Work Text:
Buck wasn’t great at asking for help. He never had been. Not when Maddie left. Not when Abby broke his heart or when every call started to feel like it could be his last.
But this… this was different. This was Maddie. And he had no idea how to help her.
So he drove to Eddie’s house without a plan, parked out front and just sat there until Eddie texted him.
Eddie: you coming in or just stalking me
Eddie handed him a beer at the front door without asking questions, then nodded toward the kitchen. Buck followed him into the kitchen and dropped into one of the chairs like gravity had just doubled.
It was quiet, the way evenings were in the Diaz household once Chris was asleep, the house calm in that way only homes with kids ever really are once the day winds down.
Eddie sat across from him and waited.
“You look like hell,” he said, not unkindly.
Buck huffed a breath, not quite a laugh. “Yeah.”
“What’s going on?”
Buck stared at the condensation on the bottle in his hands. “It’s Maddie.”
Eddie didn’t say anything. Just waited.
“She’s… existing,” Buck finally said. “She’s back at work. Going through the motions. But it’s like there’s a part of her that’s still up at Big Bear. Like no matter how many days pass, she’s still fighting to breathe. Still in that snow with Doug.”
Eddie’s jaw tightened at the name.
“She doesn’t talk about it,” Buck continued. “Not really. She’s told Chim the basics. She told me the version she’s rehearsed. Like it’s a story she memorized to make sure no one asks questions. But I can see it, man. She’s not okay. It’s like… it’s like she thinks surviving made her something else. Something bad.”
Eddie didn’t speak, his expression unreadable.
“I keep trying,” Buck said. “I’ve tried everything I can think of. Being there. Giving her space. Talking. Not talking. Lightening the mood. But nothing gets through. I can’t reach her.
Eddie finally spoke, voice low. “Because this isn’t a surface wound.”
Buck shook his head and then nodded slowly. “And I just keep thinking… if I were stronger, smarter, better… I’d know what to say.”
Eddie raised an eyebrow. “There’s no right thing to say.”
“I know,” Buck said quickly. “I know that. But she won’t let me in. And I can’t relate. I’ve never—” He stopped, rubbed his hands over his face. “She killed him, Eddie. In self-defense. He was on top of her, trying to kill her, and she used his knife and just… didn’t stop. She had to. And she did. And now she can’t live with it.”
“She survived,” Eddie said.
“She barely survived. And now she’s just… existing. Haunted.”
Eddie let the silence sit for a second. His fingers curled slightly around his own bottle, knuckles pale.
Then Buck said, almost to himself, “And I don’t know how to help because I don’t know what it’s like to kill someone. Neither of us do.”
There was a long pause.
Eddie didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. Just said, “That’s not true.”
Buck frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”
“You’re wrong,” Eddie said, voice quiet but firm. “I do.”
The room stilled.
Buck blinked. “Wait—Eddie, you… you mean… you’ve—?”
“I was a combat medic,” Eddie said slowly, looking down at his beer. “Everyone hears that and thinks of triage. Bandages. Pulling guys out. And that’s part of it. But what they don’t think about is what it means to get to the guy who’s bleeding out.”
Buck sat still, listening.
“I carried an M4 and a sidearm,” Eddie went on, looking at Buck directly. “Standard-issue for combat medics in active zones. I didn’t just patch guys up. I had to go in to get them. Sometimes under fire. Sometimes while the enemy was still shooting. And yeah… sometimes I had to shoot back. To cover my team. To survive.”
Buck was quiet. Shocked, maybe, or just trying to process what he’d never really let himself think about.
“I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t advertise it.”
“I guess I just thought…” Buck stopped, then tried again. “You always made it sound like you were there to save people.”
“I was there to save people, Buck,” Eddie said softly, picking at the label on his beer. “But sometimes, saving someone means making someone else the enemy. Pulling the trigger before they do. Choosing your team, your brothers, over someone who’d kill them without blinking.”
There was a weight to Eddie’s words that Buck had never heard before. A quiet, anchored kind of sorrow.
Buck leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Does it… does it ever go away?”
Eddie shook his head. “No. It gets quieter. But it doesn’t go away. You don’t forget. You don’t undo it. You just learn how to live with the parts of yourself you wish didn’t exist.”
Buck rubbed the back of his neck. He was silent for a moment, then said, “Then maybe you’re the one she should talk to. Not me.”
