Chapter Text
The floor disappears out from under her.
The moment Lucy clocks the stillness beneath her fingertips, the world fractures. Everything starts to flicker, seconds and minutes stolen from the gaps between blinks.
One moment, she’s gripping Tim’s wrist as though he’ll stay if she holds on tight enough, and the next she’s already been yanked backwards, two hands holding her shoulders. They’re hands she knows, attached to a placating voice she knows, and the person is trying to anchor her, keep her calm, keep her still, but she doesn’t fucking care. She’s fighting against their grip, hoarse voice pleading to stay at Tim’s side until she blinks and she’s bathed in moonlight and harsh spotlights. As she’s guided into the back of an ambulance, her eyes are locked on the paramedic doing compressions a few feet away. She swears she can hear Tim’s ribs breaking through the ringing in her ears.
Another blink later, she’s sat on a gurney while a paramedic is peeling the gauze away from her side. All she can think of is Tim’s shaking, fumbling hands putting it there with more effort than he had in him, blinking through his fever just to keep her as safe as he could.
His voice rings out below the whine of the siren above her head.
I love you.
And she couldn’t—she’d—
I know.
That’s all she could fucking say. I know.
Another blink. Nyla’s there beside her. Has she been there the whole time?
The detective’s phone is pressed to her ear, and her face is pinched, a harsh line forming between her eyebrows. Even through the phone’s speakers, the shrill tone of the flatline is unmistakable, accompanied by the whine of the defibrillator, forming an unbearable crescendo of noise that screams he’s dead.
Every muscle in Lucy’s body locks up like she could physically shut the possibility out, and it’s the most lucid she’s been since she realised Tim’s pulse wasn’t thrumming beneath her fingertips the way it was supposed to.
She strains her ears, listening to them try to bring him back.
They try, and she begs people who can’t even hear her.
They try, and she begs.
They try and she fucking begs.
They try, and—
Her own voice is ringing in her ears now, the three words that had been trapped in her chest stuck on loop over and over and over like a taunt.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
She’s stuck watching Tim’s eyes roll back in his head as he went lax. That could’ve been the last time, her last shot at making sure he knew how she felt—she’s sitting face-to-face with the possibility now, playing out through tinny phone speakers and agitating the dread in her bloodstream.
She’d finally managed to tell him she loves him, and it might have been too damn late.
If he was right here, she’d say it a thousand times over. Her lips are soundlessly forming the shape of the words like they’re a prayer anyway, hurried and pleading as though they’d be strong enough to convince him. She’s helpless to do anything else.
Her breaths are coming short and sharp long before she registers the ache of them jarring her ribs, but nothing burns more than the thought of what might be about to happen, nothing is more awful than the cliff’s edge they could be about to step off, a gasping, hopeless chasm stretching out in front of her. The panic feels like it might swallow her alive, a black hole overwhelming in its enormity.
She can’t lose him. She can’t lose him. She can’t lose him.
Beneath the mantra stuck like a broken record, her own heart monitor is screaming her distress, an irritating, loud beeping off to the side. She needs them to shut it off, because she needs to hear every last sound coming through those phone speakers—she’s spent God-knows-how-long worrying she might have to listen to Tim die, unable to see or hold him, and even though they’ve escaped captivity, they haven’t escaped that outcome. And even now, it might still get drowned out by her own panic.
Through the speakers, the defibrillator whines as it charges up, and the shock sparks through her, too, just like every kick and punch she’d heard from the other side of the wall.
A noise tears from her throat, and out the corner of her eye, she clocks a paramedic inserting something into her IV.
“No, no,” she groans, trying to swat the woman’s arm away like it’ll undo anything. “What if he—no—”
Everything’s already blurring at the edges, but she tries her best to fight it.
Static starts to flood her limbs, her head filling with cotton wool, but she has to fight it, because what if they don’t get him back? What if they get him back and then lose him again? What if this is it, this time? What if…
It turns out her body must be tired of fighting, because the static pulls her under.
