Chapter Text
At first, Buck’s mind simply refuses to accept it
He looks at the space where Christopher had crouched just a moment ago.
…
the space is empty now, occupied only by a shivering woman clutching her bleeding arm and a child Buck doesn't recognize crying into someone’s lap.
Buck turns his head sharply.
Maybe he's behind the woman, behind the cluster of wet bodies pressed together because there isn't enough room for personal space anymore.
"Christopher?"
He stands too fast, the truck swaying beneath him, and his bad leg nearly gives, but he catches himself with one hand against the ladder mount. His eyes rake over the truck, over faces and strangers looking back at him with confusion and terror.
"Christopher?" he calls again, louder now.
No answer.
He looks over the side. Water churns below, ugly and brown and crowded with pieces of the pier.
"Christopher!" Buck screams.
The cold drops through him before the panic does, slicing down through his chest and hollowing him out from the inside.
Chris was right there.
Chris was safe.
Buck climbs down before anyone can stop him.
Maybe someone shouts after him, maybe they tell him to wait for rescue teams, but Buck’s hands are already on wet metal and his feet are already searching for purchase, his bad leg shaking beneath him as he drops into the water hard enough that pain bolts up through his knee and into his hip.
"Chris!"
He pushes through water that tugs at his legs and tries to turn him, one hand sweeping along floating debris because a child could be trapped beneath anything.
…
Eddie trusted Buck with him.
Eddie had looked at him that morning like there was no question, had smiled and told them to have fun.
Have fun.
Buck shoves a floating board aside so hard a nail rips across his palm.
"Chris!"
A small head breaks the surface to his left, and Buck’s whole body lunges before his eyes catch up, but it's a little girl with dark hair, coughing so violently she can barely cry. Buck grabs her under both arms and drags her toward a half-collapsed food stand where two adults are pulling people up onto a section of counter above the waterline.
"Take her!" he barks, and someone does.
He doesn't wait.
Every person he saves who isn't Christopher feels like betrayal. Christopher is gone, Christopher is the one Buck was supposed to keep safe with both hands and his whole stupid heart.
…
Then the water changes direction.
The current around his body shifts from wild, chaotic surges into a hard, dragging pull toward the Ocean.
“Christopher!” he shouts again.
The wave slaps into his mouth and Saltwater floods over his tongue and down the back of his throat before he can close his lips.
For one terrifying second, he goes down and slams into something hard enough to burst pain through his side as he kicks blindly, his bad leg answering with a bolt of agony that almost makes him open his mouth again.
Buck fights upward with both hands and he breaks the surface on a ragged Cough.
“Chris—” he tries again, but more water splashes into his mouth.
If Chris is in the water, if he's hurt or unconscious or too scared to call out, then the water could be pulling him away right now, could be taking him farther and farther from Buck with every second.
The current surges hard around him, and he grabs blindly for the nearest thing his Hands can reach, his fingers closing around the bent frame of a signpost as the retreating water yanks at him with shocking force.
"No," he chokes, "No, no, no, come on, Chris, no."
Slowly, the water slides back from his hips. Then his thighs.
…
The moment it's shallow enough for him to stand, Buck lets go of the post and stumbles forward again, nearly falling when his leg buckles under the sudden weight.
"Christopher!"
—————
For a while after that, time looses shape. There is only the water sinking lower around his legs and his own voice scraping raw every time he calls Christopher’s name.
He moves through what's left of the pier without anything that could be called a plan, dragged forward by every cry that sounds young enough before he realizes it belongs to someone else.
He checks wherever a child could fit. Between two overturned benches... behind the buckled side of a kiosk.
He climbs over a broken section of railing and nearly blacks out when something sharp twists under his ribs, the pain so sudden that he has to press a hand to his side and breathe through his teeth until the world stops tilting.
He doesn't stop for more than a second, not even when he feels his throat burn and his clothes drag heavy against his skin.
"Christopher!"
…
A rescue worker in a soaked jacket catches him by the arm near a cluster of survivors being guided toward higher ground.
"Sir, you need to get checked out."
Buck rips himself free.
"I’m looking for a kid. Nine years old. Brown hair. Glasses. His name is Christopher Diaz."
The rescue worker’s face shifts, with the weary horror of another missing child.
"They’re bringing kids toward the temporary VA. You should check there… And go get warm, okay? You’re bleeding."
Buck stares at him, and for one awful second he can't understand how anyone can look at him and think his bleeding matters when Christopher is somewhere in this wreckage, cold and alone and maybe calling for him.
"I’m not leaving without him,"
—————
He stumbles into a quieter stretch of wreckage where the water has started to settle into shallow pools between shattered storefronts and broken souvenir stands.
His breath comes too fast, hitching against the deep ache beneath his ribs, and when he lifts his hand to wipe water and blood from his face, his fingers are trembling so violently they barely obey him.
…
Then he sees them.
They are caught against a twisted piece of metal, half buried in mud and dirty water, one lens cracked through the middle.
