she keeps intruding on their lives, a constant reminder of what happened.
Lucy cups her knotted skin. Her scar is rigid.
She draws out every part of the bathing process, mostly air dries siting on the bathmat. She pulls on her clothes and collapses into bed, checking her phone.
A text from Jiya, two minutes ago: I have an interview.
That’s great!!
Reading it back, it feels disingenuous, but she already hit send. I’m happy for you, she adds.
She is happy for Jiya. Working for Mason— the old Mason who’s kind of a dick— like nothing changed, has been, at best, bizarre for her and Rufus.
Lucy’s phone vibrates and Jiya’s name flashes on screen.
She’d tell her the details of the job, then she’d ask Lucy what’s new, and Lucy would tell her absolutely nothing is new. She still plans on moving out of the Flynn household. She’s still made no progress on that goal whatsoever since they last talked about it, after she obtained the real-fake documents which prove she is in fact a person born on January 24th, 1983 in the state of California, who was given a PhD and the license to drive a car.
Lucy declines the call, then texts her. I’m really tired. Can we talk tomorrow?
Sure.
Her stomach growls.
No talking, no footsteps, no plates being stacked. Just rain slapping against the house. To be sure, she listens by the door. Silence.
It’s not a guarantee, although to her knowledge Flynn hasn’t spent the night on the couch in several weeks.
The space is empty. She makes her way to the fridge, where she finds a container of pasta with meat sauce. There’s a burgundy post-it note attached. She wants to cry.
It’s her name in Lorena’s hand writing, with a heart for the U.
Notes:
Next chapter will include the OT3 interacting and discussion of events from S1 ( :
Chapter Text
“Do you think we should get a dog— were you sleeping?”
“No.” Flynn rubs his eyes, the light from Lorena’s laptop abrasive. “I was just dozing.”
She’s been reading on it since they went up to their bedroom for the evening. He’d watched her watch the screen, the way her head tilts ever so slightly, until his eyes closed on him.
“I like the idea,” he says. “I mean, Iris has wanted one for years.”
The familiar chant of ‘can we get a dog, please?’ came just a few days after he got back. It soothed him to know she was still the same child, nearly five feet tall, stood frowning on the bloodless porch of his suddenly alive brother-in-law’s new house.
He flexes his jaw. She hasn’t asked for a dog since the shooting.
Yes, it was his fault. His own damn mental health was the catalyst for canceling the trip. Even if he’d sucked it up and didn’t cancel, like he should have, he disappeared without warning. They tried to blame it on his work and miscommunication after the fact, but she knew something was wrong, of course she did.
Now all the monsters she fears are real.
He’d known his very presence, the choice to let himself into their home, exposed her to violence. He tried to find the strength to walk away, to let go because they were gloriously alive and didn’t need him to fight anymore. But Lorena miraged across the park and actualized in front of him and he didn’t listen to himself. He listened to her, who’s always been smarter then him, and to Lucy, curled into his side in the motel room the night before they left each other.
Perhaps his girls would be better off if he had never came home, but it’s chicken scratch on that long list of sins he cannot be truly sorry for.
“It would encourage her to get outside, even when her crow obsession fades,” Lorena muses, “help her be more confident.”
He hums, contemplates, wishes he could still say she’s never had any problems with that. “A designated friend, for the hard times.”
“Yeah, well, I want to say things will only get better from here, but she’ll be a teenager before we know it.”
A strangled sound escapes him. “And yet she was a little baby just a few months ago.”
She looks down, shyly and a little sad. “More then a hundred.”
A muscle aches behind his ribcage. How many had he missed?
Lorena closes her laptop, leans back into the pillows and gazes down at him. A small smile settles on her lips. Mutual thankfulness flows unspoken between them. Iris will not, fingers crossed, live out her high school years as a soldier or have to flee the war and start over in a new country like either of her parents Still, hard times are ahead, always. She doesn’t have siblings, just a baby cousin, all her grandparents are dead, her best friend is hours away, and she has him for a father. He can let her have a dog, it’s the least he can do. “Yeah, I like the idea, but Lucy—”
“Of course we’ll talk to her about it.” Flynn sits up, stiff as gun medal. “Do you know if she likes dogs?”
He doesn’t, and he hates that. “We should wait until after she moves out. I don’t want her saddled with taking care of a pet that isn’t hers.”
Lorena’s disagreement wrinkles in the space between her eyebrows. “She might like having more company during the day and besides” —she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear— “I’m not so sure she’s going to leave.”
He stares at her, uneasy, and presses his lips into a thin line.
“Lorena, she’s always said she’d move out when she could.” Can she tell it hurts him to say it? “And she’s like you, when she makes a decision, she’s sure of it.”
Lorena shakes her head. “She hasn’t actually mentioned moving out in weeks and she’s never talked about where she wants to go or what she’d do when she gets there.”
Flynn rubs the spot on his throat where he cut himself shaving. He hopes it bleeds.
“Clearly, plans change.” She gestures vaguely around the room, for dramatic effect. “I don’t think it’s that she wants to leave, I think she feels like she has to.”
If she feels a need to leave, it’s only because of his fingers around her neck. It’s only because of the ghosts resurrected and dead. The one most precious to him stares her in the face every afternoon and embodies the hopelessness that Amy ever will.
“If we make it clear she’s not a burden and we want her to stay forever” —she catches his eye, smiles so sincerely he can’t help but return it despite everything, bashful as the day they first met— “maybe she secretly wants that too.”
