❝look, i don’t have much time, but i wanted to tell you that i love you.❞ (kryan)
Ryan was fazed, completely thrown for a loop. Here she was, standing outside with the rest of the Chicago Police Department as they waited for the bomb squad to give the all clear. Her phone rang, breaking her focus as she anxiously watched the entrance of the business building, waiting for Kingsley to walk out, waiting for him to come out unscathed as he had in the past and make his way to her, waiting to run and let him sweep her up, grateful that they had been given another day together. Reaching into her coat, Ryan answered her phone, not bothering to look at caller ID, her eyes still trained on the front door. When she realized who it was calling her, her eyes left the entrance since the first time she had seen Kingsley enter that building.
“What? I.... Kingsley what are you talking about?” Just then, shouts alerted her, the blonde glancing up, just in time to catch the bomb squad exiting the building, shouting for everyone to get back. “Kingsley, where are you? Why are you still in there?” She seemed to get no response, feeling herself being pushed back further from the building by the officers closest to her. “No, no I can’t move back. Kingsley is still in there!” she shouted, trying to fight off the advancing officers who were forcing her back. “Kingsley? Kingsley? Babe?” Ryan was shouting in the phone now, but got no response.
A split second later, the air was filled with too much noise, the sound of booming explosions echoing through the parking lot. The line went dead, Ryan still clutching the phone in her hand. A shard of glass went whizzing past her head, grazing her cheek, but she barely felt anything, shrapnel flying through the air. Ryan watched in morbid astonishment as the layers of the building began to pancake, crumbling down one at a time. A scream lay silent in her throat, the blonde unable to look away. Her hand lowered from her ear, phone clutched as if she expected the call to be picked up once more, hesitantly taking a step towards the crater that was left of where Kingsley once was. She was speechless, EMTs and officers streaming around her, assessing damage. Her eyes remained frozen on the place the entrance had been, the place she had last seen her husband. Her cheeks felt wet, Ryan reaching up to swipe, only to come away with blood and tears on her fingertips. Glancing down at her hand, the sobs ripped their way from her throat, Ryan unable to hold them at bay much longer. An EMT approached her, wrapping a shock blanket around her and trying to guide her to a truck to sit and get her cheek stitched up. Ryan barely acknowledged them, the realization that her partner was dead starting to hit her. “He loved me,” she mumbled, repeating Kingsley’s last words to her. “He loved me.”