Chapter Text
Once upon a time, on a day that was supposed to be about togetherness and love and family, Eddie gathered everyone around - everyone who was still around - and broke Buck’s heart with a simple sentence:
“I’m leaving the One Eighteen.”
Throughout Buck’s life, being left behind was the norm. It was the expected outcome of all his relationships, to the point that he clung tightly to everyone around him that stuck around for longer than a week. Perhaps too tightly, too unwisely. He knew, he had been taught, that everyone would end up leaving him eventually, even if he had managed to delude himself that certain people were exempt from that rule. And so after hearing that announcement - only three months after he was left behind by his sister, again; only three months after his friend, after someone who had been a brother to him, had left as well, taking Buck’s niece with him and cutting him out of their life - he did something he would never quite manage to forgive himself for.
Buck panicked, and Buck ran away.
His ill-thought out flight ended with him getting horribly, terribly lost. He found himself at a crossroads, meeting a man who called himself Ichabod. The man, who was much more than a simple stranger, asked him what he wanted, and Buck could not find it in him to resist answering. So he said,
“I want to fix whatever broke my family but I don’t even know what that was. I don’t even know when it was.”
The entity that wasn’t a demon gave him what he wanted, or at least he tried to. Buck woke up on the morning of his first day as an actual firefighter, four years and some months earlier. He had been convinced it was a dream, until he walked into the station to faces he knew so very well. From then on, it was a matter of retreading a path he had already walked, and avoiding the pitfalls he knew were to come. He relived those four years of his life, changing what he could and mitigating what he couldn’t. He saved Shannon and he protected Maddie; he avoided repeating his own mistakes; he did his best to keep Athena and Eddie safe, ending up with a cracked skull for one, and letting himself get shot for the other.
He got together with Eddie, after struggling with the fact that he was not the same Eddie he had known before. He loved Eddie, and Eddie loved him. They were happy.
And then, it turned out that Buck hadn’t been fixing things at all, but was simply keeping them from breaking to begin with. He was not retracing his steps, but making a new path, while everyone he had known and loved had been left behind. Ichabod - a being who had as much of a choice in anything as Buck did, which was to say, very little - had a solution that was as unacceptable as it was existentially terrifying.
“I send you back to Edmundo and all the others you left behind, let you try again at actually fixing things.”
“And Eddie? Chris?” Buck had asked. “The ones I’d be abandoning if I did that?”
“I erase them, obviously. Trim the branch like all the others. You can’t abandon them if they no longer exist.”
Ichabod was bound by his nature to give him what he wanted. Buck had said he wanted to fix things, but he wasn’t truthfully fixing anything, and so Ichabod truthfully had very little choice in the matter. Yet with some desperation, and some twisting of the rules to his own ends, Buck managed to find a way that they both got what they wanted, what they needed.
A solution that resulted in his situation now.
It had been over a month since Buck’s return from the crossroads, since he again told Ichabod what he wanted and this time got it exactly. And now he was existing in a state of limbo, finding it difficult to adjust again to a new- an old life. He couldn’t decide if he was surrounded by ghosts, or if he himself was the ghost. This timeline was so different from the other, yet similar enough to be agony.
Nights at casa de Diaz were spent on the couch, when before he would have spent them in Eddie’s bed. He accompanied Edmundo to and from Frank’s office for the therapy he had willingly started going to, after the encounter with the Eddie of the other timeline. Edmundo was still working as the department’s liaison at the dispatch center, not quite ready to return to the station.
The others - the people he had once considered family - were all concerned about him. They had spent a month wondering what had happened to him, and when he miraculously returned to them, it was as a changed man. He had made a choice that wasn’t really a choice, and now he was stuck wallowing in the consequences of it as another version of himself reaped the benefits, but Buck couldn’t be too bitter about it. Or at least, he tried not to be. Not when the alternative involved him getting stuck here anyway, while the other timeline was erased entirely.
The night that Edmundo had offered a spot in his bed, Buck had so desperately wanted to just fall into his arms. It would have been easy, so very easy, to just pretend that he was the Eddie from the other timeline. But as he said, it wouldn’t have been fair to him, and it wouldn’t have been fair to himself.
