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i.
The rattling at the base of her skull as the stadium shakes is familiar, almost. She’s felt the aftershocks of it before; when Rivers found the mound, and then twice more as the rotation spun out of control, but being in it is a different experience entirely. It almost feels like her body is coming apart at the seams– a creaking iron chain stretched between a ship and it’s anchor, in between two places at once until she materializes on the field instead of the dugout.
For the first time in five seasons, Lou picks up a bat and swings.
ii.
She paces the stands of the Firehouse before the gates open, trying to get rid of the nerves now that she’s back to playing every game. Once she finishes stretching, she sits in the dugout with her notebook.
Lou’s kept a log of every game since day one; precision in ink and the futures that follow. Today, Duffy will get swept away, Justice will dive in after him, and neither will return by the end. They’ll lose the game too, and she’ll hit a double play to end it. It’s a curse to know, she thinks, a curse to try.
iii.
Rivers gets shadowed. Rivers stays in Ohio.
She gets it, to an extent. 10 years is a long time to spend somewhere else; and if anyone knows the feeling of not wanting to return to somewhere you thought was home, it’s Lou. Lou, who’s been running since she could walk; Lou, who never stayed in one place too long until this. So she gets it, but it still hurts. And it’s not that they don’t love each other– It’s just… different. It’s been different for a while, she thinks.
So Rivers stays in Ohio, and Lou tries not to run.
iv.
She fields the out easily, but the moment the ball comes in contact it’s an electric shock; a deep burning sting, and the first responder in her immediately clocks blue discoloration as she shakes her hand to attempt to alleviate some of the pain.
She remembers meeting Silvaire, quaking in her boots in the shadow of Tillman. She remembers the fear too, all the way back in Season 7, what getting hit like this meant. It’s Day 28, all Lou can do is hope they get through the week without an eclipse.
She tosses the ball back to the mound.
v.
Lou “Louincide” Roseheart signs her name in messy cursive. Lou is perpetually short of breath, filled with big burning emotions running under her skin. Lou doesn’t fight anymore, but she remembers how she looked with bloody knuckles. Lou never meant to be a firefighter, but she is now, and has been for longer than anything else at this point.
Lou doesn’t pitch anymore. It doesn’t feel right with Rivers gone. (It never did.) Lou runs to home like she’s running for salvation, like if she’s fast enough she’ll absolve herself of something.
It never works, but god does she try.
vi.
There’s a field behind the Firehouse that she goes to sometimes. It reminds her of home; not Chicago, for all that it has become her home but home, the sprawling countrysides and rolling hills she conquered as a child.
As soon as Season 21 ends, she lies back in the grass, trying to find solace in the earth. Wanda comes and lies next to her at some point, both their eyes fixated at the broken sky.
I’m tired, Lou doesn’t say, though she wishes she does.
I know, Wanda doesn’t say, though she might have.
And still, the world spins.
vii.
When the stadium floods, Lou doesn’t resist, allowing the wave to pull her back out with it. She drifts in the immateria, letting it take her over, and she thinks.
She thinks of Swammy, who came back scattered, and Wes, who came back even more so; the disorientation and forgetfulness that reminded her of her wrestling days. She thinks of Justice, with her prowess and single-minded purpose, and what it must feel like to have a mission. She thinks of forgetting; how she would like not having to know.
When she lands on dry ground, it’s sooner than she’d like.
viii.
The window is small.
It catches Lou’s eye one morning, sitting above the sink in the kitchen; bright panes of blue and green and yellow amalgamated into a portrait. On sunny days it bathes the entire room in fractured colours of the ocean. On the ledge some things can always be found: a can of PBR, a keychain of a saxophone, rocks from the shore of the lake, and a Flermilab key–card.
Years from now, the name will be forgotten, just like the firefighters that came before them, but in one way or another, Goobie Ballson came home to rest.
ix.
Season 22 is a season of mourning, it quickly seems. It’s a triple hit in a course of 3 weeks; after Goobie, it’s Brock, then Yong… It’s enough to knock Lou off of her feet. She white-knuckles her way to Baltimore in a silent car filled with tense teammates and when
Justice catches her eye in the rearview mirror, she sees her own exhaustion reflected back at her.
The graveyard is by the harbour, and it’s the first time she’s seen Rivers in 9 months, 2 years for Edric. They’re 10 feet apart, but the distance feels like a lifetime.
x.
They announce the semi-centennial and she can’t help but laugh. For all of Lou’s inert desire to run, she’s spent longer here than anywhere else in her life, something closer to settled than she ever thought she’d be. Ike gives her a look, quirking his eyebrow into a question. She waves him off, feeling slightly hysterical.
“It’s just–We had no idea what we were signing up for, did we?”
He laughs. “Not really, no.”
“You think we’re ever getting out of this?”
“Maybe one day, if we’re lucky.”
“Yeah...” She doesn’t know what that would look like anymore. “Maybe.”
xi.
Ten seasons ago, Lou stood in the exact same position she does now and watched Josh step in front of Rivers and burn to the ground. Twenty seasons and forty-odd years ago, she watched Tyreek do the same for Justice. Some years before that, she arrived in Chicago to see it burning too.
Lou Roseheart has always been running from one fire to the next, she thinks. Running from regret, running from the grief, running from herself. Her heartbeat; her best companion, a frantic, steady drum.
It’s Day 79, and this time when the bases flood, she dives right in.
xii.
They burn out against the Lift in the wild card, everyone too exhausted to give it a proper shot. The election comes and goes, taking Wanda with it all the way to LA and leaving a cratered team in its wake. Justice is still in the shadows, Gita won’t stop crying, and Mcdowell is earnest. She barely recognizes her own team some days–a fog of new faces that leave her feeling out of place.
When she lies down in the field this time, it’s by herself. It’s time, she thinks, to learn how to live again.
To learn how to be.