This is a request to take my story "Always be there for you" and asking "What if Simon didn't survive?" hope you enjoy it!
The entire cyber team had been seated in the waiting room of the E.R. for hours. Three a.m. found them in a state of near complete exhaustion.
Krumitz was asleep against the wall, his arms crossed protectively over himself. The gunshots, the falling, it reminded him so much of his parents' deaths.
Raven was curled up against Nelson, the armrest between the two seats up so she could lean against him. Her head was tucked into his neck, tear stains tracked across her cheeks.
Nelson had his arms wrapped around her, holding her close as reassurance. They had both succumbed to sleep not long after Simon's heart had stopped and been re-started for a third time.
Even Elijah had collapsed in an awkward position against the armrest. The only person still awake was Avery. Fingers clutched around a coffee cup, knuckles turning white, she was nowhere near sleeping, despite that she desperately needed it.
But she would not go to bed until she knew for a fact that Simon was okay.
Thirty minutes later, she gave her cup a final shake and threw it in the trash can. Her nails clicked against the plastic table in the waiting room. Her entire body was shaking from an odd out of balance combination of caffeine and exhaustion. The blonde cast a glance around at her team, her and Simon's team. All of them hurt and weary, caught up in the worst case scenario.
Just as she was about to leave and get more coffee, a doctor walked into the room. He had peeled off his gloves already, but Avery could see blood stains on his scrubs. Her breath caught in her throat. He stood and faced them with a grim set face, and she knew instinctively that she should wake up the team.
"Elijah." She nudged his shoulder. He grunted and blearily opened his eyes, then sat up straight, completely alert.
Quickly, they woke up the others. Raven swayed dangerously from side to side, still leaning onto Nelson for support, who was sniffling and wiping his teary eyes.\
Krumitz locked eyes with the doctor. He didn't need to hear the man speak before he knew what was going to be said. It was happening all over again. There would be no end, no relief. There was another Taylor Pettis out there somewhere, but cyber didn't even know who he was.
The news came out bluntly. "We tried everything within our ability, but the internal injuries were too extensive, and we were unable to keep him alive."
Avery wasn't sure the sound she made then was even human. It ripped out of her, and the only thing she felt was Elijah pushing her down into one of the hard chairs. Salty tears cascaded down her face. It was just too much, way too much.
Everyone else was in shock. This couldn't be happening, Raven thought numbly. It couldn't. It was too surreal. In a few seconds she'd wake up in her bed and realize this was just a horrible, terrible nightmare.
Elijah's training kicked in, and he started to run on auto-pilot. Get everyone home safe, make sure Avery could function well enough to take care of herself, and then he could face his own emotions. But for now they would have to wait.
He made sure Raven and Nelson both got in a taxi, that Krumitz was awake enough to drive himself home. Then he drove Avery himself, pulling up to her apartment building and walking her to her door.
"Do you want me to stay?" He asked, worried about her eerie silence and pale face.
She shook her head. "No. Thanks Elijah, get some rest."
Reluctantly, the agent left. He wondered if he'd even be able to tell Devon what his day had been like or if the words would simply get lodged in his throat. Maybe there were no words.
While Elijah struggled to find any words at all, Avery had too many. The doctor's sentence echoed through her head on repeat. "Internal injuries too extensive, unable to keep him alive…" She stumbled to the coach and buried her head in her hands. ""Unable to keep him alive, unable to keep him alive, unable to…." She wished she would cry. That a few tears would fall and validate everything she was feeling. But nothing happened. It wasn't real. But was both too close and too distant at the same time, and she couldn't comprehend that she would never see Simon again, with his gentle brown eyes and caring persona. His smile, his laugh, the way he made her feel.
No tears fell, and the exhaustion combined with the hurt set off a pounding headache that raged against her temples. Not long after, Avery laid across the couch and fell asleep, not even bothering to take off her shoes.
