#also planning a one shot for another system called mothership | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bluedemon1995 · 5 years ago

Text

Kidge One Shot...

What is real??

Blades…Hello…Anyone…come in…please come in…static…static…Can anyone hear me? Please?

Emergency message for Keith Kogane…static…I need to speak to Keith…hello? Anyone there? God, please, this is an emergency…I need to speak to Keith…

Hhhhhello, s…orry I do not speak Earth so good… I can transfer you to his voicemail Commander…

…yeah I guess that has to work…this is very important…

A few days later…aboard the Blade mothership

(Blade mission success, cheers and chaos soon ensues)

Keith sighs, he really hates the loud ruckus going on right now but his people deserve to celebrate and relax. While he prefers a quieter kind of relaxing, he recognizes the team deserves it. The planet they landed on had issue after issue: but it has finally been cleared of the worst of the illness that struck it, the farming plans have been amended and everything finally started to work after many setbacks. He knows everyone deserved some rest but apparently they want to party first. Joy. Sometimes this is when he misses Lance, party animal that he was. It took the pressure off of him to be seen and he could scurry back to his room unnoticed.

He shakes his head and tries to think of when he was last on the ship and what needs to be done. It had to be a few weeks at least! He figures he needs to stand here a few more minutes and then he just does not care, he plans on escaping back to his room. Feeling a slight pressure against his arm and he turns to see Acxa leaning up against his arm apparently soaking in their success.

She somberly looks up at him and says, “Hey we should get cleaned up and get a drink. You know to celebrate the culmination of all of our hard work?!?”

Taking a deep breath, Keith shakes his head saying, “Um, I’m actually pretty tired. Rain check?”

Acxa looks confused so Keith feels the need to explain further that ‘rain check’ is a phrase on Earth that means some other time. She nods slowly asking, “When?” Keith internally groans and says he’s got a lot to do so he’ll let her know. Hopefully she will forget. Eventually she walks away and he’s about to finally flee when his mom comes over making him pause.

She asks him if he was going to finally go out with Acxa. He felt himself flush but shook his head in the negative, does she know ‘go out’ means dating on Earth? Probably not he decides until a weird expression crossed her face and he thought she was going to comment. Internally bracing for more questions, he freezes. However, ultimately she just nodded and said for him to get some rest because he looks horrible. Obviously he hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in a while.

Keith slowly makes his way through the hall, saying a word here or there to his team all the while he carefully and meticulously and strategically maneuvering himself to the exit. While he feels more comfortable in the ‘leader’ role, sometimes he has to think…what would Shiro do. Right now he knows Shiro would give people some positive feedback and thanks. It has to be done. But there is no way he is staying here all night. Screw it.

Even though right now he just needs to get a little time to recharge, being around people so much really takes a toll. Finally he makes it out of the common area and he’s back in his room. Now he can shower, change and finally check his messages and rest. Maybe see if there are any snack packages from Hunk too! He tends to send care packages and Keith hopes Cosmo didn’t get into it like the last time! For all the stuff here, he would much rather eat Hunk’s care package!

After showering and changing he decides to lay on the bed to listen to his messages and knock off early. Most of the messages are the just the usual and are issues that he has been apprised of and already dealt with. Then finally there’s one with Hunk asking him if he has found any cool food or ingredients and another reminding him to call when he gets a minute. Lance asking if his farming suggestions helped and even Matt snitching on Shiro about how he burned something in the microwave and caused the sprinkler system to start on the Atlas. Chuckling to himself, he cannot wait to bring that one up to Shiro, especially because Shiro likes to tease about the time he burned eggs (he didn’t know that the water would evaporate)!

The lights are off and he’s laying down relaxing, he can feel himself almost tuning out and knocking out. Then suddenly, he hears a lot of static…a few beeps and what sounds like some clicking. Turning to his side, he lazily reaches out to check the device (is it broken?) but freezes when a rough voice suddenly says,

<<<Keith, buddy, I don’t know when you will get this but, Pidge, (garble) has been hurt. She’s not…it’s not looking good (crackle, crackle), you might want to try and get down here to say (tears???) good…bye…>>>

Keith freezes for a few minutes before he looks up panicked, good bye??? Does that just signal the end of the message or is Pidge dying?!? Was that Shiro?? Yelling “Cosmo!!!” He grabs his go bag, runs out of his room and while frantically calling for his mom via the comm link. He runs out into the corridor and luckily runs literally into Kolivan and his mom.

“I gotta go Pidge is hurt. I’m going to take the small cruiser, have command open a wormhole close to Earth. Cosmo is coming with me. I don’t know when I will be back! You’re in charge!!” He turns to run to the cruiser, not even paying attention to their response. He’s already trying to calculate how much longer it will be to his arrival on Earth. He starts the engines and quickly goes through the checklist for take off before he even realizes his mom is with him. He opens his mouth to say something when his mom interrupts.

“This is going to either end very badly or very good. Either way I’m not letting you go alone. Besides, I like the small Paladin, and I wish to be there for you … and her.” She meets his eyes dead on, letting him know that she means it. He nods and continues the protocol for lift off. There is no time to waste arguing. Cosmo must have sensed something was up because he was even looking serious.

Hospital-Earth

Keith enters the room slowly, not knowing what to expect. He tried to envision what happened while traveling here. So many horrible scenarios. So many questions. In fact, his mind unfortunately had a multitude of options. But whatever it was, this is a hundred, no a thousand times worse. He looks at Pidge, on the bed, pale and lifeless. Her hair is cut short again, almost the same length as when they first went out to space. She’s hooked up to so many machines, and the slow beeping is not making him feel better. Is slow beeping good or bad?

He cannot tell you the last time he cried but right now his vision is wavering and he has to stop and just remind himself to breathe. He feels his mom’s hand on his shoulder grounding him and Cosmo pressing into his leg. But it’s not enough. He tries to focus on the room and the details. He has to calm down. Breathe. In…out…in…out…

He glances around, she’s in a huge room, maybe half the size of the small Garrison hospital floor. Security was tight, so he absently wondered if someone hurt her?!? Who did this? His fists clench but he shakes his head and again breathes.

She looks so tiny in the hospital bed, which is weird because in reality Pidge is larger than life. He finally takes his eyes off Pidge, and looks around and sees Shiro in the chair next to the bed. Actually, looking closely in the dimly lit room, he quickly realizes the whole team is here, looking like crap. Her parents and brother are here too looking so broken and he thinks they look how he feels. Fleetingly he wonders how can life keep going on if she’s not here? It shouldn’t. It can’t! He starts to breathe to quickly. Too fast. It’s too much.

Vaguely he wonders again what happened but just as quickly as the thought enters his mind, he lets it go. None of that really matters right now. He can hear about it later. He vaguely notices, Griffin and a few other MFE’s are in the room near the window and spares a moment to wonder why before he’s encompassed by the team, crying and hugging. It seems like they just lost Allura and now it’s Pidge hurt. But no, she should’ve been safe here on Earth. Nothing is making sense!! This cannot be happening! Keith feels his hands forming fists but there is no enemy to fight!

Shiro hugs him and whispers, “I know, I know.”

Finally, through a lot of tears, he understands there was some kind of explosion at the lab, at the Garrison. Someone made a mistake and gave Pidge the wrong element and Pidge was hurt. They don’t quite know if this was sabotage or an accident-an investigation is underway to determine what happened. But apparently it should have been much worse. Pidge must have noticed something was wrong or off because she activated the lab’s shield and saved another person by covering them with her own body, only moments before the explosion. She always was observant and moved instinctively to limit the damage. Typical Pidge.

