Chapter Text
“Vic…”
Maya starts, stops, swallows the emotion cloying in her throat, tries again.
“Vic, let's get some of this blood off your hands, okay?”
It’s on more than just her hands.
There’s a spray of crimson across her face and smears of it all up and down the tears of her Class B’s, even coagulating in the crevices of her work boots, and she and Andy, they need to find out what is Vic’s blood and what isn’t- and hands.
They can start small.
They can start with her hands.
The dissonant rhythm of the emergency fleet casts reddish-blue shadows across them in the night and Vic looks small, smaller than Maya ever remembers her being, knees pulled close to her chest, curled in on herself on the concrete rearstep. All dark hair and dark bags beneath dark, red-rimmed eyes, tired and worn down and there are bruises in the shadows that are already lifting, would truly show when the morning truly came, and she doesn’t move.
Doesn’t answer.
Doesn’t show any sign that she’d heard the blonde or that she knew what was going on, looking at nothing on the concrete, all unfocused and far away.
It wasn't like Vic to be monosyllabic. It really wasn't like her to say nothing at all.
But she is so quiet now, so still, Maya almost feels like she shouldn’t be seeing her at all.
She cuts her gaze away from her friend, over to Andy, who’s crouched across from them, white-knuckling one of the first aid kits in a curled fist.
“Shock.”
Herrera mouths when their eyes meet and the blonde nods.
She knows.
She’d overheard Sullivan saying the same thing when he’d pulled Travis away, because the sound from Nineteen’s youngest firefighter- the raw, agonized, fearful sound, when he’d tried to reach for her… it reminded her of the sound of a kicked dog who knew they would be kicked again.
It’s a sound Maya’s never heard from her, and it’s one she never wants to fucking hear ever again.
They’d cordoned themselves off in this little corner of the parking lot, just on the other side of Ladder 19; tried to afford some degree of privacy, away from the officers, the reporters, their own team, and the other… victims, well because she supposes that’s what Vic is on technical terms.
A victim.
Even if the word feels wrong in her mouth.
This entire situation feels wrong.
“Vic,” Andy murmurs, softer, kinder, just over the crackle of her radio issuing a barely comprehensible status report, “We just need to make sure you’re not hurt.”
It's an answer they already know the answer to.
They’d all seen the way she limped out behind that uniformed officer.
They’d all seen the blood.
So really, the question is not if she's hurt, but how much.
Maya sucks in a breath, feels her stomach turn, and the rational side of her knows their line of work is dangerous, knows that all of them have been injured on the job before in one way or another, but injured usually meant a burn or equipment failure or smoke inhalation, not some scumbag putting hands on them.
The cloy of emotion tangles nauseatingly in her throat, and still, Vic says nothing, only blinks past her fingers outstretched in front of her.
She can see them trembling.
Vic says nothing, bookended by a shuddering breath that flutters past clenched teeth and the stopwatch in Maya’s head—the one she can't ignore or push away—says nine hours, forty-six minutes, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three seconds.
It had taken nine hours, forty-six minutes, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three seconds f or the police department to stop trying to negotiate and finally breach to put an end to this clusterfuck of a crisis call.
Nine hours, forty-six minutes, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three seconds and guilt burns hot and wet in the corners of Maya’s eyes and she stifles the urge to press them together tightly to keep it from overpowering her.
There had been seven confirmed hostages.
That’s what came over dispatch.
Only four had come out.
Two in critical condition.
One a kid.
A fucking kid.
“Vic,” she tries again, calm and reassuring, the chill of the concrete seeping into her bones, and her fingers itch to pull away from the curb, to reach out and touch her, but she fights it.
They’re trying, both of them are, to give Hughes back some choice, some control, yet a part of the blonde thinks fuck it. A part of her wants to just haul the younger woman into any of the available waiting ambulances and deal with the consequences later because crisis calls aren’t supposed to end like this.
They aren’t ever supposed to end like this.
But it did.
And there are no words now for what it was now.
"Victoria, we need to know if you can hear us."
There's a bottle of water a little to her left, a Snickers bar too, left untouched, because they’d thought food would help Vic unthaw a little, but maybe it's the full name, maybe it's just because she needed some time because finally Vic twitches, makes a soft sound in her throat.
Incoherent, but good enough for her, and the blonde hurries to speak further before she can retreat again.
“Good, good, we just need to make sure you’re okay.”
