Chapter Text
The night is quiet, when Eddie wakes.
For one still, silent moment he looks into the darkness, into the unfamiliar, blinking away the weight that tries to pull his eyelids back down. He can hear crickets and cicadas outside, buzzing in the low heat and moonlight that falls through his open window.
He vaguely senses his brow furrow through the haze of sleep still clinging to his thoughts. Thoughts that are slow, foggy, and, at this point in time, comprised of only a question.
Why am I awake?
The answer comes in the form of a different kind of buzzing to his left. He shifts against the pillow to see his phone illuminating the wood below it, and proceeds to make the mistake of picking it up and bringing it right to his face. He quickly puts it back down, hissing and squinting against the new ache forming right between his eyes.
Once his vision properly adjusts, he realizes his phone has stopped ringing. He looks again - slowly - and sees the time. 12:47 AM.
The seconds between checking the time, thinking who is calling me at this hour, and looking at his notifications are the last moments exhaustion still pulls at his mind.
Then he reads Missed Call: Bobby (2) and he is completely upright, heart hammering, all thoughts of sleep nothing but ashes on the wind.
Bobby wants to go back.
He wants to go back to that stupid, seemingly inconsequential moment when the world started ending and nobody realized. The moment when the paths of fate diverged irrevocably, leaving him to choke on the dust clouds of a decision he didn’t even know he’d made. Back to the moment he realizes, only now, could have allowed him to have been the one inside that damned-to-hell box. Back to when he looked at his firefighter, his kid in every sense that mattered, and told him to get their patient - get himself - to safety.
When Buck - stupid, selfless Buck - had all but dumped the slumped body on Bobby’s shoulder and said I’ll meet you out there in a sec, Cap!
And Bobby didn’t think twice, didn’t stop to consider any sort of consequences, just took the body and ran like a coward.
How could he have been so blind as to leave his team, leave his kid behind (there’s no way he could’ve known)? Why, why, why did he listen to Buck instead of putting his foot down (there’s nothing he could’ve done)? What kind of captain - what kind of man is he that he left a third child of his to—
(Athena’s voice echoes in his mind - you did all that you could.)
Bobby wants to go back.
(“All he could” was never going to be good enough.)
But he can’t.
(He will take “all he could” to his fucking grave.)
When Chimney sits up and waves into the blue-tinged camera, Bobby realizes everything is going to be alright.
The stress of the day - one of the most nerve-wracking, close-call days of both his career and life - finally releases from his shoulders, and the breaths he draws into his lungs don’t rattle with terror at long last. He prays silently for a brief moment that he and his team aren’t about to be prosecuted for terrorism by anyone here (as they’ve threatened - multiple times), but as of right now, that’s not his main concern.
His main concern is getting his team out of that metal coffin.
He can feel a smile work its way onto his face as he looks once more at the screen in front of him - Chimney is still waving, Hen is still awake, and Bobby is suiting up to lead them home. A little more tension leaves his shoulders at the thought.
He turns to the side to see his wife gazing at him with that look of hers he loves so much. “Good work today, Sergeant Grant,” he whispers, just loud enough that only she will hear, letting his smile fully take over.
She puts her hand over his not-yet-covered cheek, eyes sparkling and tone equally flirtatious when she says, “Good work to you too, Captain Nash.”
Some day, when this whole thing is more of a memory and less of a traumatic event, he’ll enjoy thinking of their time playing investigators today; of helicopter-sized distractions and bio-terrorist psychopaths. He’ll be able to remember today and think, wow, my wife is hot, instead of getting overwhelmed with a panic that his team is going to die an imminent, painful death. He’s looking forward to that day.
But today is not that day, and Bobby won’t be able to fully take a breath until his whole team is out of this God-forsaken place. So he finishes suiting up, gives his wife’s hand one last squeeze, and heads through what seems to be miles of plastic tunneling to help extract his family.
They get Hen out first so that she can be operated on as soon as she’s finished de-contaminating. Even so, they’ll do a much better job of patching her up once she’s on the side of the glass with access to proper medical care. Chimney follows close behind so that he can be hooked up to more fluids and be checked over post-infection.
