Chapter Text
Buck found himself sitting on the floor in the dark, leaning against his kitchen island, and clutching a bottle of tequila Eddie left at his place months ago. He’s not sure how he ended up on the floor but he’s not sure about much of anything right now. He’s still wearing the pants from his class A’s, the jacket was discarded on the floor a few feet from the front door. The bottle of tequila is half empty…he ponders if what’s left in the bottle is enough to give him alcohol poisoning or only enough to get blackout drunk. He stares at the bottle trying to decide which version of tonight he prefers.
“It won’t help, you know.”
Buck doesn’t look up from the bottle, a hallucination is just about par for the course today. “I’m not sure if I care,” he murmured.
He hears a heavy sigh and soft footsteps echo across the polished concrete of the loft’s floor. “You don’t want to die today.” Bare feet stop just within reach of his position, and Buck lifted his head until it bumped against the island and rolled it up to look at the man standing in his kitchen who shouldn’t be there.
Hallucination or intruder here to kill him, Buck’s not sure which is worse and he’s not sure if he cares either. He buried a friend today. An ex-boyfriend? Former lover? An official LAFD funeral is attended by all firefighters not on duty. Still, Buck thinks that Eddie was the only one other than him who felt anything but a vague sadness at an acquaintance's passing.
“Do you think I fooled them?” Buck asked.
“Fooled them how?”
“Apparently, because he broke my heart, it’s not supposed to hurt that he’s gone. We weren’t together anymore, so the fact that he’s not still out there in the world, that he will never have the chance to be happy, even if it’s not with me, shouldn’t leave me with a blackhole of pain inside me that keeps pulling more and more of what makes me me into it. I didn’t cry at the funeral. Someone said they were proud of me for not making his death about me and I had to get out of there before I cracked like an egg and spilled all this ugliness I’m barely controlling all over them. Are you a hallucination?” Buck asked with a vaguely quizzical look on his face.
“I am not,” the man replied, and Buck puzzled that out in his mind as he took the time to actually look at him. The man was rather short, he thought, maybe as tall as Chimney. He had pale skin and stood over Buck on bare feet, and he was dressed all in black from his slacks, to his waistcoat buttoned over a silky shirt. Odd. His hair was black too and seemed to defy gravity itself, sticking up all over his head. His eyes were the only color to be found, and they were such a bright green that they almost glowed like fire.
Buck tilted his head and tried to focus. “Are you here to kill me?”
“No, Evan Buckley, I am not here to kill you. I am here to give you a choice.”
“Oh. That’s alright then.” Buck paused in the act of nodding his head, and his face scrunched up in confusion. “What choice?”
The man sighed and squatted to sit on the floor cross-legged in Buck’s line of sight. “Are you not curious at all about who I am, Evan Buckley?”
Buck stared at the man before him and blinked slowly as he thought that over, “I should be, I guess. I just can’t seem to feel much of anything right now. Not fear, not curiosity. I don’t think there’s room anymore…..if you aren’t here to kill me, and you aren’t a figment of my fractured imagination, who are you?”
“Who I am is…..complicated. What I am is less so.”
“What are you, then?”
“I, Evan Buckley, am an instrument of Fate. When things have gotten off track, so to speak, I am sent in to….correct the problem.”
“Am I the problem you were sent to correct?”
“Not exactly. A change in the fabric of fate happened unexpectedly. It took more effort than I would have liked to track down what caused the aberration. A choice you make today might not seem like much but the ripples from that choice would be far reaching and catastrophic. You are about to step off the path of your future, Evan Buckley. Your influence on the people in your life is necessary and vital to Fate.”
Buck sighed and rubbed at his face roughly. “What would you have me do? I’m tired. I’ve lost too much to care about what Fate wants from me. Today was the absolute limit and I am just done. Not with life, but my life? It has become unbearable. I’m a hair's breadth away from leaving LA completely. Buck paused in thought. That’s it, isn’t it? I leave and something happens that I would have influenced. If I leave, something bad will happen?”
The man looked thoughtful. “No. The event itself would not be a tragedy. But, that one event is the start of a line of changes that would bring about a tragedy so great that its influence would be felt for centuries. I apologise. Such a burden should never land on any one being’s shoulders, for it to be known is even more devastating.”
“Can you tell me what event I need to influence? Maybe I could hang on until…..”
“I’m sorry, Evan Buckley. I cannot tell you. There are no easy fixes to be had. It is too late to make a change from this moment forward, anyway. In order for you to correct your course, I’m afraid I must ask you to go back.”
“Back?”
“Back in time. A second chance, if you will. I can only ask. It has to be your decision. You can move forward or you can go back and make different choices,” he explained.
“How far back would I need to go?”
The man steepled his hands and pressed them to his mouth. “Hmm, when did you decide to leave?” he asked Buck.
“I'm not sure. I think it has been in the back of my mind for the last couple of years but I was needed here. After Tommy left…I still had some hope, but with Eddie in Texas and Tommy dead, I’m adrift.” Buck stared blankly at the man who claimed to be the instrument of Fate and calculated how far back he would need to go to change the current course of his life. “I need to stay with the 118?” Buck asked slowly.
“For now, yes,” the man said with a nod.
“I need to be a firefighter in LA, and for now, I need to be at the 118, but those are the only conditions I need to keep to stay on the correct path and avert this disaster? And other than continuing to be a firefighter and an influence on the others at the 118, can I make other changes?”
“Pardon?”
“The man I love just died in a completely preventable accident. If I am to take on this task, I want to know that I have the ability to make the changes I need to in order to make our lives better. If nothing else, his death has altered the course of my life in the worst way. Meeting him changed me in ways I can’t describe or calculate, saving his life would make this whole situation worth it to me. So will I be able to? Save him, I mean?”
There was a long pause as the man stared at Buck. “Thomas Kinard is not a linchpin to the fate of the world, but perhaps he is the linchpin in yours, Evan Buckley. If you stop his death at the highrise fire, Fate will not attempt to reassert herself. You may consider it a boon for your efforts. What say you, Evan Buckley?”
“Will I still have all the knowledge I have now? Everything that I know about what happened at the fire and after?”
“Yes. Your memories will travel back and merge with your former self.”
“When will I go back to?”
“To reset your course, you will need to go back to before Thomas Kinard’s death. Otherwise…..I have no opinion.” He shrugged. “Do you have a suggestion?”
“Yes,” Buck replied. “I know when I want to return.”