Work Text:
when i was drowning, that’s when i could finally breathe
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Her hushed humming fills the silence of the dim lit living room as her foot gently pushes against the hardwood floor, the comfort of the rocking chair slowly lulling them both to sleep.
Greysen’s tears have soaked her skin and the fabric of her shirt from a nightmare plagued with images from yet another scary movie he insisted on watching with Tamara.
He’s three now and is pretty much the girl’s shadow — whatever Tamara does, Greysen does; wherever she goes, he follows — and it’s Lucy’s favorite thing except when she’s on one of her horror flick binges.
“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue,” She sings, her fingers brushing through his honey blonde curls and his eyelashes fluttering softly as his body fights the sleep it desperately craves, “And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”
“Mommy?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Do you have scary dreams, too?”
It’s why she was already awake when she heard him crying over the monitor. She’s been up for hours just sitting in the darkness because Tim has been working like a dog lately and she couldn’t find it in her heart to wake him.
She wonders how best to answer his question because she’s never been anything but honest with her children, but Greysen has yet to know why she still wakes most nights drenched in sweat with shaking hands searching for her husband in the dark.
It’s been years, but yes, she has scary dreams, too.
In its own irony, she finds comfort in feeling his little hand mindlessly wander under her shirt to rest on the skin of her rib cage where her date of death still resides. He’s asked about the tattoo before, but by the time she comes up with what is usually a pitiful answer, his attention is onto something else and she’s thankful for that because how in the hell is she supposed to explain her kidnapping to her toddler? But she knows one day he’ll wait for her answer.
One day, she’ll have to relive it moment by moment all over again. She’ll have to tell her son about the monster that hid in plain sight and still makes her question her instincts even though he’s buried six feet under the dirt.
“Yeah, baby. I do have scary dreams sometimes.” She says, “But I know that they’re just dreams and that when I wake up, I have my two favorite boys and my girl to keep me safe.”
“Mommy?”
“Yes, baby?”
“You keep me safe, too.”
Although he’s still so little, Greysen somehow always knows what to say to make her heart flutter.
“I’ll always keep you safe, my sweet boy.” She whispers into his cheek as she presses a few kisses there, squeezing him tighter against her chest, “Do you want to sleep in Mommy’s bed tonight?”
“With Kojo?”
“Well, we couldn’t just forget about Kojo, could we?” She jokes as she carefully brings herself to stand, moving wistfully to the master bedroom and quietly tiptoeing through the room, careful not to wake her husband from his deep sleep.
Still, her efforts prove no use as he stirs at the dip on her side of the bed, his warm hands instinctively reaching out for her, “Luce?”
“Sshh, go back to sleep, babe.”
Greysen wastes no time crawling out of her lap and into his father’s arms, nuzzling into the warmth of his broad chest, “Hi, Daddy.”
“Hey, bubba. Did you have a scary dream?”
“Yeah,” Greysen whispers through a yawn, “I didn’t like it.”
“I bet not. Do you want to talk about it?” Tim murmurs, rubbing the boy’s back in circles.
“Mommy was cryin’,” He starts, “And the bad guy trapped her…”
Lucy’s breath hitches, and her gaze locks on Tim’s dusty blues as their son recites nearly word for word what happened to her on that harrowing December day.
“...and ‘den Mommy went to sleep like Uncle Jackson went to sleep.”
She doesn’t realize she’s sobbing until Greysen is staring at her with wide eyes identical to those of his father’s as they well with tears, his impending exhaustion no longer present once he sees the pain written on her face.
She’s had plenty of panic attacks in front of Greysen, but they’re mostly over by the time he notices, but this time is different. Her chest is aching and her legs are trembling and her vision is blurry and it feels like she’s so deep under water, she doesn’t even see or hear a half-asleep Tamara whisk her brother out of the room kicking and screaming for his mother.
“Baby, just breathe.”
He’s guiding her away from where she’s backed into the wall and Tim’s lips are against her ear as he brings them both to the ground, his arms wrapping tightly around her shaking frame like a cocoon.
“Lucy, you have to let it out. Let out the breath, baby.”
A little after Greysen turned a year old, he’d caught an ear infection from another kid in his daycare class and it was hell. Three days of crying, fever, and no sleep for anyone in the Bradford household. They know children get sick all the time and it’s usually nothing to worry about, but of course the universe decided to test them as parents and give them a child that sometimes forgets to breathe when he cries.