He pats Ravi on the back as he passes by - adding in a welcome to the family as he does, which is partly in good humor, partly completely serious. Because you don’t go through what they have today without being family, and you certainly don’t risk being labeled a domestic terrorist for a group of coworkers. He has a feeling they’ll all be teasing him about this for a long time.
He turns from Ravi’s retreating form to wave Buck forward. “You did good today, kid,” he says, voice slightly distorted thanks to the heavy mask. “I’m proud of you.”
Buck, who’s still standing in the middle of the lab, starts to walk forward, eyes crinkling in a smile at the words. “Thanks, Cap,” he says, voice rough from both the mask and emotion. And then—
And then he’s pressing a button, and the door is sliding back down between them.
Bobby blinks. Blinks again, tilting his head. “Buck,” he says with a small, confused laugh, “We just got that door up.”
His mouth is halfway open, and his hand is halfway up to his radio to tell dispatch that Buck’s hit the wrong button, and he’s halfway into an exasperated, mostly-loving eye roll, and—
And Buck is halfway through taking off his mask.
Panic shoots through Bobby like lightning in a way he’s never really felt before. “Woah, hey, Buck—“
Buck, whose hand is still inching towards the seal and—
“Buck, stop. Stop! Right now. That’s an order—”
But despite the fact that his voice is a desperate mix between his most commanding captain voice and just plain desperate, Buck continues as if he didn’t even hear him and—
And his mask is coming off, exposing Buck to the infected air.
“Buck—“ His voice is beginning to tip dangerously into the desperate zone. “Buck, what are you doing - you need to—“
The words die right on his tongue.
Because there’s blood under Bucks nose.
There’s blood under Buck’s nose.
Something about the image isn’t computing. He sees Buck, sees the blood, sees the bloodshot eyes and dark stains on his teeth. His sickly pale pallor in the blue light. But all of these things are not coming together. Because adding all of these things together would produce a final picture that will never, can never be possible.
Buck’s mouth quirks up in something that could almost resemble a smile.
“I’m sorry, Cap,” he says, and Bobby can see the dark stains on his tongue, too. “I don’t think I can be on dish duty anymore.”
“Kid,” he chokes out, because what else can he say?
“Tell Chim I don’t blame him,” he says, far too fast, like there’s a clock he’s trying to race. And there can’t be a clock - there can’t be a clock that doesn’t have decades left instead of, what? Hours? Minutes? “Tell him not to blame himself either,” he adds with a little laugh.
And maybe that laugh is what finally breaks Bobby out of his frozen state. Because all at once, the world is moving again.
The world is spinning and the world is crashing right down on top of him, and he can feel every single pound of force that digs into his shoulders. It’s pressing down on him, suffocating him, and as it falls apart the jagged edges are cutting him open to bleed out on the dirty, concrete floor.
And he still can’t seem to say anything.
“My line broke,” Buck continues on, like the world isn’t ending right in front of Bobby in horrific, crystal-clear detail. “Noticed a couple hours ago. But it’s okay - Chimney’s gonna be okay.”
“What about you?” Bobby finally chokes out. And now that he’s started, he can’t seem to stop. “What about - all of us? Chim’s not gonna be okay when he finds out that - that—“
“He’s got Maddie, and Jee, and - and his new kid,” Buck says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “He’ll understand that I—“
Whatever Buck thinks Chim will understand, Bobby doesn’t hear because he’s cut off by a harsh coughing fit - one that sounds like it’s ripping through his throat like glass, one that leaves blood all over Buck’s lips and hands and Bobby’s heart and soul.
“Kid, you—“
Bobby can’t do this. He can’t do this, he can’t do this, he can’t do this. He can’t do this again, and yet he is. He is, he is, he is—
“Your family needs you. We need you, I—“
I need you.
But Buck just smiles that bashful little smile of his, the one that makes everyone love him a little more. Or at least, it’s always made Bobby love him a little more.
“Bobby, no one needs me,” he says, as if it’s a fact as average as they come and not the most bold-faced lie Bobby’s ever heard in his life. “Sure, I’ve got the 118 but—“ He coughs a bit more and shrugs. “I’m the only one with just the one family. I’m glad it was me.”
Bobby blinks once again because none his other nerves are firing. Buck takes his silence as permission to plow on with this madness he’s somehow been convinced is truth.