She fumbles for the part of herself that is calm and methodical in situations like this, because she definitely can’t be the scared one here.
Vic can’t see that, not from her, not when she looks like that.
So she takes a steadying breath, evens her face into something carefully neutral as she pulls on the zipper of her own go bag and next to her, Andy has the gauze out and is pulling on the latex gloves and Hughes has been so quiet, so still, that neither of them are really expecting it when-
“My radio…”
Hughes's tone is just wrong when she finally says something, a horse rasp that almost disappears into the wind.
“Your radio?”
Maya echoes confused, pauses, and for a moment- a handful of moments- the blonde thinks she’s misheard, but then Vic’s throat spasms again, her glazed eyes locked with something beyond the muted night.
“H-he... My… m-my... m’radio..."
Vic croaks again, the words catching against her chattering teeth, until they’re hitched and fragmented and almost do disappear this time and the blue and red lights play again over dried tear streaks that seemed to be stained to her pale, caramel skin, and fuck they really need to something about her hands.
The blonde blinks down looking for Vic’s radio that isn’t there.
Neither is her utility belt.
And a handful of buttons from her Class Bs.
Maya bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to feel it sting, forces an inhale through her nose, but the air feels too big, too full in her lungs, and she has no choice but to let it go again.
Jesus Christ.
“My radio. I can… I-I can write a report for the… f-for m’radio for t-the audit.”
Vic mumbles more to herself than to either of them, and Maya isn’t really sure if Hughes has even fully registered their presence when the words fall mostly to the ground.
“Hey. Hey! Don’t worry about the radio. Don’t. It’s not important.”
Andy tries to placate, carefully, calm, mildly confused, but Vic either doesn’t hear her or doesn’t believe her.
“My… My… radio. I… I-I can put… I-I…”
One or the other.
“Vic.”
“I can-”
“Vic,” Maya says, and her name catches in her throat and splinters apart on her tongue. “Don’t worry about the-”
“I-I can write a report,” Vic repeats listlessly, because she keeps repeating everything she’s saying, because she’s in shock, because fuck, because nine hours, forty-six minutes, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three seconds.
“Vic!”
Vic’s caught up on it, on the radio, insistent, and it’s instinct when they shift forward, trying to comfort, soothe, and it’s likely instinct when Vic flinches, shrinks backwards and Maya hates that they are something to be scared of now. Is fucking terrifed to think about why that is as she forces her hand back to her side.
“It’s just us. It’s just us… It’s us, okay? Not him. It’s just Maya and I. Just you and us. ”
Andy is saying.
Soothing, pacifying phrases, soft with worry, with concern as she pulls away too, but the damage is done because Hughes is folding herself, smaller, smaller, and all Maya really hears is her heart beating too loudly in her ears because she doesn’t do this. She’s not good at this, at comfort. It’s usually Vic’s thing, always Vic, except, Vic right now is… Vic is shaking… Vic is falling apart… then it’s Andy's, but even now, Andy’s split seam between friend and captain is fraying at the seams, and they haven’t gotten anywhere in making sure Vic was okay.
Physically, at least.
Maya blinks through hazed vision, looks back at Hughes’s hands, her wrists, how at least two of her fingers aren’t curling all the way, and scrubs her right hand over her face and tries to ignore the way something inside her head and her chest both contract.
They can’t rush this.
Vic didn’t deserve for them to rush this, but they need to do something .
Hughes was someone who liked processes, right? For someone who thrives on chaos, she always had a penchant for working through the problem and finding the solution.
It’s what made her so good with Crisis One.
Maybe, if they detailed out what they need to do, it would be less scary than suddenly just reaching for her.
“Hey. Look at me.”
She interjects softly, presses her hands against gravel, smiles as gently and calmly as she can manage even if it feels forced, even if it feels like she'd forgotten how to do it.
“Look at me. ”
Softer still, moving slowly, maneuvering and maneuvering until she’s sitting almost completely in front of Hughes on the cold concrete.
The blonde searches her friend’s eyes, searches, and searches for a glimpse of the brightness, the inquisitiveness in Vic she was so accustomed to seeing, but it never comes. Instead, Vic’s eyes just glisten, glitter in the dark, and stare right through the blonde as another toneless whisper about the radio spills from her lips, but she doesn’t shy away and maybe that’s something that can count as some sort of win.
“We’re gonna triage you, but it’ll be like Operation, alright? S’like Station game nights, except without shitty alcohol and without Warren saying he’ll win the entire time.”
