here's a snippet of eddie grief fic coming uhhhh honestly who tf knows when! @thatbuddie & @prettyboyandthekid this one's for you!! lemme know what you think guys!
eddie had had a feeling for a while that at least some of chris’ mood could be attributed to shannon, and now it all makes sense, especially after talking to buck about it; christmas was always shannon and chris’ thing, they always went all out. they decorated the tree, made gingerbread houses. hell, eddie has some memories from the last christmas before things all went bad, when chris was really young and they’d make cookies for santa and shannon would dance around the kitchen with him in his arms. they were all smiling and carefree and, for once, happy. eddie’s not seen too much of the christmases with christopher since shannon died, honestly not through any intention - they worked the first christmas after, and buck had thrown the entire station and their families a party on christmas day (eddie to this day has no idea how to thank him). and then last christmas, the pandemic was still raging, and so there wasn’t a great deal they could do around christmas.
but this year? with how upset chris has been, how withdrawn? his need to have everything be so perfect, to be as good as it could possibly be? it all makes sense, and eddie feels awful about it. because he misses shannon, of course he does. he misses her in the moments when chris gets home from school with a stellar report card and he misses her in the quiet hours after chris has gone to bed when it’s just him alone with his thoughts and no one to share them with. he misses her smile, he misses her laugh, he misses her company and companionship, and there will always be a shannon shaped void in his life - they loved each-other once, and shannon had given him the greatest gift of all in christopher, and so eddie would miss her every single day until he died. but if he’s feeling that bad, how must chris be feeling?
chris was still so, so young when shannon died, barely eight years old. eddie tried to explain to him what was happening as best as he could, but how do you explain the concepts of death and mortality to a child that small? how can you begin to get a child comfortable with the idea of carrying the weight of their grief for the rest of their life? dressing chris up in that tiny black suit on autopilot, holding his hand as they followed his mother’s casket into that small church in los angeles, holding him as he cried as the priest read his sermon, and as eddie sat there he couldn’t help but ponder the irony of it all. he couldn’t help but think there couldn’t be a God, there was no feasible way one could exist - an all-powerful, all knowing God would have to know better than giving his eight year old son, still small enough to sit on his shoulders comfortably at the amusement park, scars that run this deep. a kind, caring God would never make his son shoulder a burden that could break even the strongest of people down and reduce them to rubble. for the first time, stood at shannon’s graveside, eddie felt livid. he felt angry as the rain beat against his back like a drum and he almost wanted to get drunk on the feeling.