“Chim and my sister - they have each other. Hen’s got her family, you - you’ve got Athena and your kids, Ravi’s got his whole life ahead of him, and his parents - and his tenants!” He tacks on that last part with a laugh. “Who would charge rent without him around, huh?”
Your kids is all he can hear. Because Buck doesn’t seem to grasp that he’s one of those.
“Everyone will be fine without me. Everybody’s got their own people to get them through it.” He smiles. “It’s okay.”
And maybe there’s a part of Bobby that thinks, if I can convince him that he’s wrong, he’s not going anywhere.
Maybe that’s the part that makes him say, “What about Eddie?”
Something breaks in the kid’s eyes.
“He’s got Chris,” he says, but it seems to be a little more choked - seems to hurt him just a little bit more. “But I - I need you to tell him I’m sorry, and that I love him, okay? I…”
Buck blinks a couple times before coughing roughly again, hunched almost all the way over. He blinks rapidly as he comes back up.
“I need you to tell everyone that. I need you to tell them I didn’t want to leave them. And this, this choice I made? I never - never meant to hurt them.”
Bobby watches as tears gather in Buck’s eyes. He watches as they’re harshly blinked away. He can see - now that his world has somewhat stabilized into this horrifying reality - the tremble of Buck’s upper lip, the way his hands shake, one resting at his side and the other reaching out to Bobby. A quirk of his, one gained from years of stretching out a calm hand to patients as a firefighter.
He can see the way Buck’s entire frame tries to be steady but fails.
The kid is terrified.
Terrified, and doing his best to mask it to make this easier on Bobby.
And Bobby—
(Bobby wants to cry, to scream, to rage at the universe for being so cruel - he wants to scream at God for taking away another one of his children and he wants to end himself for being the cause again. He wants to break everything in the vicinity and he wants the broken pieces to puncture his heart because that would hurt far less than whatever he’s feeling right now.)
Bobby will not be the reason this is any harder on Buck.
So he channels every single ounce of fire captain in him - every ounce of self control he has from almost a decade of sobriety - to push down the uncontrollable urge to scream until his soul leaves his body. He blinks away his own tears - has no idea how many have already slipped past his defenses in the eternity since the door slid back down - and steadies his own hand as much as he can as he rests it on the glass.
Buck’s breath hitches - the kid is taking a step forward, and—
And their hands are aligned, skin only separated by a few layers of glass and rubber.
“Buck,” he says - whispers? Cries? He’s not entirely sure, doesn’t have enough left in him to care. “Kid. I need you to know that you are my family. That I see you as - see you as a son, and that every day I spend with you I am so - so proud to know I helped make you the man that you are today.”
Buck’s breath catches again, and Bobby can see tears gather in his eyes much quicker than he can blink them back. “Bobby—“ The kid turns his head away, like looking at him is too much. “I’m sorry—“
“I’m not,” Bobby continues. “I’m not sorry I got to spend so much of my life with someone as amazing - someone as precious - as you. I’m not sorry I gave a cocky punk another shot after he stole a firetruck. Twice.”
Buck lets out a snort through his tears, and Bobby can’t help but also let out a huff of what might’ve been considered a laugh if it weren’t for his own swimming vision.
“I love you, Evan Buckley.” Buck looks back at him now, tears still escaping his eyes and Bobby still has to pretend each of those tears isn’t an arrow straight to his soul. “I’m never going to stop loving you, not a single day for the rest of my life.”
“I… I—“
Buck once again breaks into a harsh coughing fit - only it doesn’t stop after a few moments, this time. The hand not on the glass goes to his mouth to stop the blood, but quickly flies down to clutch at his abdomen.
Buck’s shoulders tremble with the effort it takes to keep sucking in air through the coughs, and soon enough both his arms are wrapped around his middle, and he’s falling down to one knee.
“Buck,” Bobby rasps, fists hitting the glass like that will do anything to get him to his kid who is - who is— “Hey, you’re okay, you’re - you’re gonna be okay—“
Bobby is on his knees, senselessly clawing at the barrier as Buck continues his decent. The coughing begins to weaken before tapering off, but with that, Bobby watches in horror as Buck’s eyes begin to roll back into his head. As he slumps gracelessly against the clear barrier between them, unmoving. As his weight falls somewhere between the glass and the wall beside him.
