Chapter Text
It was Maddie that had found him.
In the aftermath of the fire truck explosion, the embolism, and then the tsunami, Buck finally hit a wall. He took some time to finally just sit around and try to get ahead of everything mentally, the nightmares especially. And that’s when he made a late night order online one night, straight from Japan. When it had arrived, he wasted no time in messing around with the new gaming system, and the new game that had come with it, on release day no less.
That night, he booted up the game and set up all of his information. He needed something to try to get out of his head, so he’d picked a game of swords.
Sword Art Online, to be exact.
When Maddie had arrived at his apartment two days later, after he hadn’t answered any of her text messages, she’d found him on his bed, Nervegear turned on and him trapped in what would be known as a Death Game.
A week passed, and there was no news as to how to free anyone from the game.
Buck lay in a hospital room, hooked up to nutrients and IVs and all sorts of wires to keep him alive. He still showed active brain activity, and his eyes continued moving, darting back and forth behind the glass of the Nervegear on his head. He didn’t react to outside stimulus, but he was still alive, which said a lot.
Maddie wasn’t one to pray, but she did. A lot. She’d sit by his bedside and just talk to him, about some of the calls she’d taken lately, as well as some of the 118’s. She’d play some of his favorite songs to try to make him wake up, or she’d complain about his questionable taste in music (which she firmly blamed on their parents, who still weren’t taking her calls).
Every night, she’d kiss the top of his head and whisper to him to dream well, and to come back to them soon.
Eddie only managed to keep Christopher away for about three weeks before his begging finally broke him.
The young boy didn’t quite understand why Buck wasn’t waking up. As a rule, no one that interacted with any of the 118’s children mentioned SAO or being trapped inside a video game. The experience was already traumatic enough for every one of them. They didn’t want to ruin one of their favorite pastimes for them (the 118’s own video game systems collecting dust in the corner of the station did not need to be mentioned).
As a reluctant Eddie let Chris into Buck’s room, he wondered for the tenth time if this was a bad idea. But Chris had been so distraught, especially when he woke from nightmares from the tsunami, and they hadn’t been able to reach out to the other man.
Chris carefully made his way to Buck’s beside and rested one of his hands on Buck’s lax one. “Bucky? Are you awake?” He asked, but received no answer. He turned to his father, who hadn’t managed to step in the room yet, trying to hide the tears that were already cascading silently down his face. “Dad? Can he hear us?”
“I think so, mijo. Why don’t you tell him about your day?” Eddie finally crossed the threshold and joined his son in their attempt at waking their best friend.
But at the end of their visit, Buck continued to sleep on.
Bobby and Athena made a point to spend at least one hour, three times a week at Buck’s bedside.
Every day passed by like the previous, with no reaction from the unconscious man. He was still alive, but he didn’t wake. As they moved towards the six month mark, decisions were being made about his apartment (lease not renewed by Maddie, furniture into a storage unit, valuables locked away at Bobby and Athena’s, while anything that Christopher wanted was brought to Eddie’s house for safekeeping) and about his job (extended to indefinite leave, regardless what the brass at the LAFD wanted).
Bobby made a point to not always talk about work when he came to visit. He instead told stories of his past, with Marcy, and Brook and Bobby Jr. He spoke of why he was terrified when he saw Buck under the ladder truck, and why he wanted to hold him back after the embolism. Finding him after the tsunami had almost convinced him that keeping him away was the best idea, until stories about a man looking for a little boy started to trickle in, all of them saying that the man would help people, ask about Christopher, then move on.
He had already decided to rescind his statements about Buck and let him know he would be back at the 118 when they got word of him being found unresponsive in his apartment. Bobby still didn’t know if the universe was trying to say something, or if it just had infinitely bad timing.
Athena didn’t say much, unless someone was with her. She kept him company, but she didn't want him to hear some of the horror stories of the day. When she did speak, it was stories of May and Harry’s latest adventures, making it a point to be positive.
At the end of every visit, both would give Buck a tight squeeze on his hand, silently telling him to come back to them.
Chimney was the first person who arrived to visit Buck on the one year mark of his coma.
Bobby had given the entire shift the day off, knowing that they would be distracted all day. Eddie was planning to bring Christopher after school, while Bobby would head over after Athena’s shift. Hen and Karen would spend the evening with him, and Maddie was on her way straight from the call center.
But Chimney had arrived first, and he took the time to look over Buck without any distraction. The blond man had lost a lot of weight and muscle mass, but he was still with them. His hands had become slimmer due to him not using them for a year. And of course, Buck’s hair had grown out, with limp curls cascading out of the gray headset still covering his head. Keeping him alive, but locked away.
Every day, Chim worried that one of Buck’s team of doctors was going to say something to Maddie to start thinking of stopping life support on Buck. As one of the few international victims of the Nervegear Incident, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his story relevant, when it should have been the opposite.
But it wasn’t the doctors that had been pressuring Maddie to let Buck go. Only days prior, the Buckley parents finally arrived in Los Angeles, and had immediately tried to have Buck pulled from life support. Thankfully, Maddie had put a stop to it, thanks to Buck’s iron clad living will, which had designated Maddie, Bobby, and Eddie as the only people allowed to make medical decisions. And even now, a year later, they and the rest of the 118 family were still firmly on the “Buck will wake up” side of the argument.
The Buckleys hadn’t exactly taken kindly to basically being shut out of the conversation and were currently weighing legal options. Just what Maddie needed, Chim privately and sarcastically thought to himself when he was alone. The team had immediately closed ranks against the Buckleys, making it pretty clear that Buck came first to the fire family, and they were not invited.
