Chapter Text
The headache that’s been gently pulsing in Tim’s temple since he woke up this morning has decidedly not been helped by the number of times he’s rolled his eyes.
Nolan’s out today, so Tim had figured he’d be the one to ride with Penn for old times’ sake; see how much the LAPD’s oldest rookie has messed up all the hard work Tim had put in. He’d only been mostly kidding when he’d made that quip to Lucy on their way into work.
It’s not even 11 a.m. yet, and he swears his old rookie has cycled through every single inane conversation topic under the sun, looking to fill the silence in the shop while they’re out on patrol. Normally he’d tolerate the chatter to some degree, his need for complete silence having been worn down over his years spent with Lucy, but this is excessive, even for Penn.
It might just be that it feels that way since Tim’s so used to riding solo as Watch Commander these days, but still.
The sun glares just a little too bright through the windscreen. A car alarm sounds a couple of streets away as they roll through the residential area of their beat. Penn’s still talking.
Tim’s headache intensifies, nausea beginning to roil.
“…and last night, Celina and I watched this documentary on cheetahs. Did you know that—?”
Nope. He can’t do it anymore.
“Penn.” Tim’s voice cuts right through the rookie’s sentence. “Could you stop, for two minutes?”
Taken aback, the officer leans back in his seat, before seemingly remembering himself. Or, more accurately, who he’s riding with. He lowers his head in apology. “Sorry, sir.”
Thank God.
But the blissful silence doesn’t even last two blocks before the sound of nearby gunshots slices through the air.
Yelling rings out beneath the whine of the sirens as Tim flicks them on, Penn calling it in over the radio as they turn the corner.
“Control, this is 7-Adam-100, we have shots fired at the intersection of Whitworth Drive and Orange Grove Avenue. Requesting backup.”
The shop’s brakes squeal as they come to a stop on the corner, just in time to watch a cluster of boys making a break for it, sprinting down the street. Tim and Penn climb from the car, Tim calling out before the doors have even slammed shut.
“LAPD, everybody stop! Hands where I can see them!”
No one complies, and Tim spots two of their weapons glinting in the sunlight as they run.
He’s radioing in for more backup as some of them disappear around the corner, and Penn’s on his heels as they begin to make chase. It’s a moment before Tim clocks exactly why they’re running, and it’s not because they’re underaged kids, carelessly firing weapons in a residential area.
A woman is lying on the curb, crying out in pain. Her white blouse is quickly blooming with red.
“Shit—” Tim’s course diverts to her in an instant, anger and adrenaline firing. “Penn, call an RA.”
He tunes out Penn’s relay into the radio as he pulls a pair of nitrile gloves from his back pocket, crouching down next to the woman.
“Hey, ma’am, it’s okay, I’ve got you.” Her face is scrunched in pain, and Tim isn’t sure how coherent she is of what he’s saying. “This is going to hurt, okay?”
As he presses down, hard, the woman wails. Tim winces internally, but fights to keep his expression calm—even as the flow of blood refuses to slow against his palms. It seems to spurt out in rhythmic bursts, and Tim has the terrible thought that the bullet might’ve hit an artery.
“RA en route, two minutes away,” Penn says, running over with the med kit from the back of their shop.
Looking at the amount of blood already spilling out, two minutes feels like a lifetime. But he accepts the wads of gauze Penn is passing over and packs it as best he can against the wound.
“You hear that, ma’am? The ambulance is on its way, okay?”
He can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the red blooming through the white cotton, and Tim’s heart pounds in his ears. When the woman cries out again as Tim increases the pressure, the adrenaline lights a fire under the anger building up inside him. This—this woman’s pain, the red spilling onto the concrete—is the result of a bunch of careless kids, doing some severe damage on an innocent woman who was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Penn, call in additional units for a search. We need to find these kids.”
“Got it.” Penn steps away again, radio clicking as he removes it from its holster, and Tim focuses back on the task at hand. He knows he needs to try and get their victim talking, or, at the very least, keep her conscious.
“Now, ma’am.” Her breath is coming in pained, sharp gasps, and Tim’s heart pulls. He might’ve done this countless times, but it never gets easier. “I’m Tim. Can you tell me your name?”
She just groans again, hands clasping around nothing, but her voice is getting weaker.
“Ma’am, I need you to stay with me, okay? What’s your name?” Tim tries again, voice going firm, but he doesn’t get anything in response other than a pained breath. Wanting to confirm she’s still conscious, Tim glances up towards her face, and—
His breath catches.