But right now, Keith cannot help but wish she wasn’t quite so altruistic. He’d rather her safe than some random person. He knows that isn’t right, and he’d never say it out loud but this is Pidge. She’s the smartest of the five but she’s also the one all of them are overprotective of…for varying reasons.

Regardless of his feelings, she got hurt… bad. Concussion, brain bleeding, broken ribs and wrist, burns on her arms and back. At some point Keith couldn’t process all of her injuries. But they were able to stabilize her and stop the hemorrhaging. He wipes his eyes no shame in tears but he can’t see. Apparently, they don’t know what else to do, she just isn’t waking up. Luckily she still has brain waves but the doctors essentially have no answers other than to wait, pray, wish. And hope that she is mentally and cognitively ok. After a lot of talking, (and arguing with staff who think Cosmo is just a dog) Keith and Cosmo are left alone in the room with Pidge. Everyone else has been here non stop for a few weeks and look worse for the wear.

Keith assures everyone else they should go home, shower and rest while he stays with her. Yes, he’s fine, no he’s not tired. Yes, he will call if anything changes. Yes, he has his communicator and a cell phone. Yes, he’s quite capable of talking to her so she knows she’s not alone. Yes, he promises he can talk for more than a few minutes. Yes, he can be here for her!!! No he doesn’t need to sleep or rest. No, he’s not hungry. Yes, he’s being honest. Honestly, if Lance asks him one more time…finally, Krolia leaves with the Holts, deciding it is better if she goes with them to help them out.

As everyone takes a turn telling Pidge they love her and will be back soon, the door quietly closes. Loves her. So many people love her. The other paladins kissed her cheek or forehead. Her parents held her and Matt ruffled her hair while sobbing. Even his mom said it, which took him aback for a minute. Love. LOVE.

Keith leans against the door, taking in the abnormal quiet of the hospital room once everyone left. Frozen. He feels frozen and scared. There is just a background of humming and beeping from the various machines that are currently hooked up to her but that doesn’t offer him any comfort. Keith takes a few slow breaths and slowly edges over to her bed. He carefully and slowly takes her hand. Cosmo somehow gets himself on the bed and cuddles with her on her left. At first Keith is nervous, what if he knocks something out or off??

But, it seems as Cosmo knows how to be careful with her. He’s absolutely gentle rumbling and finally licking her fingers. Keith ends up taking up residence on her right side. At some point, another nurse tries to get Cosmo out but soon realizes that this is a lost cause. Finally the nurse starts to check stats and notes some kind of data on a clipboard and Keith can’t help but blurt out, “Everything looks ok right?”

The nurse, an older lady who looks like every teacher who hated him in school, replies, “We don’t know what is going on inside her head, if anything. But physically she’s stable. But the longer she is out, the more likely we need to consider a long term care facility for her. I told her parents this but they do not listen.”

There’s silence and then there is silence. Keith wants to wail and yell that SHE doesn’t know Pidge. She’s tougher than tough! She’s fought in an intergalactic war! Instead he ignores her and focuses on Pidge. He hears the nurse leave and his eyes don’t stray from Pidge. He traces her with his eyes because he’s afraid to disturb her. All he hears are the beeping of her heart on the monitor. He takes a deep breath and smells the antiseptic and he leans his head down to sniff her hair, which smells vaguely of smoke and the distinctive smell of a hospital. Her right hand has the iv in it and looks like there’s dirt under her nails. He starts to catalog her bandages-matching them to injuries. Unfortunately he is cataloging a lot.

Keith cannot help but just stare at her. She looks so peaceful and he can’t help but wish this is one of her jokes. One where she will suddenly open her eyes and laugh at him. Haha she got him. What he wouldn’t give. He cannot help himself, like if he is tethered to her, getting closer and closer.

At some point he gives in and just lays next to her and holds her close. Carefully arranging and maneuvering the wires and machines so he does not disrupt them. Her hand is cool to the touch and he thinks how she’s always cold. He gets his arm around her because he wants, no, needs to hold her, bind her to him…protect her. Keep her here, she’s his counterpart no matter what, in fact first. How can he go on knowing she’s not there?

Lance said to talk to her. What can he say that hasn’t already been said by someone else? Probably better and more articulate. But yet, he whispers, “Pidge you need to wake up. Please, I need you, more than you know.” Whispering his secrets. His needs. His dreams.

Who is he going to call when he can’t sleep? Because she is the one who always takes his calls, no matter the time. Who is going to keep him in the loop with gossip whether he wants to know it or not? Who is going to send him goofy messages and jokes when he goes MIA? Who will send him random updates to his weapons and computers? Who will yell at him when he gets stubborn? Who would go toe to toe with Kolivan on his behalf? But more than all that, he realizes she’s his lifeline to the team. Especially with Shiro married and the others scattered about. But more importantly, he knows he matters to her. And she really matters to him.

More than she knows…he doesn’t let her know, but he rereads her messages, her notes and keeps her picture in his pocket. She means so much and damned if she even knew. God, he should have told her…but he just thought they had more time. He always believed they had a ‘later’ to explore. After she got older, after she had time to see and do everything she should, everything she wanted. After he came to terms with his need and want. And could control it.

He can feel his eyes get heavy and knows that he’s going to fall asleep with her in his arms. And somehow in his sleep if he imagines her holding him and whispering to him, imagines her saying “Keith, baby,” and he kisses her…says he loves her…who can fault him…for his dreams.

2 notes · View notes

one-of-us-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Let’s Kill Hitler (Doctor Who S06E08)

Today Jon is forced to watch and recap “Let’s Kill Hitler”, the eighth episode of Doctor Who’s sixth series, as well as its prequel. Melody Pond has been babynapped, and it’s up to the Doctor to save her. Can he reunite her with her parents in time?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, stop the presses, because once again you’ve recapped the heck out of another episode of The Golden Girls! I agree that some more recurring characters would be nice for the show, and the lack of an overall continuity has always bugged me. In a few episodes you’ll meet someone who will show up again at least once, and next season you’re going to meet a really important recurring character, but for now we’re stuck with Stan (which is something no one ever wants). I think one thing I liked about this episode is that Sophia and Max realized they were both in love with the memories of the Good Old Days that they inspired in each other more than they were actually in love with each other. That idea got played around with not too long ago in “Charlie’s Buddy”, and I can think of at least a few more occasions when it will be addressed again. I don’t know why, but stories like that always tug at my heartstrings! They get me thinking about nostalgia and memories and I just turn into a big mess from there.

We’ve got some heavy issues of our own to work out with this episode, though, so let’s get to it!

Buttocks tight!

Prequel directed by Richard Senior and written by Steven Moffat

A phone rings inside the TARDIS and the Doctor’s answering machine takes the call. It’s Amy, who asks the Doc to pick up the phone. She asks about Melody and reminds the Doc that he promised her he would find the baby. She knows Melody will at least live long enough to become River Song, but to her it’s more important that she be there to witness her daughter grow up. Amy eventually hangs up, and we see that the Doc was there the whole time and just didn’t answer the call.

