Chapter Text
Athena doesn’t want to believe it. Doesn’t want it to be true.
But the guilt is already suffocating, knowing that she brushed off Buck as a pompous, self-centered piece of work that skipped town when he was too humiliated from being fired.
But seeing him lying on the hospital bed, too thin, too pale, too dull for the bright young man he had once been tells her that they were all wrong about Evan Buckley.
.-~*~-.
Buck fades back into consciousness with a throb in his temples and thick molasses pumping through his veins. Every attempt at weak blinks is laborious and lethargic.
It takes his groggy mind minutes to finally make sense of anything.
When he tries to move his arms, he finds himself unable to. His breath hitches with panic and he thrashes slightly against his tight restraints.
When his vision clears, he’s met with an unfamiliar apartment.
Padded walls painted a pretty pale yellow. Cushy furniture and crisp white cabinets. Photos of… of him, framed all over the space.
As he becomes more and more lucid, he finally recognizes the ropes trapping him to the dining chair he sits in.
Across him sits a woman he doesn’t recognize. She rests her head on her palm, smiling at him sweetly. Her ginger hair is pulled away from her face and she seems awfully dressed up for… for what seems to be a kidnapper.
Buck smacks his lips together, trying to will words out from his dry throat to no avail.
“Did you have a good day at work, my love?” she asks, tilting her head as she awaits his response.
“I, uh,” Buck stammers, coughing slightly.
“Oh, you must be so parched. You work too hard.” She gets up from her seat and Buck can’t help but flinch.
She picks up his glass of water and brings it to his lips. Though he doesn’t trust the water, he still gulps it down greedily.
She pets his hair and the contact sends shivers down his spine. “Oh, you were so thirsty. You poor boy.” She presses a kiss to his forehead and heads back to her seat.
Buck, knowing better than to antagonize the woman who has the control of the situation, plasters a smile on his features. “Did you have a good day at work?”
She lights up. “Made that sale I’ve been working on for weeks. Berkeley finally said yes.”
Buck tries to emulate her excitement. “That’s amazing! I’m… so proud of you.”
She melts at his words. “You’re too sweet.”
Buck, scrambling to find more ways to distract her, looks at the plate of food in front of him. “This smells delicious.”
“I made it special for you,” she says. “I know how much you love your spaghetti.”
He does love spaghetti. He can’t imagine how she knows this.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Buck says, trying to sound sheepish though it comes out strained.
“You deserve nice things,” she says. She takes a bite and then grabs his fork and brings some to his mouth.
He eats it, still wary of anything she gives to him. He hums and forces a grin. “Delicious.”
“You like it?” she asks eagerly.
“I love it,” he says quickly.
She caresses his cheek. “You always know the right thing to say.”
“Well, you know me,” he says with a shrug.
“You know, you’ve been working so hard. I was thinking you should stop.”
Buck stills. “Stop?”
“Stop working,” she says. “I think you should stay home with me.”
“Well, I-I,” he swallows hard. “I actually got fired today.”
And her face erupts in glee. “Well, I guess things happen for a reason, huh?” She feeds him another forkful of spaghetti. “It’ll be nice to have you just to myself. You just love to make me jealous with all those other girls. But I knew you’d come back to me. You always do.”
Buck feels like he should recognize her somehow with the way she talks about their relationship, but she only scratches the back of his mind with a vague recognition.
“Of course I will,” Buck says.
She leans over the table and presses a kiss to his lips and he wills himself to kiss her back even though his stomach churns.
“I love you, Evan,” she says, looking at him with an adoration edged with obsession.
“I love you too…” He wracks his brain for a name, for any sign of what her name could be, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know who she is and she knows everything about him. He takes in her ginger locks and the way her hazel eyes bore into him with an almost soulless gaze. “I love you too, Pumpkin.”
.-~*~-.
Buck hasn’t woken up yet.
Bobby sits by his bedside, head in his hands, because he can’t stand to look at the young man he had failed.
Bobby wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t fired Buck that day. If it were just a reprimand and a stern talking to.
For these last months, Buck has been the butt of a long lasting joke. The ridicule of his peers with a story exaggerated more and more with each time it was retold. A cautionary tale to the new recruits passed on with laughs and judgment.