Her consciousness sifts in piece by piece.
She’d recognise the coarse scratch of hospital linens anywhere, but for a few moments, that’s all she can grasp onto. Thoughts slip through her fingers like sand, shadowed memories dissolving into nothing. There’s a machine sounding a steady, monotonous beep to her right. Shoes squeak in the hallway, accompanied by muffled conversations and more machines. The sensations flood her senses, and she can’t figure out why she’s here.
But everything settles into its rightful place before long.
The pain comes first. It ranges from dull aches to sharp agony, but it’s all muted, clouded over like she’s watching the silhouettes of the feelings through frosted glass.
For a split second, the weight around her wrists sends a bolt of panic down her spine—but it’s cotton bandages. When she shifts slightly, a series of stitches pulls in her side, and a dull ache flares through her ribs. Butterfly bandages are pulling a little at the skin above her eyebrow, and when she looks down, she’s mottled with cuts and bruises in different shades—
Everything slams into her at once.
The rooms—shipping containers. Ray. Their visitors. The red light of the camera capturing every second of pain. The escape, the rescue, the relentless fear, the ambulance. Tim’s heart stopped, and they knocked her out, and—
Tim.
Tim.
Her eyes snap open, squinting against the fluorescent lights above her head, and she blinks, trying to force them to adjust so she can look for someone who can give her answers.
Spying the empty chair by her bedside, Lucy’s half a second away from bypassing the search entirely and slamming the call button for a nurse, but her movement stills when her eyes land on a familiar form in the bed to her left.
He’s right there.
She can see the rise and fall of Tim’s chest, and if she was in any doubt, the monitor across the room is showing the steady rhythm of his still-beating heart. Her body deflates instantly, every point of coiled tension replaced with relief.
And now that she’s looking at him, she can’t tear her eyes away, even if the angle strains her neck.
Against the stark white of the hospital sheets and lit by the harsh lights, his injuries look worse. He’s more bruises than not, and now that the worst of the blood has been cleaned away, she can identify each cut and scrape littering his body, pale skin marred by the proof of how much they’d suffered.
From here, she can also see the burn marks left behind by the stun gun where Ray had jammed it into his neck. Her chest tightens at the memory of the uneven rhythm of his thready pulse, and Lucy turns her eyes back to the heartrate monitor so she can reassure herself that he’s fine—no matter how relative that word might be right now.
When she clocks the navy sling covering his shoulder on his other side, Lucy winces, because Tim’s going to hate that thing. But he’s still around to hate it, so she doesn’t care all that much. She’ll put up with every last complaint he has, treasuring the fact that she gets to hear it in his voice, his trademark exasperation like a familiar blanket over her shoulders.
And for now, Tim looks at peace, the tension in his face mostly smoothed out by sedatives and sleep.
Lucy only tears her eyes away from him when the door opens.
“Morning,” Angela smiles, the greeting just a low whisper as she slips inside.
“Hey.” Lucy’s voice comes out as a dry croak, and Angela doesn’t hesitate in striding over to offer her a plastic spoonful of half-melted ice chips before she can so much as begin to ask. She accepts them gratefully, the cool sensation on her tongue pulling the last of her senses alert.
She lets her eyes slip closed for a moment as the ice melts, before settling back into her pillows.
“How are you feeling?” Angela asks.
Lucy tries her best to catalogue her injuries, muffled as they are by whatever painkillers they’ve got her on. “Sore, but… not bad,” she eventually concludes, her head automatically turning back to gaze at the bed to her left.
“Good; they’ve got you on the good stuff, then.” Angela settles into the chair on her right, and Lucy just knows that the detective is watching her, even as her own gaze is trained on Tim. “He’s going to be fine. You both are.”
Lucy knows that to some extent—she just can’t shake the sight of his eyes fluttering closed, nor the absence of his pulse, nor the shrill tone of the flatline over the phone speakers.
“How bad was it?”
