Archive of Our Own

Sara and Buck met on a Wednesday night in a cop bar further uptown than she normally went. One of Phil's old ranger buddies was having a birthday party though, and she hadn't felt like going home. An invitation to Phil was as good as an invitation to her, and vice versa.

Buck had chatted her up, and she'd let him. Sara wasn't a fool. She knew she was pretty, smart and competent. She knew tall and charming was her type. She also knew that the combination of pretty women and charming men never ended happily. As such, flirting was all well and good, but she wasn't stupid enough to think Buck was the kind of boy you took home; or, for that matter, that she was that kind of girl.

*

Sara knew, intellectually, that she couldn't have helped falling in love with Buck. He was everything she'd ever wanted in one person, everything she'd never gotten at home. He was warm and respectful and he cared about things, rather than just paying lip service. He was good at his job, funny, not mean when he was teasing, and most of all, he saw her. Faults and all, he took her exactly as she was, and didn't seem to want to change even the things that annoyed him.

So, of course, when he proposed to her eight months after they met, she didn't hesitate before unequivocally saying, "No."

Sara had never known a man for whom outright refusal wasn't a pride-breaking event so much as a formal challenge. All right, there had been Josh Henry in junior high, but Sara attributed that to poor socialization and the horror that was being thirteen. No adult male had ever done anything but huff off to lick his wounds in private.

Buck said, "Fair enough, gorgeous. I clearly haven't proven my case to your satisfaction."

He spent the next seven months presenting evidence like she was the jury on the criminal case of his career. And when he asked her a fourth time, she just didn't have enough brains to outweigh her desire to believe he could love her for the rest of her life. They were married three months later, on the estate of one of Buck's friends. It was a private, quiet ceremony performed by a judge both Buck and she liked.

It was spring, and it rained later in the evening. Sara tilted her head back to taste the drops. She was still swallowing when Buck swept her up and took her somewhere safe and dry.

*

Buck was pretty good at talking about what was going on with him. He was better than Sara, certainly. It had taken him over a year to get her to talk about her sister's disappearance and Sara's subsequent fading away from her parents' consciousness. Buck had told her about growing up the baby boy of a prostitute within the first two months of dating, smiling during stories about the "other girls" pitching in to raise him.

Despite that being the case, the first time she ever heard Buck cry was the night he called her from the hospital, and tried, desperately, to talk away the ghosts of eight children he'd had to pry out from under the floor of a trafficking hold. He was hoarse by the time he told her about the two they'd taken out alive, the one he'd carried away in his arms.

*

Ezra wasn't awake the first time Sara came to meet him. Above the hospital blanket, his face and arms were skeletal, his brown curls cracking and limp, and each spot where an IV was delivering medication or fluids or nutrients was marked by a bruise that took up the entirety of his palm, the circumference of his arm. She was afraid to touch him, scared that no matter what she did, it would hurt.

It was only recently that Sara had let her thoughts stray toward having children with Buck. Previously, it wasn't that she hadn't wanted them, there had just been so many other things on her mind taking priority. Her job put the term "full-time" to shame, as did Buck's, and what little time the two of them managed for each other was precious.

In her more honest moments, she admitted to her fear that she was no better than her parents; that the disappearance of a child might leave her emotionally paralyzed. Worse, she worried it might not even take such a tragedy for her to be unable to reach out. Instead, she would haplessly leave her child a shadow of herself: persistently convinced there would always be something, someone, anything more important.

The thing about Ezra was that someone had already done all that to him and worse. It was possible multiple people had discarded him. And though it shamed her, Sara was fairly certain she could hardly do worse.

Sara could ignore her own fears. She'd spent the better part of a lifetime doing so. She couldn't ignore the broken look in Buck's eyes when he sat next to Ezra's bedside. And she couldn't ignore the way, when Ezra began to toss and turn, caught in his nightmares, a single touch from Buck quieted him. Buck never even had to bring the idea up. She kissed the top of his head one night before heading home, leaving him to watch over the children, and said, "I'll make up the guest room for him. We can decorate it his way when he gets home."

*

Ezra had better manners and language than Sara did; or, for that matter, anyone Sara knew. And Sara could acknowledge that as survival mechanisms and defensive walls went, his affectations worked pretty amazingly. It was why they scared her. Sometimes she felt like they were in the same room, and he was miles away. Sara didn't like the feeling of being left behind.

