Work Text:
When my time comes
Forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed
And don't resent me
And when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory
Leave out all the rest…
St. Paul, Minnesota
The dark SUV was parked in front of a low stone wall that separated the street from the small parking lot by the cemetery. Athena sat inside the car, gathering the courage to step out. Her head was bowed, and her fingers clutched the steering wheel so tightly it hurt. Her heart was racing. She had no idea how long she had been sitting there. Several times, she had almost reached for the door handle, only to change her mind and pull her hand back as if she had been burned. It had taken her so long to find the courage to come here, and after finally managing to board a plane and fly halfway across the United States, she had nearly given up in the last hundred yards. May and Harry had wanted to come with her, but in the end she convinced them that this was a journey she needed to make alone this time.
Why had she actually come here?
What did she think she would find?
Comfort?
Had she come to confess?
To remember, or to say goodbye once and for all?
She wasn’t the type of person who visited graves. And yet, she felt like she was supposed to be here. Maybe she needed some kind of release. Maybe she finally needed to cry. Maybe she needed to be alone with her husband for a little while. Maybe she hoped that seeing his name carved into the headstone would finally make it real — make her accept that this was permanent, and stop her from clinging to the illusion that Bobby would one day come back to her. Sometimes it felt as though the last sixteen months had been nothing but a nightmare, and all she wanted was to finally wake up.
This is absurd, she thought. Had she really flown fifteen hundred miles just to “talk” to her dead husband? Had she finally lost her mind? And in the end, wasn’t that the real reason people visited graves in the first place?
She took a deep breath and stepped out of the car with determination. Instantly, she pulled her knitted cardigan tighter around herself. Even though it was still summer, Minnesota was far colder than LA. The day was sunny, but the wind was biting, and the chill sank deep into her bones. She nearly jumped when the church bell rang out from the tower.
She grabbed the flowers from the back seat and took a few hesitant steps forward. Slowly, she walked along the path covered in fine gravel until she reached the row of headstones. She laid flowers in front of each one and whispered a silent prayer in her mind.
Then she simply stood there for a moment, staring at the last gravestone, which was visibly newer than the others. She bent down and traced the name carved into the cold stone with trembling fingers. Kneeling in the grass, she folded her hands in her lap and tried to gather the courage to speak. Suddenly, she didn’t know what to say. Or where to begin.
“Hi, Bobby,” she whispered at last, letting the first tear roll down her cheek. She didn’t even try to stop it.
When she decided to come here, she had promised herself that, for once, she would allow herself not to be strong or brave. “I never thought I’d be able to come back here one day. It’s been more than a year, and I still can’t believe it. I still keep expecting you to walk through the door. I still expect to open my eyes in the morning and find you lying beside me in bed. Sometimes I reach for my phone and expect to see a message from you. I’m sorry I stayed away for so long — life is… complicated.”And that was the understatement of the year, she thought bitterly.
More than a year without Bobby. More than a year of pain she had hoped she would never have to endure again. Not after Emmett. Sixteen whole months of falling asleep and waking up alone in a bed that felt far too big now. Deep inside, she felt nothing but emptiness. What good were all the numbers in her bank account and the beautiful apartment when the only thing she wanted and needed was Bobby?
Her beloved husband. The love of her life. Her partner. Her lover. Her best friend. Her rock. Her safe harbor. He had been everything she had stopped hoping she would ever find in life. And now he was gone, and all she had left of him fit into a few cardboard boxes hidden away in the closet of the guest room.
More than a year had passed since that day in April — the day that had turned her life upside down. Again
Every glance at the ring on her left hand still hurt as though someone were driving a dagger straight into her heart. So many times she had wanted to rip it off and throw it into the ocean in a fit of anger, but she could never bring herself to do it.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.
“Everyone’s doing okay,” Athena said carefully. “Maddie and Chimney had a son. They named him after you. Though they call him Nash, because Bobby… just doesn’t sound right.” She could practically picture Bobby blushing at that revelation. “Nash just turned one. Chimney loves his son just as much as Jee-Yun, but I know that every time he looks at him, beneath all that love there’s still pain that probably will never fully go away. He’s grateful to you for saving him, but deep down, I don’t think he’ll ever truly forgive you for sacrificing yourself for him.”
And neither will I, she thought.
