Raphsody for Two #7: Calling All Angels
TITLE: Rhapsody for Two
AUTHOR: fixomnia
PAIRING: Flack/Angell
RATING: It's an M. Adults dealing with adult things.
SPOILERS: Various Flack/Angell scenes from Season 3-5, and Flack's season 6.
Chapter Summary:
Being the final installment in this tale. Flack burns his wings and hits the ground. And gets up again, with a little help from his friends.
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Chapter Six
Calling All Angels
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...bring on the axiomatic
round sound midnight drumroll fury-ocity
velocity
squeeze beat angel wings
'til they sing sweet
drink the bebop sax
the wing-drip wax
of them that flew too close to the sun
fillin' holy souls and tongues
with the ever-changin'
always in the now...
- T.Paul Ste.-Marie, "Invocation"
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The sixth night.
"No, man, don't do it, I don't wanna die here."
"You're gonna."
He pulled the trigger. Cade's face disappeared in a pash of splintered bone and strawberry-jam brains, but his mouth still moved.
"Help me," said the mouth.
He looked at his gun, and the tiny LED's down the grip were flashing red.
"Help me," said the mouth, high and fast.
Flack sat bolt upright, his face and chest clammy with sweat, his heart thumping. "Shit." He scrubbed at his face and looked bleakly around his bedroom, which had not changed since the last time he saw it two hours ago. And two hours before that.
He padded to the kitchen and squinted into the fridge, shivering as the cold touched his skin. Ignoring his mother's voice telling him to try hot milk - he didn't remember the last time he'd bought any, and certainly didn't trust whatever was in the fridge - he picked up the bottle of vodka on the counter and poured a healthy measure into a mug. He thought about adding orange juice, and shook his head. No point dressing it up.
He was, however, not so far gone as to curl up in bed drinking alone, so he took the bottle and the mug into the living room, and clicked on the TV, feeling ridiculously like an outtake from The Wall.
The CNN overnight news ticker scrolled by his unseeing eyes.
Mother, will they tear your little boy apart? he singsonged grimly to himself, in his head.
At least, he hoped it was in his head.
* * * * *And in between the nights, the days wove into one another in a hazy palimpsest of movement, occasionally pierced through with too-bright stabs of light, like an old fashioned tin lantern, sharp-edged glowing reminders of the world beyond his head.
"Flack, Grady here. Fourth message. Call me, willye. Don't matter what time."
"I'm here, Grady."
"Sure you are. Where's here?"
"Someplace in hell."
"I gathered that much. Am I too soon?"
"No. No, but I'm...I'm nowhere near talkin'. Not yet."
"Then I'll wait a while longer. But not too long, mind, or I'm tellin' your Ma."
"I don't doubt it. Grady, thanks. I'm sorry, I'm just..."
"No apology needed. Will you at least ring your sister? She's that worried about you, and you know that's not good for her."
"I will."
"Honour bright?"
It took Flack a second too long to remember the old Irishism for, You promise? and to remind himself that Grady had never, and would never, judge him.
"Honour bright."
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x"Hey, Donnie, I know you're not...I just thought, maybe you wanna come to a meeting with me? I know it's not like you're, y'know...I thought, just to get outta your head and remember we're all going through shit together. And that you don't gotta do it all by yourself."
"I ain't doing that bad, kid." Not too far off, though, Sammy. "But I'll come with you if you want company."
"No, no...I'm okay. I got friends there now. It's cool. You want to maybe get lunch, though?"
"Yeah, soon, okay?"
"Okay."
They hung up. Flack recognized the twofold note of relief in his sister's voice, that not only did he and Sam understand one another's habits and could talk about them, but that he would not be intruding on the place of fragile safety she had created. He mentally raised a thumb to her. She was tougher than he was, to sit among strangers and reveal the most sensitive of her frayed nerves to them, to let them in deep enough to call them her friends.
He knew there were any number of AA meetings he could attend, some specifically for cops, but that in itself seemed to deflate any interest. Alcoholism wasn't his problem, and until this last week, he'd pretty much stopped reaching for the bottle out of habit, but this was special circumstances. This was mental pain relief of a legal form, and he didn't intend to let it go on for long. He'd ease up soon, he told himself. Just as soon as he could take a deep breath without wincing at the kick in his gut whenever he remembered.
No, this wasn't about falling into a bottle. It was about Jess, and what they had: unique, sacred, and not to be nodded over by well-meaning fellow cops and trained shrinks.
