Weight of This Concept
Title: Weight of This Concept
Fandom: The Watcher
Characters: Joel Campbell
Pairing: referenced Joel Campbell/Carolina Jacks
Word Count: 517
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: General, for the movie
Summary: It's amazing, when your whole life can be about the worst thing someone's ever done to you.
Author's Notes: Bitter, cranky writer leads to Joel bitching about life in general. Hey, I'm not about to complain, considering the guy hardly ever talks about anything, period.
Being a cop is supposed to be a fucking cakewalk. You get to be the hero. You have the gun, and the badge, and you get to save the day and kiss the girl. Except that "supposed to be" is pretty much bullshit.
You go see your therapist, who wants to know all about your thoughts and feelings, and resist the urge to tell her that the only feeling you have is that you've been living your life on "pause" for the past couple of years, and that you think your feelings don't have shit to do with it. She's a nice enough woman, anyway, and it's not her fault your entire attitude sucks.
Then you go home, to an apartment that looks like shit, a fridge you forgot to stock, and mail that means absolutely nothing. No girl, not unless you count the Victoria's Secret catalog.
I would sit there, on that couch, for hours on end, staring into space. And it wasn't because of the painkillers I was addicted to at the time. It was because I was reliving one night, one moment, over and over again in my head, every fucking day. The night my very much married girlfriend was killed by the same fucking serial killer I'd been chasing for years. See, I had the girl, but then she died in a house fire started after I'd interrupted him, while I was hunting his ass down, and by the time I got back? Nothing but a corpse.
But you see, that's just the job. People want you to go out and be the hero. You're the good guy. The good guy always wins in the end. They just don't tell you that sometimes it means you end up with next to nothing and nobody cares.
My entire life was about that one night. That one moment. No matter how hard I tried to move on -- and I did move on, for a little while -- it never seemed to stick. I fell in love with a woman, and half the time I didn't know what I was doing. She loved me despite all that, but all I ever saw was how much I seemed to screw up. She got pregnant, and I didn't know what to do with myself. She was my wife, and that's my son, and I was still waiting for the hammer to fall, for something bad to happen. I was so fucking dysfunctional that I didn't know what to do when function bit me in the ass.
Throwing myself into the work was easy. It was feeding the sickness that already existed. The one that had eaten up so much of me that when I saw the face of my nightmare again and had a chance to kick his ass? I froze. I had no idea what to do.
So I'm back at the same place where I started. With nothing. Some people will say I earned it. Some people will say life screwed me over. It's probably some combination of both.
But I guess it's fitting, nonetheless.
Fandom: The Watcher
Characters: Joel Campbell
Pairing: referenced Joel Campbell/Carolina Jacks
Word Count: 517
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: General, for the movie
Summary: It's amazing, when your whole life can be about the worst thing someone's ever done to you.
Author's Notes: Bitter, cranky writer leads to Joel bitching about life in general. Hey, I'm not about to complain, considering the guy hardly ever talks about anything, period.
Being a cop is supposed to be a fucking cakewalk. You get to be the hero. You have the gun, and the badge, and you get to save the day and kiss the girl. Except that "supposed to be" is pretty much bullshit.
You go see your therapist, who wants to know all about your thoughts and feelings, and resist the urge to tell her that the only feeling you have is that you've been living your life on "pause" for the past couple of years, and that you think your feelings don't have shit to do with it. She's a nice enough woman, anyway, and it's not her fault your entire attitude sucks.
Then you go home, to an apartment that looks like shit, a fridge you forgot to stock, and mail that means absolutely nothing. No girl, not unless you count the Victoria's Secret catalog.
I would sit there, on that couch, for hours on end, staring into space. And it wasn't because of the painkillers I was addicted to at the time. It was because I was reliving one night, one moment, over and over again in my head, every fucking day. The night my very much married girlfriend was killed by the same fucking serial killer I'd been chasing for years. See, I had the girl, but then she died in a house fire started after I'd interrupted him, while I was hunting his ass down, and by the time I got back? Nothing but a corpse.
But you see, that's just the job. People want you to go out and be the hero. You're the good guy. The good guy always wins in the end. They just don't tell you that sometimes it means you end up with next to nothing and nobody cares.
My entire life was about that one night. That one moment. No matter how hard I tried to move on -- and I did move on, for a little while -- it never seemed to stick. I fell in love with a woman, and half the time I didn't know what I was doing. She loved me despite all that, but all I ever saw was how much I seemed to screw up. She got pregnant, and I didn't know what to do with myself. She was my wife, and that's my son, and I was still waiting for the hammer to fall, for something bad to happen. I was so fucking dysfunctional that I didn't know what to do when function bit me in the ass.
Throwing myself into the work was easy. It was feeding the sickness that already existed. The one that had eaten up so much of me that when I saw the face of my nightmare again and had a chance to kick his ass? I froze. I had no idea what to do.
So I'm back at the same place where I started. With nothing. Some people will say I earned it. Some people will say life screwed me over. It's probably some combination of both.
But I guess it's fitting, nonetheless.