Work Text:
Standing there outside the station, with her back against the car and her heart beating out of her chest, Lucy hoped that the IA interview was going in Tim’s favour.
That he’d come out of the station any minute and that he’d tell her that he still had his job, and that the charges/accusations and the investigation had been dropped, and then for the first time in four nearly five days they could go home and fall asleep in each other’s arms.
When she heard the door open, she turned to watch Tim walk out of the station and she fought to stay in one spot, wanting to immediately gravitate towards him.
“Come here.” Her voice was soft as she opened her arms and pulled him in, like he’d been lost out at sea, and she had finally found him. Finally brought him home.
She enveloped her body around his.
Trying everything she could to soothe him.
Rubbing his back, letting her hand cup the back of his head.
“How’d it go with IA?”
“…I lied. About everything. But I mean I saved my job right? Protected you and Lopez?” His voice was quiet and yet the emotions were spilling out with every word he spoke.
And Lucy didn’t know what to say. How to word some sort of response that would mean something. That would help Tim quiet his mind that she knew was probably racing at a million miles an hour.
Tim stepped out of the hug, and she watched him try and detach himself from her completely, but she reached for his hand. Wanting to make sure he wouldn’t disappear.
“It was an impossible situation. I would have done the same thing if I was in your place.”
Words came out but all she wanted to do was hold him.
That seemed like the only thing that would benefit him right now.
“You wouldn’t have been in my place.” He whispered. He couldn’t even bring himself to look Lucy in the eye. He felt like he’d failed her. Completely and utterly failed her.
To protect her.
To be truthful to her.
To love her in the way she deserved.
“You never would have put self interest over your team.” He didn’t want to sound bitter, but he did, and he watched the way Lucy’s face seemed to drop.
It was the realisation that he’d done something so unfathomable and unforgivable, he’d so very nearly cost Angela and Lucy their jobs…he’d put both of them in jeopardy.
He’d let Ray get to Lucy and Tamara.
Seeing Lucy after that, when she’d come to Angela’s house. Knowing that that man had been in her apartment. So close to her. It had made his skin crawl.
“You thought you could handle it. You were wrong. But you made it right so it’s fine.” The comforting tone she was trying so hard to keep up, was slipping. She was losing her resolve, and she was certain she was going to breakdown just from the way Tim radiated pain, from every single part of his body. It was wrapping around her. Suffocating her.
“Yeah. Yeah, I wish it was that easy.”
His voice wavered and he swallowed the lump every time it appeared.
“Lucy I just lied to two men I deeply respect, okay?” Two other people to add to the list of those he had betrayed and hurt. However unintentionally, however inadvertently.
“I just betrayed everything I thought was right about myself.”
Tim felt like he was a ghost of himself.
“Tim…” he cut her off and she tried desperately to pull him closer, so he took a step back.
He didn’t deserve her comfort and solace.
“No no, don’t. Let me finish, okay? This is very hard for me to say.”
If he didn’t get this out now. He never would. He owed Lucy so much but right now this was all he could give her.
“Okay.” Lucy whispered.
“Lucy I’ve been lying to myself for a long time. That’s clear to me now…and I can’t, I can’t just go back to the way things were. Not right now.”
It felt like a death sentence.
“…maybe never.”
She searched his eyes. For some sort of semblance of love. But all she saw was pain.
“Wait…are you breaking up with me?” Digesting that information, swallowing the lump in her throat, it felt like she was swallowing razor blades.
Her heart was no longer in her chest, no longer beating, as she waited for Tim to say something, anything to counteract her question.
“I’m sorry.”
You’re sorry?
“You don’t…you don’t get to do that…you don’t, you don’t get to lie to me and then use that as an excuse to leave me. Okay? That’s not okay.”
One breath in and she felt like her lungs were on fire.
“That’s not okay, what you’re doing-”
He interrupted her.
“I know. I know.”
So, she interrupted him.
“…is not okay.”
Every single fucking word hurt.
“I know.”
Tim had to do this now, he had to commit to it, or he would let Lucy take his hand and he’d let her drive him home.
“You are an incredible person.”
Shut up.
“No. No.”
Shut. Up.
“You’re incredible, okay?”
Shut the hell up!
“You deserve so much better.”
In no universe, did Lucy ever think that this would be the end point. The final product of Tim’s lies and deception. She never would have thought that she’d have to face a point in time, where they weren’t together.
“Oh my god.”
Lucy was angry. But she was heartbroken. And she was scared.
“That’s why I’m walking away.”
“Don’t do this. Why are you doing this. Why are you doing this?” Her voice trembled as she pushed against his hands, wanting to take a step backwards but also wanting him to pull her right back into his chest. Her fingers brushing the seams of his jacket as she tried to fight with herself not to hold on for dear life.
“I’m sorry.”
Is all he said.
All he could say as he cupped her cheeks.
