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When Buck dies, his body has wilted with old age. His hair, white as new snow, has thinned, hanging only to his skull by stubbornness and gel both.
Death he embraces, he has not feared it in a long time – it hasn’t had a hold on him ever since he walked untouched by flames and sat back into himself, a second chance given at a life he was ready to throw away.
Deep in his heart too, he knows.
This is his time to leave this body for the last time. Death is a journey all must embark on and though he wandered once into its stream, he was always meant to sail its waters once more and see this odyssey to its completion.
He is at peace with his fate, he has lived many long years surrounded by love and family. Of regrets, he has few, and whatever little he had, they dissolved when his heart beat its final note.
He is ready for his essence to be given back to the universe, and he is ready to see her again.
“Hello my child.”
Nitya is as mesmerizing as he remembered, her skin dark as the cosmos was before light appeared and her eyes as bright as that very first light.
“Nitya,” he breathes out. “I knew you’d be there.”
“I told you I would, didn’t I?”
Her smile hides answers to all questions that have ever been asked but he only has one for her.
“Did I? Did I make you proud?”
“My dearest,” she tells him with her impossible gentleness, “I have always been proud of you and I always would have been, even if you had rendered yourself to your death all those years ago.”
Around them is nothing but the entirety of existence, the infinity of space and time laid bare. Buck cannot process it but his soul recognizes it, sings with it in harmony – it is made from it, of it. Both the universe and his soul are one and the same.
“So tell me, Evan Buckley,” Nitya says. “Tell me about your life.”
“Don’t you know already?” he asks. Surely, she must.
“I know all, I know nothing. I’ll know only what I’ll be told so tell me about this life of yours. I want to hear about the joys and the heartbreaks. Let me feel alive through you.”
He nods, his mind is swirling with memories with decades of very such things. He thinks about marrying Eddie and raising Christopher together, adopting Ophelia and creating a vibrant home for their beautiful family.
Over the course of his life, he has lost people, either by growing apart or by death. He recalls getting the call from Athena that one morning, telling him Bobby had suffered a heart attack and had not survived it.
He can still feel the sun that shone on his clammy skin as he stood, numbed by incredible pain, his two children at his side, watching the casket that held Eddie’s body being lowered into the ground.
Buck remembers the months spent at Chimney’s bedside as he struggled with the same cancer that took his mother’s life, all those months of fear.
But what he remembers too is the joy they all felt when Chim walked free from the hospital, weakened but cured – alive. He remembers everyone coming together when someone of their family passed and how despite the time that went on, their bond never wavered but only grew stronger and larger with more and more additions.
Yes there were pain and heartbreak and days and weeks of sorrow sunken so deep under his skin that all he wanted was to tear it away, but there wasn’t only just that.
“I was happy,” is what he finally answers with. “For the most part, I was so very happy. After you sent me back, I realized it was pointless to expect happiness to be the goal in itself. Happiness stems from our moments and so when I was happy, I cherished it. Three years ago, Eddie died. It broke me. I raged, I cried, but one day I woke up to find I had found peace in his passing, because I knew that one day, somehow, I’d find my way back to him.”
Eddie’s death had been quiet, a peaceful parting for the most gentle, caring man.
Silence stretches until it becomes a physical presence around them, warm and comforting like a blanket being draped around oneself when taking a nap, the contentment it provides noticed only unconsciously.
“Are you happy now?” Nitya asks.
“I’m not happy that I died,” he says with a smile honed by years and years of joy. “I’m happy that I lived for so long.”
“Child of mine,” she replies, moved and the universe moves with her, moving him as well until suddenly they are walking, aimless but not adrift. “How you make me proud. When I saw the fire inside of you being smothered to ashes by your pain, I despaired.”
It was a lifetime ago that he sat down in a hell of his making and waited for his heart to betray him one last time.
“But you burned,” she continues, “and you kept on burning for so long, not a fire that destroys but a fire that leads home, one that warms those it shines upon. I’ve helped many but not all kept on shining. You did.”
“I did, but not on my own.”
As they walk through the nothingness of the universe, all ages happen around them at once. Buck is idly aware of it like one may be aware of harmless bugs buzzing around on a summer day, creating a background noise that’s indistinguishable from one’s heartbeat.
He is part of the universe as much as he is the universe. Soon, he knows, he will dissolved into it and no longer be Evan Buckley – retired firefighter, widow, father of two, grandfather of four. He will be one molecule of water inside a forever ocean that’s ever changing and still always the same.
Soon, but not just yet.
“How are you?” he has to ask because he has always been the person to inquire about others’ well-being and not even death could change that.
“I exist beyond what you expect of someone’s state of mine, but I am fine. I am as I’ve always been.”
Buck is half-tempted to ask her about what she is. Is she truly the universe given form? Or is she its creator? The answer lies in him, he could never explain how but he knows that in a way, she is everything at once. She cannot be defined.
Would it matter anyway?
“There is something I want to do for you,” she adds. “Before I let you go for the last time.”
“You don’t have to do anything, you’ve done so much for me already.”