And while they were joking about the young man who disappeared after stealing a firetruck, he had been locked away, tortured and forgotten by the only people who could find him.
Bobby thought he had done the right thing.
Now he doesn’t know anything at all.
.-~*~-.
Those first few days, he truly believes he’ll be found.
He knew an entire house of first responders. Surely they’ll notice he’s gone. Surely they’ll find him.
But as the days pass, the doubt sinks in.
Why would they look for him? The reckless kid who got fired for stealing a firetruck just to get with a girl.
And the longer he is there, alone with just his captor, he starts to question if anyone ever really cared about him.
Why would they? He could never listen. He defied every order despite being nothing remarkable. He was a dime a dozen firefighter, hell, even less than that, with no real connections outside of his job filled with coworkers who couldn’t stand him.
They shouldn’t look for him. They’re better off without him.
The days blur together, no natural light in the little apartment or clocks to give him any concept of time.
Pumpkin doesn’t let Buck out of her sight. She is like a shadow, clinging to him and following even when he can’t see her.
There’s something that prickles beneath his skin, the feeling of being watched. He sees the cameras. Knows that whenever he is out of her sight she’s still got her eyes on him.
Her touch is constant. A firm hand on his thigh whenever they sit, not going further, just a reminder of her authority over him. Her lips on any exposed skin she can get it on. Her grinding weight sitting in his lap, draped over him like he’s a piece of furniture instead of a person.
At night, she makes him give her his body. She’s the one in control, using her body as she sees fit, and Buck is frozen beneath her, something he used to relish in suddenly revolting.
He thinks it’s been a few weeks when she finally leaves. She needs to get groceries. Buck knows she would never get delivery, the risk of someone knowing her location and the risk of Buck telling them the truth is too high.
He waits until he knows she’s gone. He can’t hear the door because the whole place is seemingly soundproof but he waits for at least five minutes.
And then he screams.
He screams until his throat is raw, just praying someone will hear him, while he searches the apartment for any means of escape.
The door is bolted shut from the other side with so many locks that Buck has no chance of breaking through all of them.
He tries to batter through the door, thinking his firefighting training could get him out, but the door is too thick.
He tries to break through the seemingly plaster walls but he’s met with a thick layer of concrete behind it.
It hits him that this is not just an apartment.
This is a carefully constructed prison made just for him.
Buck knows there’s no way to hide the damage he’s done and when she comes home, she knows exactly what he’s done.
She comes in, whistling and calling out to him happily, but when she sees the holes in the wall, her eyes darken.
“You’ve been a bad boy, Evan,” she says with a tsk. “You know I love you. And I do this because I love you, and because you need to learn.”
The belt is harsh on his skin and when she uses his bloody body as a sick form of apology, Buck is too delirious with pain to realize what she’s done.
.-~*~-.
Maddie had come to California, following Buck from his postcards, hoping to find him as she fled from Doug.
But instead she found an abandoned apartment and a firehouse captain telling her he’d been fired and left without a goodbye.
It’s there she met Chimney and he had been a grounding presence in her life, helping her get Doug arrested and restrained away from her.
Maddie never stopped wondering where Buck was, but she also knew what a nomad he could be. The postcards for all over about the odd jobs he had picked up and places he had seen. She just figured he’d done the same and kept sending it to an address she couldn’t receive his messages from anymore.
But no. He had been just a few miles away, captured and abused in a way that is too familiar and she aches at the knowledge that her brother had been hurt for so long and she never searched for him.
Buck never gave up on her but, even if she didn’t mean to, she gave up on him.
.-~*~-.
She learns that Buck can’t be trusted to behave when she’s gone, so she chains him inside the closet, gagged, bound, and locked in so that he can’t even try to escape.
When she comes back, she unchains him and kisses where his skin is raw and Buck does everything he can to not recoil.
She makes the mistake of leaving heels in the closet and when she lets him out one day, he attempts to stab her in the eye with it. He manages to strike her in her brow and she stumbles back and he goes to bludgeon her with the shoe, but his weak, lethargic limbs can’t strike before she clocks him in the head with a lamp and covers his mouth with a soaked cloth.
The world fades and suddenly he’s sitting at the dinner table, tied to the chair and facing her like their first meeting, but his mouth is covered by a tightly tied scarf.
