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qqueenofhades · 6 years

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I was catching up on your (many) new fics & I had the sudden image of the awesome foursome getting back from a mission & Iris is chilling next to Jiya waiting for Garcia. Something they did brought Iris back but not Lorena which makes them all very ?? but also IRIS!! So the team keep fighting Rittenhouse with this small human living with them & I'm just, very emo about it & blame you. Feel free to write a little thing if you're so inclined (or big thing whatever i'm not the boss of you).

Ahahaha. Well. This ended up being 25% cute and 75% pain, which is… probably not what you were looking for, but then again, you did ask me, and we know I can be a cruel mistress. So. Have some feelings on Flynn + his choice to leave his family + his general shock + Garcy angst + etc. Let’s just pretend this is the end of 2x07, even though it won’t be.

Summoning @extasiswings, @prairiepirate, and @lucys-preston to share in the pain, as usual.

Everyone has never been more ready to get out of the Lifeboat in their lives by the time they’re landing back from 1919. It has been, to say the least, extremely tense with Rufus, Wyatt, Flynn, and Lucy navigating their first mission as a foursome, especially with Wyatt and Flynn determined to out-snark the other, Lucy and Flynn both dragging Wyatt, and Rufus clearly wondering if it would be that detrimental to the cause if he accidentally murdered them all. They have managed to make sure that women still get to vote, with a very unexpected assist from Emma, but they’ve all been unable to shake the feeling that that favor is going to come with a pointed sting in the tail. What if they get back and Rittenhouse has changed something else, arranged a nasty surprise, or – who knows, they’re evil, it could be anything? Not that the team needs it. They’re still glaring at each other as they undo their seatbelts and the door cycles open, practically tripping over everyone’s legs in their haste to get out. They start down the stairs. Jiya and Jessica are waiting for them, as usual. And –

What the hell?

Flynn, the first one down the steps, stops dead in his tracks, so that everyone nearly boomerangs off his back. Then they look, and can’t blame him for his confusion. There’s a young girl, about eight or nine years old, sitting next to Jessica and hugging her around the waist, looking cautious but expectant. She has honey-brown hair that is starting to turn darker, held back with a pink headband, and long, skinny legs in striped tights. At a nudge from Jessica, she stands up, examining the frozen time team critically. Then she says, “Hi, Daddy. You’re late.”

Wyatt briefly looks thunderstruck, as if he might have somehow returned to not only just a wife but a child, but then he, and everyone else, realizes that the girl is looking at Flynn. Flynn himself has turned into a total statue, mouth half-open, eyes stunned and anguished and desperately disbelieving all at once. He snaps his mouth shut, opens it again, tries for a word, and can’t. Then he manages, “…Iris?”

The girl frowns. “Yes?”

Flynn remains where he is for a moment longer. Then he unfreezes, practically runs down the stairs, and straight past Iris, Jiya, and Jessica, barely looking where he’s going as he blunders down the corridor and out of sight. Wyatt, Lucy, and Rufus stare after him, as while yes, it’s shocking to return and have another lost loved one appear, at least it isn’t the first time. “Wait,” Rufus sputters. “Wait, is that his – that’s his daughter?”

“Yes?” Jiya frowns at him. “She’s been here for the last month?”

“No, she definitely hasn’t.” Wyatt, despite his anger at Flynn, is clearly the only one who can guess what might be going through his head. “She was – she was still dead when we – “

Lucy glares at him, as if reminding him to maybe not say that in front of a nine-year-old, and Wyatt shuts his mouth smartly. Then he glances around with a rather hopeful expression. “So, is her mom here too?”

“No,” Jiya says, still frowning. “We only found out she was alive and had been taken in by some orphanage like… six weeks ago, remember? So we went and got her and – I’m guessing by your faces that wasn’t the case when you left.”

“No,” Lucy confirms at last. “When we left, she and Lorena were… not here.”

Wyatt glances around one more time, as if he’s still really hoping that Lorena is somewhere, and he can get to see Flynn struggle with the same situation he was forced into, maybe mess it up just as much. There is a very awkward silence. Flynn still hasn’t returned, it does appear to be just Iris, and – was this Emma’s version of paying them back? A poisoned favor? Maybe trying to get Flynn to quit the team – as they proved almost from the get-go, they were dead in the water without his intelligence on Rittenhouse, and they’re definitely going to hurt if they lose him now? Figured that if all the team really wanted was their loved ones, give them strategically back and kill their motivation? But can it be bad, can it be wrong, if they do?

