Chapter Text
Soldier keep on marchin' on
Head down 'til the work is done
Waiting on that morning sun
Soldier keep on marchin' on
If you had asked Evan Buckley three months ago who his family was, he could easily have named at least seven people... but that was before the bomb in the truck, before the tsunami, before the pulmonary embolism, before the damn lawsuit.
And now all that was gone, and his family was back to two parents he hadn't seen since he was 19 and a sister who had once again chosen her boyfriend over him.
Buck wasn't stupid. He knew that suing Bobby would create some friction in their relationship, but he loved his job so much and was so eager to return to his “family” that he believed their relationship would be able to overcome it... How naive he had been.
93 days after returning to the team, he finally understood that once again, he was alone.
At first, he understood them, bowed his head, and accepted their silence to give them the space they needed to forgive him, but when a week turned into two, when his attempts at apology were ignored time and time again, when the simple fact of seeing him arrive made people leave the room... he understood. He had screwed up, he had been too much again, he had been “exhausting” again, and he had ruined the only real family he had ever had.
But had they ever really been his family? If they had turned their backs on him so easily?
Even Hen, who swore to march to her own beat, who had given him a cupcake on his first day back, even she had stopped talking to him, acting distant and following everyone else's example by ignoring him.
“My house, my rules,” Bobby had told him, sorry Captain Nash, once, and now more than ever he knew it was true. So Buck threw in the towel, stopped trying to talk to them knowing he would only find silence, stopped approaching them during family meals, preferring to eat alone on the roof, stopped hoping to return to the truck to assist with emergency calls, and simply did all the duties that the Captain assigned him on each shift.
Buck simply gave up.
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Every day he was on duty at the station it was the same routine: he would eat breakfast at home so he wouldn't be tempted to approach them during meal times, he would arrive at the station already changed—a lesson he learned after finding his locker vandalized and his uniform completely stained for the second time—he wouldn't even go near the locker room if he saw any of his colleagues there, checking his list of tasks and spending hours completing them, ignoring the alarms of each emergency call because he had already resigned himself to not being taken into account. If his shift was 12 hours, he could hand in his report to the captain—a report he had never actually seen him read—without even receiving a thank you and retire to the solitude of his loft; if, unfortunately, his shift was 24 hours, he made sure to stay out of everyone else's space, even taking short naps on the roof or, if he was too sleepy, making sure to use the bunks when no one was there and, if someone arrived, waiting until they were in their bunks before leaving. Over and over again, repeating the steps every shift, every week, the same for the last 93 days.
If it weren't for the neighbor in his loft, for whom he cooked every Wednesday, or the girl who worked at the coffee shop he went to every Saturday morning, Buck wouldn't have spoken to anyone in all that time.
His phone hadn't rung since then, no one had called him, and the only notification he received was from the 118 work group chat indicating a change in shifts, but Buck knew that his old family had a group without him. They had gone on without him, discarded him like trash. And he knew it was his fault.
But the truth was that he was starting to get tired. Every day it was harder to get up and out of bed, every day it was more tiring to finish his list of chores, every day the silence broke him a little more. So much so that he considered requesting a transfer to another station, although he doubted that any would want him. After all, he was the traitor firefighter, the one who had sued his captain, the one who had lost everything.
Maybe he should just leave, take his Jeep and get out of that damn city. He had done it before, after all. At 19, with a couple of dollars to his name, he had left a city where people saw him as nothing more than a burden, where his parents' silence was as hard as the silence he was now experiencing.
Buck sometimes apologized to that 19-year-old Evan, whom he had failed once again.
“Buckley!”
The blond jumped when he heard the Captain calling him from his office. With a sigh, he put down the sponge he had been using to wash the dishes and prepared himself for the scolding that was sure to come or the new task that would be assigned to him
Upon entering the office, Bobby barely looked up from the papers in his hands, and since he wasn't invited to sit down, the firefighter stood waiting for instructions, his hands crossed behind his back, a position he had learned from his attempt to become a SEAL. After a few minutes of silence, the captain finally turned to look at him, and if Buck had been the same person he used to be, he might have interpreted the man's gaze as confusion, but being the Buck he was now, he interpreted the frown as another sign of disapproval.
“Lena returned to her station last shift,” he informed him, and the blond almost rolled his eyes. He knew that, he had seen the cake in the refrigerator when he took out his lunch, but of course no one had invited him to stay and say goodbye to the woman, nor was it as if he had wanted to. Receiving no response, the captain frowned again. "You'll be on the truck today. I don't want any trouble, and if you disobey any instructions, there will be consequences."
Buck just nodded, there was nothing to say, he wouldn't thank the man because he knew he was only doing it because he was short-staffed, nor would he assure him that he wouldn't regret it because, honestly, he wasn't interested in hearing any more hurtful comments from someone he had once seen as a father figure.
Before the Captain could say anything else, there was a knock at the door and Hen poked her head in.
“Cap, have you seen... oh, Buck!” The woman's voice betrayed her surprise, but a small smile quickly formed on her lips. “I was just looking for you.” Buck said nothing, just waited for her to tell him what she needed, but she must have seen something in his face because the paramedic's smile faded with every passing second of silence. “I saw... I saw on the roster that you'll be in the truck with us... I wanted to wish you a safe return.”
“I returned three months ago, Wilson,” he couldn't help saying, almost indifferently, before turning back to the Captain. “Anything else you need, Captain?”
Nash's face almost fell, surely because of the tone he had used to speak to his superior. Great, another thing for which he would be considered insubordinate.
But the man said nothing, just shook his head, so the blond man nodded once and left the office, without turning to look at the paramedic at the door, who was staring at him.