His hands no longer made her feel safe. They stung. They branded her skin, and she fought not to pull away.
His lips against her forehead.
Were the last thing she’d have.
And she stood there.
Hollow and broken and alone.
As Tim walked away from her.
Across the parking lot, and just like the moon, when the sun rose, he disappeared.
Lucy felt her legs buckle, but she somehow managed to get into her car before every single sob she’d been holding in escaped.
Hammering her hands against her steering wheel until she collapsed against it.
Her fingers wrapped around her necklace, and she fought the urge to rip the chain from around her neck.
Just as her fingers tangled up in the chain tight enough, she let go. What was the point in breaking something else…all she did was unclasp it, and let it fall into the palm of her hand.
Taking away another part of Tim.
You deserve someone who’s worth the effort.
If we do this…and it doesn’t work…I’ll have ruined the most important relationship in my life.
It’s not worth the risk…
…unless it is.
All of their moments seemed to rush through her mind.
The smaller ones, the way they’d grown into each other. They’d learned to trust each other on a level they didn’t have with other people.
The bigger moments.
The pivotal moments.
That had ultimately pushed them to take the risk.
And now, now every single one, was tainted. Every single one was broken, and the shards of her memories were cutting into her.
Tim had just proven to her that he didn’t think they were worth the risk. Worth the effort. Worth anything.
And now she had to go home. Alone.
She would have to get used to that.
—
For a moment Lucy forgot that in the midst of the shit storm with Ray turning up at their apartment, she’d asked Tamara to stay with friends, pushing her to finalise the move, so when she unlocked the front door and pushed it open. She was met was complete and utter darkness.
And it hit her that she was alone.
Not in the sense that she didn’t know where Tim was.
She knew exactly where he was.
Because he had fucking broken up with her in the parking lot…and he’d walked away from her.
Again.
He’d slipped through her fingers, and all she had left of their relationship was the tattered shreds.
Every little noise made her jump, and the realisation that she didn’t feel safe in her apartment sunk in, she probably wouldn’t feel safe ever again, because that man had invited himself in.
Ray Watkins.
That had been the only piece of Tim’s past to infect her apartment. Because he hadn’t been able to say a damn word to her inside of these four walls.
And Lucy was sure that if she slept, she would dream of every instance where he took advantage and hurt her, or Tamara.
Tim wasn’t there to reassure her. Make her feel safe. Hold her in his arms so that he shielded her from every bad thought, every bad dream.
So, Lucy gently swung her legs over the edge of the bed and grabbed one of Tim’s duffels, and she opened it up on the bed, still drowning in just his shirt.
That, she would keep.
But every other item that Tim had brought to her apartment, in a way it had become their apartment, she took and stuffed into that duffel bag.
Every item of clothing.
His toothbrush.
She moved slowly from her bedroom to the living room.
Every book.
Every picture of them.
His favourite mugs.
His coffee flask.
His favourite jacket.
His keys.
The necklace he’d given her.
All of that went into his duffel.
And only when she felt like she was finished packing up his things, packing up Tim did she collapse on the couch.
Wrapping herself up in the throw.
Waiting for the first inkling of sun filtering through the windows so she could go to work.
Hoping that Tim would steer clear.
Leave her the hell alone.
She didn’t want to be anywhere near him right now.
Her sadness had soured and now it was bitter, and angry. That was all she felt.
Anger and bitterness and resentment.
Lucy pushed herself off of the couch and walked into the kitchen, reaching for one of her mugs, too high up to grasp properly, Tim always did that, and her fingertips barely touched it as she slid it closer to the edge of the shelf and then watched as it fell in slow motion and shattered.
Ceramic pieces like confetti scattered all over her floor.
Visually depicting the grief, she felt.
Her heart was shattered in the same way she knew that for sure.
Lucy almost walked over it barefoot. Not caring if it hurt her. If she got the shards in the soles of her feet. But she knelt down and started to pick them up.
Why couldn’t she pick up the pieces of them.
The tiny cuts in her hands served their purpose to ground her as she tried again to make herself some coffee.
Tim was gone.
Tamara was close to being gone.
If she was all alone. Surely people would be expecting her to wallow and disappear into her grief.
But she wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of being right.
Work was her only lifeline now, and if all she could do was throw herself into it to gain a sense of structure then that is exactly what she would do.
Lucy drank the coffee black, letting it scald her throat, and then she moved into her room, discarding Tim’s shirt and swapping it for some of her own clothes.
Getting ready without much care to hide the bags under her eyes or the blotchy mess of her face.
If people wanted to stare. They’d stare. She couldn’t care less.
Dropping Tim’s belongings by the door on her way out, she left the apartment the same way she’d come home earlier, in complete and utter darkness. In silence.
That was all she had left to wrap around her now.
••
Tamara moved out two days later, and after lots of tears and promises to keep in touch, and don’t be a stranger, and I won’t go if you ask me to stay, Lucy had watched her leave, and she’d sunk back into the aloneness.
