Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s an old theory — a rather famous one at that — that claims there’s infinite versions of you in a variety of infinite universes. Maybe some living a life polar opposite to the one you know; maybe one living the exact same one you’ll live, word for word, thought for thought, emotion for emotion, but changing the flavor of the ice cream you chose that one summer when you were six years old.

And so this story's universe was so intimately merged with the main, known and loved one for the longest time. Like a single formed zygote, destined to be one, before splitting and turning into two human beings, alas. So similar, yet, ultimately, simply different.

In this case, the sundering took place a fateful April second at 12:02am. They’d hurried, all right; tried to wage a war against time and LA traffic — which already are worthy opponents on their own and even more tedious and seemingly invincible when paired together against you. They also might have parked a little carelessly, too focused on getting to their destination. And, in the end, they did. Although he’d been too much of a coward to look at the clock. It had taken a bit longer than usual to get to his house, which meant they most likely had less than fifteen minutes left of April first and whatever April fool’s shenanigans that’d been included in the package.

He hurried out of his truck, feeling like he was about to open Schrödinger's box. Was the damn cat alive or dead? Would she call it quits or indulge like she’d done last night? She was hurrying out of her own car just as much, so he figured that was all the answer he’d need for the moment. He opened his door and quickly punched the code to his home security system. The screen a victim of his anticipation, receiving brusque pokes instead of the actual gentle tapping it required.

“Hi Kojo!” He heard her say, using her puppy voice, which was the exact same one she used to talk to Angela’s and Harper’s babies up until a certain point; something that amused him to say the least. “Gosh, you’re so cute! You’re so handsome! You giving me kisses? That’s so nice!” She half whispered excitedly.

“Oh my goodness! She’s so cute!” She’d said to Angela the first time they’d actually gotten to see baby Emmy in person.

“She takes after her mom.” Had been Angela’s response. “Besides, looking cute is the least they could do after wrecking our bodies for nine months. It’s a trap so you keep popping them out.”

“She’s adorable.” She’d kept staring affectionately at the child after their friend’s joking, very sound words. Then she’d raised her hand to caress the baby’s belly, and that’s when it happened. “You’re adorable.” She’d said through a smile, voice an octave higher than usual.

“You talked to her like a dog.” He’d teased her later, once they’d been by themselves.

“I did not.” She denied, kind of offended.

“You talked to her like you talk to Kojo. You scratched her belly.” He’d emphasized. She had opened her mouth to answer, closed it, then opened it again; eyebrows raised and finger pointed at him.

“That’s cause he is my baby.” She’d answered at long, matter of fact, and looking at him like she was daring him to argue.

“Sure.”

He could have stood there staring at her talk to their dog for as little time as they’d left and still, he would have called it a win. He missed her, way beyond the pleasures of sex or physical touch. He missed her voice filling the space around him —talking about her day, singing somewhere in the house, teasing him— he missed her company, the way everything she did seemed to be so radiantly golden-touched.

In the end, she’d looked up at him through her lashes, the certain tension that usually ended up with their clothes scattered all over the floor as apparent as ever.

“It’s still April fool’s.” She announced, getting up and closer to him. Although she hadn’t looked at her watch in a long while. She was also avoiding knowing how much time they had left exactly. She knew that wasn’t going to magically make time shift backwards. It was merely a way of avoiding the situation until avoiding wasn’t an option anymore. Kind of like the same logic she used after binge-watching a show's last season: as long as she didn’t know which one was the last episode, there was always an episode left.

“It is.” He confirmed. And then they were kissing, hands roaming around compulsively, aimlessly. There was quite an added desperation in comparison to the prior night. A countdown about to clock out and an urge to do everything they didn’t have time for.

He gently tugged her hair, tilting her head so he had a better access to her jaw, her neck, her collarbone. The more they touched the bolder they became. As if they were somehow winning the race against the clock. She was just starting to take his shirt off when a phone alarm went off, startling them both.

“Crap.” She whispered, eyes closed, head thrown back in frustration. He saw it on her screen when she was turning off the alarm. April second. “It’s 12:01.” She announced this time, much less cheerful than the night before, almost regretfully.

“So…” He said, not planning on adding anything else. It was a prompt for her to say what was going to happen next. He knew what he wanted, he’d known as soon as he’d gotten his head out of his ass and stopped self-destruction mode; barely into the break up. But he didn't get to backtrack after the havoc he’d wrecked in both their lives, the pain he’d caused. He got to show her in any way he could that he’d changed, that he was working towards being better. And any amount of leash he was given, he’d appreciate; but she was still the one putting the boundaries, ultimately.

“So our cheat day is over.” She completed, her eyes dancing between his eyes and his lips, which were a bit red, a bit swollen. She’d done that. And, gosh, she wanted to keep going. She’d planned for the cheat day to have a finishing act. She had been too shaken after the break-up to realize how touch-starved she'd been. Then, after the whole Valentine’s day debacle, the ideas started simmering in the back of her mind until she allowed herself that one cheat day. It’d been a long discussion among the different Lucy head-voices and, in the end, the accord had been free range for twenty-four hours and no more. No matter what happened.

Still, she'd always been supposed to spend the last few hours of the day with him, not doing a bunch of unexpected crazy OT due to people’s stupidity and eagerness to participate in a freaking purge. The ‘no-matter-what’ clause was supposed to prevent her from spending a second night over, not from actually getting the last half of her day with him.

“We could get a little extension. You know, after the purge.” He selfishly pushed. God, he wanted her for a little longer at least. But that was all the pushing he was going to do. The ball was in her court completely. She could kick it or turn around and leave.

“We shouldn’t.” She answered, conflicted.

Here’s where the divergence came to be, where the path split and kept going left instead of right. Otherwise she would have taken a step backwards and said “No. No. I promised myself it’d only be April fool’s day. I need to stick to the decision I made when I wasn’t just making out with you in your house. She’s more clear-sighted. And Celina is going to wonder where I am.” And he would have understood. But in this story, she stayed silent for a little longer as the mental debate went on. And he smiled at her: a sad, comprehensive smile. They shouldn’t. But they had: that day in the hotel. And, at last, they were going to do it again.

She got on her tippy toes and pulled his face in, kissing him hard and long until they were panting, half of their clothing now added decoration to the living room floor; until he took control of the situation, placing kisses along her back, her shoulder, her neck, her chest once he’d taken her bra out of the way.

There was no timeline anymore; it had been blurred. The new timeline was sometime after they were done; so he planned to make it as painstakingly long as possible. Something they could both look back to until the next time she gave him the opportunity — whenever that may be. Hopefully without a deadline.

And so they rode the roller-coaster. They kissed in every single, possible way known to man — quick pecks, sweet lazy kisses, dirty sloppier ones. He made her come undone time again, with his fingers, his mouth. Every noise she made, the way she dug her nails lightly into his back, her little kisses all over his chest and shoulder once they’d both finished — he tried to commit all to memory — the peace he’d felt for all of five minutes post-orgasm before he remembered she was about to get up and leave any second now.

“I should go.” She finally muttered, looking up at him from where she’d been using his arm as a pillow. “Gosh, I’d forgotten how comfortable this mattress is.” She added kind of dropping back down on her side of the bed.

“You can stay.” He proposed, earning himself a side-eye. She sighed. She couldn’t stay. That’s what her rule had been for. That was her boundary. She’d stretched it a bit already merely by accepting the extension. Maybe the whole cheat day thing had been a bad idea, because she knew it was messing with their minds even if they kept admitting to it being a ruse out loud. But she’d already given in to that, so there was no going back in time to change it. And it wasn’t like she didn’t want him back. She did. Of course she did. What else would have possessed her otherwise to throw everything out the window the day before and go to him? She just needed to check a few boxes first.

She needed to know in her bones that she was ready to trust him again like that; it wouldn’t be fair nor healthy to either of them to start back a relationship when their trust was still kind of shattered. She needed to really focus solely on the Sergeant’s exam. Her career was a priority, now more than ever. A piece of her world had shattered after the detective’s exam fiasco; her confidence had taken a very hard hit. She needed to pass the Sergeant’s exam. No, more than that, she needed to ace it. She needed to prove the station — and mostly herself— that she could do it; that she had it in her to succeed. And after those two very big mountains, she still had to get promoted so he wasn’t in her chain of command.

“No. No, I can’t. Extension's over. Besides, I can gaslight Celina into thinking I got home a little later than she did. But explaining why I wasn’t home in the morning? I don’t know that I can pull that off.” She explained as she started gathering whatever pieces of her clothes she could find in her proximity. He nodded solemnly.

“Okay.”

“Goodnight.” She said, a bit awkwardly, being in the midst of leaving his room still half naked, shoes in hand. And then she hurried down the hallway before it could become a repetition of the ‘see you at the station’ situation. God knew the awkwardness of that moment haunted her.

So she gathered her stuff, said bye to Kojo, and left; back to her apartment.
●●●

Chapter Text

Six weeks later. May 14th.

The night after the Sergeant’s exam.

●●●

She opened her door to find Celina rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. It had been a long day, to say the least. A long bittersweet day. A long few days at that. With all the studying, the most chaotic dinner to ever exist since that one Gilmore Girls’ episode, and now the way the whole Seth situation had completely blown out of proportion. She felt exhausted to the point the sole idea of her bed made her feel giddy.

“Hi. Is Rodge here?“ She asked. Rodge was usually the one to cook when they were together. Celina, as much as she loved her, may have been good at a lot of things, but cooking wasn’t one of them. She’d once managed to half-calcinate pre-cooked steamed veggies to the point they’d had to throw out the whole pan.

“Nah. I sent him home for the day. After today I figured you’d want a quiet night. And some alcohol, maybe?” Celina guessed, pulling two cold glasses and a bottle of wine out of the freezer.

“I’m ahead of you on that last one.” She’d been out for a few drinks with Tim, who’d wanted to know how her exam had gone. Which may or may not have contributed to her mood going back up a bit. She’d detested every single part of the experience Seth had been for her, but she’d never in a million years wish anything close to the brutality the kid had just gone through.

On top of that, she was worried about Tamara. She’d been holding back, but Lucy could tell she was way more upset than she let on. She was happy the girl wasn’t giving her the cold shoulder anymore, but she hated knowing that she was hurting. And, most of all, she hated that she’d gotten hurt because of a situation that would have been completely preventable if the kid had only listened to her. God knew Tamara had already gone through enough. She wished she could just put her in a bubble and protect her from all things bad. That’s all she’d ever wanted for her. But it had never been a plausible plan, much less now that she wasn’t her roommate anymore. She also wasn’t that seventeen-year-old kid. She was an adult. She was going to graduate college soon. And sadly that meant she had to learn through adult mistakes —which was a pity because most of them sucked. “But I’m not one to say no to Chardonnay.” She added once she got a better look the bottle. She loved Chardonnay. Top tier wine.

“Right. I mean, you said you thought you’d done well before… everything. So, I figured you’d want to celebrate.” She said, maneuvering the cork opener with just one hand while gesticulating a bunch with the other. “Unless you've already celebrated enough on that date…” She started, voice teasing like every time they talked about the Tim situation. Lucy was about to interrupt so she could correct her —because that hadn’t been a date— when she kept talking over her. “-friendly date, with Tim, who just wanted to show his support, in the spirit of friendship, and nothing more.”

“God, shut up.” She said in response to her roommate’s antics. Though, she was smiling.

“What? I’m just saying, it was nice of him to drive you to the exam, help you study and then follow up after a long shift even though you already owed him after the dinner thing.” She kept on pushing.

“Just open the wine already!”

The bottle emptied fairly quickly as they talked, facing each other on the couch. Girl-talk and wine: truly, a match made in heaven. No situation was safe from being brought up. Not that one essay graded unfairly back in junior year of high school, nor the one stupid fight that still pisses you off. After months of living together, they already knew most of each other’s stories. They’d circled around some of them more than once. But in the end, that was the ultimate girl-talk achievement, truly.

“Girl, not that it wasn’t obvious something was going to go wrong at dinner. But I knew it was gonna have to do with Tamara and that it was gonna be bad.” Celina said, face serious, almost grave, the way she got when she entered esoteric territory.

“What…?” Lucy started, head buzzing. She was in that sweet spot between sober and crazy drunk, one that left her kind of sleepy. Her mind worked perfectly fine, her body just felt a bit extra lazy, her words slightly dragged. That state was the trap she’d stumbled into again and again when she’d first started drinking: she’d try and drink more to wake up and end up spending some quality time with the toilet.

“I did a reading for you.” She kept going. “I know you said not to. But it didn’t hurt to know what to expect. It was for precaution.”

“Mhm. And it said Tamara had gotten engaged to Seth?”

“No. That’s not how it works.” Celina answered like it was obvious. “But I asked about your near future and I’m not lying when I say your cards gave me literal nightmares. Something about the hand…”

“Did you ask about the sergeant’s exam?” Lucy asked, suddenly feeling unsettled. It wasn’t like she believed in that stuff 100%, but she couldn’t help wishing the cards would give her reassurance instead of a reason to worry. Celina just smiled softly.

“Of course. What kind of roomie would I be if I didn’t? You’re gonna crush it, I’m sure. And, honestly, after the amount of candles I’ve lit, I’ll be surprised if you don’t make the top ten.” Lucy exhaled a bit shakily, but feeling steadier than before. She was going to get a good score. She had done well; she knew it. At least she thought she had. And not because of what the cards had said, but because she’d studied her ass off for it. Although, it was nice for the cards to recognize her hard work. “But then, getting to personal situations I was faced with the Empress, the Ten of swords and Death.”

“Death?” She was taken aback, to say the least.

“Not death, death. Death as in the card.” Celina explained, but it didn’t make it any clearer for her. “Each card has different meanings you interpret according to the context, combination… The empress can mean nurturing, motherhood; so that was pretty straight forward. You love Tamara; you took her under your wing, kind of assuming the maternal role.”

“Mhm.” She was still stuck on what the Death card meant if not death.

“It gets ugly here: Ten of swords. It can mean betrayal, or a painful ending, or hitting rock bottom. There’s a bunch of meanings and none of them are peachy, if you know what I mean. Now, pairing it with the Empress before, it was clear something bad was going to go down with Tamara.”

“Mhm. What about death?” She asked, feeling puzzled about the reading.

“Death means transformations. Something ends, something starts.”

“And how does that relate to what happened today?”

“It could be said that Tamara ‘betrayed’ you, not only by dating Seth, but by getting engaged without telling you anything. Even though you advised her not to trust him, having assumed this guide role in her life. This could have possibly damaged your relationship, or maybe it hit its lowest point yet up until Seth admitted to lying about everything and then—”

“She saw I was right and ended things with him.” She completed, uncomfortable with how accurate it all seemed.

“Exactly. And for the new beginnings we’ll have to wait and see.” Celina added. And Lucy may have been tipsy, but she was still a cop. And she knew her roommate. There was something unsaid left out of the reading.

“What?” She demurred.

“It’s just…”

“Just what?” She pushed after a few seconds, the confused frown on her roommate’s face making her anxiety start to bubble.

“Your cards were horror inducing. I'm not even exaggerating. The energy they packed… it was final and hopeless. That’s why I didn’t say anything about them. I didn’t want it to get in your head before the exam.”

“Okay?” Lucy knew Celina could go creepy oracle in a matter of seconds. She’d heard Nolan’s stories. She just didn’t expect her to turn it against her.

“I mean, I did burn enough sage to ward off evil from the whole building,” She could confirm that statement. The smell literally woke her up, thinking she’d magically transported to a yoga studio. “but still. It felt too fleeting.”

“Maybe Seth got the worst of it.” She reasoned.

“Maybe.” Celina conceded. Though it was pretty apparent she wasn’t too convinced. Lucy was ready to push, wine-fueled to find a way to relate the actual situation to the mystical prediction. But then Celina got up in a rush.

