Chapter Text
A blast of cold air hits Maddie as she walks into the grocery store. The sudden change in temperature raising goosebumps on her arms.
She's pushing the cart while Buck walks beside her keeping up a constant stream of chatter about his last shift, what Bobby has taught him to cook recently, and what specific items are on the shopping list. She lets the sound of his voice distract her, tries to force down the anxiety Doug's phone call has left bubbling in her chest. The shiny new cellphone with a shiny new number doesn't help. No matter what Buck says she doesn't feel safe, not yet anyway.
The first few aisles are uneventful. Buck picks up different vegetables, weighing them in his hands to check for some unknown quality. He adds an inordinate amount of eggs to the cart and throws in the specific type of creamer Maddie likes in her coffee without being asked.
When they're in the cereal aisle—Buck a short way ahead carefully studying the backs of two kinds of protein bars—Maddie glances around, she's never been a fan of cereal, personally, but Buck is taking a long time and the contents of the cart aren't doing much to hold her attention.
She makes eye contact with a dark haired man wearing a blue, store branded, vest standing slightly ahead of them and smiles.
"Miss, can you help me?" His voice cracks, he can't be older than 16. "Please, miss, you've gotta help me get home."
That's when she realizes—he's covered in blood.
"I completely forgot how indecisive you are!" She teases Buck, her voice light and airy belying the fear building in her chest.
"C'mon, I know you saw me. Please!"
Maddie's heart aches for him, but there's really nothing she can do.
"Give them to me." She grabs the two boxes out of Bucks hands, puts them behind her back and shuffles them, like Buck is a kid stuck choosing which candy bar to spend his allowance on.
"Stop ignoring me! I know you see me!"
"Okay, now pick one."
"C'mon Mads, I'm not six any more."
"I just want to get home."
"Yes, but you're just as indecisive at twenty-six so hurry up and pick a hand so we can move on."
"Help me, please."
"Fine. Left hand."
"Great." Maddie puts the box in her right hand back on the shelf, throws the box she was holding in her left hand into the cart and pushes it forward, through the ghost of the teenager begging for her help.
She can feel her heart racing and her breathing start to get shallow. She should be better than this, should be able to do more, to help, but she just can't. Can't stand the sound of his pleas ringing in her ears. Can't stand the stand the uncomfortable, nauseous, churning, feeling walking away leaves in her belly.
She forces one foot in front of the other. Focuses on the cool metal under her hands, the smell of disinfectant from a cleaned up spill, the distant hum of the freezers an aisle over.
She's practiced at this, at ignoring the ghosts. It's been over a decade of pretending she can't see or hear them, Doug's request, of course. It's been torture at times, especially while she was working as a nurse unable to tell the difference between a ghost and a patient. And now she's in LA and there's more of them than ever. A lot of people die here and they all seem to have unfinished business that they need, specifically Maddie's, help with.
She plasters a smile onto her face, nodding and agreeing with Buck about something, she's not entirely sure what. Desperate to give of an impression of fine-ness. Solidity. Same old Maddie. Luckily, she is an expert in not letting on that something is wrong. She's been packing so many parts of herself away for so long she's not even sure she knows what's in there anymore. Her 'gift' is just one of those things. Something that a different version of Maddie gets to have. A version of herself that didn't fall in love with a monster.
The scent hits her all at once, flooding her senses until she can't focus on anything else.
Doug.
One minute she's watching Buck wield the grocery list like a weapon and the next she's somewhere else.
A hand tucking her hair behind her ear so gently. 'You're beautiful, Maddie.' Laughter and snow down the back of her sweater. A possessive arm around her waist. Being kissed sweetly and deeply. 'Where are you? I thought you'd be home by now.' A hand tight around her wrist, fingerprint shaped bruises marring her skin. She's scared. Scared to speak. Scared to leave the house she's haunting. A warm hug after a long shift. 'I just wanted things to be perfect, Maddie, you know that right?' A glass shattered. A raised fist. A brother leaving. 'It's okay, Maddie, I can have you all to myself now and that's better, isn't it?' Another raised fist. 'I love you so much, Maddie Kendall.'
"Maddie, can you hear me? Maddie!"
No that's not right. Evan shouldn't be here.
"Hey, Maddie you're okay, just take some deep breaths for me."
But he is.
Why is he here?
Because she's not in Boston.
Or Hershey.
She's in Los Angeles.