She’s cutting her veggies with the side of her fork, eating with no indication or acknowledgement of anything that just happened.
“Looks good, hm?” She says, taking a bite of her zucchini. “Kabobs. I saw a recipe from Pioneer Woman.” She cuts into her chicken and chews it slowly. “I don’t think you deserve to have dinner tonight. I think from now on, you need to show me that you do. You’ve got to earn it.” She caresses his cheek. “You know I love you. But I don’t trust you very much right now and you need to prove that I should trust you again. Understand?”
Buck can’t respond, his mind swimming and his mouth gagged.
There’s a sudden sting in his cheek and he realizes she’s slapped him.
“Do you understand?”
And Buck nods because he has no other choice.
.-~*~-.
Chimney had always underestimated Buck.
He was young, inexperienced, and seemingly oblivious to the gravity of the job they did. He was eager but overly so in a way that made Chimney think he was there for thrill.
But seeing him here, brittle and beaten, having fought for his life to escape, he realizes that Buck was stronger than he ever could know.
Dating Maddie, he had heard the stories, but Buck remained to be this idea of a person, not someone he ever truly knew.
Chimney almost lost the chance to know him.
He won’t waste that chance.
.-~*~-.
He knows he needs to get out. He just doesn’t know how.
She’s gone to the place she goes during the day and Buck decides today is the day he’ll get out.
He has to tap into his old SEAL training to break out of the cuffs. He doesn’t care that his dislocated thumb aches, he just knows that if this is what it takes to get out, then it’s worth it.
He manages to pick the lock with a bobby pin that he pulled out of her hair when she was falling asleep, rused as him giving her a head massage. The door unlocks and Buck feels the breath knocked out of him.
He knows he doesn’t have long, especially with the high surveillance, so he makes a mad dash.
What he isn’t expecting is the excruciating burn of electrocution when he crosses the doorway.
His body locks, seizing with the streams of shocks, unable to even scream.
He doesn’t know how long he lies there, limbless and writhing in the pain and aftershocks, but when he finally comes to, she is standing above him, a rageful frown set on her lips.
“Oh, Evan,” she says, putting a hand on his cheek and squeezing is jaw with a painful grip. “Three strikes and you’re out, my darling.”
She chains him full time, only extended far enough to get to the couch that he sleeps on and that she takes his body on. She doesn’t feed him for days and his stomach twists in pain as the unbearable hunger settles in.
And if that wasn’t enough, she breaks his leg, ensuring that even if he wanted to run, he can’t.
The feeling of the metal baseball crushing his bones was agonizing and the constant throb is unignorable but he’s become so numb to the pain that it barely registers in his mind now.
When she lies on him, loose and satiated, she runs her fingers through his hair as her head lies over his heart.
“One day, we’ll have a family of our own,” she says. “I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care what I have to do. We can finally be complete.”
.-~*~-.
Hen wants to say that she saw the hidden potential in Buck. That she believed that he was more than the man he appeared to be.
But Hen had judged him, just like everyone else did. Saw him as vapid and ignorant, unable to see how truly intelligent and kind he was.
He had always been kind. Even when he was talking back or rushing into things too fast, he did it because he thought it was for the best because at his heart, all he wanted to do was do what was right.
And sure, he did a lot of wrong things for what he thought was right, but his intentions have always been clear.
He wanted to help. He wanted to be accepted. He wanted to prove his worth.
Even when he stole that firetruck, he did it because he wanted to be wanted. How desperate had he been to get that acceptance from a stranger? Enough to risk his career. Enough to ruin his career.
And look where it got him.
.-~*~-.
Buck sits on the couch, his legs burning with dull, throbbing pain. He stares at the wall with silent tears streaming down his cheeks.
He knows that tears are useless. A waste of water, a waste of energy and an even greater waste of time, but he can’t help it.
He’s been doing that a lot. Crying. Crying hopelessly as if someone can hear his quiet pleas.
He’s lost track of time. Lost track of the days because keeping track of days just makes him realize how likely it is that no one is looking for him anymore.
He had so much hope in the beginning. So much faith in his team.
But he knows now that they aren’t coming. He knows how it looks. It looks like he left. It looks like he lost his job and ran.
And what did he ever do to prove that he wasn’t that guy? What did he ever do to make them think anything else?