Episode directed by Richard Senior and written by Steven Moffat

We start off today’s episode in a wheat field, where Amy and Rory are driving around and destroying some poor farmer’s livelihood in order to form a crop circle to get the Doctor’s attention. Turns out it’s been all summer and the Doc still hasn’t found Melody. The Doc asks Rory’s permission to hug Amy, because Amy is his property and only he gets to decide who she comes into physical contact with and for how long. This is interrupted by the appearance of another car crashing through this innocent farmer’s field, and out of the car emerges Amy and Rory’s best friend, Mels. You remember Mels, right? We’ve heard all about her! Well, no, we haven’t, and she wasn’t at their wedding because apparently that’s not her scene. She wasn’t in that first episode where we saw Amy and Rory’s hometown either, because apparently hometowns aren’t her thing either. But she’s definitely their best friend, don’t get it twisted!

Mels stole the car she arrived in and now the cops are hot on her trail, so she pulls a gun on the Doc. I can definitely see why she’s been Amy and Rory’s best friend this entire time. Anyway, she wants the Doc to be her getaway driver, and decides since she has a gun they might as well kill Hitler. Screw seeing the dinosaurs, right? After the opening credits we get some shots of young Amelia and Rory and their best friend Mels playing around and Amelia telling Mels about the Raggedy Doctor. We follow them growing up and seeing Amy being there to bail Mels out of trouble and definitely always being there and not being retconned in at all.

Jumping back to the actual story, Mels has shot the TARDIS console and is generally the worst. We head to Berlin in 1938 where some futuristic Borrowers are observing things from inside their shapeshifting Zord. The Borrowers take the form of some Nazi and shrink the original down to their size, suck him into the Zord and have him kill. The Borrowers proceed to try to kill Hitler, but this is before WWII breaks out so apparently it’s too early for them to kill him. Just then the TARDIS arrives to interrupt all this. Hitler thanks the Doctor for saving his life and then asks about the TARDIS. The Zord is back on his feet so Hitler shoots a few rounds into him, but Rory manages to disarm him and lock him in a cupboard.

The Borrowers decide to scope the situation out and faint just in time for us to learn that one of Hitler’s shots at the Zord hit Mels by accident. Tell me we’re not going to lose such a beloved and well-established character! She’s integral to the whole series! The Borrowers recognize the TARDIS, and say its owner is a war criminal. There seems to be some confusion, though, because they think the owner of the box is a woman. Cutting back to this thrilling medical drama, it turns out Mels is Melody and she knows all about Amy and Rory being her parents. She starts to regenerate, and says that the last time she did this was back in her Jefferson Adams Hamilton days in New York. She… somehow arrived in England and got enrolled in the school system there?

Mels absolutely has to make a comment about the dress size of her upcoming regeneration, because that’s definitely the sort of thing someone would worry about in this situation, and then badabing River Song arrives. And… has to weigh herself. Really loving Moffat’s ideas about feminine priorities, here. Anyway, this River Song isn’t the River Song they all know, but she’s the one the Borrowers think is a war criminal. She’s also the person who kills the Doctor. Dum dum dum!!!

Anyway, she’s also been programmed to kill the Doctor and the two play around for a few rounds before the Doctor describes her as his bespoke psychopath. Guh guh guh gag me. She’s really putting the manic in manic pixie dream girl this time around. River gives the Doc a smooch with her poison lipstick and then jumps out of a window. The Doc heads into the TARDIS to cure himself while River takes out some Nazis and then… decides to go shopping. Get it? Because she’s a woman? Amy and Rory chase after her while the Borrowers chase after them. Inside the TARDIS the Doc sets up a holographic interphase, scrolling through holographic versions of Rose, Martha and Donna because life is cruel and we must always be reminded of the things we’ve lost. Eventually he settles on Amelia Pond and argues with the hologram about him dying in 32 minutes.

River forces some Germans to strip down so she can try on their clothes while Rory and Amy plan their next move. Before they can get inside to confront her the Borrowers, now disguised as Amy, shrink them down and suck them inside the Zord while the metallic jellyfish inside the Zord prepare to kill them. One of the Borrowers arrives in time to save them. The Amy Zord confronts River about killing the Doctor at the behest of the Silence and then blasts her with its shrinking ray, but just then the Doctor arrives in a suit. The Borrowers explain that they move through history collecting criminals who would otherwise go unpunished and punishing them. Amy gets access to the Borrowers’ records and the Doc finds out that the Silence set all this up to kill the Doctor. They’re not actually a species, BTW, they’re a religious order who believe Silence will fall when the Question is asked. What’s the Question? Nobody knows. Have you read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?

The Doctor starts to die and the Borrowers begin to punish River. Amy stops this by sicking the robo-jellyfish on everyone, but the Borrowers call the mothership in time to beam out. The Doc appeals to River to save her parents and after a few minutes of tension building she agrees. The TARDIS teaches her how to fly it and she materializes it inside the Zord in time to save Amy and Rory. Everyone meets up with the dying Doc and he whispers something to River before croaking. Amy spills the beans to her daughter that she is indeed the River Song everyone��s been talking about and that spurs her on to save the Doc. She uses the last bit of energy she has in her system from her regeneration to bring him back to life.

River cools it in a hospital and the Doc gives her the journal she’ll fill out over the course of her adventures. He, Amy and Rory bail and it turns out the Doc knows he’s going to die in Utah in a few hundred years. Rory wants to know if the brainwashing is taken care of, because River is in prison for killing someone after all. No answer to that, but we do jump ahead to the Luna University in 5123 where River takes her first steps into the world of archeology. She tells the professor she’s doing it because she’s looking for a man, because her entire life has to revolve around a man and her character is absolutely devoid of depth or meaning without the Doctor.

