Work Text:
Buckleys ran, it’s what they did. They ran from their pasts and from their fears and from their problems and from themselves. Sometimes, they even ran from their dreams. Sometimes, they even ran from their hopes. It was a simple point of fact, a law of the universe on par with Newton’s three. An object at rest stayed at rest; every action had an equal and opposite reaction; Buckleys will always run away.
It started, perhaps, with Margaret and Phillip. Their son died, and with him their hearts, and they ran from it. They packed up house, moved towns, and did their best to erase his very existence. They ran away from Daniel’s death, and they ran from the pain of it and of his memory, and they ran from their savior son that didn’t manage to save their son.
(Sometimes, Buckleys could run away without actually running.)
It continued, definitely, with the (living) Buckley children. It continued with Buck, who ran from home and kept running down the coast and across time zones and over continents. Buck, who ran from job to job, who ran from town to town, never settling down until he finally did. It continued with Maddie, who ran from home before her brother ever could. Maddie, who ran from the possibility of her brother being hurt because of her. Maddie, who ran from her abusive husband. Maddie, who ran from the frightful reality of herself.
Maddie, who was running once again.
She had known that things were not okay for months, but she hadn’t truly let herself accept it. Maddie hid from it, because that was also a thing Buckleys did. She hid from it, and she hid it from everyone else, and she had Howie help her hide it. She quit her job, she went to the doctor, she took her medication, but she didn’t truly let herself accept the reality of, well, reality.
She was struggling, Maddie knew that, could not find the energy to deny it, and it made her feel like such a failure. She was struggling, and she was so ashamed of it. She could not bear the thought of everyone else knowing how much she was failing at being a mother. But it would be okay. She and Howie and Jee would get through this, and it would just be one of those dark times that they did not ever talk about again, like Howie’s stabbing and her time with Doug. They would get through this and it would be okay. They would be okay.
And then the blackout happened and she was left alone for five whole days.
And then she fell asleep while Jee was in the bath.
And then she nearly killed her daughter.
Maddie was running on too little sleep and too much panic when she started her flight. She packed her bags, recorded a message for Howie - “I’m sure that you’re confused, hurt, and probably really scared…” - and left Jee at the station. Leaving her at the station, and doing it when she did, had been a thought out choice. It meant that Jee-Yun would be safe (from her) but she could avoid seeing Howie in person. It was why she had called Evan as she drove out of town, rather than leave Jee with him.
It was not an easy conversation. She hadn’t expected it to be.
It was the first time she had called him, rather than the other way around, in perhaps months. Her brother had picked up immediately, as she had known he would. If she asked for it, her brother would do his best to give her the world.
“Hey, Mads,” he answered, sounding exhausted but so happy to hear from her. “I was just cleaning out-”
“Evan,” she cut him off. The word trembled in the air and there were tears gathering in her eyes.
“Maddie, what’s wrong?” The tired cheer from before was gone in an instant, her brother’s ever present anxiety blooming in its place.
“Yesterday, I was giving Jee a bath, and- I fell asleep, just for a moment…”
“Wait, Maddie, is Jee-?”
“She’s okay, she’s safe,” Maddie hurried to explain. “I took her to the doctor, they said she’s fine, but she’s not safe with me, Evan.”
“But Jee is safe, right?” he asked, and oh, she loved him so much. “What’s going on?”
“Jee is safe. I just need some time. Time to… To get better. To figure things out.” Maddie stifled a sob that threatened to escape, because if she started crying now she wouldn’t stop. “I need you to look after her and Chimney for me, okay?”
“Of course, but-”
“And promise me you won’t tell him I talked to you, okay? Promise me you won’t tell him about the doctor. You can’t tell anyone,” she begged, shame and fear creeping up the back of her throat. “Promise me, Evan.”
“I promise, I won’t tell anyone,” Buck told her, because he would do his best to give her the world, if only she asked. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Maddie, you said I wouldn’t be left behind again. You promised.” And God, she had, she remembered. Evan had been so afraid, after meeting that retired firefighter last year, so terrified of ending up like him. Of being left behind as everyone else moved on. She had wrapped her pinky around his own and promised that she would never leave him behind again.