Christopher’s glasses.
Buck stops.
no...
He crouches, and the pain in his side blooms so hard he almost vomits, but his hand still reaches for the glasses with a carefulness that feels obscene in the middle of all this ruin.
...
Everything inside him goes quiet.
The cold is still there, his clothes are still dragging heavy against his body and the pain still blooming dark and deep beneath his ribs, but one by one those sensations seem to drop away from him, until there is nothing left but the glasses in his Hand.
His breathing turns shallow and his eyes go distant, fixed on the muddy frame, but he's not really seeing it anymore.
He sees Eddie infront of him… looking past Buck’s shoulder for the son who isn't there.
Heyes moving down to Buck’s hands, holding nothing but broken glasses.
The last thin thread of strength inside him goes slack.
Muted.
Underwater.
He can't imagine standing in front of Eddie with empty hands… looking at him and understanding, that he found the glasses and not the boy, that he kept breathing while Christopher hadn't.
…
For a moment, Buck isn't a firefighter, not a first responder, not a man who knows how to keep moving through disaster because people need him.
He's just Evan Buckley on his knees in dirty water with a child’s broken glasses in his hand and the unbearable knowledge that he may have lost the person Eddie loves most in the world.
And not just Eddie.
Him too.
Christopher isn't his son, not on paper, not by blood, not by any name that would give him the right to break apart like this, but Buck knows the shape of that love in his own chest, knows that he would have died without hesitation if it meant putting Christopher back into Eddie’s arms.
So he kneels there, staring at the glasses, and the loss is impossible from both sides, because Eddie may have lost his son, and Buck may have lost the closest thing to a child his heart has ever been brave enough to have.
…
Then he hears it.
Small.
A sound that could have been shifting debris or his mind giving him the only mercy crueler than silence.
A cough.
Buck goes completely still as his eyes lift toward where the Sound came from.
The cough comes again, from the collapsed souvenir shop a few yards ahead.
Please don't give me hope...
Then, barely audible beneath the chaos, broken almost beyond recognition, a voice says,
"Buck?"
Buck comes back to life so violently he nearly falls.
"Christopher?"
He surges to his feet too fast, and the whole world tilts, black closing in from the edges as his body protests the sudden demand, but he throws one hand against a bent pole and forces himself upright.
"Christopher, I’m coming!"
The entrance is half blocked by debris, a warped display rack jammed sideways beneath a cracked counter. Buck shoves his shoulder into it.
He squeezes through the gap and broken glass cuts his Palm, but he doesn't notice.
"Chris?" Buck calls, and the name breaks in the middle.
A tiny movement comes from behind the overturned counter.
Buck drops to his knees.
Christopher is curled in a narrow pocket between the counter and the back wall, soaked through, with his arms wrapped tightly around himself.
"Buck," he sobs, and reaches for him with both hands.
Buck crawls the last few feet because standing is suddenly impossible. He gets one hand to Christopher’s shoulder, then the other to the back of his head, and Christopher surges into him so hard that Buck’s breath punches out of him.
For one terrible, beautiful second, Buck can't do anything but crush him close. His arms close around Christopher tightly, one hand spread wide across his back and the other buried in his wet curls, holding him against his chest.
The relief hits like another wave.
"You’re here," he gets out, the words breaking somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "You’re here, you’re here, oh my God, Chris, I’ve got you."
Buck presses his face into Christopher’s wet hair for half a second, breathing in saltwater and mud.
"I found you," he whispers, "I found you, buddy. I found you."
"I’m sorry," Christopher cries into his chest, fingers knotting in Buck’s soaked shirt. "I’m sorry, Buck, I’m sorry, I fell off the truck, I tried to hold on, I tried—"
"No," Buck says immediately, and his voice is wrecked, scraped raw from shouting and terror and the ugly almost-grief that still has its claws in his throat. "No, buddy, no, you didn’t do anything wrong."
"I tried," Christopher sobs, shaking so hard his teeth click together. "I tried to stay there."
"I know," Buck says, and his hands move over him, checking for injury while his heart Pounds to fast behind his ribs. Head, shoulders, arms, ribs and knees. "I know you did. You did so good, Chris. You did so good."
"I was scared."
"Me too," he admits before he can stop himself.
He presses his mouth briefly to Christopher’s wet hair again.
"But I found you. I found you, okay? I’ve got you now."
Christopher’s hands clutch tighter, and for a few seconds, he can't do anything else but hold him.
Then a piece of debris shifts somewhere overhead, and Christopher flinches so hard Buck’s body moves before he can think. He gathers Christopher closer, one arm under his knees and the other braced behind his back.
Christopher makes a frightened sound.
"Buck?"
"We’re getting out of here," Buck says as he stands, bringing Chris up with him.
The motion nearly drops him as pain knifes through his Abdomen. Christopher tightens both arms around his neck.
"Buck, are you hurt?"
"No," he lies, because the truth is useless right now. "Nothing I can’t handle."
