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Wyatt feels like he can’t breathe as he runs through the hospital. People stare at him as he goes by, but all he can think is her name, like a mantra. Or like a prayer, his need for her to be okay almost bringing him to his knees.
He reaches her room, using the doorframe to swing in to a stop. There are two doctors in there, as well as Noah and who he assumes is Lucy’s mom. The scene is – confusing. Last he heard, she’d gotten rid of Noah. And how she’d even ended up in hospital is beyond him, honestly, because she was supposed to be at Mason within an hour of talking with her mom. He hasn’t seen her for a day, and he only knew she was here because he’d gotten a vague yet terrifying text from her demanding he come save her from the hospital.
She hadn’t responded to any of his replying texts.
“Wyatt!” Lucy’s voice is panicked, and she’s sending terrified looks over to her mom and Noah.
There’s a large bruise blossomed on one side of her face, the eye black and swollen shut. Her lip is cut, as well, and from the way she’s clutching her stomach he’s guessing she’s been injured there as well.
He can’t help the, “What the fuck?” that bursts from his lips as he rushes towards her.
He cups her face gently, his thumb running over her cheekbone on her uninjured side.
“Noah,” she whispers urgently, bringing her hand up to grip his wrist. “They’re Rittenhouse.”
Instantly, Wyatt goes for his gun. By the time he gets it trained on him, Noah also has a gun out and pointed at Wyatt too. The doctors scramble away and press their backs against the door.
“Lucy, get behind me,” Wyatt says tensely.
She slips from the bed, gracelessly like always, but it’s worse, because she can hardly move. She grips the bed frame and the back of his shirt as she stands behind him, leaning against him and using his body to stand. He wants to check on her, but he’ll take his eyes off of Noah when there’s a bullet in his head.
“Leave,” Wyatt barks at the doctors. They don’t move. “Leave!”
As they scurry out, Wyatt takes a step towards the door. He wonders on Noah’s background; how has he been trained? Has he been told to avoid conflict, like Wyatt? Has he been told that if it looks like you can win you should take out the enemy, like Wyatt? Is he seriously considering taking the shot, like Wyatt?
Wyatt hears Noah cock his gun, and he does the same.
Take the shot.
Before this ordeal started, Wyatt knows he would have done it already. This isn’t like Jesse James, he thinks, this is life or death.
If Noah doesn’t kill them now, he will do it eventually. By his own hand or no, Rittenhouse will bring death down on them if they don’t kill them first. An alarm sounds on the floor, obviously in response to the situation.
Kill them first.
With the thought in his mind, Wyatt shoots Noah between the eyes. Lucy yelps behind him, and Carolyn steps back in shock, her eyes wide.
Wyatt immediately trains the gun on her.
“Mom,” Lucy says warningly, stepping out from behind Wyatt, though keeping her hands clutched on his shirt. “Just let us leave.”
“Don’t do this, Lucy.” Carolyn’s tone is stern, obviously trying to get back some semblance of control. “You were born to –“
“I don’t care,” Lucy snaps harshly. “You don’t get to decide who I’ll fight for, mom. They’re killing people! Innocent people! They’re changing history and I’m not – I won’t let it happen.”
Killing Lucy’s mom is a whole other board game to killing Noah, so Wyatt takes a hand off his gun – still keeping it trained on Carolyn – and starts to push Lucy towards the door.
Wyatt doesn’t take his gun from Carolyn until she’s out of sight, but even then he keeps it cocked. Lucy can hardly walk behind him, probably can hardly see either, so he slips his arm under around her waist to help her along.
“Wyatt,” she mumbles, “stop. Wait. Wyatt.”
He looks down to her and realizes his hand is wet. Blood.
Fuck. He should have asked what was actually wrong with her. She probably has stitches for some reason, and now they’ve likely pulled open. She’s obviously waited until she physically couldn’t move anymore to tell him to stop, because she’s weighing on him heavily and her gown is dripping with blood.
“Fuck, Lucy.”
He sweeps her up into his arms and her head lolls backwards.
“Lucy, listen to my voice,” he commands. She’s pale and there’s sweat beading on her face, and Wyatt knows she’s in trouble. But he can’t get her help here – he’s threatened some doctors – and Carolyn has probably already told Rittenhouse he’s here and taking Lucy.
They need to get the fuck out, now.
Lucy’s eyes slip closed.
“Hey, hey, now,” he chastises, as he runs towards the fire exit. “Don’t close your eyes. Come on Luce, just look at me, okay?”
“’Kay,” she mumbles, but still, her eyes are dangerously closed.
