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Chapter Text

Three years ago, The Flynns – as Lucy and Garcia like to refer to themselves as now that they’re married – spent New Year’s Eve in the bunker along with their teammates – the party had been ruined when Rittenhouse had decided to take the Mothership out for a spin, forcing the team to chase after them. Two years ago, Lucy and Garcia had spent the evening unpacking their belongings in a luxury apartment in San Francisco, and fell asleep a couple hours before midnight. Last year, they had invited close friends, and family to their new home in Montana to ring in the new year.

This year, they decided to do something different.

To spend New Year’s Eve alone, together, in Norway.

Within the Arctic Circle.

Lucy sighs as she picks up her locket necklace from the top of the dresser. She opens it to look at a small photograph of a sonogram. She kisses her index finger, and presses it to the photo. Then closes the locket, and places it around her neck.

She looks into her own eyes in the reflection of the mirror in front of her. She closes her eyes, and takes three slow breaths.

And one last exhale.

She smooths the fabric of her white long sleeve t-shirt, and checks her reflection in the mirror. Her hair is up in a simple ponytail, and she’s applied minimal makeup. In the mirror’s reflection, she sees that it’s still dark outside even though it’s nine o’clock in the morning.

She smiles as she turns around.

The bedroom in the fjordside cabin that she and her husband have rented through the third of January, is small, yet cozy. The bed isn’t as large as the one back home in Montana, and Lucy has no doubt that her husband’s feet – and probably his calves – will hang over the end if he doesn’t curl up next to her tonight after they ring in the new year. The pillows are fluffy, and the forest green duvet cover matches perfectly with the cabin’s wooden floors, walls, and ceiling.

For Christmas, Garcia gave her a beautiful Norwegian sweater. It’s made of air-spun merino wool, has a full turtleneck and a half-zip. The top of the sweater is lavender with a gradient changing to white just below her chest. White snowflakes are woven into the design, giving it a distinct ‘winter wonderland’ look. Lucy picks the garment up off of their queen-size bed, and pulls it over her heard. Purple hasn’t traditionally been a part of her wardrobe’s color palette, but looking at her reflection in the mirror now, she’s glad that her husband has a sense of color, and an eye for fashion. To be honest, she was expecting something in her husband’s favourite color: burgundy. Then, on the other hand, he’s made a fuss all year about how he thinks she’d look good in shades of purple. He wasn’t wrong.

“You know what I’m not going to get used to?” she says as she steps out of the bedroom – making her way to the kitchen.

“Is this about the lack of sunlight again?” Garcia answers her question with one of his own.

“Yeah.” She smiles, and eyes the contents on the kitchen counter. “What are you making now?”

“I have the kiflice in the fridge, setting. And now I’m attempting to make a Doboš torta,” he says as he cracks an egg and whisks it in a bowl with other ingredients.

“The kiflice… those are your grandmother’s Christmas sugar cookies, right?” Lucy asks as she peeks into the refrigerator to look at the cookie dough. She glances at Garcia to make sure he’s not looking before taking a small sample with her finger. “And the Doboš torta is what, exactly?”

“It’s a cake,” he says. “It has five spongy layers that are interspersed with chocolate buttercream layers, and it has a caramel topping.” He smiles at her. “The cake was invented by Hungarian, József Dobos, and it was first revealed in 1885 at the National General Exhibition in Budapest. Emperor Franz Joseph the First and Empress Elisabeth were among the very first to taste it. József said that he created this cake to impress, and to last. Back in that time, most desserts used whipped cream as a topping, so the chocolate cream, and caramel topping was brand new to the world of baking and pastries.”

“So, you could say that the year 1885 was the year József Dobos changed desserts for the better?”

“He won over the emperor, and a dessert star was born.” Garcia smiles. “Want to help?” he asks, holding the whisk out to his wife.

Lucy laughs. “Sweetheart, you’re the self-proclaimed master chef of the family. Unless you want a disaster worthy of a national emergency declaration, you do not want me in the kitchen. Do I need to remind you of The Hazelnut and Chocolate Bûche de Noël Disaster of 2021?”

“That was two years ago.” He winks. “You’ve improved significantly in the kitchen since then.”

“What about last week’s visit from the fire department?” she asks, grinning as she nudges her shoulder against his arm. “And all I was trying to do was reheat Christmas Eve leftovers in the oven.”

Garcia laughs wholeheartedly. “Touché.” He stops whisking long enough to bend down and kiss his wife on the cheek. “By the way,” he whispers, “that sweater looks good on you.”

“It’s soft and cuddly,” she says as she runs her hands up and down her arms. “Just like you.” She boops him on the nose. He smiles, and turns his attention back to making the cake. Lucy sighs, and sits down on a stool at the kitchen’s island. “The kiflice cookies… those are the ones that need to be rolled into a crescent shape before going in the oven, right?”

“They are.”

“I can help roll them,” she says, watching her husband pulling up the sleeves of his fitted black turtleneck to his elbows – more specifically, she’s focusing on the way his muscles move underneath the fitted fabric of his shirt.

“The rolling comes after an hour resting in the fridge,” he says.

“Is there a reason why you’re making cookies and a cake?” She pauses. “Did we not have enough sugar to eat at Christmas?”

“It’s a Croatian tradition, and homemade is better than store-bought,” he answers. “You haven’t noticed that I’ve had cake at all our New Year’s Eve celebrations since we got out of that bunker?” He pauses, reconsidering. “Of course, Jiya and Dave have a preference for cake over chips, dips, salsa, and leftover Christmas cookies, so they probably finish it off before you had a chance to grab a slice for yourself.

“Maybe.” Lucy smiles, happy that Jiya has found happiness with Dave Baumgardner in the years since they lost Rufus in Chinatown. “Why’s cake a tradition in Croatia?” she asks.

“Having a cake on New Year’s Eve suggests the promise that the next year will be as good as the cake.”

“Then, you really should not let me near it.” She laughs. “Unless you want to risk having bad luck, and Rittenhouse making a surprise comeback in 2024.”

“Your baking abilities don’t matter to me, draga,” he says. “For me, it’s the way this year concludes that makes what happens in the next year possible. And being here, alone, with you… I couldn’t imagine a better way to ring in the new year.” He pauses. “Did you remember to pack the Licitar hearts that my mom and dad gave us for Christmas?”

“I did.” She nods her head as she eyes her husband, and makes her way towards him – stopping to wrap her hand gently around his arm. “I know that they’re not necessarily meant to be eaten, and are used as decoration, but-”

“My mother was horrified when you ate one in front of her the first time she brought us her homemade Licitar hearts.”

“I didn’t know that they take a month to make, and that they’re a decorative piece.”

“Thankfully, she’s Texan-born and raised, and wasn’t as offended as my grandmother would’ve been if she had made them and watched you eat one in front of her.” He winks.

“Your mom specifically told me that it’s ok to eat the ones she gave us this year.”

“She probably laced them with a laxative,” he says, laughing.

“Would she?”

He shakes his head and chuckles.

“Well… anyway, they’re on a plate in the living room.”

Lucy stands next to her husband and watches him as he continues adding ingredients to the mixing bowl. The muscle in his forearm flexes as he continues working on the cake batter. She bites gently on her bottom lip, places her hand on Garcia’s arm, and slowly strokes him – letting out a soft, contented sigh.

The affectionate attention to his arm doesn’t go unnoticed, and Garcia stops whisking to look at her hand as it makes its way back up to his bicep. “Lucy?”

“Hm?”

“What is it about this shirt that draws you to me like a magnet?”

“I can’t enjoy touching my husband’s arm?”