Blue eyes are rolling back in their sockets, body fighting to pull the woman into unconsciousness to escape the agony.
But Tim knows those eyes. Would know them anywhere. They’re his.
The pieces of a long-forgotten puzzle slam into place. The eyes that stare back at him in the mirror. Fading auburn hair, peppered with unfamiliar strands of grey. Lips that would sing him to sleep and promise him everything was alright.
And just like that, twenty-five years of emotions bolt through him all at once, unpleasant and sharp like he’s just placed his hand on a live wire.
“Mom,” he breathes.
But just as quick as the realisation hits, Tim is brought back into the present moment when the blood begins to drip down his forearm.
He hasn’t seen this woman in twenty-five years, but if he doesn’t focus on doing his job right now, he’s never going to see her again.
His world narrows to him, his mom, and the blood that’s now staining both their clothes. The flow of red is slowing, but not fast enough, and Tim’s calm stoicism splinters when she cries out in pain again as he increases the pressure.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, overwhelmed by too many emotions he can’t even begin to name.
Through the sudden roaring in his ears, Tim fights to focus on what he’s doing, blocking out the agonisingly familiar face he’s spent most of his life seeing only in dreams, tuning out the weakening cries carved from the voice he’d long accepted he’d never hear again. He swallows the once-dormant instinct to protect her from pain and just focuses on keeping her alive.
But it’d be hard to miss the way she goes still, curled fists going limp against the concrete. Tim glances up at her face just in time to watch her eyes flutter shut.
Shit.
“Mom,” he murmurs. And then he comes back to himself somewhat—she might not have even recognised him. Why would she? She’s in agony, and he’s essentially a stranger. “Cathy,” he tries again, louder.
But she’s out.
“Penn—” Having maintained some distance until now, the officer rushes to crouch beside him, grasping at the wrist laying bonelessly on the ground.
The seconds seem to stretch as blood continues to run beneath Tim’s gloved hands.
“Still got a pulse,” he confirms, and Tim’s head almost spins. “It’s weak, but it’s there.”
And right on cue, the whine of ambulance sirens cuts through the buzzing in his ears.
Tim tries to steady himself as the tyres squeal to a stop, and the paramedics jog towards them.
“What have we got?”
“Older woman, mid—” God, how old must his mom be by now? “Mid-60s, GSW to the lower abdomen, significant blood loss. Not conscious, still breathing, thready pulse.”
The paramedics nod, and one of them runs back to grab supplies while the other kneels down next to Tim, taking over applying pressure.
“How long ago did she lose consciousness?” she asks.
“About a minute ago,” Tim supplies, pushing himself back to give them room. And maybe to give himself some space, too, although he’d never say that out loud.
He watches them work like he’s standing behind a glass pane, the light feeling like it’s hitting everything at a strange angle as Tim tries to make sense of what he’s seeing.
That’s—that’s his mom. A woman he hasn’t seen in lifetimes.
What the hell is she doing in LA? Has she been here the whole time?
His thoughts spin faster than he can catch them, and the headache that had been overrun by the rush of adrenaline begins to throb behind his eyelids once more. Tim tries to stifle his grimace.
Once they’ve situated her on the gurney, a third paramedic turns to Tim. “Did you get a name?”
Running on something like autopilot, he almost says no, because, technically, he didn’t get a name just now—not from her. But then he remembers.
“Uh, Cathy. Catherine.” He almost says Cathy Bradford, but he doesn’t know if she goes by that anymore. He wouldn’t, if he was in her position. So, he figures it’s best to leave that alone. “That’s it. Didn’t get a last name.”
The paramedic nods, making a note. “No problem.” As they wheel the gurney into the ambulance, blood seeping through the layers of white gauze they keep applying, Tim just watches absently, still trying to wrap his head around it.
“When did you have time to find an ID?”
Tim practically jolts, not having clocked Penn stepping up beside him. He finds he can’t tear his eyes away from the blood. “Hm?”
“You found an ID or something, right?” Penn gestures in the direction of the gurney. “She didn’t tell you her name.”
“Didn’t need to.” It slips out. If Tim was more in control right now, he’d probably have come up with some easy enough explanation.
Penn’s head whips around to look at him, but he doesn’t get to probe further since, at that moment, one of the paramedics approaches them.
