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Tim breaks up with Lucy and then, in quick succession, gets demoted back to patrol, nearly kills a runaway teenager, and gets shot (in his vest, though he’s not sure if the correct sentiment is thank goodness or unfortunately).
But it’s not until Lucy almost dies that he’s finally torn from his loathing spiral of self-hatred.
“You need to fix this, Bradford,” Angela snaps, and he sucks in a breath as she storms out of Lucy’s hospital room and punches him in the shoulder.
Not lightly, either.
It’s not a love tap.
She’s pissed.
“She deserves better than me,” he whispers, and Angela nods her head in agreement as she punches his shoulder again.
“Yes, she does, because this version of Tim Bradford that is standing in front of me? No one deserves this. You do not deserve this.”
Tim just shrugs because yes, he does.
He deserves everything terrible that happens to him.
He deserves Lucy’s hatred, and he definitely deserved the way she’d yelled at the doctors that she didn’t want him in her hospital room.
He deserves the way she looks at him like she doesn’t know him.
He deserves the bruises on his chest from those bullets, and he deserves every consequence Grey and Pine had thrown at him.
He shouldn’t be here, though, because he doesn’t deserve her.
“I’m broken, Ang,” he murmurs, shrugging without taking his hands out of his pockets. “And I can’t bring her down with me.”
Angela stares at him, her eyes fiery and her hands clenched into fists. When she speaks her voice is dangerously low and Tim believes that, if looks could kill, he’d already be six feet under where he belongs.
“You fucked up, Tim. She loves you, okay? Desperately, she loves you. She knows how broken you are, she knows what you did all those years ago, and she loves you anyway. She was … she is willing to stand by your side as you figure this all out. But if you don’t figure it out soon, she may not be waiting when you finally realize what a colossal asshole you’ve been.”
Angela stares at him for a second longer and then turns and walks away, leaving Tim alone in the hallway, the only one not allowed in to see Lucy after she’d almost died.
He stares at her doorway for a long time, and then turns and leaves.
He doesn’t deserve her.
He doesn’t.
But he wants to.
_____________________
Tim sits in front of his new therapist (not the station psychologist, of course, because he has things he needs to say that he cannot say to someone that reports to his superiors) and doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t speak for 32 minutes.
Dr. Jane doesn’t speak, either.
She just glances up at him occasionally and doodles in her notebook as the ticking of the clock grows slowly unbearable.
“Aren’t you supposed to be trying to convince me to talk or something?” he finally snaps, his left eye twitching as the minute hand on the clock moves slowly past the 37 minute mark.
Dr. Jane shrugs as she adds a flower to the top corner of her doodle.
“You came here of your own free will, Tim. That means you want to be here. But I tried, in the beginning, to give you some sentence stems to get started. You didn’t respond to any of them because you’re not ready. So, I’ll just wait until you’re ready.”
Tim isn’t ready that day.
He stands and leaves without saying anything else, and then goes home and gets astonishingly drunk.
He takes his gun out of his gun safe and stares at it.
He knows the taste of the metal, of course.
It’s been in his mouth more than once, and he’s intimately familiar with the cool touch of metal on his tongue, the sharp tang, the press of the barrel behind his teeth.
After Afghanistan, he’d contemplated blowing his brains out at least once a day every single day for years.
Then again, after Isabel.
Now he sits on the couch, the stubble on his chin uncomfortably scratchy, his chest aching, and his eyes burning as he stares at the metal.
It would be easy.
He knows where to aim, how to make sure he doesn’t end up a vegetable in a hospital bed from a botched attempt.
It would be so fucking easy.
It would be easier than whatever this is, at least.
In the end, though, he doesn’t.
He places his gun back in the safe and locks it, and then goes back to Dr. Jane the next day.
_____________________
Tim glares at the journals lining the wall of the bookstore, their bright colors and their positive sayings fucking mocking him.
You should journal your thoughts, Dr. Jane had told him after their second session. It’s hard to talk to me in the moment. You put up these walls to protect yourself, and they’re impenetrable . So, instead, I want you to try writing your thoughts down. Write whatever you’re thinking, and we can talk about it in our next session.
Tim frowns as he remembers her words.
He’s not going to fucking journal his thoughts, who is he kidding.
He leaves the bookstore without buying anything, picks up a 12-pack of beer on his way home, and makes it about halfway through the case before he sees the letter from Genny sitting innocently on his coffee table.
A letter, he thinks, scoffing.
She lives ten minutes away from him now. Why the hell is she writing him letters?
