Chapter 4: Fracture

Lucy's second undercover operation is as exhilarating as the first. It's a more complex operation that requires weeks of planning and multiple meets in order to set up the bust. As much as she loves patrol work (real patrol work, not the writing parking tickets kind of patrol work), it doesn't hold a candle to the thrill, the rush of adrenaline, she gets from undercover work.

But it also consumes her. In the ten weeks that she's been involved with preparing for and executing the operation, she knows she's letting everything and everyone else in her life fall to the wayside - Jackson and Nolan, her commitments to Tamara, her friends and family outside of work. And she is deeply conflicted over what choosing this path may mean for her future and her relationships.

Despite the distraction of the UC mission and the fact that she's barely seen him even in passing since their evening in the gym, Tim has been almost constantly on her mind. And somehow, despite all of the consternation it created between them, he is still the first person she wants to text to celebrate her success when the bust is finally made. Her fingers are already typing out the 'OMG!' before she hesitates, and then deletes the message.

It's the next evening that Jackson shares the news of Tim's promotion with her. He's taken a Sergeant's position in Malibu.

Lucy just stares at him, sure that she's misheard him. She knows she's been busy and distracted with the mission, but there's no way she missed this. There's no way that Tim didn't even bother to text her the news. Not after everything they went through, everything she did to help him prepare. Not after he gave up his first opportunity to finish her training. How could he not know how much she would want to know this, how much she would want to celebrate this with him, how much she would miss him? It feels like a literal knife to her chest. Jackson tries to comfort her, but after a long, much appreciated hug she retreats to her room. Tears of frustration and hurt pouring down her face, she finally texts him, "Congrats."

The dots indicating he is responding appear and disappear. Appear and disappear. Lucy doesn't see the actual response until she wakes the next morning.

"I wanted to tell you in person. I couldn't have done it without you."

She curls up into herself, unsure of what to make of his response, but 100% sure it's not good enough. Yes, she's been busy - even consumed - with her mission, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't have made time for this, made time for him. He didn't even give her the chance, and, on some level, she hates him for it.

It's ultimately this moment, this feeling of intense loss intermingled with a realization of the immense capacity he has to hurt her that leads to her finally having to confront the delusion that she's just been missing her former TO, a former colleague, or even a good friend.

After Caleb, Lucy told Tim that her car was the only place she felt safe in the months after. She had lied. When Tim had pulled her out of that barrel and literally brought her back to life, she had been confused, and exhausted, and traumatized beyond belief, but after hours of praying to God that he would find her, there simply were not words to describe the immense relief she'd felt seeing his face, those emotionally distraught blue eyes, when she came to or the comfort of being enveloped into him as he'd held her like he had absolutely no intention of ever letting her go. The same comfort and relief she felt waking up the next morning in the hospital with him by her side. And so it probably wasn't too shocking that there was one other place she always felt safe, and that was with Tim. Her psychology brain told her it was a perfectly normal response to her trauma, but even after almost a year of therapy and processing and healing, that little bit of extra attachment and warmth and comfort she felt when she was with him never faded. He made her feel safe. And part of her would give anything to have that feeling of comfort back in her life, in whatever shape it might take.

But another part of her isn't so willing to settle for what they had before. She's been angry at him, resentful even, but not just because he is irritatingly adept at pushing her buttons and can't seem to stop projecting all of his hang ups about UC work onto her. She's angry because he's shown her who he is deep down in momentary, fleeting glimpses, only to consistently yank that part of himself away from her, just when she's seen enough to know that she wants more; an addiction she had no idea existed until she was forced to go cold turkey. She wants all of the sweet, soft, vulnerable Tim Bradford moments and she's pissed as hell at how committed he's been to preventing her from getting a fix.

Things haven't been off between them because Tim's being any more of a jackass than usual. If anything, he's been infuriatingly consistent. She's the one that has changed. She wants more from him. She wants more of him. And she has absolutely no idea what to do with that. Forget that he was another cop [here we go again], he was her TO for God's sake. It's beyond the bounds of inappropriate, right? I mean, sure, technically, he's not my TO anymore... but what am I even doing to myself here? It's Tim 'live and die by the rules' Bradford. There's no way he sees me as anything but his former Boot… right?

