Chapter Text
When I first wrote this chapter, I struggled to get into Tim’s head. Early in the show, we see how he acts, but we rarely get clear insight into why. Most of the moments that feel like his POV don’t come until seasons 4–5. I tried a few different versions of this chapter, playing with how poetic or straightforward he’d be in his internal voice. Tim's definitely a “show you” kind of guy—but when he does open up, it hits hard. I think there’s a lot going on under the surface that he just doesn’t say out loud, which tracks with how he eventually expresses himself in later seasons.
Also—men often prioritize or fixate on different things than women do, especially when layered with military/police training and trauma. It took me a hot minute to wrap my head around.
When Tim is dealing with emotions I feel like he's a go-move-fix kind of person who would shut down emotional responses that didn't fuel his solution - further reinforced by his childhood, military training, cop training. Think of when Lucy is taken by Caleb in season 2: he’s clearly emotional, but every bit of that emotion is funneled into finding her. He doesn’t fall apart; he moves. Same in season 1, when he stays at the station to catch the guy who shot Isabel—“Because I can’t do brain surgery. But I can catch the guy who put that bullet in her head.”
He spirals when he's still not when he's moving and he knows that so he just keeps moving.
This earlier version of the “desert dream” section has him a bit more open, a little more poetic. I wanted to show the depth of what he doesn’t say in the early seasons so his eventual growth would feel earned—because really, the main change is how much he verbalizes and asks for help.
It got cut because I wanted the montage of him with Isabel to be more distinctive from his cut/dry survival mode of thinking in the beginning as well as show off more immediately what kind of fanfiction it was going to be (directly adressing both characters implied canon trauma and how it influences their relationship).
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Walking into the station felt like stepping through a desert dream —the kind that whispered heatstroke warnings and gunmetal ghosts. Not quite here, not quite gone, but sharp-edged and fucking deadly if you didn’t keep your head. A desert dream was what they called the moment before an ambush, when the air went too still and the horizon blurred, and even the Reaper held his breath.
Tim could still hear it, a barked warning over comms, half-joked but loaded: Heads up, boys. Feels like a desert dream out here.
He’d earned the nickname— the Reaper —for reasons he didn’t like to examine too closely. Efficiency, some said. Fearlessness, others. Mostly it was just survival. Knowing when to shoot and when to shut up.
He didn’t have anything to shoot and he couldn’t begin to think of what to say.
Words hovered at the edge of Tim’s vision taking the shapes of memories better left forgotten and a vice around his heart.
The vice had loosened—just barely. Not enough to breathe easy. His love for Isabel had been wrapped in steel and silence for years now, constricted by fear and half-knowing, the ache of something unfinished. But even now, even like this, grief still curled heavy in his chest. A grief for someone not dead but changed. Someone still breathing but unreachable.
The fucking vice was still there.
It probably always would be.
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(the rest of the chapter would have been the same)