One Heart, Two Bodies

1. I Know What I'm Without

Tim entered the Mid-Wilshire police station on a mission, so he refused to give a second thought to the officers he passed that kept staring at him. He opened the door to Grey's office, not even knocking, and marched to stand right in front of the desk.

"You shouldn't be here," Grey looked at the young sergeant with concern and sadness.

"I'm done," Tim said angrily and swallowed hard while placing his gun and badge on Grey's desk.

"You should think about this, son. You can take all the time you need..."

"I've made my decision," is all he managed to say as emotion tightened his throat, then he strutted out of the station and into his truck.

While on the road, he pulled into a liquor store and bought two cheap bottles of champagne, since that felt darkly appropriate for the occasion. Tim didn't even have to think anymore, he managed to navigate to the cemetery on memory, so before he knew it, he was standing in front of a gravestone. He took a deep breath and collapsed into the grass.

Just like every other time before, he had to read the headstone to remind him of his new reality:

Lucy Chen
1993 - 2024

"Hey, baby," he started and looked at her name etched in the stone but pictured her face. "I did it today. I, uh, I quit the LAPD. I can't protect a world that took you. I don't want to save lives when the only life I care about is yours, and now you're gone, and nothing matters any more. Nothing matters in this world without you in it...I don't even know how I'm still alive. How I'm still BREATHING without you here. If you were here, you would probably tell me to beg Grey for my job back, but if you were here, none of this would be happening, so for once, I'm right. It took you being dead for me to finally be right about something," he let out a dry laugh. Then, he scratched at the burn spanning his left arm; it didn't itch the way it used to, but its presence on his body endlessly bothered him.

"You already know what today is, and after counting down for months, I can't believe it's here. Today was supposed to be the first day of the rest of our lives. We were supposed to get married today. You were supposed to walk down the aisle and take my breath away. We were supposed to dance. I was supposed to carry you into our house at the end of the night. And it was all supposed to be the beginning. We were going to have a future," his voice broke on the last word, and he let the tears stream down his cheeks knowing he couldn't stop them anymore. "All I have now is emptiness, and god, I'm so lonely without you. And I'm so cold, Lucy. You used to warm me up more than the sun ever could, and now I just have to wear extra layers, but it doesn't help. I'm still SO cold...And the house...it's so quiet without you singing, and it all just feels so WRONG."

He popped the cork off of one of the champagne bottles and raised it in a toast to her headstone. "Cheers, Lucy, to the new chapter of my life I'm living in now. My personal hell without you." He tilted the bottle and started to drink the bubbly liquid.

Tim lost track of time as he drained the two bottles of alcohol, babbling to Lucy, since now he had to fill the silence that never existed around her. In those early days after they first met, he would wish for her to stop talking and crave quiet in the shop, but now, the silence was deafening and jarring, and he would give anything to hear her carry on about celebrity gossip or unsolved murders or ClipTalk trends or ANYTHING.

Knowing he was too drunk to get behind the wheel, he walked home. He had done it before, so the route was not unfamiliar...except for a shop he hadn't noticed before. It was almost as if it appeared overnight. There was a black awning that read "Rowena's Magic Shop" and symbols drawn on the windows. Tim remembered that he had been to this storefront before. The name was different then. When Lucy was a rookie, they arrested a man who was getting his fortune read at this spot. The fortune teller had flirted with Tim, making him nervous, but Lucy seemed amused by the exchange; she had even jested at the end of the day that he should reach out to the con artist posing as a fortune teller, and instead of entertaining her jab with a response, he simply rolled his eyes and bade her a goodnight.