Chris's muscles shake and burn, drumming inside of her. The yoga mat underneath her sticks to her back and thigh where her clothes ride up, and slides on the hardwood every time she adjusts herself. Despite her mind's constant reminder to relax, every other part of her body is wound tight as a spring, and any thought to release it adds to her feelings of volatility.
She misses running drills with her team. Misses being in the ring with Tan and climbing against Rocker. Misses when she could kick through doors and chase actual suspects without breaking a sweat.
Now every leg raise and calf-stretch takes more energy and focus than Chris has ever needed to strip an HK or take someone down, and fury bounces in her veins.
"It's okay, Chris," Street's voice, calm like water, floats across the living room to where she's turned onto her side to lift her leg in another direction. Her fingers clench automatically, forming a fist that keeps her from snapping at him. It's not his fault.
She wants someone to blame.
Street doesn't say more. Reassurances rest on his tongue, but the set of Chris's jaw is all the warning he needs to let her feelings run through her and fizzle out unimpeded.
His heart clenches with anger, again, at the thought of the men who put her in this position.
"I'm gonna shower." He tells her, seeing her nod through gritted teeth. "Don't work too hard." He adds, throwing her a wink.
She rolls her eyes, but Chris can't help that it makes the world seem less harsh and helps her regroup, to focus on the task at hand with a better mindset. Until realization settles in her stomach about her and Street. Unfair irritation about how he gets to walk into HQ and go do what they both love while she's stuck in her apartment.
What they both love. What they have with each other. What they can't have together.
Deacon's bullshit about how she's lucky that everyone's at her arm's length comes racing back to her, her whole body tensing.
"Fuck," Chris mutters, like a knife cutting through the images in her head of the desert and Street's lips.
No bag to be found, the side of her fist connects hard with the floor.
"I'll check in, especially if anything exciting happens, I swear." Street promises. He dashes around her apartment, collecting his badge and keys, and Chris watches him with a bemused smile and the thought to text Luca that it's a miracle they make it in on time at all.
"Okay. Have a good shift." She says, as he waves and pulls her door closed.
Shaking her head, Chris closes her eyes to take in the last remnants of his energy before the air settles around her. Her mind is clearer than it was earlier, the yoga mat rolled up in the corner for tomorrow and her clean hair brushing against her neck.
When her eyes scan the shelves of books and pictures, she stops on one of her and Erika. Her memory lingers in Chris's heart, warmth and fullness having replaced the abyss of self-blame, and she wishes, not for the first time, that Erika was still there.
You'd know what to do, Chris thinks, and then lets her head hang over the arm of the couch as she lets her thoughts swirl.
She'd tell you not to be afraid to figure out a way for it to work.
Chris isn't sure where it comes from, but discomfort at the weight of the truth starts to creep into her lungs.
The sharp ring of the doorbell and turn of a key in the lock erase those thoughts, though, and she wipes any evidence of them off her face before her Aunt and Uncle see and start to question her.
"Hi, Sweetheart!" Helena says, and over the back of the couch, Chris can see grocery bags in her and Sarzo's arms. Any attempt to help them put it all away is quickly waved off.
"Rest, relax. I'm more concerned with you using it than helping organize your cabinets."
Helena comes to join Chris on the couch while Sarzo brings in another bag of groceries.
"How are you today?" She asks, eyes glued to the new scars on Chris's leg. Chris's eyes follow the line of her Aunt's until she's looking at it, too, and acceptance falls onto her shoulders.
"I'm good. PT was fine. How's Mirabel?"
"Amazing, as usual," Helena says. It makes Chris light up, smiling so wide her cheeks start to hurt, as Helena pulls out her phone and shows her pictures from Mirabel's parents' night.
"Her teacher said she's reading above her grade level and excelling in music. She's been begging me for a guitar."
"Let me ask around," Chris says. "Stevens knows someone who owns a music shop. I'll pay for lessons."
Laughing at the look in Helena's eyes, like she knows she's trapped, Chris puts a hand on her shoulder.
"If you still have your hearing after my vinyls and Tomas's trumpet and drums, you'll sleep like a baby while Mirabel plays." Helena's hand comes up to squeeze Chris's, exhaling as she cautiously agrees.
"Let me know what your coworker says. And how's Jim doing?"
The question is innocuous, but Chris feels her pulse race nonetheless. She looks to where Sarzo is putting what looks to be a box of cereal in the pantry as butterflies swarm her.
