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electricbluebutterflies · 6 years

Text

in hands more comfortable with a weapon

Because I realized I haven’t written “Lucy goes back with the journal” fic yet, and I kinda needed to. And also, y’know, a couple details I’ve suggested in previous fics and wanted to play with on a proper scale. Garcy, um... y’all know what that scenario entails, it’s emotional but ends cute. PG-ish, content warning for discussion of suicide / self-harm, and also on ao3.

She’s never been this scared, and she’s seen so much these past five years.

The journal was always meant to be the final mission, has been ever since she knew about it, and Lucy’s entire life since that detail was revealed has hinged on this moment. She’s been under pressure before, in ways beyond words, but this is so much worse. Her entire life hinges on getting one interaction absolutely perfect. If she screws up... she’s not sure what she’ll go back to, but she doubts it’ll be good.

The fact that she has to go alone is not helping, but as she walks towards the Lifeboat and prays to gods she’s not sure she believes in that she hits the right switches for the autopilot, that’s a lesser concern.

As the whirring starts, she clutches her necklace. A formality, a detail that’s supposed to help convince a past version of the man who will become her closest friend to listen to her. Their relationship in her present is complicated but improving, the undercurrent of tension slowly coming to the surface. They’ve got issues, individually and together, but they are trying. She could love him - does, on some level, but isn’t quite ready to act on it yet. And fine, kissing him right before she left was probably a very bad idea, but she wanted to do that one damn time in her own timeline just in case she...

Breathe. Focus. Worry on the way home.

Sao Paolo is different from most of Lucy’s experiences, but she has a map and a plan. She’s petite enough to blend in, aware enough of her surroundings to avoid anyone mistaking her for a tourist. She supposes she is one, by technicalities, but such things are complicated and-

It is all she can do to focus as she enters the dive bar where two lives change. She needs to remain calm, reveal as little as possible yet enough to convince a broken man to listen to her instead of acting on his current plans for the night, and she is scared, and-

She can almost taste the tension radiating off him, sadness that is about to turn to anger in the one scripted part of her mission. The rest she can improvise, but the first impression needs to be perfect. She takes a deep breath, approaches, steadies herself.

“Garcia Flynn?”

He whirls around. This, she expected. According to what he tells her later - five years into his future, on a night neither of them sleep - he doesn’t have a gun on him but there is a knife in his jacket pocket. And besides, she’s seen him fight with a variety of improvised weapons, he could probably kill someone with just about anything he could grab, not to mention his physical strength...

“I’m not here to hurt you. But we need to talk.”

“And why the hell should I listen.” Not really a question. She’s seen him this broken before, later in his timeline, but this is more raw and dangerous. Still, familiar enough that she can handle it.

“Because... this is going to sound strange, but...”

She adjusts her necklace so the wedding ring is visible, and she’s thankful it’s just distinctive enough to be recognizable. Bait, she realizes now, something to catch his eye enough for him to give her a chance.

“Somewhere private,” she says before he can launch into panic. “I’m here to help you, but... not here.”

“I’m staying a couple blocks from here. Hotel room private enough?”

She nods, forces herself calm again, follows. What happens next, she’s less sure.

She trusts the future version of him enough to allow herself to be alone with this version. She reminds herself of that detail as she stays just a step behind him, silent as they detour through an alley. Even at his worst, he’s incapable of hurting an innocent woman, and she’s not completely sure she qualifies as such right now but-

“How.” They’re in the hotel room by now, apparently the South American version of a shitty midwestern motel. Lucy suspects nobody’s called an exterminator in about a decade, and it’s a depressingly appropriate place for someone who intends to die. Probably wouldn’t be the first body whatever passes for cleaning staff would find this year, or even this month.

“The ring?”

He nods as he shuts the door behind them, bracing himself against the wall like he thinks he knows how weird this is going to get. Oh, the one and only time in his life that he counts as innocent.

“Hear me out. This is going to get weird and complicated, and you’re not going to believe me, but...”

“How do you think you know what I’m going to do?”

“Because I’m from the future. Seven years from now, exactly. And I know you then. We’re... friends.” She’s not sure that’s enough of a word, but it’s vague enough to be accurate. “My name is Lucy. And as I said, I’m here to help you.”

She reaches into her bag, keeps her eyes on him and her movements clean, and pulls out the journal. It still looks pretty, not yet the annotated version it will become, but it’s enough.

“This is how you’re going to fight them. Read it. Memorize parts.”

“And what happens if I listen?”

“You live. I know... it’s not in the journal, because it’s not relevant to anything that’s going to happen to you, but... in a few years, you tell me what you were planning on doing tonight. I know you intend to die in four hours. You’re at your lowest point right now, everything has been taken away, and it’s a logical feeling. But it’s not your only option.”

“What else?”

“We win.”

“We?”

“It’s a long road, but... yes. You and me, and a small group of other people. I wrote about them too. We become a family.”

“If there are others, why are you the only one who looped back?”

“Because I wrote this damn thing.” Lucy can’t help but remember the early days of their relationship as it exists in her timeline, and the version of Flynn she’s dealing with right now is a lot closer to that than to the slightly declawed version she falls in love with.

“There’s something else, isn’t there?”

Perceptive at all the worst times, as usual. “Maybe. I don’t know. Where I am, in my timeline... I don’t know.”

“Then why me? What about me is so necessary? Give me that. Please.”

“Because you’re going to be there when I fall apart, and you’re going to catch me, and you’re going to return this favor. I save you now. You save me in three years when everything I am gets torn apart.”

“And yet I don’t fall in love with you?”

“You... shit, you probably do. I don’t know. In my timeline, you and I are actively avoiding that conversation.”

“Okay.” He takes the journal from her hands. “Anything else I should know?”

“The version of me you’re going to meet in two years... please be gentle with her. She needs it. She needs your faith.” Lucy’s not sure if that’s an acceptable spoiler, but it’s worth a shot, she knows how vital that is for her and she wants to make sure she gets it and-

“Anything else?”

“Two years forward in your timeline and eighty years in the past. You’ll see.”

“Do I get them back?”

She should’ve expected this question, and it breaks her heart to have to answer. “No. I can’t... I can’t say more than that, but...”

“Then why do I fight?”

“Because revenge is satisfying, and you burn it down, and you find new people to fight for. You find me.”

Anything else, she thinks, anything else would be too much and so she runs. Doesn’t stop until she’s back in the Lifeboat, on her way home, desperately hoping she hasn’t created a mess.

But she lands where she’s supposed to, and the right people are there waiting for her, and it’s the best feeling she’s ever had. She leans back against cold metal, taking it in, and is somehow unsurprised when the current version of her target approaches her.

“So we’re avoiding that conversation?”

“You have waited seven goddamn years for that?”

“Never seemed like the right time, Lucy. You had your mission. I would be a bad distraction.”

“But you’re definitely-”

“Yes. But only as much as you’ll let me.”

She’ll take this future.

#garcy #ebf writes fic

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