She’s rambling, she knows she is, tingeing on desperate, and it takes a handful of seconds before she even gets an indication that Hughes even heard her, eyelids fluttering, as she blinks, blinks again, the dull emptiness coalescing into something haunted, but more concrete.
“We’re going to talk you through it, gonna talk you through it all. We just want you to work the problem with us. Can you do that?”
A pause.
A longer pause than even the last one.
They remain frozen like that, in silence, precious seconds counting away, but they can’t rush this, even when Maya wants too much. She’s hanging on the edge at this point, on the edge of the curb, on the edge of her emotions because what if Vic said no, what if she wouldn’t, wouldn’t let them help.
“M- m’radio…”
Hughes whispers again and it comes out a bit dazed, like even she didn’t know why she was saying it, and Maya wishes she had the time to take her hand, to try and understand, but she doesn’t.
“It’s going to be quick. Okay? Quick. We just want to help.”
It’s Vic, this is Vic, and there’s a fear that threatens to overwhelm Maya that they might actually have to this the hard way, they might have to not give Vic a choice because precious seconds are about to stretch into minutes and they’ve only got the to Golden Hour and really it’s been nine hours, forty-six minutes, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three seconds and behind her Andy shifts a little to mute the radio that’s squawking out more information that couldn’t possibly be more important than this and when she turns back to look she sees movement out of the periphery too.
Did she… Maya turns back slowly… comes face to face with dark eyes, murky in the reddish hue of the lot.
“Hey… There you are…”
Andy murmurs, making the realization before the blonde that even when Vic is looking at her like she’s a stranger, like she’s speaking Greek, she’s actually looking at her now, instead of through her, confirmed when they flit away, back towards Andy, to Ladder 19, then Maya again, her face flashing a mixture of red and white before it settles on a near greenish tinge.
Fuck.
Fuck!
Thank God.
“We’re going to help you out, triage, okay?”
She pounces on the moment, repeats the question, for what feels like the hundredth time, but she’ll ask it all night if she has too.
She’ll do whatever she needs.
Vic’s shoulders shake, her whole body shakes, and her focus is drifting, keeps drifting but eventually, she nods sluggishly, all jagged and unsure, almost like she doesn’t quite remember how to make the movement properly and it is so wrong, so timid a gesture to see from her.
But it’s okay.
They’ll make it okay.
“You’re in the driver's seat, tell us to stop if you need to, okay Vic?”
Another small, slow nod.
Even when Vic’s given consent, she still expects some kind of disproportionate reaction, remembers Travis trying, remembers only moments ago, realizing that even the most well-meaning touch would be poorly received at the moment, but she doesn’t flinch when the blonde brushes against her pants leg, nor does she move when Andy follows suit on the right.
Still, they go as quickly, as methodically, as they can; explaining everything along the way, until the words were spilling like vomit and she was talking just to fill the silence, and even when Vic never says to stop, it seems like she is vibrating with an intensity, like she’s forcing herself not to withdraw.
She wants to tell Hughes it’s going to be okay as she works, that there’s no reason to be scared, wants to rattle off other platitudes that would bring comfort like a storybook ending instead of reality, but it sticks in her throat and it sticks on her mouth and sticks on her tongue instead of spilling into the air because she knew it wouldn’t mean anything.
Because she doesn’t know, is the thing. She doesn’t.
She has nightmarish ideas.
Because when Maya moves through the assessment she realizes Hughes’s left ring finger and pinky are, in fact, broken and she has to use bandage scissors to cut away what’s left of the zipties, where the skin underneath had already started to redden and peel, and then there’s the purpling start of bruises where the cotton of her long sleeved Class B’s had ridden up.
Distinct. Tubular.
And it takes a moment for her to process exactly what she’s looking at.
Fingerprints.
Her stomach drops and there’s a bey-blade of pain in the space between her ribs when she falters, glancing up at Vic, whose eyes are vacant, jaw set, and under the reddish hue, if she looks from the right angle, disappearing under the neckline of her collar, are the same distinct markings, burned into the column of her throat.
The realization hits her like a truck. She feels sick. Almost is.
Those aren’t just bruises from being knocked around.
Someone didn’t just hurt her. Someone grabbed her.
Someone made those bruises, kept her there until she stumbled out covered in blood.
He did, her brain supplies. He.
So what right did she possibly have to tell Vic it was all going to be okay?
