This is my very first ever Clexa fic. It's loosely based off the Chicago Trilogy TV series (Chicago PD/Med/Fire) by Dick Wolf. Please let me know what you think and tell me if there are any errors or parts that don't make sense. I love/need constructive criticism. Hope you all enjoy.
Chapter 1 - You've Rescued Me
Lexa didn't even wait for the car to come to a complete stop before she jumped out of the passenger seat and raced through the front doors of St. Joseph's General Hospital with her partner a few seconds behind her. Chaos ensued all around them as civilians there to visit loved one's and scared ER patients ran past them with genuine fear in their eyes. Following the screams and the direction in which some of the nurses were pointing, Lexa & her partner, Detective Bellamy Blake sprinted down the corridor of the hospital. The closer they got to the point of origin for the hysteria, the more they were able to better assess the situation. Hearing the loud, rough voice of the man causing the commotion, Lexa drew her service pistol while Bellamy raised his assault rifle, both wanting to be prepared for whatever could potentially pop-off.
As they stopped just before turning down the hallway, more people ran by them in a panic. One of them noticed the Police badges, bullet-proof vests and drawn guns and slowed to warn them. "He has a gun! He grabbed one of the doctors and now he's just screaming at everyone!"
"We'll take it from here." said Bellamy in a calming yet urgent manner. "Keep going down the hallway until you get to the main doors." The second the sentence was complete the woman was once again running down the hallway. Watching her go, Bellamy & Lexa saw two other members of their team pass her by and head in their direction, guns at the ready. Detectives Kyle Wick & Lincoln Richards joined them at their place just before the crossing of the hall.
"What's the situation?" Lincoln asked, looking back and forth between Lexa & Bellamy.
"Chloe Cooke passed away about an hour ago." Bellamy told them. They could hear the disappointment in his voice. It was the same tone he always projected when they lost someone they tried so tirelessly to save. But, unfortunately, that was a part of the job that were, at times, inevitable.
"Chloe Cooke?" Wick asked looking puzzled & shocked at the same time. "The victim from that abduction case we just closed? I thought the doctors said she was going to be fine."
"Apparently she went into cardiac arrest." Lexa informed them. "They tried to revive her, but she didn't make it."
"Now her boyfriend, Atom Ward, has gone off the deep end. According to one of the nurses he's got a doctor in there at gunpoint." Bellamy said finishing the sentence for his partner, and bringing the two of them up to speed. That's when he grabbed the radio off of his vest, held it up to his mouth and spoke quietly into it, cluing the rest of the force in the vicinity of what was happening. "This is Detective Blake with Intelligence. I have a 10-14 at St. Joseph's General. Suspect's name is Atom Ward currently holding a doctor at gunpoint in the South-West end of the first level; requesting immediate back-up. Be advised that there are plain-clothes officers on scene."
"Copy that detective. Back-up is in route. ETA of the nearest available unit is 2 minutes." At the sound of the dispatch on the other end of the radio, all four detectives looked at one another, each of them knowing from past experience that in that amount of time, so many things could go wrong.
Lexa shook her head. "That's way too long. We need to go in now."
"Agreed." Bellamy said. "How do you guys want to handle this?"
Before any of the guys had a chance to speak, Lexa took the lead as she always did. "About ten feet back I saw an access door for medical staff; it leads to the back offices that wrap around the ward. Bellamy, head in there and see if you can come up behind him…at best maybe you can sneak people out. Wick, Lincoln…you two, follow my lead."
"I'm pretty sure you need a keycard to open that door. Do I look like Monty? How exactly am I supposed to bypass that lock?" Bellamy asked, a small part of him hoping to hinder his partner's constant and obsessive headship and trying to mess with her.
Lexa answered his question first with a sly smile, having done this dance with him many times before, and in some cases, during more dire situations. "You'll figure it out."
Lincoln & Wick shared a look with Bellamy. "Yes commander." Shaking her head again, this time solely at her partner, Lexa readied herself and the guys followed suit. The three of them watched as Bellamy made his way toward the access door with haste. Upon reaching it, without hesitation or hint of forethought, he used the butt of his Sig Sauer Tactical M400 like a battering ram hitting it repeatedly until the indication light switched from red to green. Giving them a quick nod, he opened the door and disappeared down the corridor.