Is that how he’ll be remembered? Buck, the guy who stole firetrucks to get a quick fuck, got fired for being reckless and stupid, and running instead of facing the consequences of his actions.
Maybe he deserves this. This is his penance for his past. For being so vapid and careless.
Yeah. He deserves this. Of course he does.
Buck wipes at his eyes with his sleeve, the chains around his wrists jingling with the movement.
The telltale beeping behind the door sounds and Buck goes still. He wipes at his eyes again, trying to settle his breathing even though his heart is racing.
Buck wills himself to turn around, resting his head on his arm with a soft smile, ready to greet his captor.
He expects to see her, coming home from work, tired and likely irritated. He waits in cruel anticipation to see if her day was bad enough to release her frustrations on him.
The last thing he expects to see is her entering with a little boy in her arms.
He stares, speechless and confused, as she enters and kicks the door closed behind her.
She drops the little boy on the floor as if he’s merely a bag too heavy and inconvenient for her to hold anymore.
She looks over to Buck with a manic glint in her eyes and a chilling smile spreading over her features. “I got you a present.”
Buck just continues to stare at the little boy.
“Since we haven’t had any luck creating a family the old fashioned way, I figured we’d go the more… easy route.” She walks over to Buck and kisses him passionately.
As always, he kisses back and matches her intensity.
She pulls away and places a warning hand on his cheek. “Aren’t you happy?”
Buck nods quickly. “I’m so happy. We… we’re our own little family.”
She smiles even wider and pulls him in for another kiss.
There’s a tiny groan.
Buck pulls away, his attention dedicated to the little boy.
“Oh, look who’s waking up,” she coos. “You know, I picked this one special.” She leans into Buck and he holds back a flinch. “He’s perfect because he can’t run away.”
Buck’s eyes go wide with horror. “What do you mean?”
“His little legs are all broken and sad,” she says with a pout. “They don’t work. I found him hobbling around on his tiny crutches.” She looks away with a faraway look in her eyes and a pleased smirk on her lips. “He just made it so easy.”
Buck feels his gut churn with disgust, but he smiles through it. “He’s perfect.”
As the boy starts to stir awake, Buck begins to feel a jolt of panic.
“You know what you should do?” Buck says.
She tilts her head. “What?”
“You should go on a shopping spree. Get some cute new clothes for our,” he gulps back the bile building in his throat, “for our little peanut.”
She lights up. “Oh, you know how much I love to shop.” She squeals in excitement. “Oh, he’s gonna look so cute!” She cups Buck’s cheeks and kisses him again. “I’ll bring home dinner and we can have our first family dinner together!”
“That sounds amazing,” Buck says.
She squeals again and grabs her purse. “Back to the door,” she commands Buck.
He does as he’s told and listens as the door is unlocked, opened, and closed.
He waits a long minute before he turns around to the little boy on the floor.
All he wants to do is rush to his side and hold him close, but his tattered leg keep him from getting up.
The little boy lets out a hurt moan. Buck’s heart aches at the sound.
As he finally comes to, his breath hitches, quickly dissolving into hyperventilation..
The boy looks at him with teary trepidation.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Buck says, making as much space as he can with the boy. He raises his hands to show him the chains that tie him to the wall. “She took me too.”
It’s only then that the boy begins to cry. He falls to the floor and Buck can’t help but rush to his side. The boy collapses into his arms, soaking his shirts with tears, and Buck can’t help the elation of feeling touch that isn’t hers.
“I’m so sorry,” Buck whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
.-~*~-.
Eddie moves to LA to get away from the suffocating control of his parents and it’s the best choice he’s ever made.
Chris acclimates faster than he could have ever anticipated and the relief is overwhelming.
He goes through firefighting training, gets put into the 118, and finds a family he never expected to have.
They welcome him with open arms, telling him that he should be just fine “as long as he doesn’t steal fire trucks to pick up girls like the last guy.”
It’s difficult to find that balance between work and home, Chris spending most of his time at his Abuela’s, but they finally find a rhythm that works for them.
It’s a rare day where he and Chris get to spend it together, grabbing ice cream and going to the park to enjoy the nice weather. A football hits him from behind and Eddie looks behind trying to find whoever had thrown it to return the ball but when he turns back around, Chris is gone.