She would never say it out loud, but more than once she had wished things had happened differently — wished that Bobby had, just once in his life, put himself first. That he had saved himself instead of Chimney. For one terrible moment, she had almost wished Chimney had been too far gone, that giving him the only antidote would have been pointless, and that they could have saved Bobby instead. She wasn’t proud of those thoughts. She knew they were wrong, but that was how grief worked. Sometimes it dragged ugly things to the surface — things that weren’t “right” or morally pure. Athena wasn’t a bad person; the pain was simply searching for someone to blame, some alternative version of events that could undo what had happened. A thousand what ifs… but nothing she said, did, or thought could ever change reality.
Athena fell silent. The wind rustled through the trees above her, carrying the faint scent freshly cut grass. She pressed her lips together and stared at Bobby’s name carved into the stone.
Than she talked about Hen and Karen. And especially about Hen, about how bravely she had fought through her serious illness after they returned from space. She also mentioned that Hen had turned down the position of captain of the 118. “Danny and Mara are practically inseparable these days.”
She went on to tell him that Eddie was back with the 118, and how for the longest time he had blamed himself for not being there that day.
She talked about Nashville — about what an adventure it had been for Buck and Eddie, even if it had ended a little rough. Especially for Buck. “God, I wish you were here, Bobby. Buck has never needed a father more than he has these past six months. He went through the kind of suffering that, out of all of us, only you could truly understand. And honestly, I think it was only because of you that he managed to get through it in the end. He’s doing well now. Technically speaking, you’d be a grandfather today. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? I guess that makes me something like a grandmother, and I’m definitely not ready for that yet.” She laughed softly to herself. “Theo is a little whirlwind sometimes — he’s all Buck, always everywhere at once.” She smiled at the memory of the tiny tornado racing through Station 118 a few months earlier, a red balloon tied to his wrist. “You would’ve adored him. And he would’ve worshipped you.”
It was fairly easy to talk about the others, about his team.
For a moment, she almost laughed at herself. She had spent her entire career keeping calm in impossible situations, and now she could barely hold herself together in front of a gravestone.
“Harry… is a firefighter now. Can you believe that?” She smiled softly. “Honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised. He wanted to be a firefighter ever since he was a kid. I know Michael hoped he’d choose a different career. But ever since you came into our lives, Harry always looked up to you — you were his hero. He’s at the 118 now. Chimney’s keeping an eye on him, so you don’t have to worry. And May? She’s dating Ravi, though she still hasn’t found the courage to tell my mother about him yet. I can’t really blame her for that. And yes, my mother is absolutely losing her mind over Harry. You can probably imagine how she reacted when he proudly announced that he’d applied to the academy.” Athena let out a quiet sigh. “She got angry so many times, yelled at me, begged me to talk him out of it. Said that if anything happened to him, it would be entirely my fault because I brought a firefighter into my children’s lives.” She remembered how Beatrice had once tried to talk her out of marrying Bobby. “Things were always difficult with my mother, you know that. But I’m a mother too, and I know that underneath all of it is just the desperate need to protect your child from pain, suffering, and disappointment. The truth is… I’m scared. Terrified that one day someone will knock on my door and Harry will be taken from me just as suddenly and unexpectedly as you were. I’m afraid I won’t even get the chance to say goodbye. I try to support him. I want him to know that I believe in him — and I really do. I know he’s good at what he does. But God help me, sometimes I honestly wish he were still working for terrible pay at that little coffee shop. At least it would be safer.”
“May’s going to be a nurse. She ran from law school too, just like I did. That didn’t make my mother happy either. I pray May never has to go through what I did. She saw firsthand what it meant to be married to a firefighter. How hard it could be sometimes. She saw you come home hurting, often injured. So exhausted you couldn’t even make it from the couch to the bedroom. She saw the nights after the harder calls, when you couldn’t sleep.” Athena lowered her gaze. “This isn’t the life I imagined for my children. But they made their own choices, and all I can do now is support them. Despite everything, I’m so incredibly proud of both of them… and I know you would be too.”
“Michael and David are still living in Florida. They’re doing well — they mostly come to LA for Christmas. My mother keeps trying to convince me to move back to Florida, says LA has already taken too much from me and that it’s time to come home.” She swallowed hard. “Maybe she’s right. I buried Emmett there… and I lost you too. If it weren’t for May and Harry, maybe I really would have left. Not to forget and start over somewhere else, but just… to keep moving forward. You would understand that…”
Athena lowered her head, her fingers twisting nervously around her wedding ring. This was the part she had been trying to avoid ever since she arrived. Talking about everyone else was easy. Talking about herself felt like ripping open a wound that had never truly healed.. For a moment, she fell silent, almost as if she expected to hear Bobby’s voice somewhere nearby asking, And how are you doing?