It was like bleeding ink on a page, and she would avoid it and avoid it until she was surrounded.
Those nights were the worst.
When the darkness seemed so infinite.
With ghosts of her past hiding in her shadows.
Grey had put her on mandatory leave, for the rest of the week, and all Lucy had been able to do was lay in bed and sleep, or cry, or fight the urge to go to the liquor store just so she could drown her sorrows.
Being confined to her apartment; meant that when Angela came over on the Sunday, six days after Tim had fucking left her, she was there.
Yet Lucy didn’t want to move.
She didn’t have the strength to move out of the bed.
Angela had a key anyway.
And when she finally used it, Lucy made a point of being laid away from her open door.
“Lucy, are you awake?” Angela called out, not liking the way the apartment was uncharacteristically spotless.
Dark and empty. Curtains drawn. No lights on.
She noticed the duffel bag by the door, but right now all she was bothered about was Lucy.
Tim was in a state.
But Lucy, Lucy was faring worse off than Tim was in this whole situation.
At least Tim was talking to her and trying to work through his feelings.
Lucy had isolated herself, and she was slowly disappearing.
Angela stood in Lucy’s bedroom doorway.
“Lucy. I know you’re awake. I’m not stupid.”
Lucy turned then to face Angela.
“You obviously are stupid for coming in here and not just taking his stuff. It’s by the door. Just get out Angela.”
Lucy’s words hurt her, but Angela knew that she didn’t mean them.
That the pain she was feeling and going through right now was more than anything she could feel or imagine.
To lose Tim, in more ways than one, would have always been the thing that broke Lucy.
Angela had just never expected to see it.
She hadn’t prepared for it.
“Why don’t you come home with me? So you’re not on your own?” Angela ignored her previous comment asking her to leave and she dared to move a little further into her room.
Lucy almost accepted. Almost.
But she remembered all the memories that Angela’s house now held for her and Tim, and she recoiled.
“No. I would like you to respect my wishes and leave.” Lucy threw the covers off of herself and stood up, waiting for Angela to move out of her doorway.
She walked right over to Tim’s bag, picked it up and handed it to her.
Yanking the door wide open.
“Tell him it’s all in there. He has no reason to come back here.” Lucy kept her voice steady.
But she knew that as soon as Angela took that bag with her.
Tim would be gone from her apartment.
It would make it even more final.
Even more real.
Six days later and she was still holding onto a tiny sliver of hope that Tim would come back, but now that had been ripped to shreds.
Lucy didn’t give Angela chance to respond, she shut the door behind her as soon as she was out in the hallway, but the second she locked it her legs gave way and she fell to the floor and curled up.
Sobbing.
Loudly and painfully.
And Angela was left stood on the other side, listening to the anguish and the sheer gut-wrenching noises coming from Lucy.
It took her every ounce of strength to walk away, because she knew that nothing, she could do would make things better, she would only make things worse. The one person Lucy needed; she didn’t want anywhere near her, ever again.
•••
—one week later
The station atmosphere was heavy, and everyone seemed to be wading through it in the midst of Tim and Lucy’s break up.
Being careful not to say or do the wrong thing.
Angela was keeping an eye on Tim.
Nyla was keeping an eye on Lucy.
And the rest of them were just witnesses to the pain and turmoil that both people seemed to be drowning in.
It had been two whole weeks, and Aaron couldn’t stop the concern from seeping in as he looked over at one half of the broken relationship that they never would have thought would end.
Lucy had barely been back on the job for 5 days at this point after being forced to take mandatory leave, and yet Aaron didn’t recognise her. At all.
No smiles.
No laughter.
Not even a vague expression of having any sort of outward emotional connection to the world.
Lucy was gone. She was a ghost. She was dealing with it all in the worst way possible.
And pretty soon Aaron was certain she’d explode, and the fallout would be devastating.
“What the hell happened to Lucy?” Aaron turned to Celina as they both watched Lucy walk into the station. Hair falling out of her bun, her face scraped up, a split bloody lip, her uniform a mess.
“Every single high-risk call. Domestic. Robbery. Tripped alarm. Bar fight or just regular fight. She attaches herself to. Ever since…” Celina watched as Tim moved across the bullpen, just as Lucy had disappeared into the locker room.
“She’s going to get herself killed,” Aaron stood up, trying to figure out what the right thing to do was, “we need to tell someone.”
He wasn’t extremely close to Lucy, but it seemed like at this given moment she needed anyone at all fighting in her corner.
Celina tried to find Lopez or Harper knowing that it might be too much of a blow to go Grey straight away. But they were nowhere to be found.
Tim was the only person there.
“Looks like it’s just Tim…even though there’s the obvious elephant in the room, he could at least talk some sense into her. That’s the fifth time this week Lucy’s come back off patrol by lunch bruised and bleeding.” Aaron knew if they waited too long, they’d miss their chance, so he pushed himself off the desk and walked over to Tim.