For the briefest of moments, Bobby wonders if that was the last time Buck will ever close his eyes.
Then, as if his soul is violently broken by the very thought, he thinks, I did not just watch my son’s eyes close for the last time.
“Buck,” he calls. “Buck!”
He’s shouting, slamming his fists on the glass, barely able to feel the bruises that are already beginning to form.
No, he thinks. Open your goddamn eyes.
They were supposed to have more time. Buck was supposed to have more time, Bobby was going to call - someone else, whether that be Athena or Maddie or Eddie or anyone, everyone because they should have a chance to—
To—
“Kid - kid, look at me. Look at me! You’re gonna be fine, just open your eyes, please, just—“
But he doesn’t.
His eyes stay closed.
And Bobby looks - he looks at the glass by Buck’s mouth and sees no condensation. He looks at the kid’s chest, and sees that it lies still.
It’s only then that Bobby screams.
He wants to put up a fight when they come to drag him away from the door. He wants to shove them back - wants to keep them away from them both, doesn’t think there’s anything in heaven or on earth that could pull him away from Buck’s side.
Then he sees they’re carrying a body bag.
As soon as he sees that, all the fight leaves him like it never existed in the first place.
He’s not sure when or how it happens, but Athena is at his side.
Athena is here, and someone must have taken some of the heavy gear off of him because she is holding his face in her hands like - like he’s worth something. Like he was ever worth something.
She’s saying something to him. He doesn’t know what. He can see her lips move, can hear that there are words, but he stares because he doesn’t hear anything at all.
She seems to realize this, because she stops. And just - looks at him.
Tear tracks shine on her face. She seems fine now, at least, putting on a brave face for him. Because she’s strong like that, she’s good like that, that she can put someone else’s needs over her own. Bobby wonders if he’s ever been worthy of being in the same room as her.
“Don’t,” he finally hears her say. “You cannot blame yourself for this. Do you hear me?”
“He wasn’t infected right away.” Bobby can hear his own voice through what seems to be an entire ocean. It sounds rough - feels rough. He vaguely wonders how long he screamed outside that door. “He was - he was fine. If I had—“ He chokes on nothing. Chokes on everything. “If I had fought harder, if I had gotten my team out when I should’ve—“
“They were never going to let you into that room.” She grips his shoulders tight, and looks at him with an inescapable intensity. “Do you hear me? There’s nothing you could’ve said or done to make them open that door.”
And Bobby knows that. He knows - of course he knows.
But he still should’ve done something because now—
Now.
He’s on his feet and moving before Athena can protest or stop him. He searches blindly for a moment to find a place where he can—
He’s over a bush - realizing for the first time that they are, in fact, outside - and whatever was left of his lunch is being violently ripped from him. Once that’s all gone, he begins dry heaving, his stomach clenching painfully like it wants to purge his whole inner being - like that can rid him of this black hole taking up residence where his soul should be. He doesn’t know when the nausea will pass - it might as well be part of him now, ingrained into his body like a branding.
Athena is rubbing his back. It might’ve been soothing, any other day. Now, though? He doesn’t think there is anything in this world that could make his heart feel like anything other than shattered pieces strung across the ground.
Well, there is one thing. Unfortunately, Bobby killed it.
His stomach lurches even harder.
“I’m here, baby,” Athena says. She knows it’s okay is a lie. “I’m right here.”
He slumps back to lean against Athena’s chest after who knows how long. Her hands move from his back to his front, and he clutches them with his own like a vice, like they can tether him to the earth.
For a moment, he breathes.
“Who knows?” he asks once he feels like he can without puking.
Her breath hitches beneath him - a kink in her otherwise perfect armor. “Ravi and I do. I think Ravi told Karen. But…” She sighs deeply. “Hen and Chim were already in isolation when we found out.”
He blinks, and ignores the tears that fall.
This is something to do. Something to focus on. He can do that. Turn off his emotions, if for a moment, and be the fire captain he needs to be.
Something cracks as a thought surfaces. He leans forward so that he can turn to look at his wife. “Does…” He swallows and it burns, though it has nothing to do with the taste of acid on his tongue. “Does Maddie know?”