Angela’s hesitation is palpable in the air, and Lucy hears her breath catch almost imperceptibly. She turns her head back towards the detective to see her eyes shimmering, gaze not quite in the room anymore. “They got his heart started again in the ambulance.”
“Would’ve loved to have been awake for that part.” The remark slips out, a number of things repressing Lucy’s filter, but she doesn’t regret it.
The corner of Angela’s mouth pulls slightly, sympathy etched into her expression. “Nyla said you were getting pretty freaked out,” she explains. “They didn’t want you making yourself worse.”
Logically, Lucy knows that’s reasonable. Doesn’t change the fact that she was dragged kicking and screaming into unconsciousness while Tim was technically dead.
But there’s no changing the past, so she tries to let it go.
“Do they know why he—? I mean, his heart stopped, Angela.”
With a gentle shrug, Angela gestures to her own neck, mirroring where Tim’s burn is. “They think it could’ve been a combination of a lot of things; the electric shock could’ve been a catalyst, on top of the strain on his body, on top of the infection developing in his shoulder. They took him into surgery as soon as he got here.”
Wait—surgery?
When Lucy’s brows knit together, she feels the movement pull at one of the butterfly bandages on her face. The fact his shoulder needed surgery isn’t the surprise, but… “If he’s had surgery, how long have I been out?”
“You’ve been in and out of it for a few hours by now,” Angela explains, her voice soft with sympathy as she reaches out and places a hand on Lucy’s arm. “This is the first time you’ve managed a conversation.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry—the doctors aren’t concerned. They’re not even surprised; your body is just exhausted. You’ll probably be discharged in the next day or so.”
“And Tim?”
“They’re going to be keeping him in for observation for a couple more days, just in case.”
It looks like Lucy’s going to be here for a couple more days too, then. Like hell she’s leaving here without him.
Once it materialises, the thought surprises her a little, because it’s not like they’ve shared a bed in months.
She nods all the same, keeping her inner monologue to herself, before something occurs to her that she definitely should’ve thought of already. She whips her head back towards the detective so fast it almost pulls something in her neck.
“Ray?”
“In custody.” Angela squeezes Lucy’s arm. “We got him, and the others.”
She swallows heavily, the thought of the others sending a sharp chill down her spine. “How many?”
“A few were already there, stalking around the place. The rest of them are being brought in as we speak.”
Lucy freezes. Part of her had assumed most of them would’ve disappeared into a void after Ray walked them out. It’s too much to ask for, she knows, but… “All of them?”
Taking a sip of her coffee, Angela nods, and a weight lifts from Lucy’s shoulders.
“How?”
“You know how you broke that guy’s nose, and Ray broke his hands?” Lucy nods. Like she’d ever be able to forget any of that. “Well, when we saw it happen, we knew he’d need some kind of actual medical treatment. We sent a BOLO alert to all ER departments in the state. Dark-haired man coming in with a broken nose, two broken hands, and probably bruised ribs, with how hard you kicked him. It didn’t take all that long for him to surface.”
Oh.
“He gave us the details for the offshore account he paid into for his… experience, and our techs were able to get details for every incoming payment on that account. Ray might have been prepared enough to remain anonymous, but these guys were civilians—didn’t know the first thing about making an inconspicuous payment. So, we got the lot of them.”
Lucy’s brows furrow as she goes back over the detective’s explanation. “The guy just… talked? Just like that?”
Angela shrugs. “He was already going to do time—we had the livestream footage of him assaulting you, and we found traces of your blood on his clothes. Guess he was pissed that he’d been caught, and hurt, and that he didn’t get what he paid for, because he was all too willing to bring everyone down with him.”
That does make sense, she supposes. “I guess Ray’s business model was counting on the clients not wanting to incriminate themselves.”
“They were all living normal, squeaky-clean lives; it’s no surprise they wouldn’t want to tarnish that with associations to some underground torture ring. We got lucky, really.”
The weight of that settles in her stomach.
They really did get lucky. None of the monsters that laid their hands on them will walk the streets for a long while. None of them will go back to their families or their normal lives in the way she’d ruminated over in that room.