“I’m not doing anything out of obligation.”
And so he nods his agreement.
His wrinkled skin feels smooth, his tired joints ache no longer. He knows it’s because he has no bones left to inhabit. His elderly body is vacant, his spirit released back to where it came from.
“What did you have in mind?” he asks, his curiosity arisen.
Her eyes twinkling, supernovas of their own making.
“Shall we go on one last journey?”
He grins, “Lead the way.”
Everything parts to let them through and when the world reassembles before them, it takes no time for Buck to recognize the moment – he has just left it.
Paper skin on brittle bones, his aged body is laying in the hospice bed where Buck spent the last weeks of his life. In the end, Buck was asleep more than he was awake but every time he opened his eyes, it was to find someone else in the room with him.
Christopher is by his side, his bright eyes shining with anguish. He is holding Ophelia who has her head pressed against her brother’s side, her body shaken by quiet cries.
The sound of the heart monitor has been cut. The green light passing through the screen is still going but growing fainter and fainter.
“I love you, Pops,” Christopher whispers into the silence of the room.
Ophelia sobs out and holds closer onto Christopher. Her hair that’s usually so well-kept is a mess atop her head, whites a sharp contrast against the beautiful brown. They are both adults, both with children of their own, and still, in that moment, Buck can only see the two kids who’d bicker and fight over mindless things but who’d do anything to protect each other.
How he loves them. He doesn’t have the words to express how much he loves them.
“He’ll be with Dad,” Ophelia manages to say through her tears and her comment has Christopher’s breath catch on an unshout cry of grief.
They are not alone. They have each other, they have their families, and the family that their fathers made with people from their own little corner of Los Angeles.
Still, the reality is pressing on them.
They are about to become orphans.
“They’re such good kids,” Buck chokes.
“They’re kids no longer,” Nitya points out gently.
“They’ll always be kids to me.”
It doesn’t take long until the line on the monitor flattens entirely.
Buck has died but Buck is here still, in the room, watching his children mourn him.
It’s heartbreaking, he wishes so very badly that he could hold them one last time, that he could press a kiss upon their foreheads and tell them that everything would be alright and he was always going to be a part of them.
Whether it be the universe itself or Nitya hearing his silent prayer, the scene before them presses forward, time unraveling faster until they are standing in another room with many people all wearing formal black, but ties have been loosened and jackets lost.
“This is my funeral?”
“Yes,” Nitya answers. “People felt the need to stay together long after the ceremony was over. They’re grieving as one.”
Buck knows all the people in this room, they are his closest friends and family. People he loves the most, who have meant the most to him, and, as he’s delighted to find out, people who are laughing.
It’s a laughter burdened by grief but it still rings true as they recall stories of Buck’s life.
It’s his funeral and they are mourning him but they are celebrating his life too and the impact he’s had on them.
His gaze his drawn to his grandchildren and they look so small but as he looks at them he can see the image of the adult they will be growing into superposed before them.
And Christopher and Ophelia, they’re laughing too. They look tired but Ophelia gives a real smile as her wife Joelle brings her a glass of water, and Christopher looks content almost while he talks with Jee-Yun and a still alert Athena.
“This is why you showed me this moment, right?” Buck asks Nitya. “So I could see they would be alright?”
Nitya hums. When he turns to her, everything spins out of focus – lights, colors, sounds broken apart until they are made anew, and it’s the same people standing in this other tableau but the scene is much different.
“I remember this,” Buck exclaims. “It was after Maddie and Chimney moved to Oregon, and Eddie had just come back from a couple of weeks in Texas with the kids.”
He hadn’t been able to come with them, he isn’t sure why now. But he does remember this exact moment. Maddie and Chim had uprooted their life for Portland over a year prior, and it was the first time in a long time that they were all back together.
The only thing they set up to celebrate was their being together once again, and that’s what they did.
“Oh, what year is this?” he wonders aloud. “It must have been summer of ‘33, O had just graduated.”
“’34, Ophelia is back from her first year at MIT.”
“Right,” he says and laughs, breathless. “God, so much time has passed since then.”
So many people his younger self has yet to lose are mingling around, laughing and joking, enjoying the simplicity of being with those they love. Moments like these where they were all of them together had been too few, they all kept close but life pulled them to new and different places.
“Buck,” Bobby calls and both his younger and nether self turn to his once captain. “Come give me a hand with the barbecue.”
Smiling widely, the Buck of this time gives one last bop on the nose to Jay, Harry’s newborn son, who is snuggled comfortably in his grandfather’s arms. Michael snorts at his antics before turning his attention back to David and Karen.
“These were good times,” Buck says to Nitya. “If you’d asked me what memory I’d want to revisit, I wouldn’t have thought of this moment, but now that we’re here, I realize this was one of the happiest days of my life.”
“Why?”
His attention is still on the people before him, blissfully unaware of the ghosts talking next to them.
“Nothing grand happened, it was just – easy. In that very moment, everything was alright and we were happy and we were all together.”