He tries desperately to think of something to say to her to keep her engaged.
“Remember the night we met?” he asks, pushing open the door to the fire escape with his back. She lets out a large breath that he takes to mean as a yes. “I remember thinking that you were gonna be the biggest pain in the ass. Who gets defensive over being called ma’am?”
Her eyes are closed but she chuckles lightly, as much as she can.
“But, hey, you know what?” He says, keeping his tone light and teasing as he goes down the stairs as fast as he can.
“Wha’?”
“You’ve turned out to be one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”
The smile that curls up her face makes Wyatt’s heart beat faster. Slowly, she opens her uninjured eye.
“You’re one of the best . . . too . . .” Her sentence trails off and her body goes completely limp in his arms.
But he’s outside now and he can practically see his car; he just needs to get her there and then he can fix her up and it will be fine.
He keeps talking to her as he goes, reassuring her that everything is fine, he has it under control, she just needs to hold on a little bit longer.
He manages to open the door to his jeep, and puts her in the passenger side. He declines the chair until its as far horizontal as it will go, then he pulls one of her arms from the sleeve and pull the gown down so he can see her stomach.
There’s a bandage wrapped around her torso that’s seeped through, red and ugly. He rummages through his glove compartment and gets his first aid kit and sets it on the armrest, then hoists himself up into the car as well.
He kneels on her chair, one knee between her thighs and the other standing on the foot rail.
Lucy jolts awake as he’s cutting the bandages off of her.
“Wyatt?” she slurs. “What’s going on?”
“Hey, hey, just be calm,” he says reassuringly, glancing up to her face. She looks confused and scared, but not in too much pain. He knows it won’t last once he takes the bandage off. “It’s okay, we’re in my car. I just need to fix this up, alright?”
She brings a hand to her face, wiping away the sweat, then presses the heel of her palm to her eye.
Slowly, he peels the bandage from the wound, and Lucy’s breath hitches on a gasp.
The wound is long, but only one half of it has split open. It’s not deep, but it is jagged now the stitches have pulled.
He see’s her try to look, and pushes back on her shoulder. “Just lay back, alright, let me do my work. You’re so bossy.”
He grins at her and she smiles weakly back.
Wyatt switches his focus back to the task, looking through his military grade first aid kit for a needle and thread. He finds it quickly, and turns around to get the lighter from the glove compartment. The needle glows red as he holds the lighter underneath it, and Lucy looks on nervously.
“Um, I’ve had a lot of stitches in my life,” she starts lowly, nervousness making her voice quiver.
“Not surprised.” Wyatt tried for a smile, but it feels weak and fake and so focuses back on the task.
“But I’ve never had any without pain meds. Is it gonna hurt?”
Yes.
“Uh, you’ll be fine.”
“Not reassuring.”
He purses his lips. “Look, if you don’t think you can do it, I –“ He was going to say he’ll find an alternative, but the look on her face makes him stop short.
He realizes too late he probably should have worded that differently.
“Never mind, then,” he mutters.
He slips the thread through easily, then braces a hand at the open end of the wound.
“You ever see the new James Bond?” Wyatt asks easily, making Lucy look up to him, startled.
“No.”
“It was kind of shit,” he admits.
Lucy laughs once. “Oh, yeah? Why?”
With her slightly distracted, he pulls the needle through.
Lucy tenses up, pressing her head back harshly, a groan filling the car.
“Relax,” he soothes, though he knows it’s a hopeless cause. “Bond got the girl in the end.”
“That’s no different –“ she grits her teeth, “to what usually happens.”
“True,” he agrees, working quickly and efficiently. The stitches will have to be replaced, but he’s not been taught how to do perfect stitches; he knows how to save someone’s life in the field so he can get them back to someone who can properly save them. He’s not entirely sure who that’ll be right now, but he’ll worry about that soon. “But I know how it actually happened, so it was kind of a disappointment.”
She purses her lips in a tight smile, face pale and sweat beading.
“Plus,” he says easily, “she wasn’t as beautiful as you.”
He doesn’t look up to her face, worried its too forward. Only yesterday he thought it would be the last of their missions together, and now here they are; she’s certainly far from dying in his arms, but it sure feels like she is.
She doesn’t say anything, and he wonders that perhaps he shouldn’t have said it. His curiosity gets the best of him, though, and he looks up. Her eyes are screwed shut and her face is tightened in pain, so he figures she probably just doesn’t have anything to say to him right now.
He finishes up quickly, and she breathes in relief when he quietly tells her he’s done.
“I just need to wrap you up.”