“We’re going to get her transported ASAP,” she says. “If we find an ID, we’ll let you know so you can work on contacting next of kin if it comes down to it.”
Tim’s mouth goes dry. Next of kin. He knows that isn’t him, but… but it should be, right?
In another world, maybe he’d be climbing in the back of the ambulance, holding his mom’s hand as they head to the hospital. Maybe she’d never have been here in the first place—Tim would’ve warned her years ago about getting between kids and guns.
But as it is, the woman in the back of that van is, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. Just someone that left two kids alone with an abusive alcoholic while she pursued a different life.
The ache he hasn’t felt for a long while sparks momentarily in his chest, but Tim snuffs it out. Peeling off his bloody gloves and placing them in a biohazard bag the paramedic offers him, he glances around, the bullet casing catching his eye as sunlight glints off it.
It makes him remember what happened here, how they even got into this situation. Kids, playing around with something they shouldn’t have, getting an innocent civilian caught in the crossfire. He vaguely recalls the groups disappearing in opposite directions.
The vault door on his past slams shut in an instant, the ambulance doors following suit a second later. When the familiar rumble of shop tyres approaches from down the street, signalling the arrival of their backup, Tim gives himself a single, concise nod, pulling himself together.
“Right,” he says, ignoring the confusion still written on Penn’s face as he turns to the officers climbing from their shops. “Everyone, listen up!”
After giving them a rundown of the situation and their ensuing orders, the officers split off, circling the neighbouring streets for their dispersed group of kids. Tim figures they can’t have gotten too far in such a short span of time.
As it turns out, he’s right—it’s not long before various confirmations and descriptions come through the radio, and soon enough, they’ve found all ten. The guns two of them had been holding are nowhere to be found, though, so a few of the units stick around to keep searching. Can’t leave guns abandoned in some random shrub for more kids to stumble across.
But even with all the kids in custody and en route to the station to determine exactly what went down, and officers out searching for the missing weapons, something feels unfinished. Still back at the scene, Tim can’t help but stare at the pool of blood spilled on the concrete, marked now with a yellow evidence marker.
It’s his blood, in some way.
He swears he can see the memories glinting in the way the red reflects the sunlight, and they make his chest ache. Her smile. Her laugh. Her voice. The woman that cared for him as a child—a violent contrast to the woman that shut down, the one that left them. The one crying out in pain as she bled out under his hands.
Tim’s never felt any desire to try and find her or reach out. Her leaving them told him everything he needed to know.
The unanswered questions had come back in echoes, of course; every time he thought about their family, the life they could’ve had, just him, her, and Genny. Every time he responded to a case that hit too close to home. Every time he thought of Lucy and how great of a mother she’ll be someday, how he’d fight tooth and fucking nail to make sure they turn out nothing like his parents, if he needed to—which he knows he doesn’t.
He doesn’t need to ask his mom why she left their dad—he understands that, without question or judgement or doubt. What he’s always wanted to know, though, is why she left them.
The blood staining the curb begins to turn dark under the glaring heat of the sun.
Tim made peace with never getting his answers a long time ago, he swears. But right now, he’s never been closer to getting them, and he’s also never been closer to losing them forever. And for reasons he can’t quite explain, that changes everything.
In an instant, Tim makes a decision.
Eyes darting round the cluster of officers still lingering on the scene, interviewing witnesses, he spots whom he’s looking for.
“Sergeant Reeves,” he calls out. The older man turns to him, taking a step closer.
“Sir?”
Tim points a finger towards him, voice firm and steadier than he feels. “You’re taking over as supervisor. Penn’s with you.”
Overhearing the direction, Penn turns from where he’s interviewing a witness. Tim’s eyes stay on Sergeant Reeves.
“Copy that, sir,” he affirms.
Satisfied, Tim nods. “You good to split any supervisory calls between yourself and Sergeant Chen for the next couple hours?”
At that, confusion flashes in Reeves’ eyes, but he still nods again, and Tim begins heading for his shop before people get the chance to ask questions.
But Penn trails after him anyway. “Wait, sir, where are you—?”
“Report to Reeves,” Tim responds, voice leaving no room for argument. He cuts off any further questions with the slam of the shop door, grabbing at the central radio as he turns the key in the ignition.
“Control, this 7-Adam-100—show me 10-6 personal. Sergeants Chen and Reeves will be fielding supervisor calls for the next couple hours.”
With that, he puts the car into drive and pulls away, heading straight for the hospital.