His heart sinks as she shakes her head. “Last I heard, she was heading over here to be with Chimney. She’ll, um.” Athena silently wipes away her own singular tear with her thumb. “She’ll be here in about fifteen.”
Bobby breathes in. Breathes out.
“We should - we should be the ones to tell them.” He wipes a few of his own tears away as she gives a slight nod. “I guess, um - you can tell Hen and I’ll tell Chim, and - we can both tell Maddie. Once she gets here.”
She nods again.
They don’t move to get up.
The walk to Chim’s tent is a blur. Getting his suit back on is even more of a blur.
Chimney smiles when he sees Bobby come through the plastic opening. He’s looking infinitely better than he had when the virus was tearing through his system.
For a moment, Bobby stops to breathe. He can’t let himself think about anything other than delivering this news.
He’s a fire captain, telling one of his men that another has fallen in the line of duty.
That’s all this is.
Chimney doesn’t seem to realize that something is wrong. And, to be fair to him, Bobby’s face and body are almost completely covered in a shield.
(He hopes it’s stronger than the one he has around his heart. That one feels a breeze away from falling to pieces.)
“Hey, Cap,” he says, grinning despite the blood still speckled around his nose and mouth (breathe, Bobby tells himself). “What a day, huh? Maddie here yet?”
“Chim,” he says.
And it’s enough.
The smile is gone. He’s looking at Bobby in a way no captain ever wants to be looked at.
“What happened?” The question is asked in a small voice, yet it echoes throughout the silent confines of the isolation chamber.
Bobby feels something fracture along the middle of his chest as he looks at Chimney. He probably should’ve planned on how he’d do this.
Chim is still looking at him.
“You weren’t the only—“
He breathes so he doesn’t break.
“You weren’t the only one.”
Chimney stares at him for a moment longer, unblinking. Something is falling apart in his eyes, and he’s turning his head away.
Because Chim knows exactly what that means - yet somehow still, he has no idea, and Bobby has to be the one to tell him.
“Buck’s…” Chimney sucks in a sharp breath, and Bobby ignores the knife lodged in his own chest because - because he has to actually say the words, the words that should never be spoken. He has to be the one to say them. “Buck’s gone.”
Bobby’s knees give out. He’s glad he expelled what was left in his stomach earlier as tears once again begin to flow, because at least he knows he isn’t about to be sick into his mask.
Chimney is still silent, until he’s not. “He can’t be.”
“Chim…”
“He can’t.” He’s looking at Bobby now like he’s got all the answers, when that’s never been further from the truth. “He was fine. He can’t be - he was fine - he can’t have—“
“I’m sorry,” Bobby says, grabbing Chimney’s hand with his gloved one. “He said he doesn’t blame you, okay? He doesn’t blame you.”
Chimney breaks at these words.
And Bobby?
Bobby breaks right down the middle with him.
Athena is there to hold Hen as she cries, just like she was there to hold Bobby.
Whatever grief is festering inside, she is sure to keep it locked away. There will be time to fall apart later. She’s already crumbled enough along the edges today. Like when she first realized why Bobby was taking so damn long; when she watched those men prepare to take Buck’s body away. She can’t fracture any more. Right now, there are people that need her.
She can fall apart later.
(Much, much later.)
Hen is still crying as Athena’s phone vibrates in her pocket. Her gut sinks as she realizes it who it must be.
Hen lets her go with barely any protest, clearly trying to hold it together. Athena’s heart breaks a bit more in her chest as she leaves - as she hears Hen’s choked sobs return from outside the tent.
She takes off her suit. Takes a deep breath, and puts one foot in front of the other.
The world is dim as she makes her way toward the parking lot, toward where she spots Maddie rushing to the outside of one of the command centers. Athena knows she won’t get any answers from the men guarding the door.
Athena looks, but she’s can’t find Bobby.
And Maddie - Maddie has spotted her. She’s already heading this way.
With one more glance around to look for her husband, Athena realizes with a drop of her stomach that she’s going to have to do this alone.