“Where did Daddy go?” Iris asks at last, shyly. “Is he not happy?”

“I’m sure he’s very happy,” Lucy says automatically. “It was – a tense mission, that’s all, he was probably just a little… a little startled. I’ll go find him, all right? I’ll be right back.”

Wyatt makes a move as if to grab her arm, or otherwise prevent her, and Lucy glares at him until he backs off. Then, still in her 1919 clothes, she hurries down the corridor after Flynn, wondering what on earth she is going to say. She hates herself for the brief spark of relief in her stomach that Lorena isn’t here – if it was awkward with one dead wife returning, two would be more than anyone could handle. But how could she think that? She knows how much Flynn wants them alive again, how he hasn’t given up hope of saving them. But that’s different than thinking that he could go back to them, or that he wants to. Yet they can’t just put Iris back out on the street, especially if Lorena is still dead and Flynn is her only living parent. He never counted on saving only one of them. It was always both.

“Flynn?” Lucy reaches his room and knocks tentatively on the door. “Flynn? Are you in there?”

No response, but she can hear choked breathing. It’s his right to be alone now if he wants to be, but after a pause, she pushes the door open anyway.

Flynn is sitting on the bed in his black suit, head in his hands, shoulders heaving in a silent, breathless, uncontrollable way that worries Lucy, until she realizes that he’s crying. She feels as if she’s walked in on him doing something far worse, because she’s never seen him look half this undone and vulnerable and shaken to his very core. She could shut the door and pretend she hasn’t seen it, but instead she hesitates, then walks over to perch gingerly on the bed next to him. “Flynn?”

He tries to answer, can’t get words out, and rubs both hands over his face. He stands up, then sits down, then stands up again, pacing back and forth. Finally he says croakily, “Is it – actually her?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy says carefully. “We don’t know her. You’d have to see. It… seems like it is.”

“She’s nine.” Flynn stares at the wall. “She was five. When she was killed. She’s lived four years somehow, lived four years – what, in an orphanage, is that what they said? Thinking that both her parents were dead, the way I thought – the way I knew! – she and Lorena were? We found her and brought her here? Who brought her? She – she can’t stay. She has to go.”

“Flynn.” Lucy reaches for his hand, trying to pull him back to sit next to her, but he doesn’t let her take it. “I know you said you’d walk away if you got your family back, but if Lorena isn’t here – you’d – what, send her back to the orphanage? She must have just been trying to get to know you again after that separation. You can’t – you can’t just – let her go.”

Flynn looks at her bleakly. Both of them must hear the echoes of her hanging on his arm in 1780, sobbing that he could still be a father, he still could – but only if he didn’t do this final, unforgivable thing, and kill John Rittenhouse, an unarmed, terrified child. At last he says, “It’s Wyatt who thinks he can bring his family to the bunker, and everyone else just has to live with it. Not me.”

“Everyone here thinks she’s already been here for a month. I’m sure Rufus won’t mind. I don’t. And Wyatt – he – he can’t really object to you having your daughter here if he brought his wife, he – “

Flynn snorts, as if to say that the one thing that is decidedly not constraining or influencing his decision in this matter is what Wyatt Goddamn Logan thinks. Then he says, “Denise’s family is still living on the outside, aren’t they? They have some sort of protection. We can send Iris there. She’ll be happier than she is living in this – here. Or we can just – ”

“Garcia.” Lucy reaches out again and manages to grab his hand this time. “Garcia, don’t send her away. Don’t. Don’t send her away. Rittenhouse could change their minds, they could come after her again, they – I know, I know you don’t feel like you could be her father, but at least ask her, at least – “

Flynn rubs his eyes. Another pause. Both of them can sense that at least part of Lucy’s desperation comes from the fact that it’s now been two rounds of miraculously restored loved ones, and still no Amy. That she can’t (and wouldn’t) counsel Wyatt to leave Jessica, and even less can she stand to see Flynn walk away from Iris. That if it was her, if it was Amy there to greet her when she walked off the Lifeboat, there would be no question of her not staying. That she knows how Flynn has come to think otherwise, but she still can’t stand it.

“I can’t,” Flynn says at last. “I – she needs to go. She needs to go to Denise’s family. That’s what’s best.”

“Don’t you want to look at her first?” Lucy’s voice, despite her best efforts, cracks a little. “Not even once?”