“Crap. Wait a second.” She said before rushing over to the bathroom. Then after a few seconds she peeped through the door. “I just got my period.” She announced, pretty much annoyed. And Lucy understood her perfectly. “Do you have any tampons in your bathroom? I figured I’d buy some tomorrow — off day and all — but it decided to come early.”

“Sure. I got a new box in there. Just, take it until I get mine.” She offered, already up and walking to get the feminine products from her bathroom sink’s cabinet.

“Thanks.”

“Here you go.” She passed her the box and went back to the couch, pouring the little wine that was left in her glass. It seemed like the right thing to do after being told she’d been unsuccessfully doomed by fate.

“Okay. So, tomorrow I’ll go get groceries and give you the tampons back.” Celina said, drying her still-damp hands against her pants.

“Girl, it’s no problem. It’s like girl code 101: communist laws are applied to tampons and pads.” Some of her S’s slurred a bit, which meant that would have been her last glass even if there'd been more left, because she truly did not feel like being hungover. She’d been having headaches non-stop for like two weeks, stressing over the exam, and that’d been enough for her.

“Hey, when did you get yours?” Celina asked, getting back to her spot in the sofa. “You usually get it like a week before me.”

“Yeah.” She chewed her lip, thoughtfully. “What day is it?” She almost felt like laughing. She’d just done an exam she’d been prepping for months; of course she knew the date. The numbers just wouldn’t be processed by her mind.

“14th.” At that the humor left the situation. Now she was back to being puzzled.

“My last was April 9th, so… I should’ve gotten it the 8th or 7th. I think.”

“A week ago?”

“Yeah.” She kept on chewing on her lip, as if the math was going to fix itself if she thought harder about it. “Well, last month it came like a week earlier so… It hasn’t been as timely since I came off the pill. And it’s probably just stress-induced from everything that’s been going on lately.”

“Probably.” Celina conceded, a bit suspicious.

“It’s not like it can be anything else.” She said, guessing where her roommates’ thoughts were taking her.

“It has been a whole week. About to be eight days. I’m just saying: if I were you, I would definitely not be as calmed.”

“I’m calm because it literally can’t be anything else. Unless 2025 years later God decided it was time for a sequel, I’m good.” Lucy said. And she meant it. Although Celina had succeeded at making her nervous. She loved her friend, but sometimes she was too blunt.

“Well, even if that’s the case, tomorrow you’ll have your tampons back after I buy some.” She brought her own half-filled glass to her lips, taking a long sip. Then they carried on with the conversation for a little while before saying goodnight and retiring to their rooms.

●●●

Lucy had planned to be a responsible adult. Her sleep schedule had been messed up from all the panic-induced all-nighters. And she wanted to fix it. She’d decided she was going to sleep at a decent time so she could get up early on her day off and do something for herself. She’d earned it. Even if things didn’t go her way in the end, she’d tried her best. And that mattered to her. She felt defensive about it, in fact. After she’d spent her whole life trying her best — and mostly succeeding — her mom had always remained either disappointed or unimpressed. And that hurt. She’d spent years trying to interiorize that her worth wasn’t solely based on her results nor the praise she received. Objectively, she already knew it. But knowing and believing were not necessarily mutually inclusive. So she liked to try and pamper herself when she deeply knew she’d tried her best; whatever the results may be in the end.

The plan had been quickly derailed after all the wine and talking. Although, it’d been the TikTok doom-scrolling she’d indulged in, in her half drunken state, what was mainly to blame. It was like some kind of dark, attention-stealing magic. One second, she was opening the app to a cute video of puppies at 11:02pm, and then it was 01:03am and she’d been watching edits of the same show for the past forty minutes.

“Oh my gosh.” She dragged herself out of bed and half stumbled towards her bathroom. She'd just wasted two hours, she was getting another headache —probably from the excessive phone exposure— and she hadn’t even changed into her pj’s, or taken her makeup off. So much for being a responsible adult for the night.

And now every time she went pee, she was inevitably going to be expecting her period, so it’d be a constant state of silently praying she hadn’t just stained her pants or underwear every five minutes.

She brushed her teeth, giving into temptation and opening TikTok again. She was going to sleep, but there was no harm done in having some entertainment while getting ready for bed. She told herself it was merely background noise —very distracting background noise.

When it was time to remove her makeup, she reached for the cotton disks she kept in the cabinet; the one she kept most of her hygiene products in. Among those products —mostly hundreds of dollars’ worth of makeup, haircare and skincare she’d managed to scrunch up throughout the years— there was a pink box with three remaining pregnancy tests.

The box had originally contained six, but she’d had a scare while dating Chris. Hence, the reason she’d gotten them in the first place. After everything with Rosalind, Vegas, then Chris’ recovery; her body had decided that it was time for her period to be five days late. And it made sense after all the stress she’d been through: she’d barely been able to sleep for that first week. But the panic and entrapment that she’d felt while taking that first test, fearing a second line would appear, was the last thing she'd needed.

The following two had been used while she’d been with Tim. At this point, she’d already gone back on the pill. She’d stopped originally before the fertility treatment thing her mom had orchestrated without her consent, after people had convinced her to just seize the opportunity. She’d needed to stop for a while until the whole process was done and she figured she’d just let her body do its thing for a bit longer after years on hormonal birth control. But once she got with him, and he was sleeping over almost every night, or she was at his place… The pill was simply more convenient.

And, here’s the thing about a pill period: it’s not a real period. Your body isn’t really ovulating after all. It’s from the hormone withdrawal caused by that week in which the pill is just a placebo.

All that to say, there’s no time fluctuations applied; it’s mostly an exact cycle. So after some faulty take-out and being two days late a little before her detective’s exam, she completely went down the rabbit hole. Though, in the end, it had been negative when she took it the third day without her period and negative when she took one again the seventh day. Her period had made an appearance the following morning, so that had been the ending to her anxiety-packed week.

She knew the first test had been negative, but until she got her period, pregnancy was still pretty much a solid possibility. And it wasn’t like she wanted to be pregnant, but what if she was and she was drinking and eating sushi or other stuff she wasn’t supposed to be eating? She’d been a research session away from buying prenatal vitamins, just in case, that seventh day before Tim talked her off the ledge and told her to take another test and just wait and see a little longer before making a doctor's appointment.

After some reflecting and a lot of time scouring the Internet, she’d gotten to the conclusion that, most likely, that nasty stomach virus that had taken her down for two days had interfered with her birth control; making her body go haywire. And she’d been lucky, really. She could have actually gotten pregnant instead of it being just a delay. She’d learned her lesson to be extra careful anytime anything that could interfere with the metabolism of her birth control took place: like vomiting, for one.

This time around it was completely different, though. She knew it wasn’t an actual possibility. The required criteria for pregnancy was fertile age and sexual activity, and she didn’t meet the latter. She hadn’t had sex in over a month, and she’d gotten her period on April, so… she wasn’t exactly worried.

She still picked the box up, turning it around in one hand. The expiration date was approaching, she realized. July 3rd 2025. So in an impulse decision she decided to take one. The process always made her nervous, even if she knew this time there was no way. It was the same psychology behind the reason she wanted the cards’ confirmation that everything was going to be okay. There was a question to be asked, and even if the answer was already out in the world, she needed to hear it matched the one she wanted.

So she peed on the stick, and then went on with her nighttime routine. The last three times she’d set a timer and spend the whole two minutes compulsively looking at the test to see the results as fast as possible. Then she would keep checking on them for like two hours just in case the true answer was delayed for some reason. This time around she washed her face, got changed and kept scrolling through her For You Page until she realized fifteen minutes had already passed. She blamed the wine; it made her mind feel scattered.

She was in the midst of being amused by the irony of drunkenly checking on a pregnancy test when she saw two very noticeable, very pink lines staring back at her.

●●●

Chapter Text

Two pink lines.

She found herself staring at them dumbfounded. Any amount of buzzy feeling she had been experiencing, dissipating immediately.

The three times the definitive line had refrained from manifesting she’d stared at the test in a frenzy, worrying about pregnancy and babies and all that stuff she didn’t quite feel ready for and hadn’t planned for. And now that it had actually made an appearance, she found herself looking at it for a long time in what could only be described as utter confusion.

She felt her stomach drop, understanding the connotation of the results before her mind had time to process the thought. Then she was moving, taking the test in her hands and looking at it closely just to make sure her eyes were not deceiving her. And sure enough, both lines were still there. Two lines. Pregnant.

She put the test down in a swift move. Looking straight ahead to find her reflection staring back in the mirror, looking bewildered. She took a deep breath. Two.

“No. Okay. Okay. This can’t be happening just now.” She covered her mouth with her hand, covered her face to see if the darkness and lack of exterior stimulus provided some clarity. But it was to no avail. She hadn’t… She couldn’t. But there were two lines, so…

She was starting to spiral into a full-fledged melt-down, her breath getting heavier, her eyes roaming around in search of something that would make sense of the situation, when a sudden burst of denial grounded her. She couldn’t be pregnant. She couldn’t. So she decided to approach the situation step by step. Maybe the test had been faulty? She’d just take the remaining two and see what they had to say.

So she desperately started to take sips from her water bottle, nervously pacing around as she waited to see if she could pee again.

When she got nervous, scared, even when she was just rushing for some reason; she, unconsciously, had a tendency to sing to herself. She guessed the psychology behind it was that music calmed her down. So, when her body started to feel overstimulated, it self regulated by bursting into a familiar song or humming it. She did not find her body funny when her response to the waiting was to start humming Juno by Sabrina Carpenter.

Luckily for her, for once in her life, anytime she drank alcohol her bladder seemed to practice a spontaneous generation of liquid. That to say, it didn’t take long.

So after walking half of the daily amount of steps recommended by the WHO in her bathroom. She was taking another two tests. And this time there was no carelessly lounging around in her room, this time there was only staring at both tests, waiting to see which one spoke first, hoping that none of them would.

That hope was shattered extremely fast, though, when both tests started showing the Test line before even reaching the Control line. Two definite, deep, dark, undeniable pink lines waiting for their standard Twin to appear. Then she quickly had three positive pregnancy tests in front of her.

She turned around, shaking her arms, fingers tapping, breath heavy in her chest. She felt like crying. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. She’d been careful. They’d used protection. And that had been all the way back in April, before she’d gotten her period, which did not make sense. She wasn’t a health-care expert, but something told her you just don’t shed your endometrium if it’s currently being used.

Once the first sob escaped her lips there was no stopping it. She somehow ended up crouching in her bathroom floor, using the wall as backrest. She didn’t know how long she just spent there, crying. Not quite thinking about anything other than the fact that everything was about to change drastically. All of her plans.

She was supposed to be focusing on her career. She’d just taken the sergeant’s exam that very morning, which meant more responsibilities, more dangerous situations, more overtime. And gosh, she didn’t even know her score yet and the career path was already being compromised. It could take months for her to get an opening, even if she scored in the top ten. How would she be taken seriously as a leader if she appeared all pregnant and exhausted for all of five minutes before going on maternity leave?

How far along even was she? Five? Six weeks? That’s how long it’d been since April fool’s day. Unless it had happened after Valentine’s day hook-up. That’d mean she was three months pregnant. Three whole months. That would be the second trimester. And she hadn’t even gone to the doctor. Besides, she’d had a lot of sushi since Valentine’s day. She’d also drunk a lot. God she’d been drinking like two hours earlier with Celina. For God’s sake, she was still tipsy. And she knew the amount of alcohol required for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome wasn’t necessarily a big one. Any amount was dangerous, especially in the first trimester. She’d studied that in college.

And Tim. God, Tim. They weren’t even back together yet. She had to tell him. She didn’t know how he’d react. He’d spent the last few months working on himself; she wasn’t stupid, nor blind. They’d both been working on themselves — albeit in different aspects of their lives — until she was ready to forgive him, until the rank problem wasn’t a problem anymore, until they had that very much needed adult conversation stablishing the expectations and compromises of what their relationship was going to look like this second, and hopefully final, round. She didn’t want to toss all that healthy progress out the window and just get together because she was pregnant. But what else were they going to do? God knew she’d forgiven him already. And she wanted him, a future with him. She just wanted it to feel like a decision the made together, not an obligation they were taking care of because she was pregnant.

She rested her head against the wall, trying to steady her breathing.

“Okay, breathe. Breathe.” She told herself. It was easier to give herself orders to follow. It helped her regain composure faster. “Now wash your face.” She continued, getting a sight of her red eyes and tear-stricken cheeks. Her hands were shaking slightly. She almost started crying again over the sink, but the cool water grounded her. “Okay. Okay. We hadn’t planned for this to happen. But it has. So now the only thing left to do is figure things out.” Her voice sounded frail, trembling. She knew she was lucky enough to have options: options she strongly felt every woman should have a right to, despite the ignorant, dehumanizing political panorama affecting their country. She just felt that — even though she wished it was all just a bad drunken dream — it wasn’t the right option for her.

So she left the bathroom and sat down in her desk, the little study-lamp providing all the illumination in the room. And she started writing a list. It wasn’t like she was going to be able to sleep, anyway. So she wrote. Things to do, things to buy, things to search, people to ask.

She started crying half way through writing it, as reality hit her hard for a second time. She somehow ended up in her bed, hugging a pillow and reading about what prenatal vitamins she should be taking. Folic acid was a yes, a big yes. 0,4mg of supplements a day — specially in the first trimester — unless the doctor said differently. The rest of the prenatal care she’d decide once they talked to the doctor.

One thing led to another and she ended up going down the pregnancy research rabbit hole. She wasn’t showing at all so she guessed the fateful slip had taken place in April fools. Besides, she found out there was this thing called “implantation bleeding” that took place one to two weeks after conception and lots of people mistook for an early short period, which did match the description of her April period — which at the moment she had just considered a light, short one, with heavy cramping. Little did she know.

She also — in wanting to anticipate what would happen and what she’d be asked in the first doctor’s appointment — discovered that, technically, they counted the first day of her last real period as the start of the pregnancy. So, essentially — even though she didn’t understand why — she wasn’t six weeks pregnant, like she'd initially guessed. She was eight weeks pregnant. Eight weeks and three days. Which was extremely close to being a fourth into the pregnancy. And, again, she hadn’t taken care of her body the way she should have. At eight weeks pregnant the neural tube of the embryo had long been closed, and she hadn’t taken a single folic acid supplement. So that meant the baby was pretty much at high risk for neural tube defects, according to everywhere she read on Google. Gosh, it was like 4 days away from being considered a fetus. She should have gone to the doctor’s a long while ago. She almost had an impulse to make an appointment right then and there. But she didn’t. She would talk to Tim and then they’d follow up on everything together.

Last thing she remembered was checking a slide show explaining the embryos and fetus’ development up until week twenty at five in the morning, before she fell asleep.

She woke up disoriented, to say the least. Her phone pressed against her cheek. She expected it to be around nine or ten in the morning up until her screen read 14:14 back to her. Which meant it was a quarter past two in the afternoon and she’d been sleeping for nine straight hours.

It didn’t surprise her, after all the crying she’d done. She still felt exhausted, though. She’d initially attributed her tiredness to the stress she was undergoing, much like her headaches. Now, looking back, maybe it’d been the pregnancy all along. She didn’t know. And she felt too tired to think about it. But how could she think about anything else?

She went to the bathroom, finding the crucial evidence she didn’t imagine the whole thing sitting there on the bathroom sink. Out of impulse she grabbed the one she knew to be the first one she’d taken and stared at it, chewing her bottom lip, much like she’d done the night before. Then a sigh escaped her; a long, resigned one. Not that she thought she’d imagined it, but it was sobering to face the tests in the light of day. It was really happening.