It was hard to say whether she was truly ready to answer that question. Talking about everyone else had always been easier.
“I wasn’t handling it, Bobby. Not even close,” she admitted quietly. “After your funeral, I shut myself away from everyone. I’m not proud of it, believe me. I pushed everyone away — even my own children. I was so buried in my grief that I didn’t want to see what was happening around me. I didn’t know how to deal with my own grief, let alone anyone else’s. I didn’t see that my children needed their mother, that they were grieving too because they had lost their dad. I didn’t even notice that my best friend was sick until she collapsed in my living room. Hen was there for me when you died, but where the hell was I when she needed me? What kind of friend does that make me?”
“There were nights when I couldn’t sleep and just screamed into my pillow until my voice gave out and I passed out from exhaustion. I was afraid to close my eyes because all I could see was your face covered in blood and that final moment when your head fell against that stainless steel table. My heart shattered into a million pieces in that instant. I think a part of me died there with you.”
“There were mornings when I wished I hadn’t woken up at all. Days when part of me wished I had died first, because every second without you was — and still is — unbearable. I said it out loud to Hen once. That I didn’t want to keep living in a world where you no longer existed, that all the joy had disappeared from my life the moment you did.” She closed her eyes and imagined the horrified expression Bobby would have worn. How devastated he would be to learn that she had truly wanted to give up.
“I don’t know how to grieve. Not the way people expect me to. I did what I always do — I buried myself in work. I convinced Elaine to let me go undercover after only a few weeks. I would’ve done anything just to avoid sitting at home, staring at the walls of that empty apartment and the unpacked boxes filled with things we bought for our house. God… I flew into space with Hen rather than stay there alone.”
“Of course it ended in a complete disaster. Don’t you dare laugh! I’m officially crossing spaceships off my list of acceptable transportation. Once was more than enough, thank you very much. Hen jokes that she wouldn’t even ride a train with me anymore. Honestly, I can’t blame her. My disastrous history with transportation is becoming legendary.” She said it with heavy irony before her voice softened again.
“But you know… for a moment, I thought you’d be up there. That I’d see you one more time, even if only for a second. But space is just a cold, dark, empty place.” She lowered her eyes. “Just like my heart. I miss you so much. And even though my mind understands the choice you made, my heart is still fighting it, Bobby. I’m angry. I’m still so incredibly angry at you.”
She realized she was practically shouting. Glancing around the cemetery, she felt an overwhelming wave of relief when she saw there wasn’t another soul in sight. “I’m sorry. But I can’t help it. You left me here alone, and I’m terrified this pain is never going to stop.”
“In those first days, before the funeral, I would just sit on the bed and stare at the wall for hours. Talk to you. And you were there with me. You were with me in the apartment, in the car… once even in the grocery store by the freezer section, standing next to the frozen pizzas we both hated.” A faint, broken smile crossed her face. “Honestly I think if I’d ever brought home a frozen pizza, you would’ve threatened me with divorce. But I couldn’t even cook for myself back then. Not that I had to — people kept bringing me food.”
“I was so scared I was losing my mind. I saw you everywhere. I kept wishing you would finally disappear and leave me alone. And then, when it finally happened, it terrified me, and all I wanted was for you to come back again. Sometimes I still call your phone just to hear your voice on the voicemail.” Her voice cracked. „You’d hate the version of me I’ve become, Bobby. It would break your heart. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”
“You were everything I could have ever wanted in life. And when you died, suddenly nothing made sense anymore. My whole world went dark.” She swallowed hard. “But you know what that feels like. We both lost something in our lives. Someone. You know what grief does to people — the kind of pain nothing can numb. Grief doesn’t follow any rules. Just when I thought I had survived the worst of it, some random thought, a memory of you, or of a moment we shared would hit me out of nowhere like a tidal wave and rip the ground out from under me. Again and again. Over and over.”
“If there’s one word I truly hate, it’s widow. I hated walking into a room and having everyone suddenly fall silent and stare at me. Those looks full of pity. The whispers. That’s her. Athena. The hero’s widow. For months I was afraid to talk about you. Afraid even to remember you. Whenever someone else said your name, I wanted to scream, or run away. Or both.”
“There were moments when I thought every memory of you would destroy me. Silence and loneliness felt kinder. All I wanted was to hold you again. To kiss you one more time. To tell you I loved you one last time. To hold your hand again.” Her voice trembled. “Life is cruel because you never know when something is the last time. That morning we were still in our house. Laughing. Making plans. Arguing about what kind of couch to buy and whether we really needed that ridiculously enormous grill. We were excited to finally move in. Outside by the car, we kissed and drove to work.”