From the expression on Flynn’s face, he would give his entire world to do that, but he doesn’t know if he has the strength. Just as he’s trying to muster himself up for a response, there’s another timid-sounding tap at the door. “Daddy?”

Flynn turns into a statue once more, head turned away, as Lucy glances at him, glances at the door, sees that he’s not going to get it, and gets to her feet. She opens it instead. “Hey, honey. Hi. You – do you know who I am?”

“You’re Lucy,” Iris says. “You and Daddy are friends.”

This is true, though there’s a certain tilt to her head as she says it that makes Lucy suspect that at nine, this clearly whip-smart girl already wonders if there’s something else to it. She’s not the very young child that Flynn remembers; if she’s been living in an orphanage for several years, thinking her parents are dead, she’s probably had to grow up fast, and there might not be the same sweet softness in her as before. There’s a pause as they continue to look at each other. Then Iris peers past Lucy into the room and says, “Daddy?”

Another shudder runs down Flynn, but he doesn’t quite turn his head.

“Daddy?” Iris sounds frustrated. “Daddy, why are you being so stupid?”

Lucy thinks that, God love him, this is often a merited question when it comes to Garcia Flynn. Iris walks past her and over to Flynn, then taps insistently on his shoulder until he glances up, eyes almost drowned in tears. Even sitting on the bed, he’s still taller than her, and he obediently tilts his head down to look her in the face. He closes his eyes and almost can’t seem to stand it.

“Daddy,” Iris says. “Are you mad at me for eating those cookies before you left?”

Flynn opens his mouth, then shuts it. He heaves a strangled gasp of a sigh that cracks at the very end. “No, draga. No. I am not mad about that. No.”

Iris glances at him shyly, biting her lip, still half expecting to be punished, shuffling her feet. “Where did you go?” she says, looking at his suit. “Was it fun?”

“F…” Flynn could probably think of many words for their adventures, but that would not be one. He blinks, clearly boggled. “Do you know about – what I do?”

“You’re a time traveler.” A proud little smile crosses Iris’ face, as if other kids have fathers who are insurance adjusters or car salesmen or middle managers or burger flippers, but she has one who outdoes them all. “You fight bad guys in the past. That’s what you were doing for me and Mommy.”

Flynn lets out an unsteady chuckle, which cracks again. “I suppose. Yes.”

“So?” Iris persists. “Where’d you go?”

“We… went to 1919,” Flynn says. “We were making sure women got the right to vote. Which we did, yes, so that’s good. Now, I – I think you need to maybe get your things, and we’ll get you ready to go to – “

“Go?” Iris frowns. “Go where?”

“We decided that you were going to live with Mrs. Christopher’s wife and their kids, remember? Before – before I left.”

Iris cocks her head and gives him the patented A Flynn Smells Bullshit look. “No, we didn’t.”

“Yes, we did,” Flynn persists doggedly. “We definitely discussed it.”

Iris’s chin begins to quiver. “No, we didn’t.”

Lucy clears her throat. “Garcia.”

Flynn glances up at her, even as his hand has hovered over Iris’s shoulder without quite touching her, as if the instant he knows she’s real, he’s going to crumble. He said to Lucy that he’d let Iris jump into his arms one time, if he ever saw her again, but it appears he can’t even stand to do that. “Iris,” he says. “Iris, you – you’ve been apart from me for four years. I thought you were – never mind. I’ve never stopped looking for you, but I’ve done – I’ve done very bad things. I – many of them. I’m – I don’t think I can – I think it’s best that we don’t live together anymore. Okay?”

Iris reaches out and grabs his face in both her hands. “Daddy,” she says decisively. “You’re saying a lot of really stupid things right now.”

Despite herself, Lucy chokes on a painful giggle – yes, this child is a Flynn, all right. Brutally honest in all situations, no time for nonsense or other people’s feelings, and refusing to sway from what she’s made her mind up on. For his part, Flynn’s heart seems to have given out a little when Iris touched him. He raises one hand to cover hers, then the other. Gently peels her small hands free, swamped in his larger ones, as he’s clearly about an inch from a total breakdown. “Ir – Iris – ”

“I’m not going,” Iris says, half a sob. Fat tears start to roll down her cheek, and she stamps her foot. “I’m not going, I won’t go, I won’t go. Please. Please, please, please. Daddy, don’t, don’t make me go. I want to stay, I want to stay here, I don’t – please! I don’t want to go!”