As much progress as she's made in being able to sort her complicated feelings towards Tim, Lucy still isn't able to let herself even think, much less hope, that this maybe, just maybe, might be one of those things that matter more.

When he gets the text from her, he knows he's royally fucked up. Of course he should have realized someone else would eventually tell her.

He knows he could have done more to prevent that from happening. And maybe, over the course of the ten weeks that went by after their encounter in the gym without so much as a text from her, he found himself feeling hurt and angry. He had poured 13 months of himself into her, training and mentoring her, standing by her side as she recovered from being abducted by a Goddamn serial killer, and now she was too busy to so much as even check in, ask his advice, anything?

So, sure, he could have - and probably - definitely- should have texted her when he was offered the Sergeant's position, but he'd put it off, first with the excuse that he'd wanted to tell her in person (and in his defense, he absolutely had spent an embarrassing amount of time hanging around outside the locker room and by her car in the garage like a total creeper hoping to catch her to no avail, given that her schedule had gone completely off the rails with the UC mission), and then eventually out of indignation over the fact that she didn't seem to have any further use for him in her life.

On some level, he knew it was an idiotic and immature response. He had never felt this kind of resentment toward any former Rookie that had moved on and failed to stay in touch. But those Rookies weren't Lucy. Those Rookies hadn't needled him about feelings and friendship. Those Rookies hadn't seen him through one of the lowest points in his own life. Those Rookies hadn't wormed their way into the most personal aspects of his life, until he had finally started to gradually let his guard down, which was no small feat.

Piece by vulnerable piece, he had shared parts of himself with her, things he had never been willing to talk about with anyone else, not Isabel, not Rachel, not Angela - what happened with Isabel and how it had impacted him, what happened overseas, what happened on the job that had irreparably changed him, what happened in his childhood. Of course there was no way she could have known that, known how utterly terrifying it was for him to open up in that way, how it went against every instinct in his very core to allow her to see those pieces of him. But that doesn't make where they are now hurt any less.

And he truly doesn't know what he expected from her, what he expected from their friendship, except for the fact that he had been sure she wouldn't disappear, that she would be different from everyone else in his life that somehow found it so inexplicably easy to walk away from him. And now that she's done exactly that, he can't help but hate her for it on some level.

It's during this time away from Lucy, caught up in all of these uncomfortable emotions, that he starts to see things more clearly.

When Caleb took Lucy, Tim had gone out of his mind with fear for her. Objectively, he knew he did not handle the situation like the detached professional he typically prided himself on being. At the time, he told himself it was because she was his Rookie and he felt responsible for her life, even despite the fact that the situation with Caleb had taken place off duty. And of course, there was the guilt over having pushed her to go out instead of going home and going to sleep.

And the intensity of emotion he felt when he'd finally, somehow, spotted her ring, and literally dug her out of the ground only to realize that she wasn't breathing was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. To this day, thinking he had lost her in that moment haunts him.

And when he'd just about flown off the handle at the prospect of her first UC mission, well, he'd told himself that was because she was his Rookie. It was his job to keep her safe. Ignoring the fact that, to this day, when he thinks about her going undercover, it calls back that familiar feeling of overwhelming panic and fear and helplessness that he is going to lose her.

The realization that he cares deeply about her, in and of itself, isn't a huge shock. They'd been through an unimaginable amount together in only 13 months. And sure she had a tendency to annoy the hell out of him at times, but as Lucy loved to point out, they were friends, or at least they had been.

The shock is in realizing just how deep his emotional attachment to Lucy runs, how out of his mind and out of his character the thought of losing her can take him, and just how miserable the absence of her in his life has left him. The feeling of missing her cuts to his very core and he's realizing he doesn't just want to go back to being friends. He wants more from her. He wants more of her. And he has no idea how to reconcile these feelings to the fact that he was her TO, her superior, or to what feels like the insurmountable fracture that has found its way between them.