Chapter Text
“Vic! Can’t you get it?”
Victoria Hughes looks up from the book she has been reading, wrapped up in a blanket on the love seat by the window. It is a sunny winter afternoon, the A Shift of Station 19 has a day off after working twenty-four hours straight and Travis and her have decided to allow themselves a full day of rest instead of carrying on packing moving boxes upon moving boxes. They still have plenty of time since the young woman has not yet gotten an official starting date for her new job as Crisis One manager in Washington D.C.
“What?”
“The door!” replies her roommate, irritated. “Someone knocked on the door.”
“No. Nope,” she answers, making the ‘p’ pop as she dives right back in. “Thrilling chapter. Can’t put the book down. Sorry.”
Travis turns to her in disbelief and makes a show of clanking pans and pots on the countertop.
“I am literally cooking you breakfast, woman! Go get the door!”
She lets out an exaggerated sigh as another knock echoes down the hall and blows a raspberry at him as she gets up, setting the book down on the seat she has just vacated.
“How very mature of you, Hughey.”
Still wrapped in the fluffy blanket, Vic walks to the door, unlocks and opens it. Then gasps as she sees the man standing on the threshold and freezes. For a few heartbeats, the visitor keeps silent as he, too, takes her in.
“Hi, Victoria,” he says tentatively.
Despite his hesitation, she can clearly hear the smile in his voice. She blinks, her mind blanks and the only thing she’s able to do is shriek.
“Traviiiiiiis!”
The urgency in her voice makes him leave the kitchen in a hurry, waving around the pan he was about to use to fry bacon. He quickly lowers his arms and nearly let go the pan as his eyes widen in shock.
“Hello, Montgomery. Nice weapon of choice,” says a familiar voice.
A very familiar one.
Which belongs to a man.
A graying blond-haired man.
In his late forties.
With a short beard and bright baby blue eyes.
“Ch… Chief? Okay, that’s it, I’m having a stroke. Am I having a stroke? I am way too young for that,” he rambles, all the while touching his cheeks. “I feel like my face is numb. Is it numb? I’m smiling, do you see it? Vic, can you see me smile or not?”
But the young woman is not looking at him. She might not even hear him. She’s still frozen on the spot and has not dared tear her gaze away from the man in front of her. Tears stream down her cheeks and her face has lost all colors, as if she is seeing a ghost. Which is exactly the case.
The blond man takes a tentative step towards her but she steps back in the safety of the house, shaking her head in disbelief and holding out a hand to keep him at bay.
“No. No no no no no no. I’m not seeing you. You’re dead. I buried you. There was a casket, and flags, and those damn bells… You’re just an hallucination.”
A feeble smile tugs at the corner of Lucas Ripley’s lips and lights up his eyes.
“Victoria, I can assure you I am very much alive.”
She tenses as he moves closer to her, delicately taking her held-out hand in his before laying it on his chest.
“Eggy, I am alive. And I’ve finally come home.”
The young woman can’t believe it. She had dreamed about this so many times over the years. The impossible fantasy of him coming back to her, coming back, somehow, from the grave. The sweet, realistic dream that always, without fault, leaves her broken and depressed come morning. The happiness that, without fault too, dissolves once she wakes up.
But this time, her eyes are wide open. She’s wide awake. And she can feel the warmth of Lucas’ hand, feel the steady heartbeat under her palm. Feel his heart, the one that stopped beating in that dreadful hospital room, five years ago, on the day her own shattered beyond repair.
She can’t believe it. It seems too good to be true.
“H… how? Just… how?” stutters a bewildered Travis who has finally put down the pan on the bench, not trusting himself not to drop it on his foot.
“It’s… a very long story,” replies Lucas with a weary smile as his gaze flickers between the two firefighters. “One I promise I’ll tell you all about in a few minutes, if you let me. But in essence, the witness protection program had to fake my death to protect me. To protect those around me. And, until a few weeks ago, the threat level was still too high. It’s not anymore.”
He locks gaze with Victoria as he adds that last part. The meaning is not lost on her. It means he can now come home. To her.
