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Lucy wishes she could be happy that her friends have arrived to take her away from this place. She would have given anything to know she'd be going home with them, but she isn't.
She just really, really wishes they had gotten here five minutes earlier.
John is the first through the door, then Tim, Angela, and everyone she's come to love over these beautiful years. Once her friend sees that her guard has already been taken down, his gun is holstered in a heartbeat and he's crossing the room and dropping to his knees on her right side, leaving room for Tim to kneel clumsily on her left.
Despite herself, Lucy smiles. She wants to cry, but doesn't the energy anymore so she turns her pressed lips upward.
He survived.
It wasn't all for nothing.
A strong ache settles in her chest, making breathing more and more difficult, but she will cling on for as long as it takes to say goodbye.
"Lucy," Tim says her name hoarsely, wetly, as he pulls her upper body away from the wall she's used to prop herself up into a sitting-adjacent position and holds her close, breathing in deeply from where he's pressed his face against her neck. Slowly, like moving her arm through a basin of wet sand, she brings her left arm up to grip weakly the thin fabric of his shirt. A strangled gasp sounds from one of the people to her left—one of her friends—but she ignores it, focusing instead on the tremors wracking Tim's body.
Lucy steals a breath as an overwhelming wave of relief overtakes her. "Hi," she half-sobs, "you're here."
He laughs, "Where else would I be?"
She doesn't answer; it's important she saves her breath for those fateful final words. And when she doesn't answer, he pulls back to look at her face. Her pale, perspired skin, her sweat-dampened hair, and her purple lips. She thinks it hits him then, that the front of his shirt is wet. Red, too, when he looks down.
Tim's expression is one of utter devastation as he looks to the blood flowing from her upper abdomen and he understands.
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"Unfortunately for us, your time here is going to have to be cut short," The blonde woman from the beach sighs dramatically as she unlocks the thick door keeping Lucy in this little square room made of stone and strides in with a goddamn assault rifle held loosely at her side, "Your friends have come to raid the place. Come, on your knees."
Lucy doesn't comply with the order, so Blondie drops the rifle on the ground near the drain in the centre of the room and unlocks the cuffs chaining her wrists to the wall before kneeling to take care of Lucy's ankles. It's an idiot mistake though, because Lucy's got the rifle in an instant. Also an idiot mistake, because Blondie's on her feet immediately, wrestling the weapon from Lucy's grip and pointing it directly at her prisoner's chest.
"You fucking bitch," the woman snarls, "I was gonna give you the dignity of an instant death, but now I'm gonna make sure it hurts. I'll make it hurt when I shoot your pretty little boyfriend, too."
Lucy sees red as she staggers to her feet and lunges at her attacker.
She doesn't even remember how the fight ended, only that there were two gunshots: the one that killed Blondie, and the one that will kill Lucy.
Did the gun go off by accident when it sent a bullet into the other woman's eye? The wound along Lucy's left rib feels intentional. The blood pumping out of her body with every beat of her heart feels intentional, too.
A rough estimate gives Lucy precious few minutes to live, and that time will only be shortened if she tries to make a journey of any kind. This cell might be its own kind of hell, but it's one she's familiar with. Lucy's owed that modicum of comfort, she thinks.
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Lucy opens her eyes, aware that this will be the last time she does so. She blinks a few times, and upon seeing all the faces of her friends, she laughs. The feeling of fresh air hitting the back of her mouth makes her gag and soon she's coughing, spewing blood onto the concrete before her.
Tim, who has taken up the place of the wall behind her, trembles as he presses a kiss to her hair. A cloth of some kind is pressed into his hands, and he uses it to wipe her mouth.
She takes in the faces of those around her:
John, a dear friend of hers. He'll be the last one left of their rookie class, now. He will carry the baton well.
Celina, who was there for all her drunk, late-night ramblings about how much she missed Tim, who brought a light into her life that she'd never known was missing.
Miles, an old soul with so much left to learn, yet she knows he will change so many lives through his work.
Wade, who had silently taken up the mantle of her father when neither her biological nor her adoptive father could step up to the plate, who has defended her—and their colleagues—fiercely, time and time again. Lucy hopes this loss will not fracture him in the way Jackson's death did.
Nyla, who has taught her everything she knows about the undercover field, about being a woman of colour in law enforcement. Who's given her the tough love she's needed when no one else could understand, someone she's always aspired to be like. Nyla does not deserve this pain.
Angela, a wonder of a human whom she wishes she had taken the time to cultivate more of a friendship with. They've only ever really interacted in the context of Jackson, Nyla, and Tim; she regrets that. Angela, Lucy knows, will make sure this loss isn't what sends Tim to his grave.
And Tim.
Trying to describe Tim in all the many ways he loves her, the countless ways in which she loves him, would be no more ridiculous a task than asking her to count all the stars that light up the night sky.
Loving him is so… easy. Leaving him is not.
His face dips in and out of focus above her, complicated by the unshed tears she holds between her eyelids.
This final supply of oxygen is fading quickly; the bullet-sized hole in her left lung a likely culprit. Tim is saying things to her—she can see his mouth moving—but sounds are underwater and she feels… nothing. Pain is a distant memory and Lucy is unafraid of what will happen when she closes her eyes; what is there left to agonize over? In another universe, this demise may have been avoidable, but not in this life. She and Tim both have gotten lucky on so many occasions… it was silly of her to believe they'd both make it out unscathed this time.
A tear splashes onto her face from his eyes, but why would he cry? Lucy is leaping, floating, soaring as she falls into a place somewhere between not-quite-here and not-quite-there; as colours fade and become obsolete, the world has never been more technicoloured.
Come with me, she calls out to him, holding out her hand, jump across this river and meet me on the other side.
Tim does not answer her, but it is of no consequence. Lucy will see him another time, someplace else where the many stars of the night sky will align and they will have the freedom to simply be with no more pain.
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