Author's notes: Hey everyone and happy Monday! 3 more days to go! Thank you for coming back! I hope you are enjoying this story, and if you want, please leave a review :) Also, ff had a glitch for over a week I think, so this is the reason the latest chapter of the One That Got Away is going up today instead of last Monday. Sorry about that even tho it really isn't my fault.
"Why do I have to do this?" Ben grunts as Andy tosses the stopwatch in his direction. Her throw is perfect, and the object lands right in his grasp.
"Because, you have a teenage boy at home. You know how to speak in their secret language." Andy explains before she is headed back down the stairs, where Liv is eager to start running through the course Andy planned just for her. She needed help, needed someone to stand at the other end and count times, needed someone to stand near the gym and make sure the teenage girl doesn't slack or take any shortcuts, but doesn't go too far and hurt herself, either .
"This is a twisted logic, and that isn't even really true. Tuck ignores me most of the time, has his head stuck in whatever video game he is playing, or in the messages he gets from whoever girl he texts back and forth with. In times he does look at me, we end up arguing over some meaningless thing or the other."
"See, I told you. You speak the secret language of the teenagers fluidly." Andy shrugs. "And to be honest, I tried to bribe pretty much everyone to help me with this. You were the only one willing."
"You owe me for this, Herrera." Ben calls out, pointing his finger out in her direction.
"We will see about that." Then she disappears, leaving Ben with the watch in his hand and strict orders as to what Olivia must do, no cheating and no cutting back on corners, and makes her way to where the sixteen years old is already waiting, wearing full gear.
They have been training together for a few months now, every time Olivia manages to come to the firehouse once school is over, and after she is done with her homework, of course.
Andy knows Olivia still has a long road ahead of her if she wants to make it through, if she wants to stand there and earn her firefighter badge as she graduates from the academy. She has gotten stronger over the past few months, her fitness coming up from somewhere near non-existence to something Andy can actually work with and improve until she is sure Olivia will handle the physical tests. She is a smart kid, Andy knows that much, and she will make it through the written exams if she takes the time to actually study, unlike the way she slacks when it comes to her school work.
Who needs to know math or chemistry when she knows what she wants to do in life, and it has nothing to do with any of the boring subjects they teach at school, the girl always argues. Andy had the same mindset when she was the girl's age, and she wasn't a straight A student herself, not by a long shot. So every time the girl comes to the station with another graded paper she tries to hide from her father, Andy just laughs, and tries to not find herself in the middle of that particular issue.
Liv will be able to make it through the tests, both the written and the fitness ones, but that is not what Andy is concerned about. She knows what it's like to be a woman in the fire academy. She knows how much you have to prove, how resilient you have to be as every man in the room looks at you like you don't belong, as if you got lost and arrived there by mistake.
You have to grow the thickest skin, and Andy had another woman to go through the training with, someone she could share some of the burden with. Olivia may not be as lucky.
Andy's goal, more than anything, is getting Olivia in a state of mind where quitting is just not a possibility. And that takes time and resilience, on both ends.
She just hopes the girl wants it bad enough, otherwise, she is doomed for a heartbreak.
"Are you ready?" Andy asks as she finally reaches the starting position she set, at the far back side of the building.
"As ready as I think I will ever be." Olivia nods, a big smile spread across her face. She might complain whenever Andy tells her to do another set of crunches or adds five more pounds to the weight she already carries, she might sweat and curse, but Liv always has that smile on her face that tells Andy she is exactly where she wants to be, making progress, baby step after baby step.
"Warren, are you ready?" Andy talks into the radio she decided to use, switching them to a private channel.
"Herrera, it isn't an active five alarm fire, she just has to run a few times around the station." She hears Ben's voice over the other end, sounding ill tempered and pissed. She will have to make it up to him, she guesses, because she will need at least one other set of hands to help her from time to time, depending what she comes up with, and God knows no one else from the A shift will be willing to help her train the girl on the rare free time they have while they are on duty.
