CHAPTER ELEVEN: COME BACK AND HAUNT ME
song of the chapter: the scientist, coldplay

The grass is green.

It is not an astute observation. Anyone with working eyes could take a glance at the patch of grass and determine, without question, that it is green. They could note that there are daisies beginning to wilt as the summer season leaves them, the autumn leaves that coat sparse parts of the ground.

The grass may be green and the flowers may be wilting, but all Buck can see is red.

Blood.

He can see it, coating her cheek. It's pouring from her head, trailing down past her ear, making its way over her cheek and over her lips. It's a stark contrast to her pale lips, which might have been pink before they lost her. She's white, now.

Buck can't get the image out of his head.

If he closes his eyes, he can still see the very moment that he watched Indiana fall through the staircase and disappear. He can only imagine what happened when she hit the ground, what position she landed in. He wonders if she was awake to feel her bones break, or if she passed out on impact.

In the distance, somebody steps on a fallen branch, and all Buck can hear is the sickening crack of bones as a body is thrown to the floor.

He imagines what she looked like, lying on the ground as the people around him rushed to save her. Buck had tried to run into the danger, was halfway to jumping down the gaping chasm when he was pulled back and dragged off of the scene, practically kicking and screaming.

"It's a conflict of interest," Bobby had explained, his hand tight on Buck's shoulder to keep him steady. "Eddie will get her out, then Hen and Chim will make sure she gets the treatment she needs. You need to stay calm, for yourself and for Indiana."

Buck stared at him, shaking hands hanging uselessly by his sides and unsteady breaths escaping him, "How am I meant to stay calm when she's down there? With god knows how many injuries- ones that I could have prevented if I had just-"

Bobby cut him off, "Do not finish that sentence, Buck. You did your job. There is nothing more you could have done."

"I didn't check the staircase properly," Buck cried. "I told her it was fine, Bobby, and she trusted me. Then she fell."

"Buck," Bobby said firmly, in a tone that told Buck do not interrupt or argue, "Fifteen children had just come down that staircase. As far as I'm concerned, that is reason enough to believe that the staircase was sturdy enough to carry the weight of one adult woman. We don't know how or why the stairs collapsed when Indiana came down them, but I do know that it is not your fault."

Somewhere, deep in his mind, Buck knows that it wasn't his fault. He knows that he followed protocol, that he did everything right. It was a freak accident, and there was nothing he could've done to prevent it.

Freak accident or not, the consequence is the same.

Indiana is dead, and there is nothing Buck can do to bring her back.

.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．

Waking up in the hospital is the last thing anyone wants to do on a Saturday.

Saturdays are meant for lounging around. They are reserved for lunch dates, for walks in the park and mimosas at brunch. It's being awoken by sunlight peeking through the blinds, by neighbours knocking to ask for eggs, and by lovers pressing kisses to cheek.

Saturday is a day of relaxation and indulgence.

Saturday is not a day to die.

Athena has left this bedside twice in twenty-four hours. She takes phone calls with one hand, her other one occupied in the loose grasp that her cousin has on it. She dare not to let go, in fear that the moment she lets go the girls skin will turn cold. Athena is not willing to take that risk. She speaks quietly down the phone to her aunt, Indiana's mother, who is desperately trying to get the soonest flight out to Los Angeles.

She lies, and says there is plenty of time. She tells her aunt Vivienne that the accident was serious but the injuries were minor. She says that something cushioned her fall.

In reality, the only thing that cushioned Indiana's fall was her own damn body.

Two broken ribs, a shattered wrist on her left side, her right leg broke in two different places, and a ruptured lung from where one of the broken rubs pierced through it. Then, just to wrap it all up in a neat little bow, a slipped disc in her spine.

She's got enough scrapes and cuts to last her a lifetime.

Really, it should have been a long and gruelling recovery- but she would have been awake and alive.

The trouble did not come from her landing. From what the doctors could deduce from her injuries, Indiana landed on her back. That would've left her with spinal injuries, definitely some broken bones, and too many bruises to count.

Then the staircase fell on top of her.

It took seventeen minutes to extract her. Manpower is useless when you're fighting against countless bricks and an active fire around you, but they did well to get her out as quickly as they did. It was blood, sweat, and tears. The doctors say they made good timing, but looking at the girl now, Athena has no choice but to question if that is the truth.

Indiana is alive now, but using that word is stretching the definition. Alive is a pathetic explanation for her current state- unconscious, in a medically induced coma, with a hundred different tubes and lines in various places of her body.

