Chapter Text
It isn’t the first time that Lucy Chen wakes up strapped to a chair. That’s the problem.
Last time she was defiant, able to play it cool enough to deprive Caleb of the pleasure of seeing her panic or beg. She’d been inwardly proud of it, too, feeling brave and strong despite the situation. But back then she hadn’t known fear yet, not really, she hadn’t tasted the bitter certainty of her own death, hadn’t plunged into the void of unconsciousness unsure of whether she’d take another breath, hadn’t needed a couple of steady hands to restart her heart for her. Now, she does know, and the panic hits her like a tidal wave in a matter of seconds.
“No,” she sobs, voice raspy and dry. She tries to no avail to free her wrists, bound to her back, as tears spill down her cheeks. “No, no, no. Please. Not again. No.”
Someone calls her name. She doesn’t look up, and doesn’t stop struggling. “Lucy,” again. A small part of her brain, too small behind the ‘trapped wild animal’ instinct overtaking her, registers the voice is coming from behind her. She sobs, keeps pushing against the zip ties biting her wrists.
“Chen.”
It’s only then that the voice truly registers. The panic doesn’t subside but she clings to that voice like a lifeboat in a storm.
“Tim?” She should hate how small she sounds, how her voice trembles and cracks with terror, but she’s too relieved by his presence to care. “Tim.”
“I’m here,” he says, marvelously steady. “I’m right here, Chen. Are you alright?”
“W- what's happening? Why- where are we?” She cries.
“Lucy, are you alright?”
The urgency in his voice —bordering on fear— snaps her out of the spiral she’s falling into. Long enough to whisper a “yes,” quickly followed by an amendment, “I think so.”
There’s a shaky sigh behind her. Something shuffles and by the sound alone she can tell it’s him, and that he’s tense and uncomfortable. She ventures a look over her shoulder and only catches a glimpse of his back. He’s sitting back to back with her, tied up too. Trapped in the same hell. Her heart rate picks up the pace again. He can’t be here. He can’t die too. The possibility is too terrible to even fathom.
“Lucy, breathe,” he says, gently.
But she can’t. She can’t.
“Breathe, Chen,” he repeats, but this time it sounds like a command. The firmness of that tone is familiar to her like the softness of her pillows and the smell of her mother’s perfume. “You need to get your head straight, boot. I need you ready and alert, alright?”
“A- alright,” she manages, and despite the shakiness she’s proud of herself for it. “Alright,” she repeats.
“What do you remember?”
Lucy takes a couple of shaky breaths as she tries to think back.
“We- we were chasing a subject,” she starts, voice cracking with tears every few words. “There- there was an accident… no. No. They hit us. I- I couldn’t get out the door. Y- you got out. Pulled me out.” Lucy closed her eyes. She remembers the sound of him grunting (she’d been so afraid that he’d hurt his back again), the metal groaning against the strain, the shards of glass falling on the hot asphalt. She remembers his arms under her armpits, dragging her out of the wreck, a hand on her cheek as he asked if she was alright. A shadow behind him-
“Then, what?” He prompts.
“Somebody hit your head. I- I tried to get up, to help, but they- they sprayed something on my face. Some- some kind of narcotic or something. I- I don’t know. It all went black.”
“Yeah, that tracks. Lopez thought they might have been using something chemical to subdue their victims,” Tim says. He shifts again behind her and this time she can feel his elbow brush against her arm.
“Now what?” She asks, and the fact that she manages to sound flat and calm, like they are on a regular patrol together, should earn her some fucking award.
“Can’t see much of the room,” he says. “It’s too dark. You?”
“No windows that I can see,” she says. She tries to move her feet, tied to the chair’s legs. Barely manages to tap the floor. The metal surface she finds sends a quick bolt of recognition through her. “Metal. If I had to guess, I’d say some sort of- of container… oh god,” another sob wrecks through her body without warning.
She can’t do this. Not again. She can’t stay in here suffocating in the dark once more. There’s a scrapping sound behind her that she barely registers until something warm and firm finds her hands. Tim’s grip is awkward in this position, with their hands bound behind them, but his calloused fingers are firm and familiar and she grips him with so much desperation that it must hurt him. He doesn’t complain. He squeezes her hands back tightly.
“It’s alright, Lucy. It’s alright. I’m here. I’m right here. Everything is going to be fine,” he says.
And even though he is in no position to make such promises and even though Lucy knows that things are far from alright and even though she’d rather die alone and terrified than to die knowing he would too… Lucy wants to believe him.
They stay like this, holding each other as best as they can in the dark until footsteps approach from outside.
“Play sleep,” he whispers, letting go of her hand.
Mourning the loss of that contact, she does as she’s told. Drops her head forward and closes her eyes.
There’s a metallic creak to her left and she can feel light bathing the room from behind her eyelids. Heavy steps approach them. One, two, three men. Lucy is careful to keep her breathing even and her shoulders relaxed.
“Still out,” a man says, his voice deep and heavy like tar. “Told you not to use so much of that damn thing.”
“I ain’t the one that hit him with that bat,” replies a second man, his voice pitched high and nasal.
“Should’ve hit them harder if you asked me,” says the third man, slowly. “Could’ve rid the world of two cops at once.”
“Still could,” says the nasal guy, who in Lucy’s mind looks much like a weasel. He steps around them like a lion smelling its prey.
She hopes to god they can’t feel Tim tensing behind her.
“Don’t start again,” says tar-voice, in a tone that suggests they’ve argued about murdering them ad nauseam. “You heard the boss. We need them alive and awake if we wanna trade our way outta here. Their captain said there’d be no negotiation until proof of life. So no touching them until I say so.”
“Or what?” Asks the third one, voice calm and deliberate.
There is a click behind her, next to Tim, and Lucy begs her starts that the tar-voiced man isn’t stupid enough to shoot a round inside a sealed metal container. The ricochet alone would be mortal for anyone. Thankfully, after a tense pause filled with shifting weight and huffed breaths, the weasel groans:
“Fine. Whatever. Just let the sleeping beauties wake up so we can get the fuck out of here.”
He leaves the room, followed by the other two. The door slams behind them, plunging them back into darkness.
They don’t move for a while until it is clear that their breathings are the only ones in the room. Finally, she dares a whisper:
“Tim?”
“Still here,” he says, just as his fingers grip hers again to confirm it. She doesn’t let go.
Lucy leans her head all the way back until her skull finds the back of his neck. He presses against her softly. She can feel him sigh and deflate with something that might have been defeat or relief.
“They will find us,” he assured her.
“Yeah,” she murmurs, feeling two tears run down her temples, but as much as she trusts Tim, this time she has a hard time believing him.
It’d been him, after all, who she’d relied on before, the first time. He’d been the one to find her, as she’d known it would. If they are both stuck here… where will she put her faith? And, more importantly, who will be out there looking after him the way she would? She wishes she was out, just so she could make sure he is saved.
“Lucy,” Tim says after a while.
She makes a noise and moves her head a little, doesn’t want him to hear the tears in her voice.
“I will get you out of here.”
A warm calm spreads through her chest like a blanket. She finds the answers she was looking for. If they are both stuck here, it just means they will have to do what they’ve been doing since her first day at the job: they will save each other.
Lucy swallows the lump of tears in the back of her throat and is pleased when she manages to sound like herself again: “We are together. We’ll figure it out.”