Turns out, he gets it from his mom.
Her lips are turning a shade of blue, her breaths coming in short gasps like she’s back in the barrel sucking in what’s left of the oxygen. Her chest feels too tight and her throat is closing up and she’s trying desperately to breathe but the effort is futile.
“Boot.” Tim barks, his harsh tone laced with a panic she’s only ever heard him use on the job, “I need you to breathe right now or you’ll be on crossing guard duty for a month.”
The threat seems to do the trick because the color starts to return to her skin and slumps against him as her exhaustion gets the best of her, his embrace cradling her much like she had only minutes earlier with their son.
“Tim.” She whimpers, and he replies, “I know, baby.”
In a swift motion, he’s on his feet with her in his arms as he brisks over to the bed, pulling back the covers and crawling in to tuck her into the warmth of his side. She buries her head into the crook of his neck and her tears are still flowing from her eyes like a steady river, but her sobs have turned to sniffles and her kids and Kojo are in the doorway, silently asking if it’s okay to seek out the comfort only she’s able to give them.
She holds out her hand for them, waving them over to fill the empty space of the king sized bed. Tamara wraps her arms around her mom’s waist from behind and Tim scoots over to let Greysen squeeze in between them, the toddler snaking his tiny hand under her shirt to rest on her tattoo, as if to say ‘It’s time to let go.’
“Mommy?”
He’s looking up at her with those baby blues and she’s already melting, “Yes, baby?”
“Can I tell you the rest of my dream?”
She finds Tim watching her with a worried look, but she says ‘yes’ anyway.
“You were cryin’ and ‘den Daddy saved you.”
She’s never smiled before when the memories of her abduction haunt her — the tightness in her chest mimicking the harrowing minutes before she took her last breath in that barrel, the cuts that maimed her skin now scars reminding her of the innocence she’d lost — but right now, here in this bed with the loves of her life, she finds it difficult to ignore the tug on her lips.
Tim presses a kiss into the crown of her head as Greysen snuggles deeper into her and Tamara begins to drift off once more while Kojo blankets their feet, and it feels oddly like a switch has flipped because she can’t see Caleb’s face anymore, or hear Rosalind’s voice in the back of her mind, and her salty tears aren’t ones of sadness or grief for the woman she will never be again but instead, they are those of relief.
She’s free.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Can you finish your song?”
Tim is staring at her with admiration and she wonders if he’s always looked at her like that, and she reaches for his hand on her thigh, his steady grip like a promise that he’ll always come to save her, as she drowns in the tears that are washing her clean.
“Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me…”
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The buzzing of the tattoo gun doesn’t send her two steps back.
Tim’s holding her hand as silent tears slip from her eyes, not out of pain or fear, but because she’s closing a book she wished had never been written at all. The artist understands, and Lucy can see unshed emotion in her eyes, too.
She’s spent weeks with the idea in the back of her mind. Removing her date of death never seemed right for some reason, but she still finds it hard to look at it in the mirror and it’s exhausting fighting those demons.
She’d been putting away some of Tamara’s laundry one night and knocked over a stack of her sketchbooks on her dresser, a few of the loose drawings tumbling down to the floor at her feet.
Her daughter has always been talented, but Lucy will never not be in awe of the way Tamara can turn something so simple into a breathtaking piece of art.
‘libre comme un oiseau
free as a bird’
It was scribbled just above the bottom of the page underneath a sketch of a bird’s wing, and it took her less than five seconds to break down. Tamara finds her on the floor of her bedroom just staring at the artwork and she takes her pen to add, ‘For Mom.’
“Some memories, painful or not, never leave you. They become a part of you,” He says as he wipes away the smeared ink from Lucy’s skin, “Like salt in the sea, you carry them. You’ll grieve the person you used to be and fear to meet the person you’ll become because of it.”
Tim’s forehead is on hers, his thumb brushing away her tears as the other rubs the back of her hand, and with each stroke of the needles writing the epilogue to the story very few will ever know, she’s healing.
“But one day, you’ll wake up and find that you’ve outlived your pain.”
The buzzing is gone and the chilled air finally hits her skin. It doesn’t hurt. She doesn’t hurt.
And as she’s looking at it in the mirror, the feathers of the wing masquerading the date of the day that should’ve been her last, she whispers something to herself, her voice raw and full of emotion, and Tim strains himself to hear her, “What’d you say, Lu?”
“I’m free.”
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i think i am finally clean