If she is being honest with herself, she thinks she might have agreed to something that was way out of her league on that day in the beanery, and it stretches her creativity to levels she didn't know were possible.
"Okay, ready, set, go!" Andy calls, telling Ben to have the stopwatch going. The girl starts her track all the way to the front of the house, wearing turnout gear that is not quite her size, and a full oxygen tank Andy hopes won't end up flattening Olivia face down to the stairs she has to climb.
She needs to follow her, needs to make sure everything is alright until she is in Ben's eyesight. Andy doesn't know what she will do if something happens to the sixteen years old under her watch. She has to follow her, but instead, her mind drifts for a moment as her body is trying to keep up with the very determined teenager.
She thinks back to where she found herself last night. Or maybe it is better be described as early this morning. She woke up on the sofa as the first rays of sun filtered through the big windows in his house, her back aching, her neck stiff. He was there, his nose back in the book, wide awake, and when he heard her stirring before she finally woke up, he gave her that look, one filled with compassion and care.
He didn't have it in him to wake her up when she was sleeping so peacefully, he said, and for some reason, she wasn't mad to find out that he let her sleep way past the moment the electricity came back on and the storm outside subsided.
It was only when she made it home that she realized she was still wearing his hoodie, and as of the current moment, it rests in her locker of all places, neatly folded, smelling like whatever fabric softener he uses.
She needs to get it back to its rightful owner, she knows that much, but for some reason, she can't shake the image of her wearing that particular hoodie, and nothing else.
As Andy watches the girl make her way through the few obstacles she placed in the barn in advance, Andy wonders if he had stayed up all night as she slept like a baby.
"You can do it!" Andy calls excitedly at the girl, who has to carry the dummy across the barn.
"Shut up!" The girl shouts back, breathless, which makes Andy roll in a fit of laughter.
When Olivia finishes her tasks at the barn and runs out of Andy's sight, she clears the few objects the girl left behind, knowing Ben will take good care of her.
She thinks about the promise she made Robert the other night, and deciding she won't let him find a way out of their agreement so easily. They are friends now, after all, and friends take care of each other, they look out for one another, making sure the other is happy.
And besides, she could use a few drinks with someone who is not Maya or Vic. She refuses to go out drinking with either one of her female coworkers, because mysteriously enough, every time Andy sits in a bar with either of them, or worse, with the two, the conversation always drifts to her, to the way she has to to talk to a stranger at the other side of the bar, to find her way back on the horse again with someone she doesn't work with or hasn't been her neighbor her entire life.
It will be nice to focus on the non-existent love life of someone else, for a change.
Andy makes a mental note to ask Robert if next Saturday works for him, since they are off shift, she thinks, as she makes her way up the staircase to watch Olivia taking the very last steps of the drill.
"Come on, give me one more!" Warren coaxes excitedly as Liv moves another weight from one corner of the gym to the other, the gear still on her.
"Done." Olivia pants, sitting back on the floor and trying to catch her breath.
"How long did it take?" Andy asks, trying to take a peek at the watch Ben is holding in his hand, but is able to see nothing.
"Shit. I didn't start it." That earns Ben an angry glare from Andy, and a laugh from Liv that turns into a choked cough as she realizes she didn't quite catch her breath yet.
She will need to find herself a new co-trainer, after all.
"What the hell is this?" Andy hears a voice behind her, one that she has grown to know quite well in the past few months. She doesn't want to turn, doesn't want to see the expression on his face, doesn't want to meet his eye, knowing nothing good can come out of the situation she just found herself in, judging by the tone he just decided to use.
But she does it anyway. As reluctant as she might be, she turns around slowly, until her gaze meets his.
He looks angry, comically so, like in that Pixar movie she is too embarrassed to admit she watched about emotion coming to life. His lips are a straight, narrow line, and he looks down at the three of them from above, being even taller than Warren. In any other situation, when his rage wasn't directed at her, his entire expression would have probably made her laugh.
She has been on the other end of his wrath her fair share of times. Whenever she made the wrong call in an incident, or talked back to him, or disobeyed an order, he was more than eager to give her a piece of his mind about her insubordination, about how she is nothing but a lieutenant, mostly in the first few weeks since his arrival.
