deep down in the quiet moments

we think to ourselves

shay would want us to be better.

she'd want us to lean on each other.

and she'd want us to represent her

every time we go out.

It's been a year.

It's in the quiet moments that it's felt the most - there isn't much time to mourn when rushing into the flames, but god knows they all manage to do it anyway, at some point.

But it's mostly felt in the quiet moments.

When the new shift is just trickling in, and one by one they gather for breakfast. Talking is reduced to a low leveled murmur, and the loudest of noises comes from the sizzling pan or plates clanking together.

Herrmann will remember squabbling for the best chair for the early meal, the cushioned one that has wheels and supports your back; he'll remember there being no hint of remorse in Shay's eyes as she yanked the chair from beneath him and he went down.

There was a time that Otis might have possibly thrown a fork at Shay when she reached for the last biscuit. Maybe. And it might have nailed her right on the head. Maybe there was blood, he'll say it was just ketchup { "Oh, gross, Otis, do I look like the type to put ketchup on anything breakfast related?" }, but honestly?

It's been a year and when breakfast rolls around, he doesn't look twice at the last biscuit. Remorse, and all that.

Shifts are twenty four hours long, and nothing short of exhausting, and at any given time half the house could be power napping.

It's so easy for Kelly to just.

Look out of his office, expecting to see his best friend lounging on her bunk. He looks but all he ever sees is emptiness. He's taken to shutting himself in the office, closing the blinds and door alike, because he has to stop this.

Cruz had the bed across from Shay and there were many a time when projectiles were flying: pillows, books, the odd pen here or there. It's been a year and he still automatically shifts into protective position when laying down.

There are times when Dawson does her laundry, and she just can't look to her left because her partner was always there, Shay was always right there, perched on the washing machine with a tiny smirk and waggling eyebrows.

Most of her laundry is done at home, now.

{ If she thinks too hard, about all the loss within this past year, she knows if there was one loss she could fix - it'd be Leslie Elizabeth Shay. Everything else pales in comparison, because through thick and thin the blonde paramedic has always been beside her. And now she isn't but things are still breaking and life sucks.

She wonders, sometimes, if she'd still be engaged. If Shay would've pushed and pushed for Dawson to fight for Casey, would've gone to the Lieutenant and demanded better.

Then again, if Shay hadn't died - Dawson would've been at a different house, under a different boss, and there wouldn't have been reason to fight with Casey in the first place.

She doesn't like to think too hard. }

It's been a year, and so much has changed but everything is still so similar. Static.

Mouch proves to stay by his namesake and spends an astounding amount of hours on the couch, watching tv. It's when the room is dark save for the screen's light, when he's alone and the house is elsewhere, sleeping, that he reminisces.

Shay stumbling in, bleary eyed and sarcastic. Dropping down next to him as he's on his fourth hour of a USA marathon, slowly waking up as the minutes tick on.

He barely said a word and she wasn't much better. But she was there.

And Casey. Before he and Dawson split, he was at a total loss. Dawson was pulling away even as they grew closer, and they were engaged yet on the rocks, and honestly?

Shay would've been there to knock some sense into his thick skull. She would've offered - crammed down his throat - assertive advice and pressure to be better.

He has a lot of regret, for never truly bonding with Shay. They had shared the station for nearly five years and barely had any meaningful conversations beyond that of concern for either Dawson or Severide.

Yet he still manages to think of her. In the quiet of his apartment, with Gabby gone and Severide out getting wasted. When he jumps into the truck, and all the men have faraway expressions.

It's one of the worst years any of the men have ever had in their entire careers.

They'll look up, catch a flash of blonde hair, and they all adore Brett but it's hard, just barely seeing her from the peripheral vision - so many times, the wrong name nearly tumbled off their tongues.

And it's not fair to her, but the first time she walked into the station, blonde hair and blue eyes, eager yet holding back just a little, ready to go in the paramedic uniform - there was shock.

And she tries, Brett tries so hard to find her place because it's always hard to join a new family but it's even harder when it feels like you're just a replacement. And they love her, but a little warning would've been nice. Dawson went home and nearly had a meltdown, Otis needed to clear his head for several hours, and they're all just thankful Severide already found a new place to stay because there was no way a repeat of 'I need a new roommate' would've gone down nicely. At all.

{ Not to say, however, that Severide would ever use those words again. He may have moved in with Casey, eventually he'll find his own place, maybe live with another person - but he would absolutely never replace the best part of his life. }

It's a struggle. For everyone.

They're managing, slowly.

It's taking Kelly so much longer though.

Shay encompassed nearly every part of his life, and readjusting to the emptiness is taking time.

Usually, when he was filling out paperwork in his office, Shay would claim his bed. They'd talk for awhile, because she was a chatty ball of wit and he needs the last word, but he knew she was doing it to keep him company.

The station was fifteen minutes away from the apartment, but the city has a mind of its' own and there were days when the drive took twice that.

Some mornings, Shay took charge of the radio. Blasted her angry hipster music, rolled down the window, and let loose.

Other times she started a conversation about the hospital shift and twenty minutes later they're arguing about what they need to buy at Jewel. They'll walk into work, each loudly insisting whether or not a restock on cereal is necessary, and they'll continue this tiny war throughout the shift.

There were some drives, mostly at night, after a long shift that ends with them both groggy and sluggish, where she puts her feet up on the dash - an act only she was allowed to pull, and he's not quite sure when it started but it wasn't even long after she moved in, and he's always been protective of his car but it's Shay - and they don't talk but having her next to him somehow fills the void of silence.

Needless to say, the trip is quiet these days.

Life is quiet, without Leslie Elizabeth Shay.

Readjusting is hard, for everyone, and as the days crept up to the thirteenth of May, it got worse.