He moves back as far as he can as she sits up, the gown falling to her hips. They’re close – so close – as he passes the bandage around her body, and he thinks he should have just stepped out to do this.
But her hands are braced on his shoulders, her fingers clutching his shirt, and he can’t really bring himself to regret it.
He helps her lay back down, then extricates himself from the seat and jumps out. His hands are covered in blood and he leans back over her to get the half-empty water bottle in the cup holder and then rinses his hands as best he can.
Lucy’s eye is starting to close again, but her head follows his movements sluggishly. He seems relatively clean, so he goes around to his side of the car and jumps in. She’s looking at him, a small smile on her lips.
“Wyatt,” she sighs, “thanks.”
He smiles a little, a slight pull of his lips, as much as he can muster.
“You can go to sleep now,” he tells her. He reaches over to cup her face, then sweeps her hair behind her ear.
Her eye closes immediately, and her breathing even outs not even half a minute later.
Wyatt breathes heavily then rests his head against the steering wheel, squeezing his eyes shut.
He’d wanted this to be over. There wasn’t supposed to be any more Rittenhouse, no more fucking with time, no more endangering everyone’s lives. And yet here he was, close to losing one of the two most important people in his life.
The most important person.
He loves Rufus, he does, he’s come to view the man as a brother in the few weeks he’s known him.
But Lucy. Lucy is something else. She’d shifted his whole world so suddenly and so completely in what he knows is a very short amount of time. Just her presence had lifted him from black and white into a world of grey, which is practically a fucking rainbow compared to what it had been.
He can’t lose Lucy.
“Fuck,” he breathes, banging his head against the wheel, eyes still closed. “It’s fucking hard loving you.”
Things happen in a blur when they get back to Mason. Lucy is still sleeping so he leaves her in the car with the windows down while he goes in to get some help, maybe a wheelchair.
But there are bodies everywhere and he can’t find Agent Christopher or Connor Mason or anyone, really. The Mothership is gone and so is Emma and Wyatt is just so mad that he let himself believe this was all over.
When he gets back to his car, Lucy is awake and laying quietly in the front seat. She looks at him as he gets into the car, and doesn’t saying anything when he shouts in anger and slams his hands against the steering wheel.
“Wyatt?” she whispers. “What happened?”
He’s so angry that he can’t speak.
Lucy bites her lip and holds her hand out, palm upturned. He inhales sharply, and holds his breath. Slowly, he touches his fingers to her palm, and it’s like salvation. Their hands close around one another, fingers entwined, and it breathes calm into his system.
Wyatt takes a deep breath.
“Are you okay?”
The question is loaded. Is her wound okay? Is she okay about her mother, Noah?
She doesn’t reply, but Wyatt didn’t really need an answer. Of course she isn’t. Nothing about this is okay. She should never have been involved with this in the first place, let alone be in as deep as she is now.
It’s irrational, of course; her mother and father practically run Rittenhouse. She was always going to be involved.
But he wants to protect her, wants to shield her from this world that he is trained to fight in, that civilians should never have to see.
“Lucy, I –“
“Let’s get Rufus and Jiya and meet up with Agent Christopher,” Lucy says. “I have a lot to tell them.”
Wyatt doesn’t say anything else as he powers up the car again. Lucy calls the other three as they drive, and Wyatt gives Lucy the address of a military dive bar on the far side of town that they’ll be safe at.
Wyatt hooks his arm around Lucy’s waist to help her walk in, trying to keep her torso as still as possible, painfully aware that she still has a wound that needs to be treated properly.
Rufus, Jiya and Denise are already there, huddled in a corner booth as far from the main door but as close to another exit as possible.
Jiya looks almost as bad as Lucy, and Rufus and Denise look like they haven’t slept in days.
Wyatt helps Lucy down, then settles in beside her. They must wear grave expressions, because Denise says, “Looks like we need some drinks,” and slips out of the booth to, presumably, get some drinks.
Lucy is slightly out of breath, with a sheen of perspiration on her forehead, and Wyatt is again struck by the desperation of needing to get her seen to.
“Luce, what happened?” Rufus asks, obviously aghast.
“Rittenhouse,” she scowls. “My mom and Noah are in on it. Tried to get me to join them.”
Rufus gestures in her general direction. “And they did that to you?”
Wyatt’s scowl matches Lucy’s. “I dealt with it,” he says shortly. “Jiya, how are you?”
Jiya hesitates, then says, “Weird.”
Wyatt doesn’t exactly know how to respond to that, and no one elaborates on it, so he just sits quietly.
