It wasn’t the name that sent alarm bells ringing in his head, nor was it the dead eyes staring back at him on the televised news feed. It was the word “Frannie” neatly written in black ink across the top of the criminal’s left collarbone that did it.

Frannie.

He remembers the embers floating down past his helmet. The scorching heat that made sweat pour down his back and ash cling to his suit. The civilian had begged him to leave him in the ruins of what was once a bathroom.

“Don’t focus on me,” he had said, “you need to get Frannie! She’s stuck in the bedroom!“

“Frannie’s—?”

“My daughter! She’s in her crib! Please just get to her already!”

It took another 6 minutes to retrieve Frannie and the man, pushing them both out of the collapsing house and into the back of an ambulance.

As the man sat there, eyes on Frannie, the script peeked out from under his sleep shirt. It sat on his skin, as bright as the flames still burning outside. It was neat and bold. It was created with love and care and devotion in mind.

“My daughter’s named Frannie too.”

The man looked up at his hero, silent for a moment, before nodding.

In that moment, the two knew each other more intimately than any other man on site could. They were one in the same.

“In that case, we must be the luckiest men on planet, huh?”

Looking at the mugshot now stings his eyes. The man’s unapologetic face, the lack of empathy in the way he holds his head high. Its hard to imagine this to be the same man who had once begged him to save his child’s life. Who thanked him for sparing him grief and pain.

He thought the two of them understood each other. That they both felt the paternal need to protect their young.

It’s why he had saved Frannie all those years ago. In a way, he had saved his own Frannie on that call too.

Now, he can’t help but grieve her as if she were his own.

Frannie practically is.