Christopher doesn't look convinced, but his face twists with exhaustion and fear, and he tucks his head against his shoulder.
Buck maneuvers them back through the gap in the broken shopfront, turning sideways to shield Christopher from the jagged edge of metal.
Outside, the world is worse than it was before, or maybe he can simply see more of it now that Christopher is pressed safely against his chest.
…
Buck holds Christopher higher.
"Keep your head here, okay?" he murmurs, pressing his face gently into the curve of his neck. "Don’t look around."
Christopher’s fingers curl into the back of his shirt.
"Why?"
"Because I said so," Buck says, then hates how sharp it sounds and adds, "Because there’s a lot going on, and I want you with me."
And maybe that's all he is now.
Not a firefighter, not if the department looks at him and only sees liability where they used to see someone usefull.
Maybe the job is gone.
But this, Buck thinks, tightening his arms around Eddie’s son, this he can still do.
If he never wears the uniform again, if his body breaks completely before he reaches the triage tents, he will still get Christopher there.
Whatever it costs.
—————
The trip back toward the VA should not be far, but it feels endless.
Every few steps, someone calls out or asks for help. Asks if they have seen a mother, a brother, a dog, a little girl in a yellow dress.
Buck answers when he can, points when he knows, but he doesn't put Christopher down.
He can't.
His arms have become numb, locked around Eddie’s son with a force that's probably too tight and still not tight enough.
…
His body begins to fail in pieces.
First the shaking gets worse, cold working its way past adrenaline until his muscles tremble around every movement. Then his fingers go clumsy under Christopher’s weight, stiff and blood-slick from the cut in his palm.
The ache in his side becomes pressure, then fire, then something deeper that steals his breath each time he steps down too hard.
Every few meters, he adjusts his grip with a sharp inhale, pulling Christopher closer even though his side punishes him for it.
"I’m not letting go of you again."
Christopher’s face crumples a little, but he nods and tucks himself back against Buck’s shoulder.
—————
The VA appears through the haze like salvation.
Floodlights cut across the soaked pavement, bright and harsh and Beautiful at the same time. Medics move between rows of cots. Radios crackle and people call names across the triage area with hoarse Desperation.
Buck’s brain narrows to onlyone thought.
Get Christopher inside.
That's all.
Get him somewhere Eddie can find him.
…
He walks.
A rescue worker near the entrance turns when Buck stumbles into the triage area, and her expression changes the instant she sees him.
Buck knows what he must look like, gray and soaked and swaying, lips numb and eyes unfocused.
"Hey," she says, already reaching. "Sir, sit down."
"Kid first," Buck says.
Christopher’s arms tighten around his neck.
"Buck—"
"Kid first," he repeats, and this time the rescue worker seems to understand that arguing will waste whatever time Buck has left upright.
She steps closer, gentle hands reaching for Christopher.
"Hi, sweetheart. Let’s get you warmed up, okay?"
Christopher clings harder.
"No."
Buck closes his eyes for half a breath, then forces them open and something like a smile onto his face even though his mouth feels numb and wrong.
"Hey," he murmurs. "Chris, listen to me."
Christopher pulls back just enough to look at him.
Buck hates that his eyes are red and scared, hates that the last thing Christopher might remember before he goes down is another promise Buck isn't sure his body can keep.
"Go with them," he says, soft and careful. "I’m right behind you."
Please, just be safe...
Christopher shakes his head.
"No."
"I’m right behind you, buddy."
The rescue worker eases Christopher from his arms and the instant his weight leaves him, the world tilts.
Buck takes one step after them but his legs don't feel like they belong to him.
He takes another and pain blooms through his abdomen so violently that his breath disappears. He reaches for the edge of a table, anything solid enough to keep him in the world, but his fingers don't close right.
"Sir?"
Buck tries to answer but he can't.
His shoulder clips the pole at the entrance of the tent, and the floor comes up hard and cold beneath him.
"Buck!"
He drags in half a breath that goes nowhere useful.
There are hands on him suddenly, rolling him, Pressing and calling for space.
…
Someone says pulse weak while another says possible internal bleeding.
The words drift above him like debris on water, but Nothing sounds as urgent as Christopher crying.
Buck tries to lift his hand.
He wants to tell Christopher he's right behind him… He wants to tell him he's sorry.
…
A hand catches his face. Bare fingers, shaking and too warm against Buck’s cold cheek.
"Buck?" Eddie’s voice cracks through the noise, close and frantic "Buck, hey, no, no, look at me."
His eyes drag half open.
Eddie is above him, pale and terrified, one hand on Buck’s jaw while medics move around them.
Buck tries to say Christopher is safe.
I found him.
I’m sorry.
But nothing comes out.
Eddie’s thumb presses against his cheek.
"Buck, stay with me, please, stay with me."
…
Christopher is still crying somewhere beyond the hands and voices, and Buck can't get his own body to move toward him.
His eyes close again and the light fades.