"He's fine. Why?" She asks, taking a sip of water,
Helena's watching her like a hawk, and Chris exhales slowly, letting a small, hopefully natural, smile find her face.
"Just wondering. He's been very kind to stay with you."
Nodding with her lips in a line, Chris hums. The ghost of his arms wraps around her, warming Chris from the inside out. She grabs a blanket off the back of the couch to wrap around herself instead.
"Deac's got his family, so does Hondo. Luca's… Luca."
"No," Helena disagrees, tone light. "I saw how worried he was at the hospital. He cares about you a lot. It seems like you care about him, too."
Like she's 16, a blush runs hot and fast over Chris's cheeks, and she wants to crawl under the couch cushions until Helena forgets she's there. Every one of her nerves is tingling, terrified of being found out, but also flush with relief at the thought of someone knowing, someone other than the two of them.
"He's my field partner." Chris quashes the electricity. Tamping it down for her own good, she tells herself.
"And my best friend," she says, softer. "Of course I care about him. I care about my whole team."
"But your whole team aren't your best friends?" Helena pushes. Their eyes lock on each other's, a battle of wills that Chris breaks first, hands holding onto the edges of the blanket as panic starts to knock at her chest wall.
"My whole team means a lot to me." Chris says, throwing the words out on a breathy exhalation and reaching for her crutches before Helena can get another word.
Standing, Chris sees Sarzo also looking at her, groceries put away and now leaning on the counter, and it's like her entire apartment is squeezing smaller around her.
"I know it's early," Chris gets out, catching the clock on the stove reading just past 8PM. Her mind is running faster than it can catch itself, and she starts towards her bedroom as she talks.
"I'm gonna lie down, headache. Wake me up if you need to."
Whispers follow her, no doubt Helena and Sarzo exchanging something, but Chris can't make it out over the blood rushing in her ears. The bedroom door shutting startles her, her hands grip the handholds of her crutches so her knuckles are white against the gray, and she has half a mind to lock the door to ensure nothing and no one can get in.
Exhaustion hits her before she can. Crutches against the wall, Chris sags onto her bed and squeezes a pillow to her chest, trying to rid herself of the anxiety and the fear that sits on her about others knowing how much she needs them.
But underneath, worse than the concern that she's setting herself up for heartache she can't come back from by letting herself fall further into Jim Street's magnetic orbit every day, lies a larger fear.
Losing him completely.
Losing her family completely. And her team. Everyone that she cares about, who she swore not to think about when sand and blood were getting caught in her hair and Rafa's boot took away the reality of everything except pain.
She's shoved it off. Distracted herself with anger and physical therapy and shitty television, but the face of death that Chris stared into a week ago is all she can see now.
Somehow, in the safety of her bedroom, with her family's laughter like music down the hall and a promise from Street to check in and come back safe, it's scarier now, looming larger and closer than before.
"In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight." Chris hears Street's voice from years ago. Her own shakes when she whispers the count, but her fingers relax around the pillow and finally release it from her grip a minute later when it's worked well-enough to calm her heart and remind her that she is safe.
Closing her eyes, Chris tells herself to breathe and feels the rise and fall of her lungs against the mattress. Sleep finds her.
The desert sand sits hot and gritty on Chris's skin. Salty sweat stings the new cuts courtesy of their car flipping and her body slamming against glass that broke just before she climbed over it to get out. Her leg throbs, pain shooting into her lip as she bites through it to keep herself from screaming out again.
Against all the heat pressing through her and surrounding her, the metal barrel of a gun is cool on the back of her neck. She hears Rafa taunting Deacon, and in her mind begs that Deacon will do what Chris knows she would and not say a damn thing.
All of those thoughts leave her as a foot connects with her knee. It sends her to the ground in an instant, her brain short-circuiting from pain and her body giving out easily.
They kick her from her side onto her back, Chris completely defenseless as every grain of sand scratches her. Her bound wrists offer little protection when she tries to shield her face from the blinding sun, but Rafa does that for her, stepping into her field of vision. He straddles her to trap her where he is, his boots squeezing against her ribs until she gasps.
"I hope you told your family you loved them." Rafa spits at her, eyes gleaming with joy as he lines up the shot with her heart.
She can't breathe. Not from terror. Not from acceptance.
From the inescapably loud, familiar sound of a helicopter that's kicking up sand which fills her lungs in an instant.
From the sound of a gun firing and the indescribable agony of a bullet ripping through her body.
From the face of Jim Street that she can barely make out in the distance, and how it disappears as Chris's eyes slide closed against her will and every memory and regret and person she loves flashes on her lids like a movie screen.