Eddie hesitated and then his expression softened. “Maybe. Only if she wants to.”
“She might not want to talk to anyone,” Buck admitted. “But if she does talk… I don’t think it should be me. Or even Chimney. Not about this.”
Eddie looked down at his bottle. He nodded. “Athena might help.”
Buck looked up. “Yeah?”
“She’s been there. She’s taken lives on the job. Legally. Necessarily. And I’m sure it still weighs on her. She’ll know what it feels like to survive and wonder if surviving made you someone you don’t recognize.”
“You think she’d talk to Maddie?”
“I think she’d understand. And I think Maddie needs to hear that survival doesn’t make her a monster.”
Buck was quiet for a long moment. He looked down at the bottle in his hands, barely touched. “Okay. I’ll reach out.”
Eddie stood to rinse his bottle in the sink. “It’s not about fixing her, Buck.”
“I know.”
“It’s about reminding her she’s not alone in it.”
Buck swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah.”
The night outside was still, the quiet kind of Los Angeles calm that only came in pockets. Inside, the silence between them was heavier, but not uncomfortable.
There was something grounding in it. Something solid.
Understanding.
~
The coffee shop was quiet, tucked into a side street in Silver Lake where the noise of the city softened behind bike racks and blooming bougainvillea. Maddie sat in the end booth, her fingers wrapped around a mug that had gone cold before she’d taken a single sip.
She didn’t want to be there.
She also didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Buck had asked her, gently, if she might talk to someone. Someone who “gets it.” Then he’d mentioned Athena. And Eddie.
It wasn’t that Maddie didn’t trust them. She did. But there was something terrifying about sitting across from people who might understand the thing she still couldn’t say aloud: I killed him. I didn’t stop.
The bell over the door chimed, and Maddie’s stomach lurched as Athena Grant-Nash stepped in, flanked by Eddie Diaz. Neither of them wore uniforms. No badges, no duty belts, no visible weight of authority. Just a calm presence that grounded the air around them.
Eddie spotted her first and gave her a small nod. Not a smile. Just acknowledgement. He didn’t pretend everything was okay.
Athena slid into the booth, sitting directly opposite. Eddie took the seat beside Maddie, leaving a little space between them.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Athena asked, “How’s your coffee?”
Maddie blinked. “Oh. I, uh—haven’t tried it.”
Athena lifted a brow. “Well, that’s a shame. I hear the dark roast’s not bad.”
Maddie tried to smile but gave up halfway.
“I’m not really sure why I agreed to this,” she said finally, voice low. “I’m not even sure what this is.”
“It’s not an intervention,” Eddie said gently.
“And it’s not therapy,” Athena added.
“Then what is it?”
“A conversation,” Athena said. “Between people who… carry the same weight.”
Maddie looked down at the table. Her hands trembled slightly where they rested.
“I don’t know how to talk about it,” she whispered. “Everyone says I don’t need to if I don’t want to. That I survived. That I should focus on that. But it doesn’t help. Nothing does.”
Athena nodded. “People like tidy endings. Survival. Rescue. Justice. But what you went through? That wasn’t tidy. That was war.”
Maddie looked up sharply.
“You were ambushed. Isolated. Injured. You fought for your life. That wasn’t just a domestic dispute. That was a battlefield. The fact that it was your husband doesn’t make it less so.”
“I can’t remember thinking anything, I didn’t decide anything,” Maddie said, voice cracking. “My body just… reacted. And then when I stopped… he wasn’t moving. And I just kept seeing the blood. On me. On the snow. On my hands.”
Eddie’s voice was quiet. “I know that feeling.”
She turned to him.
“I’ve seen that kind of red,” he said. “When you’re trying to save someone or stop someone or just survive. You don’t always know which part you’re doing until it’s over.”
“I didn’t even feel anything,” Maddie admitted. “Not until I called for help. And even then… I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t screaming. I just felt—empty. Like I’d already died too.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Athena broke the silence. “The first time I killed someone, I told myself I was trained. Authorized. Justified. Everyone else told me that too. But when I got home that night, I couldn’t stop washing my hands.”
Maddie swallowed hard.
“I kept thinking… if I’d been faster, maybe they wouldn’t have died. If I’d done something different, maybe they’d still be breathing. And when I realized that wasn’t true… I felt like a monster for still being alive.”
