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The silence in the house felt heavy and strange, the suffocating kind that only settles in when a loud, violent chaos suddenly grinds to a hault.
For two agonizing weeks after fighting to keep there lives, while the entire mid-wilson station and beyond worked tirelessly to rescue them. then their existence had been a blur of sterile hospital walls, fluorescent lights, and endless medical tests. Through it all, the physical distance of two separate hospital rooms had been a torture of its own because all they had truly wanted was to be wrapped up in each other. Then came what felt like an endless detectives asking them to repeat the same horrifying details over and over again, though there friends tried to make it bearable, but its still there jobs to unshure clear and detailed statments for when the case when to trail.
It was profoundly moving to see the sheer depth of worry and fear that had taken over the station while they were missing, it was nice to feel so fiercely cared for...
Physically, the wounds had healed quickly enough. The deep bruises were fading into faint yellow shadows, the minor lacerations were scaring over, and the lingering ache of stiff muscles was finally easing up. Even the dizzying fog in there minds, left behind by the heavy rounds of sedatives their captors had pumped into their systems, was finally clearing. But the mental toll of the kidnapping was a different story entirely. They both knew it would take months, perhaps even years, before they could stop looking over there own shoulders with a sudden spike of panic.
Once they were finally cleared to go home, their friends had practically followed them in a protective state. Nolan, Bailey, Angela, Wesley, Nyla, Grey, Celina, and even Smitty. It was everyone taking turns rotating through their house, dropping off enough casseroles, takeout, and pasta dishes to fill the freezer for a month. they offerd quiet, lingering hugs, and all raising glasses in celebration when learning the news of Tim and lucys official engagement. Underneath the joy, however, everyone was subtly checking them for signs of shattering. It felt like whose who they have chosen as thier family was terrified to take there eyes off them, fearful that if they looked away for even a second, the couple might vanish into thin air again.
It was born out of pure, unadulterated love, but it had been entirely... overwhelming.
Now, for the past three days, the daily swarm of visitors had finally died down to a trickle. phonecalls and texts still filled up thier phones but the knocks on the doors where less ans less. They were left entirely alone to adjust back to a regular life that felt completely irregular, with only a week and a half left before the earliest date they could put on their crisp uniforms and return to active duty, provided they were cleared by their final mental evaluations. Deep down, both of them where craving the grueling routine of twelve-hour shifts. Not because they believed they were entirely healed, but because they desperately needed the grounding sense of normalcy. The more to occupy their racing minds, the better.
- - -
It was one late morning when Lucy was leaneing her head back against Tim’s chest, her fingers idly tracing the soft hem of his gray t-shirt. On the television, some mindless reality show was playing, but she had not been paying an ounce of attention to the screen, instead, her entire focus was anchored on him.
Tim was incredibly stiff. He had been rigid all morning. When they first woke up, he had stared blankly at the ceiling for twenty minutes, and he had physically jumped when Lucy gently rested her hand on his chest to whisper good morning. Later, while he made the coffee, she watched him keep glancing out the window at the quiet street below. His shoulders were tense and alert, but as she studied him, she realized it did not look like fear, it looked like the weight of incredibly deep, consuming thoughts instead.
"What do you think?" Lucy asked softly,, nodding toward the television where a couple was aggressively arguing over a house. "Do you think they go with the fixer-upper or the one by the beach?"
"Huh?" Tim muttered. His chest barely moved beneath her cheek. His blue eyes remained fixed on the opposite wall, completely miles away, tracking the speed of whatever thoughts were racing through his mind.
Lucy sighed, a gentle but deliberate sound that rippled through the quiet room. She shifted, slipping out from under his heavy arm, and sat up completely on the couch. Turning her entire body to face him, she pulled one leg up onto the cushion, creating a small, intimate space between them.
"Okay, Tim. What is up?" she asked, her voice carrying a delicate balance of gentle concern and firm insistence. "You have been completely off all morning. What is wrong? Are you okay? Why don't you share with me what is going on inside that mind of yours?"
Tim blinked, pulling himself out of whatever deep, thoughts he had been wandering through. He looked at her, his blue eyes intense and searching, and the sheer gravity in his expression made her stomach take a sudden, sickening drop.
"Lucy," he said.
The name came out heavy, thick with a specific tone that instantly sent a spike of panic straight through her chest. It was the dreaded "we need to have a talk" tone. It was the exact tone of bad news, one used for permanent endings, it was the haunting melody she had heard him use on that devastating night in the parking lot when he had broken her heart into piseces.
Lucy immediately scrambled backward a few inches, sitting up even straighter against the cushions. Her entire posture went rigid, her eyes widening as she stared at him, her heart starting to hammer violently against her ribs. 'no..no..no!' her brain said.