The End

~~~~~

Back when these episodes were first coming out I heard a lot of snickersnack from Whovians I follow on Tumblr about whether or not Moffat’s writing was peppered with sexism, and, if this episode is any indication, I know which side of the fence I fall on in that argument. River Song has become the epitome of the manic pixie dream girl, which is a damned shame. Rory is possessive as hell of Amy and the things I don’t like about him are quickly outweighing the things I do like. Also, sorry, but I’m sick of writers using the Nazi Germany gimmick as a backdrop for their stories to make them seem saucy and edgy. Mels seemed like an awful person to be around, and I didn’t understand why Amy or Rory would ever want to hang out with her (granted, they totally didn’t do that before this episode was written). I felt like the Borrowers were only really here to rehash things we’d either already been told or I’d already figured out on my own, so even they didn’t do it for me in the long run. This is an episode where my old That Ain’t So Bad trick might have come in handy, because it’s hard for me to remember really liking anything about this one. The effects used when the Zord changed forms were pretty cool, though.

I give “Let’s Kill Hitler” QQ on the Five Q Scale.

Check back in Friday when Eli will think about his place in the world with the next episode of The Golden Girls, “Brother, Can You Spare that Jacket?”, and on Saturday I’ll check in with my recap of the next episode of Doctor Who, “Night Terrors”.

Until then, thanks for reading, thanks for weighing yourself and thanks for being One of Us!

#doctor who #one of us

2 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 8 years ago

Text

the trash saga of flynn and lucy: xiv

as ever, catch up on OH MY GOD IS IT STILL GOING in the trash saga of flynn and lucy, or ao3 here.

Nobody has any idea where they are.

(For that matter, and perhaps more pertinently, nobody has any idea when they are.)

Their memories of the immediately preceding moments are more than a little jumbled, flashing in and out in bursts like a poorly tuned television aerial, as Lucy sits with her head between her knees and doesn’t imagine she’ll feel like coming up any time soon. Iris shot John Rittenhouse – yes, she remembers that part, remembers it with appalling clarity, the look on Flynn’s face as the sound of it echoed like thunder. John appeared to be dead when he went down, but none of them stopped to be sure –not even Flynn, who might once have insisted on administering the coup de grace himself. They needed to get out of there, he never wanted his daughter to do this, to be like him, to take on the same sin, and none of them thought of anything but making it to the Mothership. Iris, it turns out, can pilot it – sort of. She has been trained to be Rittenhouse’s most elite operative, the insurance plan for Emma, but she has never actually flown the damn thing outside of carefully controlled test conditions. That just-completed jump was her first real one, ever. They’re lucky she stuck the landing, but she also wasn’t exactly sure how to aim or where, and that is a very dangerous thing to do with a time machine. They could, theoretically, be just about anywhen. The Ice Age, the Jurassic, earlier, when Earth is still a flaming ball of rock inhospitable to life. Or further, far further, in the opposite direction, moments before all time ends and the sun goes supernova. There is absolutely no way to know.

Lucy groans, pretty sure she’s just going to have to give up the ghost and be sick anyway, but still trying not to. She feels as slammed around as if she has been on one of those planes that fly through the eyewalls of hurricanes, or sent through an industrial washer. She is obviously not about to criticize Iris’ driving when the alternative was to stay in Salem and be burned as witches or hanged for John’s murder (is he dead? Rittenhouse still has plenty of members, it’s probably not destroyed outright, but is it weakened? Has that affected their existence in the future?) but she doesn’t feel up to facing whatever fresh catastrophe is doubtless in front of them. Not yet.

A hand touches her back. “Lucy,” Flynn’s voice says in her ear. “Lucy.”

Lucy utters an indeterminate noise that she hopes will convey the information that yes, she is alive, and yes, she more or less thinks she’ll stay that way, but that her guts have been rearranged like a collapsing Jenga puzzle and she is going to need a moment here. She hears Flynn say something in a low voice to Iris, who cycles the hatch open, and a blast of cold, pine-smelling air hits them from outside. No lava, then. Hopefully no supernova (or dinosaurs) either. Lucy tries to get her tongue around words to tell Iris about the autopilot override, the one that is supposed to enable Rufus to pull them out, until she remembers that Emma disabled it while pulling off her Grand Theft Auto in 1829. Maybe it can be activated again, though Flynn is clearly the expert in that department and not Lucy, but they have to know what the hell happened first.

After several more deeply unpleasant minutes, Lucy straightens up slowly, hoping that this will not result in turning the Mothership into the Vomit Comet. It does not, thankfully, and the first thing she sees is Flynn still bending over her with an anxious expression on his face. What little Lucy can see of their landing spot through the open door is forest. There’s a hint of blue sky, a patch of sun, so it almost seems idyllic, some return to nature, away from the fuss and mess and chaos of civilization. “Where – when are we?”

“I don’t know.” Iris continues to examine the readouts. “Someone messed with the processing core, as well as the other software systems, so I don’t have the usual information.” She flips a switch up and down a few times, clearly hoping for a reboot, while Lucy looks pointedly at the man who disconnected the Mothership’s CPU and agreed to install a remote lock on the control console. If trying home improvement by yourself is a terrible idea, DIYing your time machine is an even worse one. “I was – I was aiming forward.”

“We’ll work it out.” Flynn’s voice is rusty when he speaks, as he tries to catch his daughter’s eye, but she won’t look at him either. “It might not be the worst thing in the world to have a moment to catch our breath.”

Lucy does not disagree, as she still hasn’t caught hers, and undoes her crash webbing, preparing to stand up. This, however, is more than her body’s upside-down equilibrium feels at all like cooperating with, and she takes a few swaying steps and then almost falls out the door, clutching onto the landing strut as she is thoroughly and wretchedly sick. Her mouth burns foully as she remains on all fours, gasping, and Flynn is outside after her in a flash, kneeling next to her and trying to get her to put her arm around his neck. Lucy is feeling too grim to argue, and does so, letting him pick her up. He gets a better grip on her, swinging her across his chest bridal-style, as Iris steps out as well, gaze flickering to them and then away. It’s clear that they need to do some recon, and she takes the lead, bushwhacking steadily through the trees with Flynn (and thus Lucy) traipsing behind her. They have been walking for about forty minutes when Flynn lifts his head and sniffs. “I think we’re in Russia.”

Both Iris and Lucy give him how-do-you-know-that looks, and he gives them the look of a man from Eastern Europe, who has worked in intelligence and espionage for most of his adult life and as such has spent a lot of fucking time in Russia. “Siberia, I think,” he goes on, as they make it to the top of another hill and gaze down at the jumble of wilderness below. “Somewhere in the taiga. Eastern, probably, since the trees look like larch and I can’t see any wetlands. Kolyma, maybe? Or Kamchatka Krai. Not winter, luckily, but it’s still going to be cold when it gets dark. Or it’s the midnight sun and it won’t, but either way. We don’t want to be exposed out here.”

“We’d have to go back to the Mothership, then,” Iris says, likewise with the cool, detached tone of a soldier talking strategy to her commander. “But there’s no food and not much space for shelter there, and we’d still have to walk back in the morning. I think we can manage one night out in the open if we need to.”

Her father opens his mouth, then shuts it and nods tersely. For her part, feeling a bit like a literal deadweight while the Flynns are tasked with saving their asses, Lucy tugs at his sleeve. “I – I think I’m all right now. You can put me down.”

He looks dubious, but does so, clearly hoping that this does not trigger another projectile vomiting episode. Lucy hopes so too, and steadies herself on his arm until she is confident that it won’t. Once more, she can feel Iris watching them under her eyelashes, not saying anything out loud but not entirely approving either, and Lucy winces. Iris has saved their lives, and seems to be sincere in her decision to turn against Rittenhouse (to say the least, she would not have shot John if she wasn’t) but she is still utterly inscrutable, and far from safe or predictable. Again, too much like her father, and too angry at everything that’s led her here.

