Word Count: 3,324
Warnings/Spoilers: This chapter refers to victim injuries in a rescue.

It had been a relatively slow shift by their standards, with a kid stuck in a vending machine and a woman locked inside her bathroom after her dogs had turned feral, which meant that Buck's restless night of sleep wasn't being tested with difficult decisions or calls that involved water. He'd managed to avoid cleaning the lunch dishes when the call about the woman had come through and when they'd gotten back, Hen had challenged him to a video game and Eddie and Chim had moved towards the dishes. The thought of putting his hands in the water, the mystery of what he might touch beneath the bubbles… It had haunted him most of the time he'd been hanging back and listening to Bobby and Athena discuss whether to get animal control to the call.

He'd been hanging back during a lot of the calls the past couple of shifts, the sliced pads of his fingers taking longer to heal than anticipated and creating sensory issues when he put on his gloves and couldn't feel properly through the multiple layers of padding. If he didn't wear the bandaids, he risked re-opening the wounds and the last thing he wanted was freaking everyone out with bloodied hands or gloves.

The bells clanged and he discarded the controller, falling into step with Hen as they descended the stairs and climbed into the truck. Bobby began running through the sit-rep, detailing that a car had crashed through a shop window and the driver was down from unknown causes. There were fears of a fire, of people trapped inside the shop or under the car, and Buck picked at the bandaids while he listened to the issuing of job roles and expectations.

He wanted to protest when Bobby said he was on fire monitoring and checking those who had escaped the shop. What was the use of going on a call when he couldn't actually help on the call? His hands might not be the most useful but surely he could do better than stand back and watch?

But he swiped his tongue across his lips, balled his hands, and fought the words down again. It wasn't the same as when he'd first started – and thankfully he hadn't had any close shaves that involved water or recalling the tsunami – but he felt like he had to keep proving himself again, that he needed to earn their trust that he could deliver results. And that was hard to do when avoiding injuries that might make him bleed everywhere, like injuring his hands.

He knew all that but it didn't make it any easier to watch Hen and Chimney run towards the driver or Eddie retrieve the jaws to prise the car apart or Bobby requesting another team of firefighters check the uprights beneath the shopfront to avoid it collapsing on top of Hen, Chim and Eddie.

"Can you help me?"

Buck turned to see a blonde girl with green eyes standing beside him. She looked younger than Chris, maybe about seven, with a nasty gash on her head which left trails of blood down her face and neck. His eyes flickered with memories of other children with blood on their faces and he shook it away so he didn't scare her.

"Hey, sweetie." He crouched and held out a hand, unsure whether he could coax her closer. "Were you in the shop?"

She nodded, big eyes looking close to tears as she stared at him. "My mommy and I were having m-milkshakes and then she pushed m-me out of my chair and- and-" A sob passed her lips as she inched towards him, letting Buck touch her arm and then leaning into the other that traced the cut on her head. "I don't know what h-happened. E-Everything just went b-bang."

"It's okay." He could tell the laceration on her head would need stitches, but it seemed like her hairline would cover the worst of the scar. "You're okay now, kiddo. We'll take care of you. Where's your mom?"

"I don't know." The girl's lower lip wobbled as her green eyes looked towards the shop. "I haven't been able to find her."

The air in Buck's lungs stuck as he stared at the tears which began to spill down her cheeks, mingling with the blood and making an even worse mess on her face. "Alright, alright. We'll find her. That's our jobs. What's your name? What's her name?"

"I'm L-Lucy," she said, folding her arms around Buck's neck and startling him into gripping her tighter. "My mommy is B-Beth."

"Okay, Lucy." He swept the girl into his arms like he had with Christopher after the tsunami, propping her on his hip as he reached for the radio at his shoulder. "Hey everyone, be advised. We've got an unaccompanied tender age survivor. Mother is called Beth, possibly still trapped in the building."

He saw Bobby look over his shoulder, nodding as he received the message and pointing Buck towards the waiting ambulances. Buck attempted to shield Lucy from seeing the crash site as he carried her, gathering information about what Beth was wearing, whether she knew of any medical conditions, how old she was. When they reached the paramedics, Lucy wouldn't stop clinging to him while her head was examined and a light was passed in front of her eyes.

"She'll need stitches. Probable Grade One concussion," the paramedic from the 105th said.

"Not without my m-mom," Lucy protested, fingers clenched into Buck's jacket. "I want my mommy."

"I know and we'll find her," he promised, touching fingertips to her bloodied cheek and wishing he could clear the blood away. "But your mom would want you to be taken care of too and right now, that's what we have to do. She'll want to know you're okay."

Lucy looked unconvinced but loosened her grip and then pouted. "Will you come too?"

He smiled at how much she reminded him of Christopher. "I need to stay here to do my job but I'll tell you what. I'll stop by the hospital to see you when you don't look like someone from a scary Halloween movie."

She managed a tiny smile at that and nodded, and the paramedic in the back of the van nodded at him as he climbed from the cab and returned to surveying the scene. At least two other trucks had arrived, setting up supports at the front of the shop, crawling amid the debris in search of other survivors and victims. He could see several people milling around at the police cordon with cuts and blood-stained clothes and dazed expressions but no one looked affected seriously enough to require immediate assistance, nor did anyone have a blue skirt and black top that matched the description Lucy had given him.