It was the last night he spent at the Diaz home. In the time since, he still took Edmundo to his appointment with Frank, and he still went over to hang out with both him and Chris, but afterwards he started insisting on going back to the loft after the kid was in bed. It was easier, though it wasn’t less painful. He knew it was hurting Edmundo, but that was inevitable with every path forward that he could see, and at least this one seemed to promise the least amount.
The problem with the loft, however, was that it was even less of a home now than it had been before his unexpected journey. He spent most nights in that bed tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep, and when he did, he was usually woken up by nightmares. The old nightmares, the ones he would have called Eddie about. And during the day, he had absolutely nothing to fill his time. He just existed, and continued to exist, and found himself wishing that he could stop existing.
It was a dangerous wish.
Trying to reconnect with the people who had once been his family felt impossible at times, and like he was trying to squeeze himself back into his childhood clothes. It was different and somehow worse than how it had been when he first found himself back in time. Those versions of everyone hadn't any preconceived notions. He was an utter stranger to them, and while it had been painful to have them look through him, it hadn’t been anywhere near like this.
He had been so close to these people once, and now it felt like there was an impassable gulf between them. It was there with Bobby, and Maddie, and Hen, and Chimney, and Athena, and all the others. It was even there with Edmundo, though it wasn’t as bad. He had changed, it was impossible for him not to, and he could easily imagine the conversations they were having behind his back, trying to figure out what exactly had happened.
They all voiced concerns about how tired he was looking, or at least the ones who bothered to visit him did. Aside from Edmundo, it was mostly just Athena and Hen, and occasionally Maddie, although his sister was still struggling with her own mental health. Bobby seemed to mostly be content with getting updates about his well-being from his wife, much as he was with getting updates about Edmundo from May.
Buck tried not to let the man’s hands-off approach bother him, tried not to let it get to him that the only person from the station that was regularly checking on him was Hen, except he really couldn’t help it. It was just a confirmation of all his fears from when he met Red. The fact that no one else but him was really talking to Edmundo, either, really just highlighted it.
“Before you came home, the last time I saw Bobby was New Years Eve, just before I officially transferred to the dispatch center,” Edmundo had said, a few nights before he’d invited him to his bed. “I talked to Chimney right after he and Maddie came back, and then again when we were supposed to be cleaning your loft.”
“What about Hen?” Buck had asked, because by this point her visits to see him at the loft had become a regular thing.
“A couple of times, when I took Chris over to see Denny.”
“Life gets busy, especially when you don’t work at the same firehouse anymore,” Buck quoted, the words seared into his brain.
Eventually, however, Buck decided to finish his leave and go back to work. Not because he was desperately looking forward to it, not because he was emotionally prepared to try and rebuild what he had, but because vying with a station full of ghosts was a better alternative to haunting the loft.
It was like an out of body experience, working at this particular 118 again. Buck spent his first shift back, and the ones after, feeling disconnected from everything. Much like when he returned to the past, he kept turning his head and expecting Eddie to be there. It was just awkward, everything about it was awkward, especially Chimney.
The paramedic was obviously still feeling guilty for his actions before he ran off to chase after Maddie, and he clearly didn’t believe him about it being all water under the bridge. Perhaps it was the coldly delivered death threat Buck had given him, to warn him away from behaving like that with anyone else in the future. Whatever the cause, the man couldn’t seem to decide whether to avoid him completely or to go out of his way to make amends.
Then there was Bobby, who cared. Buck knew that he cared. Except he didn’t care enough to actually see him in person after the impromptu reunion at the hospital. And some of that was Buck’s fault, yes. Athena had given him multiple invites to dinner at the Grant-Nash house, but he just hadn’t been up to it yet. It had been a two-way street, though, and Bobby had simply settled for checking on him via his wife.
On his first day back, the captain had made noises about his obviously worn appearance. Buck wasn’t certain if he’d been gearing up to “suggest” he take more time off, but he’d shut it down quickly and efficiently anyway. It rankled him, that the man couldn’t be arsed enough to actually see him himself, but still thought he could claim to be worried about him. And perhaps, he’d been a bit rude about it.
“This is literally the first time you’ve seen me since Athena dragged me to the hospital, Cap,” he had said. “You don’t get to play the concerned father card now.”
In response, Bobby had made him the man behind for the entire rest of the day. The whole thing reminded Buck that he hadn’t slapped this version of the captain upside the head with a lesson on objectivity. While he had kept the other Bobby from making mistakes, this one hadn’t ever learned from his.