Lucy just remembers feeling so fucking helpless. And when she got stabbed, she thought that was it, attempt over, she’d tried and failed.
Turns out, it was the opposite.
“You’re the reason we found you guys, Lucy.” It’s like Angela can read her mind. “You fought like hell, and it paid off.”
She nods, not quite able to reconcile that fact with the hopelessness that felt like it might consume her from the inside out.
“And we have all the evidence we need,” Angela continues. “We’ll be able to identify them all in the livestream footage; every last one of them will be going away for a long time.”
There’s a cold edge to the detective’s tone, but it’s layered over the watery quality to her voice. It’s only now that Lucy clocks how exhausted she looks. Dark circles shadow her eyes, and that’s definitely not her first cup of coffee this morning.
It must have been a long few days for everyone at Mid-Wilshire. Chances are, Angela would’ve been one of a handful of people who insisted on watching every damn second of those livestreams, scouring them for anything they could use in their search.
Bile rises in her throat. People have seen every second of her and Tim’s suffering from a bird’s eye view, heard every scream and groan and moment of panic. It makes Lucy’s stomach twist itself into knots, and she motions for another ice chip. Angela obliges, her face pinched with sympathy.
“I’m…” Lucy takes a slow, shaking breath, trying to centre herself. “I’m sorry you had to watch them.”
The words are too small for the gravity of their situation, but she doesn’t have the energy to search for better ones.
The detective shakes her head, refusing to let the tears fall. “We found you guys. That’s what matters.”
“I’m just glad it was you,” Lucy says. The banging on the wall of the container in the seconds before they’d been found reverberates through her bones, and she remembers the paralysing fear she’d felt. “When I heard the pounding on the wall, I just thought it was…”
She trails off, not even willing to put that possibility into words. If Mid-Wilshire hadn’t been the ones to open that door, she and Tim would’ve never made it home.
“They put up one hell of a chase, but they were never going to get to you. Not if any of us could help it.” Angela’s voice is firm and certain, but the way she swallows betrays just how awful their search must’ve been. “We found some spots of blood as we searched the place. Just… followed the trail until we hit your container.”
“Oh.” Lucy breathes out a soft laugh despite herself, ghosting a hand over the stitches in her side. “That blood was me.”
“Figured as much the moment I saw you.”
“All the other containers we tried were locked,” she explains. “We got lucky.”
Angela pulls a face that doesn’t make sense yet. “Not all of them. Well—I mean, it was locked, but… Ray had keys to three containers. Yours, Tim’s, and a third.”
Lucy freezes, body revolting at the mere implication.
No.
No, no, no.
“There—there were others?”
Others like them, having their pain put on the black market.
Lucy’s chest aches. She would’ve tried to find them, would’ve tried to help them, they could’ve—
Oh, God.
“No,” Angela holds a hand up, like she can physically cut through Lucy’s spiral before it begins, “it wasn’t other victims.”
“Then who—?”
“The third container was home to our shooter and Robert Wilson. Both long dead.”
Oh.
Amidst the hell of the last few days, Lucy had almost forgotten about the shooter.
“No wonder we couldn’t find either of them.” That panicked search feels like a lifetime ago, back when she’d been the one watching grainy footage in the bullpen.
“Yeah; they were both shot point-blank and dumped in there. ME said they’d been dead for days.”
“The shooter fucked up in not getting Tim at his house like he was supposed to,” Lucy realises, “and Robert Wilson’s face was visible on the livestream.”
“Exactly. None of the others had their faces visible after that—Ray probably made sure of it. Couldn’t risk any of them getting identified out on the street.”
At the mention of the shooter, something else occurs to Lucy. “How’s Miles?”
“He’s fine,” Angela nods. “Celina took him home to recover, and she’s been taking good care of him.”
Lucy has no doubt, but she bites back any comments about that—she’s not opening up the topic of her roommate’s possible secret relationship just yet, not until she’s home and can get her hands on some actual proof for herself.
“Good,” she hums absently.
