Vitae Summa Brevis [a ficlet]
Post-CI 07x13,Betrayed. A HUGE thank you to detmike_logan for helping me edit this. Much appreciated.
Sometimes, she feels like a voyeur - like she's watching the world as it passes her by, like she's playing the bit part of the doctor in the morgue - one more piece of the set, blending in with the walls and the lab equipment. It's her role and she plays it with skill and a little flair, dispensing results and sarcasm to the cops as needed. Occasionally, when a case calls for it, she has a few more lines, uncovers a pertinent clue, then the spotlight moves on and she fades into the background again.
While her life is filled with friends she sees, a son who calls and places she frequents, it always comes down to the fact that the only person Liz Rodgers has is herself.
The Major Case saga, which unfolds from a distance, only affirms that truth.
Earlier in the day, the drama came into her morgue, protagonists clashing, climactic reveal leaving Danny Ross stunned, his detectives uncomfortable and the doctor disappointed. She did nothing to hide her feelings, though no one seemed to notice.
Tonight, she still doesn’t entirely know why she feels this way. Usually she knows herself very well, but sitting alone at the bar around the corner from her apartment, she can’t explain the leftover sinking feeling in her heart.
Perhaps it’s because she’ll only ever be the lunchtime confidante, the occasional screw, the one who makes him laugh when it’s convenient for him.
That’s how he thinks of her, she realizes. And she’s been thinking of him the wrong way, too. Despite working around cops her whole professional life, she somehow thought he was different, less flawed maybe, than the officers working beneath him. It's not even about their relationship; it's about who he is at work, in the parts she didn't see but thought she did.
There are shortcuts that cops take, rules that get bent or broken without a second thought. Lennie did it all the time. Even now, guys like Goren and Logan go out on limbs to nail suspects. But those are the actions of the everyday cop - not the brass, not the guys who set the standard.
She held him on that pedestal without even considering it, and this, this mess, shocked her from the moment she heard the first rumors.
Whatever false standard she'd been holding him up to, whatever wrong ideas she had, she still couldn’t imagine that he'd go against protocol like that. Seeing him there in the morgue, confirmation on his face, made it real, but no less puzzling.
He went out on a limb not to nail a suspect but to aid a woman who played him the entire time. And for what? How could he throw his job, his pension, his sons, on the line without a second thought?
After all these months, she realizes that she hardly knows him at all and that’s what truly disheartens her.
Sometimes, she feels like a voyeur - like she's watching the world as it passes her by, like she's playing the bit part of the doctor in the morgue - one more piece of the set, blending in with the walls and the lab equipment. It's her role and she plays it with skill and a little flair, dispensing results and sarcasm to the cops as needed. Occasionally, when a case calls for it, she has a few more lines, uncovers a pertinent clue, then the spotlight moves on and she fades into the background again.
While her life is filled with friends she sees, a son who calls and places she frequents, it always comes down to the fact that the only person Liz Rodgers has is herself.
The Major Case saga, which unfolds from a distance, only affirms that truth.
Earlier in the day, the drama came into her morgue, protagonists clashing, climactic reveal leaving Danny Ross stunned, his detectives uncomfortable and the doctor disappointed. She did nothing to hide her feelings, though no one seemed to notice.
Tonight, she still doesn’t entirely know why she feels this way. Usually she knows herself very well, but sitting alone at the bar around the corner from her apartment, she can’t explain the leftover sinking feeling in her heart.
Perhaps it’s because she’ll only ever be the lunchtime confidante, the occasional screw, the one who makes him laugh when it’s convenient for him.
That’s how he thinks of her, she realizes. And she’s been thinking of him the wrong way, too. Despite working around cops her whole professional life, she somehow thought he was different, less flawed maybe, than the officers working beneath him. It's not even about their relationship; it's about who he is at work, in the parts she didn't see but thought she did.
There are shortcuts that cops take, rules that get bent or broken without a second thought. Lennie did it all the time. Even now, guys like Goren and Logan go out on limbs to nail suspects. But those are the actions of the everyday cop - not the brass, not the guys who set the standard.
She held him on that pedestal without even considering it, and this, this mess, shocked her from the moment she heard the first rumors.
Whatever false standard she'd been holding him up to, whatever wrong ideas she had, she still couldn’t imagine that he'd go against protocol like that. Seeing him there in the morgue, confirmation on his face, made it real, but no less puzzling.
He went out on a limb not to nail a suspect but to aid a woman who played him the entire time. And for what? How could he throw his job, his pension, his sons, on the line without a second thought?
After all these months, she realizes that she hardly knows him at all and that’s what truly disheartens her.