Hold On, I Still Need You (Cordell Walker)

I Don't Wanna Let Go

tw: suicide attempt, grief, anxiety, depression, referenced gaslighting

set: 1 month after emily's murder (during and after 112 intervention flashback)

category: gen

word count: 6497

notes: Hey guys. It's been a hot minute but trust me, it's still a better update time than most of my wips. Anyway. A Tale of Two Families was such a good episode but like... the gaslighting. And the intervention, but the gaslighting. It's hard to describe my anger at Stella Walker, when the episode first came out and still. I thought she was gonna come clean in last night's episode, but she stopped before she got there. I'm so interested to see if it's her or Auggie who finally breaks and tells him. I just hope that it does eventually come to light and that Cordell's reaction gives proper weight to it (please please no more hugs to immediately get out of trouble these kids, Stella especially, need to learn). In the meantime, here's a part that's three-quarters just a you can't do that to people, you're lucky he just went undercover rant. Once again, a million thanks to Trekkiehood  for reading this as I went and giving me motivation and suggestions and the idea to get my everything Hoyt Rawlins involved again.

[spoiler warning for 113 defend the ranch] Speaking of which. I repeat, Hoyt Rawlins is my everything. Episode 13? Ruined. My. Life. He deserved better, he deserved the world, he just... I'm never gonna be okay again. I've never sobbed so hard for so long thanks to a tv show. That has nothing to do with this part but I just had to say it.

summary:

i don't wanna let go // i know i'm not that strong // i just wanna hear you // saying, "baby, let's go home."

or

Cordell feels like he lost every good part of him when he lost his wife. He's been trying so hard to be what his family needs since then, but he knows it's not enough. After he wakes up to a story he has absolutely no memory of, of putting the most precious people in his world in danger, he decides they're better off without him at all than with this version of him.

Cordell couldn't breathe.

It wasn't an in the moment, just name the things around you and focus on what was real and it'll pass and you'll be okay couldn't breathe.

It was a weight on his chest that was never going to go away couldn't breathe.

It was a he had to keep breathing even though there wasn't anything he wanted to do less couldn't breathe.

It was a there was no way the world should still be turning couldn't breathe.

And he'd been under its weight since the sheet was pulled back and he looked at his wife's beautiful, empty face, and realized that she was gone.

She was gone, and he was still here.

That was never supposed to be the way it worked.

And it didn't work. He didn't work.

The part of him she'd taken with her was essential to his very living, and in its absence, he was a walking shell of himself who knew he needed to be better but felt absolutely powerless to actually be it.

So he started to think about things he hadn't thought about in well over a decade, hadn't even considered since he'd walked out of his last group session with Hoyt, and think about them in a way he never had before. A conscious way that didn't need a flashback or a moment where he couldn't remember the past five minutes to trigger it.