But this, she has never seen him quite this furious. It feels like the anger trickles off him and fills the air, and the atmosphere, which was quite relaxed up until the moment he has made his presence known, has changed, and now it sits heavy around them, the tension waiting to be broken by the words of one of the people in the room.
"Dad, I…" Olivia is the first one to try to explain, but when he reaches his hand out to stop her, she goes silent again.
He loves his daughter, Andy knows that much. She can get away with her fair share of troubles, being his only child, being just the two of them, together against the world. She can get away with slacking on school work and sliding back into the house two hours after curfew, but this… Andy has never seen him like this, and it says a lot, considering the fact he is the kind of captain that no matter what she does, it just isn't quite good enough.
"Warren, take Olivia down and help her get all the equipment back to place, make sure nothing is damaged." He doesn't yell, doesn't scream at the top of his lungs. If Andy is honest with herself, the last time she heard him speaking so quietly was yesterday night, when they were sitting on those pillows in front of the fireplace.
It is different now. If yesterday was all about hushed voices and friendly banter, today it seems as if he is whispering because it is the only way he is able to keep all of his anger somewhat at bay.
"Yes sir." Ben nods, then helps Liv up on her feet and down the stairs again.
"Herrera, my office. Now." He mutters, then runs down the stairs behind his daughter so fast Andy barely has time to comprehend what is happening. She does as he orders, though, doesn't want to get herself into more trouble than she is already in, even though she can't say wholeheartedly she understands why he is so upset.
She guesses she is going to find out, sooner rather than later.
The door to his office is closed by the time she arrives. She takes a peek through the window, seeing him pacing back and forth across the small space, his thumb brushing across his bottom lip.
Andy takes a deep breath, and tucks that god awful strand of hair that refuses to stay put in her ponytail behind her ear. She is about to knock on the door before she hears him calling "Come in, Herrera."
"You wanted to see me?" Andy asks, pretending to be oblivious as she makes her way into his office and closes the door behind her. She thinks it might buy her some time, time that she will use to assess the situation and find the best way possible out of the mess she got herself into, not quite knowing how or why.
"Please tell me I didn't see what I think I saw." His voice is low again. He stands with his fists on his desk now, and Andy can't help but notice he didn't ask her to sit down, so she is left standing.
There is a part of her that tells her to push his limits, to see what his reaction will be when she tells him she needs him to explain to her what he thinks he saw. But it is not the time nor the place to tease him, not by the way his eyes are suddenly on her, wide open, and she can see his whole body tense, like a wild animal waiting for the right moment to attack on its prey. "Sir, with all due respect, I don't understand. You have seen us in the gym together a few times now."
"I didn't know you are training her to be a goddamn fire fighter!" Sullivan yells all of a sudden. Andy doesn't dare to twist her head and look back, but she knows his roar was probably audible all the way to the barn, and that it ignited the curiosity of everyone on the shift .
Great, more gossip and rumors. Exactly what she needs.
"All I have ever seen her doing is some squats and a little bit of jogging around the building, and I just thought, stupidly enough, she decided to work out, decided to do some activity other than going back and forth between the kitchen and her bedroom for a change, and I was happy about it. I didn't know you were training her to be a firefighter." He repeats that last sentence, this time his voice somewhat under control. "And for some reason, I have a feeling you are behind all of this, considering the fact that you have been close with her ever since the first day she showed her face in the station."
"It was her idea. She came to me." Andy says. She didn't do anything wrong, didn't break any laws, so why does she feel like she has to keep her head down and her tone apologetic?
"I couldn't care less!" He yells again, and the way he throws his fists against his desk startles her, makes her jump slightly in the air and take a small step back, separating herself from him, even though the desk is a barrier between their bodies.
And she doesn't understand. Doesn't understand how the man who opened up to her in front of the fireplace last night, the man who stayed up till it was near morning just to make sure she is alright, is the same man in front of her now, with the cold and distant look in his eyes.
