Chapter Text
For Jack the case was closed. Or as closed as could be, without catching Emma and finding Rufus. He had found his murderer after all. He sympathized with Lucy and Garcia for their missing friend but they had both insisted that he was probably long gone by now, and there was no point in spending resources into it. He had however allerted the higher authority’s of Emma’s escape. It maybe was a waste of time but he felt better about at least doing something about it.
Jack and Phryne thought they were being subtle but everyone knew they were an item. Jack was spending every other night in Wardlow and was sneaking out in the morning. The others just shrugged and didn’t comment on it, saying it was none of their business when Lucy asked their opinion.
As life continued Lucy and Garcia tried to adapt to 1929, there could have been worse time periods to be stranded in. With help from Phryne they had found a cute little bungalow that was just big enough for the two of them. Garcia worked with Phryne and Jack whenever he could. Because of his life in the NSA and the military he was frequently sought after by the Victorian police and Ces and Bert. Life was fairly cheap and with Lucy tutoring young girls in Prudence Stanley’s house they managed ok.
Lucy and Garcia had held stake outs at the clockmaker's shop in case Rufus had escaped and came to get them. After a month and a big argument later Lucy stopped going there. She hadn’t given up hope completely but there was no point in waiting there every day. So she started to enjoy her life as she now knew it.
Lucy had been dreading the day when Henry Fisher the Baron of Richmond showed up. She knew that it would most likely be the last time she would see Phryne and Jack for a long time. She had been worried what was going to happen to them, her worries where however for nothing. When Phryne left in her airplane with her father, Jack had traveled after her a month later just like he had in Lucy’s original timeline.
Lucy waved goodbye to Prudence Stanley when she saw Garcia arrive at the house. He was driving Phryne’s old car, it had required some work but Garcia had managed to get it to a good condition again. It was their routine, Garcia would pick up Lucy from work, and they would drive home and make dinner together. Garcia was the cook, but Lucy would help him with little things. She enjoyed seeing him so domestic.
When Garcia stopped at their bungalow, two figures stood in the dark on their porch. Both of them looked up to see who was driving the car. Lucy gasped when the headlights passed over them.
She was out of the car before Garcia could argue. She ran toward the couple and threw her arms around them.
“Jiya, Rufus! Oh my god, you’re still alive! I’ve bloody missed you!”
Rufus and Jiya shared a startled look but before either of them could say something, Garcia appeared and clapped Rufus on his shoulder.
“Good to see you again.”
Lucy was beaming to see them again.
“Come on, let’s go inside. I want to know what happened.”
The four of them entered the bungalow, Lucy and Garcia disposing jackets, hats and keys as they went. The two of them had a routine after all. Garcia caught Jiya’s look of wonder as he moved to the kitchen. He started to have a bad feeling, something was off.
“Where’s Emma?” Lucy asked as soon everyone was seated in their tiny kitchen.
Jiya and Rufus shared another look before answering, it did not escape Garcia.
“So, the two of you live here? Together?” Rufus began carefully.
Lucy gave him a look of annoyance
“Of course we do. Where else where we supposed to stay?”
She paused and thought for a second
“It's not that big a difference, except it’s just the two of us instead of a chock-full bunker.”
Garcia said nothing as he studied Rufus and Jiya, they were not telling them something. Lucy however didn’t notice and kept talking.
“It’s not so bad, we could be living in the bush. Ces once told be about his bush walk and that he had to sleep in a swag.”
Rufus was looking at Lucy like she was from another planet.
“Um Lucy, how long have you guys been here?”
“What do you mean, how long have you been here?”
Suddenly Garcia understood, it all made perfect sense.
“We have been in Australia for about 6 months and a half.”
He said to Jiya and Rufus. Their horror struck faces told Garcia he had been right in his assumption.
Rufus nodded “That’s why Lucy sounds like crocodile Dundee!”
“I do not!”
All eyes turned to Lucy
“Yeah you do.” Jiya giggled. Garcia spoke before Lucy had the chance too
“Ok start from the beginning. What happened after you got separated from us?”
Rufus talked for nearly an half hour, when Emma got to him she knocked him out and he came to in the clock shop. Emma threatened to kill him if he didn’t talk, she wanted to know how he was alive again. She had seen him die after all. He was being held in a room, guarded by two sleeper agents. It turned out rittenhouse had another pilot, and Emma had a brother that no one knew about. While learning how to be a pilot in mason industries, Emma had trained her younger brother Nathan in secret. He had been living with another sleeper agent in Australia for years. They wanted to start a division in Melbourne but were thankfully unsuccessful.
When Emma left to the airfield with Nathan, Rufus saw his opportunity and scratched the markings in the watch and hid the note. He knew it might be for nothing, Emma could have killed Garcia and Lucy, but he had to try. When Emma came back, bleeding from her arm and side, she ordered Nathan to take the lifeboat back to 2018 and wait for her. What he didn’t know was that Rufus had installed a tracker app in the lifeboat that was synced with Jiya’s phone. The two of them had installed it just for cases like this. And in 5 minutes of arriving back in the present Nathan was apprehended by Wyatt and agent Christopher and was sent to jail.
He clearly lacked his sisters backbone since he spilled the beans about everyone an hour into the interrogation and because of that, they managed to raid the wairhouse and the entire of rittenhouse was either killed or imprisoned. Rufus was with Emma in the mothership when they jumped back and by the excellent shots of Lucy and Phryne and the stress of the trip in the mothership to her body, Emma died of her injuries before arriving back in the present. It took Rufus a while to figure out how to go back to a place he already existed. He thought he had calculated he only needed to add 6 days so he wouldn’t exist in the same timeline twice.
“But something obviously went wrong and 6 days turned into 6 months.”
Garcia and Lucy stared dumbfounded at Rufus. No one spoke for a while as the information slowly sunk in. Garcia was the first to speak
“So rittenhouse is gone? It’s finished?”
“Yeah,” Jiya said “There are still some loose ends but their being tied up as we speak. By the time we get back we should be able to go back to our old lives and houses.”
Lucy stared at her friends faces before settling on Garcia’s. She was almost afraid to ask her next question.
“What about by mom? And Garcia’s family?”
Rufus shifted uneasy in his seat “We’re afraid if we change history to get them back, the ripple effect will undo everything.”
Garcia nodded, he figured as much. He reached for Lucy’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
“It was always a long shot, at least we got the bastards. It is finally done.”
Lucy insisted on writing letters for everyone, telling them they went back to America. She kept most of it vague but still made sure everyone got closure after they would be gone. She placed the letters on her counter where someone would surely find them, she went to gather small things she wanted to take back to the present after that. A couple of pictures of her and Garcia with their new friends, a few books she had found and some fabulous hats Phryne had gifted her. Garcia just took his -now empty and useless- glock to bring back. It was his favorite after all.