But she was a first responder, or she had been, and she should have known better than to ever make a promise like that.
“I know.”
“Just- At least tell me where you’re going, please.”
“I can’t, Evan. I can’t,” she said, because she really couldn’t. She wasn’t going anywhere, she was only leaving. There was no running to, only running from. “But I’m coming back, okay? I’ll come back, I promise.”
“Pinky promise?” He asked in a voice much too small for how large her brother was, a voice that sounded so much like the little boy who crashed his bike so long ago, and she couldn’t hold back the tears any more.
“Pinky promise,” Maddie swore, and then hung up before her baby brother could hear her start to cry. Afterwards, on the shoulder of the road where she had pulled over as her body wracked with sobs, she turned her phone off and tossed it into the back seat. She knew Howie would be calling her soon, and she wasn’t sure if she had the strength to deny him if he asked her to come home.
It was better to prevent the possibility of temptation, rather than put Jee-Yun at risk because of her weakness.
Again.
When Maddie had started her flight, she had simply followed the path of least resistance. This meant that after leaving Jee at the station, she drove until she hit the coastline and then followed California 1 until she had to pull over in Oxnard for gas. With time and space between her and what she was running from, she could take a breath. With time and space, she realized that she needed to start running to somewhere, and not simply away from.
She also needed money.
Taking out the $20,000 - in cash - that she had gotten from Doug’s estate was what gave her the idea for where to go. After all, no one that knew her would think she’d willingly go back to Pennsylvania. And the irony of it all, of once running away from there to Los Angeles, only to run away from Los Angeles back to there, seemed fitting in a way.
Years ago, she had pointed her car west and started to drive.
Today, she pointed her car east and did the same.
“Hi. I’m sure that you’re confused, hurt, and probably really scared. I don’t know what to say. You don’t need to go to the police or come looking for me. I’m not in any danger, and no one is making me do this. But Jee is not safe with me. Not now, and maybe… I know that you’re gonna take really good care of her. And she’s better off without me. I love you. I love both of you. And I’m really sorry.”
Maddie didn’t go directly to Hershey, she didn’t get on the interstate and start driving, as she had done when she made this trip in reverse. She took scenic routes, stopping often to calm herself down and reassure herself that she was doing the right thing. Occasionally, she briefly toyed with the idea to turn her phone back on and take a picture of the sights she saw, but that was always accompanied by the all-consuming panic that was brought on by the thought of having to hear Howie’s voice, or Evan’s.
Of having to hear Howie's broken voice asking her to come home.
Or worse, of having to hear Howie’s voice telling her that she was doing the right thing.
She was doing the right thing, she knew that. It was safer for Jee, and it was better for Howie. But she wasn’t certain if she could handle it if someone else agreed with her. She wouldn’t be able to stay intact if someone else looked at her and said, “you’re right, she really is better off without you.” It would be the truth, it was the truth, but it would still hurt to hear coming from Howie’s sweet mouth.
At a rest stop in Utah, she pulled into a gas station to stretch her legs and get drinks and snacks. There, she saw a rack of postcards that reminded her so very much of the ones she had received from Evan years ago. She grabbed one before she even knew what she was doing. Sitting in the car, it took her a long, long time to figure out what to write.
(“Dear Evan, I saw this and thought of all the ones you sent to me…”)
She didn’t send it, but she tucked it safely away for when she had courage.
After that, every time she stopped in a new state, she grabbed a new postcard and wrote a new letter to her brother that would never be sent. Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. Her journey, marked out in cheap cardboard and tear-stained ink.
Perhaps she’d send them when she got to the end.
Perhaps she’d keep them, and give them to him when she was better.
It took her a couple of weeks to pull across the city limits for Hershey, Pennsylvania. The sun had fallen and the pressing scent of roasting peanuts hit her long before she drove pass the first Hershey Kiss shaped street lamp. Everything reminded her so much of the lonely years after Daniel’s death, with her parents drifting further and further away, and her brother left entirely dependent upon her. The years of being a child tasked with raising a child herself.