She takes his hand. He gives her his best squeeze. “You do want her to stay forever, don’t you?”
Before two, three gunshots, before Iris jumped into his arms, before his belt was a tourniquet and Lucy grasped onto him and cried so hard he thought she actually couldn’t breath, she told him to stop calling her everyday. They had the group chat, so he didn’t lose his goddamn mind not knowing if she was alive or dead. He’s not Wyatt; he understood why she wanted space. But his marital status, awkwardness, any grief for what they had, don’t explain why she looks at him with distrust. It doesn’t explain why she screamed ‘no’ when he tried to touch her after she fell two days into her stay and broke a glass onto her hand.
“You have no idea how much I want that version.” The one where they just need to love Lucy a little more and all his girls (he knows it’s a bad habit to think of her that way, he does) are together and there isn’t a gapping hole in his chest.
They’re all okay, and they’re all under one roof, for a little while longer at least. He needs to focus on that.
“Let’s see who’s right.” Her face lights up and argument is useless. “I think I hear the microwave.”
Lorena stands, smooths her nightdress, and paints on a cool smile that stirs anxiety in Flynn’s stomach. She heads for the door and he stumbles after her.
“Don’t say anything tonight, please.” She pauses, fingers on the handle. “She’s tired,” so’s he, “and she made it very clear she wants the night to herself.”
She purses her lips. “Look, I know you think I’ll scare her off with my directness, but I know how to read a room, okay?” He gawks at her. “I’ll wait for the right moment.”
All he can do is follow her downstairs for damage control. All he can do is look at Lucy while he still can, if she’ll even allow it.
Lorena visibly forces herself to walk at a casual pace. What is she even going to say? ‘you come here often?’
(He, of course, doesn’t need an opener. Lucy is used to his night patrols.)
The curtains are still open. Normally he closes them after sunset but the rainy day’s mess distracted him. It bothers him more then the situation merits, but he needs to notice these things, to be vigilant like he’s never managed to be.
Lucy’s reclined on the coach, bowl in hand, head tilted against the backrest. On the coffee table, her laptop plays something black and white with low dramatic piano music.
Her eyes stay fixed on the screen. Lorena approaches, her smile warm and inviting. Flynn wavers behind.
“Do you mind?”
“I can turn it down if— oh, no I don’t mind.”
Lorena sits on the far side of the couch. Flynn observes beauty from a distance, takes his time with every lock on every door and window on the first floor, listens to the hum of the music and the rain against the house.
He takes a seat on the old leather armchair. “Do you ever watch movies from this century?”
Lucy looks his way. There are deep circles under her eyes. Sympathy twinges in his midsection. He doesn’t want it, not when she doesn’t want it. “No.”
On screen, a woman appears to be on the run from someone. Words flash, and he frowns at the Dutch. “Or in languages you understand?”
She sighs, sets her bowl on the table. “I could only find the full movie in Dutch on YouTube.”
“Why’d you pick it?” Lorena asks, her body angled towards Lucy.
A few seconds pass. She points to the screen. “I met her.”
Flynn turns back to the movie and studies the woman in question. She’s pretty, brown, and he doesn’t recognize her. Lucy must have met the actress before their alliance began. Even if he’d been elsewhere when the two woman met, by the way her eyes are glued to the screen, he would have heard about it.
“Who is she?” Despite himself, Flynn smiles at Lorena’s delighted interest. Time travel gave them experiences they could never have had otherwise, and although few and far between, some of them didn’t hurt or kill anyone. “When did you meet?”
“Her name was Josephine Baker and we met in 1927.” A nostalgic grin breezes across Lucy’s face. “Same year this movie came out. She was... incredible: a singer, actress, civil rights activist, and a spy for the allies during World War II.”
“Wow,” Lorena muses, and rests her cheek on the back of the coach, “that’s almost as impressive as traveling through time saving history.”
Lucy laughs, acquaints herself with some far off scrape on the floorboards, and runs a self-conscious hand through her hair. “Well.”
He frowns. Is this Lorena’s idea of making her feel welcome?
“How’d you meat?” He cannot help himself.
She studies him, bites her lip, uncertainty dancing in her eyes. He could not cross the room to be with her, has never been less able to cross a room.
“Sometimes I forget we weren't always on the same side.”
He gives her a deeply unimpressed look, which she misses, perhaps intentionally, by turning her gaze back to the movie. “Ernest Hemingway introduced us when we were looking for Charles Lindbergh— a Nazi sympathizer by the way, a lot of people don’t know that— um, after his plane went down.”
The day Lorena found them at the park, after she and Stiv used security footage from the store he and Jiya stole food and clothing from to place him in the area, he told her what he became. He told her it was a war, because she knows what that can mean. He told her about the innocent people he killed, some of them, at least, and the scope of his sins. He told her about John Rittenhouse; the very worst of it. Still, there’s a thousand smaller evils she knows nothing about. She said it was okay, that she didn’t need to know all of it. He wishes she did know, that her decision was completely informed, although he wouldn’t be able to recall every cruelty if he had a hundred years.
“That’s where I enter the story.” He grins, wolfish and regretful. He never wants Lucy to walk on eggshells about anything he’s ever done for the sake of his marriage, or for any reason.
She raises a hand to her chin and stares straight ahead. Maybe it’s selfish to reference their past, to make her recall what he did to her. But he can’t imagine her memories are actually so watered down in the first place.
“Why were you with him?” Lorena asks. “Hemingway, I mean.”