Standing at the edge of the hallway, hugging the wall, Lexa glanced behind her to get the all clear from the guys. Once they all gave the classic nod signifying they were prepared, she quickly turned the corner, raised her gun and situated her body in a tactical stance. Advancing through the double doors of the ICU, she immediately caught sight of their suspect, with whom they had dealt several times within the last week in an effort to rescue his now late girlfriend who was abducted from a shopping mall parking lot.
The second they entered the Intensive Care Wing, their cop eyes quickly assessed the scene before them acting as a sixth sense they'd acquired during their training at The Academy. Without uttering a word or so much as giving a swift glance toward one another, Lincoln, Wick & Lexa instinctually fell into a strategic formation. Positioning themselves a few feet apart from one another, blocking the main entrance, they aimed the barrels of their guns all in the same direction.
Atom Ward was a wreck; that much was evident. The first thought through Lexa's mind was remembering looking into his background to rule him out as a suspect in the abduction of his girlfriend, Chloe. Something that stood out was his rebelliousness during his adolescence which escalated to the point that his parents sent him to a military-style reform school, where he learned discipline, resilience and more importantly, how to handle weapons. There was no doubt that he had retained everything he had learned. The manner in which he was holding the blonde, was so proficient, there was no way any of them could get a clean shot off without hitting her too.
"Atom! Put the gun down!" Lexa spoke with such conviction, it's no wonder she became a cop.
Atom, however, was in no condition to listen to reason or follow any commands. "No! You guys don't need to be here! This is none of your business!"
Wick stood directly to Lexa's left just a few feet away, lining up his sights as best as he could with what little he could see of Atoms face. "You don't have to do this, Atom! Just let her go and drop the gun!" he commanded.
Lincoln shifted his focus to look at the doctor, gauging the best way to make sure she remained calm, but his eyes widened once he recognized just who Atom Ward was holding.
"Clarke?" he asked, causing her eyes to meet his. "...Clarke, are you alright?" She nodded, never opening her mouth.
Without breaking his sight on the occurrence, Wick aimed a quiet question towards his partner. "You know her?"
"She's friends with Octavia." He responded. "Clarke. Just stay calm. Everything is going to be fine." Again, she nodded, but all the detectives could hear her heavy breathing through her nostrils.
"No, everything is not going to be fine!" Atom screamed back angrily. "Don't tell her that. That's exactly what she told me."
"Atom, calm down." Lexa said in a more soothing tone. "Talk to me, okay, what's going on?"
With tears streaming down his cheeks freely, Atom shook his head, struggling to accept the meaning behind his words. "She's dead…she's gone."
"I know. And I'm sorry about that." All authority left Lexa's voice & was replaced with empathy.
"No, you don't need to apologize. You did your job. You promised me you'd find her and you did. But this blonde bitch here," He grabbed Clarke tighter, jamming the gun tighter into the side of her head, forcing her to wince from the pain. "Said Chloe would be fine. She was supposed to be okay! Then she just…stopped breathing, everyone was rushing in."
"They tried to help her. They did their best."
"No…they gave up…after only a minute, they gave up on her." He used his shoulder to wipe the tear streaks from his cheeks and motioned with his head to the room they were standing just outside of. "And now look. This was her room. She hasn't even been dead for three hours, and they already made it as though she was never even here. Like she never existed in the first place."
Lexa lowered her gun and took a step forward, raising her left hand, showing him that she wasn't an immediate threat. "Okay…Atom, listen to me. I know you just lost…everything, and right now it seems like there is no point to keep on going, but…"
"What next? Are you going to tell me it gets better?"
"No." Lexa said shaking her head. "Because it doesn't. Not at first anyway, but eventually…it becomes easier to live with. And with each passing day, it gets that much easier."
Just then, Lexa had noticed in her peripheral vision that Bellamy had slowly begun to open the back office door. Thankfully the door was well out of Atom's line of sight. Holding the gun steady in his direction, Bellamy stood guard, shielding some of the hostages as they used the now propped open door to make their silent escape. Fortunately, thanks to the nurse's station residing in the center of the room, Atom, along with the other three detectives, couldn't see the hostages crawling their way to the exit.
Atom, however, wasn't about to let himself fall for what he was sure was a ploy. "No, no no…Don't do that. Don't-don't talk to me like you know what I'm going through. I know this is just something every cop does in this situation. Empathize with the perp and get him to drop the gun."
"That's not what I'm doing. I do know what you're going through."
"NO YOU DON'T!" He screamed so loud, everyone left in the room nearly jumped out of their skin.