After a pause, they start to move again, and trudge for another hour at least. Lucy keeps glancing around warily – if they are in Siberia, and she sees no reason to doubt Flynn’s diagnosis, there are man-eating grizzlies out here, and as the only weapon they have is Iris’ pistol, that might not prove terribly efficacious against a charging one-ton brown bear. She thinks of all the spooky things she’s read about that have involved the Russian wilderness – the USS Jeannette expedition in 1879-81, the Tunguska event in 1908, the Dyatlov Pass incident in 1959, Solzhenitsyn and the Stalinist gulags, the Lykov family who lived in complete isolation for decades, the ice highways on frozen rivers, the aforementioned bears, and all the other ways in which this vast, untamed, fey place can kill you. Lucy is from California. Outside of her time traveling, she’s never been anywhere outside a few hours’ drive from a city. Her dislike of small spaces is well noted, but somehow this, here, with too much space, is almost as unsettling.

The sun has vanished behind the horizon, and the wind chill is enough to make Lucy’s teeth rattle, by the time they finally spot something remotely resembling human presence ahead – a cabin, in fact. It doesn’t look like anyone’s home, although either way, Russian hermits are probably not terribly huge on unexpected company. Iris shifts to get hold of her gun, and Flynn gives her a terse look, clearly wishing that she would let him handle the shooting part rather than having to keep doing it, but doesn’t say anything. They venture cautiously up the porch, and (not sure if they want it to be answered or not) they knock.

Boy, Lucy thinks. I sure hope that Flynn isn’t completely mistaken, and that we’re not actually near a little-known Soviet nuclear power plant called Chernobyl, 1986. Yes, that would require them to be literally on the other side of the country, but still.

When nobody answers, Iris and Flynn glance at each other, take up positions to either side of the door, and he kicks it in as Iris covers him. They make a good (and scary) team, and as they peer into the dim cabin, waiting to see if something is going to leap out at them, Lucy tries to slow her racing heart. She still feels too cold in a way that does not owe itself to Siberian weather, unable to catch her breath. Shock, probably. Now that they have, even for a moment, stopped moving, that there is the possibility of sitting down and facing her near-death in Salem and the chaos of their uncontrolled escape through time and the trudge through the taiga, not to remotely mention the rest of recent events, she will be lucky to get through tonight without a complete meltdown. Not yet. There are still things to worry about apart from herself. She’ll hold it together.

Still nothing. Iris and Flynn advance in cautiously and take a look, trying to guess the approximate time period, and Lucy quickly finds a newspaper. As Flynn is the only one of them who reads Russian, she hands it to him, and the date is discovered to be April 4, 1965. At least it was, as there is no way to know how current the paper is, but it doesn’t look yellowed or old or left for too long. This is definitely an outpost of some sort: there is a moth-eaten sofa, a radio, a faded portrait of Stalin, cross-country skis and other gear, and a hunting rifle, which Flynn immediately appropriates. He finds the ammo boxes and loads it, going back outside to further check their surroundings, while Iris and Lucy sink onto the rickety kitchen chairs. This all feels like the prologue to a horror movie to Lucy, as if someone or something is going to come out of the woods at midnight, and suddenly, she doesn’t want Flynn out there alone, even with the rifle. She starts to stand up. “Maybe we should keep moving.”

“Not at night.” Iris looks at her for the first time since she rescued them in Salem, gaze cool and unrevealing. “This is Russia in the middle of the Cold War, and if – Daddy’s right about where we are, we’re on the far eastern coast, probably right across the Bering Sea from Alaska. I’m guessing this is a hotspot for smuggling the KGB into American territory.”

Lucy can’t help but be impressed at this display of historical knowledge, as she always is, even as she remembers that Iris has been educated by Rittenhouse and all of it has been meant to identify and target the places where it can be more usefully changed. It is still unbelievably jarring to see this beautiful, intelligent, dangerous, guarded young woman, when she was taking care of the scared little girl just a few weeks ago, and Iris is not even her daughter. It must be a thousand, a hundred thousand times more surreal and heartbreaking for Flynn. An unhinged little giggle slips out. “So, uh, I guess they really can see Russia from their house here?”

Iris looks at her blankly, not understanding the joke, and Lucy bites her tongue. She looks at the paper again, trying to make any sense of the Cyrillic characters, but it is impenetrable. She opens the cupboards and checks the supplies instead; this definitely looks like the mid-sixties, and there are even a few American brands, as whoever lives here must not be opposed to taking contraband in trade, if the alternative is eating Soviet canned food all the time. The Cuban Missile Crisis was three years ago, assuming the date on the paper is accurate. Khrushchev was deposed last October, and Brezhnev is First Secretary. Schoolchildren across America are probably still practicing their duck-and-cover-under-the-desk drills religiously.

Lucy shuts the cupboards and goes through the curtain to the small alcove that proves to be the bedroom. A Russian Orthodox icon sits on the table, along with a bottle of vodka and a half-full pack of American Marlboros. She lies down on the bed, shivering. Leering images of the crowd in Salem, baying for their blood, swirl against her eyelids whenever she closes them, and she opens them again with a jerk, clenching her fists.

She stays there for some interminable interlude, until the sound of shouting and then the distinctive crack of a gunshot outside wrenches her upright as if someone has yanked a fishhook in her belly. She almost has a panic attack as she lurches off the bed and runs back through the cabin, remembering just in time not to burst into the open if someone unfriendly is out there shooting. “Garcia? Garcia!”

“I’m here, Lucy.” He sounds more than a little tense as he answers, but Lucy momentarily clutches onto the doorframe in relief, as she and Iris peer out and see the shape of a body lying at his feet. It is (or was, probably) the owner of this cabin, also with a gun in hand. He doesn’t look like a crazy, bearded survivalist, so Iris’ theory is probably right, and he was a KGB agent returning from smuggling fellow operatives across the Bering Strait in battered fishing trawlers. Flynn is already kneeling next to him, ransacking his jacket in search of ID.

“Did you have to shoot him?” Lucy mutters, more for the sake of form than anything. She knows Flynn was never going to let an armed man into the cabin with her and Iris, and the guy likely would have done the same, but still.

Flynn shrugs. “I don’t like Russians.”

Lucy bites her tongue on remarking that he doesn’t like anyone, though she considers that a man from former-Yugoslavia, who has worked for American intelligence, probably doesn’t, no. They find a battered USSR state identity card, which gives the dead man’s name as Nikolai, but no obvious KGB affiliation, as he’s probably not dumb enough to carry it around with him. Lucy hopes that no superiors will be radioing in to check on him, or asking him to arrange another drop. She is suddenly tempted to head straight back to the Mothership (though with their luck, Nikolai’s friends picked it up, decided it was a strange American nuclear missile or spy device, and called it into Moscow) and get out of here, rest or no rest. It doesn’t seem like the most peaceful of places, anyway.

It, however, is still pitch-black and freezing, and the only thing more ill-advised than possibly and inadvertently turning the Cold War hot is to try to find their way back to the Mothership in the depths of Siberian night. Once Flynn has dragged Nikolai’s body a few hundred yards away from the cabin and scuffed some leaves and undergrowth over it, he returns and heads inside, grimacing. Lucy can see blood on his shirt that isn’t from his immediately previous activities, and frowns. “Did you break your stitches?”

“I said I’m fine, Lucy.”

“No,” she snaps. “Sit down and let me check.”

Flynn is briefly flummoxed, but Lucy grabs him by the arm and forces him into the rickety chair, as Iris almost looks amused. She hides it quickly, vanishing through the curtain to the bedroom, which leaves Flynn and Lucy, for the moment, alone. Lucy rummages in the cupboards until she finds the first aid kit, and pulls Flynn’s shirt and the crusted bandages away from where they have stuck to his shoulder wound, which isn’t looking terribly happy. She sucks in a breath. “This could be infected.”