Calling out for his son with a growing hysteria, he is hit with the dawning realization that his son is gone and he has no idea where he is.
.-~*~-.
Buck learns that the boy is Chris, though he makes sure to never tell Pumpkin. To her he is their perfect little peanut.
Pumpkin doesn’t deserve to utter something as precious as Chris’s name. It’s a secret between the two of them, just like Buck.
Pumpkin only calls him Evan or Ev or Evie. But never Buck. That name is his and Chris’s and the people outside of this room but never for her.
Pumpkin stops leaving the apartment, instead working in her bedroom.
She makes sure neither of them can talk while she’s working. Buck so badly wants to scream out when she’s on her calls, but what would he tell them? He doesn’t know where they are. He doesn’t even know her name. Sure he could say his own or Chris’s but would they even want to help him? If they work with Pumpkin, who’s to know that they aren’t also like her?
It’s not safe and it’s not worth the risk, especially if it could mean that Chris could get hurt.
So he tells Chris to be quiet. To not scream through the cloth gag that she puts on the both of them and they learn to communicate how they can.
Chris knows a little sign language, enough to tell Buck what he needs from him. Buck learned it before he had become a firefighter, wanting to be able to help more people, and he teaches Chris more words so they don’t have to fingerspell to each other at all times.
Chris guides Buck through the stretches he used to do with his dad and Buck makes sure they do them together. He doesn’t want the boy to hurt more than he has to.
Together, they build with legos and draw crayon pictures and Buck feels himself get more and more attached to the kid that he doesn’t have to feign his love for him in front of Pumpkin.
And that’s why it disgusts him when she is near Chris. He wants to bear his teeth and keep him as far away from her as possible. He wants to rip her hands off of him, break them so they can never touch the boy again.
And she never touches him untowardly. Never like she touches Buck. But she treats the eight year old like a toddler, babying and coddling him in a patronizing way that Buck knows humiliates the boy.
Buck wants to preserve as much of the boy’s youth, but knows that he has been forced to grow up trapped here with Buck, and he knows that he doesn’t need to be treated like a kid, even if he is one.
So, Buck is his friend. Parent only in front of Pumpkin, but just someone that Chris can trust in a place where trust is hard to find.
Chris tells Buck of his father, a selfless man who loves Chris with his entire heart and would move mountains for him. He doesn’t treat him like he’s different and he is endlessly encouraging and supportive of him.
Buck prays that Chris’s dad is out there, looking for them, because Buck knows that no one is looking for him.
.-~*~-.
Eddie can barely function.
Chris is gone and it’s his fault. If he didn’t look away… if he hadn’t taken him out that day… if he just… just…
There’s missing posters plastered around the streets and Eddie can’t bear to look at them and see the grinning picture of his lost son.
It’s been too long. Most missing cases are left unsolved after 48 hours of no leads. He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want his son to become another one of those statistics, taken and dead before he can ever get the chance to say goodbye.
And if he’s not dead, then he’s taken, somewhere that Eddie can only conjure up the worst of scenarios, repeating over and over in his mind.
But Eddie can’t lose hope. He won’t.
Chis is alive.
He is.
And Eddie will never stop looking for him.
.-~*~-.
They find a new normal, though nothing can ever be normal.
But they have to cope. Have to find some sort of stability else they spend their days debilitated by grief and fear.
Buck knows he needs to get them out, but he has to plan carefully. He doesn’t know the codes to the door. Doesn’t know how to get it unlocked from the outside. Doesn’t know now how to incapacitate Pumpkin and doesn’t know what other traps she has set and doesn’t know how to trick her without hurting Chris and doesn’t know how to run with his bum leg and doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know!
But he has to keep it together, has to be strong for Chris. They can’t afford him falling apart and he wouldn’t dare hurt Chris more than he already has not getting him out sooner.
They’ve finished reading, not out loud of course, but Buck is sitting there to help Chris with any words he doesn’t know, and they are about to do a puzzle, but when Chris pours out the pieces, it makes a loud raucous.
They both still, staring at Pumpkin’s door.
It doesn’t open, the murmur of her voice only pausing momentarily before it continues.
They wait with terror for her to come out.
It takes what feels like hours for her to come out. The door slams against the wall, enough to dent, and she is furious.