Pride may have been the first of all sins, and a major obstacle to his seeking out any help, Flack knew, but at least he still had some.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xIt was Stella who kicked his bony ass into getting out of the apartment.
She came by every few days with takeout, and caught him up on cases and office gossip, and let him ramble about Jess. If she noticed the dried-up takeout trays from her last visit, barely picked over, she simply swept them into her deli takeout bag along with the trash from whatever lunch she had brought, not mentioning how little he had eaten between her visits. In Stella's company, he could eat a few bites without choking, and even savour the garlicky, tangy taste of a meatball sub now and then.
In time, with Stella keeping up a running commentary of thoroughly normal cop-talk, he was able to start sorting through Jess' belongings that she kept at his place, and was even able to cry now and then. Stella didn't pretend not to see his tears, nor did she offer pity. She simply gathered him in her strong arms and pressed him against her shoulder, comrade-to-comrade, and let him rest for a minute or two. He was caught between the stinging raw relief of it, and the voice of self-reproach that told him that a murderer had no right, no right at all to weep.
He never knew whether she called in advance of her visits to give him a chance to tidy up a little and hide the bottles, or just to check on his state of mind, but he was grateful. If Stella knew just what a stew he'd fallen into, she'd have bullied him into...something tiresomely healthy and active and distracting, after which he'd come back to his solitary apartment, where Jess wasn't, where Jess and their baby weren't, and it would all start over.
On her fourth visit, two weeks in, she'd realized that he hadn't been to Jess' apartment yet, and had not, in fact, even seen Danny or Lindsay since the shooting. He'd been faking it, going along with her updates on Danny's recovery as though he knew all about it. She strung him along with a few planted half-truths, pegged him with a look, and then stood up, fists balled on her hips.
"Don, I love you, but you're full of shit. You didn't get shot and fucking paralyzed from the waist down. Danny did. Your best friend, remember? Jess wasn't just taken from you. That bastard took her from all of us. I know you don't want to hear this, but you are not alone. You're ours, Don. We're your family. Be an asshole, get angry, get depressed, but we are not walking away. You and Danny need other more than I can even tell you, and he's being an jerk about waiting for you to call him, and Lindsay's at the end of her rope, and you're just drinking yourself into oblivion, don't think I don't know - "
She trailed off, sounding near tired tears herself.
For a second he wanted to tell her everything. About just waiting for the right moment to ask Jess to marry him. About the shadowy dry crack in Sid's voice as he told Don about the baby that would never be.
About killing Cade and telling himself he felt no remorse, regardless of his nightmares.
But he couldn't do that to Stella. She'd cry with him, she'd console him, and then she'd march him to Professional Standards and then to the police shrink. He wondered if that wasn't exactly what he wished would happen. It would be easy to say that learning about the baby had been the final push over the edge, but it was more than that. It wasn't a moment of madness. If anything it was a moment of crystal clarity, seeing the sum total of everything he and Jess could never have, could never be to each other, after working their entire adult lives to do some good in the world, and that the human race would be better off without people like Cade in it.
He thought it would be clean and decisive. It wasn't.
"I suppose," he said heavily, after a pause, "I got no right to tell you about what losing people you love does to you."
"You better fucking not."
"Or what?" He shot back, feeling an oncoming smirk for the first time in a couple of weeks.
"Or I withhold finikia."
"You wouldn't."
"You wanna try me?" she aimed her finger at his chest. "At the very least go give Lindsay some time off from sitting with Danny. She needs some time with Lucy. And for herself. She doesn't get to take any time off. D'you even know which hospital he's at?"
"Uh. I actually do have it all written down somewhere."
"Uh-huh." Stella took in the slurry that was his apartment. "Gimme your arm." she sighed, and reached for a ballpoint in her bag,
He wandered into Danny's hospital room two days later, showered and shaved, with a greasy paper bag of buttery-warm pizelles and a few seasons of Red Dwarf on a thumb drive.
They blinked at each other.
"You look like shit," they said in unison.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xHer name was Hannah, and she was a nice looking blue-eyed blonde whose date was being a prick, trying too hard to impress her, and then telling her how lucky she was to have him all to herself all night. Fed up, she'd smiled sweetly, said she had to go to the bathroom, picked up her purse, and kept moving out the back door. She walked straight into Flack, who was ambling down the alley to the subway station after leaving Gracie's Tavern, and they stared at each other before grinning and apologizing.