“Oh, he just sort of showed up, I guess?” She picks up her bowl and scrapes the last bite of food into her mouth. “He was helpful at first, then he got kind of drunk and wouldn’t leave us alone.”
“He left you alone eventually.”
She glares at him. Lorena looks between them, curious, but doesn’t ask, doesn’t take the bait. “What ended up happening to Josephine after all that?”
“She went on to adopt 13 children.”
Flynn chokes on his astonishment. “13?”
She sets her bowl down. “Then died at 68 a few days after celebrating 50 years in show business.”
“Is there nothing she couldn’t do?” Lorena coos, her smile so open and so completely out of place.
“Yeah, well, she didn’t do everything she did well.” Lucy picks up her water glass, watches the ice swirl.
“Hey,” her sudden attention tenses his muscles, heightens his heartbeat; he tells them he wanted this, “whatever happened to Karl?”
“Emma told me he left.” There’s an edge to his voice even now, with that version of Emma Whitmore so indescribably far away. What he sees is Lucy on the ground, her blood, in that alleyway and in the restaurant. “So either he really did leave or—”
“She killed him.” Lucy nods, a fresh hardness to her face.
He stands and takes her bowl to the sink, ignores her barely heard ‘thanks,’ watches the rain bash the window.
“Who’s Karl?” Lorena asks behind him.
“Someone who used to work for your husband.” The use of the title inexplicably imitates him. And she uses it often, whether to prove a point that needs no reminder, or because it’s awkward to use his last name with Lorena, he doesn’t know.
She’s never once called him Garcia. He doesn’t mind that, exactly. He has no preference between his names. But she couldn’t start now, could she? It would be unnatural from her lips, a forced illusion of intimacy.
She turns in his direction. “Where did you find those people?”
His gaze catches on her black-sleaved forearm laid out on the back of the couch. It’s a shirt he brought her, no doubt. She watches him too, expression light, as he resumes his place in the tatted armchair. “Networking.”
On screen, Josephine Baker undresses by a river. By the choppy edits, Flynn can tell where someone cut around shots with her exposed breasts.
Lucy snorts and he can’t help but smile a little.
Lorena pays no mind to the movie and she doesn’t meat his look. It’s set unmovably on Lucy, thick with something he recognizes.
Oh.
It’s her attention, the way her body shifts towards her when they speak, the attachment, the hope. He didn’t notice. It was all so unquestionably natural. But her desire is the same, and she searches Lucy for interest now as she probed him for compatibility 15 years ago.
She’s courting her and didn’t bother to let him know.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” He’s about to do something terrible.
Starry-eyed and slow to react, she peals her gaze away from her crush. "Sure.”
They stand and Lucy glances at them, mildly curious. Flynn schools his expression into something neutral. Stomach turning, he checks for young ears on the stairs, and leads Lorena to the back door, as far from Lucy as they can get with her still in his sight. He wants her in his sight.
Lorena crosses her arms and narrows her eyes, utterly unsurprised.
Flynn keeps his voice low. “How long have you been planning to fuck her?”
She sighs. “Since Monday.”
“Monday?” He cringes. How is he supposed to respond to any of this? “And when were you planning on telling me this?”
“Whenever I figured out if she was even capable of being interested.” There’s a bite to her voice. She glances over her shoulder at Lucy, who’s blissfully unaware, and her shoulders relax. “Remember, Iris was late for school and I had that thing at work.”
Flynn makes it a point to remember, to write it on scraps of paper and in the notes app on his phone, the things his girls say and do that fill his heart with joy. But those weekday mornings blur together and he didn’t notice. How could he not have noticed?
"We were rushing around but she sat down at the table with her coffee and her hair was in her face and I just... wanted her,” she’s wistful, moony, almost too much, “so much it hurt.”
“I’m sorry.” He grimaces. “I know what it’s like to love her and not be able to do anything about it.”
He could ignore the lust. He really had no intention of acting on it, ever. But he couldn’t kill his appetite for nearness, the desire to know every part of her. He can’t get over wanting to touch her, to hold her while no one bleads, although he knows it would disgust her.
Lorena shakes her head, refuses to accept impossibility. “How could anyone not love her?”
He smiles in recognition of their shared sadness. “A question for the ages.”
There’s a challenge in her soft eyes, still. By reflexive, he checks on Lucy, stagnant on the couch. Lorena’s gaze follows his and passion stirs in him again, their love in the same direction, Lucy’s direction, and he can see how amazing it would be, if it wasn’t for him.
“The whole school drop-off I was freaking out about it, but then I remembered hearing the word polyamory somewhere, so I sat in the parking lot and googled it. I googled polyamory and children. I read about metaphorical escalators and by the time I was late for work I thought, okay, this can work.”
He blinks at her. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” she confirms. “Well, it took about half an hour.”
“Half an hour.” Flynn runs a hand through his hair.
“Do you need a minute?”
He shakes his head. No amount of time to think will change anything, nothing will erase the pain he’s caused Lucy. “It’s better if I don’t draw this out.”
“I’m suggesting we pursue a relationship with her together.” Lorena looks deep into him, mostly unfazed and a little indignant. “Tell me you don’t want that.”
He takes a half step forwards, all there’s space for. “I hurt her,” he wills her to understand. “You have no idea how much.”
"So tell me.” Her reply is sharp, her expression rigid. “What is so unforgivable that I don’t know about it?”
“I can’t.” It comes out pleading, he hadn’t meant it to. “It’s hers to tell and for the love of God, don’t ask her about it, please. Don’t tell her about any of this. All it’ll do is hurt her and drive her away before she has anywhere else to go.”