Denise comes back with a tray of drinks for them, and if it weren’t her who got them, he’d make sure it was paid for with cash and the money was taken out no one where near here, but it’s her, so he doesn’t, just takes sip and lets himself wallow in how shit this situation is.
Lucy spills all the sordid details of what she’d learnt since she’d left Mason Industries, and the expressions on the other threes’ faces continue to darken.
Jiya and Rufus leave almost as soon as Lucy’s finished her tale, agreeing to meet in the morning to plan their next move.
Lucy leans against the wall and closes her eyes, and her breathing evens out only a minute later, and Wyatt keeps a close eye on her.
“Noah stabbed her,” Wyatt informs Denise lowly. “The wound reopened on our escape. I stitched it up, but - . . .”
“I know a guy,” Denise says just as quietly. “Bring her to my house tonight. But we’ll need cash. I have three thousand, but it’s not enough. We’ll need to double that.”
It’s a lot of money. He doesn’t exactly have it lying around like Christopher seems to (he doesn’t want to know why she has that much in cash), but he can get it. He doesn’t have an account with a different name, so he’ll have to take it out legitimately; he’ll take as much out as he can now, so that it’s a one and done, and then he won’t have to worry about Rittenhouse tracking him. They might have to go the run soon, and he doesn’t want them to be able to follow after them.
“I’ll get it.” Wyatt looks over to Lucy, who’s sleeping, pale faced and with a cold sweat. “The sooner the better.”
“It’d cost extra to get her tonight. Not as much for in the morning.”
Wyatt purses his lips, looks back over to Lucy. Honestly, her wound isn’t particularly life threating. Painful, probably, and at a high chance of infection, but he’s seen soldiers survive longer with a lot worse.
“I’ll get the extra. Tonight.”
But he loves her.
Wyatt wakes Lucy up, then takes her to his car.
“You sure you don’t want me to take her?” Denise asks as he shuts the door. “You need to get the money. She’ll be safe with me.”
That’s probably true. He doesn’t want to leave her, but she doesn’t need to be moved around unnecessarily. She needs to rest.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Take my car, don’t move her again. I’ll be back at yours in two hours.”
They switch keys, and Wyatt looks at her pointedly. Christopher pauses, then backs away to give them a second alone.
Wyatt pulls the door open, and leans against the frame to stand close to her.
“Christopher is going to take you to her house,” he tells her lowly. “I need to get a couple things, then I’ll come straight there, alright?”
Lucy stares at him. “To get money, you mean?”
He should have known better than to try and keep it from her.
“Yeah. We’re gonna get you fixed up.”
She frowns at him. “How much?”
Wyatt shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be back with you soon.”
Lucy grabs his wrist before he can move away. There’s not much strength to it, but he doesn’t try to pull out of her grip.
“Wyatt.” Her voice is quiet, but serious. “When we were in the car, earlier today . . .”
He smirks. “When I saved you, you mean?” He’s trying to make a joke, and she smiles a bit, but then goes back to looking at him intently with her big brown eyes.
“You said –“ She pauses, searching his face.
He knows what he said.
“I said that I love you.”
She inhales sharply, relief painted clearly over her bruised features. He’s vaguely worried that it’s too much too soon, that maybe that wasn’t what she was referring to, but - . . .
Her face has the most peaceful expression.
“Wyatt.”
He loves the way his name sounds on her lips. Her fingers tighten on his wrist.
“Kiss me?”
His mouth curls up into a small smile. He doesn’t need to be told twice.
Slowly, so slowly, he wants to savor this moment like he couldn’t with Bonnie and Clyde, he leans forward. Her eyes flutter closed, but he keeps his on her face as he brings up the hand she’s not holding to her face, careful to not touch the swollen side.
His fingers touch her cheekbone, and his eyes follow the touch, completely enamored with the feel of her skin under his fingertips.
The second their lips brush Lucy leans in deeper, opening her mouth, even though it must hurt the cut. She tastes so sweet, with the sharpness of the prosecco cutting through. He can’t help but groan at her eagerness, his hand losing its gentle touch to thread through her hair.
He just can’t help himself; he bites her upper lip between his, avoiding the split, laving his tongue over it to sooth the mark.
She lets out a beautiful whimper, then grunts painfully and pulls back, bringing a hand up to her ribs.
“Sorry,” he breaths. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she replies, though she settles back in her seat and away from his reach. “Just hurts.”
“I’ll get the money and be back to you soon.”
She squeezes his wrist, then drops her hand. Wyatt tucks her hair behind her ear, then steps away from the car.
He goes to close the door.
She catches the door before it closes. “I love you, too.”