She figured there was no reason she couldn’t be upset and productive at the same time. She’d already lost half the day sleeping. She had a bit over five hours until Tim’s shift was over. Five hours to get ready, finish her list, go to the drugstore and plan how the hell she was supposed to break the news to him.

She somehow managed to waste a lot of time thinking about what she should eat. She wasn’t really hungry, but figured she should not go around on an empty stomach. She was also thinking maybe she should reduce her caffeine intake. Not that she drunk a lot of coffee, but apparently it was known to be an enhancer of nausea. Not that she’d experienced any nausea. Throwing up would have sounded the alarm much sooner. She read it could appear anytime in between the fourth and tenth week, though. So she guessed she still had a week and a half.

She looked at her watch 02:45pm. And she was mad at herself. She’d cleaned the kitchen, reevaluated her whole nutrition plan just to end up eating a measly sandwich, and hadn’t done a thing out of what she was actually supposed to do. And now she had four hours left until she had to be in the station.

She decided it was time to face reality head on. Even if it scared her or made her upset. She was pregnant. She closed her eyes. Breathed in. Breathed out. Let the thought simmer without clinging on to a list of tasks to complete so she could feel in control of the situation.

She recognized that it wasn’t what she wanted to happen. And it was a big thing. She told herself it was okay not to be okay with it, that it was normal to be overwhelmed when faced with such life-changing information by herself and out of the blue. She also reminded herself that she wasn’t really alone. She had someone to share the burden with, even if he was still oblivious — and she had no doubt he would step up. He was too noble not to. He’d probably jump the gun and ask her to move in with him or want to skip the final steps of their reconciliation all together, because that’s what would make sense for them to do due to the circumstances.

At that she decided she’d try to gauge and hold onto the silver linings. She loved Tim, despite not being back together yet, she did. She’d wanted a life with him before everything went south, a family. They’d talked kids and grandkids and baby names. And she knew in her heart he would be such a great dad, despite his own upbringing. Lastly, sure, they hadn’t planned it to happen like that, but they were thirty-three and forty-three years old, they both had solid incomes, they were both responsible adults. They would figure it out. She could still build a great career for herself despite being a mom. She had two very great examples nearby.

“Being a mom.” She said out loud to herself. Celina wasn’t home so it wasn’t like anybody was going to hear her. “Gosh.” She understood it was the whole implication of being pregnant; becoming a mom. But it felt like such a gigantic idea for her to grasp. She couldn’t imagine herself being in charge of shaping a whole person. Not only shaping, but protecting, feeding, loving, prioritizing. For the rest of her life. There were a million things she could screw up. She was already screwing up by being close to nine weeks pregnant and not having gone to the doctor. It all just felt too inordinate. “It’s okay to feel overwhelmed. It is an overwhelming situation. It’s perfectly normal to be scared.” She told herself, reasonably. And she’d keep saying it again and again until she actually interiorized it.

●●●

It was 08:03pm at Mid-Wilshire, which meant day shift was supposed to be handing everything off to night shift, and Tim was supposed to be officially off work.

He was still nowhere to be seen, though. And Lucy had been pacing around the station for half an hour, compulsively repeating and rearranging the whole speech she’d planned and the bases she wanted to cover.

• I need to talk to you about something very big…

• I’m pregnant.

• I know this is very unexpected and I understand if you need time to process. I needed some time myself.

• If you’d like to talk about it now, I figured we could go grab some dinner.

Those were the main bullet points she planned on talking around, the order in which she wanted to present the news and the options. There was also the possibility she’d just start rambling, so she’d brought that first pregnancy test with her; having figured out that your ex, whom you’ve recently had sex with, handing you a positive pregnancy test was pretty self-explanatory.

Weirdly enough, the test had helped ground her. She’d used it as a fidgeting toy inside of her pocket, turning it around while she waited.

Lucy heard him before she saw him. He sounded angry, though that wasn’t particularly strange during work hours.

“Have I ever made it sound like we’re friends, boot?” He barked. And gosh, it’d been years since she’d been at the receiving end of that prompt, but it still put her on edge. It didn’t help that she had to tell him something she was nervous enough to tell him before she knew he was in a mood.

“No, sir. I apolo–”

“I’m your T.O. I’m your instructor. And that means you listen to me or kick it to the curb, Texas. I don’t want your apologies, I want you to follow orders when I give them to you. Are we clear?” He was talking with his back to her, although she imagined what face he was making. Lucy didn’t know what it was that Miles had — or maybe hadn’t? — done, but she pitied him as of now. She also pitied herself having to talk to him after that.

“Crystal, sir.” Penn said, looking straight ahead and composed. He was probably used to Tim’s moods by now. She had been. She was used to his work-self. She was just suddenly very, extremely nervous, and possibly about to resort to the pregnancy test move, even though she’d promised herself she’d at least try to communicate first.

“Good.” He turned around, scowl on and a big cut right next to his right eye? “Lucy!” He said her name, clearly taken aback.

“Hi.” She greeted, her nervousness momentarily overshadowed by worry. “What happened to your eye?” She grabbed his chin to get a better view of the wound. It was like a quarter of an inch away from his eye, way closer than what she felt comfortable with. Whatever had happened; it could have ended badly.

He automatically relaxed a bit under her touch. He always did. Though he was still pretty much pissed off at the cowboy for his lacking abilities to follow simple orders. He was about to say ‘nothing’ — because truly, it hadn’t been anything extraordinary, just a very stupid drug-addict with a knife and an even stupider rookie — when Penn opened his big mouth unprompted.

“It was my fault, ma’am. I failed to properly retrieve all the weapons from a suspect in time and he tried to attack Sergeant Bradford while he was with another suspect.” Miles spoke respectfully and, for some reason Tim didn’t know, still in his vicinity.

“Go change, boot. You’re dismissed.” He said, finally. And it did the trick, because the rookie quietly muttered his goodbyes and left quickly. He knew the boot enough to know he’d try to start the next shift by apologizing, yet again, and promising the situation wouldn’t repeat itself, though.

“You okay?” She asked, getting another peek at his eye. She wasn’t touching him anymore, but she still stood closer than she would have, normally, after the break-up.

“Yeah, just a cut.”

“Crook almost got your eye, though. A little bit to your left and you would be wearing an eyepatch right now.” She stared at the wound worriedly, chewing on her bottom lip, the way she always did when she wasn’t necessarily convinced. And she looked beautiful.

“Yeah, well. It would have added to the tough guy persona.” He joked. She rolled her eyes at him and sighed. “What are you doing here?” He asked. At that she genuinely felt like a deer in the headlights, as she remembered what she was there for.

“Right. Um…” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a second. He automatically frowned. “I need to talk to you about…” She drifted off as his cut started to bleed a bit, blood getting under his eyes and covering part of his lower lashes.

“Shit.” He pressed the wound with his hand, which probably made it worse since it was pretty fresh, which meant it would open easily with little effort. “Damned head wounds bleed more than gunshot wounds. I swear.” He took out a fresh gauze package out of his pocket and layered some of them before using it to apply pressure and stop the bleeding.

Lucy kind of internally panicked. He had blood covering a quarter of his face, he was grimacing. She dropped the test inside her pocket. How was she supposed to tell him? ‘Let me help you with this. By the way, I'm pregnant.’ That didn’t seem right. The adult thing would be to wait until he changed into his civvies and got the bleeding under control, but she felt she might just accidentally babble it. And she didn’t just want to accidentally share it and have him freak out on her while pressing a bloodied gauze to his face. If he freaked out. She didn’t think he would. She just… It was a big thing. A very big, fragile situation. She wanted to give him the luxury of finding out as gently as possible —which she wished she’d had. Not have him relate the pregnancy announcement to ‘the day I almost got my eye gauged out’.

“Sorry. What were you saying?” He asked, looking at her, frowning and half squinting through his right eye.

“Huh?” She asked stupidly. Maybe it was paranoia, but she swore she was finally getting nausea. “Nothing.” She lied. And he could tell she was acting weird, cagey. “I wanted to talk to you about the sergeant’s exam.” She started, unsure of where she was going with that. “Advice.” She continued, deciphering her own improvisation, deciding what made more sense for her to say. “Yeah. I’ve been climbing up the walls, feeling restless. I wanted some advice on how you passed the time between the test and the results. I know your correction got extended longer than usual. So… any advice?” She swallowed, feeling instantly bitter about lying to him, but unable to backtrack and share the news.

He scanned her face, tilting his head to the side as he analyzed the situation. She held her breath, sure he would call her bullshit and she’d end up just handing him the test in the middle of the station while he was actively bleeding. But then he started nodding, ever so slightly.

“I mean, I was training you for one. That was time consuming.” He reasoned. Then he shrugged. “Then if I had some time to kill, I’d just go to the gym, play some videogames.” He shook his head a bit and sighed. “Look, Lucy. My advice is to focus on something else. The exam is done. And I’m sure you did amazing. But the only thing left to do is wait. So start a book or a show, spend time with friends. Hell, if it helps get your mind off of things give in to your social media addiction. Though, I’d personally advice you do something productive. But I guess you get to indulge after all the hard work.” He started speaking matter-of-factly and evolved into a softer, endeared demeanor. “Just try and find something to focus on besides the results. If that’s even possible for you.” He joked. He’d teased her more than once when she’d been preparing for the detective’s exam, saying that she compulsively hyperfocused on her goals to a worrying extent. He would keep trying to get her to take her mind off of revising and focus on something else so her world didn’t completely revolve around the test. He mostly failed, as well. Except for when he himself provided the distraction. That usually did it to capture her attention. She was distracted this time around, though. She’d find such a big distraction that she would dare say the sergeant’s exam’s results were now the distraction from her new problem.

“Mhm. Thanks. I’ll do that.” She smiled at him. A tight-lipped, kind of rushed smile. He lifted one eyebrow at her. He thought she was nervous over the results. He interpreted her hasty response as an indicator that she still pretty much didn’t know what to do with herself during the wait and that she would just keep on obsessing over it until she had an answer.

“Anytime. Anything else?” He asked, unbeknownst to the massive secret she was hiding. She felt wrong about it. She didn’t like the fact that the pregnancy was now a secret she was actively keeping from him.

“No. No, that was what I wanted to tel–ask you about.”

“Okay.” He said, stuck in his own head. He wanted to tell her she could call him if she felt too worked up about waiting for the results. That he would go with her to a molecular-cooking exposition in a heartbeat if she thought that’d be enough of a distraction. But she had just said the night before that nothing had changed until they knew her results, after his suggestion of ‘celebrating’. And he wanted to respect her decision. He was ready to let her lead the way at her own pace. “Well. I better go take care of this.” He smiled at her. Such a soft smile. Only for her.

“Yeah. See you tomorrow.” She got out before rushing out of the station.

●●●

Chapter Text

She was so angry at herself. She’d gotten cold feet. She’d spent hours carefully crafting her words, considering every possible reaction or situation, exactly so that wouldn’t happen. And still, when it really mattered, she chickened out.

What had she even been thinking? Sure, it wasn’t exactly the best moment to break the news: he’d just been attacked on duty. But, considering the nature of their job, that wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence. They were punched, pushed and shot at daily. She thought about calling him, asking him to quickly meet up. But there was no telling him ‘quickly’. The moment he found out they were due for a long conversation. And after missing the 8pm window, it was already too late. They had work in the morning. And he was covering some extra shifts, which essentially meant he was facing twelve-hour shifts day after day. And that was brutal; she knew. He deserved to rest. Or maybe that was her procrastinating the conversation even more and finding excuses to validate her incorrect actions.

There was no telling him that day. But she made a promise to herself: the next morning she’d ask him to grab dinner together after their shift. There was no way she was doing it before, during breakfast. She could not just spring the news on him and expect both of them to go on their separate, jolly ways at work. So she would ask him to dinner, share the news and have the adult conversation the situation required. It worked perfectly for both of them. She knew he was off Saturday and she was also off. So if Friday night dinner got extended there’d be no real repercussion. And they’d both get the day to process together before putting on the uniform and getting back to work.

She felt exhausted. She was ready to drop in her bed and just sleep. At least the distractions had been limited after her google searches leaked into her for-you-pages and turned them into a pregnancy/baby fest. Who knew that was all she had to do to decrease her screen time? Get accidentally pregnant and avoid being reminded every three scrolls. She opened her door to see Celina and Rodge talking in the kitchen.

“Hi there.” She greeted.

“Hi. How come you went to the station? Something wrong?” Celina asked. “Miles told me.” Her roommate clarified before she got the time to ask how she knew where she’d been.

“No. I just had to talk to Tim.” She answered, feeling a bit defensive about the situation, although shre refrained from showing it.

“Ah.” Celina and Rodge exchanged a glance. And maybe she had a bit of a short fuse after that day’s fail, but she truly did not feel like being teased about her relationship. “You want some? We got way too much. Rodge had a discount after playing in the restaurant.” When she looked at the table, to her dismay, she found trays and trays of different kinds of sushi.

“Los de la derecha son míos.” Rodge said to Celina, kind of under his breath.

“Comparte.” Celina muttered back. Lucy may not be very fluent in Spanish, but she knew enough to understand that interaction.

“No, thank you. I had some Mexican on my way home. I wanted to try this place Rachel had told me about.” She lied, thinking wistfully about the tuna nigiri. She was hungry, gosh. All she’d had that day had been a protein shake and a sandwich, and she was sure as hell paying the price. She’d really been looking forward to a cucumber salad with salmon. Though, after her lie, dinner was out of the way. “I’m gonna head into my room and call it a day. I’m kinda sleepy.” She excused herself, feeling very drained, very moody, very hungry.

“Okay… goodnight.” Celina said, a bit puzzled.

“Night.” Rodge Wished, looking pretty happy. Probably thanking his lucky stars that she’d already ‘had dinner’. Little did he know his sushi was safe from her for the foreseeable future.

●●●

Once she was alone in her room she got this unprompted feeling of sadness. She wanted to cry. And she felt stupid, because she had nothing to cry about. Nothing new, at least. She just… She’d made a plan to follow because she already was behind on a bunch of stuff.

First thing on her list: tell Tim. She hadn’t done that. And, subsequently, she hadn’t made an appointment with the doctor, which meant if — God forbid — something was wrong they would find out even later. She’d read about a bunch of possible complications. Most of them appeared or were detectable later on, but still. She could be anemic — she had a tendency to get anemia every once in a while. And, again, she truly felt exhausted. She also, maybe (not likely), possibly was at risk for gestational diabetes. She knew her mom had had it with her. Besides, being Asian-American was a risk factor. And she had lost a bit of weight in the last month or so. Nothing much, really. And it had probably been due to the fact that her dietary plan had been sort of neglected while she studied and worked, not a newly-developed insulin resistance. Still, she was pregnant. She wasn’t supposed to be losing weight. And she should have been checking it all out as soon as possible.

Along that same line, the only thing she’d done had been buying prenatal care, but she was sure taking some supplements and vitamins were no use if she didn’t eat, which she barely had. And again, she was really hungry, which didn’t help her mood.

The day before she’d been drunk, that day she was giving the embryo a Hunger Games experience. She didn’t know if there was a ‘worst pregnant woman’ competition, but she sure as hell would be a great participant.

The moment a sob escaped her lips, she covered her mouth. She was spiraling and she was being mean to herself in the process and that was not going to achieve anything. Besides, last thing she wanted was for Rodge and Celina to hear her crying.

The way she was feeling right now… she felt that, if prompted —given her sharing nature — she’d completely spiel to Celina in search for support. But that wouldn’t be right. Tim needed to know first. He was the one who was to ride the roller-coaster with her.

She, at one point, started singing an old comfort song from her childhood to herself, the familiar melody enough to help her control her breathing and calming her down. There was always tomorrow to get things right. It wasn’t like the pregnancy was going anywhere.