"I don't know what you want me to say." Andy's gaze is still on the desk that separates the two of them as she searches inside her to find whatever words he wants to hear.
"I want you to say you won't train her anymore, and that you get that idea out of her head."
"What?" Andy questions, her head shooting up to meet his eyes.
"You heard me, lieutenant, you know I don't like to repeat the same order twice."
"Sir, with all due respect, we are not talking about a ten years old we have to fish out of the sewer system. We are talking about your daughter, who made a decision about the career she would like to pursue once she is out of high school. She is almost an adult, I think that she should have a say in what she…"
"My daughter!" He yells again, interrupting her. "My daughter, the only person I have, and I will not let you compromise her health and safety chasing some stupid dream she has in her head!" He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself down, and when she looks at him, she sees him.
She sees the man who opened up to her about Olivia being all that he got, and it scares her, how easily he goes from one to the other. It scares her, the fact she never knows who she is talking to. She is supposed to be terrified, supposed to turn and run away from him as fast as her legs carry her.
Yet something inside, something she can't deny, attracts her toward him, toward the man who suddenly looks so broken.
"Andy." He uses her first name in a way that makes her heart skip a beat. "You, and I, and everyone else out there, we all know what a toll this job carries. A price no one tells you about when you are in the academy, and that the people who look up to us as we rescue their loved ones don't see. But it is there, the risk and the constant death threat hanging above our heads like a knife. Damn it, Montgomery even has a nasty scar running across his chest to prove just how dangerous this job can be. How you should be willing to lay down your life on the line every single day if it comes down to it. And it does come to it, more often than any of us likes to think about."
He takes a deep, shaky breath, and Andy knows he is not done, not yet. "I am more than willing to lay down my life for this job, but I will die if something happens to my daughter, knowing I could prevent it." Then he adds with a voice even smaller, nothing above a breath. "Please, Andy. She is all that I got. I won't be able to keep living without her. I can't lose her."
Andy nods, can't help it, even though she doesn't fully have the chance to think his request through. "Is she still allowed to hang out around here, with me?"
"Yeah, I think being around you makes her happy, you know?" Andy can't help the smile that creeps up the corners of her lips as she hears him continue. "I want my daughter to know I encourage her to do anything, that she can be anything she desires. If she wants to pursue her talent in the kitchen, or anything else, as long as I know she won't put herself in danger day in and day out."
"Okay." Andy nods, still a little bit shaken by the way he lashed out at her not even five minutes ago, but she doesn't let him see it, doesn't let him sense how much impact he has on her.
"That will be all, Lieutenant Herrera." He waves his hand in the general direction of the door, signaling her to leave. She doesn't have to be ordered twice, and as she closes the door behind her, she wonders what the hell she has just agreed to.
When Andy walks into the beanery, Liv's favorite place of hiding while she is at the station, it smells burnt, like someone decided to purposely set it on fire just to watch it burn.
The girl sits by the table, a piece of burnt toast in her hand, one she doesn't eat, just scrapes the char off with a fork. Andy enters without a word, opening the fridge so the girl won't be startled by her presence. She doesn't have any appetite, not when her tummy turns, so she settles for a cold bottle of water, and finds a place in front of Liv.
The girl looks broken, her shoulders slumped, her body tense, and you can sense the uncanny resemblance to her father, whom Andy saw in the exact same position not even ten minutes ago.
The person who said the apple doesn't fall far from the tree was certainly right, at least regarding the Sullivans.
Andy places her palm on top of Liv's hand and asks. "Why didn't you tell me he didn't know you wanted to be a firefighter?"
"Because…" The girl takes a minute to think, then blurts out. "Because he is your boss, and if you knew he wasn't on board with the idea, you wouldn't have agreed to help me."
It is only half of the truth. If Andy knew her father wasn't on board with her plan to become a firefighter, and decided to help Liv anyway, it would have made a tear between the two, one Liv isn't sure they would ever be able to repair.