“That doesn’t answer my question, sweetheart.” He laughs quietly as her thumb kneads gently into his bicep.

“I don’t answer rhetorical questions, dušo.”

“So… it’s the same reason why you fell out of the kayak in the Arkansas River last summer during our trip to Colorado, huh?” He winks at her, and moves his arm so that his muscles contract, which draws out a quiet, satisfied groan from his wife’s throat. He smiles, raising his brow as he continues a stroll down Memory Lane. “How you got distracted by my arm, and tried to reach out to touch me while I tried to maneuver us through the whitewater rapids?” He smiles at his wife. “Then before I knew what you were trying to do, I hear you yelp and splash into the water.”

“You have nice arms, ok?” she says defensively, with a smile. “Or maybe I wanted to get us both wet, or maybe I wanted you to rescue me.”

“I did jump out of the kayak to save you,” he says. “Made for an interesting, unanticipated night camping without supplies in the woods, though.”

“It did.” Lucy smiles fondly at the memory.

“Just promise me that next time we get together with Amy and Karl to play tennis, that you’ll pay attention to the game rather than my arms and my back-”

“-and your ass-”

“-and my ass, so that we can beat them for a change.” He winks and laughs as Lucy rests her head against his arm.

“If you want that to happen, then you need to let me play at the net, otherwise your backside is too distracting.”

“But when you play at the net, you get carried away trash talking with Karl, and me and Amy end up sitting on the bench, chugging back water, as you two squabble.” He stops mixing the cake batter, dips his finger into it, and holds it up in Lucy’s face. “Want to lick my finger clean?”

“Why would I want to-”

“Aw, c’mon… I know you like to scrape the bowl clean once I’m done baking.” He waves his cake batter-covered finger in the air. Then he dips his other finger into the bowl, and gives it a little taste test himself. “Tastes really good, Lucy.”

“I’ll wait to scrape the bowl clean,” she tells him. “Besides, I uh… I’m warm and comfy in my clothes, and we both know where finger licking can take us.” She winks, turns her back to him, and leaves the room.

She disappears from view, and then seconds later she hurries back to him, grabs his wrist, and places his cake batter finger in her mouth – looking up at him seductively through lowered eyes. Then she moans, closing her eyes, thoroughly enjoying the cake batter. His finger slowly slides between her lips, and she tells him, “Tastes good.”

And then, she wets her lips, gazes at his, turns, and sways her hips as she disappears into the living room.

Garcia swallows hard, and his heart pounds in his chest.

He knows that there’s an expectation to make love tonight, and to be honest, he’s not sure how well he’ll be able to perform without the comfort of knowing that his firearm is in the drawer of his nightstand. Yes, the war with Rittenhouse is over, but he carries with him years of fear and paranoia that someone could still show up in the middle of the night, and take Lucy from him.

His fears, his paranoia, and even the PTSD that he developed over the last nine years, has affected his life in undesirable ways, and has even taken its toll on his physical relationship with Lucy. But he’s working with a mental health professional three times a week to deal with his issues, and he and Lucy are seeing a sex therapist to help with their physical intimacy. Things are better than they were a year ago, but he still has a long way to go.

“Garcia…?” Lucy says his name quietly, and he looks over and sees her hovering in the kitchen entry. “I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable.”

“It’s ok.” He smiles to assure her that a little finger licking doesn’t bother him. “Besides, I was the one asking you to do it.”

“I know.” She makes her way to him, and rises on her toes to kiss his cheek. “And I want you to know that there’s no pressure tonight, ok?” She runs her hand through his hair.

He nods his head, and he knows she means what she said, but the fact of the matter is that he puts pressure on himself, and feels inadequate as a lover if he performs below his own expectations.

“I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you, too.”

Chapter Text

While Oslo, the capital of Norway, experiences about five or six hours of daylight in December, further north within the Arctic Circle, they experience a month-long polar night with no sunrises or sunsets. The polar night season begins on the 27^th of November and ends on the 15^th of January. And even though there is no sunlight, it is not always completely pitch black. There are twilight hours where the sky is painted in soft shades of blue between twelve and two o’clock in the afternoon.

Lucy and Garcia stand in front of the cabin’s panoramic floor-to-ceiling window in the living room, which gives them a beautiful view of the Lyngen fjords – a long, narrow body of water that is surrounded by steep land on all sides. The smell of cake baking in the oven fills the air.

Garcia bends over his wife, and nuzzles his cheek against hers. “The Norwegian fjords were carved a couple million years ago by massive glaciers,” he says quietly as he adjusts his hold of Lucy in his arms as they look out the window.

She sighs as she leans back against her husband’s chest. “I know you want to go hiking tonight,” she says, “but you do know that with this view, and being far enough away from any city lights, that we’ll probably be able to see the northern lights from the comfort, and warmth, of our cabin?”

“Trust me, Lucy… there’s a difference between seeing them from inside a cabin, and walking underneath them in nature. It’ll be the perfect New Year’s Eve, I promise.” He kisses the top of her head, and murmurs into her ear, “And when we get back…” he kisses her cheek, “we’ll have a good excuse to warm each other up.”

“Mm…” Lucy hums, turning in her husband’s arms, and wrapping her own around his waist. She looks up at him, and wets her lips – wanting to get to the warming each other up part of this New Year’s Eve.

“You’re gonna miss your first kinda-Norwegian sunrise if you’re looking at me like that, draga.” He, too, smiles and wets his lips.

She laughs. “It kinda freaks me out that when we arrived in Tromsø this morning, that it was dark outside. And now, at lunchtime, we’re going to see our first almost sunrise.”

“Technically, the sun isn’t going to rise,” he says.

“We should come back in the summer to witness the midnight sun. Does Tromsø have the midnight sun?”

“Yes,” he answers, adding. “You know we’re in Olderdalen though, right?”

She nods her head, remembering how disappointed she had been with herself for falling asleep on the drive from Tromsø to Olderdalen earlier. But can you blame her? Traveling from Bozeman, Montana to Norway took about twenty hours. Add in the jetlag, and the night sky afternoon, and the fact she hasn’t had an ounce of caffeine since their layover in Paris, and yeah… she really should go take a nap so that she doesn’t conk out before their midnight hike. She sighs, and asks, “But didn’t we pass through a few other towns on our way from the check-in office in Alderdal… Ulderdaleh-”

“Olderdalen-”

“-from Olderdalen to the cabin?”

“Right, yeah, we did.” He chuckles. “I guess even I don’t know exactly where we’re at.”

“We should ask if we can book this cabin for June or July when we check out on Wednesday.” She pauses, then adds. “And maybe Amy can come with us, so we don’t come off as that couple that only takes romantic vacations, and leaves family and friends behind.”

“I think Lorena and Iris would like to experience the midnight sun. We can make it a family summer vacation.” He pauses. “Do you think Amy will still be dating Karl by this summer?”

Lucy laughs, and nods her head. “Yeah, why?”

“Because… traveling with Karl is… well, it’s… he hates traveling.” He chuckles to himself, and adds, “We could get first class tickets for you, me, Lorena, Iris, and Amy, and then economy for Karl so we don’t have to hear him complain.”

Lucy smiles and rolls her eyes at her husband. She presses both hands against his chest, and pushes back to look up at him. “But Karl traveled through time, I’m sure he can handle flying from Bozeman to Norway.”

“Sweetheart, you barely handled the time it took to get here,” Garcia says with a laugh.

“I survived because we had a three-hour layover in my favourite city in the world, Paris.” She smiles.

“In which you insisted we rent a locker for our luggage so we could go take a quick tour of the City of Light.” He gives his wife a look. “Might I remind you that we didn’t rest and relax in Paris either, and we nearly missed our flight to Oslo because you-” he corrects himself, “because we needed to pick up some Parisian pastries before heading back to Charles-de-Gaulle.”

