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She listened to the chirping of the birds.
It was strange, it’s not like she hasn’t heard birdsong in months – she’d heard it quite frequently in fact, on their various trips to the past.
But what is strange is to heard birdsong accompanied by the steady hum of the freezer and to not be wearing a corset whilst hearing it. Lucy sits on the steps on their new safe house, a mug of coffee held between her hands provides some warmth in the pre-dawn chill. She isn’t actually sure what time it is – somewhere between three and four in the morning, she guesses – but she had just known that she could not stay in the stuffy little room a moment longer.
The new safe house wasn’t much of a step up from the bunker, but she did like how she was able to step outside from time to time now. Well, not by herself, but no one else was up at this hour and she felt like she couldn’t breathe, and therefore had carefully escaped the room without waking her sleeping companion.
She kept on circling the plan given to them by Future Lucy and Wyatt before they stepped back into their lifeboat and whizzed back to wherever they came from. If they did this within this time frame, if they could get this part from 1956, if they calculated the calibrations to travel back to a time when they already existed…
If. If. If. They hadn’t given them anything concrete and the saving of Rufus could only be completed after they had jumped through a series of hoops. She hated the uncertainty of it all, she wanted Rufus back, no if about it. She missed him. She missed his laugh and his corny jokes and fighting over the TV at two a.m. because he wanted to watch Star Wars, but she didn’t want to give up watching real housewives.
She misses his friendship. She misses the way they understood each other without needing to say too much. He shouldn’t have died - Rufus was good, far better than any of the rest of them here and she will bring him back, no matter what it takes, no matter what it costs.
A tear rolls down her cheek and she does nothing to stop it. The weight of her emotions was killing her and she hadn’t been able to feel anything, with Wyatt’s sudden love confession, the appearance of her from the future, moving safehouse and just general fighting Rittenhouse bullshit she hadn’t been able to grieve her friend.
Her sobs become louder and she covers her mouth with the sleeve of her sweater in an attempt to muffle the noise, but she can’t keep it there as soon she has to gasp for breath and she feels like she’s stuck in the ocean where every time you come up for air, another wave drags you under and your lungs just keep on burning because there’s no possible way that you can really catch a break.
Lucy jumps when she feels a hand on her back, she didn’t even hear anyone approach and can’t even bring herself to turn around and see who it is. It’s not going to be who she wants because who she wants is Rufus and he’s not here. Whoever it is sits down next to her and pulls her against his chest, she fights it a first, pushing violently at her companion, but they are stronger than she is and she finds that’s she’s soon pulled tightly against the offending figure’s chest.
Suddenly it’s warm and she can feel life thrumming beneath her fingers which are balled up in his sweater, a heart beats steady against her chest and she gasps for air in time with its beat. A hand trails up and down her back whilst gentle sssh sounds are being murmured against her hair. Just like that, she can breathe again.
She peers through her eyelashes to finally see her mystery companion and is less than surprised to see Garcia Flynn. The two have been sharing a room more or less since their arrival here, Wyatt and Flynn would not bunk together, under any circumstances, so the former had been stuck in a room with Connor. Lucy was supposed to share a room with Jiya, but the sounds of her crying in her sleep had been too much for Lucy to handle and Jiya would not accept any forms of comfort. Flynn had gotten his own room once again and the two had ended up sleeping together under a moth-eaten blanket on a bed that was much too narrow to properly accommodate both of them. But neither tried to change their circumstances nor did they speak about it. It was just simply something that had happened when he’d found her trying to get comfortable on the sofa after the first night and promptly told her he had a perfectly fine bed in his room. After an argument when she told him that she would not be taking his bed, he’d huffily laid down and pulled her in beside him and that was that.
So it didn’t surprise her that he was here, he probably woke up and wondered where she was. What did surprise her, however, was that she was glad it was him. Which in all honesty, is a little ridiculous, because she’d spent more time with him in the past few months than anyone else by her own choice. So, her relief in his presence is not something that should be a surprise to her.
He rocks them both gently on the step as the last of her tears get soaked up by his sweater and she wonders how his arm is doing with all this movement but decides that it can’t be bothering him that much considering how he’d chucked the sling five days ago.
Her breathing eventually evens out and she shifts, not away from him but instead pulls herself so that she is sitting in his lap and buries her face in his neck. She’s half waiting for a rebuke, a telling off that she shouldn’t be outside without him. But none comes, he instead continues to gently rock them on the step.
She pulls back a little to look Flynn in the eye. “We’ll get him back.” She doesn’t pose it as a question. It’s a statement, a spoken promise between the two of them that if nothing else works then they’ll work it out between them. There’s no one she trusts more and she wants – needs – Rufus back because she’ll not allow him to become something else Rittenhouse takes away from her. From Wyatt. From Jiya and Conor. From Flynn.
Holding her eyes, he nods in confirmation, understanding the promise completely. Leaning forward, she gently brushes her lips against his, sealing it with a kiss. She kisses him a second time with slightly more vigour, his tongue sliding against hers until they both come up for air, she rests her forehead against his as she once again tries to get her breathing back to normal. Nothing more is said, and Lucy turns to face the sunrise and watches as the darkness gives way to the light. She feels him press a kiss against her shoulder and brush a hand gently through her hair.
She’s unaware of the time that the stumble back to their bedroom at, but she clings to him tightly in the small bed and thinks about their promise, how she’ll know he’ll keep it. Something that feels dangerously like hope begins to bloom in her chest.