[image ID: 3 captioned gifs of Buck in the firehouse loft from 9-1-1 season 2 episode 15. gif 1: Buck sits at the table, speaking and gesturing with his hands. The caption reads “So let’s see if I got this right. The fake nerve agent attack was a distraction for the armored car robbery..” gif 2: A close-up of Buck speaking. The caption reads “which was a distraction for the diamond heist.” gif 3: Buck looks at Chimney and leans back in his chair. The caption reads “Crime is hard.” /end ID]
Sometimes all I can think about is how no one seems to fully grasp the weight of what Buck experiences in the shooting and its aftermath.
When Chim says that he’s pretty shaken up, but otherwise fine, and Maddie mentions how it’s just another trauma to add to the pile? And then when Bobby gets a little snippy with him when Buck says we had no reason to think Eddie would get shot helping a kid, either and then gets angry with him (understandably) for the stunt he pulls?
My heart aches for Buck every time. Because they mean well, and they’re not wrong, exactly, but my god, the way it feels like it minimizes everything Buck is experiencing. Like it’s just something that happened around him and not tohim.
That poor man had his entire world crushed. He wore Eddie’s blood on his skin like it was his own. He drew on every ounce of strength he had to get to him and literally drag Eddie to safety. He stood over him as Eddie was bleeding out under his hands and desperately tried to keep the blood pumping through Eddie’s veins. He watched his best friend—his family—dying in front of him while he begged him to hang on. And then Buck had to watch as Eddie was taken from his hands and wheeled into that hospital, leaving him utterly lost and alone.
And then he had to leave Eddie behind and find the courage to tell Christopher that his father might not be coming home.
And the fact that they showed us—that we saw the pained, vacant look on his face as he stood there, shaking uncontrollably, his only thought getting to Christopher? And to juxtapose that image of Buck immediately with he’s pretty shaken up, but otherwise fine andjust another trauma to add to the pile?
It highlighted so brilliantly just how far beyond shaken he really is.
I’d venture shattered would be more apt to just how deep this wound runs.
But no one seems to recognize that. Even Bobby, who sits there and tells Athena what it felt like to have to listen to what he thought was her dying after Athena prompts him to talk to her about what that felt like for him—literally laying out a near exact replica of Buck’s experience with Eddie—Bobby still can’t see that Buck is falling apart. That while his decision may have been calculated, it certainly was not made in a sound state of mind.
But no one—no one—seems to understand that he’s shattered, even when he says it.
It’s no wonder, really, that he doesn’t seem to have processed or talked about what’s happened when everyone around him is treating it like just another hazard of the job that Buck happened to get caught up in, instead of the devastating reality that Buck had to watch someone he loves nearly die under his own hands and then had to look Christopher in the eye and tell him he didn’t know if Eddie would ever make it home.