The blue-eyed man returned to his to-do list, but when the first alarm of the day sounded, more than one person looked at him strangely when he wasn't the first to run as before. Their surprise intensified when, instead of taking his old position in front of Eddie, he took the place furthest away from them, choosing not to wear his headphones and spending the entire trip looking out the window.
Buck would like to say that his heart raced when he arrived at the emergency site, that his body vibrated with excitement, but the truth is that he felt nothing. He listened to Nash's instructions in silence, one step behind everyone else, and did as he was told without question.
Eddie barely glanced at him as he followed him to the crash scene in front of them.
“I need the...” He had barely finished the sentence when he was already handing the ex-soldier the saw, but before their hands could touch as they took the equipment, the blond man let go and walked away, cutting off contact and following protocol to help the victim inside the car.
Less than half an hour later, they were done, the victims had been taken to the hospital by Hen and Chimney, and Buck was back in the truck on his way back to the station.
“Good work out there, guys,” he heard the captain's voice, but he didn't turn his head, focusing again on the window, knowing that the praise wasn't specifically for him.
The rest of the day was the same, each call the same routine: silence in the truck, precision in the field, and efficiency in front of others. And during all that time, Buck hadn't said a word, not even when Chim tried to make a joke about his return to the truck, or when Athena greeted him at a scene, or when the team sat down to eat and he simply retired to the cots. When the shift ended, he was more tired than ever and felt as empty as always, and feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders, he left the station with quick steps.
Maybe if he had stopped for a moment, he would have heard Bobby call him, or seen Hen's worried look as he walked away, maybe he would even have seen Eddie hesitate and stop himself from following him.
But Evan Buckley didn't stop, he didn't hear Nash, he didn't notice Wilson or Diaz, he just kept walking and left the station.
That night at home, while eating a boring sandwich, he allowed himself to visit the LAFD website for the first time and check the section on stations needing new firefighters.
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The next day was the same: a 12-hour shift at the station, doing his tasks between alarms, eating his meals alone on the roof, spending his free time reading on the couches, keeping his distance from the others on the team, arriving home at night and checking the list of available stations. Day after day, the same for a week, and in all that time not a word was exchanged on his part.
The strange thing was that the others had started talking to him, first Hen, who greeted him with a “Good morning, Buck” as soon as she saw him, then Chimney, who offered him a cup of coffee if he saw him in the kitchen or handed him the bowl of popcorn he was holding when he sat down on the couch next to him while the blond man read. But that was as far as each interaction went, with a nod in response to Wilson's greeting or a refusal of Han's offers.
There was no point in having more interaction with them. Buck had learned his lesson and now knew the difference between family, friends, and colleagues.
The members of 118 were colleagues.
He hadn't seen his friends since Peru.
His family had never really existed.
Buck would not make the same mistake again.
“Cap said dinner's ready,” he heard Hen's voice near him, but he didn't pay any attention to it. He hadn't shared a meal with them in almost 97 days, so he doubted she was talking to him. But when he felt a hand on his shoulder, he couldn't help but turn around suddenly. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you,” the woman apologized, “but I don't think you heard me. Dinner is ready,” she repeated.
“It's not my turn to wash the dishes today,” was his simple reply, and he returned his gaze to the book, but he could sense how everything around him fell silent, and if he had looked up, he would have seen the distraught look on his captain's face or Chimney's worried expression.
“No... that's not why I was saying that,” the paramedic almost stammered. “But... aren't you going to eat? We haven't eaten in hours.”
Buck glanced at his watch and realized she was right. With a sigh, he closed his book and walked to the kitchen. As if under a spell, the station began to fill with noise once again.
He almost wanted to go around the table when he saw that to get to the fridge he would have to pass Eddie, but there was no way around it, so he simply continued on his way. When the ex-soldier turned to look at him, holding out a plate, the blond man walked past him and took his lunchbox out of the fridge. Without saying a word, he turned and headed for the roof.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Chimney had stopped halfway with his spoon while serving himself pasta, and Eddie was still frozen in the same spot with his plate still outstretched.
But while the Buck of before would have taken this as an approach, the Buck of now knew that nothing had changed.
Just as he was heading up the stairs to the roof, he could almost swear he heard Hen say...
“Happy, Captain?”
A few hours later, his shift was finally over, and as he walked to his Jeep, he heard Eddie's voice calling him, but to be honest, he preferred to ignore it. The dark-haired man hadn't spoken to him in over 90 days, so there was no reason to start now.
He was about to reach his car when he felt a hand grab his arm and turn him around.
“Didn't you hear me calling you?” the ex-soldier said in a tone of voice laden with reproach, but almost immediately his expression changed when he saw the blond man pull his arm away and square his shoulders, just as he had done in front of Nash since he returned to the station.
“Do you need something?”
Before Diaz could say anything, his cell phone rang, and with a snort, he watched him take out his phone. Even from a distance, he could see that the screen said “Carla” and the ex-soldier didn't take long to answer. The blond man took advantage of this moment to get into his car and drive away from the station, although he could have sworn he heard the ex-soldier calling him again.
That night, he did the same thing he had done the week before. While he was having dinner, he checked the list of stations, but this time he allowed himself to look at stations outside Los Angeles. The brief interaction with Eddie had only served to cement his decision, because the Buck of before would have stood there until the ex-military man finished his call, no matter how long it took, all with the possibility of repairing their broken friendship or at least with the hope of hearing something about the little 8-year-old boy he hadn't seen in months but who haunted his nightmares every night... But the Buck of today felt nothing, and walking away had been the logical thing to do.
Buck knew that something had undeniably broken inside him and that with each passing day his soul was fading a little more. But he also knew that if he ever wanted to feel anything again, it was time to let go completely and walk away. To find a new place.
It was time to leave.