Eddie nodded slowly. “You don’t forget the first life you take. Or the second. Or any of them. They stay with you. Not like ghosts exactly… more like scars. They don’t bleed anymore, but you still feel them when it rains.”
Maddie gripped her cup, but her knuckles were pale. “Everyone keeps telling me I did the right thing. That it was self-defense. But what kind of person does what I did and keeps going like it’s normal?”
Athena didn’t flinch. “A person who wanted to live.”
“I butchered him.”
“No,” Eddie said, quietly firm. “You fought. And you survived.”
“But I didn’t stop.”
“Neither did he,” Athena said. “He’d hurt you before. He came there to finish what he started. He brought a weapon. He used it. You stopped him. That’s not murder. That’s survival.”
Maddie’s voice shook. “What if I don’t want to survive like this?”
That stilled the table.
Eddie leaned forward, resting his forearms gently on the edge. “I’ve thought that too.”
She looked at him, startled.
“After the war. When I got home. I had my son, my family, a roof over my head. And I still felt like a hollowed-out shell. Like something in me had gotten left behind over there. And that if people knew what I’d done… they’d see it too.”
Maddie blinked fast. “Did you tell anyone?”
Eddie shook his head. “I just kept moving forward. One foot in front of the other. Like I was taught I guess. But that was probably a mistake… when I still get stuck in it, I look for the good people in my life, because around them I feel normal. Like I can breathe again. Chris. The 118. Buck.”
Her mouth trembled. “I know he’s worried about me.”
Eddie nodded. “He is.”
“I don’t know how to explain this to him. How broken I feel. How… tainted.”
Eddie put his hand on Maddie’s shoulder and rubbed softly. “You don’t have to explain it. You just have to let him be there for you. He has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.”
A small sound left Maddie’s throat. Half laugh, half sob. “Did you know he tried out to be a Navy Seal?”
Athena raised her eyebrows and Eddie looked surprised, dropping his hand and tilting his head.
Maddie sniffled. “I was really happy when he didn’t make it. I know he never rang the bell to tap out, and he never told me exactly what happened. But I was just so grateful that he wasn’t going to be in harm’s way like that… but I think now, now I’m just really glad he didn’t have to experience this because I don’t think his big heart would survive it, you know?”
Eddie swallowed and nodded. “I’m glad too then.”
Maddie reached up and wiped her eyes. “I want to feel normal again.”
“You won’t,” Athena said gently. “Not the way you used to. That version of normal is gone. But you can feel whole again. That’s different. That’s real.”
Maddie looked between them. “How do I start?”
“By feeling it,” Eddie said.
“And by letting yourself grieve,” Athena added. “Not just for what happened. But for the version of yourself that didn’t make it off of that mountain. She’s gone. And it’s okay to miss her.”
Maddie breathed out, shaky but steady.
“I hate snow now,” she said suddenly. “Can’t even look at it on TV without my skin crawling.”
“That’s fair,” Eddie said.
“I used to love it. The silence. The softness.” Her mouth twisted. “Now it feels like a shroud.”
Athena gave a quiet nod. “Mine was the color blue.”
Maddie glanced at her.
“The suspect wore a blue hoodie. I saw blue for months and thought I was back there. Heart racing. Palms sweating.”
Eddie offered, “For me, it was diesel fumes. From the Humvees. Takes me right back every time.”
Maddie let out a breath, her shoulders slowly relaxing.
“I thought I was broken forever,” she said.
“You’re hurt,” Athena corrected. “You’re changed. But you’re not broken.”
Maddie looked down, then up again. Her voice was stronger. “Do you… still have bad days?”
“Yes... sometimes,” Athena said, nodding.
Eddie nodded in agreement. “The bad days don’t stop. But neither do the good ones.”
Maddie blinked against tears. “I don’t know what I expected when I came here.”
“We didn’t either,” Athena said. “We just wanted you to know… what you did to survive doesn’t make you unworthy of healing.”
“I’m not sure I believe that yet.”
“You don’t have to,” Eddie said. “Just keep showing up. We’ll believe it for you.”
For the first time in what felt like forever, Maddie let herself breathe. Really breathe. The weight hadn’t lifted completely, but it had shifted. Shared burdens didn’t crush quite the same way.