Things with Hen and Ravi weren’t nearly as strained, although that wasn’t to say things were easy. Hen had dropped by the loft at least a couple times a week to see him, and so her concern about his well-being wasn’t nearly as galling as Bobby’s. And with how little time they actually spent together, compared to everyone else, Ravi had next to no pre-existing ideas about how Buck should be.
Oh, he surely noticed that Buck was more withdrawn than he had been before Christmas, but he was perfectly willing to let it be. As a consequence, Buck spent most of his time on shifts with Ravi, whenever he wasn’t avoiding everyone entirely. Or whenever he was desperate to distract himself from the glaring absence of a certain someone.
Buck could have easily slapped on the fake smile and joked with everyone and acted like everything was fine, but that required more energy and effort than he honestly had. It was exhausting to come into work every day and be reminded that these were not the same people he had spent the last four years with. It was exhausting to spend empty hours at the loft while Edmundo worked a regular nine to five. It was exhausting to find himself missing “his” family, when these versions had been the ones he knew first.
It was exhausting, to wake up with the incessant and urgent need to scrub at his hands until his skin was red and raw, again. To wake up clutching at his leg as he remembered in vivid details the myriad of ways it was injured that were somehow worse than the truck. To wake up remembering the look on Eddie’s face as he desperately tried to keep him from drowning, or the way he had screamed when he watched Buck fall off the cliff. To wake up from all the scenarios his brain cooked up for whatever followed his litany of deaths in the timelines Ichabod claimed to have torn from the tree of time, of the way he knew a version of Eddie had walked into the kitchen after the tsunami to find him gone, too.
It was exhausting to wake up from dreams about Eddie, any dream about Eddie, only to be constantly reminded that he was alone in his bed.
One night, at the end of his first week back at the station, he finally cracked. Just a little. But he gave in and called Edmundo, after tossing and turning in his bed for what felt like forever. Despite the late hour, the other man had answered right away, a reminder that he was still having trouble sleeping, too.
“It was real, right?” Buck asked, because he needed to know, he needed that reassurance. The question had started haunting him days ago, and it hadn’t let up. “I’m not crazy? I didn’t just disappear for a month and dream it all up?”
“I don’t know about everything,” Edmundo said. “But I know you didn’t hallucinate the crossroads, or the man with the black eyes, or the other me. Or if you did, then I did too.”
“Okay. Okay,” he breathed out. “It’s just… Some days I sit here and I can’t help but wonder…”
“You don’t ever talk about them,” the other man noted. “About what happened. Do you want to?”
Yes, he wanted to say.
“No,” he said instead. “Thank you, but… But no.”
They didn’t talk for long, and Buck ended up laying awake for hours after.
Being here was a mistake, and Buck knew it was a mistake.
They’d responded to a call involving a family being held hostage with a bomb in their truck, set to explode if they dropped below a certain speed. Apparently, it was ripped straight out of some movie, but he had never heard of it before. Chimney had seemed torn about whether or not to rib him for it.
Buck had ended up leaping from the 118’s ladder truck into the bed of the family’s pick-up, while someone from another station did the same. From there, they had worked together to evacuate the family. It had been odd to hear Edmundo’s voice coming from dispatch. It had been stressful to learn about the pressure switch, and the danger of moving the driver.
Buck had been intending to put his own foot on the pedal and shove the dad out the back window. But then Lucy Donato - from the 147 - had ended up solving it herself while he was getting the man’s wife to Ravi, in a move about as reckless as what he was planning to do, if in a different way.
But all that brought him here, to the mistake he was in the process of making. Because after shift, one of them - not him - had the brilliant idea of celebrating at a pub. So now here he was, stuck at a table surrounded by people who used to know him so well, and joined by someone that was an actual stranger. Surrounded by people that didn’t know how he went into the same spiral as Bobby had, so many years before the captain met any of them.
Buck hadn’t really wanted to go out, and had originally intended to go straight to the Diaz residence after shift. He probably should have anyway, but more and more it seemed to just be a reminder of what he didn’t have any more. The other alternative was to go to the empty loft, and that was its own version of hell. So he allowed himself to be cajoled into going, and he sat down with them as Lucy gushed about being in the news, and Bobby bragged about Minnesota, and Chimney and Hen ragged on him for it.
And then Lucy ordered him a drink.