As the room quiets, Lucy finds her gaze drawn back towards Tim.
The conversation dies entirely as she starts to scrutinise every inch of him, cataloguing every bruise and cut and potential scar, every single injury that almost formed a part of the end of his story. He’d been right there on the cusp of it, she knows. He’d been feverish and terrifyingly out of it, and if she hadn’t been there, part of her wonders if he would’ve pushed through it at all. Maybe he would’ve just let his body give up.
She swallows the wave of fear that crawls up her throat at the thought. Watches the steady flicker of his pulse on the monitor. Remembers the absence of it, right when she’d needed it most. Her hand clenches around the memory.
“He’s going to be okay, right?” Her voice comes out smaller than she’d planned for it to, as she asks a question she’s already had answered.
“Yes.” Angela doesn’t hesitate, her voice resolute.
Of course the answer hasn’t changed, but she needs to be absolutely certain. “Because he—he really wasn’t in a good way, before—”
“I know,” Angela says. “Trust me, Grey and I grilled the doctors. Both of you are just going to need a lot of pain medication and bedrest. Tim’s going to hate it.”
Letting out a sound that’s almost a laugh, Lucy nods, placated for the time being, letting her eyes settle back on him.
He pulled through. They both did. And now…
“He loves you, you know.”
Lucy nods, her own choked admission echoing through her skull now, a tear prickling at the corner of her eye. “Yeah. He told me, and I tried—”
Her throat closes around the rest of her words as she remembers the awful moment his eyes had fallen shut.
He might not know.
But he has to know; she needs him to.
“This is one hell of a shove from the universe, huh?” Angela’s tone is dry, and when Lucy looks back at her, the detective is watching her, one corner of her mouth lifting.
Lucy smiles in return. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“I’d never go as far as to say things like this have a ‘bright side’, but…”
“Yeah.”
Biting back a sudden yawn, Angela rubs at her eyes, draining the last of her coffee before staring at the cup mournfully.
“You good if I go and grab another one of these?” she asks, shaking the paper cup. “Can I get you anything?”
“Go and get some sleep, Lopez,” Lucy says, and it’s her turn to reach out to place a hand on her friend’s knee. “We’re good for now, I promise.”
Angela’s uncertain gaze lingers on her, before shifting to Tim, and back to her. “Nyla’s coming by in about an hour.”
Lucy smiles. “We’ll survive that long.”
The detective pushes herself to her feet after another long bout of staring, giving Lucy’s hand one final squeeze before heading for the door. Right as she reaches it, though, she turns back.
“You want to get some more sleep?” she asks. “Shall I get the light?”
“No.”
The response comes out ragged and desperate before Lucy has time to fully register the question, and Angela’s hand snatches back from where she’s already reaching for the switch.
“You can—you can leave the light on.” She doesn’t know why she’s trying to make her response seem in any way normal. “Thanks, Angela.”
The detective’s watchful gaze lingers, knowing damn well that that response was something, but she doesn’t push it further. No doubt that will come later.
As Angela takes her leave, Lucy realises that she and Tim are probably both going to be like this for a while—terrified of the darkness, waiting to hear the other one suffer every time a light goes out, imaginations left to wreak havoc in the shadows.
She doesn’t know how she’s going to sleep without Tim by her side, without the constant reassurance that he’s still breathing, but part of her is hoping she won’t have to.
Keeping an eye on Tim in her periphery, Lucy exhales, trying to settle back into her pillows. She thinks about trying to get some more sleep like Angela had suggested, her body still trying to cash in on the rest of the debt it’s owed, but she decides against it.
It’s just as well, because a sharp inhale soon comes from Tim’s side of the room. The sound sends a twist of discomfort through Lucy’s chest, and she turns her head back to see his eyes opening.
He blinks a few times, brows scrunching together as he squints at the ceiling tiles for a few moments, getting his bearings.
And then, without warning, his head tilts to the side, tired eyes finding hers immediately.
