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Lucy’s palm slammed against the wall next to her in an attempt to keep her upright, pain radiating from the point of contact all the way up to her shoulder. Her head was spinning, causing the lights above her to appear as though they were just moments away from collapsing on top of her, the floor feeling more and more uneven with every unsteady step she took. She took a shallow breath, her body trembling with the force it took her to inhale. Despite the tremendous amount of effort it took her, she kept one hand against the concrete wall, sliding it along with her in order to keep her standing, and kept moving towards where she knew the nearest exit was situated.
Lucy was able to discern figures around her, some of them stopping and looking at her, others reaching out to touch her, causing her to dodge every attempt of stopping her. The hallway was tilting and fuzzy, and having to deal with the added sensory input of people’s hands on her was too much, so every time she heard what should have been comprehensible words turned into a garbled mess, she leaned closer to the wall, making herself as small as possible.
Nearing the door, she braced herself for when she inevitably had to stand up from the wall and push the doors open in order to make it to her destination.
She leaned against the bar on the glass doors with her whole body weight, causing the door to fling open and almost throw Lucy into the middle of the parking lot with the unexpected force. Instead, she stumbled out of the doorway, taking two hesitant steps forward before dropping to the ground, her knees hitting the concrete below her, causing her to hiss in pain as once again she felt a radiating heat spread throughout her body. She tried to stand up, but the effort was too much for how much energy she had left. Instead, she stayed on the ground, the sun beating down hot against her skin, making her uniform feel itchy and her eyes to hurt from the strain of the midday sunlight.
She received a moment’s respite when a shadow appeared in front of her, but it was gone as soon as it came as the blurry figure knelt down to match her level, an arm extending forward to gently grasp her shoulder, and despite her hesitance towards touch, she couldn’t be bothered to shrug it off.
“-ucy?”
She blinked, trying to get her eyes to focus on the person in front of her, only to be met with similar results as before.
“Hey, Lucy. Look at me.”
Well, that was new- discernible human speech. She complied with what was asked of her, slowly raising her head, shutting her eyes quickly as the sun momentarily blinded her.
“You alright, Chen?”
Even despite her feeling quite the opposite, she nodded, gingerly opening her eyes in order to get a better look at who was in front of her.
“Well, that’s a lie, but I’ll take it. What happened in there?”
What had happened? She struggled to recall just moments ago when she had gotten up out of the briefing room in a panicked haze, stumbling her way out here.
Right.
The announcement: Rosalind was back.
She’d gotten this worked up over a name that wasn’t supposed to bother her anymore. She wasn't supposed to be afraid after this much time. She’d recovered, put her trauma behind her and taken so many steps away from the place she had started in; terrified of the dark, unable to stay indoors for too long, afraid to drink.
“I’m-” She started, her breath hitching in her throat. She tried again. “I’m alright.”
Blinking a few more times, she finally got a good look at who was in front of her.
“Tim?” She asked, reaching out to touch his arm, confirming he was really there.
“In the flesh. You wanna tell me what’s going on now? Last time I checked you weren’t the type to get up and leave meetings without reason.” He teased lightly, his head cocking slightly to one side.
“I thought it was over.” Lucy mumbled gravely, her eyes falling back to the ground as she started to occupy herself by counting the number of rocks in the concrete below her.
“Thought what was over, Chen?”
“Rosalind, Caleb, the whole thing. I thought I got to move on.”
“Lucy-”
She held her hand up, stopping him mid-sentence. “Tim, stop. I don’t want pity.” In fact, the last thing Lucy needed was pity. Out of all of the things that really got on her nerves, one of the top few was people looking down on her, feeling bad for her. Pity never solved any problems.
“Good, ‘cause I wasn’t going to give you any.” He continued after a beat. “Lucy, we talked about this already. What happened to you doesn’t get to define the rest of your life. You can’t let it.”
Her eyes didn’t move from where they were focused on the ground, prompting Tim to go on.
“Look, you know that if you need me, I’ll be here. You’ve come too far to let something like this trip you up, so if I need to drag you back inside, I will.” Despite his harsh words, he began to rub his thumb across her shoulder in a soothing manner.
At this, Lucy let out a small chuckle. “Man, you are terrible at comforting people.”
She lifted her head to see a small smile form on her former TO’s lips. “Yeah, well, I know you well enough to know that you just needed a little bit of tough love.” He said, standing up and brushing off the dirt from his knees before extending his hand in front of him, a silent offer to help her up, although they both knew the gesture meant more than what first met the eye.
Taking Tim’s hand, she accepted the help standing up, quickly bringing her thumb under her eyes, wiping away the tears she hadn’t been aware were falling.
“Are you saying you love me, Sargent Bradford?”
“Maybe I am.”