Chim quietly took one of Buck’s boney hands into his own. “You got to come back to us, Buckaroo,” he whispered, not wanting to shatter the delicate silence of the hospital room. “I can’t bury another brother. Please, find a way home.”
He didn’t get a response. He wasn’t expecting one at this point, but he wasn’t about to give up hope yet.
Hen was the only person in the room when they had what they called “the scare.”
She had walked in only minutes after Buck’s nurse had done his latest rounds. Hell, she hadn’t even cleared the doorway. Suddenly the heart rate monitor had gone haywire, showing him in distress. She’d been pushed out almost as quickly, with doctors and nurses rushing in.
It had only taken a second for them to discover that he wasn’t in danger (outside what danger he was already in, of course). Instead, one of the leads on his chest had been displaced when the nurse had finished with his check, which was at the same time as Buck was getting cleaned up. He wasn’t dying. Yet, anyway.
Hen had all but collapsed into the chair next to Buck when she was allowed in. It had been too close. They’d been too close to losing him, again.
She wasn’t looking forward to passing on this little moment to the rest of the team when she got to work later that night. They would be terrified, and Eddie would find some way to blame himself, again.
She leaned back in the chair and regarded Buck’s now-lanky profile. “We miss you so much, Buck.” She said the same thing every time. Just once, she wished it would wake him up.
Eddie was visiting again for the fourth time that week.
He’d snuck in to see Buck in between dropping Christopher off at school, where he was excelling so that he could tell Buck when he woke up, and going to his noon shift. It wasn’t something he normally did, but he just felt like he had to.
The older man had become closed off in the near two years since Buck was taken from them. Only his immediate family, Carla, and the family at the 118 could really break through his layers now. It wasn’t something that he liked and it wasn’t healthy, but he was working through it with Frank, twice a week. When he wasn’t playing hooky. Like now.
Eddie was just going to sit down when he saw it. Normally, he’d sit, then let his eyes look over his best friend’s body, making sure nothing was amiss, especially since the scare. But today, something was different.
Buck’s eyes were open.
It took a second for that simple difference to register in Eddie’s mind. Then he watched Buck blink once, twice, then slowly start to glance around a bit. When his blue eyes landed on Eddie, Buck’s face broke out into a small but brilliant smile.
“Buck.” Eddie’s voice was caught in his throat. He slowly leaned forward, hitting the call button to bring the nurse, before grasping his friend’s shaking hand. “Buck. Welcome home.”
Maybe playing hooky could be excused, just for today.
Christmas dinner at the firehouse was always a special time for the 118. Usually one or two people would organize the dinner and get as many of the family members of the teams’ working to be able to come and share a meal, as well as exchange some gifts.
The last two years’ Christmas dinners had of course still happened, though they had been very subdued. They’d all gotten together, but they left a chair empty for their fallen comrade. It was silently agreed upon that when he woke up, he’d get his chair back.
This year?
Though he was still dealing with occupational therapy, there was absolutely no way Buck was going to miss it.
The only people who knew that he was up to coming were Bobby and Maddie. It was meant to be a surprise to have him show up. The plan had been to have the immediate team come on the 26th to Eddie’s to celebrate the holiday. But this? This was better.
Buck had been awake from his almost two year coma for about eight weeks. He was cleared to resume most normal activity just three days prior, except for strength training to pass his certifications. Not just yet, but soon. In the new year, all bets were off.
Maddie had picked him up from Eddie’s not ten minutes after Carla collected Christopher, who did not want to leave. The near-preteen have been clingy since Buck woke up, not wanting to let him out of sight for more than sleep. Buck almost broke and let them in on the plan, but instead just promised that if he did go and give Eddie a hug for him, he’d get a surprise later on.
Maddie had laughed for the entire drive when Buck relayed that. A surprise was indeed coming, but not just for the youngest Diaz.
Buck had asked Maddie to go in first. He wanted to savor the moment finally walking back inside the 118. He’d made it a point to not stop by, even after he was released from in-patient care and had been cleared to do more than just move around the house. He wanted to earn his way back.
And he had.
As he stood outside the bay doors, just out of sight, he could hear the sound of everyone greeting Maddie. A smile touched his face, seeing his sister so ingrained with all of his friends, his family. The family that stuck by his bedside while he was fighting to get free as one of the Clearers inside SAO.
It had been a hard fought battle to get him to now, he reflected. First, his parents had made it known that he should be in their care (as they believed he was still an invalid), but that was taken care of with a strongly worded letter and phone call, where Buck may have yelled. A lot. And not a word of it was exactly in English. (The game was primarily in Japanese. Apparently no one had put it together that he had learned how to get by with the language.)
Then, the department questioned whether he’d be allowed or able to return to duty. Bobby had gone to bat for him on that, ensuring that Buck would be back as soon as he was cleared. The again was implied, but no one was cruel enough to actually say it out loud, thankfully. He also had to deal with setbacks in his recovery, as his leg did not want to cooperate initially. It took a good deal of time to focus just on that, let alone everything else.
But in the end, it was worth it.
He heard the sound inside die down a bit, so he chanced a look around the corner. Everyone was up in the loft, talking amongst themselves. No one was looking in the direction of the doors.
Buck took a deep breath and started walking forward, back into his first real home. Back to his family.
And if the sound of everyone calling his name as he came into view didn’t touch his heart, nothing in this world would. They were the reason he was strong enough to finally come home.