And then he can’t speak because Eddie is there, and Eddie is alive and breathing and beautiful.
Buck does not have a heart anymore and yet it tumbles in his chest, cracks under his ribs with the weight of all that he feels. It’s Eddie, it’s the love of his life, and he’s bright, and Buck loves him.
Buck will love him when the universe turns to ashes, when light flickers out in the cosmos.
Even beyond eternity, Buck will love Eddie.
“Thank you,” he croaks when his voice comes back to him. “Thank you for giving me one last moment with him.”
“We have to go, child,” Nitya says. “There’s one last thing I want to show you before you leave.”
“Just– just give one more minute.”
“Just one,” she agrees.
He fills himself with the sight of all these people who have meant so much to him. He has loved every single one of them with all his heart and he knows that they loved him in return. That’s all that’s ever mattered. He may have grown up in a family of only himself and Maddie hidden in the shadow of a lost brother he’s never known, but both Buckley sibling grew to have a chosen family bigger than they ever could have dreamed of.
In that moment, Evan Buckley was surrounded by love and happiness, but in the darker moments that came after, even when he lost track of it, he was never alone and he was always loved.
And for the members of his family that are left, even the people who have yet to join it, it will be the same.
All of them, together, they have made something beautiful and enduring.
“We can go.”
This moment is no longer happening but it will never be gone.
Without having to be told, Buck knows that this is the last leg of their journey.
After this, Buck will go on to the next part of his existence.
He keeps his eyes closed just a beat longer than he ought to, wondering where Nitya has taken them but unwilling just yet to let go.
When he does, it’s to find himself, just a few years older than he was after he died and came back, alone in the 118 station.
“Oh.”
The truck is gone, the station is silent, and Buck knows why.
This is the day he left the 118.
Hen had already left when she graduated medical school, Bobby had been injured in the field some months prior and would retire soon, and Chimney had become captain in his place.
Buck had been given an opportunity at a station closer to his home and he’d taken it after much deliberation.
This exact moment is him walking away from the 118 station, no longer a member of its crew.
“I was so afraid,” he whispers. “I didn’t know if we’d still remain a family when we’d stopped working together.”
He had never forgotten about Red and on this day, memories of the old man had plagued his thoughts.
“You didn’t know what the future was made of,” Nitya says. “You say you’re afraid but I also see excitement in your eyes. You were ready for this new chapter. It was time.”
“It’s always scary to start something new, but you’re right. I was ready for it, and it was the right decision.”
He smiles, at peace with himself and the world.
“I wouldn’t change anything about my life, not the good and not even the bad. All of it made me, it brought me the people I love. We endure the pain because we know it won’t last. It’s never lasted, even the worst of it, it’s always lessened over time. Every burden is heavy but it’s lighter if you share it.”
The younger Buck of the past exhales heavily before squaring his shoulders and turning away, walking towards his future.
Buck remembers being this young and all the worries and fears he had, all the hopes and dreams he had too.
The station was an important place in his life. There, he meant his family, he met Eddie. He grew as a person and as a firefighter.
Here, he was forged.
But in the end, it’s just a place. It’s not the walls that are important, it’s what they mean.
“He doesn’t know all the things he’s gonna live,” Buck says, looking at where his past self disappeared. “It’s gonna be a wonderful life.”
“It was.”
And this is why they are here.
Both his moving on from the 118 and his dying are the same. It’s an ending, it’s a beginning.
Buck thought he would have no reservations about passing, that he would be absolutely ready for it and for what came after, but he wasn’t.
He realizes now that he was afraid of the unknown.
As he did all those years ago, he will march forward.
That’s the way life goes, you can’t go back in time but in your memories, and there is no point getting lost in them. There’s new things to be experienced, new memories to be made if only you go on.
Buck has lived many years. He has had his moments of doubts and darkness. He has dragged his feet at change, but one can’t resist the passage of time unless one desires to get crushed underneath the grinding of its wheels.
Buck moved with life, he danced with it.
He’s loved life, all of it.
And now it’s over but he’s not afraid anymore.
Nitya has shown him the truth once more.
“I’m ready.”
All around them disappears, the station, Earth, everything. They are standing in a place that exists beyond a human’s perception of it – it’s everything at once, full of light and dark as dusk, loud and silent both.
This is the end.
It’s his new beginning.
“Thank you for everything,” he tells Nitya one last time.
She, ageless and beautiful, smiles down at him. She has never seemed taller than she does now but she’s not towering over him, she is just larger than the universe for she holds it in her breast.
He closes his eyes when she bends down to press a gentle kiss to his forehead, and with the feel of her cool lips on his skin, he is given true peace.
If the universe is a neverending symphony, he is one note of it and he has just found its harmony.
“Goodbye, Evan Buckley.”
His essence is rendered back to the universe and what the universe does with it, Nitya does not know. This is the only knowledge that escapes her but perhaps it is better not to know. Nothing is written, nothing is made sure and possibilities are endless.
Like all before him and all after him, Evan Buckley is gone but he is forevermore.
Life never ends. It only changes.