Once she felt a little better, she decided to change into her pajamas and hope Celina and Rodge would leave the kitchen soon enough for her to raid it.

She took her pants and her shirt off, stripped only to her underwear. She looked down at herself: her cleavage, her belly. Then she walked towards her mirror, looking at her whole reflection. She didn’t know what she expected to see. She didn’t really notice anything different. That was a lie, though. She’d noticed her boobs were a bit more tender than usual, and that lately she was rocking it with every top with cleavage she owned. She just had thought it was premenstrual symptoms.

It felt alien for her to try and deeply comprehend how much her body was about to change. She understood it, to a surface level. She was pregnant, her body was inevitably going to alter itself to grow a person. But she hadn’t interiorized it. She hadn’t grasped that it was going to be her body; that body she was looking at just now. It was scary.

She wondered how long it would take for her to start showing. First time pregnancies usually ranged from twelve to eighteen weeks, she’d read. So possibly three weeks? A month? She knew reality was, ultimately, multifactorial; varying according to the mother’s abdominal wall, the position of the uterus, where the baby situated itself…

She held that last thought. ‘The baby’. She felt stupid by feeling reality-smacked by the stupidest most obvious things; but it had been the first time she’d referred to it as ‘the baby’. She’d mostly been thinking of it as an embryo that was treating her fairly well despite her tendency to malnourish it. A part of her body she had to learn to take proper care of.

Sure, again, she knew that was the whole deal with being pregnant: getting a baby to be a mom to. She just guessed she’d spent all her day thinking of the effects it was going to have on different areas of her life — a disturbance, being blunt — instead of processing it as a new part of her life.

Although, she was still referring to it as ‘it’, so the day had only taken the baby’s humanization process so far. The baby. Her baby. Tim’s baby. She felt a rush of air leave her lungs unsteadily. This thing, so tiny not even she could tell it was there was about to tether them, irrevocably and permanently, together. More than any promise, or ring, or signature could ever do. There was no getting out of each other’s lives anymore. No no-contact after a messy situation. There would be either family life together or friendly co-parenting if they ultimately didn’t work out. Birthdays and holidays, and back-to-school shopping, and extracurriculars, and doctor’s appointments, and a million other things that come with kids. A whole life. For as long as they lived.

She felt a tear running down her cheek as — for the hundredth time — she was hit by the magnitude of the situation. Only that, this time, it wasn’t because she was upset or stressed out — not that she suddenly was dancing with joy at the verdict — it was just that… It truly did feel like a beautiful prospect. An overwhelming and complicated one. But beautiful nonetheless. To be able to experience all that with someone she had so much love and respect for.

She ended up having to swat away a few of those tears while she changed. She imagined finding herself in the same situation her mom had been. To find you’re carrying the child of someone who isn’t interested in partaking in its life. To be completely alone in the midst of such a life-changing, exhausting, egregious, scary process. She’d be a wreck. Not that she was justifying the approach her mom had taken with her. There were other options she could have taken when faced with an unwanted child. Gosh, she’d only known she was pregnant for less than a day and she already felt protective of it. She couldn’t imagine herself doing anything other than nurturing and taking care of her child. Definitely not going out of her way to belittle them and make them feel like a disappointment.

It just gave her a whole new perspective’ of her situation: that, despite its unexpectedness, she was still extremely privileged in her pregnancy.

She’d calmed down considerably. In fact, she was probably the calmest she’d been the whole day. She brushed her teeth, washed her face and looked at the two pregnancy tests she’d stashed away back in a hidden nook inside her cabinet, where Celina wouldn’t see them if she returned the tampon box; which she hadn’t yet. Not that she cared about them as of now. She obviously wasn’t going to need them for at least another year.

She stared at the tests, yet again, not quite sure of how she felt about them anymore. She wasn’t happy. She also wasn’t overwhelmed by the impending doom that had plagued her the night before. She also didn’t feel indifferent towards them, not in the slightest. It was complicated.

She sighed. Turning off the lights and crawling into bed, in spite of her protesting stomach. It didn’t take long before sleep claimed her.

●●●

Dreams are a crazy realm where a wide range of realities live, mostly to be forgotten. A place for one’s imagination to subconsciously reign true to its chaotic nature. Most dreams she had didn’t make a lot of sense, objectively. A lot of them contained strange scenes, embarrassing scenes, unprompted scenes that she wouldn’t be imagining had she been responsible for the direction of the rambling mind.

That night she dreamt and remembered some snippets from the different hours she’d woken up to drink water or go to the bathroom — which had to be psychological, because she suddenly felt like she had to do twice as often. The first dream she was suddenly very pregnant, but somehow, she still hadn’t told Tim, so she was trying to scheme a way for her to break the news before he saw her and got mad at her. She got the message from her subconscious: she had to tell Tim as soon as possible. The second dream was weird. Dream weird. She was not going to specify nor even try to recall it because she didn’t feel like cringing was something to add to her day’s tasks. The third she knew a hospital was involved, she just didn’t remember how. She interpreted that as: she should hurry and make a doctor’s appointment.

She got up at six fifteen in the morning, which meant she’d gotten eight hours of sleep; light and multi-interrupted, but a full night of sleep nonetheless — literally a third of the day — and she felt like she could just plop back to sleep and sleep for another eight hours. She was tired. She’d probably been tired for the last month, she just thought it’d go away after the exam. Still, she had work to do, so she showered and got dressed. She used some of what she considered to be her comfort/lucky clothes. Her favorite jeans, her favorite shoes, her lucky bra — she just liked the pattern so much she’d decided it was lucky.

She was, again, nervous. To have to work an entire shift around him, to have to talk to him as if nothing had changed. She’d considered methodically avoiding him until dinner to save herself the tension, but that wasn’t a plausible plan.

“Here are your tampons. Thank you very much. I forgot to return them yesterday.” Celina announced, settling the box on the counter.

“Thanks.” She said, continuing to do her lip convo. She could not control the outside world or what happened, but she could control the way she looked. And so, when situations escaped her, she liked to look extra nice. As if looking nice meant things were going to turn out fine.

“Yours has made an appearance already or do you want me to grab some diapers instead of tampons next time?” Celina joked. And gosh, she almost dropped the lip-gloss. For a split-second she’d thought maybe she’d seen the pregnancy tests, or found out somehow. Then, she thought rationally about it. Celina was teasing her. They’d talked about it two nights before. And she had told her that there was no way she was pregnant because she hadn’t had sex — which hadn’t been a lie; she’d truly believed that.

“I personally use pads or tampons for my period. But, if you wanna try diapers, go on girl. Experiment.” She carefully kept her response from showing just how nervous she was. The backtalk itself had been kind of lame. But she didn’t think it’d been lame enough to raise concern. So, she called it a win. In the end, Celina just smiled and left the bathroom.

She got to the station and there was no Tim in sight. She got changed and still no Tim in sight. Then she got to roll call and there he was, sitting next to Nolan. As she approached them and sat next to them, she realized they were talking sports, which didn’t surprise her.

“Hey.” Lucy sat next to Tim, finding his presence to be slightly overwhelming. She could not have him beside her and not lose her mind about not telling him

“Morning.” Greeted Nolan, as happy, friendly and oblivious as ever.

“Hi.” He smiled at her. “There’s no way that would ever happen. Not against the Dodgers.”

“Care to put money on it?”

“NBA season tickets.” Tim wagered. Nolan nodded. “You just don’t get tired of paying for me to watch games, do you?” They were making bets and talking sports and she was just there gatekeeping the fact that he was going to be a father. “Were you able to sleep last night or did you just toss and turn counting the seconds?” Tim said. She was puzzled for a second. What did he know about her anticipating…? Then it clicked. He was teasing her. He thought she was anticipating the sergeant’s exam’s results. Which she was. She really was. She just had a, perhaps, more important thing to deal with first.

“I slept fine. I found something to get my mind off of it.” She admitted, truthfully. And he was definitely shocked to hear that. He felt his eyebrows try to become one with his hairline as he looked at her.

“Really? Well that I didn’t expect. What…” He drifted off as Gray entered the room, with Nyla tailing him, and started talking and handing out assignments.

“Alright people, it’s eight o’clock, which means roll-call has officially started. Last night’s shift was an eventful one. And once more, we’re left picking the pieces from nightshift.

It’s come to our attention that a mid-level gang called Los Tres Hermanos has recently split. And not amicably.

Until recently, they operated as a unit — family-run, tight-knit, under the radar. The leaders: Mario, Jorge, and Pedro González. All three have prior arrests — mostly low-level stuff in the past: petty thefts, drug charges, bar fights. Pedro, in particular, has a long-standing rep for violence.

They’ve been ghosts for a while. We’ve had suspicions about their involvement in cross-border drug trafficking and prostitution, but nothing’s ever stuck. No concrete ties. No hard evidence.

Now, Mario was found murdered eight days ago in South Central Alley, behind an old laundromat off Vernon Avenue.

Mario was the oldest. He held the highest leadership role in the gang’s hierarchy. With him out of the way, both remaining brothers felt they had a claim for being the biggest fish.

The investigation is still ongoing. But we know that Pedro’s baby mama was also found brutally murdered in her house on Wednesday. Blunt force trauma. Looked personal. Nothing stolen. No forced entry.

And then last night a building where Jorge and his closest man were was blown up down in Watts. High-yield IED, custom-wired, directional blast. Not homemade junk — this was pro-grade. Timed for shift change. Half the building’s gone.

There were eight fatalities, six critical and two who got out with minor injuries. Jorge Gonzalez walked out with shrapnel wounds and a busted arm.

So yeah — we’re looking at open warfare between the surviving brothers. Narco links suggest cartel backing might be involved, but here’s why I’m telling you this: the bomb.

Tech analysis is still ongoing, but initial forensics show signature traits matching a dozen past incidents across Southern California —some dating back over fifteen years. Gang hits, hijackings, a couple train derailments we couldn’t tie to anyone. Same construction, same chemical traces, same trigger types.

Whoever built last night’s device is the same person responsible for over a hundred deaths across the last two decades —and they’d been dormant for the last four years. Until now.

Detective Harper is going to be leading this part of the investigation. Gang Division and Narcotics will continue handling the González mess, but you stay looped. This thing could spill over fast, and I don’t want any of you caught flat-footed if another one of these goes off.”

“Had you heard any of this?” Lucy asked Tim, shocked to hear so much had gone south in so little time and with so little noise.

“Yeah. There’s been whispers of a gang spat for a couple of days. And the bomb was all over the news this morning. Also, the bomb destroyed a tiny chapel next to the building and Lopez is convinced that’s a bad augury, so she had plenty to say.” He explained, sounding annoyed. “You didn’t?” He looked at her surprised. She would have usually found out through social media, but she’d been avoiding it.

“No. I went to bed early and woke up late this morning. I needed to catch up on some hours of sleep.” She lied.

“Officer Miles, you’re going to be riding with officer Nolan for the day. There’s a protest near Union Station later and Command wants visibility on site. Keep comms tight in case it turns. A good opportunity to practice crowd control.” Grey continued. She felt Tim’s energy shift next to her. She could almost hear him thinking. Why are they giving my boot to Nolan for crowd control? She didn’t understand either. She was just praying, to whatever would answer, for them not to be paired together for the day. She could not ride with him for twelve hours and not tell him. She could also not tell him in the middle of a shift and have the conversation interrupted by some drunk driver, who’s run a red-light, that they’d have to take into custody for him to hear them talk consequences of thoughtless hook-ups with faulty protection.

“Bradford, you’re off patrol today. I want you combing through archived case files from 2009 to present day, looking for any explosion reports that didn’t get flagged by ATF or didn’t have follow-up. Civilian, gang, industrial — I don’t care.

Tech’s cross-referencing active stuff, but we need boots-on-the-ground memory here. You did EOD overseas, you know what kind of crap gets missed in the system. Look for patterns. Even loose ones.

Anything smells like this guy’s work, you bring it straight to Harper. The rest of you, standard patrol.” Lucy exhaled. She’d be riding with Celina, not with Tim. They’d just have a normal day out on patrol and then dinner. Which reminded her.

“Better not soften my boot with wholesome speeches and juice boxes. He doesn’t screw up; that’s his job. He screws up; he gets disciplined.” Tim told Nolan. All bark, no play. He was still pissed about the incident. His wound was healing well, but still.

“Celina got plenty of wholesome speeches and I like to think she’s a better cop because of it.” Nolan answered, as they all got up and ready to start the work day.

“Or in spite of it.” Tim rebutted.

“Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?” She got in before everybody went their separate ways and she didn’t have time to ask him.

“Sure. What is it?” He answered. Not that he was disinterested, but there was a casualness to his response. She did talk to him a lot about a wide range of stuff — even after the break up. It was normal for him to be so nonchalant in spite of the enormity of what would go on later that night.

She opened her mouth to ask him, but was interrupted by a phone ringing. His phone.

“It’s Genny.” He showed her his screen before hanging up. “I’ll call her back. What did you wanna talk about?” She suddenly felt her throat very dry, her words ashy.

“Are you free tonight?” She got out, acknowledging it’d sounded a bit blunt. He squinted at her. She couldn’t blame him. Last time she’d asked something along those lines — that very same week, in fact — the most awkward dinner ever to exist ended up taking place at his house.

“What for?”

“We need to talk about something. I need to… tell you something.” She explained, dragging her words. She didn’t want to share too much, nor make it seem like anything was wrong. Although, it kind of was, depending on perspectives. Not wrong. But different. An unexpected, comprehensively upsetting different. He raised an eyebrow at her, feeling puzzled.

He thought she wanted to talk about them. About their relationship. And he knew her enough to detect when she was nervous or upset about something. He got the message she wasn’t explicitly saying out loud: she wasn’t exactly happy about whatever it was that she was going to share. In fact, it very much seemed like she didn’t know how to tell him. His brain immediately started going through worst case scenarios: she’d thought about it and didn’t feel like she could forgive him, he was too emotionally unavailable and what he’d done was ultimately irreparable; she just didn’t feel the same anymore; she was going away — no, that wouldn’t be a problem, he’d follow. And the worse he could think of: was she sick?

“Lucy, is something wrong? Are you okay?” He felt his pulse quicken. His stomach churned as he waited to see something that would tip him off. She wanted to kick herself.

“Yes… No. Yes!” She babbled. He felt… confused. “I’m okay.” She said assertively. “Nothing is wrong.” She followed, more dubiously. She shook her head. “We just really need to talk. But everything’s fine. I swear.” She reached for his arm. He could tell she was still pretty much nervous, but her eyes settled on him with such conviction and gentleness. He calmed down considerably after that. “It’s nothing bad.” She reasoned. Her conviction going significantly down. “ So–“

“Ready to roll?” Celina asked right behind her, appearing out of nowhere. Lucy jumped, getting away from Tim and earning herself side-eyes from the two.

“Talk to you later.” She told Tim in a rush before hurriedly walking away, expecting Celina to follow her. He was left behind wondering what the hell had just happened.

●●●

Station-bound. No patrol. No action. Homework. Lots of homework. Lots of searching through old files related to explosions —which weren’t exactly scarce. It was tedious, but barely an hour into his research he knew exactly what he was looking for. There was a particularly meticulous way the bomb had been structured. Most of the blasts were funneled, for once. Designed to hit a certain area or target. There were also certain taggant chemicals present after forensic analysis. Chemicals he was familiar with because he’d worked with them back in his military days. It was clear, whoever this guy was, he was no amateur. In fact, he was ready to bet, whoever they were, they most likely had some kind of military training of their own.