Even more than that, though, she hated that he was clearly afraid of her. Buck, he was scared of losing, and Sara could empathize with that for eternity. Sara, he feared.

Unwilling to let things come to a head—she hadn't clawed her way into a predominantly male world by being timid—she asked Ezra, "What are your feelings on fancy cars?"

His posture shifted slightly, in a way Sara had learned meant he was interested, but didn't plan on admitting to anything. "Fine machinery. And yourself?"

Sara grinned. "I was thinking we should go for a ride."

*

Phil read her the riot act, but he loaned her Lola all the same, as she'd known he would. Ezra, to her utter delight, stared at Lola with nearly-undisguised attraction. He murmured something quietly to her as he climbed in. Sara took them out of the city, out to where they could put Lola through her paces.

When Sara was beginning to tire from the constant wind and motion, she found an Olive Garden and they stopped for lunch. Once they were tucking into their endless soups and salads, Ezra politely decimating the bread sticks, Sara asked, "Why'd you come with me, if you thought I was going to leave you here?"

Ezra stilled completely for less than a second. The kid was good. He started, "I'm certain I've no—"

Sara didn't bother to let him get through the denial. "Whenever the two of us go anywhere, you make sure you have what cash you've managed to pull together on you, at least two snacks, the fake ID you made the first week you came to live with us—impressive, by the way—and the pocket knife Buck got you."

"Never hurts to be prepared," Ezra said, with a fantastic veneer of calm.

Sara thought, for a moment, how brilliant he'd be as an undercover agent when he grew older. Suddenly, without even knowing it was coming, she found herself laughing. Too emotionally ground down to stop, she put her face in her hands and did her best to get it under control before she was sobbing. When she'd managed the task, if barely, she took a deep, shaky breath and looked up to where Ezra's eyes were wide, his expression uncertain. "Sara?"

Sara shook her head slightly. "It's part of my job description to be unafraid. I think I pursued it for that reason. Well, that, and the completely unsubtle psychological drive to find what is lost. But you and Buck? The two of you scare the fuck out of me."

Ezra frowned. "Ah. I, that is—"

"I fall asleep every night, terrified I'll wake up and you'll be gone and not only will I lose Buck to his need to find you, I will lose myself to forever wondering where you are, if you're okay. I…I genuinely don't know if I could survive that a second time. When my sister disappeared, I mean, it's one thing, with a sister. It's horrible and crushing, and perhaps made worse by parents who do not handle it at all, but a sibling can process past the event.

"The disappearance of a child? A child Buck and I have chosen, no less? I don't know, Ez." Quietly, she stressed, "I don't want to know."

Ezra's eyes were wide. He was obviously listening, at the very least. Sara pressed her advantage. "You don't owe me anything. I know that. But if you have any fondness for me, if only for not causing you harm, don't do that to me. To us."

Ezra blinked rapidly four times. Slowly, he asked, "Have any of the names Maude Standish, Mae Stanley, Stella Johnson, Cecelia Mason, Madeline Baker, Pauline Manning or Marie Prescott ever come to your attention in a case file?"

It was Sara's turn to blink. "Once or twice. She's not considered a big enough threat to be assigned as a case, but she's crossed enough state lines that she comes on the radar now and then. From the first name you gave, I take it you are related?"

"She is my mother," he said simply. "For a long while I was now and again useful to her."

Sara could only imagine. She was tempted to do something to bump up the conwoman's priority enough for her and Phil to catch the case. The ache of a child's infinite loyalty to a parent still echoing in Ezra's features, however, told Sara she never would. She took a breath. "For a woman who has been smart enough to keep from getting caught, she's rather dull when it comes to recognizing value, isn't she?"

Ezra cocked his head. Sara tried not to seem exasperated, but probably failed. "You're brave and loyal and smart. How many people do you know who have all three of those aspects to their personality?"

After a long moment, he looked directly at her and smiled just a touch. "A handful more than previously."

*

A few nights later, Sara awoke panicked, incapable of stopping herself from running across the hall to see that Ezra was still there, still safe. Ezra, who wasn't much good at sleeping through anything, spooked awake immediately. Sara said, "Sorry, sorry."

A second passed and Ezra slid from the bed to burrow into her arms. Sara hadn't known she was allowed to offer, but once he was there, she couldn't stop herself from clinging. She laughed uneasily. "I'm supposed to be the adult, here."

Ezra mumbled into her shoulder, "You haven't let me go. Good enough for me."