Work Text:
Green was the colour of peace.
Peace. Wealth. Health.
Life.
He loved her in green.
(He loved her in any colour, but especially in green.)
She’d worn a green belt around her wedding dress, and he hadn’t even noticed until Angela sidled up to him, champagne softened, and pointed it out. They’d shopped together for it, searched high and low to find exactly what she was looking for, checked every store from Rodeo Drive to the Santee Alley. It was Lyla who’d found the perfect piece of material, recycling thrifted garments into trendy fashion and disassembling an eighties bridesmaid dress into threads and ribbons.
She’d worn it in her hair the next day, weaving it through a braid that crowned her head - more exquisite than diamonds; queen of his heart.
He’d brought her fresh flowers, as often as he remembered, and she’d moved the vases from surface to surface, pointedly remarking how bright the colours were in the clean but sterile surrounds of his house.
Of course he’d let her paint.
Anywhere she wanted, any colours she wished. Bright yellow and deep blue and forest green. Masking tape evolving into golden streaks of sunshine, splitting the colours into a rioting kaleidoscope on carefully chosen feature walls.
It quickly became ‘their house’.
Their home.
An extension for Tamara. A crate for their yoga mats. Little Buddhas and succulents and candles - candles everywhere. Tealights and pillars and votives; organic or scented or tapered or wood-wicked. He was forever chasing flickering flames, dutifully blowing out the sparks in hurried puffs before following her laughter into their bedroom.
Then, one day, there were no more flames.
A week - less - awash with unwanted candles and bouquets of flowers, and then…
Gone.
Forever.
He’d placed himself beside one tall candle (a year’s worth of wax in the normal run of things - more like a couple of months if she’d had access to it) and behind a small avalanche of wreaths, and he hadn’t moved for hours.
The mourners poured through the room like an endless river of despair.
It was Nolan, of all people, that had kept him upright. Fending off the few sympathisers who tried to breach his floral barricade with an unassuming nod and a handshake, and guiding them past the casket and down the line of friends and family. Rounding the barrier and steadying his shoulder with a quiet hand when his breath started to shake or his body started to tilt. Passing him cups of water throughout the day without ever making eye-contact.
He didn’t remember the service.
Grey spoke for him. Genny too.
He never said a word.
What was there left to say?
The end of the world had come - the end of his world - and despite everything in his life up until that point, he still hadn’t been prepared.
The burial was burned into his mind, flashbulb moments in a misty cemetery.
A black-clad crowd, huddled together like a murder of crows.
The minister shrouded beneath a dark umbrella.
One giant, gaping hole in the clay at his feet. Far too big. Far too long.
Her casket - bamboo woven and speckled with mushroom spores. Her choice. She would sink into the soil and it would embrace her, tenderly entwining her molecules with seeds and roots until she dissolved beyond her mortal limits and became one with the earth.
Beyond his reach.
Evergreen.
The others had taken turns staying over with him. With Tamara. She’d wept and wept in his arms, and he’d had nothing to say to console her. Bailey had taken the lead on finding something to send them to sleep, dosing them methodically and packing them off to bed. Instructions listed and left for whoever was to guard them the next night, and the next.
James played smooth hip-hop low on the living room speaker all night long.
Wesley read, a pile of thick books gathering in the corner beside Kojo’s bed.
Nyla had a games console, the whirrs and ticks of the sound effects punctuating the dark.
Genny brought the boys, all three camping out on the floor in front of the TV screen, her hands looped tenderly into the hair of one and the elbow of the other.
Angela sat in silence, staring into space. Occasionally lifting her phone and scrolling through her photos. Sniffing quietly into a tissue as the reels went on.
Nolan had eventually offered to take Kojo; given him the run of his spacious backyard.
Tamara had gathered her things and folded herself into the embrace of her friends, whittering and fluttering around her like a flock of protective doves as they packed her up and drove her back to college.
And he was alone.
He’d tried to go back to the station, managed three whole days of re-immersive Patrol before it was all too much.
She was everywhere, there.
Her coffee mug clinking in the breakroom. Her fingers clattering over keys in the bullpen. Her pen scratching on paper at the intake desk. Her keys rattling in the locks of the cells.
Her voice, her laughter, her breath, her scent all over his office and the briefing room and in every single god damn shop they offered him.
Pine had agreed to a transfer. ‘Compassionate grounds’. Offered him Hollywood, and when he’d baulked, swapped him out with a willing officer from Central Division.
It was busy there. Probably even more so than Mid-Wilshire. Train lines and homeless camps and tourist traps. Celebrities and low-lifes constantly shoulder to shoulder. He clocked up enough overtime to worry the Captain, and grimly pleaded his case when she’d suggested therapy instead. She’d given in and let him have his way.
Angela visited, routing her cases out of her grid to check in on him from time to time. He could see the calculating look in her eyes, her thoughts flashing back to his years after Isabel.
This was different, though.
He knew it, and she could see it too, and he knew it frightened her more than his past rage.
He was cold now. Removed. Closed-off and stiff and monosyllabic, at best.
Something in him sparked a new fear in his suspects, their defiance withering away at his silent stoicism. Arrests were quick and clean, for the most part, and he never engaged in verbal sparring or articulate arguments anymore.
His team respected him, but kept their distance. Greeted him in the mornings, saluted him at night. Offered perfunctory invitations to social gatherings that he would never attend.
His locker and office were grey. Bare surfaces and the rudiments of his supplies. No notes, no stickers, no photos.
No boots - only his own.
Objects were one thing - easy to cut out and discard and ignore. People were more difficult. Angela and Genny were persistent, sending Nolan and Nyla to Good Cop/Bad Cop him when he refused their approaches. Tamara sent voice notes or video calls at college-kid hours, which, predictably, lined up with his own. Wesley and James tried to badger him into guy’s nights out. Grey cornered him at work and sat him down for a stern talking-to.
But, eventually, his detachment wore them out, and they stopped calling. Stopped messaging. Stopped dropping by.
Bailey stopped sending clips and pictures of Kojo.
Tamara stopped spending weekends at the house.
Genny and, finally, Angela gave up and stopped appearing on his beat or in his office or at his door.
And he was alone.
Completely alone.
Lost, without her.
Their house grew dim, dust gathering in the corners and on the statues. The plants died out, withered bouquets first, then his fern, and at last, her tiny little succulents. The air grew stale, the rooms unlived in and unloved. No candles lit to drive away the small ghosts that clung to the furniture and the dark recesses of the hallway.
It was a tomb, a mausoleum to her memory, haunted each day by his living shadow.
But there was nothing alive here now.
Only on her grave, where he knelt in the soft earth and dug his fingers into the clay below him, was there any life.
Jasmine and lavender.
Warmed in the sunlight and sparkling with moonstone-bright droplets from the sprinklers.
This was the only place he could breath, could feel his heart trip into tangible rhythm.
And he breathed deep.
Jasmine and lavender.
Lush and vital and thriving over her final resting place. Petals smiling up at him with gleaming white teeth.
They know.
Tim is the one who died that day, his soul ripped out and buried there in the ground with her.
But Lucy…
Lucy is evergreen.