“Running to our departure gate all the way on the other side of the airport did wear me out,” she says. “Probably why I couldn’t stay awake on the drive here from Tromsø.” She looks up at him with a smile.

She turns around in his arms to focus her gaze out the window to look across the still waters of the Lyngen fjord just as the midnight blue sky transitions to a lighter shade to reveal the silhouette of the Lyngsalpene – the Lyngen Alps – around them as the sun peeks over the horizon. Her lips part in awe, and she takes in a deep breath. “Garcia… it’s… it’s…” She’s at a loss for words as she shakes her head. “This is… amazing.”

Garcia chuckles and wraps his arms around his wife’s waist. He lowers his head to her. “You know Karl will want to see you wearing that t-shirt he had specially made for you, right?”

“The one with all the synonyms for the word amazing on it?” Lucy rolls her eyes. “Yeah… he said that I need to learn new words to express amazement since he claims that I say everything is amazing, all the time.”

“You do, though.”

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do, sweetheart.”

“Not that much.”

“I don’t keep count, but if I did, I’d estimate that you say amazing at least five to seven times a day.”

Lucy says nothing because she knows he’s right. Then she argues, “But it would be weird for me to go around saying all the other words Karl had printed on that Amazing Synonyms t-shirt though.” She pauses to make fun of the synonyms on the custom-made shirt. “Seriously, imagine me saying things like… oh, that’s so stupefying! Oh my, that’s staggering! It’s… it’s… perplexing.” She turns her head upward to look at Garcia. “Tell me any of those words are more natural-sounding than amazing.”

Garcia can’t argue with her. Those other words, in the context in which she says amazing, would sound out-of-place, and ridiculous. So, he laughs with her.

“Ooh… your response is…” she giggles, “marvelous.”

In moments like this, Garcia can’t help but think about how far they’ve come since the days spent fighting Rittenhouse. Back then, smiles and laughter were few and far between for both of them. Lucy’s happiness had come slowly as they got to know each other in the privacy of what had eventually become their bedroom in the bunker. Their friendship began the night she had come to his room after their trip back to 1936, San Antonio, and they had only grown closer from there. A few weeks after the team had lost Rufus, they had become comfortable sharing his bed. From then on, there had been no turning back.

Sensing that her husband’s thoughts have drifted, Lucy holds her hands over his arms, and presses her back gently into his chest. It’s hard to believe that seven years ago, she had thought he had been her enemy. That she had thought he had been trying to kill her and the others on her team. Seven years ago, she never would have imagined that she’d be standing here in a romantic fjordside cabin, in Norway, married to a man that had been classified as a terrorist – Garcia Flynn.

Once they had joined forces, he let go of the character he forced himself to become when she and the others had chased after him through time. Gradually, he left his ‘dumpster fire’ persona in the past, and returned to being the man he had been before he lost his wife and daughter. The decision she made to help him escape prison, was a decision that ultimately brought them together. To trust each other. Respect each other. To become best friends. To love one another. All which led them to becoming husband and wife.

Garcia tightens his hold on Lucy, and lowers himself to her. He kisses her cheek. “Jeg elsker deg,” he whispers, rubbing his nose against hers affectionately. “That means I love you, in Norwegian.”

Lucy groans with soft laughter.

“What?” Garcia asks as he kisses the top of her head.

“Don’t tell me you’ve learned how to speak Norwegian, too,” she says, stroking his forearm with her thumb.

“Only the essentials.” He pauses to turn Lucy around in his arms. He looks into her eyes, and speaks softly, intimately. “Du har pene øyne... du ser bra ut… I mean… du ser vakker ut.” He winks at her.

“I have no idea what you’re saying, you idiot.” She smiles. The truth is she loves it when he learns new languages because that just means that he has more words to use to express how much he loves her. And… it’s no secret that foreign languages really get her going when things run smoothly in the bedroom.

“Du er perfekt for meg, og… du betyr så mye for meg,” he says, smiling as he rubs his nose against hers again. Lucy smiles, understanding – at least she thinks – some of what he just said (you’re perfect for me). He places his fingertips under her chin, and lifts her lips to his.

Their eyes close as they kiss, and as he’s done a thousand times before, he places one hand on her lower back, and pulls her closer to him. Her arms slide beneath his, and her hands slowly drift up his back to hold onto his shoulders. She rises on her toes to deepen their kiss.

Minutes later, they part with a hint of anxiousness about later tonight. Lucy lowers her head, and even though it brings her some sadness, she fingers her locket. She sighs with a slight shake of her head, then wraps her arms around her husband, and looks up at him.

Garcia wets his lips, and rests his forehead against hers. “I uh… I said you have beautiful eyes… you mean so much to me, and that… you look good.” His body tingles with gooseflesh as Lucy runs her hands along his back, stopping to hold onto his waist. “Then I corrected myself and said you look beautiful.”

Lucy raises her eyes to look at him.

She shakes her head.

“I swear, Garcia. One of these days, we’re going to have to go someplace where it is impossible for you to learn the language spoken. Like the Xhosa language or something.”

“I’ve actually looked into Xhosa, and did you know that it has eighteen click consonants, and that it’s a tonal language?”

Lucy shakes her head again. “Why does this not shock me?” She laughs. “Can you say anything in Xhosa?”

“Ndiyakuthanda,” he says, then kisses her forehead.

“Which means…?”

“I love you.”

She smiles. The first sentence he learns in any language is always I love you. “Are you planning a trip to South Africa?” she asks.

“No.”

“Then… why are you looking into Xhosa?”

“I can’t help it,” he says, chuckling as she steps away from him. “I caught the language bug reading Tex Willer in Italian when I was a kid, remember? I think it’s impossible for me to not learn, or at least dabble in, a new language.”

“Meanwhile, I’m over here still struggling to remember how to say pencil and luggage in Croatian.” Lucy laughs.

“Olovka, and prtljaga,” Garcia says the Croatian words for her.

She pokes her index finger into his chest, and teases, “If I have to twist my tongue around Croatian, I’d rather twist it around my Croatian.”

“You know, as a new year resolution, you could make getting to conversational fluency in Croatian a goal. I know that Croatian can be like a tongue twister, but I’ve learned several languages to conversational fluency, and I know I could help you get there with-” He stops. Lucy’s staring at him in disbelief, unblinking – honestly, a look he gets more frequently than he should. “What?”

She blinks. Then, she blinks again - looking at her husband. Is he taking her literally? Did he not get that she was attempting to crack a kissing a joke? She sighs, and explains, “I was making an analogy between French kissing, and Croatian tongue twisters.”

He looks at her, not quite following. “There’s no such thing as a Croatian kiss, Lucy. It’s called a French kiss. Colloquially, in France, they now call it une galoche, noun. Galocher, verb. And did you know that up until 2013 or 2014, the French didn’t actually have a word for French kiss, they simply called it a kiss?”

Lucy laughs to herself with a lowered head. “Sometimes, it amazes me that you ever figured out that I wanted you to kiss me.” She shakes her head. And he just looks at her quizzically. She adds, “How we ever consummated our relationship, is beyond me.” She places her hand on his arm, rises on her toes, and kisses his cheek.

She makes her way to the kitchen, and Garcia follows.

“It’s been an hour,” he says, opening the refrigerator to take out the chilled cookie dough. He sniffs the air. “And it smells like the cake is almost done, too.”