She picked up her coffee and took a sip. It was cold and bitter and lukewarm and real.
“I think I want to talk again,” she said softly. "Not today, not tomorrow. But sometime."
“Anytime,” Athena said.
Eddie gave a small smile. “We’ll be here when you call.”
~
Buck wasn’t pacing, but only because he was consciously not pacing.
He’d cleaned Maddie’s kitchen. Twice. He’d organized the mail and watered the sad plant by the window that Maddie insisted wasn’t dead. And now he was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch, tossing a stress ball from hand to hand and trying not to stare at the clock like a dog waiting for the door to open.
When it finally did, Maddie walked in quietly, her keys barely making a sound.
Buck stood, nerves tight in his chest. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said back, setting her bag down with a small sigh.
He tried not to read into her expression—tried not to project what he wanted to see onto what was actually there. But there was something different about her tonight. Not lighter, not exactly, but maybe less crumpled.
“You okay?” he asked.
Maddie kicked off her shoes and shrugged. “I think so.”
Buck waited. She didn’t keep him waiting long, moving to the couch and sinking into the cushions with the kind of tired that lived in the soul, not the muscles.
“Was it…?”
“Hard,” Maddie said. “Really hard.”
Buck sat beside her, slowly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She didn’t answer right away. Then she said, “They didn’t try to fix it. Or fix me. They didn’t give me a checklist or tell me it was okay just because it had to be. They just… sat with it. With me.”
Buck nodded.
“They talked about their own experiences,” Maddie continued. “About what it’s like to carry something like that and still find a way to live with it. Not erase it. Just… carry it.”
Buck’s voice was quiet. “You’re allowed to carry it.”
Maddie turned to him, her face open, vulnerable. “Are you okay?”
That caught him off guard. “Me?”
“Yeah. You’ve been so focused on me, I just—” She shook her head. “I know this hasn’t been easy on you either.”
Buck stared down at his hands. “I was scared,” he admitted. “When you came back… I didn’t know how to hold everything you were carrying. I didn’t know if I was saying the right things. Sometimes I said nothing because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.”
“I know,” she said gently. “And you weren’t wrong. I just… wasn’t ready.”
Buck nodded. “Eddie told me about the Army. About… about what he did over there.”
Maddie’s brow furrowed. “I got the impression he doesn’t talk about that often.”
“I didn’t even realize… I thought being a medic meant he was safe. Or at least—separate from the violence. But he wasn’t. He made life-or-death choices every day, just like you did.”
Maddie looked down. “It didn’t feel like a choice.”
“I don’t think it was. Not like… consciously.”
There was a long pause. Then she said, voice barely a whisper, “I kept stabbing him, Buck. He was already hurt. He wasn’t even holding the knife anymore. And I just… kept going.”
Tears rose in her eyes, slow and quiet.
“I wasn’t trying to stop him. I was trying to end him. That part of me—I didn’t know it existed. And now I can’t unknow it. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”
Buck reached over and took her hand. His was warm and solid.
“You didn’t know how else to survive,” he said. “And now you’re learning how to keep going afterward. That doesn’t make you bad, Maddie. It makes you human.”
She laughed, but it cracked halfway. “I don’t feel human.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Buck said. “Because we’re not great at that in this family anyway.”
Maddie finally smiled. Small, tired, but real. “You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah, well… I’m your idiot.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her gently and squeezed.
“I don’t know how long it’ll take,” she murmured.
“As long as it takes.”
“I might not be okay for a while.”
“You don’t have to be.”
They sat in silence. This time it wasn’t heavy. It was just there, like background noise you stopped noticing after a while.
Eventually, Maddie whispered, “Athena said something. About grief. That you have to mourn the version of yourself that didn’t make it out.”
Buck exhaled. “Yeah. That sounds like her.”
“I think I’m ready to start.”
He didn’t say anything. Just squeezed her tighter against him.
The next morning, Buck got a text from Eddie.
Eddie: How is she?
He stared at the screen for a long time before typing back:
Buck: She’s not okay yet. But she’s not pretending anymore either.
Eddie: That’s something.
Buck looked up. The sun had crept in through the window. Maddie was making coffee, humming under her breath. It wasn’t a happy tune. But it was music, and it was hers.
He texted back:
Buck: Yeah. Actually, that’s everything.