Even he can’t tell if he actually believes that, if it’d actually be a betrayal to tell his wife the specifics of what happened between them, or if it’s just an excuse to not confess.
“You know, I only ever hear about these vague awful things from you," Lorena retorts, her voice breathy. "I don't think anyone hates you as much as you hate yourself."
"With Rittenhouse gone that might be true." His own voice is quiet. Her eyes shine in the low light with fruitless determination. “But our relationship is nothing like what it was before. You can’t notice what I do.”
He doesn’t know when something broke between him and Lucy. She had time to think while she traveled up and down the coast, more then enough to realize she deserved someone who’d never laid a rough hand on her, who’d never kidnapped her.
"You don't even want to hear her prospective," Lorena argues
Or maybe, they were alright until he killed the man who shot her without hesitation, without any consideration of an alternative. (He was supposed to be better.).
Perhaps shooting him didn’t matter at all, just his earlier, complete failure to keep his child from—
She limps. Someone who didn’t know her before wouldn’t notice, but her gait is different. He led her into danger constantly when they were on opposite sides of that war, and because of the journal, he believed she’d be okay. That inevitably shattered beneath his feet. That bullet blew very close to her bone, very close to an artery, and if she had died alone? He’s too used to second chances. He hasn’t let himself imagine it since those minutes when he hadn’t known.
With his NSA badge, he strong-armed the nurses into letting him see her just as the anesthesia was wearing off. She was still worryingly pale, but not yet in pain, and not, as far as he could tell, frightened. She coughed and murmured incoherences to him and the only words he could make out were ‘Flynn’ and ‘how.’ He held her hand. He told her it was okay, he was there, she’d be alright. It could have gone the other way. He failed to protect Iris, but she didn’t.
And it’s on the edge of his tongue to tell Lorena it’s grief, that she can never touch her sister again for the same reason their child and her are alive, but the thought sickens him.
“No one’s punishing you,” she says. “Deal with it.”
“I don’t want to be punished I want you to understand!” He half-whispers, half-shouts it, and she takes a step back, gives him a disgruntled look.
He rolls his shoulders, becomes tired.
Lucy does not turn to look.
"I know how badly you want to believe a relationship between the three of us could work because I want it too.” He knows so much better then to let himself fully imagine the fantasy she thinks is possible, but knowing better isn’t enough.
“Maybe something could be arranged just between the two of you, but please believe me when I say” —he implores like the day he didn’t tell her almost everything— “she’d never want to be with me like that, and she could never, ever, love me—"
A blast breaks the air. Lucy screams. The lights go out. He finds her unharmed and tells himself it was just close thunder. He glances at the stairs towards Iris, follows the women’s gazes out the kitchen window.
"Stay here."
He ignores their protests, steps over the puddles, stops on the sidewalk. Rain pounds his face but it’s not unwelcome.
The top third of the power pole is gone. From what remains, blue sizzles loader then the storm and spits in every direction. It is, unbelievably, like Lorena’s eyes.
Notes:
The silent movie staring Josephine Baker, Siren of the Tropics, can indeed be found in Dutch on YouTube. (It's a shortened version, don't tell Lucy.)
Also, : ) : ) : )
Chapter Text
Lorena had a plan. The plan involved getting her ducks in a row and emotionally fulfilling sex. The plan did not involve a lighting strike obliterating a power pole.
“It looks like a snake trying to intimidate it’s enemies,” Iris observes from the porch, as if of an abstract painting. “Or like one of those things outside of car dealerships.”
Lorena keeps both hands firmly on her daughter's shoulders, in case she gets any bright ideas like her father, or she needs to shield her from an explosion. A scenario which seems highly unlikely, based on the lack of urgency from the first responders. One stands a dozen feet from the dancing blue, hands on hips. Lorena can’t be sure from this distance, but she thinks he’s shaking his head at the absurdity of it all.
“Come on,” she says. “It’s too cold and wet to stay outside in your pajamas.”
Iris could have satisfied her curiosity through the window. Lorena wouldn’t have let her open the door if she’d asked, but she didn’t ask, and Lucy was next to her, so she let her kid have those few extra steps beyond what made her comfortable.
Iris glances up at her, forlorn, and kicks halfheartedly at the concrete. “But I want to watch the firefighters.”
“You can watch from inside.”
“Fine.” Begrudgingly, Iris opens the door and stomps her unlaced sneakers on the front mat.
Maybe it’s perfectly reasonable to watch from this distance with no cover and she needn’t have given it a second thought. Half a dozen of their neighbors stand on their porches. One walks down the sidewalk welding a camera wrapped in a plastic bag. Perhaps her instincts are misaligned. There’s nothing like having your kid decide to run away— however temporarily intended— actually go through with it, and almost get shot to make one reconsider every little parenting decision.
Lucy stares ahead, too. Mentally elsewhere, she makes no move to follow Iris inside. She’d stayed out when Lorena and Garcia went upstairs, to check on Iris and change clothes respectively. Lorena taps her shoulder, finds her sleeve damp from blusters.
Lucy startles, a half-hop. Her fingers curl into themselves, and down her arms go, pinned to the sides of her ribcage. She looks up at Lorena, searches.
“Are you okay?” She keeps her tone light, causal.
“I’m fine, it’s just—” Lucy gestures with one hand, fingers splaying. Her other hand finds her collarbone. Her fist closes as if to hold a necklace she doesn’t have. “This isn’t normal, right?”