Because she doesn’t fucking know, does she?
Fury crackles under her skin. Competes with the roiling nausea.
Maya wants to lose it, to go hunt down this asshole and teach him a lesson.
She wants to. She doesn’t.
Instead, she pushes back the white hot rage she feels and forces herself to be clinical, casts aside the crushing pain, and tries to revel in the fact that aside from the crimson dotting up through the tears in navy cotton, aside from all those fucking bruises, Vic has no other broken bones, nothing that needs a tourniquet, nothing life threatening.
It means that a lot of this blood. It probably wasn’t hers.
There are a lot of blanks to fill in this mess, a million questions to ask.
But Vic doesn’t need that right now, right now she needs a friend.
Maya swallows the hard knot in her throat and cuts back to Hughes’s misshapen knuckles.
This. She could work with this.
“Let’s fix this and clean your hands off, okay?”
Maya’s voice cracks and it comes out all wrecked and inadequate and she doesn’t really expect an answer from Vic and she doesn't really get one. The other woman barely even flinches when she snaps the first joint back into place… almost as if she’s forgotten how to process it, the pain she should be feeling.
It must be the sweet, antiseptic smell of the wipes that burns her eyes.
“ Captain ,” Andy’s radio crackles again, loudly, when she’s splinting the second, “ Chief of Police wants to talk to you. ”
Sullivan’s disembodied voice reverberates into the atmosphere, snapping Maya out of her spiraling thoughts.
Andy leans, rocks back on her heels a little, and it takes a slow, lagging moment for the other woman to reach for her radio when her line of sight remains trained on Vic.
“Tell him I’m not available.”
“We did,” and of course they did, the Station is family, the Station knows what everyone needs. ”He wants you to be there for the hotwash with Incident Command.”
It makes sense, even when Maya doesn’t want it too, wants Andy to stay.
There’s a price that comes with those captain bars; the responsibility for the public good and right now the public good means more than just Vic.
The muscles in Herrera's jaw tighten as she comes to the same realization.
She murmurs a reluctant affirmation, but her eyes are dark, fearful when Maya catches a glimpse as she moves to stand, and the blonde doesn’t know what she’s scared of exactly, or what she’s thinking, but she doesn’t need to guess.
Andy Herrera looks afraid.
And there’s just everything- everything- wrong with that.
“Does V-” Sullivan coughs , “Does she need medical attention? I can get Warren back on the next rig.”
There are bloodied, antiseptic wipes on the ground and Maya is wrapping coband around broken fingers and Vic isn’t bleeding out, isn’t at death's door, but a sliver of fear… of possibility… niggles in the back of her mind, because she’s still shivering, still hasn’t said a damn word about anything except her radio and the darkness kind of claws at her ankles and acid tickles her throat and she has to heavily swallow it down.
“She hasn’t been shot.”
Andy leaves it at that.
“How’s she doing?”
She watches Andy consider the question.
Watches Andy leave it unanswered because they both know he wouldn’t want to hear a lie, and they know he won't like the truth.
“She needs to go to Grey-Sloan.”
Andy huffs in a whisper only Maya is meant to hear and she nods.
There are plenty of things Vic needs.
To drink something for starters. Food too.
She glances again at the untouched Snickers bar. The water bottle.
All three things might be a hard fought battle.
“And she doesn’t go home alone tonight.”
She knows.
After Vic moved out from Montgomery’s place, home for Vic meant a one-bedroom apartment on the outer side of West Seattle Junction.
A ten minute drive for Maya.
A few minutes more for Travis and the rest.
No chance in hell she stayed alone tonight.
“I’ll be right back. Right back. I promise.”
Andy says louder, so Hughes can hear, if she’s even listening, before disappearing into the reddish-blue hue, and the silence that follows is thick, almost suffocating in nature, unbroken only by the way Vic’s shoulders heave up with every long, deliberate breath, as she holds it, before letting it go.
It’s a calming technique Maya recognizes from her time with Diane. The blonde had always been kind of shitty at it, and it doesn’t seem to be working for the younger woman either because the tremors continue to make Vic’s fingers twitch and quiver as the blonde finishes securing the last edge.
“Alright, alright, you can put your hands down now. I’m done.”
Cleaning her hands is the best the blonde can do for now.
Nothing short of a shower would wash the rest away.
“Hughes...”
She urges gently, when the younger woman doesn’t move.