Flynn flinches as if he’s been shot. His hands are visibly shaking where they are holding hers, as Lucy wonders if she should step in, but still feels this is something they’re going to hash out on their own. Flynn starts to get up, and Iris throws her arms around his waist, clutching him desperately. “NO!”

At that, Flynn throws half a panicked look at Lucy, as if actually expecting her to step in and drag his hysterical daughter away from him. Both of them are at a loss, until there’s a second knock. From outside, Jessica’s voice says, “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting, but is everything okay in there?”

“Jessie, he’s trying to make me go!” Iris wails. “He’s trying to make me leave!”

There’s a pause. Then the door opens, revealing Jessica Logan with a confused and almost angry look on her face. “Excuse me, he what?”

“Look, this is – “ Flynn is looking even more distraught. “You don’t – “

“I’ve figured out that things were different before you left,” Jessica says firmly. “I get that. But look. I remember that she’s been with us for a month, and I like her. If you don’t think you can do it, for whatever reason, then fine. Obviously, I’ve been in a weird position with all this myself. I know it’s a lot to get your head around. But if I’m living here, so is she. I’ll take care of her. Clear?”

Flynn looks mildly stunned, as does Lucy. Iris, still sniffling, detaches herself from her father’s waist and runs to Jessica instead, and both Flynn and Lucy stare at it for a long moment. Garcia Flynn’s daughter hugging Wyatt Logan’s wife, because somehow they’ve succeeded (or Rittenhouse has) in that. Jessica rests her hands on Iris’s shoulders and glares challengingly at Flynn, who appears to have nothing to say. Finally he manages, “You… don’t mind?”

“No,” Jessica says simply. “Clearly, I don’t. You think about whether you do. Come on, Iris. I bet I can find a few more of those cookies.”

With that, she gently shepherds Iris away, the door shuts behind them, and Flynn and Lucy are left alone, still completely gobsmacked. Finally Flynn turns and says, “I should… get changed.”

This is clearly a hint that he wants Lucy to leave, so after a moment, she nods and does so, stepping back out into the hall. She doesn’t leave, however, waiting until he emerges in sweatshirt and cargo pants and looks surprised to see her. “Lucy – ”

“Just…” Lucy doesn’t know what she’s trying to say. It’s not in any way her fault that Lorena didn’t come back too, she still feels guilty over the brief relief, and she knows he must be struggling. “Leave it. For now. All right?”

Flynn looks as if he isn’t sure, but after a pause, follows her down the hall to the kitchen. Jessica has gotten Iris calmed down, Wyatt is clearly at a bit of a loss for words himself, and everyone’s heads turn at the sight of Flynn, waiting for some sort of continuing meltdown. Iris hunches her shoulders. Rufus and Jiya exchange glances. Finally Rufus says, “So… if you’re going now… that’s cool and all, and I’m actually like 12% sorry to see you leave, but – ”

“I’m not leaving.” Flynn’s voice is rough, and he clears his throat. “The job isn’t done. The fight isn’t over. Rittenhouse is still out there. I’m not going anywhere.”

Rufus blinks. It has clearly not occurred to him that Flynn would feel a shred of loyalty to the team after he’s gotten back at least half of what he was in this war for, and it startles him. “You’re not?”

“No.” Flynn blows out a breath. “I’m staying.”

Wyatt also opens his mouth, then shuts it. There is another long pause. Flynn and Wyatt both glance at Iris and Jessica, then back at each other, and something at last, unspoken, passes between them. Then Wyatt nods stiffly and excuses himself, as Lucy looks back at Flynn. So does Iris.

“Daddy,” Iris says. “Please.”

Flynn rubs both hands over his face. At last he says, “You can stay for tonight. Then we’ll talk about this again tomorrow.”

“But I – “

“I said tomorrow, Iris.” He looks at her as if he still can’t get enough, he can’t stop, he can’t believe every breath she draws, and yet, he is by no means reconciled to any idea that he can do this forever, that he has anything beyond days, or hours. Sand in the glass, running short. Passing, passing, time that cannot be gotten back. Lost, lost, lost.

Garcia Flynn gazes at his daughter for a final moment. The heartbreak, the pride, the love, the devastating grief in that look is so raw that Lucy can feel it in her own chest, coiling around her heart like thorns. He holds it an instant more. Then, quietly, he turns on his heel, and goes.

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #oh hai flynn family feels #yeah this hurt me #i am sorry?#proflucypreston #ask

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