Lucy rolls up the sleeves her new sweater, and sits down at the table. Garcia joins her with the chilled cookie dough, and they start rolling it between their hands, shaping pieces of the dough into crescent shapes before placing them on a baking tray to sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Less than an hour later, the sun which never fully rose, settles northern Norway back into the darkness of night.

Chapter Text

Lucy sits on the living room couch with a small handful of kiflice cookies in her hand. She brushes off powdered sugar that fell off the cookies onto her brand-new sweater. She indiscreetly checks her peripheral vision to see if Garcia – on the other side of the couch – noticed how messy she has been eating the cookies. He’s on his phone, talking to Lorena and Iris who are at their home in Montana – a fifteen-minute drive to hers and Garcia’s ranch house in Bozeman.

The smile hasn’t left his face since Iris picked up the phone when he had called them thirty minutes ago. And it’s moments like this that Lucy appreciates the hell that they went through in fighting Rittenhouse because in the end, just as he had told her, they saved the people they love. And that, more than anything else, was the reason they had fought so hard. Amy returning. Saving Lorena and Iris. Having the people they love most back in their lives had been the most important aspect of the war with Rittenhouse. They fought for each other, and they fought for their loved ones. And they succeeded.

Lucy smiles as she watches her husband talk to his daughter.

It’s been strange for him.

To save Lorena and Iris, they had to go back to the night before Rittenhouse came to murder them. They had to convince Lorena that it was best for her and Iris to return with them to the year 2019. Today, Iris should be fourteen years old, but because they brought her from 2014 to 2019, she’s only nine. And Lorena should be seven years older than Lucy, but instead she’s only two years older.

“So, are you excited to ring in a new year?” Garcia asks his daughter, pausing to let her answer. His eyes widen, and his brow wrinkles. “You invited Santa Claus to come back for your New Year’s Eve party?” He pauses again. “And mom agreed to not light a fire in the fireplace so he can join you?”

On the other end of the phone, Lucy can hear Iris squealing and laughing as the expression on Garcia’s face turns from humored to confusion, and finally to dejection. He turns his head and locks eyes with Lucy. Then he speaks to his daughter again, “What do you mean that you figured out me and mommy are Santa Claus?”

Lucy covers her mouth to giggle.

A week before Christmas, she had warned him that when she was nine years old, she had accused her mother of being Santa. Citing as proof, that Santa’s handwriting on the gift labels was the same as her mother’s. She had told Garcia to be prepared for the day Iris figured it out, and it looks like that day has come. And her heart shatters seeing the expression on her husband’s face. The realization that his little girl is growing up – having a second chance at life because he saved her. What he always wanted.

“But daddy saw Santa yesterday,” Garcia says, pleading with his little girl to still believe. “He’s back at home after delivering all the presents to little girls and boys all over the world. He’s on a vacation now… and um…” He looks at Lucy as if she can help him handle this. “And um… did you know that Santa doesn’t actually live at the North Pole, but that he lives in Norway?” He pauses to let Iris answer. “Yes, daddy’s in Norway right now.” He waits for her to speak again. “Yes, yes… of course I saw him, and talked to him, and-” He’s cut off by Iris on the other end of the call. “Um… I… I forgot to take a selfie with him. I’m so sorry.”

Lucy leans towards him and whispers, “She knows you’re lying.”

Garcia covers his phone, and whispers, “No, she doesn’t.” Then his attention is back to his conversation with Iris.

Lucy stands up, and heads into the kitchen with the plate of cookies. She eyes the clock display on the microwave. It’s a few minutes past ten o’clock at night. Once Garcia is done talking to his girls, they are going to head out for a cold, New Year’s Eve hike, with the hope of ringing in the new year underneath the northern lights.

So, she slides the cookies into a metal can, closes the lid, then heads into the bedroom to begin layering up. She got used to being cold while living in the bunker, but she’s a California girl, and with the temperature below freezing outside, she’s going to want to look as chunky in her outdoor winter clothes as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Chapter Text

There’s not much of a breeze as Lucy and Garcia trek through the snow-covered foothills of the Lyngen Mountain range. Lucy looks up at the sky, and is disappointed that she hasn’t yet seen the northern lights above them.

“Do they happen every night?” she asks, tightening her grip on Garcia’s hand as they trek up a steeper hill in the snow.

“Well… um… they don’t appear nightly. It depends on the atmosphere, solar activity, and geomagnetic conditions.” He stops walking, and looks up at the sky. “At least it’s a clear night. If it was cloudy, even if they appear, we’d probably not see them very well.”

“Is there something we can do like a rain dance, to make them appear?” she asks as she gazes up at the sky, which throws her off balance, and she grasps onto her husband’s arm so she doesn’t faceplant in the snow.

He looks down at her, and smiles, finding her clumsiness endearing. “If there was, you’d probably accidentally find a way to hurt, or stab yourself with the spikey crampons attached to your boots,” he says. Lucy giggles, and Garcia rolls his eyes – knowing that his wife is giggling because crampon sounds like tampon. “Question?” he asks.

“Yeah?” She continues giggling.

“When you’ve had to use the French word for to stamp, do you giggle?”

“You mean tamponner?” She giggles again. “Honestly, I try to wiggle my way around the word so I don’t have to use it. And it’s not like we talk about stamping things very much in English, so using it in French isn’t common.” She raises her foot, and pokes at the spikes attached to the bottom of her boot with her glove-covered fingers. “Anyway, I’m layered up like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and if I poked a hole in my snow pants or winter coat, I won’t deflate, so I think I’m safe from any accidental stabbing of myself with these…” she holds her breath, trying to force herself not to laugh, “crampons.”

Garcia, amused, shakes his head and takes her gloved hand in his as they continue forward.

“Are you warm enough?” he asks.

“Actually, I am. Well… except my nose and the part of my forehead that is sticking out underneath my hat. And you were right… I should’ve wrapped a scarf around my neck, so I could use it to cover my nose.”

As she says this, Garcia lets go of her hand, and removes the scarf from his neck. “Stop,” he says, and when she faces him, he wraps it around her, making sure to cover her nose. Then he tugs at the front of her hat to pull it lower over her face, low enough to cover her eyebrows. “Better?”

She nods. “What about you?”

He shrugs his shoulders, and pulls the neck of his insulated jacket over his nose. “We’ll head back soon,” he tells her. “I guesstimate that it’s almost midnight, and we’ve been out here for about an hour, and we shouldn’t stay out much longer, especially since we’re both cold, and we still have to hike back to the cabin.”

“I’m sad that we haven’t seen the northern lights,” Lucy says, her voice muffled by the scarf covering her mouth. She turns and looks around them. The twinkling lights of the small towns in the distance, the snow covering the foothills of the Lyngen Alps for as far as she can see, the way that the moonlight reflects on the still waters of the Lyngen fjords, and the stars in the night sky paint a picture in which even Van Gogh would be jealous.

Garcia clears his throat, and speaks elegantly, a quote from memory, “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise-”

“With nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” Lucy says, completing the quote from Vincent Van Gogh about the inspiration for his painting The Starry Night. She smiles. She doesn’t know how or why, but sometimes when she thinks of something, the same – or at least, a similar – thought runs through Garcia’s mind as well.

They share a smile, and their eyes meet, acknowledging how often this happens.

“I’m sorry we haven’t seen the northern lights yet,” he says.

“It’s still beautiful being out here with you,” she says, taking Garcia’s hand in hers.

“Do you want to head back?”

She nods.

Garcia wraps his arm across her shoulders, and isn’t sure that she can feel him since she’s bundled up to almost twice her size. “There’s always the chance that we’ll see them tomorrow night,” he says.