The cherry on top was when he started scanning through the more recent cases. The ones with high-precision shrapnel that, post-blast, etched a date somewhere in the way of the explosion. It annoyed him. The guy had been responsible for dozens of major wreckages for over a decade and still they were confident enough to go out of their way and make sure the police knew it’d been them. Repeating patterns all over his work and then adding a signature to it. The thing that pissed him off the most was that, in some cases, the date didn’t even make sense. Sometimes it was the date of the explosion, sometimes it was a day before or after. Sometimes the discrepancy was even larger. For example, the date found after last night’s explosion had been May 14th, when the explosion had taken place at night, during the first hours of the 16th. Which meant the date wasn’t necessarily only related to the detonation. It could be the day they got hired, or when they built the IED. It could be a ton of things they didn’t have evidence to back or even try and guess.

So he pretty much felt like he was chasing a wraith. A very real one, there was no doubt of that. But it felt impossible to him to have such a record and never once screwing up in the slightest. There had to be something they’d missed. A client who felt like talking. Though according to records no one had seen him personally. Every single client claimed they had to make first contact.

“You having fun scouring cold cases?” Harper asked from the doorway, looking smug.

“Time of my life.”

“We got Jorge Gonzalez in interrogation. If you wanna come.” She offered. He wasn’t about to show just how eager he was to do something that didn’t involve reading and paperwork. So he, nonchalantly, accepted her invitation.

“Sure. Why not?” He said after pretending he was considering. She eyed him unimpressed.

●●●

“And you know what’s the worst part? They completely butcher the characters.” Celina complained. They’d been talking Grey’s Anatomy for close to twenty minutes. Lucy had watched most of it through the years —she picked it up and got up to date every once in a while— and Celina had started watching it with Rodge.

“I know.”

“Like, if the character’s gonna be written out that’s fine. But don’t give them a personality transplant in the process that makes me hate them. And it happens with almost every single one. George. Izzie. Oh, Burke just leaving Cristina at the altar.”

“Yeah, that was a weird plot.” She conceded. Her memory was a bit mushy, but she remembered the first six-seven season well enough.

“Now every time one of them starts acting a little douchy for a while I just know I’m not seeing them again.”

“Honestly, they’re all asses at some point in the show.” She saw Celina laugh ironically at that. She’d gotten pretty fired up complaining about some plots. And she was passenger princess for the day while Lucy drove — that way she was busy enough for her mind not to wander — so she was free to gesticulate, look around and shift according to her complaining as much as she wanted.

“Yeah. But there’s being an ass and then there’s O’Malley cheating on Callie after reasoning that Izzie was a supermodel and he didn’t have a shot with her.”

“Oh my gosh! Yes! That storyline was atrocious.”

“The disrespect.”

“A hundred percent.”

“I’m just saying. Callie’s way classier than me. I would’ve bitch-slapped both their asses. And they didn’t even make sense together! It was solidly the worst couple in the show. I said what I said.”

“Unit 7-Adam-19, respond to a 911 call at 4521 East Rosecrans Avenue. RP reports foul odor coming from the neighbor’s residence. States the occupant hasn’t been seen in three days. No known medical history, no answer at the door. You’re closest. 8 minutes out.” The dispatch call interrupted the conversation, the static voice becoming the sole object of their attention.

“7-Adam-19, copy. Show us en route.” Celina answered.

“What do we know about the address?” Lucy asked as Celina fidgeted with the car’s computer. Foul smell usually meant dead body. She’d attended to a variety of those and knew just how versatile they could be. Last one had been a seventy-eight-year-old lady who lived alone with her cat. Neighbors started complaining after a few days. When they finally made entrance, it was estimated she’d been dead for three weeks. Three whole weeks no one had noticed her gone. It was a deplorable and horrific way to go. And the smell. The cat. She didn’t feel like thinking about it. She, as a cop, was used to gruesome sights. And guts and brains were hard to see. But it was a different kind of gruesome to see a scene in which death had had the time to simmer and make its presence clear. The decay.

“Ashley Prescott. Twenty-nine-year-old woman. Lives alone. She’s a pre-k and kindergarten teacher. No prior record.” Celina recounted.

“Well, let’s hope she forgot to take her trash out.” She said out loud, hoping that was the case. More than one of the foul odor calls she’d had had been a trash slip up and a noisy neighbor. Celina nodded solemnly.

●●●

“Control show us 10:97, at location.” She called as they got out of the car.

It was a quiet street that time of the day. A nice neighborhood. The house right next door had a little pink bike in the porch, training wheels still on. She’d initially grown up in a neighborhood like that one. She remembered playing in her own pink bike by herself in the street. Of course, that had been back in the nineties, when every single kid was out and about, playing. There had been an added safety in numbers. And still, awful things happened. Celina’s family was heartbreaking proof of that.

Still, she could imagine parents feeling it was safe enough for kids to play in the yard by themselves when that was the neighborhood that surrounded them. Nonetheless, they’d been called in, so that clearly wasn’t the case. Thousands of Amber alerts came from parents thinking it was safe enough or their kids were smart enough not to follow strangers. Most times it wasn’t even a stranger; it was a neighbor, family friend or member. How was she supposed to breath with her children out of her sight after every tragedy she’d not only heard of, but also witnessed.

“LAPD. Open up.” Celina knocked. “Police. Open up.” She insisted after a couple seconds.

“I don’t notice any smell. Do you?” Lucy asked.

“No.”

“Oh, thank God!” A woman exclaimed from the other side of the fence, the one that belonged to the house with the pink bike. Both her and Celina got startled at first, not having heard the woman approaching them. “I’ve been worried sick about Ashley. She’s my daughter’s teacher. Two days ago I went to talk to her in the morning to tell her my daughter was sick and if she wouldn’t mind bringing me a copy of whatever assignments they were doing for the day after school. But she didn’t answer. And I figured she had probably just left earlier. But then I found out she had been absent for work. And I’ve tried texting her, knocking on her door. I’ve kept an eye out for her, but she’s nowhere to be found. And then this morning my daughter wanted to play in the swings we have in our backyard and I was hit with this rancid smell. So we went back into the house and I called 911. I know I’m coming off as a crazy controlling neighbor, but we’re friends. We’ve known each other for years. I would have already gone into her house if my stupid husband hadn’t accidentally thrown the copy key she gave us a month ago.” The woman rambled, radiating worry and anxiety.

“Well, we’re here to check on her ma’am. You said you smelled the odor in the backyard.” Celina asked, her mind calculating.

“Yes, right over there.” Both Lucy and Celina exchanged a glance. It was time for them to go around the porch and into the back of the house to check on the alleged stench. And sure enough it was pretty apparent after barely walking halfway there.

The back of the house was pretty. Ashley Prescott had a beautiful flower garden. One Lucy could only dream of having one day since, for one, she lived in an apartment, and she may or may not have been known for killing more than one or two plants. She wished she could have gotten to see the place without the awful tang in the air. It looked like such a quiet and peaceful place to meditate or just relax.

She was looking at the house, at the little ceramic keepsakes she guessed the woman had acquired from her students —since they were extremely colorful and erratically made— some containing tiny handprints with a bunch of glitter; when she saw the blood staining the inside of the kitchen window.

She guessed Celina saw it at the same time because, once again, they exchanged a knowing glance.

“Mama, it still smells funny outside.” A tiny voice complained a few feet away from them, very close to the fence, where the neighbor stood, looking at them with worry.

“Ma’am, I need you to take your daughter and go inside. Right now.” Lucy said, leaving no room for discussion. The woman looked aghast.

“Oh my God! Is she dead? Did you see something?”

“We need to go in. I don’t know what kind of scene we’re going to walk into. But I know, whatever it is. If something’s wrong, you don’t want your child getting a look at it. So please, get her and go inside.” She looked like she was about to cry. But in the end, she nodded. She bent over, disappearing behind the fence for a second before popping up again with a little girl in her arms. Then she quickly walked towards her house. The child staring at them curiously over her mother’s shoulder, two long blonde pigtails framing her face. She waved goodbye at them before disappearing into their backdoor.

“7-Adam-19, we’ve got visible blood just inside the threshold. Possible 10:54. Requesting additional units. Making entry now.” Celina called in before kicking down the door. And then the blood fest started.

Chapter Text

It may as well have been a horror movie scene. The theatrics. The absolute hyperbole of a murder that it was. She understood someone might be just ambitious enough to represent such a scenario in an upcoming blockbuster gore film. But to be sick enough to actively do it; to paint a house red with the owner’s remains?

It was all over. Maroon patches covering the ceiling. The couch. The TV. The whole living room. It was an open space, so some had spluttered into the kitchen. It looked like someone had filled buckets and buckets and just tossed it around. It was impossible for all of it to belong to one person. She would have doubted it was all even blood had it not been for the smell. The awful, putrid, ubiquitous smell that seemed to be drowning them.

Then there was the victim. Ashley Prescott. 29. Kindergarten teacher. Now lay as a stump on top of her dining table. She was naked. Skin pale with the tinge of death. Eyes open. Lips cracked. Flies buzzing around. Her hair was blonde, half of it matted with blood from what looked like blunt trauma.

It was fairly easy to spot both legs: one right next to the body; the other one leaned against the couch as if it were a conspicuously placed umbrella or broom you’ve set aside for a second before resuming your task, not an amputated limb. Then, for the arms: one was nowhere to be found; the other was placed on top of the coffee table, serving as some kind of paperweight for what seemed like a newspaper article. She didn’t get to read what it said right away, though.

She saw Celina holding back a gag, covering her mouth and nose with her hand, eyes wild, roaming the scene. She felt herself about to be sick as well, the bitter taste of vomit creeping up her throat. She got out of the house before she could contaminate the scene.

The air outside they’d thought smelled bad felt fresh compared to the rotten one inside. She rushed down the porch stairs, inhaling deep, trying to keep her breakfast in. Celina followed suit.

“Jesus Christ! What happened there?” Celina looked greenish. And Lucy guessed she probably didn’t look any better. She didn’t feel any better, certainly.

“I jinxed myself. I told Nyla my day was going to be way more relaxed than hers and now…” Angela said, looking around.

The perimeter had long been secured. They’d been guarding the scene for close to forty minutes when Lieutenant Grey arrived to take over, shortly followed by Lopez, who arrived close to the one-hour mark.

They’d given their statements, though they would have to write it all down later either way.

“Do you need us to do anything else?” Lucy asked. They’d gone and asked a few questions to the woman next door while forensics arrived, and Celina had gone to check on some dumpsters a few houses away to see if they had any luck finding the missing arm. But now that the scene was already being processed, and Angela and Grey were there, she didn’t think there was much left to do.

“No. Not for now. You girls go back on patrol and we’ll update you if we find anything out.” Lopez said, looking grimly back at the house. “This is definitely a scene, though.”

“After this you should probably debrief and clock out. You’ve seen enough for the day.” Grey suggested. Since Tim had been station-bound and there were no other field-sergeants it was up to the watch-commander to be supervisor.

“It’s two in the afternoon, sir. We still got half a shift to cover. We’ll manage.” She countered. He was looking at her with hidden concern in his eyes. They hadn’t seen a scene this bloody since, well, Rosalind. And even she wasn’t such a brute. It wasn’t like Lucy didn’t think about her every time a scene was particularly macabre; about Caleb. But it had been years ago and she’d worked so hard on her trauma for it to not affect her job.

“At least take a good lunch break. You’ve been stuck here for hours.”

“Oh, that we are gonna do, sir.” She said. Grey gave her an affectionate tight-lipped smile.

“We’re doing a deep cleansing when we get home.” Celina announced, half-jogging to the group. “First the jigsaw movie scene and now I almost got run over by a dude in a black sedan. I don’t know what kind of taint this day has had on us, but I’m not claiming it.” Grey lifted an eyebrow at her. “Oh! Also, no luck with the arm.”

●●●

“Had you talked to your brother? Before the bomb? Did you have any idea of what he might be plotting?” Nyla asked, circling around Jorge González like a shark.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mhm. Really? Because I think your brother wanted revenge after what you did to Maria Blanco. And he hired someone to make sure he got his revenge. What better way to assert dominance than blowing the competition up?” Harper pushed.

“Cute story. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We have witnesses from the medical stuff that testified you kept saying you were going to kill your brother for what he’d done.”

“Yeah, well. He’s my brother. He pisses me off often. No need to take things so seriously.” He kept acting unbothered, but it was clear he was lying. There was a certain vitriol whenever he brought Pedro up.

“You know. The bomb. It didn’t wreck the place up entirely. It did enough damage to your friends, but we were able to recover a bunch of stuff. Very interesting stuff, actually. A lot of contraband guns.” Nyla wagered, prepping to use her leverage. “You can help us. And we can look the other way. Or you can go to jail for a considerable amount of time.”

“I want my lawyer.” Jorge announced, nose flaring, refusing to engage anymore.

Nyla turned to look at the fake mirror for a second, coincidentally nailing the spot where Tim stood behind the glass. With Jorge playing the quiet game and Pedro nowhere to be found, he guessed that meant it was time for him to get back to scanning through paperwork.

As he was leaving the interrogation room he got a call from Angela.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Do you remember the Murder-board murderer? Pretty big around the 2010s.” His self-proclaimed best friend started, cutting straight to the chase.

“Yeah. Brutal scenes. I worked on one back in 2012 or so. Why?”

“He may be back.” Angela announced. That information caught him off guard. Last they knew of him, a victim had managed to escape him. She’d hurt him in the process. She’d kept repeating something about his leg and cutting his face. Sadly, she’d succumbed to her injuries shortly after, and they’d never been able to catch him. But he’d been off the grid for a long while now. “Jury’s still out on that. There’s been a few copycat attempts. But I got a feeling this is the real deal, if I’m honest. Anyway, I know when I get home, I’m gonna squeeze my babies til they’re blue in the face and guilt-trip a massage out of Wesley. But Lucy and Celina were the ones who discovered the scene. I thought you might wanna check up on her.” She suggested, not subtly at all.

“Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for telling me.” He wasn’t stupid. He’d seen those scenes firsthand. They were barbaric.

“Sure.”

●●●

They were back at the station to write down their statements about the murder. It was now four thirty in the afternoon. In the end she’d gotten to eat her veggie burger, which had been nice for all of five minutes until the adrenaline crash due to happen happened and the exhaustion hit her like a freaking train. She felt like she was moving around with weights around her limbs; like it took double the usual energy she needed to just exist. And anytime she thought about the scene her stomach felt extra queasy, which didn’t add to her comfort.

“I swear if I close my eyes I can see it. It was awful.” Celina commented, filling her own share of the paperwork.

“Yeah. It’s crazy to think that there’s people out there willing to cause that much damage. To inflict someone so much pain.” Lucy conceded. “I’ve studied everything about psychopathic thinking and behavior. I understand it theoretically. And they told me, when I was a rookie with Rosalind, it was pointless. But truly, after years, I don’t think I’ll ever not wonder what the heck goes so fundamentally wrong for that to be the result.”

“I’m being serious about the cleansing. We’ve got too much bad energy on us. First the crazy baby-snatcher. Then the Seth situation. Now this? You know what we need? Some black tourmaline: for protection. And maybe a salt bath.” Celina plotted. She didn’t know about the salt bath. But she was going to be burning some sage around their apartment. Her roommate was right: there had been a lot of craziness plaguing them lately. More so than usual. Better safe than sorry.

“Hi.” Tim’s voice came in from behind her. He was standing in the doorway, smiling softly at her.

“Hi.” She greeted back before turning to Celina again. “Be right back.” She announced, ignoring her roommate's knowing smile. So she got up and went out the door, into the hallway and straight into his arms.

“Angela told me.” He talked against her hair, his arms tight around her waist, her own around his neck. He provided a nice anchor.

“Mhm.”

“You good?” He asked, pulling back to look at her. Hands still lingering on each other.