He'd showed her his badge and offered to walk her to wherever she was going, since a dark alley behind a row of bars probably wasn't a good place for a pretty girl to be. She'd blushed and thanked him, and really, it was ridiculously easy after that. They weren't exactly drunk, but they definitely weren't sober. She told him about her lousy date. He offered to run a crim check on the guy, and she laughed at the silly tale he wove of the insurance frauds, wives in six states, and the string of snot-nosed woebegone children he'd left scattered across the country.
They came out onto the street. He asked her which train she needed to catch, and she hesitated.
"I know a way to get back at him," she said. "What would piss him off more'n walkin' right under his nose with a nice guy I just met?"
"You think I'm nice?" he frowned clownishly. She giggled.
"You're a cop, ain'tcha?" she asked.
He wondered which small town she'd been raised in. Her freshness was completely unaffected and charming, as, incidentally, was her smile. "You wanna 'nother drink?" he asked. She put her head to one side and looked at him for a moment, and then smiled.
"Sure. Yeah."
Instead, they got a room at the Crystal Court as they walked by. She wasn't at all used to hooking up, but damn, clearly she was enjoying her new life in the big city. Her touch was tentative and sweet, and he was slow and gentle with her. It felt good to take care of someone. She was gone by morning, leaving a little note that said only, "Thanks".
He'd slept, though. He awoke feeling a little clearer in the head, and physically, the better for the human contact, but now he had to contend with Jess in his head all day. He knew damn well it was a concoction of his own mind. Cheating on Jess had never entered his mind, not once, and he was still crazy in love with her, but Jess was gone, so...was it cheating? It had been clear from the first that Hannah, while attractive in her own right, was also as different from Jess as could be.
If Jess were alive, she'd have sandblasted the skin off him verbally, removed all traces of herself from his apartment, and never spoken to him again. Was that what he was trying to get not-alive Jess to do? Holler at him, give him hell, and then get out of his head and leave him alone?
He found himself trying to shut Jess out of his head nearly as much as Cade. If only they'd all just go away, he thought during the day. At night, he found himself panicking, wondering if he could still reach out and feel her nearby, as if she would come from her bath at any moment and crawl in beside him.
But if he could still feel connected to Jess, as if she had never left, didn't it mean that Cade could touch him, too?
Hence the vodka, and when he was sick of the sting, the Ballantyne’s, and then the straight-to-hell Jack Daniels.
And then there was Jill, who'd invited him back for coffee, after he'd interviewed her about a shooting near her apartment, and artsy Efrat with her many social causes, and Serena, the vivacious Korean grad student who'd been hanging out at Gracie's since she moved nearby...
Really, any girl who didn't look like Jess would do.
He ran into Devon one day, running errands in downtown Manhattan. Strangely, his spirits sank, and he felt a sudden emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Devon's warm smile and flying hug were genuine, and he realized that while she must have heard about the female cop recently killed in action, she probably didn't know it had anything to do with him. Thousands of cops in the city, after all. He didn't try to explain his distance, but he couldn't lie to her. And he certainly couldn't lie with her, not anymore, and not in this state. No matter the look in her eyes, or the quirk of the corner of her mouth when she asked him what he was up to for the rest of the afternoon. He made his excuses and promised to call her sometime.
He swore he heard Jess snickering at him.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xIt wasn't that he'd expected Monroe not to say anything, but he still felt a wave of irritation as Mac approached. What was so wrong about not opening fire on a suspect? The girl was unhinged. She was going for suicide-by-cop. Monroe had her tackled and on the ground in seconds. Nobody died. Wasn't that the point?
He felt a cold wave in his stomach as the thought process of that moment echoed in his head. You shoot her, there'll be an automatic inquiry, like always. And you think they won't ask about Cade? They know. Everyone knows. They'll spin it as revenge for Jess, and say you're an unreliable cop. You shoot this girl, you're done, man. Done.
It was the quiet little voice saying, and would that be such a bad thing? that actually stopped him firing. If he was going down, they'd have to come get him. He wouldn't deliver himself into their hands.
He only wished he knew which voice to trust: the one that rebuked and reviled him all day and pursued him into his dreams, or the faint one that whispered, you're a good man, and you have good friends around you.
"Don. Everything okay with you?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"I'm not convinced."
He eyed him. "Why'd you need to be? Did I do something wrong?"