“Sir. Officer Juarez and I have some concerns we wanted to talk to you about.”
Tim looked up from his desk, twisting his pen around and trying to figure out if he was in the mood.
He wasn’t.
“And why do you need to speak to me. Lopez, Harper and Grey are the higher ups. Go and talk to them about your concerns.”
He tried not to think about the fact that he was back on patrol now.
He’d lost Lucy, his rank, and all sense of respect for himself in one fell swoop.
“It’s about Lucy, sir.”
Aaron saying Lucy’s name, made him drop his pen.
“Officer Thorsen, may I remind you that discussing the personal matters of other officers is not at all appropriate.”
Aaron stood his ground, because someone needed to help Lucy. And the only person who could even remotely understand what she was going through right now was Tim. Because he was going through it too.
“She’s killing herself. I don’t care if you write me up for being inappropriate or unprofessional. Every single day this week she’s come off of patrol in the morning, and she’s bruised and beaten up. For five days I’ve watched her walk into this station looking like a ghost of herself. She refuses to ride with someone, she takes all the high-risk calls. One day she won’t walk back into the station. And you are the only one who she’ll listen to, I know that. I know you’re going through something. But she needs someone to talk some sense into her before she ends up in a body bag.”
Aaron’s words sunk in, deep, and he desperately tried to come up with some stupid excuse as to why he couldn’t.
But he had no retaliation.
Maybe he’d walked away from her.
But he hadn’t walked away from his feelings.
He would never stop loving Lucy, for as long as he was still breathing, his heart beating, he would love Lucy.
So, he stood up, “where is she?”
Tim followed Aaron’s line of sight.
The women’s locker room.
If Lucy wouldn’t listen to him, he’d just loop Grey in, but he had to give it a try.
“Thank you, Officer Thorsen.” Tim made sure he said something gratuitous before he abandoned his desk.
Walking across the bullpen, trying to figure out exactly what he was going to say to Lucy.
Maybe he should have knocked on the door.
But the risk of her refusing him entry was too high.
He’d probably face repercussions for his decision, but what was one more on top of everything else.
So, he pushed the door open, walking in, moving to the left of the first set of lockers, but he didn’t expect to see Lucy stood there with her back to him, in only her bra.
All the bruises.
Dark blues and greens and purples.
They littered her skin. Barely any untouched skin was visible.
Aaron hadn’t been exaggerating…
Her breathing was shallow, and he wondered if she’d broken a rib, at this point the sheer amount of bruising wouldn’t have dissuaded him from that idea.
“Lucy.”
She turned around so fast.
Her eyes wide as she tried to pull her T-shirt back on, wincing at every sudden heavy movement.
“What the hell? Get out. You can’t be in here.” Every single word was dripping with venom. But she was hollow inside, completely void of any emotion.
Her walls were fifty feet high.
Her face was blotchy and banged up, not to mention the bags under her eyes.
Her lip was split and bloody.
She was clearly in vast amounts of physical and mental pain.
All because of him.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Was the entirely wrong answer.
“Now you’re choosing to stay…” Lucy scoffed, “should I be honoured? Flattered? So completely fucking enamoured Tim? You’re choosing to be the hero now…just don’t. I’m not some damsel in distress, and I’m certainly not your concern anymore, you walked away, or did you forget that? Lucky you.”
Lucy barely managed to switch her T-shirt, and slam her locker closed.
Pulling a clean shirt on and buttoning it up.
“You’re not going back out on patrol. Lucy, you’re injured!” Tim watched her move around him; grabbing her duty belt as she reached for the door.
But he grabbed her wrist and stopped her thinking that she’d actually stay and hear him out...
Until Lucy yanked her hand away.
“Do. Not. Touch me. You lost that right when you threw us, and our relationship down the fucking drain, like we were nothing but a chore, a stupid little fling that was so easily disposed of.”
Tim stood there. He didn’t have anything to say that would make it better. He couldn’t make it better when he was the one who’d made Lucy fall apart.
The door slammed in front of him and he snapped back to reality.
Everything in him was screaming at him to run after her.
But Lucy didn’t want his help, she didn’t even want to be in the same vicinity as him, so he opened the locker room door and let it close gently behind him before he walked back across the bullpen and sunk down at his desk.
Making the wrong decision, yet again, for Lucy’s sake.
Letting her go.
••
—three weeks later
Lucy didn’t stop putting herself in dangerous situations, but after Tim had cornered her in the locker room weeks ago, she made sure she approached things in a different way.
She rode with someone on various occasions so no one could accuse her of purposely isolating herself on the job.
She made sure the paperwork she provided was spotless. So, every report she gave matched up to her partners.
And she gave no one any reason to believe that she wasn’t fit for patrol.
Getting hurt was part of the job, and sometimes you had to walk towards the danger head on.
