Author's Note: So don't ask me where this came from because I honestly have no idea. Technically it started as an image of a moment, that didn't even necessarily have anything to do with Dawsey or Chicago Fire, in my head when I couldn't sleep the other night and then somehow morphed into this as I spent the next several hours writing this in my head while trying and failing to fall asleep. But how I got from an image to a sad, depressing Dawsey one shot is a complete mystery to me. And this will be sad and depressing (I even choked up a few times while writing it) so be warned.
You'd think that given the amazing awesomeness that was the premiere last week (and may I say that the way Casey's face lit up when Cindy dropped Louie off at 51 was just oh my god, definitely my favorite part of many fantastic parts of the episode). Anyways what I was trying to say was that you'd think that if after Tuesday I were to have a completely random idea for a Dawsey one shot, it would be something happy and not this. I guess I already did write the happy Dawsey/Louie family story though so there's that.
I'm not expecting everyone to want to read something like this so I completely understand if people just decide to skip over it or don't want to finish it. The story really seemed to want to be written though so I spent the afternoon putting it down on paper instead of doing some of the many things I probably should have been doing. As I said for some reason I really needed to write this.
I must admit that I wrote this quicker than I normally write a chapter or story so while I did proofread it, I apologize in advance if there are more typos or blatant errors than usual. I'm also not really sure how well it flows; it's a little jumpy at times and doesn't always go in chronological order (I thought that worked better but I guess you'll see).
I'd say enjoy but this isn't really the story for that so I guess I'll just say take a deep breath and prepare yourself and as always when you're done, let me know your thoughts.
Matt sat at Gabby's side, holding her hand while she slept and hoping that she would wake up again, that they hadn't already said their last words to each other because he knew it wouldn't be long now. The doctor had told him it was likely a matter of hours when she stopped by to check on Gabby that morning. Despite having had months to prepare for this day, he wasn't ready. He doubted he ever would be. As first responders both of them had always known that they could lose the other before they were ready. He had always figured that if it were to ever happen it would be sudden and on a call, not the slow, agonizing march that it had been. Now he wasn't sure which one would have been better. What he did know was that the only good thing that would come from Gabby taking her last breath was that his wife would no longer be in pain.
He'd never imagined the woman he loved would be reduced to the frail form before him, her body having been slowly destroyed by the cancer. It wasn't supposed to be this way. When she'd first been diagnosed, the prognosis had been good. They'd caught it early, and she was otherwise healthy. Most of all she was Gabby, she was strong, a fighter. There was no reason to believe she wouldn't beat it. Only the cancer didn't respond to the chemo while Gabby was left to suffer from its side effects. They'd tried different drugs and treatments but none of it worked. No one had known it at the time, but when the decision was made to remove her uterus, is was already too late. The cancer had metastasized and was spreading rapidly. There was nothing anyone could do.
When Matt and Gabby got home from the hospital that day, they had put on a brave face for the kids, trying to act as if everything was okay while spending as much time with them as possible. Alone in their room, this room, that night once the kids had gone to bed, they'd held each other and cried for hours. It was several days before they were able to bring themselves to even talk about let alone decide to follow the doctor's recommendation to forgo further treatment and begin at home hospice care. It was even longer before they could bring themselves to try to explain to the kids that their mother was dying. Even now he was pretty sure they didn't truly understand what was going on.
So now he found himself here with Gabby while they waited for the end. The kids had been in here earlier. He and Gabby had spent months debating whether or not it would be too traumatizing for the kids to see their mother in her final hours. After all Louie, who they'd formally adopted shortly after their wedding seven years ago, was now ten, and Leslie, named for Shay of course, was only five. In the end though they'd decided that the kids needed a chance to say goodbye and so did Gabby. His in laws and Antonio had their own private goodbyes a little while ago, but understanding that she and Matt needed to spend as much time alone together as they could, the three of them were now downstairs with the kids. The rest of Fifty One had been in and out of the Casey house all week, but they were on shift today so each of their last visits would have to serve as their own final goodbye.
"Matt," Gabby tried so say once she woke up only no sound came out, her throat was too dry, so she squeezed his hand.
"You're awake," he smiled at her.
"Matt," she mouthed again, to let him know what she needed.