No. She didn't tell them she loved them. Not in the way she wanted to.
She wakes up sobbing. Hands are on her in the darkness that Chris desperately tries to shove away, not recognizing them at first even when the light flicks on because her eyes slam shut in protest.
"Chrissy, Chrissy!" Sarzo's voice snapping her eyes open, loud enough to not be mistaken, but gentle enough to not cause her any more panic.
He sits on the edge of her bed and sets an arm around Chris's shoulders as they rise and fall rapidly and Chris fights her lungs to stop hyperventilating. Her good leg bends to her chest, but all Chris feels are the immobile muscles of her right spasming as they try to break free from the brace so she can make herself smaller.
It's another reminder of what's been taken, part of her own body stripped away from her, and a groan escapes as nausea settles in.
"It's okay, you're okay." Sarzo soothes, his rough, warm hand brushing sweaty hair back from her forehead and then stroking her hair in a calming repetition.
"Here," Helena says, holding out a glass of water that Chris takes in a shaking hand, nails of the other digging into her knee.
"Thank you," she whispers, voice scratchy and throat sore. Helena and Sarzo's eyes are focused on her like lasers, but she's afraid to meet their gaze. Glass emptied, Helena sets in on the nightstand gently, wary of the thud of glass on wood.
"I'm okay," Chris tries to assure them, but the lack of movement in the room tells her they don't believe her. She doesn't know why she thought they would when she knows she's lying, too.
The bed dips further, Helena sitting next to Sarzo when Chris scooches over some to make room. His fingers have moved from Chris's forehead to her shoulder, gliding over the fabric of an old t-shirt as sweat dries on her exposed arms.
"Do you want to—" Sarzo starts, cut off quickly by Chris shaking her head forcefully, Rafa's words still playing like a broken record bouncing around her skull.
"I," Chris gets out, words catching in her throat.
"I love you. I was so scared I wasn't ever going to get to see you again. That scares me more than anything. I'm sorry I'm terrible at telling you." Chris wants to say. To throw her arms around them and thank them for being there and for always being concerned for her. To apologize for the distance she wedges between them and all the things she doesn't tell them about for a reason that she doesn't know how to discern.
"I can't do this," is what's choked out of her, breaking every part of her that it touches on the way.
"What, Chrissy?" Sarzo asks. Concern pours out of him that makes Chris feel worse, her nails cutting into her harder.
"This," she repeats, ragged and unable to elaborate as her mind runs away from her.
Accept that people love her and she loves them, but that isn't always strong enough to survive the world. Accept that knowing it's not doesn't make disengaging from it possible, and the only thing anyone can do is hold on tighter.
"Okay," Sarzo accepts, sharing a brief look with Helena as they try to decipher what she means. "That's okay."
Another shake of Chris's head signals that she doesn't agree, but it's all they can do to keep reassuring her.
"It is. You're okay, I promise."
"We're all okay, Chrissy," Helena chimes in, and it's the first thing that makes Chris feel like she can breathe again.
Until the sharp ring of her phone tears through the fear that's subsided and sends it flying.
"It's Jim," Chris hears Helena. She reaches out for the phone, eyes rising enough to see it in Helena's hand and Helena standing.
"It's okay, I've got it," Helena tells Chris, met with a groan as Chris tries again to get the device. But Helena's the one who's ambulatory, and Sarzo's arm is an extra weight keeping Chris on the bed, as comforting as it is from being constant over the past 30 some years.
Chris is just able to make out the faint "Hi, Jim," that Helena opens with before her bedroom door is softly shut again.
"You're okay. We're all okay." Sarzo says again, even and steady.
Chris knows it's a lie even if her Uncle doesn't.
hello! very long time no see in this work. i hope you enjoy this update! we're nearing the climax and i really love everything i've got going so far, so i hope you do, too! a little less street in this chapter and probably the next, but then there will be plenty. for now, chris & her fam, which we know is my jam. while this started as just an injury-recovery fic, it turned into more of a character study to an extent (although i'd love when i have the brain power to do some real deep character studies of the both of them). still pretty up and down in my life, but i do love interacting w everyone here/on tumblr (come hang out!) streakyglasses. thank everyone who continues to read and kudos/comment on everything with every new update; it's a big motivator to keep writing. really hoping at some point to get back to where i was just writing like all the time like last semester, and i appreciate everyone's support while that's not happening lol. wishing everyone the best, and Happy Lunar New Year to those celebrating! xo, A