“It isn’t,” she agrees.
They step inside. Iris already stands by the kitchen window, as close to the action as the countertop allows.
“But it happened on our street, so I shouldn’t be surprised, right?” It’s a turn of phrase, nothing more. But she likes that word ‘our’ in Lucy’s mouth.
Something crosses her face. Discomfort. Lorena looked too long, maybe, too eagerly, or else Lucy noticed her own word choice and thinks she’s misspoken. Regardless, she looks away, looks at the floor.
Lorena reaches out, swipes her thumb over Lucy’s forearm. “I’m going to see about Garcia," she says. "I think we’re going to be down here for the night, or at least until he’s decompressed and Iris gets sleepy.” She hesitates. “You’re welcome to sit with us, if you’re staying up, but, um, change into dry clothes first.”
Through the window, emergency vehicles dimly light Lucy’s surprise. It’s a muted version of what’s so sharply familiar from those first few days after she got out of the hospital, when she needed a lot of help but seemed to expect none. Today, rather then unease, curiously is in her dark eyes.
“We would appreciate it," Lorena adds.
Is that, like, way too much? She doesn’t think it is. A weird thing to say, maybe, because there’s actually no evidence to suggest Garcia would appreciate it, based on his behavior tonight, anyway; although she knows for him Lucy’s proximity is like morphine for the recently impaled.
She turns towards the stairs, hindering Lucy's chance to reply, She moves quickly, misses one step in the dark, and doesn’t slow until she’s at the bedroom door.
Garcia sits on the edge of their bed, his hair ruffled, a small towel in hand. He’s changed into a burgundy turtleneck. Next to him, a flashlight illuminates the closet door.
“Iris?”
“She’s fine.” Lorena closes the door. “She’s downstairs with Lucy now. She was actually asleep when it happened. I found her sitting up in bed rubbing her eyes, wondering if she’d dreamed it.”
Instead of a bedtime, Iris has lights out. They made that decision a few years ago, in order to save their sanities, after she began to insist she didn't sleep, not ever, would only stare at the ceiling extremely bored until the sun rose. Never mind that Lorena woke her up for school every morning.
She told him that story, and others, on the drive home, caught him up on his life. Or, the life of his counterpart? She can’t always find the right language for all this.
“Are you feeling better?” As much as she hated it, she hopes the impulse— the danger, the water— helped him.
He balls up the towel and tosses it into his clothes hamper. “More or less.”
“Good.”
He's attracted to violence and danger. He's good at it, too, really truly good. War makes him feel helpful, so he's made that vocation his fate. The fact his vocation consistently leads him to make choices that harm himself has thus far been the hardest thing for her to accept within their marriage. It's harder then the post traumatic stress and the years of Iris’ childhood he lost to Rittenhouse. It's harder then when Iris was five and Lorena felt ready to suffer another pregnancy, and he told her he no longer felt any desire for a second child.
She has accepted it, has checked in again and again and found she still prefers being with him over not. But on their way home, she told him he'd gone back to his old profession for a while, and he scoffed, as if the update were about someone else entirely. She hopes that attitude will stick, this time. Of course—she couldn’t ever forget— that focused helpfulness is also what made her want him in the first place, so.
She crosses the flashlight’s beam and stands in front of him. He gives her his undivided, tired stare.
“Lucy needs to understand that she’s welcome to stay. Ideally she’d hear it from both of us, but I’ll talk to her about it regardless,” she pauses, “whenever we have electricity again and she looks less like a pitiful kitten.”
He nods once, in acceptance but not necessarily agreement.
She hesitates. “I’ll leave the romance out of it unless or until you’re okay with it.”
"I could have handled that a lot better.” He flicks his tongue, looks behind her, meets her eyes. “I'm sorry I didn't."
She hopes Lucy dismissed whatever heated Croatian she may have overheard, but that’s probably too much to ask.
"You were surprised.” She half shrugs, moves to sit next to him. “I thought it was best to make sure about her first, but I still could have told you the day I realized.”
“I’m not sure it would have made much of a difference.” With the flashlight between them, she watches their shadows alive on the closet door, watches him rub his face. “I’ll tell you,” he says, finally, “all the details. But I need us to be on the same page first.”
She leans back, observes the man she loves in profile, this man she thinks she knows so well. “Right now I want that more then anything else.”
He nods, takes a full breath. “Lucy and I never talked about before we were a team, the things I did to her, both intentionally and unintentionally.” He twists his wedding ring. “I was never sure if an apology was something she wanted or if I’d be doing it for me. I didn’t want to do it for me. Now I know I would be because I want to and she— she’s made it clear she doesn’t want to see me more then she has to.”
“I know this is a weird situation,” Lorena cuts in. “I know she relies on us for her needs to be met and there’s a certain power imbalance there. I have thought all this through. It might be a dealbreaker for her, but it might not be.”
“How about the part where she doesn’t like me as a person?” His mouth corks upward into a self-deprecating smile, his eyes a challenge. “Is that a definite dealbreaker?“
She narrows her eyes.
Lorena wants, from deep in her soul, to discredit him. The thing is, so much of her evidence against his viewpoint is based on what he told her about his and Lucy’s relationship before the world changed. It’s true that these days they don’t spend much time together. Most of their conversations, at least that she’s aware of, revolve around coordinating responsibilities with Iris. Maybe he’s correct now, and had previously exaggerated the degree of his and Lucy’s closeness. Maybe he loves Lucy and Lucy hates him and it’s just Lorena's misfortune to love them both.