"YES!…Yes, I Do!" Lexa took a deep breath, a preemptive strike against the tears she was sure would form as she uttered the next few words. "Do you…Do you remember three years ago…The whole city was on edge because of that serial killer that was at large? His name was John Murphy."
Atom nodded his head behind Clarke's. "Yeah, I remember. They said he killed, like, 17 people."
"18." Lexa corrected. "And one of them…was my girlfriend. Her name was Costia." It took everything she had not to let her voice break just uttering her name. Bellamy, Lincoln & Wick were all surprised to hear her talk about it after so long. It was the first time any of them had heard her speak Costia's name since what had happened.
Lexa took a deep and shaky breath before she could continue. "And he killed her because I was investigating him and I got too close. I knew it was him, but I couldn't prove it. So, I started harassing him, thinking I'd spook him, hoping, maybe he'd slip up & make a mistake. All I did was piss him off. So he started following me after work…that's when he learned about my relationship with her and he used that to get back at me. One night, I came home and our apartment was trashed & Costia was missing. He had kidnapped her, he tortured her, killed her then left her body beneath a freeway overpass. So trust me when I say...I know what you're going through."
They could tell by the look on his face that he was starting to come to his senses. "…How long until you didn't…feel like this anymore?"
Lexa knew she was wearing down his defenses. "A while. Sometimes…on a bad day…I still feel like that. There were times I couldn't even get out of bed. But I got through all that. And you sure as hell can too. The first step is to just accept that she's gone, and as much as it sucks, know that there is nothing that can be done."
His grip on Clarke started to loosen a bit. Tears streaming down his face, he lowered his head into her shoulder, both mentally and emotionally defeated. "I'm sorry…I'm so sorry." He said quietly directly into Clarke's ear, though she had a feeling she wasn't who he was directing his apology towards. More and more, the hold he had on Clarke slackened until he let go completely. His gun hand no longer aimed at her and rested against his chest as he leaned his back against the wall.
Lincoln took one hand off his gun and called out to her, motioning to her. "Clarke…Come here." Slowly increasing the distance between herself and Atom, Clarke looked back in fear that his mercy would be short lived. Seeing his eyes closed and his head hung in devastation, she turned back to Lincoln and quickly made her way to him. Lincoln threw his arm around her and pulled her behind him defensively, re-aiming his gun and attention to Atom.
"Alright Atom." Lexa began once Clarke was safe. "You're doing great. Now just drop the gun."
He shook his head as the tears continued to fall. "I can't. You might have been strong enough to survive that…but I'm not. I don't want to survive this."
Hearing the defeat in his voice, Lexa immediately grew concerned of what his next move might be. When he looked back up at her, there was a dead look in his eyes that replaced the despair. "Atom…?" She asked apprehensively, raising her gun back at him slowly as he did the same. "Atom, don't!"
Lexa so desperately wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Lining him up in the sights of her Sig P226, she hesitated to pull the trigger. The last thing she wanted to do was shoot a man grieving a tragic loss.
On the other side of the room, Bellamy quietly closed the service door trying not to give away his presence and retain his upper hand, hoping to get to Atom before he would be able to get a shot off at his partner. Sadly, discretion on his part lead to sluggish advancement; there was no way he would get there in time to stop him without alerting him and catching a bullet himself.
Her reluctance to fire allowed Atom to get a shot off. Missing the detectives completely and hitting the wall behind them, intentionally, knowing the outcome, lead to both Lexa and Wick to each discharge their weapons twice, hitting Atom center mass. As Atom fell to the ground, and the echo of the gunfire faded, the room then filled with sounds of screaming from those that were left against their will.
No longer burdened by the need to be quiet, Bellamy rushed to the lifeless body riddled with bullet wounds, and kicked the gun out of his hand before kneeling down to check his pulse. A few moments passed but Bellamy felt nothing. He looked up to his partner and the other two detectives shaking his head. All three of them holstered their weapons and relaxed their stances. Lincoln turned back towards Clarke to check on her. Wick and Lexa stood, staring at Atom's lifeless body lying still on the ground.
Bellamy rose back up and looked around the room, noticing the remaining hostages that were left. "Is everyone okay?!" he asked aloud, prompting the nurses, and civilians to slowly stand now that they were officially safe.
So that's the first chapter. If enough people like it, I'll keep it going and update as often as I can. Let me know if you love it or hate it, but thanks for reading!