“Yeah. A bit shaken. But it’ll pass. Have they confirmed if it is the actual Murder-board murderer?”

“Not yet. But Angela says she thinks it is.” He saw her shake her head deep in thought.

“It was the worst scene I’ve ever walked into. By far.” She, initially, was planning on venting a little. But she could feel herself getting a bit more emotional than she should. And she didn’t want to worry him. Gosh, she felt so extremely tired. “I’m just, very ready to clock out today and go straight to bed. It’s one of those days.” He nodded understandingly. “Crap. Dinner.” She slapped her forehead. Because how could she forget?

“It’s okay. We can reschedule. You rest.” He suggested. She was going to object but then the cursed phone interrupted her, mirroring the morning’s events. Tim sighed. “It’s Genny. I should probably answer. I forgot to call her back.” Forget, decide to ignore momentarily and then, accidentally, end up ignoring completely. It felt like semantics to him.

“Sure.” Lucy agreed. She wanted to say more. She was going to say more. The ‘But’ was about to leave her lips when another recreation of the morning happenings took place.

“Hey. I just finished. Ready to roll when you are.” Celina informed kind of awkwardly, half peeping through the doorway.

“Sure.” She repeated, feeling frustrated.

Tim gave her one last tight smile before walking away to get the phone. She vaguely heard his greetings before the voice disappeared down the hall. Then it was time to keep going for another few hours. She would just catch him before end of shift and tell him that she was good, and that dinner was still on.

●●●

“You got a retired pyromaniac and I got a retired serial killer. And here we were making spa plans last week.” Angela said to Nyla. They were both at the station now. Drowning in paperwork and evidence to dive into. Both cases were tight and concerning people who’d proven to be extraordinary at not getting caught, so they knew they weren’t exactly going to have an easy week. Angela could almost feel the overtime knocking at her door. “The universe heard us talking and said ‘nope’.”

“Well, the universe has crappy humor.” Harper took a sip of her coffee. It was almost 08:00pm, but she knew she was going to stay a few hours longer, get ahead of as much as she could. Lila was at her dads for the week, and James could handle Leah himself. But once Monday came around and it was her week with Lila, OT would be more of an inconvenience.

“Any news on the bomb guy?”

“Nothing. I’ve been going over the list of known people who’ve hired them, but every testimony claims you show interest and they contact you if they feel like it. Any news on your guy?”

“It's officially been assumed it’s the real Murder-board murderer. He left a copy of a news article about a Georgia sextuple murder back in may 1973, and underlined some letters to spell ‘Miss me’. And it hadn’t been revealed to the public that he used them to leave messages, so. I’ve been going over previous statements. Nothing beyond that yet, though.”

“At least you got a description of your guy.” That was more than Nyla could say. They didn’t even know the sex of the bomb-maker.

“Yeah. White man around his late 50s now. That completely narrows it down.” Lopez observed, sarcastically.

“I heard he was supposed to have a scar in his face. That’s a distinctive feature.”

“A generic one. I know of like ten cops with face scars. For all we know Tim could have one by next week. It’s not that of an uncommon trait. Besides, we only know the victim who escaped wounded him; we don’t know she left a scar.”

“Please, Bradford’s face is gonna be fine. I’ve seen the big eye injury. I’ve gotten worse paper-cuts. And well, at least you got something to work with.” Harper basically repeated her previous statement. It wasn’t about competition. It really wasn’t. There was no ‘Who has it worse to catch the bad guy?’. They were both essentially screwed with the assignments they’d been given. Now all they had left was to try and support each other as much as they could.

“I really wanted to try this new Mediterranean place. The waiting list is eternal. And Wesley had managed to get ahead of it. We were supposed to go for dinner Sunday night. I’m pretty sure I can kiss my gyros goodbye now.” Sure. A horrible murder had taken place. She wanted justice for that poor woman. For every victim to that sick bastard. But blood, and gore, and death, and evil was the nature of her job. And she’d really been looking forward to that date. It’d been a while since their last date-night. And Jack had recently caught a bug at school, which had resulted in baby Emmy getting sick, which essentially meant their house had been a bit of a puke-fest lately. She just wanted to go out and unwind a little. The bad side of the world would still be out there waiting for her after dinner.

“Oh, yeah. That is not happening. We are miserably facing decades old cases until we either solve them or fail.” Harper laughed dryly.

“Well, when you put it like that. I can’t wait.” Angela said. She was actually amused too, but it was because her friend’s words were so undeniably true. There was no use in delusion.

It was six minutes past eight by then. And Lucy was already changed and loitering around, waiting for Tim. She’d initially changed before she usually did, knowing that he was station-bound for the day, and hoping to catch him a bit earlier. That hope had shattered quite quickly as she found herself in the exact same situation, she’d been the day before.

She saw Angela and Nyla talking and thought maybe they’d know something. So she quickly approached them.

“Hi. Quick thing. Any of you seen Tim around?” She asked, feeling nervous all-over. Just like she’d felt the day prior.

“No.” Said Angela.

“Not in the last couple of hours.” Said Nyla, almost at the same time.

“Oh. Never mind. I guessed since you were here and he’s been here all day maybe you crossed paths. Anyway, thanks.”

“Are you waiting for him?” Angela asked casually, before exchanging a glance with Harper. Gosh, she knew everybody was all up in their business with them. But sometimes she wished they weren’t so obvious about it. Especially when she was trying to keep something private from everyone but him. She wasn’t comfortable with their friends knowing she was seeking him out to talk to him. She realized they probably were assuming that it was about getting back together. But she still felt paranoid. And she really didn’t want anyone to find out before he did. She felt like that was his right.

“Kind of. We were supposed to get dinner.” She shared, also casually, keeping her expression neutral.

“Have you tried calling him?” Angela suggested.

“It’s only been six minutes since end of shift. I’m sure he’s just running a bit late. Thanks anyway.” She said, hurrying out as inconspicuous and fast as she could.

“You’re welcome.” She heard Angela say back, kind of loudly, since she had already started walking away. Both detectives just stared at her disappearing down the hall in amusement. They were too invested in whatever was going on. Especially Lopez.

●●●

Lucy walked around the station. Evidence. Interrogation. Processing. Kit room. Every area she could think of. She’d sent him a message telling him she’d be waiting for him, but that had gone unread. Once the clock hit 08:20pm she decided to call. The phone didn’t even get to ring once. An automatic message informed her that the number she’d called was not available. Which meant it was either turned off or out of signal. And none of those options sat right with her. Tim was responsible with his phone battery life — mainly because he actually mostly used it for communication purposes and not social media — and she couldn’t think of a place he could be in which he had no signal. In the end she decided to ask Grey if he knew anything.

“Hi.” She greeted as she walked into the watch-commander’s office. The Lieutenant looked at her curiously.

“Chen, you’ve just taken the exam. It's gonna take a while for the results to come in.” He said, getting back to reading and signing the papers in front of him.

“Yes. I know, sir. It’s not about that.” She informed him. He looked back up, eyebrow raised. “I was wondering if Tim had come talk to you or if you knew anything about where he might be.” In that moment she realized that, out of all the people she could have chosen, perhaps their boss who would obviously advice them not to get back together wasn’t the best choice. But she didn’t know who else to ask.

“Sergeant Bradford left around three or four hours ago. He said he had something to take care of.” He informed her, leaving her baffled.

“Did he say anything else? Is he okay?”

“He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. He just said he had to go and that it was urgent.” That didn’t do anything to pacify the unnerving feeling sparking to life in her, though.

“Okay. Well, thank you, sir.” She gave him a tight smile and excused herself before leaving his office. He stared at her go through the glass panels, knowing that whatever was going on between those two, he’d just act like he knew nothing. She’d be out of his chain of command soon enough; Wade was sure of it.

She tried to call one last time before leaving the station. Though it was to no avail. So she finally left a voice message.

“Hi, it’s me. I know the dinner thing was kind of left on murky waters, but I was really looking forward to it. Um. Grey said that you left early today. I hope everything’s okay. Just, give me a call. As soon as you can, please. It’s very important we talk.”

She felt like she might just cry, again. She was very tired. And, again, she’d been building herself up the whole day to tell him, only to end up going home the same as she’d done the day before. She sat there, holding the wheel of her parked car, lip quivering. She guessed her car may as well be where she left it all out, because once she got out and upstairs, she’d risk Celina hearing her.

She kind of felt like an idiot for all the crying she’d done in those last few days. She also felt weird about blaming her crying on hormones. But she guessed that’s what it was. It was kind of the same feeling she got before her period; only worse. And a pregnancy lasted way more than six days so she wasn’t liking the prospect.

In fact, she had well over six months left. She’d done the math. They were having a Christmas baby. The due date wasn’t definitive, obviously. She knew that. But she’d found this formula to calculate it that was: the first day of her last period plus seven, the month of her last period minus three, and depending on the month it was either add one year or the same year. And that’s how she’d gotten to December 24th 2025. Literally, a Christmas birthday. A week earlier or later, it would still clash with the holidays.

Anyway, she was frustrated to say the least. She’d seen him multiple times by now. And she hadn’t said anything because she thought she would be able to tell him at dinner. And she was really going to do it this time. Maybe it was karma’s way of screwing with her after withholding the information from him and lying the prior night. And now she didn’t even know where he was, and she was not going to see him the next day because they both had days off. Oh, and he wasn’t answering his damn phone.

She was getting flashbacks to the forsaken situation that had wrecked them in the first place. The havoc that his old secrets and facing Ray had ultimately unfettered. It had been his doing in the end. It’d been a triggering situation, of course. But he’d been the one to decide to cast everything aside, to push her away. And the beginning of the end had looked unsettlingly similar to what was going on in the moment. Only now, even if he didn’t know it, there was no option to self-righteously push her aside. If not for her, for their child. He didn’t get to disappear for days because ghosts from his past were knocking on his door. Or to not explain a single thing and walk away claiming they'd be better off without him. He just didn’t.

She closed her eyes. She was getting horribly ahead of herself. He didn’t even know she was pregnant, gosh. And she knew him better than to think he’d even think of abandoning his kid. Whatever his reservations had been when he broke up with her, she knew it was different with a baby in the equation.

She was just worried, and tired. And funneling her frustrations about not telling him into getting mad at him over past mistakes. She couldn’t fathom an emergency that would get him to turn his phone off, though. And with her anger out of the way there was just fear to focus on. Fear that he’d gotten himself into some kind of trouble. Fear that he’d been killed; his body left in a dumpsters to be found by some random person — much like what had happened to Dim. Or that he’d gotten in an accident and was fighting for his life in a hospital bed.

She sighed, forcing herself to close her eyes again and stopped thinking of worst-case scenarios. He’d only been off the grid for a few hours. He was probably fine. He’d probably turn the phone on anytime soon and call her once he saw how insistent she’d been on contacting him.

A thought spark so fervently she actually gasped. Genny. She’d been trying to call him and he’d also taken a while to answer his phone. Maybe something had happened to her. Or the kids. That would definitely be an emergency that’d make him turn his phone off to take care of whatever situation that had taken place. Even if he acted all annoyed and distant sometimes —especially when he and Genny didn’t agree on something about their childhood — he loved his family more than anything in the world.

She made sure her voice was steady and then dialed Genny’s phone number. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. She was starting to think she wasn’t gonna answer when she heard a noise from the other side. Then a voice.

“Mom, they’re calling you!” She thought it may have been Austin. She wasn’t sure, though. Both the kids’ voices had changed so much in what felt like so little time. She still remembered both of them arguing in high-pitch voices over who’d gotten more fries one day at dinner. “It says it’s Lucy.” The kid added. She heard Genny’s voice in the background saying something she couldn’t quite get. “Hi Lucy.” The boy finally acknowledge her with a happy tone.

“Hi.” She got to say just before his mother's voice appeared at the other end of the line.

“Hi.” Genny said.

“Bye Lucy.” She heard loudly in her ear.

“That was Austin.” Genny said, and she could hear the exasperated smile in her voice. That whole interaction had just showered her in a short-lived warm feeling. She’d always liked spending time with the boys. But she had called with a purpose. “So, I guess Tim told you.” She sounded down, tired. As tired as Lucy felt. Those five words made her stomach drop even more.

“Tell me what?” She asked, fearing the answer.

“Our dad… well, you knew he hadn’t been doing well for a while. But, um. He lasted way more than we ever thought he would. But he was sedated today. Doctors say he’ll probably pass anytime now.” Genny shared, voice shaky. Lucy sat there in her car, mouth open. She knew what the sibling’s relationship with their dad was. She knew Genny had always had a softer spot for him, that she’d loved him in spite of everything. And she was very, intimately familiar with how Tim felt about him. Of the loathing and impotence the old man sparked in him. She could see Genny mourning their father’s death-to-be. But Tim? She could see him shutting down over every conflicting emotion this event was surely going to trigger.

“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry to hear that, Genny. I didn’t know.” She admitted, trying to fit this big, unexpected, extremely inconvenient piece of information in the convoluted puzzle that was their situation.

“Oh. I thought… since you were calling. What happened, then? I’m sorry I just spieled on you like that.” She apologized, sounding comprehensively scattered. It was at that moment when she so selfishly realized that whatever gentle announcement she had hoped for had been completely thwarted. She bet he was going to be angry for a while now. Angry at the situation, at his dad for dying and making him feel conflicted, at himself for feeling even slightly sad or bad about his death. Last thing she wanted was for him to associate those awful feelings about his father’s death to him becoming a dad himself.

“No. No. It’s okay. I understand. I was actually calling about Tim. I couldn’t reach him and I thought you might know… well, if something was going on.” She tried to explain. She was originally planning on telling her to tell him to call her back. Now she felt herself fumbling for words. Lacking any coherent idea on how to process from there on.

“Did something happen?” Genny asked, voice tinged with worry.

“No, no. He just. Left out of the blue. I was worried.” She sighed immediately after the words left her mouth. Another family member she kept the pregnancy from, officially. “Can I ask you how he’s doing?” She felt a bit insensitive asking her that. She obviously was going through the mourning process. But he probably was, as well. And she couldn’t reach him.

“Well. He was mainly angry. I asked him to come for the sedation and he did. He also refused to enter the room. Said he was only there for me. Then he didn’t say much for the rest of the day. You know him. He left half an hour ago or so.” She heard Genny sniffle through the phone. Her heart ached. But it was for both of the siblings, not for the deceased-to-be in question.

“Well, I’m so sorry to bother. If you guys need anything don’t hesitate to ask.” She offered.

“Oh, nonsense. You are not bothering at all. I appreciate your call. I’ll tell Tim you called if you want. If I see him tomorrow.”

“That’d be nice. Thanks.” She said, because what else was she to say? “Tell the kids hi for me.” She added, feeling the heavy silence that was about to drown her after the call was over.

“Will do. Goodnight, Lucy.”

“Night.” She got to say before the call was disconnected. Then it came. The quiet. The utter disoriented feeling that seemed to have become quite common these past few days.

“What do I do now?” She asked out loud. She got no answer, though.

●●●

Chapter Text

She’d realized that her pregnancy, though quite nice in the sense that she hadn’t even experienced morning sickness — which she assumed was the worst symptom — was built on contradictions. She was exhausted, but when she tried to sleep it was super light sleep that could easily be disturbed. And she had to go pee like every five minutes, but only at night. She was famished, and then she’d eat like half the dish and feel like she was stuffed.

She’d only felt/realized those effects after discovering her pregnancy, which meant one of two things: either it was all psychosomatic or the baby was revolting for her gatekeeping its existence from its dad. She realized that the latter made no sense, whatsoever. She also, deeply, thought that was what was actually going on.