No wonder, she thought, that Doug had managed to sink his claws into her so easily. She had needed an escape, and he had offered her it, and she hadn’t thought to look the gift horse in the mouth when it was giving her what she thought she wanted. She had needed an escape, and hadn’t bothered to stop and wonder if what she was running to was in any way better than what she was running from.
Was she doing it again?
Muscle memory had her making familiar turns onto familiar streets past familiar houses. Before too long, much too quickly, she was pulling up in front of the house that was never a home. The porch light was off, but the living room lamps were on, with the television flickering in the window.
Nothing about it had changed, except for what time and age had weathered away. There was nothing new, nothing altered. Even the flowers planted along the sidewalk were the exact same as they had been when she left with Doug.
Why had she come here? What had she been expecting to do? To run into the comforting arms of her mother? Those arms hadn’t provided comfort since Daniel. This wasn’t where she wanted to be, this wasn’t going to be the sanctuary she needed. All that she’d get here was the voices in her head made manifest.
She made sure to grab a postcard before she left Hershey, to add to the others.
She also grabbed flowers, for the stop she made along the way. It seemed only fair to tell one brother about the other.
Hi, Evan. I’m back home in Hershey. I have no idea why I thought this would help. Maybe I came here because I didn’t think it would. Bolsaro would be so disappointed in me. I think he spent all our appointments disappointed in me. I’m disappointed in myself.
I’m doing this for Jee, I just have to remember that.
Love you, baby brother.
Maddie spent three days and two nights in Boston, simply wandering aimlessly. On the third night, sometime past midnight, she found herself standing in front of the Old North Church. It was the church, she could remember Evan telling her, that Paul Revere hung the lanterns from in warning of the British invasion.
“They don’t know for sure what happened to the lanterns,” he had told her, “but one is supposed to be in a private collection somewhere, and one was broken during a tour, and one is at the Concord Museum.”
“That’s three,” she had pointed out, but he had shrugged.
“Because one of them obviously wasn’t one of the actual lanterns. Or none of them are.” he’d replied. “It’s a mystery!”
There was a replica of the church back in Burbank. A postcard one year had included a picture of him standing in front of it, arms spread wider than his smile. There was a weird feeling, to be so far away from home and yet find such a solid connection to it.
For the first time in weeks, Maddie found the strength to turn her phone back on. Immediately, there was a storm of new notifications. Texts from Josh and May and Buck and Howie. A dozen missed calls from her brother, and a single voicemail. Dozens more missed calls from Howie, and about as many messages. And there were emails, too.
She checked the first one, and the breath froze in her lungs.
It was a video of Jee-Yun, crawling on a floor she did not recognize. Where was she? Where had Howie-
“Utah?” she gasped aloud, panic flaring in her stomach and threatening to make her vomit. No, no, no, this could not be happening. No. She had asked him to take care of her, she had told him he didn’t need to follow her. What was he doing? Why?
She called Evan without thinking, heedless of the late hour.
“Hello?” he’d answered, almost immediately. In the background, she thought she could hear Eddie grumbling.
“Evan?”
“Oh thank God, Maddie, are you-”
“Why is Chimney in Utah?” she interrupted him.
“He left town to look for you after he found out what happened with Jee. I left you a message…”
“You told him?” she demanded. No, why? Why had he done that? How could he do that to her? “You promised-”
“No, no, he figured it out on his own, your insurance sent an invoice.” And oh, of course they had. She hadn’t even thought about the insurance company. Stupid, so stupid. “How do you know he’s in Utah? Did you talk to him?”
“He emailed me a video of Jee crawling.”
“She’s crawling now?” His voice sounded weird. Did he not know? How could he not know?
“You didn’t know?”
“No, he’s- We’re not really talking right now. Maddie, please, just tell me where you are. I can come get you or I can tell Chimney-”
“No, Evan.”
“I just need to know that you’re safe.”
“I am safe,” she told him. The church bells rang the hour behind her. “I’m just not ready. Not yet. I’m sorry, I love you.”