The air rushes from her lungs. His eyes are so blue. Right now, she could stare at them forever—a few hours ago, she’d been terrified she’d never see them again.
“Hey,” he murmurs, voice gravelly with sleep and sedatives.
“Hey yourself,” she breathes, her chest catching. He’s awake. “How are you feeling?”
It’s probably an unfair question to ask a minute after he’s woken up, but Tim takes the time to figure it out anyway, closing his eyes as he turns his head back towards the ceiling.
When his eyes open again, they catch on the sling around his shoulder, cradling his arm.
“I’ve been worse,” he concludes.
Lucy snorts. That sounds about right. “That’s probably the medications doing most of the work.”
He shifts as he turns back to her, unable to school his wince. “Oh, I’m aware.”
She lets out a giggle, despite everything. There’s already an inexplicable lightness in the room.
His eyes trail over her, giving her a once-over, twice, three times, like he’s trying to figure it out before he asks. “What about you?”
Her lips curve into a smile without her permission. “Better, now.”
She means it in every single sense—and the way his eyes soften impossibly tells her he’s understood that just fine. What he says next only confirms it:
“I heard you, you know.”
She doesn’t need to ask what he means; she just blows out a quiet breath. “Yeah?”
He hums his confirmation, but then his face does something strange. The corners of his eyes pinch, and he looks… sad.
“I know that you thought I was—I just, you know...” No, she doesn’t know. Not even a little. He huffs out a breath, clearly frustrated at his inability to get the words out, before trying again. “It’s okay if you didn’t mean… if you don’t—”
Oh.
Her heart shatters when she realises what he’s trying to say.
“You thought I could die, so—” He tries to keep going, trying to give her an out in case she wants it, but she cuts him off.
“No, no—no, I meant it. I—I do, mean it, still.”
He pauses, lips still parted, frozen around the words that are breaking her heart, before gently closing. His eyes soften, finally meeting hers again, his expression lightening.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She takes a slow inhale, the smile once again lifting the corners of her mouth of its own accord. “I love you, Tim.” Her voice cracks against the words, but she doesn’t care.
It’s hard to tell if the shimmer in his eyes is a trick of the fluorescent lights, or tears that he won’t let fall, but his responding smile just makes her wish she’d been able to say it sooner. She wishes it hadn’t taken this, that his eyes weren’t lighting up an expression that’s bloody and bruised.
“I love you, too.” The words sound as precious and as honest as the first time Tim had said them, and every time after that. She never took them for granted, not once, and she sure as shit isn’t going to start now.
Lucy swears she can see every shred of his love for her in the ocean in his eyes, bright and brilliant and almost overwhelming. That love doesn’t waver, but his smile does. After a few moments, he breaks their eye contact, his gaze shifting to stare at nothing.
“Look,” he sighs, and Lucy’s heart sinks. “I know—I know I fucked up. I—I broke your heart, and your trust, and, Lucy, I—”
There’s something about watching him shoulder the blame, with his bruises and cuts and broken body, that makes Lucy’s heart ache. She cuts him off again with a sharp shake of her head, and his apologies dissolve before they reach her.
“Tim,” she says, her voice firm. “Look at us.”
His brows furrow together, and his lips part, clearly intending on voicing his confusion, but she continues without letting him.
“Look at what we just survived,” she clarifies. “Yeah, you broke my heart, but… doesn’t that seem pretty small now?”
His face relaxes slightly, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Don’t get me wrong; we still have a lot to talk about. But I…” She blows out something between a breath and a sigh. “That can wait, you know?”
Right now, everything else can wait.
Her body starts moving before she’s had time to think about the logistics of her plan, her legs swinging over the side of the bed so she’s facing Tim.
“Lucy—what are you—?”
She ignores his questions in favour of focusing, knowing he’ll understand what she’s doing soon enough. Her IV pole is already in the gap between their beds, so she doesn’t need to think too much about navigating around the wire as she crosses the space between them—even if it ends up awkwardly crossed in front of her body when she sits down at his side, it’s a small inconvenience for the warmth of being closer to him.