“Where’s Howie?” Maddie is asking, a frantic look in her eye. “Nobody is telling me anything - please Athena, I have to see—“
“He’s fine, Maddie,” she says, and she doesn’t mean to use such a clipped tone, she doesn’t, but it comes out that way despite her wishes. She swallows in an attempt to push down the lump that’s made its home in her throat. To push down anything that isn’t under her control.
From the moment Athena first spotted her, Maddie has been a blur of energy - she’s had a clear purpose that she came here for, a one-track mind. But Athena can clearly see something in her gaze shift at the words, the hurricane hiding beneath her skin halting in its tracks.
Maddie takes uneven breaths that are painful to simply watch. “What happened?” she finally asks. “Is - is Hen—“
“She’s fine,” Athena says, just as short and clipped, and again, she doesn’t mean to be. She has no idea how to stop. “She’s going to be fine. So is Ravi.”
“That’s good?” It should be a statement, but it’s not. “If - if everyone is fine, then—“
Athena ignores the unsteadiness in her own hands as she lifts them to hold Maddie’s shoulders. “Maddie,” she says, ignoring the fact that she’s seconds away from running to the bushes like Bobby. “Maddie, there’s…”
She had been able to tell Hen. Why can’t she do this? Why are her words getting stuck somewhere between her throat and the open air?
“What’s going on? Is someone - not fine? Is—“
Athena sees the moment it clicks. What Athena has said, what she hasn’t said.
Maddie purses her lips, the way she does when she’s doing her best to hide her feelings for the sake of others or herself. “Where’s—“ She swallows and glances around, looking for someone she doesn’t know she will never again find. “Where’s Evan?”
“Maddie…” Impossibly wide eyes snap back to Athena’s. “Maddie, I’m sorry.”
“Where is he?” There are tears now, though they have yet to fall. “Athena, where is my brother?”
“I’m so sorry, Maddie - we, we tried—“
“No.” She shakes her head, and with it the tears are flung from her lashes. She begins to tremble beneath Athena’s hands. “No. Athena, please, where is - where is my—“
The words seem to get stuck in Maddie’s throat. Her mouth opens and closes, yet no sound escapes.
“I’m sorry,” is all Athena can say.
“No,” she says again in a voice that is growing weaker and weaker with each passing word. Her gaze grows vacant as she continues to shake her head. “No, please - you can’t—“
And then the storm that was hidden beneath the surface violently breaks through, the eye of it nothing but a memory. Athena is bearing all of Maddie’s weight, and she carefully wraps her arms around her so that she can gently lower them both to the ground.
None of this registers much over the earth-shattering wails coming from the girl in her arms.
At some point, Bobby ends up back in Athena’s embrace. They sit on a curb as they lean on each other, both her own exhaustion and his radiating between them.
He apologizes for not being there to tell Maddie - for falling apart while telling Chimney. She tells him it’s okay, because it is. She knows grief - there is no playbook on how they need to go about things. Getting through each passing moment still breathing is enough, no matter how hard or painful each of those breaths might be.
They lean on each other, and Athena isn’t sure how long they do before Bobby is sighing and putting his face in his hands.
She knows what he’s thinking before he opens his mouth - Lord help her, though, she hopes she’s wrong.
“I have to call him.”
She’s not.
“It doesn’t… have to be you,” she says, the arm she has around his shoulders tightening in what she hopes is support. “Anyone at the LAFD could make the call. Or even dispatch.”
She knows - because she knows her husband better than she’s known anyone - that he’s going to shake his head before he does. “He deserves better than that. He shouldn’t—“ He sniffs and wipes under his eyes for the hundredth time. “He should hear it from someone he knows.”
She nods. “And then we go home, baby.”
It takes him a second, but then he’s nodding, too. “Yeah… home.”
(The word has never sounded less true.)
Eddie sits in bed, unmoving and unblinking as the missed calls stare up at him. They sit on his lock screen just like they would any other day, yet because of them he has to force himself to take in each new lungful of air.
His phone lights up with another call, and he’s not sure if it’s this or the notifications that make his stomach plummet to the center of the earth.
The phone vibrates in his hand. The buzzes seem to line up with his heartbeat - a throbbing pulse that has migrated straight to his throat. He sees the little green button he’s supposed to hit to answer, and the red one next to it. A splash of color in the otherwise dark room, burning straight into his retinas.