He could see Hen, Chimney and a couple of paramedics extracting the driver from the back window of the car onto a backboard. He looked old and even at this distance, Buck could see the blood that was smeared over his face and stained his clothing. Bobby was pointing at one of the supports, gesturing at the person who was cranking it into place.

And then there was a shout, and a scream, and a few other shouts and Buck was leaping into action to grab an extinguisher out of a panel off the nearest truck. The driver was wheeled away by jogging paramedics and other members of the LAFD were escaping the impending carnage but Buck was moving towards the spark, pulling the pin in the extinguisher and trying to determine where to aim it first. Where was Eddie? Was he inside the shop? He barely had time to cast his eyes around to look because he needed to get rid of the fire.

"Buck!"

"I got this, Cap!" he shouted, spraying the car as flames erupted beneath the chassis and started licking at the metal. He could hear other screams within the shop, people who had been trapped by the car now trapped by a new form of inescapable terror.

"Buck! Get back!"

"I'm-"

The car exploded in front of him, lifting him off his feet and throwing him onto his back. It knocked the air from his lungs, heat flashing against his face, and he could feel glass spray over him in jagged razor blades that bit into his flesh and tinkled onto the road around him. The extinguisher clattered from his grasp, rolling across the ground, and all he could do was stare dumbly. There was a high-pitched ringing in his ears and it was irritating. He blinked, lifting a heavy arm towards his head, and tried to understand why there was blue sky above his head. For a split second, he couldn't comprehend the abrupt change in perspective.

And then with a snap, awareness returned and he could feel the pain radiating across his shoulders and towards his tailbone. There was a dull ache in his skull which thudded in time with his heartbeat. There were pinpricks of pain all over his face that felt sharp and scratchy.

"Ow…" he muttered, blinking at the blue expanse above him and wondering why he was underwater and whether this was another dream or whether he was back in the water.

"Buck?" Hands grasped his burning shoulders and squeezed hard enough to focus his eyes on Bobby's face swimming in and out of focus above him. "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah, Cap," he mumbled, though everything seemed a bit hazy around the edges and he still had the ringing in his ears and a lot of confusion over where he was and how he'd gotten there. "Just a knock to the head, man. I'll be okay."

Bobby's eyes were wide but his lips were thin with fury. Buck put that down as a thing to deal with later. There was something strapped around his neck and Bobby's hands helped roll him onto his side as a backboard was slid beneath him. Weak protests immediately fell from his lips as he was carried to the make-shift triage area near a waiting fleet of ambulances.

"Someone check him out," he heard Bobby's voice order and Buck felt hands at his feet, loosening his boots and testing whether he could feel all his toes.

"Where's Beth?" he asked suddenly, not even fully cognizant of who Beth was but knowing she was important.

But Bobby had already gone, leaving him with unfamiliar medics who forced him through a series of tests to clear him of spinal damage, and then began the concussion tests, and then peeled his jacket from his shoulders to examine whether glass had pierced the fabric. When he sat up and tried to avoid wincing, another guy fussed with plucking shards of glass from his face and rinsing his eyes.

He avoided focusing on the pain by fixating on the shopfront. It was engulfed now, with firefighters zipping back and forth with hoses and extinguishers. Buck had no idea if Beth had been found in the chaos. He could only hope she had. He caught a glimpse of the back of Eddie's jacket and that was enough of a relief that he hadn't been inside when everything had exploded.

When the paramedics finally announced they were satisfied he didn't have any immediate damage, he sat through their detailed concerns about the risks of the blood thinners during the next twenty-four hours. Despite how much he wanted to help with the unfolding horror in front of him, they refused to let him leave the triage area until the 118 were done. Something about bleeding through his eyes or fingernails if he was left unsupervised.

Even so, sitting and watching the flames lick at the walls of the building while firefighters scurried back and forth was even worse than Bobby benching him for so long after the clot, and then the tsunami, and then the lawsuit.

Although Hen doubted he had a concussion, she still checked his responses every half hour for the rest of shift and ensured a steady stream of ice packs were applied to his shoulders to minimise the bruising. Bobby didn't seem mad, exactly, but he did seem wary of allowing Buck on any further calls. It was frustrating and Buck wanted to tear at tufts of hair, but if he were honest then he didn't really feel like he could concentrate anyway. Every time his attention drifted, he saw the image of Beth's crumpled and twisted body, the burned clothing that was attached to her skin, and then he'd blink and see Christopher being wrenched from his arms by a wave of water, or the searing pain of the truck crushing his leg, or-

He sucked in a breath, leaning his head against the wall outside the station and tried to think of something – anything – else. If someone saw a firefighter having a breakdown, it probably wouldn't add much credibility to their jobs or his desperation to prove to Bobby that he was okay, that he could do this job that he'd fought so hard to get back to and show Bobby he could do everything demanded of him.

"That was a tough one this morning," Chimney said, appearing around the corner and leaning against the wall next to him. "What are you going to do when you get off shift?"