Vic drops them down a fraction, curls them closer to her knees, but otherwise doesn’t react and Maya gets that frantic feeling again, the urge to do something to make this all okay.
“There’s a water bottle, right here. You haven’t drunk a whole lot, but a little might help, “ she murmurs softly, trying to draw her friend back out of the dissociative fugue she’s being pulled back into, “and when we go to Grey-Sloan, they'll hook you up to fluids, give you some of the good stuff. You know, the Gatorade without the flavor. ”
She tries to keep the mood easy, light, fights with herself to prop up a fragile facade of something okay, but Vic’s nose scrunches, eyebrows drawing all her features inward and she drags the heels of her palms under her eyes.
“M-” Vic starts, tries to anyway, the word trailing off with a rough exhale of breath, cracking around the letter designation. “M- M-Maya?”
Confused. She sounds confused. Her question is cut off again by her breath, by the scuffed cotton of her Class B’s all small and distant, almost inaudible.
“I’m right here, Vic. Right in front of you.”
Maya tries to keep her voice even, but Vic won’t look at her, her breathing is picking up, and she's rocking herself a little, back and forth.
Slow down, Maya thinks about saying, take your time, but she doesn’t get it too.
“M-Maya…”
She repeats, sounding more insistent this time, more desperate, pleading.
“Vic!” she says again, and there are tears in her eyes, in her voice, as she tries to get her to understand, “Vic, I'm here. You just have to look at me. Please.”
Vic doesn’t look at her. Won’t look at her. Another noise bubbles up from her throat. Wounded and distressed.
“ Maya, I c-can’t…”,
This is Vic.
It’s Vic.
Vicvicvic.
“Maya… he has m-my radio.”
So small.
So defeated.
And the depth of her fear, her agony, cuts through Maya’s soul, makes her heart break, makes her heart stop.
“We’ll get it back.”
It feels like the only thing that she can say, even when she isn’t sure why the conversation keeps circling back to this, but Vic reacts like she’s been burned.
“I… I don’t want- I-I-” She stammers, fumbles with her words over chattering teeth and deep lungfuls of air and every part of her trembles, “I-I don’t- Maya. Fuck. M-Maya… I c-can’t I can't stop… s-stop shaking.”
Vic’s trembling hands move from her face in a jerky spastic movement, down over her shoulders, her torso, her legs, futilely trying to smooth some calm into them, trying to right her stretched and torn clothes, and her chin wobbles and her eyes are filled with tears and-
“Vic, Vic. Hey, hey... You’re in… you’re in shock.”
Maya soothes, struggles to explain, tears stinging in her eyes.
“Shock.”
Vic echoes disbelievingly, less like she’s saying them, more like they’re drifting away in the breeze, another tremor sifting through her as she struggles to process what she’s been told.
“Shock.”
She confirms, her breath hooking on the back of her throat.
“It’s…”
Normal is what she wants to say, but the word doesn’t fit. This isn’t normal. Shouldn’t ever be expected to be.
“It happens, sometimes, after things like this.”
The things like this are painted on Vic's skin.
The things like this tangle around all the emotions that are bleeding into the festering, infected wound that this shitshow had become and it burns the insides of the blonde’s ears with the way it hangs in the air.
The things like this hurt and there was no possible way to describe this pain.
“I… I… can’t stop. I can’t-.”
Vic shakes her head, tries to rid herself of something that wasn’t there, and her face crumbles, her blank expression falls, and collapses into something that resembles utter despair. One tear runs down her cheek before another, and another, and another and her hands twist up into hair, and her head is tilting forward and there’s a sound there, too,
A terrible gasping noise.
It's just – a lot. All at once, too much. It’s nine hours, forty-six minutes, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three seconds. And for Hughes, everything is finally coming crashing down.
“He… he… h-he-”
Vic doesn’t finish. Can’t. And those silent tears dissolve into sobs and it’s all Maya can do to say is- “Vic, just breathe. Just breathe.”
The world around her narrows, the world fades away and it’s not a cordon, not an active investigation, not a hostage situation, it’s just the two of them in this parking lot and the sound Hughes is making, it’s hysterical and horrible and something inside the blonde snaps with it, the concrete turning to sand, and Maya doesn’t know if she wants to know what he did, and thinks maybe she's crying too.
And she wants to tell her so bad, that it was all going to be okay.
But she doesn’t. Because she can’t.
She doesn’t know if it will.
…. ….. …. ….
,