"Hey," Tim said quickly, his hands shooting forward to catch hers before she could pull away from him entirely. His features softened with instant, crushing regret as he recognized the terrifying weight of his own words. "Hey, sorry. No. No, no, no. That tone came out all wrong. I am so sorry, Luce."
Lucy let out a long, ragged breath she had not realized she was holding, though her brow remained tightly furrowed. "Then what is it? Because you are making me really nervous right now, Tim."
Tim looked down at their joined hands. He rubbed his thumb over the back of her knuckles, his skin rough from years of hard work but incredibly warm against her chilly fingers. When he looked back up, the rigid tension in his broad shoulders seemed to melt away entirely, replaced by a raw, quiet resolve. His entire expression went soft, his eyes filling over the brim with a profound, undeniable love. He melted befoee her.
"Lucy Chen," he began, his voice dropping down into that low, steady register that always made her feel perfectly grounded, no matter how chaotic the world became. "I know this isn't the perfect romantic setting. It's not a beautiful beach at sunset. It's not some grand, meticulously planned-out do-over moment. But this is just what I have been thinking about non-stop for weeks now, and ive got to get it off my chest"
Lucy’s breath hitched in her throat. She locked eyes with him, absorbing his words with a thoughtful intensity, focusing entirely on the cadence of his voice and what he was telling her.
"The last time I asked you an important question," Tim continued, a faint, bittersweet smile touching the corner of his mouth, "we didn't get our perfect ending. We barely even got a single moment to celebrate the enagement before the world decided to crash down on top of us. And during our time in captivity, it really left me thinking about how unbelievably fragile life can be, and how important it is to spend every second of it with the ones you love. So, I know there is absolutely no need to ask you to marry me again, but I have come up with a completely different question instead."
Slowly, deliberately, he slid off the edge of the cushions, dropping down onto one knee on the hardwood floor right in front of her.
"Tim," she whispered. Her face was still tight with concentration, but a single, hot tear escaped her eye and slipped down her cheek as she sat there unshure of what was happning or what he would say.
"Lucy Chen, would you do me the absolute honor of marrying me today?" Tim asked, his eyes never leaving hers. "For years, I have been the luckiest man in existence just because you are in my life. Your kindness, your generosity, your resilience, your intelligance, your spirte, your beuaty, your absolute everything. You are my everything! Lucy, but to have you by my side as my true partner in life is even more of a gift, one I am still not entirely sure I am worthy of having."
He squeezed her hands tighter, his voice growing thick with a swell of raw emotion.
"You are the light of my life, and if this past month has thrown anything at us, it has made me realize that you were the guiding light that made me want to fight to survive for, and survive with. You have given me the blueprint of a future that I will fight until my very last breath to live in. You are my reason for being, Lucy, and I will spend the rest of my life coming up with endless ways to show you how much you mean to me, even if words seem incredibly small and meaningless compared to what I actually feelfor you in my heart."
Lucy felt a steady stream of tears running down her cheeks. Against her hands, she could feel Tim’s hands shaking slightly, a rare display of nervous jitters that made her heart ache with affection as he pushed forward to get through his speech.
"But I don't want to test that luck of mine anymore," he confessed softly. "I am rarely this lucky, and selfishly, I don't want to spend another single moment of my life without you as my wife. I want to race down to city hall or the county clerk's office, or wherever the hell we need to go to get married, hand in hand. Hell, we can even get on a plane to go straight back to Vegas if that is what it takes, or if that is what you want."
He took a deep, grounding breath, his chest expanding as he looked up at her with an intensity that made the entire universe shrink down until it was just the two of them in the room. For a brief second, he was rendered entirely speechless, words failing him against the staggering magnitude of what he was asking for and from her. because god he wanted that, yes.
"I want you to have whatever you want," he added, his voice cracking slightly under the weight of it all. "So I promise you this. If you marry me today, but down the line, later on, you want a real wedding, I will personally make sure you have the wedding of your dreams. With all of our friends, our family, surrounded by all the love we have for each other until it is absolutely suffocating. Because I want to spend the rest of my life making sure you have every single thing you have ever dreamed of. I just want to give you back a fraction of what you have given me. You brought light back into my life when I thought there was only darkness, Lucy...
So, what do you say? Do you want to go get married?"
For several seconds, Lucy could not speak. Her throat felt entirely too tight, choked up with a wave of pure, overwhelming happiness that completely washed away the lingering shadows of the past two weeks.
"Yes," she whispered, her voice cracking. Then, louder, a breathless, tearful laugh breaking through her lips, "Yes! Yes! Yeah, of course!"
She did not wait for him to stand up. She lunged forward off the couch, throwing her arms tightly around his neck and pulling him into a fierce, desperate kiss. Tim caught her easily, his strong arms wrapping around her waist and lifting her slightly off the floor as he kissed her back deeply. His own laughter mingled with hers against her lips.
