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Everything moves in stops and starts.
Sometimes she’ll blink and be in a different room, different minute, different hour. Other times, every second feels like a thick tar she can’t wade through.
They’re home now—Lucy knows that much. She can make out the familiar walls whenever the memories stop flickering in front of her eyes.
All the same, her panicked breaths echo off the walls of the tunnel. Pain blooms in her forehead as the assailant slams her head against the metal grating over, and over, and over.
“Tea’s ready.”
Their living room materialises through the fog, the low, warm lights oddly jarring in contrast to the cold blue memory. Tim’s right there, pressing a mug into her hands. It should feel warm. Maybe it does.
“Thank you.” It doesn’t come out much louder than a whisper, the memories deafening. Tim hears her anyway.
“Yeah.”
He presses a hand to her shoulder, and it ghosts down her arm. Instead of being grounding, though, the touch just feels foreign. Strange. Like her body isn’t quite hers, like it’s distancing itself from a comfort she can’t accept.
“You ready for bed?”
Her brain fills in the gaps on autopilot, muscle memory taking over from every other night he’s asked that same question. “Yeah.”
But this isn’t just another night.
It’s not until Tim starts to move that Lucy comes back to herself slightly, and realises that she can’t—not yet. Going to bed means a night of staring at the ceiling, watching the face of the man she killed looming over her. She’s not ready.
“Come on,” Tim murmurs, but—
“No—” Her lips finally catch up with her mind, and the love and concern in Tim’s eyes almost feels suffocating. She can’t hold eye contact, tearing her eyes away to stare at a spot just past his shoulder. “I… I think I’m just gonna stay up for a little bit.”
Tim nods. “Alright.”
She’s just grateful he doesn’t push to stay and keep her company. Justified as it may be, the weight of his worry feels like more than she can carry right now.
He turns to leave, but comes right back before Lucy’s moved a muscle. “You know—listen,” he says, “Celina’s right.”
Lucy’s mind brings up nothing but static. What did Celina say?
“It’s going to be okay.”
The memory of the tunnel flickers back into view, and she thinks she vaguely remembers something like that echoing off the walls, but it’s foggy. All she could focus on was the body, the one she’d pushed aside when the dead weight had collapsed on top of her.
She nods all the same, because she feels like she should. “I know.”
And maybe some part of her does know; because it can’t feel like this forever.
God, it can’t.
How does anyone ever survive this?
When Tim presses a kiss to her forehead, Lucy’s reminded of the fact that he’s survived this. More than once. She just wonders if she’s strong enough to do the same.
He pulls away.
“I’ll be in in a bit,” she says, even if she doesn’t know how true it is—time is skipping like a broken record.
Tim acknowledges the hollow promise with a soft murmur Lucy doesn’t quite catch as he leaves. His footsteps retreat into their bedroom, the door closing with a soft, familiar snick.
As she stands there, alone in the low light and silence, the mug in her hands feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. The clink it makes on the coffee table as she sets it down sounds like the knife hitting the metal grating, and it’s all too easy to end up back in the tunnel as she folds herself onto the couch.
Her mental playback skips through the ambush. A blur of limbs and sounds and pain and echoes, right up until she was pinned down. The dim lighting had glinted off the knife as the man had fought to drive it into her throat.
Lucy had just… reacted.
His weight went slack, brown eyes dulled.
And all of a sudden, it wasn’t a zombie looming over her, a feral threat to her life that she had to stop.
He was just Martin.
An innocent man who’d clocked in for work one day and never made it back home.
As the realisation slams into her, the glass wall she’s been stuck behind finally shatters, and the emotions Lucy’s felt distant from since they left that tunnel come flooding in.
She can’t stop shaking as the tears overwhelm her, tremors rattling her foundations.
Martin’s face materialises every time she blinks, his uncontrolled rage snapping to a cold, vacant stare as she’d driven the knife into his chest.
Maybe he had a family. A wife, a child. Friends. Parents. Siblings. People that loved him.
He was exposed to a toxic combination of chemicals and got turned into something he wasn’t—and she killed him for it. It feels like his ghost is already haunting her, his presence taking up space in their living room.
The memory plays on a loop. Over, and over, and over.
The echoing silence; the ambush; the pain blooming as she’d hit the ground.
Over, and over, and over.
It starts to play in the wrong order.
She hits the ground. Martin’s dead, his eyes empty. Her head is slamming into the grating. She’s driving the knife into his chest. She’s going to die. Tim’s there, arm outstretched, concern masked behind a wall of procedure. The knife clatters to the ground. She’s pinned down. Martin’s blood is on her hands. Someone catches her off-guard, launches at her from behind. Martin’s dead. She’s going to die. He’s about to put the knife through her throat. She’s crouched, staring at his body.
She’s going to die.
The silence swallows her whole.
Over, and over, and over.
A hand lands on her knee. Lucy jolts upright, pushing herself back as she flinches.
“Sorry, sorry…”
It’s Tim, his eyes riddled with guilt.
The tunnel winks out of existence. She’s back in their living room. Home.
Salt is drying on her cheeks, and she swipes at her face with the sleeves of Tim’s hoodie, her heart racing.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I just… it’s getting late.”
Is it?
She nods like she already knew.
“You’ll feel better after some sleep.”
Lucy’s pretty sure Nolan had said that, too. It doesn’t exactly feel like the truth—not when she ends up staring down that tunnel every time she blinks; not when Martin’s ghost seems to linger in every shadow.
