No Ordinary Love...What Comes Next?

When Does Our Luck Run Out?

The missing little Stellaride scene from s12 E10. The Wrong Guy.

What did Severide think when that car went crashing down from the side of that building..?

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The crumpling sound of crashing metal and splintering glass filled the room as he was tossed through the air and onto the floor. Shit! Shit! Shit! Rolling over and scrambling to his legs, he stumbled towards the gaping hole in the wall, and for a moment, he didn't think he could breathe.
Stella?!
His mouth opened to shout her name, but he wasn't even sure any sound came out over the thundering of his heart, richocheting around his chest, drowning out everything else.
Standing on the threshold of where the car had been embedded only moments earlier, he stared out of the void, terror squeezing its fingers around his chest. Squad hadn't been able to secure the car any longer...
Dust hung in the air where the car had been moments earlier, along with his fear. It was in his eyes, his mouth, in the tremor of his hands. That same fear that he'd felt too many times before as his eyes tried to focus. The car had catapulted downwards onto the street, and it had been Squad's responsibility to keep that car balanced.

On the precipice of the hole in the side of the building, his brain detangled enough to register her crouched on the ariel ladder and overwhelming relief washed over him, weakening his legs, and in that second he learned to breathe again, a mute prayer of thanks uttered to some god somewhere that she had gotten out.

Skimming over her to check that she was in one piece, he sucked in a breath. Her face mirrored the same realization ....The near miss, her smile weak when she looked at him. A joint, Fuck (!) registered between them, a tremulous smile and an assuring nod of her head that she was o.k but his face remained frozen, the bile still churning around in his stomach and threatening to rise up and choke him. He looked through the missing piece of the building and down at the crumpled remains of the car and then back at her. Yeah... Fuck that had been close.

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From across the road, Stella watched as Severide got in the rig and slammed the door shut. He hadn't spoken to her since she'd come down the ariel ladder with Damon, other than a terse,

"You got the clean up?"

"Yeah, of course....." She had been about to make a flippant response about the t.v crew hanging around hoping to get an interview with the hero of the moment, one Lieutenant Kidd but something about the closed off look on his face told her keep quiet.

And back at the firehouse, before they could even grab lunch, Severide ordered his team onto the Apparatus floor to do a complete equipment check from their rig. Capp opened his mouth to complain, but Tony kicked him under the dining table as their Lieutenant turned back around, hearing Capp's tut.

"Preferred him playing fire cop to fire Chief......" Capp, averting eye contact when Severide pinned him with a frozen blue stare.

"You have something you wanna say to me, Capp?"

Meanwhile to the left of Capp, Cruz's mind had been adrift fighting his own frustrations about Chloe being out of town again, his head trying to balance outstanding chores, and now his shoulders slumped downwards, as he got up from the table. He didn't blame the Lieutenant...that second after the beam securing the weight of the car had crashed through the wall and Severide was thrown off the front, he had seen the terror on Severide's face and he wouldn't wish that upon his worst enemy. There'd now be a squad post mortem on what they could have done differently to stop the wall collapsing, and they'd conclude that they had done all they could have. But right now, the Lieutenant needed to prove that they had.

Truck and Engine returned to the house just as Squad were repacking the rig , noting the faces of a miserable team in various degrees of Lieutenant imposed misery.