"Here try this," he reached for the water bottle that was on the nightstand and brought it to her lips, tilting it so that the water easily flowed into her mouth and down her throat.
"Better?" he asked once he had put the bottle back on the nightstand.
"Yeah," she said weakly. She tried to smile at him but was in too much pain. The morphine drip was at her disposal, but she wouldn't use it. She could feel herself slipping away and wanted to be lucid, not under the effects of painkillers, when she said goodbye to her husband.
"I love you," she said, the words coming out as a whisper.
"I love you too, Gabby," he said before leaning down to kiss her lips, lovingly and tenderly, one last time.
Feeling the tears that started running down his cheeks, she tried to reach up and wipe them away but found she didn't have the energy.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," he told her.
"I don't want to leave you and the kids," she explained.
"I know, Baby. I know," he replied.
They sat in silence for a few moments before Gabby spoke again.
"Be happy," she whispered.
Matt looked at her confused. How could he be happy when she was about to die?
"After. Mourn me. Then be happy," she clarified.
"I'll try. I promise I'll try," he said. Truth was that it was hard to imagine ever being happy without her, but he would do everything he could to honor her request because it was what she wanted and because he knew their kids needed him to be.
He got out of the chair and climbed into the bed with her. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her close, careful to try to avoid causing her any unnecessary pain. Words weren't needed between them now so they just lay there, holding onto each other for as long as possible.
Then he felt it both in Gabby's movements and in his own heart. Her breathing slowed until it finally stopped. Gabby was gone.
"I'll love you forever, Gabriela Casey," he said quietly as he kissed her forehead, letting the tears flow freely now.
Not yet ready to leave her or face their family, he continued to lay there, holding her body and crying.
When he finally did emerge from their room, his mother-in-law let out a gasp and a sob. He was a little relieved that he didn't need to say it out loud. Everyone knew what his presence meant.
The funeral was hard. He'd managed to get about a quarter of his eulogy out before breaking down and needing to stop. Antonio and Chief Boden had to go up and speak while he tried to collect himself. He was pretty sure he had scared his kids, which only made him feel worse.
He felt like a zombie as he followed the Chief, Severide, Hermann, and Brett as they carried Gabby's casket out of the church, but it was at the cemetery when they were getting ready to lower his wife into the ground that he felt his already broken heart shatter into a million pieces. He was trying to keep his composure while Louie sat next to him stoically as if he were in a daze. The problem was Leslie. Understanding that her mother was in the casket but not truly understanding what death meant, his five-year-old daughter had starting screaming and begging them to stop as she got up from her seat and started running towards the grave. His head knew that he needed to go after her and try to comfort her. He was her father after all and seeing her so distraught ate at him. Still his body didn't respond. All he could do was stare at the casket and watch out of the corner of his eye as his in laws and Severide of all people stopped her and tried to comfort her, ultimately bringing her back to his side, where she sat on her grandmother's lap sobbing and begging for Mommy.
Unable to leave the cemetery, he'd left it to his family and friends to bring the kids home. He hated knowing that he was failing them and vowed that he just needed to get through the day and then tomorrow he would do everything he could to pull himself together and be a better father. His children needed him, and they were really all that mattered now.
Today was about Gabby though, and he spent hours after everyone else had left sitting on the grass next to her grave, trying to comprehend the fact that his wife's body was now in the ground. Occasionally, he'd glance at the plot immediately to the right of where he sat, the one he'd bought for when his own time came.
He knew he'd never marry again. He and Gabby had shared something so special and so deep that he knew anything else would seem artificial by comparison, and he couldn't help but feel like some other woman attempting to fill Gabby's role in both his life and her children's lives would cheapen Gabby's memory. The role of his wife and Louie and Leslie's mother was reserved just for her. She was irreplaceable. And Gabby had only asked that he be happy, not that he move on. So when it had come time to pay for his wife's final resting place it had made sense to ensure that he would get to be buried next to her.
When he finally made it back home, he wasn't surprised to see all of Fifty One at his house along with his and Gabby's families. They were having an impromptu reception in Gabby's honor. He joined them, listening to the stories they told about his wife but not yet ready to share his own. It helped to remember all the good times, but he was filled with regret when Severide casually brought up how everyone had known how he and Gabby were going to ultimately wind up together both before they'd announced they were a couple and after they'd broken up. He hated that they had wasted so much time dancing around their feelings for each other.