They walk in silence for several minutes before his smartwatch starts making loud, beeping noises.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“I set an alarm to let us know when it’s five minutes to midnight, so we wouldn’t miss ringing in the new year.” He pauses. “But I forgot to tuck away the bottle of our non-alcoholic champagne inside my coat.”

Lucy laughs. “Think we’ll make it back to the cabin in five minutes?”

“Doubtful.”

“I’m thinking that we could hop into that outdoor jacuzzi, and hope the northern lights make an appearance while we’re soaking in its warmth.”

“Then after, we can take a warm shower together… a massage… and then… možemo voditi ljubav…” He places his hands on her shoulders, and kisses the small patch of exposed skin at her temple, after telling her that he wants to make love tonight.

“That sounds nice,” she says, having understood the Croatian. “But maybe we shouldn’t.”

He lowers his head, and clears his throat, hoping that it covers his disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I want to, but… I don’t know if being in an unfamiliar place would help. You even said earlier that you feel on edge because you didn’t want to bring your gun with you to Norway. I just… I want to, but I don’t want us to start the new year feeling disappointed in case it doesn’t work out for us.”

“Yeah… I uh… you’re right.” He adjusts the hat on top of his head, and can’t bring himself to look into her eyes.

“Hey…” She touches his face, and he looks at her. “We can also disregard what I just said, have no expectations, and see where things go, ok?”

He nods. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, either.”

Lucy instinctively presses her fingers against her neck as if touching her locket, thinking of the photo of their baby within it. She nods her head, and touches his arm. “We should head back.” She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. “We have champagne, cookies, and cake waiting for us, after all.”

She sounds defeated, and he blames himself for suggesting they make love. He watches as she walks away from him, and he wants to do something to make her smile again. And since he can’t make the northern lights magically appear, he kneels down in the snow, and gathers it in his gloves – forming a snowball. Having learned this past Christmas that snowball fights put her in a good mood, and make her laugh and giggle, he calls out, “Hey! Lucy!”

She turns to face him, and sees that he’s holding a snowball in his hand, and is preparing to throw it at her. Her eyes are wide as he launches it into the air, and she yelps, hops, and tries to run, but because she’s in chunky outdoor winter clothes, and can’t move quickly, she ends up falling into the snow.

The snowball misses her by a few feet to her right.

And she knows her husband well.

She knows that he’s trying to turn her mood around – it’s working – just as she knows that he’s already forming another snowball in his hands, so she has to be quick to make one of her own to try to throw at him before he can get her. She pushes herself up onto her knees – giggling – and frantically makes a snowball, turns, and throws it at Garcia as he’s running towards her – unarmed.

Her snowball hits him right smack dab in the face. At least the snow is somewhat dry, so it breaks easily – falling like glitter onto the ground. He bends forward, drawing both hands to his face, and stops running.

“Oh God!” Lucy tries as hard as she can to stand up quickly to check on him, but she can’t. She’s too thick and bulky, and the spikes on her boots are sticking in the snow, and she can’t move easily. “Garcia?!” He groans, and uncovers his face to look at her. She starts to crawl towards him. “Are you ok?!” she shouts.

“I’m all right!” He stands up straight while trying to wipe his face dry with the sleeve of his winter jacket.

“I-I didn’t mean to hit your face, sweetheart,” she says, still struggling to stand. He comes up behind her, and wraps his arms underneath hers to lift her to her feet. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

“I should’ve given you a heads up, huh?” He kneels in front of her, and gathers up snow, and shapes it into another snowball. He looks up at her, and winks. “You’ve got ten seconds before you’re under fire again,” he warns with a wink.

“You son-of-a-”

And she takes off running – more slowly, and more carefully than before since she doesn’t want to fall down again. She laughs as she hears her husband not-so-slowly counting to ten.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight…”

Once she feels that she’s at a safe enough distance, she bends over and forms a snowball in her hand. She stands, and BAM! a snowball hits her in the stomach, followed by another on her arm, and another on her leg. “Garcia!” She throws her snowball in his general direction, and misses.

She squeals as she tries to run away from him. She falls, of course, and quickly forms another snowball in her hand. She turns to take aim, and he’s running towards her – his arm raised above his head, ready to launch another snowball attack.

Then BAM! he’s struck by a snowball in his chest.

He throws his, and hits Lucy on her back as she kneels in the snow, making more snowball ammo. He picks up his pace, running at her – unarmed. Then he falls to his knees behind her, takes her in his arms, and rolls her onto her back. He presses his lips against the soft fabric of her scarf.

Lucy laughs loudly, and he does the same since their lips didn’t meet as he intended.

Then, Lucy holds onto the back of his neck with one hand as she lowers the scarf to her chin. She draws him to her, and they kiss. Their bodies slowly melting into the snow beneath them.

When their lips part, Garcia nuzzles his face into the scarf covering her neck. “Mm… not many people can say they’ve made out in the snow-covered foothills of the Lyngen Mountain range on New Year’s Eve…” He rubs his nose against hers.

Lucy opens her mouth to say something to him, but instead, she gasps.

Her eyes are wide as she stares up at the sky.

“Oh… oh my God… Garcia…”

He rolls onto his back next to her, and watches as bright green shimmering lights appear, slowly transitioning into different shapes and formations above them across the sky. Then faster and faster they move, spreading out in countless different ways. Then red swirls join the green, dancing beautifully in the night sky to music only the gods and spirits can hear.

Garcia turns his head to look at his wife as she lays beside him in the snow.

Her eyes are wide, and lips slightly parted in a smile.

With a blink of her eyes, a tear falls down her cheek, and Garcia rolls onto his side to wipe it away for her before gathering her in his arms to hold her close.

“Garcia, I…” She shakes her head. “I… this is just so…”

“I know,” he whispers, “it’s uh… insert-a-synonym-for-amazing here, right?” They both laugh at his attempt at a joke. He remains quiet for several minutes before speaking again. “Not to history geek out on you, but um… in 1619, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei coined the name aurora borealis after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek god of the north wind, Boreas.”

Lucy holds onto Garcia’s arm as they lay together in the snow, and adds, “The Vikings believed that the northern lights were light reflecting off of the armor of the Valkyrie which were supernatural maidens who helped warriors into the afterlife. And the earliest suspected record of the northern lights is in a thirty-thousand-year-old cave painting in France.” She turns her head to look at him, expecting him to add more to their history banter, which she loves so much.

“The Cree Indians believed that the Aurora were the spirits of the dead who remained in the sky, yet apart from their loved ones. That the lights were their late friends and family trying to communicate with those left on earth," he tells her.

Slowly, Lucy turns in Garcia’s arms, and looks into his eyes.

She smiles.

“Finland has the cutest legend about them though,” she says. “Do you know it?”

“I do, but I’d like to hear you tell it,” he says – adjusting the scarf to cover her nose.

Her heart flutters. Even after all these years, the fact that Garcia Flynn loves history just as much as she does, endears him to her so very, very much. She smiles, and tells him, “The Finns believed that the lights were caused by a red panda, or a uh… firefox that ran so quickly across the snow that its tail caused sparks to go up into the night sky, and those sparks created the northern lights.”

“And did you know that the Finnish word for northern lights is revontulet, which translates literally as fire fox. It’s from the Proto-Finnic words revon, which means fox’s; and tulet, which means fires?”

“No,” she shakes her head. “I did not know that.” She inches closer to him. His knowledge of other languages is another thing that makes him so damn attractive. She sighs, and glances up at the northern lights again as they continue their brilliant, colorful display above. “In Greenland…” she says, “the lights were associated with giving birth, but um…” She swallows, and closes her eyes – feeling the sharp sting of tears. “They were uh… thought to be the souls of… of stillborn babies.” She takes in a sharp breath, shakes her head to resist, trying not to cry.