But it gets him thinking.
He opens his seventh beer and begins writing, his fingers uncoordinated. His handwriting is messy and his thoughts messier, but it feels good.
He knows he can’t tell her these things directly, and not only because she won’t even speak to him.
He also can’t tell her because if she ever saw this letter, if she saw the words he’s pouring onto the page, he’d be too ashamed to meet her eye.
She knows what he’d done, but she doesn’t know.
Dear Lucy, he begins, and he feels like an idiot but the alcohol in his veins makes him just barely brave enough to continue.
I hate myself every single day for what I did. I wanted to prove myself, and I was reckless. I was stupid. I broke every rule in the book, and my actions got two innocent men killed. One of them had a brand new kid, you know? He’d be twelve now.
He never met his father, because of me.
I got them both killed. I am responsible for ending their lives, and no one else. And in the moment, you know, there was too much adrenaline to really process what had happened. We grieved, I was angry about it, I moved on. I made sure their wives and kids got death benefits, went to their funerals, and pushed everything down. I pushed and pushed and pushed but eventually you can’t push anymore, you know?
And when Ray called… it was like all of the force I’d pushed those memories down with exploded back up. I went blind with panic. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do anything but react. I made one bad choice and then another and another and another.
I hid it from you, which I regret.
You could have slapped some sense into me if I'd told you, maybe.
But I hid it from you, and I hurt you. I lied all those years ago, and then I lied again to Grey and Percy and everyone, and now you have to live with my lies, too.
I always prided myself on following the rules because rules matter, boot.
But it was all a lie, wasn’t it?
I’ve always been a fake, because I have no morals.
I got my men killed all of those years ago and for what? A fucking promotion?
Ray brought it all back up, and now… I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’m drowning. I’m ashamed. I hate myself for breaking every single moral code I thought I had, because without that, who am I?
Who am I, Lucy?
I don’t know. I wish I did.
I wish I was still the Tim Bradford you fell in love with.
I want to be him so badly, because he is the man who deserves your love.
Not me.
Never me.
I’ll always love you, you know. You’re it for me. But you deserve better than me, baby, because I am poison and you’re everything good in the world, and I do not deserve your light.
Yours,
Tim
He’s crying as he finishes, tears pouring down his cheeks silently.
His hand is shaking and his handwriting barely legible.
He feels like his chest has been flayed open as he stares at his shaky words, at his heart displayed on a piece of paper.
He nearly tears it into a million pieces, but he doesn’t.
He’s never going to show it to Dr. Jane, of course, but he also can’t bring himself to destroy it. So, instead, he shoves it into an envelope, writes the name of the person who will never receive it on the front, and then shoves it into his coffee table drawer before slamming it loudly.
Kojo jumps and raises his head from where he’s been sleeping in the corner of the living room, but Tim hushes him as he rearranges himself on the couch, too drunk and tired to even move into the bedroom.
“Shh, boy. It’s fine,” he slurs.
Nothing’s fine, he thinks, and he falls into a fitful sleep, plagued with dreams of the past, present, and future, his demons haunting him even as he slumbers.
_____________________
He never shows Dr. Jane the letter, but their next session is easier.
He’s able to open up, just a little bit.
“I wrote her a letter,” he murmurs, and he sees Dr. Jane perk up at his admission.
“Lucy?”
He’s told her about Lucy, of course, because she’s in every single one of his thoughts. She plagues his mind, always there, always taunting him because he can’t have her.
He’s told Dr. Jane about what he did, about lying on the after-action reports, about what happened with Ray, about how he lied to IA.
He’s never been more thankful for doctor/patient confidentiality than he is right now.
But he also told her about Lucy — about their relationship, about their history.
About how he broke up with her.
About how he hurt her.
About how he doesn’t deserve her.
“Yeah,” he whispers, shrugging. “I was drunk and feeling maudlin, and so I wrote her a letter. Didn’t send it, but… it helped.”
Dr. Jane makes one of her soft hmmmming noises, and Tim grips the armrests of his chair tightly.
“What do you think she’d do, if she read it?”
Tim thinks about Lucy reading his letter and nearly vomits.
He’s ashamed.
He’s ashamed of who he is, who he was.
He’s ashamed of the lies, the secrets.
He’s ashamed of dragging her down with him, because she has to lie to everyone she works with for the rest of her life if he wants to keep his job.
He saddled her with that weight, and he hates himself.
“No,” he says, shaking his head.
He won’t even entertain the thought of her reading it.