It was Hermann who brought the first small to his face in days when he said that he was sure Gabby and Shay were creating all sorts of mischief up there when they weren't looking down on them. The idea of Gabby being reunited with Shay and watching over him and the kids brought him a small amount of comfort. He knew she would always be in his heart and the kids' but it was nice to imagine that she still existed in more than just memories and love.
In their own ways the kids struggled with their mother's death. Not truly understanding that Gabby was gone, Leslie cried for her mother every night for months, and while Louie barely remembered his life before becoming part of the Casey family, he still bore the scars from his early years. Feeling like someone else had abandoned him, Louie became angry, announcing that he hated Gabby and starting to act out. It reminded Matt of Griffin back when he had custody of the Darden boys all those years ago. Gabby had been such a big help in dealing with that back then, and now he struggled to deal with it on his own. In the end though, it was Gabby who once again saved the day. She had anticipated this, and a letter she wrote to Louie went a long way in getting him back on track.
He did everything he could to make sure the kids never forgot their mother. He worried that they would, especially Leslie who was so young, so he never let a chance to show them pictures or tell them stories go by unheeded. What he wanted most was for his kids to have good lives and be happy and know just how amazing their mother was and how much she loved them and that she would never have willingly left them.
On Leslie's seventh birthday, the three of them were on the back porch, when she looked up at the sky and pointed to the brightest star and announced that it was Mommy. He couldn't help but think that the star matched Gabby perfectly. From that day on whenever the kids were in need of a mother's love, he would point out the star and tell them that that Gabby was watching from above and she was so very very proud of them.
Gabby had spent much of her final months working on a secret project, only stopping when she got too weak. She refused to tell him what it was, locking it in a drawer and making him promise not to open it until after she had passed. It took six months before he could himself to open that drawer, but when he did his heart swelled with love at the neatly organized box before him. It was filled with letters Gabby had written to the kids, one for various special occasions from birthdays to proms to graduations to weddings. Each letter to Louie or Leslie was accompanied by one to him along with a separate set of letters for his and their own special occasions. Part of him was tempted to read what she had written to the kids but he never gave into that temptation. Occasionally, one of the kids would tell him some of what she had written, but he never asked, understanding that the letters represented a private moment between mother and child. Every time he would take one of the letters out and give it to one of the kids, their faces would light up. He knew they cherished their letters just as much as he cherished his.
He read each letter that Gabby had written him so many times that it only took a few days before he could recite a letter word for word. It didn't stop him from continuing to read them though, even the ones from years ago. She had alternated between signing his letters with "All My Love, Gabby" and "Forever Yours, Gabby." His heart skipped a beat every time he read those signatures, the words symbolizing the fact that she had loved him.
Their eighth wedding anniversary was just over three months month after she died. That night he'd left Louie and Leslie with Severide while he went out drinking. He wound up at some random bar a couple of miles from their house. He didn't want to be around anyone he knew right now. The sad, sympathetic looks would be too much. What's more he hadn't been able to set foot in Molly's since Gabby's death. Even though he'd inherited her ownership stake, he didn't think he would be able to handle being there and not seeing her working or laughing and having fun.
The alcohol didn't stop him his mind from wandering to what he would be doing that night had Gabby never gotten sick or how much better the prior seven anniversaries had been when he and his wife had gotten to celebrate their marriage and their love. So he just drank more and more trying to make it stop. Somehow once the bar closed he managed to make it to the hotel across the street, where he got a room and crashed for the night. When he made it home in the middle of the following afternoon, he was relieved to see that Severide had taken the kids somewhere. He wouldn't have wanted them to see his disheveled and hungover state.
Two months after Gabby's death, on his first and only shift back at Fifty One, he couldn't help but notice how different and empty the firehouse felt. Something was missing, and he knew it was Gabby. By the time their first call was over, he understood what Gabby had meant that first shift after getting Louie when she said that something had changed for her. Something had now changed for him. As much as he loved being a firefighter, he couldn't keep doing the job. He couldn't go to work knowing that there was the possibility, no matter how small, that by the end of the shift his kids could be orphans. So at the end of that first shift, he spoke to Boden and resigned from the CFD. The Chief had offered to find him a desk job or a role at the Academy, but it wasn't for him. Having to sit around and watch as other people ran into burning buildings would just fill him with jealousy and longing. By the end of the week, Hermann was serving as the lieutenant of Truck 81 and he was focusing on building Casey Construction into a bigger business that was more than capable of supporting the three of them on its own.
