twenty
"her first lost"

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trigger warning; mentions of suicide

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"OKAY, SO WE HAVE A suicide call for a woman in this apartment."

Lynn gazed up from staring at her feet, and her eyes met with a tall apartment building that had at least ten floors. The crew had just arrived on scene, and were scrambling to see if this suicider was on a balcony, so she could jump to her death. But it didn't seem like anyone was outside, which made sense since it felt like one hundred degrees.

"Dispatch just rolled out that it's apartment 4C, let's go," Bobby spoke up again, looking at each of his individual firefighters. "Hen and Chimney, stay down here and alert us if you see her on the balcony, Buck, Lynn, you're with me."

The now smaller team, slowly and carefully, skipped their way up the many floors between them and the suicider. Lynn was bubbling with nervousness, since this was one of her first suicides where she would actually be on scene, and not just from a distance.

As they finally arrived at the apartment, Lynn let out the smallest of sighs as she wasn't exactly sure what to expect.

"Lynn, I want you to talk to her," Bobby instructed, and Lynn glanced up with shock and disbelief written on her face.

"Wait, Cap, why me?" Lynn questioned, her eyes switching from him over towards the door.

"Dispatch said the woman is around your age, the last thing she needs is an old man or a playboy trying to talk to her," Bobby replied, earning almost a glare from Buck with attitude.

"I'm not a playboy, anymore," Buck corrected, making Bobby roll his eyes, but he ignored the boy and turned back to Lynn.

"You've got this, I know you do."

Lynn met eye contact with Bobby, and felt the tiniest bit better knowing there was only truth hidden away in his eyes. But Buck still saw how nervous the girl was, so he reached forward to grip ahold of her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze and supportive smile.

"I know you can do this, Eve," Buck stated, but once he realized that Bobby was staring at the two of them, he quickly pulled away.

Lynn sucked in a deep breath, and then let it exhale while she rose her small knuckles to pound on the door softly.

"Hello? This is Evelynn Kennedy, I'm with the LAFD," Lynn yelled, not in a harsh way but more gentle where the woman in distress could still hear her. When she heard no response, she slowly turned the doorknob, and she recognized it was unlocked. "I'm stepping inside, but just me, okay?"

Lynn pushed the door open, nice and slow just so she wouldn't alarm the woman. When she fully stepped in, she started to shut the door behind her, but was interrupted when she felt a shoe stop the door; just in case.

Lynn's eyes fell on a small, brunette woman in wet tears, where she was curled up in a ball while sitting on a grey futon. Her cheeks were stained red, and she looked like she had been crying for awhile. She looked broken, like she'd given up.

The apartment was dark, like all the curtains were pulled to keep all her shining light out. There were several beer cans, along with empty fast food restaurant bags, and it smelled as if the last time she had cleaned the place was the ice age. But putting aside everything wrong with the place, she glanced back at the woman, and that was when Lynn focused on a black handgun in her hand.

"Cap, gun," Lynn responded into the radio, as silent as could be so she wouldn't upset the woman.

As Lynn took careful steps forward towards the woman, Buck's body went rigid when he heard her mention a gun. Why was he all of the sudden so concerned that Lynn was in possible danger?

"Hi, I'm Evelynn, but you can call me Lynn," Lynn spoke up gently, cutting through the defeaning silence with a knife. "What's your name?"

"S-Stay back!" The woman shouted, and where the gun was just pointed at the floor in her shaky hands, it was now pointed at Lynn. "I-I don't want to hurt y-you, just leave me alone..."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," Lynn shook her head, her eyes leaving the lingering gun and towards the sad woman, her arms were raised just to make sure she didn't think Lynn was going to hurt her. "You called 911, some part of you wants help, so just let me. What's your name?"

"H-Hazel. My name is Hazel Allen."

Lynn sent a sympathetic smile, and she lowered her index finger down to black gun in Hazel's grasp.

"Well, it's nice meeting you, Hazel Allen, but do you mind putting that gun down?"

Hazel's chocolate brown eyes hovered for a moment between the gun and Lynn, and then slowly started to lower it where it wasn't pointed at her anymore.

Lynn had seen a fair share of suicides, of course it was almost always after the fact they had already tried to commit, but still, she could tell whether or not they actually wanted to die. She knew Hazel Allen didn't want to be dead, hell, she was just starting out her life in her early twenty's. She just wanted the pain to end, and the only way she knew of how to do that was to end everything.

"Yeah, that's good, just like that," Lynn smiled softly, showing the tiniest amount of teeth while staring at the girl "You want to tell me what's wrong, Hazel?"