She hung up, body shaking. No, no, this couldn’t- No. Howie was supposed to stay in Los Angeles with Jee, with their family. He was supposed to take care of her until it was safe for Maddie to be around her again. He wasn’t supposed to be ignoring her wishes like this, trucking their daughter across the country. He wasn’t supposed to be chasing after her, not when she wasn’t worth it. Not when she wasn’t safe for her daughter.
Her daughter, who was crawling now.
She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t-
This was all wrong.
She missed Jee, she missed her so much. And she missed Howie, and she missed Evan, and all their friends. She wanted to be home with them.
But it wasn’t safe for Jee to be around her.
But she wanted-
But it wasn’t-
Standing there, with the bells of the Old North Church ringing the lateness of the night, she thought she knew now what hitting rock bottom felt like.
“Third new message…”
“Hey Maddie, just calling you to say that everyone’s safe. Assuming you listen to this message. Assuming you watched the news coverage of it at all. Taylor wanted me to do an interview, but I just didn’t have it in me. But everyone’s safe, everyone’s okay. Eddie’s okay. I’m okay. I- I’m fine, I-”
“Message saved.”
Getting better, Maddie learned, was such a difficult task. After that night in Boston, with the distance between her and her daughter getting ever shorter, she found a clinic in the city that dealt specifically with situations like hers. With illnesses like hers. The doctors and nurses there were kind, but no-nonsense in a way that reminded her of Carla and Eddie’s grandmother. They gave her support, but they didn’t coddle her, and they didn’t let her lie to herself or hide or run away.
The therapist - Dr. Jensen - would ask why, and would keep asking it, until she came up with an answer that was closer to the truth than what she had ever admitted aloud before. It was hard, it was so very hard, and she hadn’t realized how strong her brother must have been to start his own journey. At the end of the required once-a-day sessions, she went back to her room feeling torn open and flayed. And then, the next day, she did it again.
When she had first checked herself in, they had taken her phone away. Standard procedure, she had been told, not that she had fought it very hard. Afterwards, a week or so later, they’d allowed her to have it again. She turned it on, once a week, and listened to the messages left. She would do this in one of her sessions, and it helped a little to calm the feeling of panic hearing their voices brought.
At the beginning of December, she played the message from Evan, asking her to be there for Christmas. And she wanted to be, she wanted to be there so very badly. For once, for the first time in so long, the thought of going back home didn’t fill her with shame and panic. For the first time in so very long, she didn’t want to run away or hide.
She called him back, right there during the session, with the doctor’s urging.
“Maddie?” he had breathed out. She could hear the sounds of the fire station behind him. “Is that really you?”
“It’s me,” she had told him. “What’s this surprise you have planned for Eddie?”
“I’m gonna marry him.”
“Yes, I know, but-”
“On Christmas. I’m gonna marry him.”
“You’re surprising him with a wedding?” she asked, eyes going teary. The doctor’s eyebrows went high across from her. “On Christmas?”
“On Christmas,” Evan repeated. “You’re… Are you gonna be there?”
“Of course I’ll be there,” she swore, meeting her doctor’s eyes, challenging them to deny her this. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to be there.”
Across from her, the therapist smiled. There was a hint of pride in it, even.
It took some finagling, but it was done. A nurse by the name of Ruth, an older lady who had no family of her own, flew over with her on Christmas Eve. And on Christmas day, she bawled like a baby as her brother said “I do.” Afterwards, between food and drinks and bad dancing, she gave him the postcards she had written, tied together in a neat red bow.
“I saw one in Utah, and I thought of all the ones you sent me,” she told him, and then yelped as he picked her up and swung her around.
Being accosted by a tipsy Hen claiming she had Howie on the phone had almost been enough to bring down her Christmas cheer. The fact that she had apparently unintentionally hung up on the man had been as amusing as it was bemusing. The thought of talking to him hadn’t filled her with the same panic as it had before. She had honestly been disappointed to find that he hadn’t been there. She had been heartbroken to realize that Jee-Yun had missed her uncles’ wedding.
She had been angry, the night before the wedding, when Athena and Bobby had told her what he had done.
(“You deserve to know what Howard did, Maddie,” the sergeant had said. Ruth had been with her, a constant shadow on this trip. “I would want to know, if it was Bobby.”