Garcia sighs, and pulls her into him.

Before the war with Rittenhouse came to an end, he and Lucy had talked about how much they wanted to have a child of their own. While they were still living in the bunker, she had become pregnant, but early into her second trimester, she had miscarried. The same thing had happened in 2019, and again in 2020.

In 2021, they had made it past week twenty in their pregnancy, and thought they had been in the clear. They were wrong. Their daughter was delivered stillborn early in the morning on August 7^th. While they had been able to spend time with, and to hold in their arms, their stillborn daughter after delivery, two years later that hasn’t made dealing with the loss any easier for them.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy whimpers, wiping away warm tears with the back of her glove. She looks at Garcia, whose eyes are filled with tears, too.

He kisses her cheek. “Maybe…” his voice cracks, “maybe tonight, the lights are our… our baby girl. Maybe seeing them is her way of letting us know that she’s ok. That she’s watching us from above, and is being taken care of by our loved ones who passed before her.”

The pain sears through Lucy’s heart as if it was yesterday that they lost their little Lilijana. She chokes back tears as she gasps for air, pulling Garcia towards her, to bury her face into his chest.

Feeling his wife’s body shudder as she sobs in his arms, rips at his heart – threatening to shred it into a thousand pieces. It’s been over two years since that day, but sometimes it feels like only yesterday.

It’s one reason why they decided to leave San Francisco last year, and to move into a ranch house in the outskirts of Bozman, Montana.

In San Francisco, they had decorated a room in their apartment for their daughter. While in her nesting period, Lucy had baby-proofed their entire apartment. And Amy had thrown a huge baby shower for them both. After the stillbirth, people who knew of their pregnancy, but who weren’t as close as family, and didn’t know that they had lost Lily, had asked about when their daughter was born. They had asked how mother and daughter were doing, and how they were handling being new parents. It was too much, and they needed a change.

Living on a ranch at the base of the Bridger Mountain range in Montana provides solace. Comfort in the quiet, and stillness, of the nature surrounding them. There, they’ve been able to live one day at a time. Gradually, pulling themselves out from under the dark cloud of grief suffered after the loss of their little Lilijana. A grief that they know they will carry for the rest of their lives.

While they’ll never know for sure the reason why Lucy could never carry to term, they have accepted that something happened to her – maybe even to him – while they had been traveling through time. And to protect themselves from any unplanned pregnancy going forward, Garcia decided that it was his responsibility to protect his wife, and himself, from suffering that pain again, and he got a vasectomy.

Lucy sniffles, and takes a deep breath. “I still dream about her.”

“Me, too.” He looks at her, and follows her gaze back to the sky. The northern lights are still shimmering above them, in colors more vibrant than the human eye should see.

He shivers, and Lucy rubs her hand up and down his arm in a futile effort to warm him.

“We should head back,” she says, touching his cheek tenderly with her gloved hand.

Garcia nods his head, and places his hand on her lower back as they sit up in the snow.

He stands, and starts patting himself all over to get the snow off of him.

Lucy laughs quietly as she struggles to stand.

Garcia raises his brow to ask why she’s laughing.

“You’re covered in snow,” she explains, “and you look like Kristoff from the movie Frozen when he first meets Anna at the Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post and Sauna.”

He laughs as he goes to her, thankful that their sadness is already lifting. “I think Frozen took place in Norway,” he says as he offers his hands to help Lucy to her feet. “I took Iris to see that movie when it was released. We saw it every weekend – Saturdays and Sundays – until it was no longer in theatres.” He dusts snow off of himself, and Lucy. “I’m pretty sure I could quote the movie word-for-word if I had to.” He takes her hands in his when he realizes that she’s not really listening to him, and draws them to his mouth. He exhales warm breath into her gloves as he looks into her eyes. “Are you ok?”

“I am.” She nods. “I’m good. I just…” she looks up at the northern lights, and smiles, “… if they are her, I’m happy because that means that loved ones who have passed are still with us.”

Another alarm sounds loudly from his smartwatch. “That’s the thirty-seconds-to-midnight alarm,” he tells her.

Lucy takes a deep breath and looks up at the northern lights again, and smiles.

Garcia takes off a glove, and wipes a tear from her cheek. He looks back up at the sky. “Looks like Lily wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with us, huh?” He pulls Lucy close to him, and holds her in his arms.

“How many seconds now?”

He pulls back the sleeve of his winter jacket to check his watch. “Seven seconds… six… five,” Lucy joins him in saying the countdown as they gaze into each other’s eyes, “four… three… two… one.”

“Happy new year, Garcia.”

“Sretna Nova godina, Lucy,” he says, rubbing his nose against hers, “and… godt nytt år.”

She smiles, shaking her head, and reaches up with one hand to hold onto the back of his neck. She lowers her gaze to his lips, waiting for him to kiss her.

“Do you think our lips will freeze together?” he asks, chuckling – knowing that it’s not cold enough for that to happen.

“You’re such a dork,” she says, moving her hand to his shoulder. “And I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.” He rubs his nose against hers, and places his hand on her shoulder as he rests his forehead against hers.

They turn their heads when they hear a quiet BOOM! in the distance. Brilliant, sparkling colors of fireworks are being set off in the towns at the foot of the Lyngen Alps. Lucy looks up at him. He smiles back at her, wets his lips, then he lowers himself to his wife, and kisses her again.

When their lips part, he speaks quietly. “Kako dočekate ponoć, takva će vam biti cijela godina…” He waits for Lucy to silently indicate she has no idea what he’s said before translating. “How you welcome midnight, is the way your whole year will be.” He pauses. “In Croatia… the belief is that the upcoming year will go according to how New Year’s Eve was spent.”

“Then, I think we have all of 2024 to look forward to,” she says. “A little bit of awe and amazement, remembering loved ones who have passed, smiles and laughter, and…”

“And three-hundred and sixty-six days of being evermore in love with you,” he says softly.

“Three-hundred and sixty-six?”

“2024 is a leap year, draga.”

Lucy smiles, and tells him, “Did you know that on February 29^th in 1692 was the day the first warrants were issued for the arrests of three women in the Salem Witch Trials? Basically, the superstition that a leap year brings bad luck was true for Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne.”

“In 1996,” Garcia adds, “after about four years of continuous Serbian attacks, the siege of Sarajevo was finally declared over on February 29^th. The siege was the longest in the history of modern warfare.”

Lucy looks at him, seeing sadness in his eyes. She takes his hand in hers, knowing that he had friends who had been trapped in Sarajevo during its siege, and that he had lost all of them before the siege was over. He has talked to her about the guilt he felt in the years after since he had fled the Balkans in 1993, a couple years before the end of the Croatian War of Independence. She doesn’t want those feelings of guilt to take over him tonight, so she gently nudges him, and says, “The year 1904 was the first time New Year’s Eve was celebrated in Times Square in New York City.”

He smiles, appreciating that she’s changed the subject. “And in 1907,” he says, “that was the first time the ball dropped in Times Square to ring in the new year.”

The smile fades on Lucy’s face. “And three years ago, tonight… Emma had been with the team for a year,” She looks into his eyes. “After everything that happened, she… Emma really became a good friend in the end, didn’t she?”

He nods. “She did.” He pauses. “Well, at least she was to you and me.”

Lucy is quiet as they start making their way back to their cabin, thinking of how Emma gave her life to save Garcia in the final battle that destroyed Rittenhouse. “I miss her,” she says with sadness.

“I know you do.” He drapes his arm across Lucy’s shoulder, and pulls her into him as they walk.

“She saved you, and… and I’ll never forget that she was the one who went behind my mother’s back in order to keep Amy safe from Rittenhouse.”