“What was that?” She comes over and rips off their gags.
“We were doing a puzzle—” Buck starts.
“Oh, you were doing a puzzle,” she repeats, nodding with a chuckle. “Yeah, you were doing a puzzle. You were just doing a puzzle.” She swipes her hand over the puzzle pieces, scattering them over the floor. “You were doing a fucking puzzle?! I have one rule when I am on calls. One rule and that is to be quiet! Are you just so fucked up in the head that you can’t understand that?”
“It’s not his fault—” Buck pleads.
“Of course it’s his fault! Has the cripple in your leg gone to your brain?”
“Hey!” Buck shouts. “Don’t talk to him like that.”
She turns to him slowly, face blank, and Buck realizes how much he’s fucked up.
She takes a hold of his throat, squeezing hard as she pulls him up so that they’re nose to nose.
“You do not speak to me that way.”
Buck chokes against her grip, Chris quietly crying as he reaches for Buck but knows not to touch.
Finally, she throws him down and Buck coughs as he gasps for air.
“You will make this up to me tonight,” she says. “But I have work to do. Do not make a single fucking noise.” She covers their mouth again and stomps to her office.
Chris barrels into Buck’s arms and he holds the boy close. He wishes he could tell him any words to comfort him but he knows that neither of them would dare utter a word.
Chris pulls away, tears streaming down his face as he hiccups sobs beneath his gag.
‘Please don’t leave me,’ Chris signs.
‘Never,’ Buck responds.
Buck presses his hand shaped in an ‘I love you’ into Chris’s back and Chris returns it against his chest, over his heart.
.-~*~-.
It’s tense when she finally lets them eat again.
She feeds them both, just as she always does, and Buck, desensitized and starving, takes the food greedily, but Chris refuses the spoonfuls.
“C’mon, peanut. It’s a family recipe,” she says. “Your momma made it special just for you.”
“You’re not my mom!” Chris shouts.
Silence.
She stands from her chair harshly, the legs scraping against the floor, and she goes to Chris’s chair, gripping him by the hair. “Do not speak to your mother that way.”
She raises her hand, about to strike his cheek, but Buck cries out, making her pause.
“C’mon, Pumpkin,” Buck says. “You worked so hard on our delicious meal. Don’t let his pissy mood get in the way. You know babies get cranky.”
“He needs to be disciplined—”
“Babies get cranky when the’re hungie,” Buck says, cringing internally at his words but knowing that she accepts nothing less when referring to Chris. “I know that when I’m bad, I need to earn my food, but growing little boys can’t miss too many meals.”
She huffs and crosses her arms, thankfully releasing her grip on Chris’s hair and sitting down. “He’s being ungrateful. He won’t eat.”
“Fussy baby,” Buck coos. “Look at him. He’s just being grumpy. Maybe he needs a little nap and you and I… I can treat you tonight. For putting up with us and for working so hard on dinner.”
They send Chris to his closet turned room and Buck lies himself down onto the couch, presenting his body to her in hopes that she’ll forget all about her anger towards Chris.
“I’ll talk to him, Pumpkin,” Buck says. “He’s a momma’s boy through and through but sometimes they need their,” he stutters on the words, “sometimes they just need their papas to remind them of their place.” He brushes her hair from her face. “You don’t want him to be angry at you. Let him be mad at me. Good cop, bad cop. You’re the one he can love and never have any trouble from and I’ll be the one who has to put his foot down and reprimand him.”
“Babies are so difficult,” she pouts into his neck.
“And you’re the…” he gulps down the bile threatening to spill in the back of his throat. “You’re his momma and he loves his momma.” He buries his face in her hair so he doesn’t have to look at her. “I’ll talk to him, alright. He didn’t mean it. Let me make you forget all about it.”
The next day when Pumpkin releases Chris from his closet, they wait for her to return to her office before Chris flings himself into Buck’s arms.
When he can finally pry himself away, Buck makes him a promise.
He is getting them out and she will never hurt them again.
.-~*~-.
It takes them a few weeks but they work out a plan.
A carefully placed mirror and a peeking eye gets them the code to the door.
Days of loosening just two of the chains that lock Buck to the wall get it just enough where they can slip through with a hard press.
Careful practice of lockpicking in the small bike lock she had kicked under the couch.