She wagered with it in her mind — maybe as a way of coping with the thought that she had to tell him somehow. She’d internally swear she was going to share the news as soon as possible, that the baby didn’t have to take away her food-enjoying privileges. That she realized she already had it good enough, with the lack of puking everything she ate and all. But that, technically she was already suffering food restrictions, since its existence inside of her meant no sushi. No sushi was a big deal for her; she loved sushi. The baby surely had to understand that compromise and just let her eat her whole, normal food portions, for both of their well-beings. Sadly, the baby didn’t budge. In the end she dragged her eating time in hopes she’d feel less full — to no avail — then forced down the rest of her food, before retiring to her room.

“You know. For someone who’s growing in me uninvited, you’re quite ungrateful.” She talked to the baby out loud for the first time. She didn’t even realize she was doing it, since she was used to talking to herself out loud. It felt natural. Besides, she was too busy being pissed at the thing for not letting her enjoy her baked, sweet potato — which she loved. She actually thought she may be feeling nauseous.

She was ready for bed, though she lingered in front of her bathroom mirror. She chewed on her lip nervously. Another failed attempt. This one with worse repercussions to it. Though it hadn’t completely been her fault this time around. Sure, she could have been more outspoken. She could have made clear that they were having that dinner, that what she had to say could not be postponed. Of course, that wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the day. In the end, he would have left early to be with his family. But at least then he would have already known that he had to talk to her. With the dinner being left for ‘rescheduling’ maybe it'd given the illusion that it was a conversation that didn’t need to be rushed.

She didn’t know. She couldn’t know for sure. There was no changing the past. She had told him it was something important. But now what was she supposed to do? ‘Hi. I heard about your dad. I’m here if you need me. By the way, remember that thing I wanted to tell you? I’m pregnant.’ didn’t seem right. But she couldn’t just keep postponing it. She was already pretty far along to keep consciously postponing basic stuff, such as doctor’s appointments. She also didn’t want to go alone. He had to be there. It kind of scared her; not having any kind of support at the doctors. She didn’t want to face more news by herself.

For what felt like the hundredth time that day, she took a big breath. Then she turned off the lights and climbed into bed.

●●●

“Kojo, come on. Go back inside, boy. Come on!” She called after the dog, who she’d committed the rookie mistake to unleash out of the house and now felt like playing chase in the front yard. She didn’t have time to play, though. She had to talk to Tim.

“Kojo!” Tim called out behind her, using the same voice he used to scare off rookies. And it worked; the dog immediately ran inside.

When she turned back to look at him, she swore he looked smug. Though he quickly went back to making breakfast, looking kind of stressed. She was struck with the realization: it was her time to share the news. She was taking in a deep breath to let out the speech she’d been preparing when he started talking again.

“Did you pack the bags? By the way, do you want bacon with yours?” She had not packed any bags, nor did she know why she was supposed to be packing bags. She did not want bacon with her pancakes, though. The thought of it made her queasy.

Tim was moving around the kitchen in a haze. It was like seeing an efficient tornado moving around. He was flipping the pancakes, cleaning what he’d dirtied up while cooking, filling some water bottles, putting the milk and eggs back in the fridge.

Lucy smiled. She found it cute when he got stressed like that.

“Slow down. You’re gonna take off, accidentally.” She joked. He looked at her like he didn’t find her funny, but he seemed endeared enough.

“We should have packed yesterday. We’re gonna be late.” He said. That’s right. They had to go somewhere. It was going to be a long car-ride, she believed.

“We’re gonna get there with time to spare, you’ll see. It's just breakfast and then we’ll be out the door.” She assured him, knowing he was just being so squared because he was on edge about the trip.

“Mhm. Did you manage to get her up?” He asked. She stared confusedly at him. Wake who?

“What?”

“You know she just goes back to sleep if you let her stay in bed, right?” He looked at her the same way he did when she was a rookie and had just made a very obvious, very dumb mistake. She honestly felt offended for a second. Then he just sighed and disappeared down the hall, shaking his head. “You know, they sold us the problem was they didn’t sleep. I swear she would sleep the whole day if we let her.”

She wondered what the heck he was doing in one of his storage rooms. Last time she’d been in there, there’d been a gamer computer set, a very comfy chair, Kojo’s food stash and some other random stuff in boxes.

Then he came out of the room, looking pretty much annoyed; a tiny little girl in a blue frozen sleeping gown clinging to his neck. At first she thought it was the little girl she'd seen that morning before entering the murder scene, but this one was way smaller. He was so tall, the size difference was comical. She looked about two-ish. He was barely holding her with one arm; like she weighed nothing. The toddler just held on to his neck, honey-blonde hair messily covering her face as she kept on sleeping on him. She was little enough that it’d probably turn dark as she grew up, but as of now her shoulder-length messy waves matched Tim’s color.

He looked at the baby in his arms like he was tired of finding himself in that situation.

“We got you down at seven last night.” He muttered into her hair. She just kept on sleeping. He fixed some wayward strands behind her ear so it wasn’t all over her face. Then he poked her in the ribs, getting her to squirm in his arms before going back to sleeping. “You’ve slept for thirteen hours.” He emphasized, like it was supposed to mean anything to the girl. Then, after a few seconds of silence, he looked at Lucy, rolled his eyes and sighed again. “Come on, let’s go with mama.” She felt so confused at that. Just the girl in his arms. Him referring to her as ‘mama’. She felt like a breath had lodged itself in her lungs; refusing to go in nor out. He wanted to ask him what was going on, but then he handed her the girl.

She whined and held tight to his neck. She was committed to sleeping, she had to give her that.

“Come on, baby. Go with mama.” He repeated, getting their daughter to angrily open her eyes and spot her. Once she saw her, she let go enough so that Lucy could readjust her in her arms. Then her daughter looked up at her, and Lucy felt silly. It was their baby girl, of course. Who would not wake up in the morning for the life of her, to her father’s demise, anytime they had something to do early on in the day.

Lucy wouldn’t remember in the long run. But in that moment, she thought their daughter looked so much like him. She saw his hair color with her hair texture. She saw his lips, his nose. She saw her face-shape, though. And her eyes, they were a mix; both the color and the shape. She had this beautiful olive shade of green with different hues of brown around the middle, and she could very clearly see the little Asian she’d managed to get into that very blonde, very green-eyed child, in their shape.

The toddler barely looked at her for a second before circling her arms around her neck and plopping down on her chest, back to her slumber. Lucy could have melted right then and there.

“G’morning, honey.” She said softly into the girl’s head, rocking her slightly. The act felt so strange to her, yet so incredibly right and preordained. There was truly no way to describe what she was feeling. But she felt this undeniable calm and sureness. Then she saw the way Tim was looking at her, accusatorily, as if she were enabling her. She shook her head and looked away, an amused smile plastered on her lips. She was a baby. Babies needed a lot of sleep. That was the whole point. And she liked snuggling her. “Come on. You gotta wake up. We gotta go.” She added half-assedly, just so he couldn’t say she wasn’t trying to wake her up.

He started packing some food in a little cooler, resuming his tornado activities while she walked in circles around the living room, rocking their daughter while she slept. She mindlessly started muttering a song to her, looking at the way their baby girl’s lashes fanned over her cheeks while she slept. She looked so peaceful. So perfect.

“Did we forget to buy her cheese strings again?” He asked, frowning, an open cabinet in front of him. She had no idea. She certainly didn’t remember buying cheese strings in a long while, though she’d loved them when she was a kid — before her body decided it didn’t want to get along with lactose anymore — so she guessed the answer was yes.

“We can just buy them on the way.” She suggested, earning herself a side-eye.

“We’re already late.” He objected. Then he closed the zipper to the bag. “Well, all done here. And you’re just letting her sleep on you, instead of getting her dressed and ready.” He pointed a finger at her as he approached them.

“She just looks so peaceful.” She said, in her defense.

“Mhm. But we’re gonna be late.” He repeated.

“I thought we were already late.” She countered.

“That does not help your case.” He pointed out before tugging at their child’s pajamas. “Hey, I’m gonna throw this one out and get you the one with the sleeping princess. I think it’s more fitting.” Again the girl didn’t even react. Tim looked at Lucy so helplessly exasperated she laughed. He poked her in her ribs again, successfully getting her to squirm and audibly complain. Then he poked her once more and she actually tried and swat him away before burrowing back into her mother’s neck.

“Hey.” Lucy called out immediately. “Don’t hit daddy, okay? No hitting. Absolutely not.” Then she looked back a Tim. “Don’t bother her.” She chastised. He opened his mouth to complain.

“She has to wake up.” He defended. “I’m serious. We got to leave in 20. The latest.” He warned her.

“Mhm.” She considered this new timeline she’d been given. “I’ll just pack her a change of clothes and get her ready on the way, when she wakes up.” She offered. It didn’t seem like a big deal for a toddler to leave the house in pjs. A few months prior to that they’d probably constructed like over half her wardrobe.

“You realize she’s just going to keep sleeping in the car, right?”

“Well, she has to wake up at some point. It’s a long car ride.”

“Yeah, but she likes sleeping in the car the most.” He countered.

“You know. I’m hearing a lot of problems from you and not one solution.” She observed. He smiled and kissed her temple.

“I’ll go pack her stuff. You enjoy your breakfast.” He offered. She closed her eyes for a second, breathing his cologne in, as she resumed lightly rocking their daughter.

“I like that idea.” She smiled, enjoying just how much he spoiled her sometimes. Tim, again, walked down the hallway, shaking his head in defeat.

“Good job!” She muttered close to her baby’s ear. “We got dad to make breakfast and to pack. And I get to eat breakfast, and you get to sleep a little longer. We’re just that good.” She smiled knowing her joke was to no one, since the girl was obviously not listening to a single word she’d said. Then she kissed her head before setting her down on the couch for a little while.

They were out of the house right after she was all done eating, which had taken a few minutes. So, essentially, they had time to spare, as she’d predicted.

Tim got everything in the trunk while she got their daughter all buckled up and safe — though it had taken a bit of fighting with the safety-belt.

“I’m not looking forward waking her up for school.” He joked as they both got in the car. She smiled, but she knew it was probably going to be a struggle when the time came.

In the end, the little girl woke up once she realized they were parking at a Target’s — in case there was any doubt that was her daughter. Lucy quickly got her into her fresh clothes and brushed her hair into two little braids. Then they fetched the girl’s snack and went back on their merry way.

She was awake for a long while after that. She talked and talked for a bit, sometimes without making much sense, as most kids did. Then they moved on to singing Disney songs. Singing was a stretch, though. It was mostly Lucy singing and having the kid complete the last word of each line, but she looked adorable doing it.

Tim drove, pretending he was annoyed by their antics, but she could see how relaxed he looked, the little smiles he let on every once in a while. Once he loudly sighed during what had to be the third rendition of Moana’s ‘How Far I’ll Go’.

“Got a problem?” She asked amused.

“Yes. The repertory's very repetitive.” He complained, looking as amused as she felt.

“Mhm.” She hummed before turning back to their daughter. “I think daddy’s being grumpy-cop again. Tell him ‘don’t be grumpy’” She encouraged the girl, who looked like she thought her mom was a top comedian.

“Don’t be grumpy-cop, daddy.” She giggled, stopping in between words to get some air as she laughed. She had such a baby voice.

“I think maybe singing ‘Do you wanna build a Snowman’ again could cheer him up.” She suggested impishly, looking straight at him, as he side-eyed her. That was the one song they’d sung even more than the other.

Eventually, their daughter fell back asleep, as he’d predicted. Then they fell into an easy cycle of casual conversation and comfortable silence.

For a while he drove; one hand on the wheel the other resting on her thigh. She looked at him drive, studying the same profile she’d more than memorized after years of riding with him. Then he looked at her, that soft-smile of his in complete display. For her. Always for her. Only for her.

They got to their destination soon enough. It hadn’t felt like such a long car ride. No wonder. They were at Tim’s childhood house. The one they’d fix up for him and Genny to sell.

She hadn’t remembered that was their destination. In fact, she didn’t remember what they were supposed to be doing there. She was going to ask when she saw Tim’s dad walking into the front yard, oxygen tank behind him. He stared stonily at his son, who was just closing the trunk to their car, their daughter in his arms.

It didn’t make sense to her. She thought the old man had just been sedated and was to pass away any moment now. Obviously, she was wrong. They were having dinner at his house that night; that’s why Tim had been so on edge.

“Put her down and let her walk. She’s got legs.” Tim’s dad ordered harshly.

“I’m good.” He said after a beat, quite defensive.

“She’s gonna be a brat if you baby her that much.” The old man pushed, looking at them disapprovingly from the front door. Lucy could do nothing but stare at the inevitable train wreck waiting to happen.

“Yeah? Well, forgive me if I don’t feel like taking parenting advice from you.” Tim answered, voice filled with loathing.

His dad just stood there for a little longer. She thought he actually looked amused, in some twisted way.

“Are you gonna come in or what?” He asked.

Lucy thought whoever’s idea it had been to have that dinner happen should never, in the story of the universe, be allowed to have an idea again. It was torturous. She’d even dare say that it was worse than the dinner they’d had with Seth.

Tom — Tim’s dad — kept aggressively making comments to get under his son’s skin. And eventually he just took it, a haunted expression taking over his face. She would have interfered. Gosh, she wanted to. But she knew it was only going to get worse if, for some reason, the older man’s scorn was directed to either her or their daughter.

She vowed they were never going back to that house. For a second she felt glad the man’s time was limited because he was proving to be every piece of the mistreating asshole she’d heard about.

It somehow got worse when her own parents appeared out of the blue. It was, apparently, a family dinner that excluded the only family member they both actually liked.

It became hell fairly quick. They were surrounded by cacophonies of disapproval. On the one hand, they had an abusive alcoholic criticizing their parenting skills: telling Tim he’d soon realize that that he’d end up being just like him, that they weren’t any different. On the other, they had both her parents aghast, guilting them for exposing their child to so much violence due to the nature of their job, for not caring enough for her to stop risking their lives daily.

They both battled their own demons for what felt like forever. But she looked down, and she had her little girl asleep in her arms yet again. She’d immediately climbed onto her lap once she’d finished eating. And she felt that same warm sureness she’d felt while rocking her around their house. They could criticize, judge, and look down on them as much as they wished. Truth was: they were happy. And the healthy little girl sleeping in her arms proved that they were doing a good job.

She traced her cheek with her knuckle, settling on ignoring whatever shade was being thrown at them. Although, when she looked a Tim, he pretty much still looked tortured, lost. She grabbed his hand under the table, trying to wordlessly pass her convictions to him. He looked at her the same way he had the day they’d found that gun in the walls, after facing his father, once the cat was out of the bag. She’d had enough. She got up, holding her child with both arms so she was supported.

“Excuse us.” She said, leaving no room for discussion. She looked at him. He followed.

They were now in a tiny empty room. Just the way she remembered the house before they’d fixed it up.

“Whatever they’re saying. It doesn’t matter. We’re doing a good job.” She assured him. He didn’t say anything. “Look at her.” She ordered. “She’s perfect. And she’s happy. And she’s safe with us. We’re doing a good job. We are.” She approached him. Reaching for his face after adjusting the child so she was holding her with one arm. “And you’re nothing like him.” She’d told him all those years ago, before they’d even started dating. And she could not stress it enough. “Okay?” She asked. He looked away. “No.” She forced him to look at her again. “She loves you. You’re a great dad, okay? Don’t let anyone ever get into your head like that. Much less him. Okay?” She needed him to understand it. Needed him to say he understood. He nodded. She kissed him. Long and sweet. “Okay.” She said once they parted. Patting his chest, smiling at him. She’d gotten a tad bit emotional, misty eyed.