“Hiding her in the past after your mother ordered her to ensure her erasure from history was smart.”

“I don’t know how Emma figured out how to do it, but I’m glad she did.” Lucy smiles up at her husband. “Amy’s told me that whenever she has a daughter, she’s going to name her after Emma.”

“If Karl ends up being the father, I’m sure he won’t argue against that.” Garcia chuckles as he considers, “Imagine a little Emma Borsok running around with the high energy of your sister, and the smartass attitude of Karl.” He laughs, then looks at Lucy, scrunching his forehead. “Or do you think Karl will take Amy’s surname, and their daughter would be named-”

“Emma Preston?” Lucy’s lips curl into a smile. “I somehow think that our Emma wouldn’t care for that. She hated Carol, and when we were on opposite sides of the war, she called me Princess, Princess Lucy, or Little Princess Preston.”

“Hm…” Garcia considers again. “Amy Borsok?" He glances at Lucy, her forehead scrunches, so he tries instead, “Karl Preston?”

Lucy snort-laughs. “I kinda like Karl Preston,” she says, giggling.

“Sounds better than Amy Borsok, right?” He laughs.

Lucy laughs, shaking her head. “Karl would hate that we’re discussing this right now.”

Garcia laughs in agreement. “Yeah, he’d have a few uh… choice words to say to us if he were here right now. And this reminds me… Karl said he’s thinking about growing a beard. How does Amy feel about facial hair? Same as you, or no?”

“I never said I liked beards.” She stops to reach up to touch Garcia’s face, more specifically, to touch his perfectly maintained five o’clock shadow.

“If I had known that my scruff gets you going sooner, I wouldn’t have been so clean-shaven in that bunker.” He winks.

“Sweetheart… even in your clean-shaven days in the bunker, I wasn’t thinking about you in that way.”

“Yeah, you were.” He nudges her playfully.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“I had a journal that said otherwise.”

“That journal disappeared after my mother kidnapped me. So, you have no proof.” She side-eyes him with a smile.

“I saw the way you looked at me in that bunker, and that nervous way you get when you find someone attractive… you behaved like that with me all the time,” he says.

“I did not.”

“The morning after the Robert Johnson mission, you did.”

“Nuh-uh.” She shakes her head, trying not to laugh because she knows she’s lying.

“Apologizing profusely… running your hand through your hair… laughing, and rolling your eyes at my lame jokes… and you can’t convince me that you weren’t just a little disappointed when I told you that nothing happened between us, right?”

“Shut up,” Lucy says, grinning. Her husband knows her too well.

“And most women who aren’t interested in a man will not tell him – to his face, no less – that he’s the easiest person to talk to.” He pokes at her chunky winter coat, even though she probably can’t feel it.

“I may not have been in love with you then, but um… if I had to pinpoint the exact moment when our relationship changed… when we became friends, that night and the following morning, that was the moment.

“But you definitely wanted me after the Harriet Tubman mission,” he says, matter-of-fact.

“Garcia…” Lucy warns in both tone and look.

“You’re going to deny what happened the night after we got back from that mission?!” He throws his head back and laughs. “I was perfectly fine with sleeping in that chair, and you all but dragged me into my bed with you. And you laid with me, with your hand exploring, or rather… caressing my chest, neck, jawline, waist, and hips.” He shakes his head again as he laughs. “And don’t get me started on where you had placed your leg in conjunction with mine. If that alarm hadn’t sounded when Jessica took Jiya, I’m convinced you were trying to find a way to kiss me, or to get me to kiss you, or to clumsily,” he makes air quotes with his gloved hands, “fumble your lips onto mine.”

Lucy says nothing. She only plasters a cute, and playful pout on her face to silently protest the fact that yes, if that alarm hadn’t sounded in the bunker that night, she was very much intending on figuring out how to kiss him.

Chapter Text

Condensation slowly trickles down the bedroom window overlooking the Lyngen Alps. Their breath, unsteady, quivering in the aftermath of their love making. The northern lights continue to shimmer in the dark early morning sky. Garcia swallows hard as he lays on his side with Lucy behind him, her arm draped over his body. He holds her hand above his heart, and draws her knuckles to his lips to kiss.

Her breath is warm on his back, a reminder that with her, he is safe.

It’s been nearly four years since the war with Rittenhouse ended, and two years since the stillborn birth of their daughter, Lilijana. Despite the difficulty he has in letting go of his paranoia that Rittenhouse will show up and take Lucy away, his irrational dislike of not being in control, and the fear he has that he could accidentally impregnate his wife again, despite his vasectomy, making love tonight still had its challenges. For them both.

He trembles in his wife’s arms – his body unused to reaching such an intense climax. Lucy tightens her hold on him, and presses her body into his back, and kisses his neck.

She has been patient and understanding every step of the way.

Until this year, she’s always taken the submissive position beneath him when they’ve made love. Understanding that he needed to feel in complete control when giving himself so vulnerably to her. Now, they’re working on his ability to let Lucy take the lead – for her to take the dominant position on top of him, as they did tonight. Most of the time, he loses hardness, ejaculates too quickly, or even has an accidental ruined orgasm.

He still prefers being able to keep an eye on the door, and having a weapon within reach on the nightstand, but tonight, in this cabin – four-thousand miles away from their home in Montana, and his firearm – if he wasn’t looking at his wife, or into her eyes, he caught glimpses outside the window, and that allowed him to let go of thoughts about not being armed, or what he’d do if some Rittenhouse soldier burst in the room to hurt them. He was able to let go, and be one-hundred percent (well, maybe more like 96%) present with his wife.

Lucy initiated, which still feels awkward to him, but he trusts her, and followed her lead. And as difficult as it had been for him to do, he let her lower him to the bed as she positioned herself on top of him.

He was scared to relinquish control.

He’s done it a few times before, but it isn’t easy.

But tonight, being with her… it felt different.

So different.

His heartbeat had pounded in his chest as Lucy held his arms over his head as she leaned down to kiss him, or to stroke him, and as she guided him inside of her. Maybe knowing that they’re in the middle of nowhere, Norway, and that they are completely alone, helped. There had been several times that he had to ask her to stop, or to slow down, so that he could compose himself. Feelings of not being in control still bring forth fear that they are being watched, or that any minute they’d be interrupted and have to fight for their lives. That something terrible was about to happen.

“You ok?” she murmurs, kissing his back.

“I-I’m sorry that it took so long for me to… you know… finish,” he whispers.

Lucy rises on her elbow, and he rolls onto his back to look up at her.

“You don’t have to apologize, dušo…” She lays down next to him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I know this isn’t easy for you.” She takes his hand, and kisses his knuckles.

“I’m trying.”

“I know.” She wraps her arms across his waist.

“It’s getting easier, though.” He offers her a soft smile.

She kisses his shoulder, but says nothing as she moves her hand up to cover his heart.

He kisses the top of her head, and whispers, “You’re my everything, Lucy.” He turns to face her, and runs his hand through her hair. “Thank you for understanding, and for not leaving me when things get difficult, or when I can’t... make love to you the way you deserve.” He feels self-conscious, so he tries to lighten the mood by saying, “I could always talk to my doctor about trying Viagra.”

Lucy doesn’t smile, or laugh. Instead, she runs her fingertips through his chest hair, and quietly tells him, “I’ll never leave you, Garcia.” She inches closer to him. “We’ve had our problems, and… and we’ve lost a child, and it hasn’t been smooth-sailing one-hundred percent of the time, and I don’t expect us to have a perfect, easy life after everything we’ve been through, but overall… I’m happy. I take the bad with the good, and there’s so much more good in our lives now than we ever thought there could be. I mean…” she sighs, “when we were living in the bunker, it felt as if we’d be there forever. That our lives, our relationship, would be confined within those concrete walls.”