And Lucy used that as a scapegoat.
Yet she still came home bruised and broken and in pain.
Healing from a broken rib, and a near miss of a punctured lung, made her tone things down, but she made sure that every night after work she ended up at Las Torres or any other bar on that street, and she dampened her pain with whiskey or tequila whatever she was fancying when she turned up.
The façade she had managed to put up, was fooling everyone.
And Lucy wasn’t sure whether she should be impressed with herself or scared of herself.
But after three or four drinks. It didn’t matter very much.
Drinking had never been her coping mechanism.
Tim had been her coping mechanism.
But he was gone.
He had left her.
Deciding for them both that they weren’t worth the risk, weren’t worth the effort.
So why should she even try to pretend that she was okay?
She didn’t owe anyone anything, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to pretend that this wasn’t happening.
That it hadn’t happened.
That she was okay with being abandoned and lied to and treated like nothing but an incompetent child who didn’t deserve to be kept in the loop.
Tim had broken her down and he had torn her heart to shreds, and he’d had the audacity to give it back to her and try and apologise.
Their relationship had been everything to her.
And in the end, it had been nothing to him.
At this point, it was clear to her that there was no coming back from this.
Tim could grovel and he could apologise, and he could tell her over and over again that he loved her. That he’d never stopped loving her, and she didn’t think she’d ever be able to believe him.
How could she trust him again?
Let him back in her life when she couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t just walk out again when the going got tough…
Lucy was coming back from the evidence room when she bumped into someone.
And she looked up ready to apologise, but then her eyes were on him, and she stopped.
Meeting his gaze. Those blue, wounded eyes. It made her feel sick.
All of the air in her lungs was replaced with water and she was instantly drowning.
“…hey.”
Lucy shook her head.
“Just don’t. We don’t do this anymore,” gesturing between them, “no need for awkward conversations.” She wanted to say so much more, but she didn’t.
She couldn’t.
So, she took a deep breath, and she turned around and walked away.
Tim didn’t move though.
He watched Lucy walk away; his hands clasped around her necklace that he carried with him everywhere now.
It stung, that she’d given it back to him, but he found comfort in it now, that he had a piece of her, no matter how small.
Tim couldn’t function, as much as he tried, because every day he saw her, he saw her come back from patrol, hurt and bruised and broken.
No one was doing anything because she was ‘following proper procedure’ and there was nothing he could do but continue to see her being ground down, whilst he was hanging on by a thread, knowing that one day there was every chance she wouldn’t walk back into the station after a call.
He’d lose her for good.
But he couldn’t get her back, he’d lost that privilege, he’d fucked everything up and now he had to live with the consequences.
The pain.
The heartache.
The loss.
The residual love in his chest for Lucy. The past love, the present love, and all the love he should have been able to give her in the future.
Maybe it was for the best, or maybe it was for the worst.
But Tim needed to walk away, the same way he had done in that parking lot that night.
Lucy needed him to stop hurting her, she needed to be given the opportunity to move on.
To give her that, may very well just about kill him, but it was better than watching her kill herself.
If someone had to go, he would, if it meant Lucy could move on.
He loved her. So much. But he loved her enough to let her go. Completely.
•••
—
When Nyla cornered her in the locker room as the fifth week came and went and she entered the sixth week of having lost everything, she tried to maintain her neutral façade.
She’d gotten good at it lately.
“Hey,” the fakest smile graced her lips as she buckled her belt and started buttoning her shirt up, “do you need help on a case or?”
Nyla was sat on the bench. Watching her every move.
Observing her.
And it made her a little uncomfortable.
“I’m trying to gauge your state of mind, because I have a question to ask you. But if I think for a second that you’re not in the right frame of mind for what I’m going to say then I’ll pull the plug.”
So, a UC Op.
Lucy knew that that was why Nyla was here.
Her use of the very concise language, and how she was there to observe her had given her play away.
“Ask away.” Lucy said, focusing on shoving the last hair pin into her bun.
Watching her sunken expression in the mirror.
Practicing her best ‘fake’ smile.
“We have an operation that needs an experienced UC. And I think you’re perfect for the job. It’ll be a month or two at most. Possibly drugs and trafficking involved. One of the CI’s needed to be pulled out so you’d need to go under tonight. But I am not putting you in there if you’re going to implode.” Nyla stood up then, walking over to Lucy’s locker as she pushed it shut.
Looking at her straight in the eyes.
Evaluating every time her gaze flickered.
Every crease in her forehead.
Every twitch of her mouth.
But Lucy held her nerve.
And when she saw Nyla back off, she knew she’d passed her test.
“I won’t let you down.” Lucy repeated words she’d said so long ago.
During her first op.
When things had been so different but so much better; maybe she hadn’t been with Tim, but she’d had him at least.
“I never have that doubt Lucy, come on let’s get you briefed and then you can square your personal life away and we’ll get you under.”