Flynn answers with a grunt and only a faint flinch as she prods. Wyatt’s neat stitches are mostly holding, but have tugged loose and been spotted with blood in places. Then she lifts the hem of his shirt to check on his side, which has granulated somewhat better but still will require close watching. She has not come this far just to let Flynn die stupidly of septicemia, especially if he is too stubborn to admit that it is even a possibility. At last he says, “You’re not my nurse, Lucy.”

“No, I’m not, am I?” Lucy tries to keep her voice down, as she knows Iris can probably hear them – the cabin is small and the curtain is thin – and doesn’t really feel like an audience for this argument. “I might never know what I – what we are, but heaven forbid I take care of you?”

“It’s like I said in Salem. I don’t –” He grimaces again as she unscrews the pungent-smelling tube of antibiotic ointment, hoping that sixties Soviet medicine can get the job done, and dabs it on. “Can’t you just give up trying to save me? One of these days?”

“Is that really what you want?” Lucy gulps back her usual nausea at the sight of blood, as her stomach still isn’t very pleased from earlier, and refocuses. “Or is it just what you’re asking for, deflecting with, because you’re afraid?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Sure,” Lucy says. “We can go with that.”

Flynn looks miffed that she thinks he would ever be less than 100% forthcoming with his feelings (yeah, where would she ever get that idea?) “Lucy – ”

“Garcia.” Lucy wipes her hands on one of the kitchen rags. She doesn’t want to fight with him again. “Please stop talking.”

For once, Flynn does as instructed, snapping his mouth shut on whatever misjudged opinion he was about to offer. Lucy gets the kettle and brews them both a cup of strong black Russian tea, then one for Iris as well, and the three of them sit around the tiny table in something almost like familiar silence. Once they’re done, Lucy gets up. “I think I’m going to try to sleep.”

“I’ll keep watch.” Flynn answers almost abstractedly, moving to get the hunting rifle and putting it on the table next to him. “You both should.”

“No,” Iris says. “I’ll sit up too.”

“You should go to bed.”

“I’m not tired.”

“As usual?” It slips out, almost before Flynn can catch it, and he looks as if he wants to bite it back, but can’t. “It’s a different sort of monster under the bed, dragi.”

Iris’ lip trembles in something too sad to be a smile. “I know.”

Lucy quietly gets to her feet, wanting to leave the two of them together, and backs through the curtain to the bedroom. The wind is sighing and keening through the trees outside, she thinks of Nikolai lying dead in the grove, and the immensity of the darkness and wilderness beyond this tiny foothold, and burrows fully clothed under the covers, unable to stop shaking. She curls up on her side. The bedclothes smell of damp and smoke and some too-harsh cologne.

The ghosts of Salem come rushing up once more when she closes her eyes. She refuses to open them again, breathing shallowly, clutching a fistful of pillow until she feels at all grounded. Just one night. They can get out of here tomorrow. Exactly where is, as ever, the question. Hope Iris can steer this time. But 1965 is the closest she’s been to the modern world, to her own time, since she left 2017 to go to 1861 London, and she feels a desolation at the thought of once more leaving it. Even if back-of-beyond Cold War Russia isn’t anything like home, at least there’s the chance, the glimpse, the thought of reaching it. Has history been fixed yet, or rather, moderately less torched? Does she exist again? Can she go back?

Does she want to go back?

Lucy Preston has spent a lot of time in the past by now. Far more than anyone should. And yet, she has absolutely no idea, not even a flicker, of her future.

It takes a while. Her dreams aren’t pleasant. But she sleeps.

------------------

“Here,” Iris says, holding out the bottle of vodka and the pack of Marlboros. “Pass the time?”

Flynn’s lip twitches. “I don’t think I can agree, as a parent, to offer my daughter alcohol and cigarettes.”

“I’m offering them to you.” Iris raises an eyebrow, in a gesture that reminds him so much of his own that it makes his heart ache. She gets up, finds a lighter in one of the drawers, and pulls out one of the Reds, flicking a spark to it and taking a drag. She blows out a fine ghost of smoke, not saying a word, until Flynn finally takes one of his own, feeling that if she’s going to, he’ll have to as well. His shoulder throbs. He’s in more pain than he’ll admit to Lucy. Some self-medication might not be the worst thing in the world.

They sit there, both listening hard for anything moving outside, forged into this uneasy unity for the time being. Iris gets up again and lights some of the thick white candles, wedging them into empty jars. There is obviously no electricity up here, so while it might technically be the middle of the twentieth century, it feels much earlier. Flynn wants to say something, wants to speak to her so desperately, but he is afraid of shattering whatever fragile rapprochement exists. Finally he says, “Thank you. For Salem.”

“You’re – you’re welcome.” Iris sits down again, tapping the ashes off her cigarette and staring into the candlelight. Her eyes are the image of Lorena’s, and Flynn’s heart twists in half again. “I don’t know what came over me. It was like I’d been asleep, all that time, and then just like that – I woke up.” She shrugs, almost diffidently, painfully. “I saw what they were, and I didn’t want to be one of them anymore. Daddy, are you. . . are you angry with me?”

“How could I ever be angry with you?” Flynn, startled past all reticence, reaches across the table and grabs her hand, holding hard, tears trembling at the edge of control despite himself. “How could I ever? When you were strong enough to overcome those bastards, when you saved us, when you would have had every right not to? No, my baby. No, I’m not. I’m not.”

Iris looks down. Very quietly, she says, “Do you think I killed him? John Rittenhouse?”

Flynn does not want to even think about the answer to that question, when once it would have been all he cared about. He half-hopes that John is still alive, that Iris has not had to take on the guilt of murder even once; if so, he can finish it later. He’s used to killing, he’s already aware of the cost. He’ll carry it. He doesn’t want her to.

He says, “I don’t know.”

Iris’ fingers clench briefly in his. After a moment she says, “Why did we end up here?”

“I have an idea.” Flynn finishes his own cigarette, pours himself a dram of vodka, and knocks it back. “Your grandfather.”

Iris looks startled. “My grandfather?”

“Yes. My father. His name was Asher, Asher Flynn.” His throat sticks; he hasn’t talked about the old bastard in a long time. Probably since Lorena. “His parents – my grandparents – met in World War II. His mother was a resistance fighter in the Independent State of Croatia – that was what it was called then, it was a puppet regime controlled by the Nazis. She tried to break people out of Jasenovac concentration camp, the place they called the Auschwitz of the Balkans. His father was a Red Army soldier, we don’t know what happened to him. Grandmother thought he probably died in Stalingrad. It was only one night, and she never saw him again. My father did not say so, but I got the feeling that she had not much wanted a child, and resented him for it.”

Iris is watching him intently. She has never heard this part of her family history – has never heard any of it, really, as she died when she was five, when none of this mattered. Now she’s alive again, and it does. She can sense that this is a painful topic, and waits, instead of pressing for details. Finally, as he’s still groping for the words, she says, “And?”

“His name was Aleksandr.” Flynn takes another drink. “When he was six, Grandmother married a British Army officer, George Flynn, and he changed it to Asher. He grew up mostly in strict English boarding schools, but when he was eighteen, he ran away and went back to Yugoslavia. Became a spy and saboteur against the Russians – blamed his father for leaving his mother, for dying, I suppose. He met my mother, Maria – I don’t think you remember her, you were only one when she died – when she moved from America in 1970. They were married in ‘72, I was born in ‘74. Those are the basics.”

“So. . .” Iris frowns. “You think Grandpa might be. . . here? In Russia somewhere, working as a spy against the KGB? And that was what I was thinking of, without knowing it?”

“I don’t know for sure, but if it’s 1965 – yes, he would be.” Flynn blows out a breath. “I doubt it’s anywhere particularly nearby. Russia is a big place, after all. But yes, that might have been what drew us here, unconsciously. And my father – it’s complicated.”

Iris considers him. “How so?”