“Desiderium.”

“What?”

“Desiderium, it’s uh… the intense desire or longing for something, someplace, or someone lost. It’s associated with a repressed understanding that you might never encounter the person, place, or thing ever again. An incompleteness.”

“Lily?”

“Lily…” He nods his head. “The life we had before Rittenhouse upended everything. The relationship you had with your mother. The life I had with Lorena and Iris. The life we lived in that bunker. I think there’s a part of us that will always wonder what could have been if things hadn't been changed because of Rittenhouse and time travel, but we’ll never know the answer to the question, what if none of that had happened?” He inches closer to her, and strokes her shoulder with his thumb. “We can’t turn back time, to return to our lives pre-time travel, and even if we could…” he looks into her eyes, “I know I never want to lose what I have now.”

“Me neither.”

They lay in silence for a long time as their breathing slowly falls into unison – their chests rising and falling in perfect synchronicity with each other. And just as Lucy starts drifting off to sleep, Garcia asks, “So, any ideas on how I can persuade Iris that Santa Claus is real for at least one more Christmas?”

“Hmm… you can uh…” Lucy adjusts her position next to him, and pulls the blanket up to cover her bare shoulders. “You can ask Karl to gain a lot of weight, and to dress up as Santa, and drop down a chimney next year.”

Garcia chuckles quietly, imagining how he might talk Karl into doing that, and what he’d have to do to get his friend up on the rooftop of Lorena and Iris’s home. And he’s pretty sure that the chimney wasn’t built to allow any living being to actually drop down it to enter the house. “I’d have to put together a pile of soot and ash, and push Karl into it if – and only if – I was successful in getting him to dress up in that red suit and hat, and a fake white beard.”

“You know… if Amy has Karl wrapped around her little finger, she might be able to help us convince him to play Santa.”

“But if not then… then I guess the Santa believing era of Iris’s life is over, and I’ll have to accept that.”

Lucy raises her head to look at him. “How do you feel about that?”

“Sad,” he says. “But this is what I wanted when I set out to save her and Lorena.” He curls into her, trying to make himself small against her. “When they were gone… I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what Iris would be like at age eight, nine, ten, twenty, thirty…” He wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. “When she was gone, she was forever five-years old. Forever my baby girl. But now…” he bites down gently on his lip, and sniffles, “… now she’s nine years old, and figuring out the truth about Santa, and,” he lets out a soft sob as he quietly laughs, “before I know it, some sixteen-year-old boy is going to be picking her up to take her out on a date.”

“Be honest,” Lucy says, smiling as she wipes a tear from his face. “You’re looking forward to that, even though the idea of her dating teenage boys terrifies you.”

He laughs, and nods his head. “That and giving her away at her wedding.”

“And… when she makes you a grandfather.” Lucy runs her hand through his hair.

“Please, let’s not entertain that yet.” He laughs. “You know... I wish… I wish that we could’ve had a kid of our own.” Lucy lowers her eyes, not knowing what to say. He wraps his arm around her, and kisses the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I-I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I feel the same way.” She looks at him. “Maybe we could adopt?” She waits for his reaction before continuing – he swallows hard, and opens his mouth then closes it, furrowing his brow. “I know we haven’t discussed adoption before, but there are so many children in need of a loving family, and we have so much love to give.”

Garcia takes a deep breath and shifts his body. He exhales as he looks into her eyes. “I think… adoption is something we can look into later this year.” The moment the words escape his mouth, there’s a flutter in his heart, and he smiles. He kisses the tip of her nose. “And once we do adopt a little girl, now that Iris has graduated from believing in Santa Claus, I can take our little girl up on the rooftop on Christmas Eve to try to spot Santa and his flying reindeer.”

“That isn’t safe, Garcia.”

“I took Iris up on the rooftop for the first time when she was three years old to look for Santa,” he says. “She was with me, so she was fine.”

“I’m sure Lorena disagreed.”

“She did, but me and Iris snuck out on the roof anyway.” He smiles. “And after we saved them, I did the same when she was six, seven, eight years old – of course, we were in the apartment and didn’t have roof access, so we had to sit out on the balcony. But this year, we got up on our roof.”

“Why didn’t I know about this?”

“You were asleep.”

Lucy gives him a stern look.

He smiles at her, and continues his story. “I always waited until Iris fell asleep before bringing her back inside, and tucking her into bed. Then the next morning, she’d ask why I didn’t make sure she stayed awake, and I always said it was because Santa had magic sleepy dust that made all little kids fall fast asleep when he was near.”

Lucy smiles at him, and knows once they adopt, that she’ll have to keep a close eye on her husband and daughter on Christmas Eve. She sighs. “I could use some magic sleepy dust right now,” she says, yawning as she rolls onto her back.

“Well… it’s not magical dust, but I know something you enjoy that I can do that helps you relax…” He kisses her on the cheek, then slides his hand from her waist down between her legs. “Unless you aren’t in the mood,” he says as he slowly moves his hand against her.

Lucy closes her eyes and hums softly as her husband touches her. “As… as much as I like what you’re doing…” She opens her eyes, and looks at him. “I’m tired.” He nods his head, and removes his hand. Lucy cups his jaw in her hand, and pulls him towards her. She kisses him on the lips. “Could you hold me in your arms until I’m asleep?”

“Big spoon-little spoon, or big spoon and baby spoon?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer as she repositions herself to lie down on top of him with her head just beneath his chest – one arm at his side, the other resting on his shoulder. He smiles as he adjusts the blanket to cover them. Then he rests his arm on her back.

“You’re ok with this position, right?” she asks since she knows that being beneath her can bother him.

“You always slide off me after you fall asleep anyway, and I keep you safe in my arms,” he says. “So… I’m… I’m good, sweetheart.”

“The northern lights were really beautiful tonight,” she says. “A perfect way to ring in the new year… thank you.”

“Nordlyset var virkelig vakkert,” he says – he can feel Lucy roll her eyes at him. Then he translates, “The northern lights were really beautiful.”

“Nordlyset…” Lucy chuckles, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it took you this long to let me know how to say northern lights in Norwegian.” She closes her eyes, and settles into his body, so she can fall asleep.

“I can tell you how to say it in several other languages, too, you know?” He pauses. “’Anwar alqutb, Arabic… Servernoye siyaniye, Russian... L’aurora boreale, Italian... Das Nordlicht, German... La aurora boreal, Spanish…”

“Are you going to keep going until you bore me to sleep?” she teases.

“Les lumières du nord, French... Luminile Nordului, Romanian... As luzes do norte, Portuguese...”

“Garcia… shh… I’m trying to sleep,” she says, failing miserably to not laugh.

“Polární záře, Czech... Ōrora, Japanese... And don’t ask me how I know this, because I learned it on a top-secret mission when I was doing black ops for the NSA… Şimal işıqları, Azerbaijani.” He looks down at Lucy, her eyes are closed, but her lips have curved into a smile. She’s still listening to him, so he continues. “Uttarī battīharū, Nepali... To vóreio sélas, Greek. Oh and of course there’s sjeverna svjetla, Croatian. And it’s the same as Croatian in Bosnian, but in Serbian there’s a slight change, severno svetlo…”

And as her husband continues to spew off how to say the northern lights in other languages, Lucy listens, loves him more for what a dork he is, and slowly drifts off to sleep in the early morning hours of the year 2024, making a new year’s resolution to herself that this year will be the year that they will figure out a way to have the family life they’ve always wanted.