Lucy tried not to think of the immense pain in her chest.
Nyla’s last request would be easy.
She didn’t have any sort of personal life to square away this time…
—
When Tim walked into the station the next morning, he did the same as he always did, scoured the place for Lucy.
If he saw her once before he started his shift and once before he went home, it helped him sleep better.
But he tried to find her, and he couldn’t, and just as he was about to head back to his desk he bumped into Nyla.
“Hey Tim, how’s it going?”
It wasn’t like her to make polite conversation so early in the morning.
Something was up.
“Good yeah. Where’s Lucy?” He got straight to the point because he really wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush.
Nyla stiffened at the question, remembering Lucy’s final request to her before she went under.
Make me a promise Nyla. Don’t tell Tim. It’s not his business anymore and he’ll just try and make you pull me out. I don’t want him to know and if you’re my friend and you care about me, you’ll respect that.
“Out of the station today, I needed her to run down some leads for me and she left early.”
Nyla was lying to him. Right through her teeth.
“Okay then. If you won’t tell me. I’ll ask Grey or Angela.” He could feel the anger and the fear mixing together like a deadly concoction in his veins.
Travelling to his heart.
Slowly but surely, it would kill him.
“You know you’re not together anymore? You have no jurisdiction over what she does, not that you did when you were together because she’s her own person.” Tim needed to realise that Lucy was moving on, and he needed to do the same.
The way they’d ended things was so raw and so volatile, and neither of them were going to be able to heal from that in such a short space of time.
But Tim was holding himself back from healing by trying to hold onto Lucy.
“Thanks for the reminder,” Tim quipped, “but I still have every right to go ask Grey or Angela or anyone who’ll give me a straight answer. Someone will tell me.”
Tim started to walk away, done with the conversation, but Nyla grabbed his arm.
“She went under last night, on an op. It may last a month, or it could be longer. I suggest that you take this time to figure your shit out so that when she comes back that you’ll both be able to move past this. You lost her Tim, and I know that you thought breaking up with her was the right decision in the moment, and I don’t know the ins and outs of what happened. That’s not my business. But I care about both of you, and I don’t want to keep seeing you tear yourselves apart because neither of you are letting the other one move on.”
Tim didn’t care about Nyla was saying, all he had focused on was ‘she went under last night on an op’.
A month. Maybe longer…
Her recklessness hadn’t stopped.
So why would that be the case now?
But if Tim said something now, he’d just give Nyla a reason to pull Lucy out.
And he had to trust her that she wouldn’t do something stupid on an op.
He had to trust her…he had to let her go and hope that she came back alive.
“Okay.” Tim didn’t have any other words, except that one.
He didn’t trust himself to say anything else.
“Don’t ask me for updates. She doesn’t want that, and I’ve already betrayed her trust once. I’m sorry Tim. But I made her a promise. See you later.” Nyla walked down the hallway, and Tim walked to his desk.
Fishing Lucy’s necklace out of his breast pocket.
Letting it untangle and slowly swing as he held it in front of him.
It was all he’d have of her until she came back.
If she came back.
And he was going to hold on tight to it, the way he should’ve held on tight to Lucy instead of letting her go.
•••
٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ- week one ——
Gaining trust was always the hardest part, especially when she’d been thrust into this role so quickly without much time for preparation.
Even though it hadn’t been all that difficult to remember the information she’d needed, what she’d realised the most was that she found that she’d stepped into Nova’s personality with an ease that felt too much like a betrayal towards her past self.
Like assuming Nova’s identity, had given her the permission she needed to truly leave everything else behind.
Tim, their relationship, the pain and the suffering.
But she was a little bit scared that when it came down to it, when she went home, that she wouldn’t want to remember it all.
It would feel like she was reopening a wound that she needed to heal so badly.
So, if she could, she’d make this last as long as possible so that when she did eventually finish the op, it wouldn’t hurt as much to go back.
Building up trust was the first step.
And she knew that the rest would follow.
••
٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ- week four ——
Lucy had lost herself, completely, there wasn’t a clear line where Nova started and ended anymore.
There was no Lucy.
She didn’t even let herself go back to herself when she slept, when she was out of sight of everyone else.
Her check-ins were brief.
Nyla always tried to make more of an effort with conversation.
Lucy would sit inside the car, and listen to her talk, update her on everything she needed to know, and make a swift exit.
She never mentioned Tim and she was glad about that.
But deep down, down in her core, she felt that ripple. That small, burning sensation. The love she had tried so hard to stamp out. It was still there begging to her reignite the flame.
She wouldn’t.
Ever again.
If she did. The fire would consume her, and she knew that she wouldn’t have the strength to put herself out for a second time. She’d barely made it out alive the first time.
“Yo Nova, are you coming or what?”
She shook off her thoughts and dropped the piece of laundry she’d been folding.