She's not in a vegetive state, not yet. She's still got fight in her. She's never been the type of person to go down without a fight, and Athena is praying to all things holy that she does not give up now.

"There are so many things that you have to do," Athena whispers, her voice cracking, holding the girls hands between her palms in a prayer. "So many things you have to say."

The words fall on deaf ears. The only sound in the room is the beeping of ventilators and countless machines, the ones that are keeping Indiana alive, and Athena's own heavy breathing.

She feels selfish, wasting her breath on unspoken words, when her pseudo-daughter is lying in a hospital bed, getting hers through a machine.

Athena is preparing to speak again when she feels her phone buzz in her pocket, a phone call from Jasmine. She's in Indiana's house, looking after Clover. Her and Rosalie have been taking shifts, and whenever Jasmine isn't there, she's right by Indiana's bedside.

"How is she?" Jasmine asks, sounding every bit as terrified as she does every time Athena picks up the phone. "Any updates?"

"Not in the twenty minutes since you last called," Athena replies, sighing into the phone. "How's Clover doing?"

Jasmine hums noncommittally, "I think she knows something is wrong. She won't settle, she keeps wandering around the house, whining like she's in pain."

"Animals are smart," Athena tells her. "They always know when something is wrong, often before we know ourselves."

There's a knock on the room door, then. Athena turns her gaze towards the door, where her husband is standing with two coffee cups in his hand. He enters the room, extending a cup towards her. Athena accepts the cup with a soft smile, wedging the phone between her ear and her shoulder, and Bobby's now free hand lands on her shoulder and squeezes it reassuringly.

"I've got to go, Jasmine. Bobby is here."

Jasmine hums, "Call me if there's any updates on her condition. Any, Athena, even if she just twitches a finger."

"Understood," Athena promises, pulling the phone away from her ear with the two fingers not grasping her coffee cup as the call ends. She looks to Bobby, sighing softly, "Thank you, honey."

They sit in comfortable silence, watching over the sleeping girl with concern. Athena knows that watching is not going to wake her up, but the gentle, barely there rising of Indiana's chest is the only thing keeping her sane.

The breathing, as little as it may be, is reassurance that Indiana is still with them. She's coming back to them, when she's ready to take a deep breath of her own. She's going to come home when her body is ready.

It's a promise.

"Has he been to visit her yet?"

The name does not need to be spoken for Athena to know who Bobby is talking about. It is the same man who has saved her husband more times than she can count, who has a bigger heart than anyone she has ever met. It is the same man who witnessed Indiana fall through two flights of stairs and couldn't do anything about it.

Athena can't blame Buck for not visiting. She knows how hard it is to see your loved one in such a vulnerable position, knows that it will tear at your soul until there is nothing left to give.

She knows that Buck and Indiana were never actually together. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, according to Indiana, and they both got what they needed from it with no strings attached. Somehow, Athena suspects the strings got attached, anyway.

Attached, thoroughly tangled, and permanently intertwined.

Still, as naive as they may have been entering the situation, the arrangement is still theirs. It does not concern Athena, is not hers to reveal. It's not her secret to betray.

As far as everyone else is aware, Buck is a grieving boyfriend who is grappling with the potential loss of his partner, and battling with his own involvement in it.

Athena doesn't doubt that that is far from the truth.

"No," Athena responds simply. "Have you spoken with him?"

Bobby says, "Briefly. I asked him how he was, he responded 'How do you think I am?' and hung up the phone."

The response is uncharacteristically Buck. He wears his heart on his sleeve, struggles to put his emotions into words, but he always tries. Buck is not the type of person to shut himself away with his grief. He knows the family that he has standing behind him, and with the years, he has come to lean on them.

Now, Buck is alone. He is self-isolating himself, all because of a stupid deal that he and Indiana made. He doesn't want to betray himself and the promise they made to each other by revealing his true feelings for her to her, but he cannot allow people to think he is anything less to her than they know him to be.

He's playing the part of a mourning boyfriend perfectly, but he's still too early. Indiana is not dead yet, and she has a whole team of people behind her, waiting for her to wake up. Buck is grieving a death that hasn't occurred yet, and it's about damn time that somebody brought him back to earth.

"Stay with her," Athena tells her husband, standing up from her seat and heading towards the door. "I'll be right back."

Bobby doesn't say a word, he just nods in understanding and takes Athena's empty seat. That's a perk of being married, Athena thinks, always knowing what the other person is thinking.