"It's what you didn't do. Could've got you killed."
He grinned disbelievingly. "Am I being second-guessed for not killing someone?" Mac remained silent, and he prodded: "I thought that was a good thing."
"It is. If it was a choice." Mac's gaze was steady, and Flack looked down as if to check on some papers. "People are concerned about you, Don."
"Tell people I said thanks. But I can take care of myself."
"I wish that was true." Mac said. "If it weren't for Lindsay saving your ass today, we might be having this conversation in an Emergency room. Or maybe not at all."
The cold, shut-it-down reflex he'd learned from his father served him well. "Unless you want to make that official, I got nothing else to say."
Mac held his gaze, unfooled. Flack picked up his files and walked away.
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He couldn't keep living in a gray swirl, not forever, but in the meantime, it felt so much better to stay tucked away inside his head. Or to keep himself well-buffered against reality. There were moments when he saw himself clearly, and saw how the fragments of his life had fallen like leaves around him, waiting to be swept up and sorted. Generally those moments were followed by an RTO-day of determined drinking, so that even the memory of his father, nodding over the last half-finger of whiskey, was dulled. He'd be sobered up and presentable by the time his next shift rolled around.
He knew it had to stop sometime. He just didn't know how it would come about.
He thought he was being a dignified drunk. He was on days off, after all. Minding his own business, not doing any harm. Perfectly in control, ambling down the subway stairs, navigating the turnstile and the train doors as they slid open. Just minding his own business, smiling politely at an elderly Chinese lady laden with her shopping. She eyed him warily, less than charmed. As did a cute young brunette a few seats down, who glared at him and turned away. Whatever. Not like he had anything to say to them.
The two wannabe gangstas that got on two stops later couldn't have known who they were about to deal with. He felt them zero in on him, and found himself anticipating a satisfying and completely defensible fight. If they so much as touched him...he carefully set his bottle beside him, in preparation for a quick reaction.
But he was slowed down. He remembered all the moves he was supposed to make, but, as if he were stuck in a dream, the laws of physics were all messed up, and his legs didn't work right. Kicked in the ribs, bashed in the temple, he slid to the ground, and felt more hard, punishing blows to his gut. He reached for the Sig in his ankle holster, but the asshole closest to him kicked it skittering away from him. He managed a clear hard kick to the side of the guy's thigh, and heard him curse as he fell. Yeah, motherfucker. NYPD.
Things went weird then. He was sure he saw a flick knife, and he somehow couldn't move away, his eyes riveted on the shining blade. Was this it? Stuck like a pig and left to bleed out on the subway, just another drunk? But then he must have been dreaming, because Terrence was there, holding the fallen Sig like a pro and ordering the two punks to drop his wallet and back away. And they did.
In another blink, he woke on a leather couch in an apartment he'd seen once before, a dreary place that a couple of overly-expensive pieces of furniture did nothing to disguise. Terrence was sitting across from him, watching him with an expression between dread and disgust. Flack raised his head to ask what happened, and the room spun and he started retching. Terence got him on his feet and pointed towards the bathroom. The puking cleared his head a little, but made him painfully aware of his ribs, which seemed to be one large bruise. He pulled up his shirt and confirmed this to be so. If he hadn't cracked a rib, he'd be lucky.
"Why you let yourself get beat down like that?" Terrence asked, and there was real concern in his voice. "That's not mournin'. That's somethin' else."
Flack couldn't begin to frame an answer, but he was spared, sort of, by the loud knocking of a couple of Terrence's boys. A flash of fear cut through the worry on Terrence's face, and he shut Flack in the bathroom with an injunction to stay quiet. Flack heard the scuffles and loud negotiations, and was glad to be out of it in his current state. Looking out into the open apartment, he spotted his backup Sig Sauer lying on the table, and his stomach turned cold and tight. No-self respecting homeboy would miss the fact that it was obviously law issue. He knew Terrence had taken a lot on, hauling him up here, but the reality slammed into him. Terrence wasn't his informant any longer, but the timing wouldn't make a difference with anyone who had a grudge against him.
But Terrence was up to the task. Within minutes, his two boys were gone again, peaceably, but with muttered warnings. Flack breathed again, and leaned on the bathroom sink, looking into the mirror. Fuck, he was a mess. He grabbed the least grungy hand towel that was slung over a rack, and rinsed it out with plenty of soap before beginning to mop at the laceration on his temple.