Her eyes well up even more and she finally takes a small step towards him. Then another. She’s so close he can smell her scent. He has missed it. So much. He wants nothing more than to wrap his arms around her but he’s afraid of scaring her away. Another step. They are in each other’s space, and she looks up to him and…
She hits him in the chest with the flat of her fists. Hard. And the blanket falls from her shoulders.
“You were dead!”
Another blow.
“You died in my arms!”
She punches him again.
“You died, and it hurt so much I wanted to die! I was so, so devastated I felt like I would never be happy ever again! And I couldn’t show it ‘cause you and I were never officially a thing and I was just the unranked firefighter who banged her boss’s boss’s boss and not the newly engaged woman who had just lost the love of her life!”
She keeps on hammering his chest, each sentence punctuated by a punch. Travis seems ready to intervene, but his former chief signals him not to with a small shake of his head. Lucas does not move, does not try to stop her or to deflect the blows. He knows the pain he is feeling at the moment is only a mere fraction of what she had to endure. Of the suffering he caused her. So he lets her have a go at him, because deep down he feels like he deserves it. Because he can feel five years worth of bottled up grief, loss and mourning finally exploding in her. Because, in some way, it is only fitting that Victoria Hughes yells at him.
She keeps punching, on and on, until she finally slows down and all she can do is collapse against him.
“How could you do this to me?” she chokes out, her hands fisting his sweater, while her knees threaten to buckle.
Then, and only then, Lucas allows himself to draw her in his embrace, tightly, safely, while she breaks down in his arms and cries uncontrollably. He does not say a thing; he knows there are no words powerful enough, meaningful enough to erase her pain and somehow make the situation okay. His cheek resting on her head, he merely rocks her gently, all the while drawing lazy, soothing circles on her back with his fingertips. He can feel her tears soaking his shirt through his sweater, her shoulders shaking with dry sobs, her grip loosening.
He has no idea how much time passes by before he finally senses the sobbing easing and Victoria soothing. Travis had retreated further down the hall to give them some privacy. Drawing the young woman closer to him, Lucas drops a kiss on her temple.
She pulls back a little and looks at him like she’s finally seeing him for who is truly is. She reaches out, brushes his face, traces the line of his jaw. When she grazes his lips, he grasps her fingers and softly kisses them.
“I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through, Eggy.”
Emotions whirl around in Victoria’s heart; her eyes fill with tears again and Lucas holds her tight, tighter than ever, while she wraps her arms around him like her life depends on it. And maybe it does. She’s drowning in chaos and he is her lifeline. She feels the hard planes of his chest, the scratch of his beard on her forehead, the smell of his skin… Oh, how she has missed his stupid nice smelling shirts! Her hands roam his body, recognizing every edge and every curve as if it had not been this long.
“I’m so sorry,” he repeats as he rocks her. “I can’t begin to imagine the hell it has been for you. I hope you can forgive me once you hear the whole story.”
Vic looks up to him with puffy, red-rimmed eyes, sniffing loudly.
“You’re back. You came back. Right now, that’s the only thing that matters.”
Then she tilts his head down and crashes her lips on his. If it’s indeed a dream, then she wants to live it to the fullest. Tomorrow’s Vic can deal with the aftermath.
Lucas kisses her back eagerly, softly at first, then he becomes more and more audacious. They are caught in their own world, one they should not have been kicked out of in the first place. That kiss is like coming back for air after being trapped under water. And, in a way, that’s exactly how it is for Victoria and Lucas. A rebirth.
Somewhere in the house, a door slams, startling the three of them. Lucas realizes they are still standing on the front porch and that Victoria, dressed only in pajamas, is shivering from the cold.
“God, Vic, you’re freezing!”
He starts pulling slightly away from her to bend down to pick up the fallen blanket and she flinches, a defeated look flashing on her features.
“I’m not going anywhere. Ever,” he promises her. “Unless you want me to.”
It is both a statement and a question and he cannot help the racing of his heart as he waits for her to answer. He knows that, after all this time, he is not entitled to anything, not even a conversation. That it is kind of cruel of him to come here when she might have moved on from him, rightly so. That they cannot exactly pick up things where they left off. But he hopes like hell that all that suffering has not been for nothing.
She stares into his eyes, into his soul, searching for the truth, the one proof that he is not a figment of her imagination. And decides to take a leap of faith.
“Come inside. You’ve got some explaining to do.”