“He was. . . difficult.” Flynn looks back at the candle, dripping waxen gremlins in its jam jar. “He had a temper. He was angry a lot. He and my mother would fight, and I thought he would hit her, and I had to protect her, even when I was very young. He thought she coddled me too much, and she thought he raised me like a soldier, not a son. She was. . . sad. All the time, she always had it about her. She had been married once before, in America, but her husband died in a car crash and her son, my older half-brother, died when he was six, from an allergic reaction to a bee sting. My father almost blamed her for it, that she had never gotten over it, that she never seemed to be happy all the way. He said he was sorry that we were only the replacements. They. . .”

At that, Flynn pauses. He can still hear their shouting, and the way he played nervously with his cowboy toys, aged eight, hoping they would stop. “They divorced, finally, when I was fourteen. I always admired my father, in a way. I wanted to be like him, because everyone was afraid of him, and he could do whatever he wanted. But I knew as well that he was not a good man, and was not a good father. I always told myself that if I ever had children, I would be nothing like him. I made up a little with him before he died, and he admitted some of his faults, but it was never forgiven entirely. I talked with. . . your mother about it, before you were born. That I was so afraid I would become him. And now, knowing that I have, and that you’ve become like me, like him too – no wonder we’re here. It is a big circle. None of us can escape it.”

Iris doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. She opens her mouth as if to apologize again, then stops. Finally she says, very quietly, “What happened, Daddy? With me and. . . and Mama?”

Flynn looks at the tabletop. “Do you want to know?”

“Yes.” Iris doesn’t blink. “I want to know.”

If she’s sure, Flynn thinks, then he might as well, as he can hardly feel much more gutted than he presently does. So, as simply as he can (which is impossible when the whole thing is this insane) he explains to Iris what happened, that she and Lorena were killed by Rittenhouse, that he got a journal and a chance to change it, stole a time machine, and has been trying ever since, ever more impossibly, to bring them back. That he doesn’t know how he somehow saved her, but not Lorena. That she has been brought back to life only to be trained and molded into Rittenhouse’s perfect weapon for fifteen years, that she has been robbed, that she has been robbed. That all of this has become enmeshed, ever more impossibly, with Lucy Preston, and the question of her own fate, her own destiny. And that, well. That Flynn knows the least about at all.

When he finishes, Iris is silent, rather (and excusably) stunned. “So,” she says at last, barely above a whisper. “You – you didn’t abandon us?”

“No.” Flynn feels in sore need of another cigarette, good examples be damned, and lights it, struggling to keep his voice even. “Not by any choice of mine. Not once. Not until I saw you in London in 1861, and you ran to me, and I thought you had to be a trick or a cruel joke or a. . . Iris, I’m sorry. My baby, I am so sorry. I don’t even know if I was the one who saved you, or how, or why any of it happened. I would give anything, anything, to have saved your mother as well, for the two of you to be alive again, to live together, even if it meant I had to trade my own life in doing it. But.” Flynn takes a shuddering breath. “I don’t. . . I don’t know if I can.”

It is the first time he has ever admitted it out loud, the possibility of failure on his quest, when he has ostensibly succeeded at half of it with Iris, but at such a terrible cost. He feels impossibly, unbearably guilty. No, how can he do this, how can he admit defeat, when she is sitting across from him, when he knows there still might be a chance somehow for Lorena? He will not be able to live with any suggestion that he loves her any infinitesimal fraction less than he did, he does: with every inch, every sinew, every atom and particle and breath and dream and grief of him, the sun around which his dark and battered world revolved, the stars, the moon. He cannot concede that. He cannot simply replace it, or move on. He can’t.

(And yet – if he is being entirely honest with himself, which is a terrible thing to do that he avoids as much as possible – he knows that nonetheless, he has started to. Never meaning to, never wanting to, completely out of his control. And that is the most unforgivable thing of all.)

“Lucy,” Iris says, with perfect and unsettling clairvoyance. “You love her, don’t you?”

“I – ” Flynn’s first instinct, of course, is to deny it. That, however, is all it remains: an instinct. The actual words get stuck.

Iris smiles, very faintly and very sadly. “I’m sorry for what I said about her.”

“I – ” Flynn says again, wondering how they have gotten to the next stage of this, when he’s still hung up on the last part. “I’ll – I won’t. I’ll –I’ll try harder to bring your mother back, I’ll stop. I know it was a mistake, I’ll – ”

“Daddy.” Iris reaches across the table and puts her hand over his. Her voice isn’t terribly steady. “That’s not what I was asking you to do.”

Flynn careens to a jumbled halt, utterly thrown. “You. . .you weren’t?”

“No.” Iris knuckles at her eyes. “Of course I want Mama back. I know you do too. I know it. But if not. . . if it can’t happen, if you’ve done everything and then some, I don’t. . . I don’t want you to live like that for the rest of your life. You know.” She gestures timidly at their surroundings, at the literal irony embodied in it, the presence of his father, of the old family wounds, of all the Flynns’ mistakes. “In the past.”

Garcia Flynn has absolutely no clue what to say to that. He opens his mouth, then shuts it. The silence returns, even as the candles are starting to burn low, swimming in the wax, a small flame adrift among the darkness. He gulps a breath, then another. There is an immense ache in his chest, torn and raw, that is entirely different from the pain in his shoulder. He isn’t sure which one hurts more, or which is the kind of pain that means it might ever heal.

Quietly, Iris says, “Daddy, I’m tired.”

The tears almost come up his throat then, but he doesn’t let them. Instead he nods, gets to his feet, steps around the table, and picks her up out of the chair, carrying her to the ratty sofa and settling down with her. She’s much too big to sit on his lap now, but neither of them care. He holds her tighter than he ever has, than he ever remembers, from when they first laid her in his arms as a newborn in the hospital in Dubrovnik, on that sunny morning when his world changed forever. He rocks her, humming a tuneless lullaby under his breath, as the tears start falling freely. As Iris Flynn drifts off to sleep, at last, and somewhere in the darkness, for a short while at least, Garcia Flynn once more believes in God.

-------------------

Lucy wakes up feeling better, at least somewhat. She sits up slowly, testing the steadiness of her head and stomach, but the sleep has helped, and she doesn’t seem any more crappy than could be expected. She is hungry, which is a good sign, and swings cautiously out of bed, pushing the curtain aside and emerging into the main living area of the cabin. Glances across to the sofa, and sees father and daughter asleep on it, Iris curled up on Flynn’s lap and her head cradled against his shoulder, both of them dead to the world. Lucy doesn’t want to disturb them for anything, and tries to fix breakfast from the tinned goods as quietly as she can. The world outside is nothing but a sea of thick, featureless mist.

Flynn and Iris begin to stir as they smell food (read: powdered eggs and toast made from black bread that is the approximate weight and consistency of petrified wood). Lucy makes more of the tea, scrapes some strange Russian preserve over the toast, and carries it to the table, as they blink, yawn, disentangle themselves, and sit up, looking groggy but shyly pleased. The atmosphere certainly seems different, and they eat in more or less congenial silence. Then Lucy says, “Are we going to try to make it back to the Mothership?”

“Not in this fog, we can’t.” Flynn mops up the remainder of his eggs with his toast. “I’m still not sure exactly where we are, either. Somewhere in the Far East, close to Alaska. Kamchatka Peninsula, most likely. If so – ”

“It’s a prime Cold War battleground,” Lucy completes. “Iris told me about her theory last night.”

“Ah.” Flynn coughs, looking almost proud. “I’m sure you know, then. I’ll go out and take a look, see if anyone has come sniffing for Nikolai. You two should stay here.”

“No,” Lucy says. “I don’t want you to go by yourself.”