Athena takes the hospital at twice the pace she usually walks, making a beeline for the hospital garden. She knows that Buck is there, because there is nowhere better to drown your sorrows than a flower garden. Her suspicions are proven correct when she walks into the garden and finds him, tucked away on a bench in the far corner, staring off into the distance.

Athena knows the look in his eyes. She's seen it in her husbands too many times to count.

"Get up," Athena tells him. There is no time for sympathies, no time for pacifying. Not when Indiana is flitting between life and death in a bed a few hallways away. "You should be in that room with her, Buck."

"Athena," Buck whispers, looking up at her with watering eyes. "I can't go in there, Athena. I can't see her like that."

"Why not?" Athena demands. "Because she's injured? Because you think it's your fault?"

He forces a shaky breath out of his mouth, "It is my fault. I know you're all trying to make me feel better, but you know it's my fault. You should hate me, Athena. I did this to her."

"Evan Buckley," Athena says, her tone firm and familiar. She grasps Buck's chin in her hand, forcing him to meet her eye. "The only thing you did to that girl was love her- even if you didn't tell her that. She is in that hospital bed, hurt beyond measure, but she is alive. Stop treating her as if she isn't."

"She's going to hate me," Buck insists. "If she wakes up, the last person she's going to want to see is me. It's better for everyone if I just remove myself from the equation before it gets complicated."

Athena scoffs in disbelief, "It's already complicated, Buck. How do you think it's going to look when everybody finds out that Indiana's boyfriend abandoned her when she was in a coma, huh? You think that's going to look better than you standing by her side and being there for her, in any way that you can?"

She knows Buck like she knows the back of her own hand. She knows that he will throw himself into dangerous situations like it's nothing, knows that he would walk through fire for the people he loves. She knows that he loves with an open mind and an open heart.

More than anything, Athena knows that he is sorry. It wasn't his fault, not in any way that could have been avoided, but Buck is never going to believe that. He's going to beat himself up for the rest of his life, that the blame is going to overcome him eventually.

Unless he hears the words from Indiana herself, the blame will stick to him like a second skin until his dying day. He needs to see her recover, needs to hear from her that she is okay. None of that is going to happen unless Indiana comes back to them.

Athena takes a steadying breath, resting her hand on Buck's right shoulder. Buck stares up at her, with bloodshot eyes and insurmountable guilt, and waits for her to speak. He knows, now, what he has to do. Athena knows. He just needs that reassurance, the confirmation that he's going to do the right thing this time.

"Your girlfriend is in there alone, waiting for a reason to wake back up. Be a man, Buckley, and give her one."

.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．

"Hi, sweetheart."

This is far from Buck's first time in a hospital room. He spent at least half of his youth in the emergency room, having his attention injured fixed up. Then he came to visit Maddie when she was in Boston, and their conversations took place behind the hospital curtains.

It is in a hospital room that you are at your most defenceless, but usually, you are the one laid up in the bed. Buck has been in countless hospital rooms, in a hundred hospital beds, not one of them have ever made him feel as vulnerable as he does at Indiana's bedside right now.

He clasps her bruised knuckles in his hand, running a thumb back and forth across the discoloured skin. He can't tear his eyes away from her face, scraped and bruised, with spots of dried blood still clinging beneath her bandages.

"I'm sorry," Buck whispers, uselessly, pressing kisses to her hand. "I'm so sorry, Indiana. I-I, I tried to get you out, but they wouldn't let me come near you. I'm sorry."

Apologies aren't going to get him anywhere, Buck knows that much. He can apologies until he turns blue, but it is not going to wake her up. He needs to give her a reason.

"I've been keeping something from you," Buck reveals, bringing his hand up to her face, tracing across her cheek with a finger. "I'd really like to tell you, but I can't tell you while you're sleeping."

It's a bogus excuse, telling her he's got a secret.

He wants to tell her. He wants her to know. Wants her to know that his heart is in her hands, needs her to know that he loves her with every inch of his being. He breathes for her, thinks of her all the time, wants to be wrapped up in her orbit for as long as she'll let him.

"So I need you to wake up, okay?" He says, pleading. "Wake up, and make me say it to your face. Be here, Indiana, and make me regret meeting you. Come back and hate me, if you must. Just come back."

The sky is blue. The hospital sheets are white. He feels the eyelashes beneath his palm flutter against the calloused skin of his thumb. He sees a flicker of deep brown, so quick he thinks he might've made it up. Until it happens again.

Indiana opens her eyes, and Buck can breathe.