Buck hadn't really thought about it, but he also hated how easily the others could shake things off after horrific calls and look towards the future again. Maybe it was because there had been so many horrors he'd had to see lately and he didn't feel like he could talk to anyone about how he felt. Lawsuit – and the bridges he'd burned because of it – aside, talking to Maddie risked her telling Chimney, which meant Bobby would quickly find out. Anyone else at the firehouse would do the same by tattling to Bobby if he exposed even the slightest trace of vulnerability. Sometimes that was why he missed Abby and Ali, because they were a step removed from the house and it was safer to talk to them. But now that he had no one-

"Buck?"

He'd been silent too long and Chimney's arched eyebrow made it clear that was unusual for him.

"Probably read a book or watch a movie," he shrugged, having no real intention to do either. "What about you?"

"Well I was thinking of taking Maddie to dinner and-"

Buck tuned out the rest but he nodded politely from time to time until Chimney was apparently done talking and wandered back into the house and left Buck in peace.

It wasn't long before the alarms went off again and the trucks pulled out of the 118 and all Buck could do was watch forlornly from his spot against the wall.

He spent the entire time that the trucks were out itching to leave. It was painful watching the seconds tick, pacing the rafters strung above the floor, until the trucks returned and the crew chatted about another call that left him on the outs.

When he was finally done, when he could finally flee, he shouldn't have been surprised to see Eddie and Bobby approaching him as he finished tying his shoelaces. He tried to slow the bouncing knee thing he had going, the anxiety to get home and break down almost overwhelming him. It had been cresting all day, this feeling of uselessness and failure and he wanted to pummel his pillows and then sink beneath them until he could sleep. It was probably a fruitless hope – when had he last slept well? – but he wanted it nonetheless.

But as Eddie and Bobby stood in front of him, he did his best to stitch together a front that showed he was okay and ready to leave.

"Hen thinks you need to be monitored overnight," Bobby began and Buck gritted his teeth to avoid letting loose the words he really wanted to say. "She's concerned you could still end up with a delayed concussion or suffer internal bleeding from that explosion this morning."

Buck stared at his Captain for a long moment, fingers twisting into the loose folds of his jeans. If Bobby noticed, he didn't say anything.

"I'll ask Maddie to look in on me," he said when it seemed as though Bobby was waiting on an easy acquiescence. Which Buck had no intention of providing.

"She wants you to go home with one of us. She's not even comfortable with you driving."

"That's really not-"

"This is not up for discussion or debate, Buckley," Bobby said, an edge of steel creeping into his voice. It was the sound of the Captain ordering him to do something, putting distance between their friendship to ensure Buck looked out for his wellbeing. He wasn't sure how it made him feel that he needed to be ordered to do something as simple as monitor for some bruising. "We thought we'd at least give you the chance to choose who-"

"I'm going home," he said, checking his watch and seeing it was a minute after his shift was meant to have finished. He got to his feet, lifting his bag over his shoulder and ignoring the flash of pain in his back when he did so. "I don't need a babysitter, but thanks."

"This isn't-"

"See you!" he called as he made a hasty departure from the locker room, nodding at a few of the other guys changing for the shift handover and blocking out Bobby's calls behind him because he wasn't wrong. He was a fully grown adult. He'd survived a tsunami when none of his team, his friends, his family, even knew he'd been missing or that Christopher had been lost somewhere among the water and the carnage. He didn't need a babysitter. He didn't need them to fuss around him now. He'd spent weeks on his own because of the lawsuit. He could handle a few bruises.

He was almost at his car, fumbling for his keys in a side-pocket of his bag, when a hand clamped around his wrist and forced him to turn around. He was shoved somewhat roughly against Hen's car, a soft whimper escaping him when the metal hit a spot that had to be bruised despite the icepacks.

He shut his mind to the ache and bit back a tired sigh. "Eddie-"

"Will you stop being such a stubborn asshole and allow us to make sure you don't almost die on us, again?" Eddie said, his eyes narrow and sparkling with anger as he crowded into Buck's space. His grip remained tight on Buck's wrist and though Buck could have wrenched Eddie's hand away, he didn't particularly feel like breaking his best friend's wrist by slamming him on the ground. He was too exhausted for that, anyway.

But Eddie's anger, his determination, the obvious fury that dripped off his words… It gradually sank into Buck's tired brain and beneath the layers of skin, deflating his annoyance because Eddie was just trying to care in his messy, broken sort of way.

He released a frustrated sigh that made him feel like he was a shrinking balloon without any sort of control over his own decisions.

"Fine," he conceded, shaking Eddie's hand off him and adjusting the strap of his gym bag on his shoulder. "I'll go back to your place while you collect Christopher from Abuela's?"

It sounded awfully domestic. Eddie didn't seem to pick up on the reasons behind Buck's uncomfortable shifting because some of the darkness in his expression cleared and he nodded, rolling his shoulders back. Buck would've sworn his eyes changed to be three shades lighter if anyone had asked.

"I'll see you at home."

And if that didn't cause weird jumping sensations in Buck's stomach while he watched Eddie walk back into the station to collect his gear, nothing would.

~TBC~