If she rips the wires out of her arm, she doesn’t even want to think about the million different alarms that will go off, so she settles for perching on the edge of Tim’s mattress, her legs hanging over the side. She’s happy sitting beside him while he lies down, but he surprises her when he pushes himself upright with a small wince. He waves off her concern before she’s even opened her mouth, shuffling himself across the covers until he’s sitting on her left.
Now that they’re side by side, Lucy leans into his good shoulder to close the last of the gap between them, relishing in his warmth as she stares absently at her own hospital bed.
The last few days could’ve ended so differently, so many times, in so many ways. But they both made it out.
“I don’t care about the sergeant’s exam,” she blurts out.
Tim stiffens, almost leaning away to look at her. “Lucy—”
It’s not until he’s reacted that she realises how that sounds.
“Not—I still want to take it, I just—I mean…” Lifting her head from his shoulder, she looks Tim in the eye, and any final inkling of doubt that might’ve been lingering dissolves completely, lost in the blue. “I don’t care about waiting for it,” she clarifies. “Fuck the ‘rank problem’, the chain of command bureaucracy bull. We can keep this to ourselves if we have to, but…” Her eyes flood with tears. “But I want it back. You. Us.”
A strangled sound comes from the back of Tim’s throat.
“I thought I was going to lose you because of him, again,” she continues, her voice growing watery. “Your heart stopped, Tim. I’ve never been so goddamn terrified in my life.”
With a soft shake of his head, he wraps his arm around her shoulders. “You’ll never lose me,” he murmurs, pulling her closer.
She responds in kind, wrapping both arms around him. She’s careful of their wires and their injuries to a degree, but another part of her doesn’t care. She just wants to feel close to him, and a dull ache in her side isn’t going to get in the way of that.
He leans down and presses a kiss to her hair, and Lucy’s eyes slip closed as she relishes in the feeling.
She almost lost this.
The sob rips from her throat at the realisation.
They’ve spent days being tortured at the hands of sadists, just to fulfil some sick, fucked up thrill. They were barely even human, reduced to products up for sale. She wasn’t sure she’d ever feel a gentleness like this again. At some points, she’d wondered if they were going to die at the violent, cruel hands of people who just wanted them to hurt. They almost did.
They were this fucking close to never getting this back.
Every thought shakes another sob loose, the weight of them slamming heavy into her chest, and in the safety of Tim’s arms, Lucy finally lets herself splinter without trying to push it back down. She lets her tears fall with the knowledge that they’re no longer play some awful part in a monster’s twisted glee; she doesn’t have to swallow around the lump in her throat to keep her emotions sacred. No one’s getting this moment except the love of her life.
Tim is the love of her fucking life. That thought doesn’t feel like claws sinking into her heart anymore.
Her tears soak the front of his hospital gown as she sobs into his chest. Tim just pulls her in closer.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, tucking her head under his chin. “We’re safe now.”
Every shred of fear and anguish and overwhelming love comes spilling out in rivulets, and Lucy just lets herself feel it, the weight of the last few days crashing down around her. They’re safe. She’s safe, right here in Tim’s arms—they’ll carry this together. They’re going to get through this together.
Eventually, she runs out of tears, but she still holds onto Tim for dear life, wrung out and exhausted. Her body is already relaxing into his, and he doesn’t protest in the slightest.
“I don’t want to let go,” she mumbles into his chest.
Tim leans in impossibly closer, holding her even tighter. “I didn’t ask you to.”
After pressing another kiss to her hair, he rests his cheek against the top of her head.
“We’re going to be alright,” he promises, his own voice growing hoarse with unshed tears.
They’ve got a long road ahead of them, she knows. A lot of healing, physically and mentally, and it’s going to be hard. Hell, they still need to talk, to make sure their foundations are solid before they build everything back up.
But for the first time in a while, Lucy isn’t scared at the prospect of any of it. They’ll make it through, the same way they’ve made it through everything—side by side.
They’re going to be okay. She really does believe that.