Dr. Jane doesn’t fight him.
_____________________
He writes a second letter the following week, after Lucy’s first day back on patrol after nearly dying.
My love, he begins, and he feels silly writing the words but that’s what she is to him.
His greatest, final love.
I’m in therapy now. I know it’s too little too late, but Dr. Jane is helping me process through… everything. She’s… she’s okay, for a therapist. A little too fond of long pauses and asking me how I’m feeling, but it’s... Helping? I think?
I should have started this years ago.
After what happened.
I should have told the truth to begin with, actually, if we’re going all the way back. I should have admitted that what I did was wrong and taken my licks. But the lies have piled so far up, I don’t even know if I can unravel them now.
If I tell the truth, my career is over.
Angela’s too.
Yours.
And while I don’t care about my own life, I care about yours and hers. I can’t allow your life to be ruined by my mistakes.
So instead I sit in this web of lies, drowning in the knowledge that I did this to myself.
I don’t know how I’m going to pull myself out of this darkness, Lucy.
I don’t even know if I want to.
Is Tim Bradford a man even worth saving anymore?
I think I was, once. I was a scared, beaten kid. I deserved saving, then.
But now?
Would it be easier for everyone if I just disappeared?
I think about it a lot. I think about just ending it all. I think it would be easier — for me, of course, but also for you. You still have to see me every day and remember how I lied and kept secrets from you, how I pretended to be someone I’m not and never have been. You can never forget because I’m always there, reminding you.
But if I were gone?
Eventually you’d wake up one day and you’d go to bed that same night and you wouldn’t have thought about me once.
And then maybe it’d be a week without thinking about me, and then longer.
Removing myself from the equation would be best for everyone.
But I’m selfish and I want to see you every day.
I need to see you every day.
I love you, baby, and even though I know my love isn’t enough, I cling to it like a life raft at sea.
I think I’d just drown if it weren’t for you.
Yours,
Tim
_____________________
Lucy goes undercover (a short operation, he’d told) and Tim finally breaks down in Dr. Jane’s office.
He doesn’t cry so much as throw a lot of stuff and scream, but Dr. Jane doesn’t look scared.
She knows that he won’t hurt her, and she’ll make him pay for everything he breaks.
In the end, though, it’s her who hurts him.
“When you broke up with Lucy,” she begins, and Tim already knows he’s not going to like the question.
He almost bolts, but he doesn’t.
Instead he waits, hands clenched into fists, for Dr. Jane to finish.
(It’s not a question, though; it’s a statement, and it’s somehow so much worse than he’d expected).
“When you broke up with her, Tim, you didn’t let her decide if she thought you were worth loving. You decided for both of you.”
It’s not worth the risk, she’d said, and he’d been too blind then to realize that she was trying to protect her own fragile heart from him.
Maybe because, in some way, she’d always known he’d break her heart.
Unless it is.
He’d decided for them then, too.
He leaves therapy feeling like shit.
_____________________
My love,
I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry.
I’m so broken.
I’m so ashamed of who I am, of who I’ve always been deep down.
Maybe you could always see it in me, I don’t know.
I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.
How do I learn to live with the lies? How do I live this half-truth? Do I tell Grey and Percy everything? I almost want to, just to get this weight off of my shoulders, but I can’t.
Because of you.
Because I got you tangled up in all of this, too.
Dr. Jane says I have to make a decision.
She says I either have to come clean, or move on.
It seems so easy in theory.
But coming clean ruins a lot of lives.
Mine, yours, Angela’s.
Moving on only ruins mine.
So, I guess I’ll move on.
I’m already ruined, anyway.
Yours,
Tim
_____________________
Tim eventually begins to heal.
Slowly, in stops and starts.
Two steps forward, three steps back.
Dr. Jane helps him realize that who he was doesn’t have to be who he is, that the decisions he made when he was 25 years old don’t have to ruin the rest of his life.
“Everyone makes mistakes, Tim,” she says.
Tim laughs, running a hand over the ever-present stubble on his jaw. “Most people’s mistakes don’t kill two people.”
She’d sgrees, but pushes on.
“You can choose to survive, or you can choose to live, Tim. Your men — they can’t forgive you.”
“Because they’re dead,” Tim deadpans.
Dr. Jane nods slowly. “Yes. But Tim, you can forgive yourself. You have to forgive yourself, if you’re ever going to live again. You can spend the rest of your life as a miserable shell of a man, or you can forgive yourself and spend the rest of your life trying to do better in their honor.”