She slowly gained consciousness. She knew she was dreaming, knew there was a world outside of the one she was in, in her slumber. But if she kept her eyes closed the scenario came back to life and she had their little girl soundly in her arms. She wasn’t real, though. Nor was anything she’d just dreamed of. She felt the pieces of the story — once so clear and palpable — drifting away from her, on to be forgotten like most stories that took place in dreams. The little girl she’d seen with so much detail evolved into a little blonde girl. The world they’d been in, the family they’d built, her convictions in their relationship, in their future; nothing but a fantasy. She scrambled to remember it as best as she could, to no purpose.

Once she realized she felt this deep sadness in her core. It’d felt so real; so right. She laid in her bed processing everything. Everything she’d had. How easy and clear it all had seemed, even in the hardest moments. They’d been so happy.

Things were not easy, nor clear, out in the real world, though. There were no silly arguments over waking their baby up. There were murderers, and family drama, and a pregnancy she didn’t know how to share with the man who she wasn’t even back together with yet.

She was still upset about the lie her subconscious had fed her being a lie as she got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Then she got struck by a thought: just because it wasn’t real yet, didn’t mean it’d never be real.

She’d felt that sureness before, when they’d been together. Prior to everything going up in flames all of a sudden. They had it in them to be happy. To be that warm, fuzzy, domestically happy. And she was pregnant. She didn’t know everything, but daughter or son, they’d be rocking a baby to sleep soon enough.

Again, she wasn’t suddenly in love with the situation. She wasn’t convinced this had been the best thing that could have happened to her. If she had the power, she would have delayed it to a more stable time. Have them be married or at least in a steady place. Have her career be more advanced.

She did, however, find herself a bit excited over her pregnancy for the first time. A bit biased towards having a girl, also. She could see Tim being the sweetest dad to a little girl. She’d seen it so clearly in her dream.

She had her mind made up right then and there. She had no idea what the near future had for them. But she was pretty convinced she’d seen a preview of what their life could be like, what it would be like. She’d hold on to that dream while navigating the murky waters they were in at the moment. The promise of what was to come eventually.

●●●

Chapter Text

When he answered that phone call, he’d been ready for a minute complaint-monologue about him not answering the phone, not his sister’s crying. That initiated an alarm response in him. He couldn’t make out what she wanted to say at first, which only made his worry skyrocket. He didn’t know what had happened, but he was ready to go wherever was needed and do whatever was needed to stop Genny’s crying.

He walked through the station in a haze, the familiar feeling of uselessness he got whenever he didn’t know what to do or couldn’t do anything to help crashing into him like a wave. Then the intended message was delivered.

He stopped moving. Stopped thinking. His brain may just have turned off momentarily. His sister asked if he was still there.

His initial response once he reacted was rejection. Why would he care? The guy hadn’t been part of his life in over two decades. The one difference was that now he knew the son of a bitch was out of his life, in every single sense, for good. Yet his sister was still crying. And he felt like someone had snuck glass in the food he was digesting.

He wanted to tell her exactly what he’d initially felt. He didn’t give a damn. She shouldn’t even have called him. Their father had been dead to him for years. Then she asked him to come. And he was going to say absolutely not, there was no way in hell he was setting foot in that hospice. But Genny said ‘please’, begging. And he still was going to refuse. His plan was to demand for Grey to unbound him from the station and go in the worse part of town he could ever think of. Until she so brokenly told him that she couldn’t take the kids and, without Rob now, she was going to be alone. And she didn’t want to go through that alone.

“Please.” She repeated, crying so hard she shattered the single-syllable word twice.

So he informed Grey he was taking the rest of the day off, got on his truck and went straight to the hospital; feeling like he was an inconvenience away from punching anything as hard as he could.

He got out of the car, went upstairs, looked for his father’s room. And with every passing minute this feeling of revulsion crept up his body. He felt this itch, like his skin might just start peeling off, like someone had just showered him in acid. Bolting was all he could think about to keep his peace. He’d told his sister he’d be there for her, though. And God knew he’d already left a lot to wish as a big brother.

He saw her get out of the forsaken room, tear-stricken and red-eyed. And he couldn’t manage to feel anything other than that repulsion eating him alive, leaving him void of anything but the need to run as far from there as he could and scream until his vocal cords were on fire; punch a bag until his knuckles split open and bled.

He hugged her, though. Held her as she sobbed. Run a hand through her back soothingly. And the war of feelings began. Because his sister was grieving. He wanted to be there for her. At least he knew he should want to be there for her. Instead he was asking himself what there was to grieve. They should be celebrating that hell was getting a whole new VIP resident. Not that that man deserved anything that involved any kind of celebration. But at that he just felt like an insensitive asshole who couldn’t even manage to be there for her sister when she needed him.

He almost wanted to laugh out of frustration. He had this voice, induced by all the therapy he’d been going to lately; telling him all this constructive, encouraging stuff, that made him want to shoot himself just so it would shut up. And then he had his impulses to recluse and ignore anything in the world that didn’t involve him being angry. And he was somehow managing to go against both contradicting mindsets at the same miserable time.

He waited outside for the procedure. He didn’t give a damn if it was the last time he'd ever get to talk or see him. He couldn’t wait to know he was dead. That there’d be not a single place in the earth he could possibly go to and find him in. Not that it mattered in the end. Tim could see and hear him more often than he could stand. In nightmares, in memories, in his rage, in little things he saw or did that reminded him of his father. In his own face in the mirror as he got older, because it wasn’t enough to be cursed with an abusive alcoholic of a father; he also had to look like him. Sound like him even when he got angry sometimes. All that thinking was single-handedly taking him apart, broken piece by piece, until he was left with more numbness than he’d felt walking in — which he hadn’t believed possible.

A nurse had to break his wishes of not seeing him again by opening the door to exit the room and giving him a full display of Genny holding the bastard’s hand while he laid there in his hospital bed, eyes closed.

He felt like fire was catching inside of him, searing every blood vessel available in his body. He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve any of that. He didn’t deserve to have someone mourning him, keeping him company, saying goodbye. He didn’t even deserve to have him waiting in the hallway. For all Tim cared, he deserved to die alone, in pain, preferably conscious of everything. He deserved to suffer. He sure as hell did not deserve a loving daughter. And he did not deserve any kind of response that wasn’t relief from Tim.

He hated himself almost as much as he hated his father in that hallway. Hated that he couldn’t just remain unbothered by his passing. Hated that he couldn’t be the supportive big brother. Hated that he felt restless, pacing around. Hated that he felt like crying out of anger and impotence. Because he shouldn’t be feeling a single thing for that man. He’d been dead for him forever. Nothing should feel different. But it did.

Then his phone beeped in his pocket mid internal crash out: a 20% discount for family-sized pizzas at domino’s good until the 30th appeared in his email. Needless to say he didn’t want fucking pizza right now. Nor any other stupid notification. He turned the phone off, aggressively clicking the button with way more force than necessary as a socially acceptable alternative to smashing it against the wall.

They left an hour later. He felt like champagne bottle about to pop, so he was thankful when his sister kept quiet on the way to their cars, and then again while they nursed twin beer bottles in her kitchen counter. The only thing that came out of her mouth was if he’d want to be involved in the funeral planning. At that he just chugged what he had left in one sip. Then he left.

It was time for him to be alone with his feelings. And he should have been happy about it. It was what he’d wanted since he’d walked into that hospital. To get away from the world. To be left alone to find whatever shriveled semblance of peace he could. Turns out peace wasn’t an option his mind was willing to provide.

He went straight to the storage room he kept his gym gear in and dragged the punching bag out of its resting place, knocking things over in the process. He didn’t care about the destruction he was leaving in his wake. The more the better. Let his house match his internal turmoil.

He didn’t know where he’d put his gloves. He also didn’t bother to look in the box he usually kept them in. He just hit the bag as hard as he could. And again. And again. And again. He only stopped when he saw his blood smudged against the plastic-like fabric. He stared at his hands. They didn’t hurt. Or at least they didn’t hurt enough to outweigh what was going on inside of his head. But he knew that wrecking his hands more wouldn’t be responsible. It could raise alerts. So he stopped. Breath heavy, droplets of sweat starting to run down his temple.

It hadn’t done much to help him get rid of the feeling, but at least punching that bag had kept him occupied. Now he had nothing. Nothing to do, nothing to distract him. He needed something to drown himself in, something that he could solely focus on.

He rinsed his hands of the blood sticking to his knuckles. There was barely any damage. Perhaps he could have gotten away with a few more punches. It didn’t matter now; he had a new plan.

He grabbed his car keys and headed straight to the station. There was a bomb-making maniac to be caught and hundreds of papers he was yet to go through.

He didn’t even sign in for overtime. He just went straight to evidence, grabbed some of the boxes and started going through everything in an empty interrogation room. When the stacks of paper got shorter and shorter as the hours passed, he just got up and retrieved more. That morning he’d never have thought he’d be glad to be dealing with such an extensive case.

It was a type of conflicting mindset; the one he was approaching the evidence with. He wanted to find something, of course. He wanted to advance in the investigation, wanted to see the bastard responsible for all those wreckages caught. He also feared running out of evidence to look into or finding anything that would finish his search and leave him with nothing to do, nothing to look into.

When a wiry-looking officer who Tim thought looked like a very tall high-school student opened the door to the interrogation room it was easy enough to get rid of him. He didn’t even have to work particularly hard on his glare —it was 3 in the morning; he was tired and very irritated— the guy just mumbled something before closing the door, never to be seen again. Now, Lieutenant Grey opening the door on him accidentally dozing off was more of an awkward encounter.

“Bradford, what are you doing here?” He asked as if he were chastising him. “Go sleep at home, not in one of my interrogation rooms.”

“I’m getting back the time I missed yesterday.” He answered, trying not to sound like he’d just woken up and failing. Last time he’d looked at his phone it’d been 5:47 a.m. And his neck was not very happy with him.

“At night?”

“It’s seven thirty.” Tim rebutted after looking at his watch.

“And how long have you been here?” Grey pressed. Tim stayed quiet, his mind still hazy from sleep. “It’s your day off. You’ve been working all week. Go home. Get some actual sleep. I don’t want to see you again until Monday.”

“I work tomorrow.” Tim said, resisting the urge to rub his eyes: they felt misty

“Not anymore. You take care of whatever it is that has you sleeping in my station and then you come to work.” Grey stated, decisively. At that he felt his body become alert enough. He was not going to be stuck at home.

“I’m fine.”

“Tell that to your eye bags.” Grey rested his hands on his hips, looming in front of the door like a disapproving parent daring his child to talk back. “Go home.” Tim bit the inside of his cheek, feeling pretty much annoyed.

“I’m taking this.” He informed after a beat, pointing at the evidence with a tilt of his head, feeling some juvenile, petty, rebellious spite take over him at being sent home.

“As long as you sleep on it at your house, I don’t care.” More of the staring contest took place before Tim finally got up and started gathering the evidence. He would go get a bigger pile if he was taking it home.

Wade stared at him from the hallway. He wondered what had happened. And if it had anything to do with Chen asking about him the night before. He didn’t know. And he wasn’t going to ask. That didn’t mean he didn’t care or didn’t worry. He did know that the last time he’d seen Bradford acting off it’d cost him his sergeant position in metro and almost his career. So he damn sure was going to send him home until he felt like he had his life together.

●●●

Lucy hated not being productive. Well, she hated not being productive when it wasn’t a voluntary decision. She had no trouble with fusing with the couch while binging a season of something on Netflix. But right now she hated knowing she wasn’t doing anything, helping someone, or at least doing something for herself. And that Saturday was the very definition of a lazy day.

She’d gone back to bed after a little while, indulging in her body’s wishes to lay back down for a little longer. She had not expected to fall asleep for another three hours. So when she opened her eyes — somehow still tired — and saw that it was midday, she almost fell off the bed in her stupor.

“Crap.” She muttered to herself, trying to rub the sleep off her eyes before an unexpected yawn took over her. She sat there in her bed, feeling useless. She could not just stay the whole day in bed; she’d slept for twelve hours. She got up, feeling her stomach grumbling for food. And then, for the first time, clear as day and undeniably: nausea. She did not feel like running to the toilet and spilling her guts out. She actually kind of felt the exact same way she did after a night of heavy drinking. She wouldn’t have guessed a baby would mess her stomach the same way one too many shots of tequila did.

“Hey, I thought we had a good thing going on here.” She complained to the baby. Thinking about it, she thought she may have felt like that recently. She’d just attributed it to her nerves.

She got out of her room, messy-haired and feeling kind of disgusting in her pjs. She was planning on making herself a protein shake — because anything else she thought about made her feel like she was going to check all the boxes of the hangover experience and become friends with her toilet — when she saw Rodge and Celina in the kitchen.

“Oh, Hi!” Celina said, sounding surprised after a long silence in which everyone just stared at each other. Then she looked back at Rodge. “We thought you'd gone out.”

“Yeah. It’s kind of late. You usually wake up at a more responsible time. So we thought you were gone.” Rodge explained, spatula in hand as he cooked something in her pans, voice sounding like he’d just said something very helpful. She was starting to get Nolan’s original opinion on the guy.

“En serio?” Celina side-eyed him.

“No, it’s okay.” She said. It wasn’t. She felt very annoyed at that remark, more than she should have, probably. She was aware she’d wasted half of her day, he didn’t need him reminding her. “I guess, my body decided it was time to catch up on all the sleep I missed while studying.” She lied, though it was sound enough. It’d only been a few days and she’d had to work the day before, so she guessed it could be true enough. Celina smiled at her; she’d found her mid-study-induced delirium in the middle of the night more than once.

“We’re going to eat in a little bit if you wanna join us.” She offered.

“No, thanks. I need to wake up a little bit before eating anything. I was just going to get a protein shake or smoothie...” She explained, walking over to her blender. She felt like a sore thumb in the kitchen, between the third-wheeling and being the only one who looked like she’d just gotten out of bed —which she had. In the end she awkwardly finished making her smoothie and went back into her room to miserably sip on it as her stomach protested.

The worst part was that, as under the weather as she felt, now she felt compelled to leave the house, because she didn’t want them to think she was just going to get back into bed and waste away; which is what she actually felt like doing.

So she threw her hair in a low ponytail and got dressed in what she thought was the best balance between comfy and presentable.

“I’m going to head out. I’m meeting with a friend for lunch downtown. There's a bunch of food trucks she’s got discounts for, apparently. You guys have fun.” She informed them. Celina lit up. Lucy feared she would ask to join her and her ‘friend’ for a second before she spoke.

“I love food trucks. If you go to Smorgasburg and see any Venezuelan chicha you gotta try it. I swear it’s so good.”

“I will.” She agreed, relieved. “Well, see you guys later.” And then she was gone. No idea where to, though.

●●●

Back at Mid-Wilshire, Nyla Harper rinsed her coffee mug, ready for a refill. She’d been there since eight thirty in the morning. She’d tried to get some stuff done at home, praying something would come up, anything that might have been overlooked from prior years or any new information that could send them down a new path to explore; but nothing at all had come up. The investigation was so dead they might as well start organizing a funeral for it. And Bluey’s intro was not helping with the little patience she barely had left.

So she packed the mama role for the morning and prepared to be Detective Harper for the rest of the day, hoping something would come of it. Even though her research was cold as ice and Gang Division and Narcotics had also had no information of use to forward her case.

She started thinking of something as she saw the newly brewed, black liquid that represented a shape of life-support for most detectives fill her ‘Best detective mommy’ mug that Layla had given her two weeks ago for Mother’s day. A plan to get the cat out of the bag. She let it simmer, turned it around in her head, pre-analyzing the scenario. And, ultimately, she decided to expand the idea quietly, waiting for the moment she could use it.

She sighed. It was more of the waiting game now. And her idea wasn’t some panacea that’d magically solve everything. It was a shot worth taking, though. And she was ready to bet it’d be the only shot they’d had, even if its aiming was almost the antonym of ideal.

●●●