“I don’t know how else to say it," she crosses her legs, "I just don’t see that. “
He’s unimpressed.
“You saw how much she didn’t want me to touch her.” His voice is low and strained. “You heard her scream when I tried.”
Involuntarily, she rolls her eyes. “That? she was overwhelmed, embarrassed. You know how she is. She thinks she should carry it all on her own. ”
A few days into her stay with them. Lucy, with an empty water glass in her hand, fell, or possibly fainted— Lorena never got a sure answer— and cut her palm open. Garcia went to her. She’d half screamed something, Lorena doesn’t remember what, but it sent her into the room and made Garcia step back. Lorena helped her up and into the bathroom, took care of the minor but bloody wound, and made sure Lucy hadn’t sat on any of the glass shards while Garcia swept up.
What's sharp in Lorena’s memory, is how Lucy made herself stop crying. It was almost immediate. Then she’d apologized, which Lorena ignored.
“She doesn’t want my help,” he says. “She hasn’t wanted my help in a long time. When she was recovering I saw how— how unhappy she looked every time I did anything for her, brought her a meal or clean laundry.”
“You think she wanted my help?" Lorena says. "It made her so uncomfortable, and not just the physical stuff. She hated the situation, she hated needing help.”
Lorena insisted on picking Lucy up from the hospital alone. She wanted to have a full conversation with this women who'd saved Iris' life, who she'd already agreed to let live in her home, and whom she did not know from Eve. Plus, she'd thought it better for Garcia to watch Iris alone sooner rather then later.
She brought Lucy a change of clothes, because most of what Lucy owned had been logged into an evidence locker somewhere and, not having an ID, she could not prove she was not actually a dozen armadillos in a well-made human costume and therefore could not get her possessions back. That had been awkward, particularly for Lucy. She'd clearly expected Garcia, not his wife who could barely be called an acquaintance. There was a rigidness to her exhaustion, a guarded quality that slipped away in the days that followed.
In a gas station parking lot, she tried to use her crutches and fell twice. The instruction she received at the hospital was insufficient and Lorena said as much.
An arm around her shoulders, a body to lean on; she needed a lot of physical help, more then Lucy was comfortable with.
She'd needed so much sleep, which, paradoxically, even the good hospitals barely allow. At home, Lorena let go of her a few feet from the bed, allowed her awkward descent onto the covers. Garcia left a bottle of water on her nightstand and they let her sleep through dinner.
She didn't see Lucy again until that evening. Mysteriously, she sat on the kitchen island, and looked like she was genuinely considering playing it cool. With a tight smile, Lorena repressed her laugh, and asked what she was doing.
"I wanted," Lucy bit her lip, "to take a shower."
"And…?" Lorena prompted, gesturing at her choice in seating.
And she'd been told she should first wrap her bandage in plastic to keep it from getting wet. Instead of asking for help, she had, naturally, decided to hobble out of the bedroom, across the living room, and into the kitchen. She'd figured out the plastic wrap was stored in the top shelf of the pantry, out of her reach on a good day. She then, naturally, decided to climb up onto the island in order to try and reach it.
It did not work out the way she had intended.
And it must have been excessively painful.
Had anyone explained to her how to wrap her leg? No, they hadn't. Well, years ago in what Lorena would have once described as another life, before that term took on a sharper meaning, she had been a nurse. It was easier to just show Lucy what to do then it was to explain it.
Obviously, she could not get off the island by herself without a searing jolt of pain. To gentle the landing, Lorena placed her hands on Lucy’s waist and lowered her to the floor.
Her eyes were shut.
‘Alright?’ she'd asked, and Lucy nodded. The pain hadn't come.
Heavily, Lucy leaned on her. Together, they hobbled to the bathroom. Lorena had her sit on the rim of the tub. She got the plastic wrap from the kitchen while Lucy pulled down her sweatpants.
She wants to think, as she scrutinizes her words, her memories, that when she came back into the bathroom, Lucy looked nervous. She didn't. She looked scared. Not of Lorena, specifically, or at least she doesn't think so. No, it was like Lucy didn’t expect to be treated well.
Because they were, at best, acquaintances, she offered to get Garcia instead. Lucy, with something adjacent to a chuckle, said no. Lorena suspected her answer would have been different if Garcia were again a widower, or if it had been someone else asking. Then again, maybe not, because they were both women and that was how these things tended to go. She did not read too much into it, thank you very much.
She tried to make it as normal as possible, tried to present genuine care as normal. What happened to Lucy, and what certain people failed at, Lorena has her guesses, her leads, although she tries not to assume. She knelt, wrapped Lucy’s thigh in plastic, and Lucy said she didn't have to. But, she did. She told her as much. She should have said more. Maybe that would have helped.
"She was very thankful, though," Lorena muses. "Resistant, but thankful."
“We used to share a bed.” It isn’t news to her. She snaps to attention anyway. “She used to let me comfort her. She used to let me in.”
“But now I’m here.”
He grimaces, closes his eyes.
She knows the reminder of her own death is painful, so she doesn’t point out that he doesn’t have a comeback. “You said it yourself: she was in a similar situation before and the guy didn’t treat her well, so she wanted space.”
“I just don’t think that’s all it is. I can’t think that anymore.” He rubs his temple. “We would have adjusted by now if it was just awkward or a little painful, but we haven’t.”
“Don’t you think I would see it, if it were so much worse then all that? I am biased and I don’t know the full story but neither do you because” —she pokes her index finger into his chest— “you won’t ask her how she feels.”