“Deserve to know what?” she had asked. And since when did she call him anything but Chimney?
Athena had simply pulled up the pictures on her phone, the evidence a splash of red that became purple and blacks as they progressed.)
The conversation had not been a pleasant one. It was the start of a necessary conversation, but it wasn’t one she wanted to have over the phone. It definitely wasn’t one she wanted to have over the phone while she celebrated Buck’s happily ever after. She would talk to Howie in Boston, she promised, and he promised to be there waiting.
The Monday after New Years, Maddie found herself in the reception area of the clinic, Jee-Yun in her arms for the first time in months. And for the first time in months, she wasn’t terrified of hurting her. Her baby had gotten so very big, but she had recognized her mother, and she had laughed, and Maddie’s heart felt lighter than ever before.
“Maddie, I’ve missed you so much,” Howie told her, eyes shining.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she said, and then bopped Jee’s nose. “And you.”
“When are we going home?” he asked, and she frowned at him.
“We?”
“You and me and-”
“Howie, no,” she interrupted. “Like I told you, like I’ve told you repeatedly, I need time. I’m here to get better, to be better. I’m here to be a better mom for Jee.”
“You’re a wonderful mother-”
“Howie.” He fell silent. “I was sick, I’m still sick. They diagnosed me with postpartum depression and gave me meds and we carried on as if everything was fine. It wasn’t. It wasn’t, Howie. And in my effort to run away from that, I cut myself off from all the support I’d built back home. Worse? You let me.”
“Maddie…”
“I meant what I said on the phone. I needed help getting better, and I didn’t get that from you. You enabled me, instead. You hid from the truth of it just as much as I did. Do you know how bad it could have gotten, Howie?”
“What happened with Jee-Yun wasn’t your fault.”
“I know it wasn’t my fault!” she snapped, and for the first time, she believed it 100%. “But that doesn’t change anything, Howie. That doesn’t change that our daughter could have died, because I needed help that I wasn’t getting.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’ll do better,” he said.
“We both will.”
They fell silent, watching as Jee played with Maddie’s fingers. It was the most peaceful she had felt with her daughter in… She didn’t know. Had she ever felt this at peace with her daughter in her arms? She had spent so many months looking forward to being a mother, even with the constant fear of becoming her own mother, and then she was finally born and it felt like it had all gone to hell.
“Why did you call Buck and not me?” Howie asked, breaking their peaceful silence.
“Because I made a promise to him that I would not leave him behind again,” she explained. “And I needed him to know that I wasn’t breaking that promise. Why did you punch my baby brother?”
She watched him chew on his lip, keeping his eyes focused on their daughter and not on her.
“Because I was upset,” he finally admitted, the words quiet but earth shattering. “I was upset that you had called him, and not me. I was upset that he had talked to you and hadn’t told me.”
“He didn’t tell you because I made him promise not to tell,” she said. “Something that I keep doing and need to stop, because all it does is hurt the people I love.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are. I also know that I told you I needed a better answer than that you were upset.” The words shook with the rage that Maddie felt, remembering those pictures. “I promised myself I would not be there again, Howard. I told you I would not be there again.”
“Maddie, I promise, I would never-”
“Damn right you wouldn’t, because I killed the last man who did,” she told him, and he flinched away from her. “But the reality is that you got angry and you punched someone you once claimed to love as a brother. And running from reality is what got us into this mess.”
“I’m sorry,” Howie said again. “Where do we go from here, Maddie? Because I love you and I don’t…”
“You’re going back home,” she answered. “You’re going to take our daughter back home, to be with her uncles and her cousin and her family, like she should have been this entire time. And then you’re going to do your best to rebuild each and every bridge you’ve burnt.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to stay here, for a little bit longer,” Maddie said, talking over his immediate protests. “And then I’ll come home, and we’ll work on getting better together, because I refuse to have Jee’s family be split apart because of our failings. But I’m here for me, Howard. I want to get better for myself. I want to get better for Jee. And I don’t care if you like it or not.”
And he didn’t, she could tell.
But it wasn’t a reality that he could run away from.