"Hey Terrence, this has been fun and all, but you might wanna get some new friends," he called, by way of thanks. "Your boys are like walking parole violations." Silence from the outer room. "What'sa matter, I hurt your feelings?"
Sill no answer. Where was the backchat? "You get sensitive all of a su - "
Oh, shit.
Mac Taylor, large as life, stood watching him quietly. Flack was acutely aware of how bad he must look. Unshaven, yesterday's clothes, the sour reek of yesterday's alcohol sweating out of his pores. Mac was as immaculately groomed and straight of spine as ever. And coldly, furiously pissed. This was not going to go well.
They sat down.
He gave Mac the choirboy look he used to use to send his father's blood pressure up. "What you wanna hear, Mac? Just one of those days."
"You can do better than that."
"All right, fine, it won't happen again," Flack rattled off, according to the old, well-remembered script.
"You're damn right. I'm making it official."
Well, it was about fucking time someone did something.
He shrugged and stood up. "Do what you gotta do." he said.
Mac stood up too, and faced him. "Let's be clear." he said, in a voice Flack had never heard before. "Part of me wishes I could take off this badge and settle this another way."
Flack was tempted to push him there, just to make it real. "Get outta my face." He brushed Mac's arm away, remembering too late that Mac kept up his military bearing as a matter of pride. Mac strongarmed him back against the wall like a pesky fly.
"Hey! We're in the middle of a murder investigation, and you go AWOL?"
"I can handle myself."
He'd apparently reached the petulant stage, which was where he usually went down in flames.
"Oh, yeah? Is that what you're doing here in this apartment?" Mac held up the small Sig. "Is that why I had to get this from Terrence? Is that why I had to have Stella triangulate your phone - and Danny check the ER's to see if you turned up dead?"
Stone cold sober, hurting all over, and aghast, Flack couldn't do much more than stare, and then slump back into his chair.
"You can keep telling people you're fine," Mac told him, "but that won't work."
It was an opening. Mac would listen to him. Whatever he felt necessary to do afterwards, Mac would hear him out. Flack had been choking on the truth for months.
"It's been eatin' at me, Mac. When Angell was killed. All I wanted to do was make it right."
"We did that. Justice was served because we did our jobs."
"You weren't there, with me and Simon Cade! I stood over that bastard. I looked him in the eyes, and I - "
Mac cut him off. "Whatever happened is between you and your God. I'm not your priest. What I do need to know is whether I can count on you."
Mac stared down at him, and Flack could only look helplessly back, and try to control his breathing around the pain in his ribs. As Mac strode out of the apartment, Flack tried to rise, unsure if he should follow him, but Mac was gone in seconds.
Flack sat, feeling sick, disgusted with himself, and alarmed. How easy it had been to just slide under the water and let it close over his head - and how badly he wanted to fight like hell to breathe again, once he was finally called on it.
He clasped Terrence's hand as he left, and promised to send him and his current girl to a nice restaurant for dinner. Not wanting to deal with the harsh afternoon daylight, not wanting to see anyone, he took a cab all the way home, and slunk upstairs to his apartment.
His place was a mess and smelled like a fratboy's dorm room, but that could be dealt with. He might have to make some uncomfortable phone calls about arranging payment for the pile of bills, but everyone could wait a day or two.
He sat heavily on his couch, and thought, for the hundredth time that week, of exactly what Jess would be yelling at him. He could hear her tone of voice and see the precise angle of her finger, and he wondered if she really might be out there, up there, around here, watching him. Sober, the thought gave him the shakes. No wonder he'd been staring at the bottom of the bottle all this time.
How the hell would you feel if you knew I'd done something like that? she hollered. We're cops, Flack. We do not deal out justice! I lost a fight, but at least I kept my integrity. That was a wounded man who was never going anywhere but jail. I never asked for vengeance, and you know I never would.
He was an inhuman hired killer. He killed you, and the baby, and how many others? And how many would he have gone on to kill? He took away the best part of me.
No - you handed it to him.
In his mind, her voice softened.
What's done is done. All you can do is move forward, or be stuck here forever. How long are you going to let this go on?
Much later, after a long shower and an exhausted deep sleep, he realized that Mac had managed to lay out his position - the position all his superiors had apparently chosen to take - as clearly as he could without admitting anything concretely, or damaging anyone in the process.