Dawson, who blamed herself for months and is still agonized with guilt every day, throws herself into the work and flames, desperate to keep her mind from wandering.

But in the moments leading up to the dreaded year mark, she stares and stares at all the little things around the station.

Leslie Elizabeth Shay written in gold across the driver door on the ambulance.

The god awful reminder that they all pass daily, the picture of her best friend's line of duty death that hangs on the wall - it serves as a reminder of what was lost and she tries to think of the happier times, like when she and Shay partnered up and effortlessly pulled off prank after prank, but it's hard.

There was the ambulance sixty-one plaque, hung on a thin strip of a wall.

Picture after picture, framed proudly and previously gave way to fond smiles but now only leads to bitter tears.

Once, by pure chance, she walked past Severide as he pulled his locker open.

Right on the inside, just above a picture of a smiling blonde, she saw a strip of tape with 'SHAY' printed across in black sharpie.

She never tells Severide what she saw, the tape from Shay's old locker, but she has to go take a breather outside because it had just barely been five months at that point and they're all still in hell.

{ Dawson will never tell anyone, but she winds up at Shay's bridge often. Just to reminisce, remember the old days. She holds her - Shay's - necklace, and tries not to cry. }

The thirteenth falls on a Wednesday, and is also their first day off - the last shift was horrific, and mostly just due to what was soon to come. Kelly barely made it through the day and Dawson didn't even speak, and the rest of the house was just silent.

When Wednesday comes, it's almost like they all scatter.

Herrmann holes up in his cramped garage, under the pretense of sorting through all the shit he's accumulated but really he just sits and tinkers with a few minor things, thinking of heartbeats and red helmets.

Otis goes to Molly's. Works behind the bar, ignores the fairy lights that were so lovingly { and by that he means painstakingly } hung by one lost friend, and generally loses himself while wiping down counters.

There's a knock on Brett's door before eleven and she opens it to Cruz's blank face. It's almost heart wrenching, because it's been a year since they lost the blonde haired, blue eyed paramedic yet now they have another, and she's right here, and really, he thinks it might be masochistic of him to show up at Sylvie's.

And Dawson just. Goes to the bridge. All day. She stands there all day, leaning on the railings, watching the water, scuffing her feet on the pavement because Shay loved this spot, and when she was lost and didn't know where else to go, the bridge was a comfort. Dawson likes to think she comes to the bridge for comfort, too, but it's mostly because Shay was comforted by it.

Mouch tries { read: gave half a second's thought } to not wind up at Trudy's, because she isn't one for angst, but that's where he finds himself. They do nothing more than watch crappy television, but that's just the kind of thing he needs.

It's still incredibly easy for Casey to feel guilt. Because Shay was so important to Gabby and Severide, who were both important to him - yet there were few true moments of bonding between himself and Shay. And she's gone, has been for a year, and he just wishes he would've talked with her more, about things not related to Gabby, things that didn't have to do with his anger towards Severide. And he's furious that he never put in the effort, and he considers himself a nice guy so why would he essentially ignore a woman who meant so much to his friends - he picks up a quick job Wednesday morning, one where he can beat the hammer down and be reasonably violent.

Peter Mills picks up a shift at a local diner. That's it. He didn't know Shay well enough, but by throwing himself into a work force that he loves and can do in his sleep, he doesn't have to think about painful things and line of duty deaths.

There was a time where Severide knew he'd end up at a bar. On this day, he just knew. Things were too hard.

But he surprised himself.

It's been a year, and he's still not quite healed. Probably isn't even halfway there, to be honest, he's always been one to hide his pain and lick his own wounds, and this is why it takes him incredibly long to recover from most things. He's so busy tending to it himself that he neglects the imperative parts that would smooth the process along.

But, he avoids alcohol. It's been a year, and by this point he knows forgetting won't lessen any pain, and will actually make him feel worse, as if he's tarnishing her memory or something.

So he goes to her grave.

He's never been the guy who sits in front of headstones, not for Darden or anyone, but Leslie Elizabeth Shay was so much more than everything life gave him, and the irony hurts because she isn't even breathing anymore.

He sits on the grass after dropping a single blue flower, tries not to think about how often he was a dick to his best friend, about how their last words were a promise of all their years, about how everything is so dark without her.

{ And he doesn't look at the engraving, has only ever looked at it once, barely holding it together before completely losing it ten minutes later. Because right there, under her name:

always

And it glares at him, he can feel the words burning into his soul even as he turns his eyes away, because that was their promise to each other, their promise to everything, that no matter what they would always have one another. }

It's been a year.

And they're all hurting, still.

They all went their separate ways but eventually came back, starting a new shift and saving more lives. It still takes time, but eventually there will be less hesitation when glancing towards Brett. Eventually Dawson will stop staring at the frames covering the walls, but she'll continue to hold a necklace as comfort and occasionally takes a detour to the bridge while driving.

And Severide is still lost for a long, long time, but there will come a day when he doesn't have nightmares about Shay being taken away from him, when he can look at pictures and smile fondly instead of bitterly, when he can walk through an apartment and not be smothered with pain.

But for now, it's only been a year.

The longest, more heartfelt year of nearly all their lives.

They're all coping, somehow.

It's in the quiet moments, that her loss is felt the most. Because Leslie Elizabeth Shay was the heartbeat of House 51, and that will stay true for the rest of their days.

No matter what.

i tried to fit in everyone but that started to turn out like i was trying too hard, which did not make me satisfied with my writing.

i tried to fit in everyone but then it turned into longer dawson moments and even longer severide ones, which is a terrible habit i have because SHAYVERIDE

i hate the ending it's terrible sorry

title is from 1000 years by bleu and kt tunstall

i'm still a pitiful piece of trash crying under my desk please join me. password is 'i will never forgive anyone for taking away leslie elizabeth shay'.