Chapter Text
Fiona hadn’t thought about going home in years—not really. Not the Gallagher version of home, anyway. The one with peeling paint and laundry mountains, where someone was always yelling and someone else was always crying, and somehow you loved it because it was yours. Because you were all trapped together in a way that felt like belonging.
On paper, she had the life she told herself she wanted: a steady job, a decent apartment, quiet streets. She even had furniture that matched. A queen bed with an actual bed frame, not a hand-me-down mattress on the floor. Silverware that came from a box set instead of a thrift store bin. A calendar on the fridge instead of eviction notices.
It was adulthood, sure—just the kind that came with a savings account instead of five siblings to raise and two addicts to manage. The first real freedom she’d ever had.
But freedom has its price.
When Fiona left Chicago, she didn’t just leave a place—she left an identity. She thought shedding the Gallagher name would let her become someone new. Someone stable. Someone good.
But the only thing that really changed was the loneliness.
Quiet streets meant quiet nights. Quiet nights meant the kind of thoughts she used to drown in noise. The neighbors smiled politely and kept their distance. And even if she had tried—really tried—they would have seen it immediately: wrong neighborhood, wrong upbringing, wrong history.
She wasn’t “first-date Fiona” anymore, but she hadn’t had love since the day she sat on the church steps in a wedding dress, mascara streaking down her face, cigarette dangling from her lips, while Frank blew up the last real thing she ever had.
Since then, she’d tried a few times. Florida had its own brand of chaos, its own heartbreak. She survived it, which was more than she could say for some people. But it left marks. Gallagher marks. The kind you don’t talk about unless the room is dark and no one else is listening.
Still, her throw pillows matched her curtains now.
So maybe that was supposed to mean something.
But nights were long. And mornings were quiet. And there was no one in the hallway banging on the bathroom door because they were late, or tripping over Frank passed out on the floor at 2 AM, or trying to cook breakfast with a blowtorch.
The Gallagher house had heart. Even when it broke.
Three years gone, and Fiona finally understood the truth she had always run from:
She would always be her father’s daughter.
And now her father was dead.
So where did that leave her?
The phone rang at 3:14 AM. Of course it did. Frank Gallagher would never die in daylight like a normal person. He was a creature of basements and bar stools and back alleys- a cockroach of a man. Even dead, he found a way to be inconvenient.
They said it was COVID. Or maybe heroin. Or both. The man had always loved a cocktail.
There wasn’t relief. Or grief. Just a hollowness. A silence where something should be.
And then the part Fiona had spent three years practicing:
What now?
Who needed her?
Who didn’t?
Liam would be crushed. He was the only one who ever believed Frank might've been more than a disease in human form.
Debbie would pretend she didn’t care, weaponize it later.
Carl would be sad in the way you miss something familiar, then move on.
Ian…
Well. Ian had Mickey now. And that was a reality she was still learning how to hold. If Ian spun out, Mickey would be there. Which meant Lip, as always, would shoulder the rest.
Lip.
God. Lip.
She called him first.
“Hello?”
Rough voice. Tired. Not drunk—but close to something like it.
“Hey, Lip.”
“Fi? Jesus—it’s 2:30.”
“Yeah. Sorry. I—”
“What’s wrong?”
“Frank died.”
No soft lead-in. No easing into bad news. Gallagher muscle memory.
Lip was silent for a long beat.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Can’t believe the bastard actually did it. Thought he’d haunt us until we were all six feet under.”
“Same.”
Fred started crying in the background. A soft wail. Lip sighed, heavy. Older. Worn.
“Go get him,” Fiona murmured. “I’ll call Ian. I’ll catch a flight. You tell the others in the mornin’.”
“Yeah… okay. Fi?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful coming home.”
Something in that landed heavy.
“See you soon,” she breathed.
She stared at her phone for a long time before dialing.
His contact was still “Ian ❤️” from a lifetime ago. She couldn’t bring herself to change it. Not when she left. Not now.
The line rang twice.
“Hello?”
Ian’s voice was clearer than Lip’s. Groggy, but more from sleep than from life. He’d always been the kind of person who slept lightly—ready to run, ready to fight, ready to hold someone.
“It’s me,” Fiona said, and her voice came out smaller than she expected.
A soft inhale on his end.
“Fi?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed. “Hey, sweetface.”
He didn’t speak right away. Not from anger—just surprise, and something like remembering.
“You okay?” he asked gently.
God, that nearly cracked her open.
“No,” she said. “Not really.”
Ian let the silence sit. Not push, not pry. Just be there. He always had that gift.
She forced the words out:
“Frank’s dead. They called me about an hour ago.”
Ian exhaled slowly. “Not surprised. He OD’d this morning, then disappeared. Liam said he was trying to kill himself.”
“Jesus,” she breathed. The room tilted with dread. Regret. She’d left them with a Frank-sized wreck. “I should’ve been there.”
“Fi.” His voice warmed—sad, not scolding. “You did what you had to do. We all did.”
She blinked hard. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“It is,” he said. Simple. Steady. “You kept us alive. You get to have a life after that.”
She didn’t correct him. Didn’t tell him she didn’t feel like she had one. That she wasn’t sure if leaving had really fixed anything.
“I’m coming home,” she said. “I’m on the first flight out.”
There was a rustling, like Ian was sitting up in bed.
“Okay. Yeah. Of course. You staying with us?”
She almost said I don’t want to be a burden.
But that was the thing—she was exhausted from pretending she wasn’t.
“If that’s okay,” she whispered.
“Fi.”
He said her name like a hand on her shoulder.
“You never have to ask that.”
She nodded, even though he couldn’t see.
From the background, she heard Mickey’s voice, groggy and vague:
“Who the fuck is that?”
Ian covered the receiver, but not well enough.
“Fiona,” he whispered back.
Mickey groaned. “Tell her I said… fuck, I don’t know. Hi, I guess?”
Fiona let out the first real laugh she’d had in months.
“I heard that.”
Mickey’s voice sharpened—awake now.
“…Oh. Well. Hi, I guess.”
Her smile turned softer. “Hi, Mick.”
His tone shifted—less defense, more something like… familiarity.
“You coming home?” he asked, blunt and unadorned, the way Mickey always cut to the truth.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m coming home.”
“Good.” Mickey said it like a fact, not a favor.
Ian returned to the line. “I’ll pick you up from the airport.”
“No,” Fiona said quickly. “You don’t have to—”
“Fi.”
That tone again. The one that used to stop her in the middle of a breakdown.
“Let me,” he said.
She closed her eyes.
“Okay.”
They didn’t say goodbye. Gallaghers never really did.
She just held the phone a second longer, breathing with him, like muscle memory.
Then the line went quiet.
She was going home.