With Buck.
Who is using his first responder voice, steady and calm, but his eyes are round with concern.
She doesn't want him to be using the first responder voice.
Why is this happening? She left, she got out.
She takes the breaths anyway.
How is this fair?
"That's it you're doing so good."
She feels his thumb swipe softly across her cheek. She didn't even know she'd been crying.
Painfully, slowly, the world around her comes back into full view. The bags of chips, the scuffled linoleum floor, her own knuckles, white where she is gripping the handle of the cart. Her brother.
She didn't want him to see this. She's supposed to protect him, care for him. Not the other way around. This feels wrong, uncomfortable. Prickles run across her skin making her want to itch and scratch until the world is the right way up again.
Tears start falling faster.
"Hey, hey, hey! C'mon, keep taking those deep breaths."
She does and it helps.
"I'm fine." Then firmer, "I'm fine. But can we go home please?" She doesn't sound like herself.
"Y-yeah, yeah of course. I can sort all this out later, don't worry. Let's just get you back to the apartment."
The apartment, not home. Because Maddie doesn't have a home anymore.
He wraps an arm firmly around her waist—protective not possessive—and guides her out of the store and into the car in a singular fluid motion.
She keeps her breathing steady and feels herself finally return fully to her own body. The first thing she notices, once she's settled, are the concerned looks Evan is directing her way. He's going to have questions she's going to have to answer but she's really not ready to talk about it, any more than she already has anyway. Especially not right now. She needs to… She doesn't know what she needs but a long conversation delving into the specifics of that is definitely not going to help.
But, sitting in the passenger seat of her old Jeep has a more calming affect on her than anything else so far. She lets the gentle motion of the engine rumbling along and the warm mid-afternoon sun, pouring through the passenger window, soothe her nerves.
And for the whole drive home she keeps up a steady rhythm of 'Doug isn't here. Buck is here.' in her head.
She's safe. She's safe. She's safe.
***
The journey back to Abby's apartment passes in a blur. Maddie still not fully aware of her surroundings.
She takes a shower, running the water extra hot; trying to burn away the feeling of Doug in her space. Looming. Threatening. She takes extra time scrubbing every inch of her body trying desperately to cleanse herself of all the places he ever touched.
From nowhere a memory from nursing school hits her. It takes seven years for every cell in the body to regenerate. In seven years she'll have a body that Doug has never touched. That feels something close to hopeful. This isn't forever, she just has to keep moving forward to get there. Relief floods her body at the realization and she finally feels grounded enough to turn the water off and leave the shower.
As she dresses into soft sweatpants, pulled from the suitcase she still hasn't unpacked, she turns her mind to what to do about Evan. He's going to ask questions, that's a given, and he's going to want to help her. But she's so scared that his help will hurt. That he'll kill her while trying to give her CPR. She needs to give him a target less painful. Something he can focus on without accidentally destroying her in the process.
By the time she makes her way into the kitchen Buck is leaning against the counter with two mugs of hot tea next to him, steam rising and filling the air with the scent of chamomile and honey. Did Maddie teach him to be this considerate or is it something he learned for himself while they were apart? She genuinely can't remember right now.
"H-hey Mads. I made tea." He seems tentative as if Maddie is some fragile thing that will shatter if he talks slightly too loudly. It makes Maddie's skin crawl.
"I'm fine, Buck, there's nothing to look so concerned about." Plastic smile firmly on her face. "I will take that tea though." She picks up one of the mugs and heads through to the living room and sits on the couch, with her feet tucked, and a blanket pulled across her lap. Buck takes his seat at the other end, resting his mug on his thigh and looking at Maddie with his big, sad, concerned puppy, eyes.
She's desperate to not have this be a thing. She lost it a bit in the chips aisle of a grocery store and now she's fine. And that isn't Evan's problem to deal with. She's here to make up for lost time, to be there for her brother who's absence in her life has been like a constant ache for the last five years. She doesn't want a lengthy tug-of-war where Buck forces her to talk about things she can't even look at head on right now. But they're both as stubborn as each other so she knows she has to give something.
"Okay…. So you're fine, but what happened back there? Was it something to do with—"
"Remember when you were a kid and we'd play a game that we could see ghosts and help them go into the light?" She interrupts him before he can say Doug's name.