"Lucy's had a hard year and a worse couple of months.” Garcia takes her hand in his, squeezes it, and lowers it onto the bed. “I don’t want to make things worse for her.” His eyes flick to hers. “Tell me you won’t make it worse by bringing up what I’m going to tell you.”
“I know she’s had a hard time.” It comes out almost a whisper, although she doesn’t intend it. His jaw tightens slightly. “Of course I’m going to be careful with her feelings. And, by the way, if you don’t want her to be uncomfortable, you have a strange way of showing it.”
He flicks his tongue. The little crease in the south-east corner of his forehead deepens. He has the audacity to be genuinely confused.
“When she was telling that story earlier, what was that conversation?”
If he were anyone else, she would think he was referencing some sensual encounter to tease Lucy. But, if such an encounter existed, he would have said by now.
She asked him, outside the motel, what his and Lucy's relationship was. He said he really didn't know how to answer. She asked if he slept with her. No, not in the way she meant. They had shared a bed some nights, not every night, and not because there weren’t enough beds, although there wasn’t enough beds. He made sure to emphasize that. He made sure to emphasize that there was an attraction there, one he’d never acted on, and he’d made sure to emphasize that it wasn’t because of her that he didn’t act.
Lucy didn’t feel the same way, he said. He'd wanted so very badly to be honest with Lorena, and had admitted, unprompted, that they’d never actually discussed it. How Lucy felt hadn’t been something Lorena particularly cared about at the time, so she hadn’t pressed him for how he came about the information.
“She left out some details for my sake,” he says. “I didn’t want her to do that.”
She narrows her eyes, shakes her head, doesn’t doubt it. It’s the kind of fucked up logic he uses sometimes.
(Yet, he’s so emotionally intelligent when he’s not in pain. Funny how that works.)
“Your self loathing isn’t helpful.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you could use the reminder.”
She could argue with him forever. It’s like arguing with herself. But it isn’t getting them downstairs. Sometimes people need a hug. Sometimes they need a shove.
“You know,” she stands up, in front of him, and crosses her arms, “If I believed everything I’d been told about you we’d have never gotten together and Iris would have never been born.”
He inhales sharply, rubs at a mark on his neck. That thought is almost unbearable. It's more unbearable then the knowledge that Iris was dead. It pains her to bring it up, but she needs him to see her side, to see how it's the possibility of joy, that love that become essential, which he’s lived without, that he now wants to say is impossible with Lucy, thus making it so.
“Maybe she won’t be interested, maybe she’ll be horrified at the idea," Lorena says. "But I know if I don’t say anything to her I will regret it. I don’t want to still regret it in 15 years, still think it’s too late.”
Garcia tugs on his turtleneck as if it were suffocating him. "I did something to risk that,” he says, “to risk Iris never being born.”
“What?”
He twists his wedding ring, squeezes his knuckle hard and looks up at her, his eyes full of remorse.
“Gabriel. I saved his life, and I knew the whole time I was planning it there was a chance it might make me disappear, or end up like Lucy is now, and I did it anyway.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I would never do that today. At the time it seemed—”
“Like the right thing to do?”
He loved his mother, did not want her to know the pain he suffered, the pain Lorena could only imagine. So he did the selfless thing, saved the child in front of him and she shouldn’t be angry. But she is.
She fidgets with the fabric of her nightdress, means to pace, to process this, steps forward and hugs him.
His hair is still damp under her fingers, against her chest.
They breathe together in rhythm. The weight is comfortable. She thinks only of this, their bodies, and her relief that this is where time and space ended up.
(Her relief that he did not end up like Lucy)
He stretches his fingers between her shoulder blades, pulls away slightly. “What you said before,” he starts softly, “this is nothing like that.”
She lets go, fingers uncurling in his hair, and steps back to look at his face. “I have no way of knowing.”
She waits a beat to see if he’ll tell now. He doesn’t. She doesn’t really want him to.
“Do you want to be near her?” He closes his eyes and the lines in his face deepen. He looks, momentarily, like he’ll cry.
"Do you want to go downstairs and sit with her? Because I told Lucy we’d be downstairs for the night, or for part of it at least, and I let her know she was welcome to...” she searches for a phrase that won’t make his eyebrows raise, “hang out, with us. You think she doesn’t want to be near you? Let’s see what she does. Maybe she’ll prove you wrong.”
That possibility sparks his interest. “Okay,” he says after a beat, “I’d like that very much.”
She touches his check, because she wants to, and because she’s happy as a clam. Even he can’t find fault with her sound logic, thank you very much. He covers her fingers with his and their hands puddle together on his cheek.
She moves towards the door. Her hand glides from his check. He follows.
“If she’s in her room when we get downstairs, you’ll say she was just tired and it doesn’t necessary mean anything,” Garcia points out.
She pauses by the door, looks at him over her shoulder. “And I’d be right.”
“Yes.” He gives her a bone-tired, rueful smile.
They trudge downstairs and the door to Lucy’s room latches shut. Disappointment twinges in Lorena's stomach. Still, there’s plenty of time. Lucy won’t disappear into thin air.
Iris sits in the leather chair, which she's taken and arranged to face the window. Her feet are flat against the kitchen cabinets. Lorena lets that go on account of her near certainty that this whole situation will literally never happen again.
Garcia walks over to her. “What do you think of all this, sweetheart?”
“Really weird, but kind of cool," Iris says. “I want to sleep here."
