Hello, hello! I'm SO sorry it's been a while. I will definitely be updating a much longer chapter this week, I promise! Until then, however, I have my first of a few flashbacks I think I'm going to throw in every once and a while. Please let me know if you like the idea, and what you think! Thank you for reading xx
I listened to this song writing and it almost made me cry. It's perfect, but I warn you, it'll break your heart!
You - Keaton Henson
2009
Grace cracked her eyes open slowly, disoriented and cold. She moved her fingers and toes slowly, coming back into her body again. Pain blossomed inside and out as she turned over on to her other side, tubes and wires coming with her. The rhythmic beeping of the monitor beside her was a soothing constant in the background and she tried to time her breathing with it as memories flooded her brain.
Breaking glass, blinding heat, Tommy's hoarse voice slamming through the Garrison and the ringing in her ears, his hands never leaving her. Tommy's voice had turned to a whisper soon after, possibly to soothe himself more than her as he asked Grace mindless questions to keep her awake. Her blood sunk into the Garrison's wooden floor after Tommy's suit could absorb no more, the warmth of it had been strangely comforting like a macabre blanket. Grace remembered smiling up at him in delirium and brushing his face limply with her fingers, the streaks of her red mixing with his, pouring from the cut on his brow. The burning pain in her chest had been nothing compared to watching the pain in his eyes.
Grace stared now at Tommy's sleeping body in the chair next to her, thinking that she would live through those memories again if it meant she would have this. Through the drugged fog of her brain she stared at him, smiling softly even though it hurt.
Somehow sensing her newfound consciousness, Tommy stirred and rolled his head towards her, eyes opening to reveal the piercing blue beneath that was awash with relief as he took her in.
"Hi." Grace said, voice almost inaudible from misuse from her healing sleep.
Tommy said nothing, sitting up and attempting to drag his chair closer to her, impeded by the railing of her hospital bed. He snaked his arms through the metal spaces to find her hand, their skin contact broken up by the seemingly endless amount of tubes pouring into her.
"Gracie, I-" His voice cracked and the relief in his eyes disappeared, replaced with the same pain that Grace had seen as she had laid in his lap. Tommy struggled for words as he stared at her, bringing his thumb to trace her lips, surrendering to his struggle with a simple, "Hi."
Grace smiled at his out of character lack of words, hiding her wince from him as she shifted closer to the railing, and him. "How long have I been asleep?"
"Three days, off and on." He swept her hair back from her face and twirled a frizzy lock of it around his finger, watching his own movement as he spiraled it gently. "How do you feel?"
"Sleepy. But fine. I'm fine, Tommy."
"This is fine?" He said, the self-hatred in his voice made Grace want to cry. Tommy gestured at her body, so small under the three extra and unnecessary blankets on top of her. Grace was sure he had probably terrified some poor nurse in demanding them.
Grace nodded, head swimming. "Tommy, I would do it all again-"
"Don't say that, don't fucking say that Grace, please." Tommy's eyes shone and Grace froze, not prepared to see the display of emotion from her stoic love. "You shouldn't be in this bed, it should be me. You're here because of me."
Grace shushed him quietly and raised her hand to his face, his stubble scratching her palm. "I'm here because of me. I had to."
"No. No you didn't. Why did you do it, Grace? Why did you fucking do it?" There was a low anger crackling in Tommy's voice but Grace ignored it, knowing it wasn't for her.
"Campbell would have killed you. I didn't think twice, Tommy." Grace shrugged. "I had to, I had to. You're my life, and you know it."
Tommy sighed out a shaky breath and squeezed her hand gingerly, careful of the IV. "So you put that life on the line for a man like me?"
"Yes."
They stared at each other in a draw, remaining unbroken even when a nurse came and went after changing Grace's clear bag of medicine.
Grace continued after she left, desperate to know about the fate of her previous boss, and massive thorn in all of their sides ever since. "Is he dead?"
"Yes. Very."
Grace let out a small, unsympathetic laugh, this one was worth the hurt in her chest. "It wasn't my shot was it?"