"E-Everything is wrong!" The girl shouted, and then she turned the gun towards herself to rub against her temple harshly, and Lynn could already see the red marks appearing from the friction. "Nobody cares about me, don't you see? My mom doesn't care, my friends never did, and the only boy I've ever loved had been cheating on me the entire time we dated! I wasted two years of my life on him for him to break my heart..."

Lynn's face twisted with sympathy, and she knew a thing or two about having a broken heart. She knew that Buck and Bobby were listening right outside the door, and she really didn't want to tell anymore of her past than she had already accidentally spilled; but she had a good feeling that hearing someone's story of a broken heart would help Hazel.

"Hey, hey, Hazel, look up at me," Lynn spoke up, swallowing any of the anxiety she had pitted in the back of her throat. "I know exactly what you're feeling, I do, and I know so many people who have went through tough shit like that and survived. I mean, I did."

Hazel's crying face then stopped for a moment as she tore her eyes from the ground and up towards Lynn, and she could see the curiosity bubbling in them.

"I had a longtime boyfriend, and I loved him, like the kind of love you thought was only in fairytales," Lynn explained, and she could feel her own eyes seemingly growing in wetness. "But I guess he didn't feel the same way, because I caught him in bed with quite literally my only friend. So, I lost two of the closest people I had in my life at once, bother, look at me now. I'm alive. And so can you, Hazel."

"You said you're alive."

Lynn confusingly narrowed her round blue eyes at the girl, not quite sure where she was coming from.

"You said you're alive, not that you're living," Hazel stated, her eyes brimming with more tears than before.

That was when Lynn saw something that made her breath hitch in a mere second. Lynn stared down into Hazel's eyes, and she seemingly saw the once bright light that shined in the girls brown eyes, to see that nothing but a dull reflection was left.

"I'm sorry."

It was like Lynn saw the exact second that Hazel Allen had given up.

"No!"

Lynn raced forward the second she started to hear the words being formed into a sentence, but there was simply no time for her to reach the gun in time before Hazel dug it into the side of her temple and pulled on the trigger. After both Bobby and Buck heard the gunshot echo throughout the air, they instantly rushed into the apartment to see what had happened, and they gasped at the sight.

It was like life was playing out in slow motion for Evelynn Kennedy.

Lynn had flinched backwards when the bullet rang, from the sound booming so loudly along with the fact that blood from Hazel's head had splattered over her face. She glanced down to her hands, her pink lips spread into a slight gasp as she saw the red wetness that had sprinkled its way onto her body. She saw it on her arms, and a bit on her uniform.

Lynn let out a shaky breath as she started to process what had happened in front of her merely a second ago, and so she raised her head back up to see Hazel Allen. She was lifeless on the couch, still curled up in that ball but her limbs had loosened due to no longer have muscle control. There was blood covering the wall, couch, and it was littered on Hazel's body.

"Eve? Evelynn!?"

Lynn finally snapped out of staring at the dead body of a woman she was talking to a moment earlier when Buck grabbed ahold of her shoulders, physically dragging her body so she would be facing him instead of the blooded room.

She blinked several times as she tried to focus on what Buck was mumbling in front of her, but she was so unable to understand anything as all she could see was the same imagine of Hazel Allen shooting herself replaying over and over in her mind.

"EVELYNN!"

Lynn gazed up to make eye contact with Buck's gentle blue eyes, and she felt the warmness of tears start stinging her eyes as her heart beat started to rapidly go crazy and it was almost like she was not able to catch her breath.

"I-I said alive and not living," Lynn breathed out loudly and quickly, and as much as she didn't want to cry in front of her coworkers, she couldn't help it any further. "I said it wrong, oh my God, I could've...I could've saved her."

"Eve, this is not your fault, this is no where near your fault," Buck insisted softly, pulling the girl into a tight hug by wrapping both of his muscled arms around her waist. She instinctively accepted it, otherwise knowing she probably would've fallen to the ground in a sudden heap as sobs racked her body.

Lynn buried her face deeply into the crook of Buck's neck, just letting the tears out as she continued to murmur about the different ways she could've saved the girl, with Buck defending her each and every time. He raised a hair to place a few fingers in between strands of Lynn's brunette hair, giving her a small, comfortable massage.

"It's okay," Buck hummed gently into Lynn's ear, his breath almost tickling her skin, but she was much too focused on not letting snot stain Buck's clothing. "It's okay, Evie."

a/n: its late so if there's any spelling mistakes i'll fix it tmr!! :)<3