He did. Over the next few years, he turned it from a one man shop to one of the top rated building and contracting businesses in Chicago. To support the growing business, he'd hired several different crews, allowing him to take on multiple jobs at once. When he was older, Louie joined him at Casey Construction, ultimately taking over the business, filling him with a sense of fatherly pride.
The years passed and the pain of losing Gabby slowly dulled. It wasn't that he ever stopped loving or missing her because he didn't. Or that the hole in his heart ever truly healed. She'd taken a piece of it with her to the afterlife. But the days got easier and the feelings of loss and heartbreak became less pronounced. His life was moving forward without the person he wanted to share it with by his side, and as much as he hated the fact, he'd come to accept it. Eventually he began to feel content and then even happy. It was never the true pure happiness he had felt when Gabby was alive, but he knew it was happiness nonetheless. He hoped that wherever she was Gabby was smiling, knowing that what she wanted for him had come to pass.
He was right in his prediction that he would never marry again. He did try dating a few times over the years, mostly as a result of one of his friends, usually Severide, expressing worry about the fact that he never seemed interested in trying to move on. They didn't get it. What he and Gabby had wasn't something he could ever move on from, but he found it easier to pretend to try to move on in an attempt to placate his friends than explain it to them. So every few years he'd go on a few dates that never led anywhere and never with the same woman twice. And on every date he would find himself wishing he was home with the kids, at least until they stopped being kids, or here with Gabby. Then he'd start imaging he was here with Gabby and how different it would be if she was here, what she'd be saying and how she'd be reacting. These women, no matter how nice or beautiful, couldn't hold a handle to his own late wife. Then once his friends were off his back, he'd quietly stop dating without them even realizing it, and then he'd go visit Gabby's grave and let her know that it would always be only her.
Twenty years after Gabby's death Louie and his wife Elaine came to see him one cold December morning. They were expecting their first child and had just come from a doctor's appointment, where they had been told it was a girl. They wanted him to be the first to know that they were going to name her Gabriela. He'd cried and pulled his son into a tight hug, telling him that Mom would be so proud and honored.
He loved all his grandchildren, but he'd be lying if he tried to deny the fact that Gabriela was his favorite. She was so much like her namesake, from her attitude to her mannerisms to her smile, that if he hadn't been there he never would have believed that Gabby was her grandmother by adoption and not blood. She was even determined to become a paramedic.
When Gabriela was a child, Antonio had commented that watching her was like being transported back in time. When she was almost an adult, he felt the same sensation; seeing her with her friends and especially her boyfriend reminded him of the time he had spent with the first Gabby Casey.
Now he was an old man, lying in a hospital bed as his own time was almost up. He'd had a stroke a few days ago and according to the doctors it had damaged his heart, which was now failing. Personally, he thought his heart had been slowly failing since the moment he became a widower. Louie and Leslie were at his side. Their own spouses and children were in the waiting room. The whole family had been in the room earlier but having so many people around had been too much for him.
"Don't worry about us. We'll be fine. You raised us well," Louie told him.
"It's okay to go be with Mom now," he could tell Leslie was trying to hold back a sob as she spoke.
"I love you both," he reached for his kids' hands as he spoke, squeezing them tight and hoping to convey just how much he loved them and how grateful he was to be their dad. Gabby's last wish was that he find a way to be happy and he had because of these two people who he'd watched transform from small children into amazing adults who he was incredibly proud of. Without them, he was pretty sure the years since her death wouldn't have even been bearable.
He closed his eyes and slowly started drifting away.
"I love you too, Daddy," he heard one of his children say, but the voice was too far away. He couldn't make out which one of them had spoken.
He pictured his wife's beautiful face smiling at him. It was forty years to the day since he had last held her. He really hoped that heaven was real and that he would be seeing her there soon. The first thing he wanted to do was wrap her in a tight embrace because it had been far too long since she had been in his arms. But even if there was nothing beyond this life, at least he'd get to lie next to her for all eternity.