Timeless: Through Time - Garcy

Space Race

You're no good 'til they're looking at you
Bad front, I can see right through, yeah

I can't stop judging every thing you do
But I can't get enough of you

- King Princess, Upper West Side

Lucy knew who had just sat beside her before she even looked up. She had been patiently waiting for Rufus to meet with her for around ten minutes by now, and had already finished her first coffee. She had simply been enjoying the ambience of the NASA cafeteria that smelled comfortingly of baking cakes and coffee, but the atmosphere was now taut. When she turned, Garcia Flynn met her eyes.
He looked like he had seen better days, and for some bizarre reason was wearing a plumber's uniform, but her breath still caught in her chest at the sight of him. It was both fear and something else - something she would rather ignore.

"Hello, Lucy." he said pleasantly, sliding another mug of coffee over to her. How long had he been watching her, unnoticed, to know she had just finished hers? Regardless, she didn't take it. She honestly thought it might be poisoned.
"Flynn."
He seemed amused by her cool attitude. "It's a surprise to see you here."
"Oh, because you tried to trap us in 1754? Thanks for that, by the way." she scoffed.
"You would have been fine." he said tightly.
Lucy hesitated at the truth in his words - but his emphasis on "you" made her wonder.
"And what about Wyatt, and Rufus?"
He seemed irritated by the mention of them.
"What about them?" He challenged, leaning an arm on the table. Lucy ignored him, studying a gaggle of women who had just entered the room and made a beeline for the table next to them, chatting annoyingly loudly. She only turned back to the conversation when one of the women gave her a strange look for staring.
"Would you have come back?" She didn't bother to add the words on the end they both heard; for me. They sounded too personal, strayed too far across her boundaries, however innocently she might have intended them.
"I told you, one day we will work together."
That was no real answer, but she knew there was no point pushing him. He was too dangerous, and had already told her she would help him over and over again - it still made no sense to her. She was determined to prove him wrong, though. Wyatt had proven to her, during their conversation after making it back from 1754, that she was in control of her own fate.

In her long silence, Flynn drank deeply from his own mug and shifted on his stool. His leg happened to fall touching hers - he either didn't notice or didn't care, because he didn't move it away. Lucy was too stubborn to do it herself - she didn't dare give him any opportunity to tease her, especially since she had been so unpredictable around him recently. It was torture to leave it there, though - it was too intimate to have them touching so casually, and the warmth spreading from his body to hers made her want to lean into him. But if she moved her leg at all, he would surely notice... She would just have to deal with it.

"What are you doing here?" she asked finally, breaking the silence. He set down his drink carefully.
"Oh, I'm sure you already know, Lucy."
That was true, of course: she wasn't Mason Industries' chosen historian for nothing.
"You want the Russians to succeed, win the cold war?" It was as much a question as it was a statement. It didn't seem as foolproof a plan as his others - they were well planned, at careful pressure points in history where one difference could unravel the future - but this was different. He couldn't guarantee the aftermath of his meddling - Russia could, as a result of this, win the cold war, but it was a slim chance. She thought he must have something else up his sleeve to devastate them, but for all her knowledge she couldn't figure out what.

"I am sorry, for putting you in that situation." He said at last, each word sounding like he had forced it out of himself with extreme difficulty.
"Which one?" She retorted, jumping on the defensive. She was uneasy that he had suddenly become so nice. "Imprisoning me in a Nazi fortress? Trapping me in the Alamo? Leaving me to die in 1754?"
Her raised voice was gathering attention from the women at the other table. Flynn flashed them a charming smile, earning swoons from them and an impressively dirty look from Lucy. Women tended to like Flynn, she'd noticed that.
"Calm down, honey." He said loud enough for them to hear, looking at her engagement ring pointedly and resting a hand on her shoulder. She glared at him, but subtly brought her hand up to her face to show off the jewel resting on her ring finger. This, thankfully, convinced the women to lose interest and go back to their conversations. It was surreal how comfortable his touch was.
"Congratulations, by the way." He said quietly, removing his hand.
"What? Oh." The engagement. Lucy didn't feel like having to explain anything to Flynn, but to her surprise, he said;
"Doctor, isn't he? Impressive."
"Yes." She said stiffly. It wasn't even worth asking how he knew.
"It's a shame you have no idea who he is."
Lucy whirled to him, her eyes wide. He just smiled into his mug, sipping lightly. Of course, she thought, the damn diary. She hated it with a fiery passion.
"Give it back." she ordered. He feigned consideration, before simply answering; "No."

They could play this game for eternity. "Shouldn't you be off ruining history?"

Flynn grinned. "Someone needs their coffee."

She crossed her arms and glared at him. He was just being petty now. "What do you want from me?"

"I wanted to warn you." He suddenly sounded very serious.

"Warn me?" Lucy scoffed, though his tone of voice scared her. "Warn me about what?"

"If this fails, you don't want to come where I'm going next."

"And where's that?"

He didn't say, just as she'd expected him to. "Nevermind. You could get hurt."

"Oh, since when did you care about me getting hurt?"

A muscle flickered in his jaw. "You don't know Rittenhouse. You don't know what you're getting into."

"You can't stop me."

"I know. Just be careful. Don't trust them."

Lucy frowned. It didn't make sense - he didn't seem to care before. But wait, that wasn't true, was it? He had kept her alive, defended her, even... But a lot of the danger was his fault. She didn't know what to think or who to trust anymore. It drove her mad. The mission had seemed black and white; she was part of the good guys, and Flynn was the bad guy to take down. It wasn't so simple anymore. So she looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since meeting him, abandoning all of her bias for the moment. She took in his paler skin, his newly pronounced dark circles, and noticed that pink subtly rimmed his eyes. Had he been crying?

"Are you okay?" she asked hesitantly.
"Yes." He drained the rest of his mug in one gulp and stood. She rose with him so that they were face to face.
"No, you're not."
He studied her for a few seconds. "No, I'm not." he breathed out heavily. Lucy didn't know what to do - she couldn't exactly ask him what was wrong, and she suspected he wouldn't tell her anyway. She reluctantly placed a hand on his forearm.
"You don't have to do this." She said appealingly. His face hardened at her words.
"Yes, I do." He walked away without another word, leaving her hand awkwardly floating in mid air.
"You can't just leave!" She shouted after him, but he kept going until he was out of the door. She was left stunted, completely unsure of what had just happened.

Lucy sat back down, tapping her fingers on the table. Flynn's cup caught her eye, piquing her interest. Maybe he was- but no, surely not. But if he was... Lucy's curiousity got the better of her. She lifted Flynn's cup and subtly sniffed. Her suspicions were confirmed when the sharp smell of rum made her nose crinkle in disgust. He had been drunk. He was most definitely not okay. She gnawed at her lip worriedly. If something was big enough to have Flynn upset...
The women at the next table squinted at her strangely. She made a great show of putting his cup down and trying to look as though she had only accidentally picked it up, instead of being a total creep and sniffing someone else's mug. Good going, Lucy.
She drank her own coffee eagerly. Flynn did make a damn good coffee, she'd give him that, drunk or no. Lucy resigned herself once again to simply appreciating the atmosphere and reveling in the calm before the storm.

---

Only long, long after she had finished, and Rufus had at last come to get her, did Lucy realise the amount of trust in Flynn that had gone into her drinking that coffee. Maybe Flynn was right in saying they were going to work together - she certainly seemed to be on that path, whether she wanted to be or not. And now, their dynamic had changed - dramatically. A fitting old quote she had read way back in high school came back to her as she pondered the prospect - "Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"