It was a beautiful moment they let themslefs lingure in longer, and longer, and longer in. Taking all the time they wanted to make up for the lack of time they had to celebrate the engament weeks ago.
When they finally pulled apart, Lucy was beaming, her cheeks soaked with tears. "Today? You really want to do this today?"
"I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life," Tim said, using his thumb to gently wipe a tear from her cheek, entirely uncaring of the tears that were freely flowing down his own face.
- - -
What followed was thirty minutes of absolute, joyous chaos, as they got ready to get married.
Lucy scrambled into the bedroom, pulling hangers out of her closet with frantic, nervous energy. She knew she did not want to wear just ordinary jeans, but she also did not have a proper wedding dress ready to go, considering they had only been officially engaged for about a month. After tossing aside a dozen options, she finally settled on a simple, knee-length dress. It was mostly white, with a delicate trail of embroidered flowers accenting the bottom hem. She had bought it the previous summer and had never found the right occasion to wear it. It felt light and airy, and the moment she zipped it up, she felt a sudden, beautiful rush of reality settling deep into her bones. She brushed her hair quickly, styling it a bit too much just for it to look like she's letting it fall loose in her natural waves. Then she applied light makeup just enough to hide the faint circles of exhaustion under her eyes, that haven't gone away since they got back alive from the atac.
Meanwhile, back in the living room, Tim sat hunched over his laptop trying to figure out the immediate logistics, searching frantically for the closest available appointment anywhere in the county for today, while simultaneously pulling all their essential legal paperwork they might possibly need out of the safe in the closet.
By the time Lucy emerged, he had changed into a sharp, black suit, with a crispe white shirt tucked underneath the jsuit jacket. He had cleaned up completely, his hair styled perfectly in place. When he looked up from the screen and saw her standing elegantly in the doorway of the bedroom, his breath visibly caught in his throat.
"You look... Pulchritudinous," he murmured, stepping forward to take her hand in his.
"You don't look too bad yourself, Tim," Lucy teased, though her voice trembled with a beautiful excitement.
"You ready?" he asked, his free hand reaching for the front door handle to open the way for her.
"Yeah, yeah," Lucy said, stepping forward before suddenly stopping dead in her tracks. "Oh no, wait. What about Kojo?"
She glanced anxiously around the living room until she spotted the massive hound passed out asleep in his favorite doggie bed near the windwo.
"What about Kojo?" Tim asked, turning back to look at her cunfused.
"Well, we can't just go get married without him," she reasoned, her bottom lip turning out slightly.
"Lucy, I really don't think they let dogs into federal buildings," Tim replied, a amused smile tugging at his lips. "And he's a dog, Luce. He doesn't even know what getting married means."
He saw the immediate disappointment clouding her face, and his tough exterior melted instantly. He rubbed the back of his neck, quickly coming up with a compromise.
"Okay, how about this," he offered softly. "Later in the future, when we have a formal wedding or at least a big reception with all our friends, he can walk you down the aisle if that is what you want."
Lucy’s eyes lit up instantly. "Really? You would actually let him be in the wedding party?"
"Of course," Tim promised, stepping closer to wrap his arms around her waist. "And how about right after we get married today, we come back here, pick him up, and then we just take off driving into the horizon? We can spend the next few days all together on a makeshift honeymoon."
"Yeah, okay," Lucy breathed, a radiant smile breaking across her face. "That sounds absolutely perfect. So, um, we are really doing this?"
"God, I hope so," Tim whispered, pressing a quick, firm kiss to her forehead.
"Good!"
Within a minute, they were out the door, locking the deadbolt and leaving the quiet house and the last few weeks of blurred depressive sensation of normalcy firmly behind them. As Tim opened the passenger side door of his truck for Lucy, before he when to the drivers side to pull out into the bright, sunny Los Angeles traffic. During the drive Lucy reached across the center console, locking her fingers tightly with his.
There were no blaring sirens, no terrifying emergencies, no lingering threats, and most importantly, no worries. Just the wide-open road ahead of them. It was filled with standard city traffic, but for once, the delays did not bother them in the slightest. They were only focused on what was to come, completely locked into the brand new chapter of their lives they were just about to create together.
It's not The End...
Its only the Beginning! .........
- - -
......... It was after the fact when they were driving of into the horison of what now felt like endless time.
With Kojo in the back, head out the window catching the breeze is when she turned her head slowly to look at Tim's profile, her eyes widening in realization. "Oh my god, Tim."
"What?" he asked, glancing over at her with a brow furrowed in concern.
Lucy swallowed hard, a sudden wave of comedic worrying dread washing over her. "Angela is going to absolutely kill us for doing this without her when we get back!”
All Tim did was laugh.
Laughter from both of them soon filled the car... loud, carefree, bright and beautiful laughter!
And for a car ride, everything was immensely perfect for the newlyweds.
- - -