Turning to Felix, Rico Harris’s younger brother.
And the brains behind the drugs and trafficking operation she was infiltrating.
Normally it was always the other way around, but Felix ran things and Rico followed every order.
“Chill out man, you wanna fold my laundry for me?” She held the basket up and offered it to him.
“No thanks chica, but you can fold mine next time.”
His childish nature had helped Lucy gain his trust first. Therefore, gaining Rico’s trust too.
But she had seen first hand how nasty he could be. She’d witnessed his punishments.
And she was working on staying on his good side.
Even if she didn’t care about her life anymore, she didn’t want to go out that way.
“Forget the laundry. We’ve got a party to gatecrash.” Felix wouldn’t let her stall any longer, and she knew it would mean a missed check-in but part of her was losing the want and desire to care.
She was slipping and she knew that if she wasn’t careful, then she would end up fucking things up, to the point of no return.
•
٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ- week seven ——
Somewhere between week four and six, Lucy had dropped the ball.
But she’d put Nyla and everyone else involved in a difficult position because they couldn’t pull her out without risking losing Felix and Rico altogether.
No op is worth your life.
Except Lucy was starting to think that the only way she was making it out of this one was in a body bag.
She didn’t care.
Somewhere along the way, she’d let Nova and Lucy dissolve into one person, and she was living through both of them.
The heartache from losing Tim.
The need to finish the job.
No matter the cost.
“You’re going to tell us who the fuck you are, and who you’re working for. Right now.”
That’s why she’d ended up in the position she was currently in.
Tied to a chair, where she had been for maybe 12 hours already. Sweaty, and bruised, bloody and broken, and barely hanging on. Sleep deprived and mentally exhausted she wasn’t sure she wanted to give them a reason to keep her alive for much longer.
With Felix and Rico taking it in turns to torture her.
Starting out small, she had held her nerve, but as they started moving on to the heavier side of things, she could feel her resolve weakening.
All because she’d tried to sneak out, after nearly missing her check-in.
They’d found her burner phone.
They knew she wasn’t ‘Nova’, but she hadn’t given in, not yet.
She was close though…
“If you don’t start giving us some answers, we’ll start giving you no choice.”
Felix had turned nasty in an instant, and he made her skin crawl.
The way he looked at her.
How his fingers moved over her bare skin.
But he was the least of her worries when Rico stepped back into the room with a plethora of tools.
The shock stick would be the least painful. It always had seemed to be the weakest in his arsenal, from the other torture sessions she’d been forced to sit in on, it was the weapon he used the least.
But the knives and the array of needles he had; she was certain would do more damage than she could handle.
“Fuck you both.” She spat, but the last of her fight left her when she felt Felix move her hair out of the way of her ear.
“That can be arranged.”
His hot breath against her ear reminded her of Caleb.
And in turn it brought so many memories from that moment in her life to the forefront of her mind, and Tim was intertwined with those memories.
Of course he was.
“I’m a cop.” She whispered.
Dropping herself in it had been the only thing she could think of to distract them both from that frame of mind.
Rico tilted her chin up.
“Say it louder sweetheart.”
The needle was slowly being dragged up her forearm.
Whatever concoction was inside it wasn’t going to be good.
“I’m a cop. With the LAPD. The whole time I’ve been with you, I’ve been feeding back information to my handler. So, they’ll be on you faster than you can think of an escape plan. And that’s on you because I missed my check-in last night.”
Rico squeezed her arm and pushed the needle into her vein, and she cried out in pain.
But the slap from Felix silenced her.
“Well, we’ll be ready for them when they come, don’t you worry.” Rico threw the needle to the floor and then she tried to turn away as he stroked her face.
“You’ve been so much fun to play with.” He grinned.
Lucy could feel herself getting dizzy, and if she knew that whatever she’d been injected with would kill her she would have succumbed to the darkness that was pulling her under.
But she had to stay awake. No matter what.
Or the unthinkable would happen and she would never recover from that.
—
End of shift couldn’t have come quick enough but as Tim stepped out of the locker room, he was greeted with chaos, and he moved through the frantic people and found Nyla.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
She looked at him.
With one single shift in her demeanour, Tim felt his stomach drop.
Lucy.
“She missed her check-in. She’s been AWOL for thirteen hours. We may have a location but we need all hands on deck. I know she won’t want you there, but will you come anyway, we need all the help we can get.”
Tim was reminded of when Lucy had missed her check in last time, during her first operation.
He was certain she was dead.
But Nyla had reassured him.
For some reason, he wasn’t sure that he’d get that from her right now.
“You don’t even have to ask.”
Tim may have been trying to move on, but the second Lucy needed him for anything, he would drop everything in a heartbeat.
Moving on didn’t meant he’d stopped loving her.
He never would.
Tim took the vest, and he made sure his badge was on his belt.
If he was going to get Lucy back, then he wanted to be able to tell her that he wasn’t going to let her go again.