When Tim pulls away, making room for her to stand, the memory of his hand on her knee lingers, some semblance of comfort beginning to curl in at the edges of her awareness. Her eyes catch on the mug she’d left on the coffee table as her feet make contact with the rug. The steam is long gone, a ring of condensation forming at the base.
Tim follows her line of sight. “Want me to make you another one?”
She shakes her head weakly, reaching over to curl her hand around the mug and take a sip. It’s stone-cold, no longer something to provide warmth and superficial comfort. Now, it’s just a passing necessity so she doesn’t choke on her own guilt.
When she finally stands, Lucy feels like she could drop again. Everything spins—the tunnel warps around her, reflections of cold, dim light seeping in through the shadows—but, just as quick, Tim’s hand is wrapping around her arm. For the first time in hours, she lets herself lean into him as he keeps her upright.
They’re in the bedroom with her next blink.
Time’s still doing funny things.
She doesn’t have the energy to change, and Tim must sense it. Wordlessly, he pulls the covers back on her side of the bed, and she just stares.
Sleep. It sounds like a punishment.
Lie there. Play it all back. Let your mind convince you it’s real until you wake up screaming.
A hand on the small of her back guides her into bed. Her body protests as the pain flares through her, the memory of every blow and sound and impact reverberating through her bones as she tries to settle.
After replacing the covers over her, Tim hits the overhead lights—but leaves on one of the lamps in the corner, just for tonight—and climbs in beside her. If she pretends today didn’t happen, this could almost be normal; the two of them seeking each other out in the quiet peace of their home after a difficult day.
And Lucy fucking hates it.
She doesn’t deserve normal.
Martin deserved to make it home.
She doesn’t notice the sob until it’s broken free, scrunching her eyes shut against the tears already spilling out down her temples.
“Hey,” Tim murmurs. She can feel his hand hovering over her waist, like he’s not sure if he should touch her.
The guilt feels like it’s drowning her; wave after wave after wave of black tar pulling her further under with every sob. Every burst of pain that follows reminds her of the seconds that had passed in that tunnel.
Without thinking about it, Lucy curls towards Tim, ignoring the way her body screams in pain. She doesn’t quite close the gap, unsure of what exactly she wants right now. She wants to be alone, to sit in this agony that she brought upon herself—she feels like that’s what she deserves—, but she’s also terrified at the very thought.
Tim freezes for a second, surprised, before making the decision for her.
“I’ve got you,” he promises, bridging the space between them as he pulls her in, his chin resting atop her hair as he wraps his arms around her.
But she can’t escape the thought that the hands gripping the fabric of his shirt have blood on them.
“I—I killed him,” she chokes out, swallowing another sob.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Tim whispers, arms pulling her closer into his chest.
Lucy wants to resist it. All of it. The love, the comfort, the words of reassurance—every scrap of safety she can’t comprehend ever deserving in the wake of what she did.
The lump in her throat tries to claw her words back, but she needs to say them out loud. Needs to hear her voice carry her guilt into the corners of their bedroom.
“It wasn’t his, either.”
She feels the way Tim’s chest hitches at that as another sob escapes her, her tears now soaking into his shirt.
That’s the truth though, isn’t it? Martin was a human being. He wasn’t even a criminal by choice—she killed an innocent man.
“No,” Tim agrees, voice low. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
The image of Martin’s dimmed eyes flickers behind her eyelids. She can still see the life leaving him.
“I’m the one that did it.”
Tim doesn’t even hesitate. “You were defending yourself.”
Ignoring the way the concussion makes everything warp, Lucy shakes her head to reject the notion—because she can’t let herself off the hook like that, there’s always another way—but Tim’s already continuing.
“No—listen.” Even low and soft, his voice takes on a firm edge that breaks through the fog. “You were concussed. Terrified. Pinned down. He had the upper hand, and if you hadn’t done what you did, you’d be the dead one, and Lucy, I—”
Tim’s voice cracks, and he stops as the words dissolve. His chest rumbles with the weight of the slow, quivering breath he takes in, and Lucy curls herself into him tighter for both their sakes.
When he speaks again after a few quiet moments, the words come out slightly watery. “You’re going through hell, I know. Trust me, I do.” She does trust him; he does know. “And this… this was a winless fight. But believe me when I tell you that I’d take this outcome a thousand times over the one where you didn’t come home.”
Lucy swallows, trying to grasp the words she’s looking for somewhere in the clearing fog. “I’m not…” The breath she fights to take in is unsteady, another tear slipping down her cheek. “I’m not convinced I did come home.”
It’s hard to feel like she ever left that tunnel when every blink takes her back, the world warping even when her eyes are wide open. There are moments she feels like this is all a hallucination, like any second she’ll end up back there, staring down at the life she took.
She feels Tim’s sigh against her hair before he presses a kiss atop her head. The familiar sensation pulls her a little more back into reality, her heartrate slowing behind her ribcage.
“I know,” he whispers, pulling his arms tighter around her. Still gentle, always an anchor. “But you will. We’ll get through this; I promise.”
She doesn’t know if she believes that yet. She wants to. In the daylight, after some sleep, maybe. Tim Bradford always keeps his promises.
Right now, Lucy just needs him to hold her through the nightmares, shielding her from the shadows. She knows he will.