Tim goes home without deciding, because while he wants to live, he doesn’t know if he deserves to.
_____________________
He continues writing his letters to Lucy over the next several months.
He writes one when Lucy comes back from her undercover operation, bruised and bleeding but triumphant.
My love,
You are so amazing.
I want to deserve you, some day.
I want that so much.
I don’t know if I ever will, but Dr. Jane basically told me today that I have two choices. I can either give into self hatred and spend the rest of my life hating myself, or… or I can try and forgive myself and become the man Coin and Henderson thought I was.
The man you thought I was.
I want to be that man.
I want to be him so badly, Lucy. And not because I want you to take me back — though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that. I want to be that man because he’s good, and I want to be good.
I want to be someone worth the effort.
I don’t expect anything. I know I’ve ruined my chance with you.
But I want to be someone you’d be proud of, anyway.
Yours,
Tim
_____________________
He writes her a letter after she takes down a fucking third drug cartel and finally earns what she’d been owed a long time ago — her detective stripes.
He’s so fucking proud of her that every bone in his body aches with it.
He’d said as much and she’d smiled, and he’d felt like everything was right with the world for the first time in over six months.
My love,
You smiled at me today.
I miss that.
I miss your smiles.
Your touches.
Your hugs.
Your body against mine.
Your love.
I miss you, Luce.
I have never stopped loving you.
I will never stop loving you.
I loved seeing you smile — I’m glad you’re happy.
Even if it’s without me.
Yours,
Tim
_____________________
He writes another a month later, after he sees her walking through the station with Noah.
Smiling.
Laughing.
She’s been happier, lately. More happy than she’d been in a while.
His chest aches, but he’d known this was coming.
My love,
I know you’re not my love anymore. And that’s okay. It’s my fault — I made a choice for you, for us, and even though I’m slowly healing now, it doesn’t mean that you owe me anything.
I hope he makes you happy.
I hope he’s worth the effort.
I love you, now and always.
Yours,
Tim
_____________________
The pile of letters is so large now that it barely fits in the coffee table. Tim considers moving them, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
(He should have).
_____________________
He writes one more before everything comes crashing down.
Lucy, he begins, because she’s not his anymore and he needs to start accepting that fact.
I’m not healed, not by a long shot. But I’m finally at a point where I can own my mistakes.
Not involving you was a mistake.
Lying to you was a mistake.
Keeping you in the dark.
Not contacting you.
Trying to protect you when you didn’t need to be protected.
All mistakes.
But the biggest of all?
The one I regret the most?
Breaking up with you.
Because I may not have been the man you deserved, and I’m probably still not… but I think I can be again, one day.
I can be the Tim Bradford you fell in love with.
But I know I’ll never know, because I made the worst mistake of my life.
I pushed you away.
I hurt you.
I thought I was doing what was best for you, but in the end, I only broke your heart.
I’m so sorry, Luce.
You’ll never know how sorry I am.
But if the universe ever saw it fit to give me another chance, I’d start from the beginning.
I’d ask you to dinner. I’d hold your hand and kiss you goodnight. I’d tell you how pretty you look, how beautiful your smile is.
I’d shower you in gifts.
I’d hold you.
I’d tell you I loved you every single morning and every single night.
I’d tell you every truth, always, even the hard ones.
Even the shameful ones.
Even the selfish ones.
I’d fight with you.
For you.
I’d love you until your dying breath.
But who am I kidding?
Even if the universe never lets me atone for my mistakes, I’ll love you anyway. You’re the last woman I’ll ever love.
Lucy.
My love.
My light.
My life.
I love you.
I love you.
I fucking love you.
Yours,
Tim
_____________________
He and Lucy slowly reach a point where they talk sometimes, and he wouldn’t have asked her but he doesn’t have another choice. He’s stuck at work and someone needs to walk Kojo, and he knows Lucy would love to see the dog, anyway.
She jumps at the chance and takes his keys when he throws them to her.
He finishes his paperwork and drives home, expecting Lucy to already be gone.
But she’s not.
She’s not.
He opens the door, sucking in a breath when he realizes her scent has premeditated his entire house from one afternoon.
He misses this.
God, but he misses this.
Kojo barks and runs to him, and Tim leans down to scratch behind his ears, taking a few precious seconds to pull himself together before facing Lucy.
“Lucy?” he murmurs, a frown tugging on his lips when he realizes he hasn’t heard her or seen her.
The house is silent.
Eerily silent.
“Luce?”