And just hope.
Hope that there aren’t traps when they get out.
Hope that they can find an exit.
Hope that they can get out.
They wait for her grocery day, knowing that that’s when she’s out the longest, and they start their plan.
When the door opens, the relief is palpable.
However, the relief is suddenly extinguished when he’s met face to face with her.
“Oh, clever. Clever, clever, clever. But not clever enough.”
She takes him by the hair and slams his head against the exposed cement. Again and again and again until Buck falls limp to the ground.
“Buck!” Chris shouts.
“Oh, you’ve got little nicknames for each other now?” she says. “That’s just rich. You and Daddy have been bonding without Momma, huh? Is that what this is?”
Chris shakes his head. “We just— just—”
“I don’t want to hear your lies!”
“Please,” Chris says. “You have to save him.” He puts his head on Buck’s heart and a sob breaks through his throat. “Please!”
“They’ll take him away!” she screams. “No. No, I’ll— I’ll fix him myself.” As she goes out of the door she whips around. “You are never going to leave me!”
She slams the door behind her and the tears stream down Chris’s face. It’s only when he’s looking at the door longingly does he see it.
Her phone.
She dropped her phone.
Chris crawls to get it and with shaky hands, makes an emergency call to 9-1-1.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“Please help,” Chris cries.
“Hey, can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“He’s gonna die!”
“Who?”
“My, my,” there is no words that describe Buck in the little time Chris knows he has. “My dad.”
“Is he injured?”
“His head. It’s bleeding.”
“Can you tell me where you are?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know where we are.”
“Okay. Can you tell me a landmark—”
“I don’t know where we are because she took us.”
“Who? Who took you?”
“I don’t know!”
“Okay, okay. Can you tell me your name?”
“Chris.”
“Okay, Chris. And what’s your dad’s name?”
“Bu—”
A hand grips his wrist and wrenches the phone from his hand.
Pumpkin sneers sharply at Chris and brings the phone to her ear. “Hello? Oh, I’m so sorry about my son. He’s been playing doctor too much. I’m sorry that he bothered you.” She throws the phone and takes a step towards Chris. “Oh, you little shit.”
“I’m sorry!” Chris shouts. “I just— just— I’m scared! I don’t want him to die!”
“You don’t think I can fix him?” she asks, cocking a warning brow.
“You can! I’m sure you can! But he— I don’t think he has enough time.”
She looks with conflict between Chris and Buck’s unconscious body.
“You will not say a single word. You will listen to everything I tell you. You will be a good little boy or I won’t save your daddy. Understand?”
Chris nods.
She grabs him by the arm and pushes him out the door before she drags Buck down the halls.
As they drive, she scolds him with harsh words, barking orders of everything he needs to do when she takes Buck to the hospital.
And Chris knows that he needs to do something drastic.
And he has no idea if it’ll work.
He yanks the wheel and the car swerves off of the road, crashing into a pole. Her head hits the wheel as it’s jerked forward and she’s knocked out on impact.
Chris goes to Buck and shakes him as hard as he can.
“Buck. Buck please. Please wake up. We have to go.”
And somehow, miraculous, Buck’s eyes blink open. “Chris?”
“We have to go. Buck, we have to go.”
Buck lets himself be dragged by Chris to the nearest bench. There’s a whispering crowd around them, staring and gawking at the car wreck and the little boy dragging a man covered in blood. Buck collapses again and Chris cries out.
“Someone call 9-1-1! Please!”
.-~*~-.
It’s Athena who finds them.
Chris, crying over Buck’s limp body, and Buck bleeding out all over the sidewalk.
At first it’s shock. And then relief. And the shock again.
Because they’ve been looking for Chris for months. But they didn’t know that they had to look for Buck.
.-~*~-.
The 118 gets called to a car crash, helping a bleeding woman out of her car.
The blood coating the backseat doesn’t go unnoticed.
It isn’t until they’re in the truck, on the way to the hospital that they get the radio.
It’s Athena. She says to meet them at the hospital.
“On our way now,” Bobby replies.
“Eddie’s with you?” she says.
And he has to tamp down the hope that blossoms in his chest. “I am.”
“Good,” she says. “Good.”
She doesn’t say more but Eddie thinks that there’s so much left unsaid.