He looks back at Lorena. In the low light, she can just make out his raised eyebrows and the hint of a smile. Until now, Iris has only ever declared wanting to go to sleep on Christmas Eve. There’s a first for everything, she supposes.
“Just this once." For all it’s wired them up (pun absolutely intended) there is a beauty in the sparks outside their window. There’s a comfort in seeing the minor catastrophe be repaired. “And you have to scooch a little further back from the window.”
Iris does as instructed, pushes the chair back maybe a few inches. Garcia finishes the job, pulls Iris in the chair across the kitchen, nearly knocks the opposite wall. Lorena sits on the coach and tosses him a stray throw blanket, which he sets in Iris' lap.
Lucy opens her bedroom door, comes out wearing a fresh sweater.
“Hi.” Lorena moves to one side of the couch, and grins at her. She doesn’t try to hide it; the half light will soften it.
Lucy smiles back, and joins her.
Garcia watches, doesn't say anything but slowly meanders towards them.
Lorena turns to Lucy, pride like a purring cat bubbling in her chest. “We should all go to the beach tomorrow.”
Garcia places his hands on the back on the couch, nods. "Just to walk around, get away from all this.”
“To relax,” Lorena agrees. "We could go first thing in the morning.”
“I’d like that,” Lucy says after a minute, “just maybe not the walking around part."
Her voice is steady, but she looks so burdened. Is it by her injury, or the fact her body isn't bulletproof?
“We could bring a picnic blanket and just sit for awhile."
"Just sit," Lucy echoes, and shifts to the middle of the couch.
“Are we going swimming?” Iris calls from across the room. Garcia smiles as he sits down on Lucy's other side. Lorena reminds herself to calculate all risks, to remember young ears are always listening.
“No, it’s too cold,” Garcia calls back.
Lorena twists around to look at Iris; her crossed arms and her straight stare out the window. “No swimming, but we might go to the beach tomorrow just to spend time in the sand.
“And look at the dead things that wash up there.”
Lucy's hand flies to her mouth, stifles a laugh.
“Look, but not touch,” Garcia says sternly.
“Yeah, yeah,” Iris says. “I know.”
In the half dark, his eyebrows raise like a flag, but they don't hold, and his expression quickly crumples into soft admiration. “That’s our kid," he says softly.
“That’s our kid,” she agrees.
Between them, Lucy leans back into the couch, tries to shrink herself.
Lorena reaches for Lucy's hand, rests her fingertips in the slight indent where hand and wrist meet.
Lucy does not relax into her touch. But without looking at her, she intertwines their fingers.
Delight sparks in Lorena's chest. The night air is heavy. Garcia makes no move of his own but his desire shows in his eyes, in the set of his jaw.
Lorena plays with Lucy’s hand, rubs circles in the soft skin of her palm, finds a dent in one fingernail. “Do you remember when we first me met?”
“How could I forget?" She stares straight ahead, expression unreadable. Garcia meanwhile, is made nervous.
"Do you remember going back to your motel room, when you and Garcia were ahead of me on the stairs?"
Lucy exhales. "Yeah."
"You lost your balance and he caught you," Lorena says quietly. "That mattered to me."
Lucy looks at her, searching. "Why?"
Lorena shifts her gaze to Garcia. "You told me about all the bad things you did." His voice had cracked when he said he didn’t know if it’d be right to go home to Iris, if it’d be selfish, if he could still be her father. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. "But you were so—" she searches for the right word and turns back to Lucy, "he was so attuned to you, so caring. That's not something to take for granted in a person. I took it as a sign."
In Lorena's experience, that level of attentiveness towards another human being is rare and not to be dismissed. Garcia had it for Lucy, even when he was staring at Lorena like she might not be real, even when he was in a fog, utterly bewildered she didn’t immediately believe his story.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
“Because I think I should have said it sooner.” She hadn't told Lucy how grateful she was to her. She'd been too focused on trying to alleviate Lucy's discomfort through pretending this was all normal.
Garcia leans into the couch, sighs.
Lucy turns and looks at him. Her hand shifts, and Lorena's fingers find her pulse point.
He offers a crooked smile. "No one should be alone in the dark, Lucy."
Lucy's heartbeat quickens. Her face is as unchanged as a statue's.
"Is that why you're here?"
His smile fails. Caught out, he says nothing. Lorena experiments, moves a little closer, doesn't quite press against her.
"I'm here because—" his voice cracks, softens. He turns to face Lucy more completely, his gaze briefly flicking to Lorena's. "You matter to me, and this matters to me."
Lucy exhales.
"I think we're building something really amazing." Lucy looks at Lorena, their faces inches apart. "What do you think?"
"I think," Lucy's voice is low, almost a challenge, "it could be better."
"I agree."
Lorena doesn’t want to be on the edge, sit on the fence, wait. She presses her hip against Lucy’s before she can second guess herself.
Lucy closes her eyes, opens them, and draws in a shaky breath. She leans back, tilts her head to look at Garcia. Something passes between them, some context Lorena isn't privy to, and the tension melts away.
She relaxes, rubs a reassuring circle into Lucy's thigh. She hears the firetruck drive away, watches the headlight-cast shadows grace the far wall. In the leather chair, Iris is still, her head angled to one side. Their breathing grows deep and even. There's no real reason they can't be together, Lorena decides. She considers how their necks will hurt in the morning.
"You were right," Lucy mummers, almost too softly to hear. For a moment, Lorena thinks it's directed to her, and feels validated.