Flynn, who of course prefers doing things by himself, opens his mouth to object, but Lucy is insistent. It is also most sensible to leave Iris to hold down the fort, as she can handle a gun if unexpected intruders come knocking, and Flynn and Lucy bundle up from the jackets and wraps in the tiny closet. All of it smells like fish. It is, however, far preferable to freezing, and Flynn makes sure he has plenty of ammunition for the hunting rifle, which he slings over his shoulder with casual ease. He takes out the flashlight and the matches and anything else he thinks they might need if they have the bad luck to get lost, and loads it into a rucksack. Then, promising Iris that they will be back by nightfall, they cautiously step outside the cabin and shut the door.

The first thing they do is check on Nikolai. He has frozen overnight, and does not appear to have attracted the attention of anything large and carnivorous, but Flynn decides he’s still too close to the cabin for comfort. He drags the body a further way, well out of sight or wind, and while Lucy tries not to watch, hacks a shallow grave out of the earth. She thinks of that Russian Orthodox icon on the bedside table back in the cabin. It’s too late now to feel guilty about his death, especially given that she wasn’t responsible for it and that he might well have done the same to them, but she can’t help it. She’s tired of people dying, famous ones or nameless ones alike. She loves history, but she is so exhausted by the weight of it. By the tragedy. How it goes, and comes, and goes, and comes again, inexorable.

Flynn finishes up, brushes his hands off, and they tramp deeper into the woods, looking for any hint of other human presence. If Nikolai was indeed KGB, they’ll presumably be back here before long with a new batch of operatives for him to smuggle into Alaska, and even Flynn probably can’t take on a whole squadron of angry Russian special ops alone. (Not that that would stop him trying.) As they walk, breath steaming silver in the chill, Lucy says, “Why on earth do you think we ended up here?”

Flynn glances at her sidelong. His voice is carefully offhand. “No idea.”

Something about that gives Lucy the distinct impression that he might know exactly why, or at least strongly suspects, but doesn’t feel like sharing it with her. She debates whether or not to press, as she’s also deeply curious about what he and Iris might have talked about last night to lead to that tender scene this morning on the couch, but she knows it is not her place. She keeps close to Flynn, keeping a wary eye out for bears, but nothing, thankfully. Then when they reach the top of a hill, some of the mist thins and she can glimpse a truly spectacular jigsaw of white-capped mountains in the distance. Her jaw drops. “Wow.”

“Yes, this is Kamchatka, all right.” Flynn seems to enjoy her reaction. “Like the view?”

“It’s amazing,” Lucy says, as they start down the trail on the far side. It’s steep and slippery, and Flynn keeps hold of her arm most of the way, as her shoes from 1692 are not exactly up to the rigors of more Siberian tundra-tramping; they are already decidedly chewed up from yesterday. At the bottom, she gets a strong whiff of sulfur, and looks at Flynn in confusion. “What, is there a local portal to hell around here?”

“No, probably a hot spring. This place has a lot of geysers, and half those mountains are volcanoes.” He remarks this casually, as if it is not yet another way in which they might die here, and laughs at the look on her face. Actually laughs, with gentle, genuine amusement. She doesn’t think she has ever seen him do that before. “Don’t worry, most of them are extinct. But that’s why they call Kamchatka the Land of Fire and Ice. Come on.”

Curiosity piqued, Lucy follows him to the source of the sulfur smell, which turns out to be a small pool shielded by a tumble of rocks and a larch grove, smoking gently in the midmorning sun. Flynn kneels down and tests it with a finger, then grins. “Here.”

Lucy crouches next to him and puts her hand in warily, bracing for it to be freezing, as one would imagine for a pond in the middle of the Siberian wilderness. But instead it is shockingly, delightfully hot, just the right temperature for a long and luxurious bath. It makes her gasp involuntarily with the pleasure, and she can feel Flynn once more looking at her sidelong, almost hesitantly, as if waiting to see what she is going to do about it. The possibility of KGB agents, bears, or KGB-agent bears remains, of course, considerable. But after a moment, Lucy makes up her mind. Stands up, pulls off the wraps and jackets and the battered remnants of her Salem clothes, shivering all over as the cold wind stings her bare skin, and jumps in.

She splashes fully under, has a moment to hope that it’s not too deep or there’s not a hidden current or some horrible flesh-eating bacteria or whatever else, but the sensation of immersion is too glorious to care. She bobs up, and discovers that the water is about four and a half feet deep, with a bottom of smooth-worn stones, so she can stand easily. She ducks down so the water covers her shoulders, hair drifting loose like dark weed, and shudders again with the feeling of it soaking into her raw and sore and aching body. Looks up at Flynn, staring at her from the bank like a man struck down by a heavenly vision, and says, “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to get wet?”

He does that seemingly unconscious thing with his tongue that he sometimes does while looking at her, while continuing to stare as if he can’t stop. Then – slowly at first, then faster – he pulls off his own clothes as well, heaping them on the bank. Swings one leg over the edge, then the other, and pushes into the gentle eddy of the water. Crosses the stones, and comes to her.

Lucy shudders all over, for another reason, as she lifts her wet arms and puts them around his neck. This is, as far as she can recall, the first time they have ever been completely naked together, seen each other in the full light of day, as all their previous encounters have been with some or even most of their clothes on, ripped aside in the necessary places but never taken off all the way. This is different, this is intimate, this is not just hunger or lust or challenge. His hands slide slowly down her torso, under the water, settling on her hips and lifting her. They remain there, holding each other without a word, steam rising around them in thick gusts and swirls. Then she tilts his head down to hers, puts a hand in his hair, and opens her mouth to kiss him.

Flynn makes a soft sound, likewise different from anything she’s heard from him as he hoists her up on him and leans back in the water, letting them float. It’s dreamy, slow, wet, hot, sweet, as they splash and sway in the warmth. Lucy doesn’t stop kissing him until she’s good and ready to, and only then, moves her head slightly away to rest their noses together. She notes vaguely that his shoulder wound looks somewhat better, so hopefully the antibiotic cream is tackling it before it gets any more inflamed. She wants to look at all of him. He is tall and lean and strong and scarred, rough-hewn, worn around the edges, solid as a rock. He moves to lift her again, as her legs lock around his waist, and she can feel him nudging between her legs. She hitches herself forward, arching her hips, and takes him inside her.

Flynn enters her with an accompanying rush of hot water, hard and deep, and Lucy moans as their slick bodies slide together to the point of completion. Her fingers claw in the muscles of his back, her hand coming up to the nape of his neck, urging his mouth down to explore her breasts, sucking and teasing. His hand slides down her spine, onto the small of her back, molding her more closely against him. He thrusts at the same time he bites her nipple, making her squeal, and she braces her forearms on his shoulders, lifting herself slightly, changing the angle of his penetration as he rides up into her. He whirls her around, slips half out, and then claims her again, as deep as he can. She breathes the steam and the salt and the sting of him, of them, sweet and slow. It feels downright pagan. Elemental, primeval. Magical.

It doesn’t take long for either of them to be urged to release, Lucy’s body shuddering in deep, uncontrollable spasms as some of the tension and toil and pain finally begins to be burned out of her. She gulps and gasps as Flynn’s mouth muses against hers, half a kiss and half a shared breath, strong and soft. They remain floating in an island of mist and steam, something cool on Lucy’s flushed face, a snowflake drifting from the pearly sky. Fire and ice, she thinks. Indeed.

At last, she shifts, letting Flynn slide out of her, and remains with her arms entangled around his neck as they sway. Then she says, “We need to make it back to Wyatt and Rufus. We need to find where they are, and what has happened to history as a result of – whatever Iris did to John Rittenhouse. We can’t do this alone, Garcia. We need the team. We need to fight. Together.”

For a moment, he doesn’t answer, eyes half-closed, still holding onto her. As if he wants to stay like this for just a bit, just a bit longer, and then he will wake up. Then, without a word, he nods.

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #the trash saga of flynn and lucy

12 notes · View notes