As they’re wheeling in the woman, there’s sudden blood curdling screams from a passing gurney.
First they’re: “Don’t take him from me! Please don’t take him!”
And then they’re: “Don’t let her take us again! Don’t let her take him!”
Eddie’s head turns to it and he feels himself freeze. And then he’s running. Running to his little boy who screams with a terror he should never have.
Eddie scoops up his son in his arms, a son that he almost believed he would never get to feel in his embrace ever again, and Chris sobs into his chest.
“No one’s taking you anywhere, mijo. You’re not going anywhere.”
“She’s gonna take him!” Chris keeps yelling. “Don’t let her go in there with him!”
They all slowly turn and look at the woman they just stopped wheeling in. The woman that Chris stares at with fear and fury.
“Athena,” Bobby radios in. “We’re gonna need you out here.”
.-~*~-.
Eddie follows Chris inside, the boy still hysterical but calmed down just slightly as he’s reunited with his father.
Apparently the man who was kidnapped with him was taken in for surgery. Eddie can do nothing but helplessly hold his son until he exhausts himself with his tears.
Chris is asleep for just an hour before he wakes up and falls back into his sobs.
Eddie somehow manages to get him calmed down enough to tell him and Athena what had happened.
Chris doesn’t know everything. All he knows is that Buck is not bad. Buck was taken too and he took care of Chris. He made sure she never hurt him even though she hurt Buck all the time. He makes sure they know that Buck had never and would never hurt him. She took them both and he protected Chris.
Chris tires himself out again after he gets checked out by a doctor, getting the clear, Eddie takes him to the man’s bedside.
Athena comes with them and she looks at Buck with an expression Eddie can’t decipher. She doesn’t stay, though. She has a job to do.
They wake up at the same time, as if they’re in tune with each other.
Chris immediately bolts out of Eddie’s arms to cling to the man. They hold each other, clinging as they cry together. Tears of relief. Tears of disbelief. Tears of utter joy.
Finally, they both calm down, Chris finally content now that he is with this man that Eddie does not know which makes something wary stir in Eddie.
But he can see that this man had obviously been prisoner with Chris, the raw skin around his wrists and his pallid skin and his cadaverous form.
And if he is even a fraction of what Chris told them, he must be a good man.
Buck looks at him with trepidation, hugging Chris closer to him which makes something spike in Eddie.
Chris turns to Buck and makes a motion with his hands.
Realization dawns on Buck’s face and he turns to Eddie and gives him the brightest smile he can manage.
“You’re Chris’s dad.”
“I am,” Eddie says. “And you’re…”
“Buck,” he says. “I… I swear. I didn’t—”
“He told me,” Eddie cuts him off. “And I believe my kid.”
Buck smiles. “He’s told me a lot about you. I believe him too. And from what I can tell, there was no exaggeration.” Buck looks down, his grip loosening on Chris, but Chris clutches at him. “I understand if you don’t want me to see Chris anymore.”
“No!” Chris shouts, hugging him tighter. He turns to Eddie with pleading eyes.
“Of course you can see him,” Eddie says. “I think you two will,” he steels himself, the words hard to admit, “I know you two will need each other. And I would never keep you apart.”
And Eddie can see, as Buck pushes back Chris’s curls, scanning him for injury even when he’s lying there in casts and bandages himself, he can see that this man would never hurt his son, and they have a stronger bond than Eddie will ever understand.
.-~*~-.
Eddie gives them a moment alone when he goes to get them dinner.
Buck holds Chris close, Chris’s ear over his heart just to reassure himself that it’s still beating.
“We got out,” Buck whispers. He laughs, not quite believing they did it. “We did it, Chris. You did it. You got us out!”
“What do we do now?” Chris asks, pulling away to look Buck in the eye.
“Whatever we want,” Buck says.
“I just want to go home.”
Buck smiles softly. “Then you’ll go home.”
Chris looks at him with wide, hopeful eyes. “And you’ll come with me?”
Buck looks at Eddie who stands at the doorway. He gives a small nod.
“Yeah, Chris. I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here. I’m not gonna leave you.”
Buck will stay however long Chris will have him.
Chris is never gonna let his Buck go.
They’re free. They’re out. And they’ve got each other for whatever comes next.