He should have just left it on the table and ignored it completely. It would have been odd to the others, it would have been another strike against him in the tally he was certain they’d started since his return, but he knew it would have been the smart thing to do. He willfully did the stupid thing instead, and threw it back like it was water.
And then he ordered another.
One night, for just one night, he wanted to be numb. For one night, he wanted to forget. He wanted to forget about Eddie, about Ichabod, about Doug. He wanted to forget that home was no longer home, or rather, that he was no longer able to go home. He wanted to forget about the time he drowned while his leg was crushed by a sunken car, with Eddie desperately trying to free him. He wanted to forget about the sight of Chris with his chest so very still, and the time he slit his arm open and let himself bleed out because he was fully convinced it would fix everything. He wanted to forget the sight of his blood on Eddie’s shocked face, and the feel of Edmundo’s blood on his own.
(He wanted to forget that moment earlier in the night, when he watched the family’s truck explode and found himself wishing he had been in it.)
So one drink became two became four became too many. He played pool with Lucy, who had never met him before and so didn’t look at him with that mixture of concern and disappointment that was almost a constant in everyone’s else’s gaze. She kept ordering him drinks, too, because she didn’t know better and he hadn’t told anyone here. What would he have said, anyway? That in the month he claimed not to remember, he suddenly turned into a teetotaler?
It would be fine. He’d have this one, single night of letting loose, of being drunk and happy, and then tomorrow he’d go back to being sober and not-happy. He was fine, and this was fine, and everything was fine.
Lucy kissing him was fine, too. It was after a round of margaritas, in the middle of a game of pool. She had been flirting with him, and he might have been flirting back, because it was fun and meaningless and the attention felt good. And she kissed him, and he kissed her back, because it was nice. Kissing was nice, kissing was fun. And it had been so long, too long, since he had kissed Eddie.
Except he wasn’t kissing Eddie, and the realization was a kick in the ass.
“I- I’m sorry, this was a mistake,” he sputtered out, pushing himself away from her. “I- I shouldn’t have…”
What the fuck had he done?
What the fuck had he done?
What the fuck had he done?
That question bounced around his head as he stumbled out of the pub and into the cool air outside, nearly tripping and falling on his face in the parking lot. He didn’t want to be here, it had been a stupid idea and he was stupid for coming. He wanted to be home, to be with Eddie and Chris and Shannon and all the others. He just… He just wanted to go home.
So he ordered an Uber and did exactly that.
Eddie was not having the best of nights. He had thought things were getting better, since that night Buck miraculously showed up at his house. And truthfully, they were. The sessions with Frank were kicking his ass, but he at least had his best friend - and hopefully more than that, one day - to decompress with afterwards. It was just that, well, things didn’t get better overnight. Or even over multiple nights.
He had tried to sleep, he truthfully had. But he spent most of the time tossing and turning, and ended up moving to the couch to sit in the dark. It didn’t really help, and only really served to highlight the problems in his life right now. Because not too long ago, Buck would have been sleeping on this couch.
And then he had to go and fuck it up by pushing too hard, by asking for too much.
“What are you doing?” Chris asked, shuffling into the living room, and his son’s voice had Eddie jerking up in surprise.
“Hey buddy,” he said. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“I don’t know, why are you awake?”
“I guess I’m just not used to the nine-to-five life yet,” he lied, not really wanting to burden his pre-teen son with his problems. “Body’s still on the twenty-four hour shifts now and then.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Chris said, shaking his head.
“No? Alright, Doctor Diaz,” Eddie said, trying not to laugh even as he struggled against a yawn. “What’s your diagnosis, then?”
“You miss being a firefighter.” It was a statement of fact, and not one he could argue against.
“You’re right,” he said. It wasn’t what was keeping him up this time, but that didn’t make it untrue. “I do.”
“So why’d you stop?”
Eddie didn’t answer right away, taking his time to get his thoughts in order. He had promised, so long ago, that he wouldn’t lie to his son when it mattered. So he wasn’t going to lie to him now.
“Because I was scared.” It was something he’d only confessed to Buck and Frank so far. He hadn’t even admitted it to that fun-house mirror version of himself, denying it each time it was thrown in his face. “And sometimes people do silly things when they’re scared.”
He had been so angry, when that other Eddie had confronted him with it. A hissing, feral cat in the face of a truth he was fully intent on denying. The entire truth that he had been denying, falling back on old habits because it was better to be angry than to admit weakness. And the truth had been that he made the same mistake as he had years before, with the exact same results, and had the audacity to be surprised and upset about it.