A sob caught painfully in her throat. “ “It never even crossed my mind that it could be the last time. That only a few hours later I’d be watching you die behind a pane of glass in some laboratory where I couldn’t even touch you.”
Tears streamed freely down her face.
“I sold our house, Bobby.” Another thing she wasn’t proud of. “I hope you can forgive me. But I couldn’t stay there. Not without you. It hurt too much. That house was a reminder of everything I lost. Of the future that disappeared along with you.” She wiped at her cheeks with trembling fingers. “Even though we never really got to live there, we still had beautiful moments in that place. All the planning was exhausting sometimes, but it was beautiful too. We had something to look forward to.”
“Do you remember that rainy evening? We came there from dinner completely soaked. Right after we walked through the door, you tripped over a toolbox and we almost crashed onto the floor. We wandered through the house with flashlights for a while, laughing at our own shadows like two idiots.” A faint smile flickered across her lips before fading again. “And then we…” She stopped herself as the memory surfaced — the intimate moment on that nearly finished kitchen counter. “Sometimes we were like horny teenagers. I don’t know if you knew that. Or if I said it often enough, loud enough… but I was truly happy, Bobby. And after everything we’d been through, I was grateful for every second we had together.”
Nervously, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “And now I’m here. I missed your birthday, Christmas, our wedding anniversary, even the first anniversary of your…” Her voice broke, and for a moment she couldn’t continue. “But I couldn’t come sooner. I just couldn’t.” Deep down, she knew Bobby would understand. For years she had watched him withdraw into himself whenever the anniversary of the fire approached. More than once she had suggested they come here together, light candles at his family’s grave. He never wanted to, and she had never pushed him. She also knew the last time he had been here was before their wedding.
She brushed a few cobwebs from the headstone with her hand. “ Actually… I have news. I’m a detective now.” There was a small note of pride in her voice as she pulled out her new badge, almost as if her words needed proof. “It wasn’t until I got shot…” She closed her eyes, imagining how Bobby would have reacted if he had been there that day — and how desperately she had wished he had been. Nothing in the world would have helped her heal faster than the love and presence of her husband. When she first woke up after surgery, she had instinctively looked around the room, expecting Bobby to be standing beside her bed, holding her hand… which, of course, he wasn’t.
“It wasn’t until I got shot that I realized I can’t keep living like this anymore. I don’t want to.” She took a shaky breath and instinctively touched the place where the bullet had torn through her chest. “They operated on my heart, and God, I wish they could’ve fixed the hole you left in it when you died.” A sad laugh escaped her. “Elaine wasn’t exactly thrilled when I told her I wanted a change. It didn’t take long — 727-L-30 signed off duty, and now…” She looked down at the badge in her hand. “Welcome Detective Grant-Nash.”
“I still needed you here, Bobby. You should be here with me.” Tears kept slipping down her cheeks, unstoppable now. “I’m angry — so unbelievably angry that you didn’t give us a chance to help you, to save you. Why wouldn’t you let us try?”
“In front of everyone else, I pretended to be strong and brave, but inside I was screaming. My whole life was falling apart in my hands, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t know how to put myself back together again. Where was I supposed to find the strength to get up every day and keep going? To keep living without you?”
“When we stood in that courthouse and said I do, we both knew exactly what we were signing up for. We knew that the unofficial third member of our marriage would always be the risk that one of us might not come home from work someday. We both knew what it meant to be first responder, and that tomorrow was never guaranteed.” Her voice softened, fragile but warm. “But we always got through everything together. Home safe, remember?”
“We found the strength to keep going because of each other. We opened our hearts again and allowed ourselves to love. Those were the best years of my life, Bobby. Aside from the years I spent raising my children, the years beside you were the happiest I ever had. Even with all the problems life threw at us.” She shook her head slowly. “Not for one second did I ever regret any of it. And for the rest of my life, I will be grateful that I got to be your wife.”
Her voice broke completely. “I will never stop loving you… and I will never stop missing you.”
By now, the sun was slowly beginning to set behind the trees, bathing the cemetery in soft golden light. Athena wiped the tears from her cheeks with trembling fingers and looked down at Bobby’s name one last time.
For a moment, she simply stayed there in silence.
Then she took a slow, unsteady breath and carefully pushed herself to her feet, her knees aching from kneeling in the cold grass for so long.
“I’ll come back,” she whispered quietly.
And somehow, for the first time in a long while, the words didn’t feel impossible.