He was going to fight for them in the way that he should have in the beginning.
—
Maybe another hour had passed but she wasn’t sure, she was groggy, but she hadn’t actually lost consciousness.
Fighting every instinct to give up.
Even though she wanted to and wanting to die seemed to outweigh the need to live.
“Lucy, Lucy…”
Rico’s voice was singing her voice in her ear, and she jolted up.
“Officer Lucy Chen, you’re too easy to find. And all of your friends are too. Felix and I are going to have a great time with everyone.”
Now would be a good time to make an appearance Nyla.
She needed them to be looking for her. To be on their way.
All the while Felix was distracted, and Rico was more bothered with her, she was trying to get out of her restraints while she still had some energy.
“So, what, you’ll both leave me here alone, and then what? Expect me to still be here when you get back. I’m a cop for gods sake, do you think this is my first rodeo?”
Lucy finally got her hands free, showing Rico for a second before she punched him in the throat, and thanked her lucky stars that they hadn’t bothered to tie up her feet too.
There wasn’t time to be unsteady on her feet because Rico was lunging for her again and she picked up the chair and used it to push him back and block his mistimed punches.
He couldn’t fight in the same way Felix could with his hands, so she was at an advantage.
That was until she took her eye off of Felix for a second, and then she felt something wrap around her throat.
She dropped the chair.
Gripping the wire that was cutting into her skin, choking her, and she struggled.
She had one well timed blow to land with her foot. Or she’d end up dead.
Her grip began to loosen, and she knew that if she didn’t do it now, she’d miss the chance altogether.
So, she kicked her foot backward, hoping she hit Felix’s knee, and when he screamed out in pain and loosened the wire, she was able to break free.
Stumbling across the room until Rico caught her.
But she hadn’t realised that he’d picked up a knife in between the commotion of fighting with Felix.
And he pushed it so deep into her chest that she didn’t feel anything. Not even when he pulled it out.
Lucy dropped to her knees just as the door was blown off its hinges, and she fought to stay upright. Looking for a familiar face in the smoke.
Not sure how she was supposed to break the news, that they were too late.
The one familiar face she hadn’t wanted to see was his, and he moved towards her before she could even register that he was real.
“Hi, hey. We’ve got you now we’re going to take you home.” Tim’s voice sounded like it was far away, too far away to be real.
He hadn’t clocked that she’d been stabbed.
He was just looking at her.
“I don’t want you.” Lucy shook her head, trying to move away from him.
But she was losing blood, and she was losing the will to keep fighting.
“Tough. You’ve got me.” Tim watched Lucy sway, and he reached out to steady her but when he finally looked at her.
Properly looked at her.
He saw the crimson that was seeping through her shirt. The deep red staining her hands.
“Nyla! We need an RA! Someone up here now! Lucy’s hurt!” Tim shouted at the top of his lungs, and then he softened his voice instantly when he helped Lucy lay down.
Her head in his lap.
“Someone’s coming. It’s okay.”
“I. Don’t. Want. You.” Lucy was still determined to make her point.
But when Tim pulled off his jacket and pressed it against her chest, she didn’t even have the energy to cry out in pain.
“We’ll talk about this later. When you’re not bleeding out. When we’re not in this room. When you’re okay.” Tim watched Lucy’s eyes close.
And he tapped her cheek until he saw her brown orbs again.
“No, we won’t. I have nothing to say to you.”
Lucy coughed, and almost blacked out from the pain.
“You can hate me all you want. I’m going nowhere. Just like I shouldn’t have walked away then, I’m not walking away now. Never again.” Tim needed to keep talking.
What was taking Nyla so long???
Lucy shoved Tim’s hands away from her chest, but he was stronger than her right now.
No more words came out, and she felt sleep trying to pull her in. Except she knew it wasn’t sleep.
It was far more permanent than that.
“You’re too late Bradford…just a little bit too late.” Lucy mumbled.
Tim looked away from her for a second.
And when he looked back down at her, she wasn’t breathing.
“Lucy? Lu, hey. Come on, breathe.” He moved her head out of his lap and made sure she was flat on the ground.
“NYLA!”
Wasting no time as he gave her a rescue breath. The closest their lips had been in months.
Not how he wanted it to go.
So not how he wanted their reunion to go.
At all…
Pushing down on her chest as he performed CPR, he was back out in the middle of nowhere, looking at Lucy’s lifeless body surrounded by dust and dirt.
She’d breathed again then.
But he kept going.
And going.
He’d probably broken a rib or two at this point.
But she wasn’t breathing.
Why wasn’t she breathing.
Her words were swirling around his head as he carried on counting every time he pressed his hands against her chest.
‘You’re too late Bradford…just a little bit too late.’
And maybe she was right, maybe he was.
Too late.
Too late to fix things.
Too late to tell her he loved her.
Too late to save her life.
Too late. Too late. Too late.