And Eddie—
(Eddie knows that there are only so many things Bobby Nash would call him about at this hour.)
Eddie has to answer the phone.
(He’s never wanted to do anything less.)
His fingers shake as he does just that, raising it to his ear before the call can go to voicemail once more.
For a moment, Eddie listens.
He hears nothing.
“Hello?” he says after a beat, voice rough from sleep even as his heart tries to beat right out of his chest.
He desperately, stupidly hopes for the unlikely scenario in which there has been a mistake. Bobby is in bed, just like him, and is - accidentally calling. Somehow. He prays to a God he hasn’t spoken to in years that that’s all this is. “Bobby, you there?”
Someone’s breath hitches on the other end. His own heart skips several beats at the sound, the blood going even colder in his veins.
“Yeah,” he hears Bobby say. “Yeah, I’m here.”
Eddie waits, but there’s nothing else to hear. He forces himself not to dwell on the raspy tone of his former boss’ voice. Forces himself to speak. “What happened?”
There is no use in beating about any bush. They both know something has happened - both know Eddie knows something has happened.
Another shaky inhale. “Eddie, there was, um… An incident. On a call.”
And somewhere, in Eddie’s heart, he knows.
He knows this is not how a call would go if someone was hurt - if someone was in the hospital, even on death’s door. He’s spent enough time as the one giving and receiving this kind of news to know the difference.
Images flash through his head. Of sitting in the back of an ambulance, of standing in front of a temporary hospital. Moments when the floor dropped from under him, when he knew in a split second that life would never be the same. Different than brushing with death. There’s a certain finality to knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s no chance. That there’s nothing you can do.
Someone on his team is dead.
He doesn’t know who. Maybe that’s the worst part - the not knowing. Any one of them could be gone and Eddie doesn’t know who because he’s eight hundred miles away.
His mouth is dry, his tongue sandpaper. There are no words he can think to say.
“Eddie,” Bobby says. The world stops and time has never moved faster. “Buck is gone.”
And Eddie—
(Eddie was wrong. Not knowing wasn’t the worst part.)
Eddie—
(Part of him feared it but - a larger part of him had thought it to be impossible. There is no world where Evan Buckley doesn’t exist. It’s a given fact that if the earth turns, if Eddie is still breathing, Buck is, too.)
Eddie—
(He was wrong that not knowing was the worst part and he’s never been more wrong in his life. He’s in a helicopter and it’s going down and it’s crashing and the world isn’t moving anymore. The world was moving - maybe even too fast - and now it’s just—)
(Not.)
He—
“Eddie? Are you there?”
He must say something. Or maybe he doesn’t - he has no idea, no clue if any words come out of his mouth or if any more are said to him in turn. One of them must hang up the phone - he’s staring at it in his hands, the screen dark as it stares right back.
Buck is gone.
The words loop themselves in his head, like if he hears them enough times they’ll start to make sense, like the world he’s been thrust into will start to feel like reality.
Buck is gone.
The phone slides out of his hold, and he distantly hears it land on the wood floor at his feet.
Buck is gone.
He falls, too. The edge of the phone digs into his knee. Something - something heavy, something hot - is pressing into his chest. He needs to reach inside his lungs and pull whatever it is out because he can’t breathe around it, can’t exist around it.
Buck is dead.
A loud, inhuman cry escapes his lips before he can stop it.
He presses a hand to his mouth, heart stuttering for a moment with something other than - whatever this feeling is, nausea and searing pain and a gaping hole opening where his soul should be. It stutters in - fear. Because—
Because he needs to keep quiet. For Chris.
Just when he thought the agony in his chest couldn’t possibly get any worse, it multiplies. He’s going to have to tell his kid, his child, that—
That—
He reaches behind himself blindly with the hand not muffling what are now unrelenting sobs, feeling around until he can latch onto his pillow. He yanks it towards himself and before he can think twice replaces his hand with it, making sure to cover and muffle and smother like his life depends on it.
As soon as he does, he can no longer stop the sounds that are tearing violently from his chest.
Because he’s too weak to suppress it. Because the very blood and bones within him are screaming. Because nothing, no piece of him, will ever be okay again.
Because Buck is dead, and he has to keep the night silent for his son.