Tommy shook his head slowly, eyes murderous as they remembered a scene Grace couldn't see. "No, I wish it was though. It was mine."
"Good." Grace traced circles on his cheek weakly, thumb barely making contact. "I love you, Thomas."
"As I love you. More than anything, Grace." He paused and looked down at her chest, the hole in it leaving a red circle on the white bandage over top, eyes darkening as he clenched his jaw.
"Don't blame yourself, Tommy. If I hadn't had come, if I hadn't had beat him off of you, if I hadn't had taken the-"
"Then you wouldn't be here, broken and bleeding and in pain. For what, for me?"
"Yes, Thomas Michael, for you." Grace hadn't realized she was crying, but Tommy let her know as he wiped the rolling tears off of her cheeks. "Do you think I can live without you, really? The bullet you took last year was my fault, I betrayed you and I-"
"I don't care about that."
"Let me finish, god damn it." Grace snapped in her quiet voice, and Tommy almost smiled. "I'm alive, aren't I? Here I am, for you, with you. We found each other. It's over, Campbell is dead and I'm alive. With you. Here. It's over, we're out of this now. I would do anything for you Tommy, don't you get it?"
"At what fucking cost? You almost died Grace." Tommy's voice was so low Grace almost couldn't hear it. "Do you understand that? I need you Gracie, I need you. You're the only light I have. But you're right, it's over. It's over, for now, eh? Only fucking for now. That's the problem with this life. But I promise Grace, I'm getting us out of this life, I promise you right now. No more of this shit. It's about me and you from now on, okay? Me and you. That's it. Remember that. Please."
"You and me." Grace nodded weakly. She could practically feel Tommy's heart clawing at her own, desperate for the guilt to be lifted. "I know this hurts you, so this is the first and last time I'll ever say it. But I'm happy I did what I did, and I don't want to be anywhere else in the world right now. I would do it again, and if I ever have to I will. Don't say anything, please."
Tommy slammed his eyes shut but complied, brushing his lips on her cuts from the broken glass of the Garrison's lamp that had shattered above them when Campbell's first hateful shot had missed Tommy, before the second one buried itself in Grace's shielding body. "I love you. I love you. I love you."
Grace's tears came again but stopped when she heard her newfound family loudly stepping off the elevator, all the way down the hall.
"Fuck, they're back." Tommy muttered, rubbing his eyes with one hand as he couldn't bear to lift the other from Grace. "This is the first time most of them left the hospital, you know."
"And you think I deserve better?" Grace fully smiled at him now, shining all the light on him she possibly could.
Tommy grumbled to himself in her favorite grumpy way before his family poured into the room, quieting only slightly when they saw Grace was awake.
Grace grew up with nice things, and a loving family. She had thought herself lucky as she grew older in the Burgess' mansion, surrounded by material possessions and a high-society life. Her mother had shunned her since she had left her father's legacy in the dust, calling her soulmate and his family slurs and condescending words that Grace used to say herself as an impressionable daughter. But now she knew her mother was wrong.
She knew her mother was wrong as she watched Ada and Meghan squeeze onto the foot of her hospital bed, rubbing Grace's legs. Arthur ruffled her hair, handing her a get-well card with his boyish smile. Finn provided more than enough comic relief as he animatedly described his and Isiah's search for Grace's favorite flowers, Michael pulling up a chair opposite Tommy and putting his feet up on the bed railings as he made fun of them. John handed her his own Starbucks, having not anticipated her being awake, claiming he didn't need it although the bags under his eyes said otherwise.
They didn't have money, they didn't have nice things, they never knew what the next day would bring or take. But as Tommy silently traced the words I love you onto the bare skin of Grace's arm over and over, the strongest love in the room, Grace knew that she had never been truly lucky until now. Laying in a hospital bed, having narrowly missed death for the greatest treasure she could ever possibly possess, the same one she abandoned her mission for, the same one that her mother would never feel like this. Love, selfless love.