Trust. That is the most important thing her father believes in. He doesn't trust people easily, doesn't let many people in, but when he finally puts his trust in someone, he does it wholeheartedly, without a doubt. And if this said trust is to ever be broken… Well, her father is not a man known for handing out second chances.
Liv knew it was only a matter of time before her father finds out and loses his temper, but at least now Andy can say she wasn't aware Robert was in the dark about Liv's intentions, and really mean it.
"And why didn't you talk about it with him, then?"
"Because I am sick and tired with the way he treats me!" The girl yells, dropping the fork onto the floor, but doesn't bother to bend down and retrieve it. She has her manners, though, and Sullivan raised his daughter as well as he possibly could, so Andy knows that once the anger subsides, the girl will clean up the mess she made.
Andy opens her bottle and takes a big swig, giving Olivia as much time as she needs to process her thoughts.
"He treats me with a kid's glove. He handles me like a delicate flower that is bound to fall at the first sight of wind coming at it. When I was younger, I really wanted to play soccer. I wanted to run after a ball, wanted to be a part of a team ready to do everything to win, and to be frank, I really liked the game. Can you guess what extracurricular activity he made me sign up for?" Andy shakes her head, saying no, she has no idea. "Painting." The girl rolls her eyes, and Andy is glad she didn't have any water in her mouth, otherwise she would have choked on them.
"No way." Andy refuses to believe.
"Oh, it happened. And I am just putting it out there, I am not a Picasso." Liv shrugs, and the remark just makes Andy laugh even harder.
She is really something else, this kid.
"I know that he loves me, and I know all he wants is to protect me, but I am sick and tired with the way he feels he has to wrap me in bubble wrap and keep me hidden from the world." Liv sighs, then murmurs something that Andy barely catches, but he is there, hanging above the girl's shoulders. "All I want is to be a firefighter, to keep his legacy." The girl emphasizes the word his, even though the two of them know who she is talking about. "I want to try, and if I fail, so be it, but at least I know I failed because I wasn't good enough, and not because I wasn't given the chance to prove myself in the first place."
Andy tries to come up with the words to comfort the girl, to give her a sliver of hope, but she finds none, so she just sits there in silence.
"All I have ever known is firefighters and firehouses. Uncle Luke, and the firefighters back in Montana… They practically raised me, since I had nowhere else to go. Being a firefighter… That is all I have ever known."
"I know how you feel." Andy nods, because she does. She remembers being a kid, hanging around the station with Ryan while her father was working, learning to read or running around in the barn. "I don't think I will be able to make your dad turn his mind around about the whole idea, but, I do have a suggestion for you, if you are interested."
"I am listening." The girl leans forward now, seems genuinely intrigued.
"We don't have to stop our training, we just have to make sure he doesn't see us doing it. It means that we won't be able to work with the gear all the time, but he barely leaves his office anyway, so as long he won't be around, it isn't supposed to keep us off track too much."
"I don't know if it is a good idea." Liv hesitates.
"Why not?" Andy asks. "You know what they say. What you don't know, can't hurt you. Besides, once you are eighteen, you can do whatever you want, and I am sure your father will come around the idea once he understands just how much you want that."
Liv can't answer that, not truly. She knows her father is able to forgive her for anything, yet with Andy… They are still not close enough for him to forgive and forget lying to him, sneaking behind his back, and Liv thinks that maybe, other than her, his own daughter, no one will ever be able to get past his guards.
It feels like her father and Andy are going one step forward and two steps back, but maybe, just maybe, they will be able to make some real progress. If Liv decides to compromise it… Her father might not ever give Andy a real chance.
Nevertheless, she says. "Fine. But we have to be really, really careful. He cannot find out about this."
"You have my word." Andy nods.
"Now, what do you want to have for dinner?" The girl asks, rising from her seat, and Andy knows she feels better already, by the way she moves like a storm around the kitchen, opening and closing all the cupboards, searching for something she can work with.
"Spaghetti and meatballs?" Andy answers the questions with one of her own.
"Spaghetti and meatballs it is." The girl repeats, and Andy can swear she is able to hear a smile in her voice.