A part of him wondered even now what would have happened if he had taken the time to talk to Buck first, before that fateful Christmas announcement. Would he have seen the lie for what it was and called him out on it? Would Buck have stayed, instead of breaking and running like he had? Would Eddie still have ended up with this changed and fractured version of the man he loved?
(Would Eddie have ever gotten to the point where his feelings for Buck were so utterly undeniable?)
“But you’re really brave,” Chris said, interrupting his musings. He looked and sounded so very confused.
“I haven’t felt really brave recently.”
“Then I can be brave for you,” the boy said, reaching forward to cup his face.
“You really are the best kid,” Eddie told him, reaching up to cover his hand with his own.
He let Chris stay up for a little bit longer, before insisting he head back to bed. He himself was about to try for sleep again, when the sound of someone stumbling through the front door drew him back into the living room, the ever trusty bat at the ready. It was with a breath of relief that he found it was only Buck.
“Eds! Eddie!” the other man cried, coming at him with open arms.
“Keep it down,” Eddie hissed, setting the bat aside. “Chris is in bed.”
“Oh, woops.” Buck giggled to himself.
“Are you drunk?”
“Yes,” he slurred. “But only a little.”
“More like a lot,” Eddie said, grabbing his arms and trying to guide him to the couch. It was really more of a drag, because the man was very uncoordinated at the moment. “Let’s get you laying down.”
“That’s a wonderful plan,” the other man said, and let his head fall forward so his face was in the crook of Eddie’s neck. He nearly leaped out of his skin when he felt Buck start trailing kisses up to his jaw. “Let’s go to bed.”
“What?” Eddie pushed his head away from his neck. “You’re drunk.”
“So?” Buck’s hands tried to slip under his shirt, and he grabbed them by the wrist to stop it. “I’ve missed you so much, love.”
Eddie closed his eyes and grit his teeth, and did his best to ignore the way the words broke his heart.
“No, Buck,” he said, practically shoved him backwards, sending the drunken man stumbling. The wounded look that crossed the other man’s face at the rejection almost made him want to take it back, but this was not what he wanted. This wasn’t what Buck wanted, either. “I’m the wrong Eddie.”
Buck blinked at him uncomprehendingly, the words taking a moment to pierce their way through the haze of alcohol. When they finally did, his face twisted with despair.
“I just wanted to come home.”
“You are home,” Eddie tried, but it was clearly the wrong thing to say.
“No, I’m not!”
“Buck, man, keep it-”
“This isn’t home! This isn’t- I don’t want to be here!”
“What?” Eddie snapped, forgetting the need for hushed tones. Buck had told him that he had wanted to be here, that he had chosen to be here. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I don’t want to be here!” Buck repeated, throwing his arm out to his sides. “I want to be back home, with Eddie and Chris and Mads and all the others! With my family!”
“You said that you chose-”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
Buck’s words reminded him of that near argument they’d had, that morning after he showed back up. Eddie had been angry at the implication, but he let it go and then pushed it out of his mind. Now here it was again, flung into his face and impossible to ignore.
“So you were going to stay with your other family,” he bit out, doing his best to not disturb Chris, even as his temper rose.
“He was going to erase everything!” Buck cried, with actual tears even. “Everyone would have been gone, and I’d have been stuck here anyway! I was going to lose everyone anyway! If I had been given the choice, I wouldn't have come back!”
“What?"
The small voice cut through their shouting like a knife. Both men turned their heads to the hall, and to where Chris was blinking up at them.
“Christopher,” Eddie said, immediately starting on damage control. “You’re supposed to be back in bed.”
“I heard shouting,” the boy said, gaze focused on Buck. “What did you mean?”
“I- I-” Buck stuttered out, shaking his head and backing away. “I- Oh, God, Chris, I’m-”
“Dad, what did he mean?”
“Oh, God.”
Eddie didn’t really have a chance to react before Buck was spinning on his heel and running for the door. He flung it wide and then let it slam closed behind him. By the time Eddie got to it and yanked it open again, he was no longer in the yard.
“Buck!” he shouted after him. Running to the end of the sidewalk, he could see the other man was already half-way down the street. “Buck!”
But Buck didn’t even slow down.