Kojo trots after him as he walks through the entryway and into the living room, and though the dog has no qualms about walking right up to Lucy and plopping his head in her lap, Tim freezes in place because oh fucking hell no—
“Lucy,” he whispers again, but this time his voice is broken.
Fucking shattered.
He’s torn open, his heart beating outside of his chest, his deepest thoughts and darkest secrets on display as she reads the letters.
Her letters.
Oh god no.
She glances up and there are tears in her eyes, and Tim hates himself in a way he hasn’t for several months because he put them there.
She’s all the way through the pile, the final letter in her shaking hand.
I love you.
I love you.
I fucking love you.
“Tim.”
Her voice shakes, and Tim swallows hard as he takes an aborted step forward, his hand outstretched as if he can tear the letter from her hand, his words from her brain.
Neither of them speak for a long time.
Lucy sits there, perched on his coffee table, the letters splayed out on the table around her, his shame and his darkest thoughts on display.
“They had my name on them,” she whispers, as if she’s afraid he’s going to be mad that she opened them.
Tim swallows again, nodding as he takes another step forward.
There’s still an impassable chasm between them, but he feels drawn to her.
“They’re yours,” he confirms, because even though he’d never meant for her to see them, they’re hers.
Just like he is.
She sniffles and wipes at her eyes, and Tim hates that he’s made her cry.
Again.
“Is it… are they…?”
She trails off, unable to finish her sentence.
But it doesn’t matter what her question is.
The answer is the same.
Tim nods.
“Yes,” he answers. “Yes.”
Lucy nods and stands, the letter still clasped in her hands, and Tim steels himself against the pain he knows is coming.
This is it.
This is the end.
The end of everything, including the friendship they could have maybe one day had.
“I am so sorry for everything,” he whispers, his words torn from his throat and his heart because if this is it, he needs her to know.
To hear it from him and not just from a letter.
Lucy nods again, and takes another step closer.
Tim continues talking, because his brain-to-mouth filter seems to have taken an impromptu and frankly very rude vacation.
“I am sorry for pushing you away, and for hurting you and lying to you and —”
Lucy reaches him and presses a finger to her lips. She holds up the letter she still hasn’t put down, the final one he’d written to her.
She doesn’t say anything, but Tim nods anyway.
“It’s all true,” he whispers, his voice hoarse and his eyes wet with unshed tears. “I will always love you, Lucy. What I did to you — to us — will always be my greatest regret.”
Lucy nods again.
Slowly, her eyes never leaving his.
Blue and brown.
An inch of space between them.
Tim keeps talking because she’s not.
“I’m in therapy. It’s helping. I’ve… I’ve grown a lot. I’m not … I’m not who I want to be just yet, but I will be, Lucy. I will be the man you think I am— the good man you fell in love with — one day.”
“Oh, Tim,” she whispers, and she shakes her head as a single tear finally trails down her cheek. “You already are.”
Tim nods, once, and then fucking collapses, his entire body shrinking down until he fits in Lucy’s arms, his head tucked into the crook of her neck. He breathes her in and greedily memorizes everywhere they’re touching, desperate for every piece of her he can catalog before she’s gone.
How she holds the back of his head.
Her soft words in his ear.
Her breath against his skin.
Her heart beating against his, in time with his.
He memorizes every touch, every scent, as he cries and allows her to hold him.
“Do you forgive me?” he finally asks, and he’s prepared for the answer to be no but then again, Lucy has always been a better person than him.
“Yes,” she whispers, and she’s smiling when he finally pulls away, his head aching with how hard he’s cried. He sniffles and wipes at his face, averting his gaze from Lucy’s.
He doesn’t know where to go from here.
What to say.
Lucy does, though.
“If the universe saw it fit to give you another chance…” she murmurs, and Tim’s heart races as he listens to her words, hope blooming so large and loud in his chest that he can’t breathe.
“Lucy,” he whispers, but she shakes her head, pausing him with a finger on his lips again.
She’s still crying, too, and he knows they have a lot more to talk about.
He has a lot more to apologize for.
He has groveling to do, too, and whether she requires it or not, he’s going to.
He’s going to fucking shower her in love and apologies.
“I never stopped loving you, either, you big goofball,” she murmurs, and Tim’s nodding and crying at the same time, his large hand cupping her cheek.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, his voice wet and his heart beating out of his chest.
Lucy nods and Tim sucks in a breath, knowing that there’s no coming back from this.
No moving on from her.
As if he'd ever want to.
He presses his lips to hers, and he’s home.
fin.