"Erm. Yes?" Buck's brow furrows as if he's both confused at the abrupt change in topic and desperately trying to search his memory. Granted, he would have been very young at the time and as far as she knows couldn't actually see the ghosts.
"Well that wasn't a game, for me. I could—can—actually see ghosts. 'Earthbound spirits', that's what Grandma Melinda called them anyway."
"Who's Grandma Melinda?"
Maddie resists rolling her eyes, obviously the unknown person is the thing he latches onto, not literal ghosts.
"Mom's mom, she died before you were born but she stayed around long enough to explain what my gift meant and what I needed to do. As far as I know she's moved on now," her voice filled with a painful mix of love and sorrow. She'd loved Grandma Melinda both before and after her death.
"O-okay. What does that have to do with you having a panic attack?"
"It wasn't a panic attack." It wasn't. Maddie doesn't panic. "Doug didn't like that I had this… power. He– He couldn't believe it because he couldn't see them. So, I just stopped seeing them. I ignored them all until they gave up trying to talk to me. But, since I've been here I'm starting to see them again and I don't know why. It's just… very overwhelming. So that's what happened. I saw some ghosts, it was a lot, and I froze up for a minute. Absolutely nothing to worry about."
She takes a sip of her tea, continuing to project an air of utter and absolute fine-ness. Because she is, she's fine.
Maybe if she tells herself that enough times she'll believe it.
"Maddie, that seems like quite a lot to worry about," Buck replies, incredulous. "I-I-I thought it was just a game we were playing, why couldn't I see anything? And why have they come back now?" Buck's own tea is abandoned, undrunk, on the side table and he's twisted his whole body to look at Maddie with so much worry in his eyes she doesn't know what to do with it.
"The way Grandma Melinda explained it to me is that it's passed down from mother to daughter, the matrilineal line. She taught me how to help the earthbound deal with any unfinished business or emotions or whatever so they can go into the light. And just… you were with me so much when you were young, and I didn't want you to feel left out, so I turned it into a game."
"But there were actually ghosts there? You weren't just talking to the air?"
"Exactly."
"And they went away while you were with Doug because he didn't like it?" Buck looks so affronted when he says this, as if it's just another thing on a very long list of reasons to hate Doug. Which it is, she supposes. "So, why are they back now?"
"I'm not sure and there's not exactly anyone I can ask. I guess maybe because I feel safer now?" She sounds uncertain because she is uncertain. Both about her own safety and the reasons that things are changing.
Maddie realizes how rigidly Buck must have been holding himself when he sinks back into the couch slightly, seemingly soothed by the idea that she feels safer with him. And his ease puts her more at ease in turn; like they're two mirrors endlessly reflecting stress and ease and joy and sadness back and forth.
"Maddie, you're one of the most caring people I know," he sounds slightly awestruck, "if anyone was going to be able to see ghosts—to help people even after they've died—it would be you."
Maddie scoffs. There was a time when she would have believed him. When she felt as though she was a kind and empathetic person. But that person died years ago. Doug killed her and now Maddie is dragging around the animated corpse of who she was, just hoping that nobody notices.
But Buck, of course, hasn't noticed and carries on; "You practically raised me! You turned something that was probably incredible stressful for you as a teenager into a fun game for me. You're the best person I know and if you're seeing the ghosts or or or the earthbound or whatever again maybe it's for a reason?"
"I don't know. Maybe? It just… It's a lot okay? I'm trying to get settled here and I've got my interview for dispatch in a few days. I don't know that I can do this as well."
"That… I guess that makes sense," he doesn't sound sure at all. "I just– I guess I don't want this to be another thing that Doug has taken from you."
And wasn't that just the last thing she was expecting to come from her brothers mouth, she didn't know he could be this astute. Because he's right, it is another thing that Doug has taken from her, she's just not sure that she wants it back.
"I'll think about it," she hedges, not ready to commit one way or another just yet. "You've got a big heart, Buck, and I'm not sure I can take all the credit for that, but my happiness and safety aren't your responsibility. You don't need to worry about me so much, I'm fine. " He looks as thought he's going to interrupt her and she stops him. "But if anything changes you'll be the first to know."
He looks placated for now, which in turn eases some of Maddie's fears. She's brought herself some time to figure this all out, at least. Determined, as she is, to do this by herself and not put more strain on Buck than she already has.
"I just want to help."
"I know."
They let the silence settle around them; something unresolved hanging in the air stopping it from being entirely comfortable.