The FBI gave them all a week to recuperate. Originally Avery had doubted that that would be enough, but by the third day she was feeling antsy.
She wanted to walk into CTOC. Logically she knew Simon wouldn't be there, and that his desk had probably already been removed, but some emotional, childish part of her still held out hope. It whispered in the back of her mind that maybe the past few days had been nothing but a bad dream.
She wanted to catch one of their notorious hackers, maybe someone on Cyber's top ten, and stand back triumphantly as they were cuffed.
Deep inside her, a flame of rage was burning, hot and strong. She would find who did this. She would track them down and she'd arrest them herself. She'd interrogate them until they cracked and confessed exactly what they'd done. Then she'd tell them that Simon had died, that Simon meant everything to her, and she'd watch the fear in their eyes as they realized that she would do anything to have them face the maximum penalty for what they'd done.
The anger rose in waves, crashing down on her every now and then, when red flashed before her eyes and prevented any other emotion from surfacing.
Elijah had Devon to help him out, who stayed up through the long nights to talk with him. And Michelle brought a bit of welcoming color into the dreary days.
Daniel had been through grief before. But that didn't make it any easier for him. The only thing he'd found that could help was remembering what Simon had told him when he confronted Taylor Pettis at the café with his sister. "That scared, angry reaction is that of a ten year old's. You need to find a way to get past that." Repeating that over and over in his head kept him sane. Breath in, breath out. Keep breathing.
Raven and Nelson had each other. They would lapse between talking for hours about Simon to sitting quietly beside each other, neither actually having much to say. Eventually they'd force themselves to eat something and go to bed at some ungodly hour of the night.
Avery had no one and no way to cope. She cycled through the stages of grief several times a day, if not per hour. Without Simon to force some sense into her, she was too stubborn to ask for help.
And she didn't.
At least, until work resumed.
The following Monday, nearly everyone was late. Avery was there two hours early, but that was beside the point.
When they sat at each of their desks, there was a strange silence. Normally it was Simon who announced the arrival of a new case.
After a few uncomfortable seconds, Elijah stood up and read the brief from his tablet, turning on the wall of screens.
Slowly but steadily, the team listened, suggested a course of action. The case was right within D.C. No traveling required. Avery said a quiet prayer of thanks. She didn't think she could handle meeting victims and examining a crime scene without Simon at her side.
By six that night, Raven was running scans on malware, Nelson and Krumitz were reassembling a phone, and Avery had finally summoned up the strength to talk to Elijah.
"I need to talk to you," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
"What's up?"
She faltered. "I- I don't what to do. Without him here, it's like I've lost all direction. I just-"
Elijah embraced her. "I know, Avery. I feel it too."
"I've met with his son, Aaron. I could barely make it through a conversation. I can't do this, Elijah. I really don't think I can."
"You're wrong. You can. You're scared of not having him as support, we all are, but we have each other still. We can't block each other out."
She nodded.
Elijah continued. "We'll all get through this. Together. It's going to be horrible. I'm not going to lie to you, Avery. But we can do this. And we will."
The blonde took a deep breath. And another. "You're right," she said. "You're right."
No one on the team would say that the next few weeks, or months, were spent easily, or perhaps even happily. But gradually, a little bit of color, a little bit of excitement began to creep back into their lives.
Someone would look at Simon's empty office, then have to quickly look away before bursting into tears. But at the same time, getting together after solving a touch case became common again.
Krumitz would bring up a time when they'd had to educate Simon on a whole new branch of social media because he'd had no clue what it was, and Raven would laugh for the first time in a while. Avery would find herself smiling. Elijah could separate the pain from the memories. Nelson was starting to remember the happy times with Simon, not the long hours in the E.R. or the painful grieving right afterwards.
When they got their next case, Avery stood back for a moment, in the rear of CTOC, and watched. She promised Simon she'd always be there for him. And, as she pinned his star against the board in the back of the room, for those who died serving their country, she knew she'd kept her promise, and now he would forever be watching over her.