It was, as Mac implied, between him and God. The NYPD was deep in a state of cultivated ignorance, and nothing would be said. Nothing would be written. No action would be taken. And he realized that the reason he still had a job, acting and looking as he had been doing, was that this was all old hat to the top brass. They knew exactly what level of acting-out to expect from him, and as long as he didn't get into more trouble that they couldn't overlook, they'd simply keep his desk tidy and stop him killing himself until he sat back down again.
What the hell did that say about the Force, that they'd let someone who gratuitously took a life, back within ranks, and even sympathize? What did it say about his father, who must surely have witnessed more than one good cop go down for less, while others walked free? And Cliff Angell, who had been more of a father to him this past year than his own? Flack could never tell him.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x"St. Augustine's Church. May I help you?"
"Hey, Helena. Don Flack."
"Why, hello, dear. It's been a while. Father's around here somewhere - will you hold?"
"'Course."
"Father Grady,"
"Grady. Flack."
"Hey, boyo! You took your own sweet time. H'are ye goin'?"
"Not so good. But I think I've got my head pulled out now. Does Helena still keep those jam cookies in the jar?"
"Oh, for sure. There was some unpleasantness to do with someone suggesting oatmeal, but I think that's all over now."
"Aw, she's a peach."
"She is that. When will I see you?"
"Tonight sometime?"
If Grady was surprised at this sudden desire for a meeting, after a couple of months of silence, he didn't show it, but then, Flack thought, that must be part of his job.
"I'm hearing Confessions 'til nine, but if that's not too late, come on by."
"I'll be there."
* * * * *"We used to joke about just coming to work one day with wedding bands, and seeing who noticed. And then it wasn't a joke anymore. We were right there. I was just waiting for the right time to ask her. And it turns out she - she was pregnant. Just, like a week...we didn't even know yet."
"Jaysus." Grady swallowed. "You have been walking through Hell."
"We were a team," he said simply. "We were going to go away for her birthday weekend next month. I thought I'd ask her then. You know, do it nice, by the ocean and everything. And we'd have known about the baby by then."
"Maybe she had an idea. Women sometimes do, right from the very beginning."
"I don't know. I doubt it. She took on a hired gun, with only her service weapon, not even a vest. If she knew, I think she'd've hit the floor and tried to work from there. But then, I dunno, that was Jess. If she was gonna go down, she was gonna look him in the eye and go down fighting."
"You haven't begun to let her go."
"Not even close. Coming home, not seeing her there, or her desk at the office...it's like she's just gone away for while. Like I'll wake up one day and she's gonna be there."
"Donnie," Grady said gently, "She's not. That doesn't mean you ever forget. It's a lot of good, you have, to hold onto. Ye've changed since you met her. Hold on to that. But she's not comin' back."
"I know. But I need her. Grady, I need to talk to her so badly..."
Grady reached over for box of tissues and handed it to him.
"Do you talk to her?" the priest asked. "D'ye tell her what you need her to know?"
"No!" Don said, between shaky breaths, "I mean, wouldn't that be crazy?"
"Not at all. Look, Don, you say you haven't let her go. It's very clear you haven't. That means she's still with you, in a very real way. Call it her soul, if ye like, whatever you want, but she's with you still. Talk to her. What if she needs to hear from you, before she can move on? If you were gone, boyo, and she was actin' like y'are, would you leave her be? Not till you saw she was on the mend, if I know you."
"You believe that?"
"I do." Grady was firm. "I believe in the teachings of the Church. But given how attached we are to our earthly lives, I don't think we suddenly just shed them and reappear wherever we're goin', the moment we pass on. If there's a Purgatory, I like to think there's maybe a kinder waystation for Heaven, too. To get our bearings, like."
"That's so not what I need to hear right now."
"What is it scares ye?"
The quiet question shook him to the bone. He swallowed reflexively a few times, and somehow answered Grady back just as simply: "Because I killed the man who killed her. We took the warehouse they were using. They opened fire, and we fired back."
Grady waited.
"I hit him once already. He was already down, he wasn't goin' nowhere. Then I realized it was him. He was the one who killed Jess. And the baby."
Comprehension dawned on Grady's face.
"And here's the thing: I can't even convince myself that what I did was wrong. God knows how many people he killed, or how many more he would have. I've tried to think of his family, what he might have wanted to be when he was a kid - but I can't. He was a stone-cold killer, he killed a cop and I killed him. If I'm honest, what I feel worst about is that I let everyone down. The law, the entire Force, my family...I did just what I've suspected other cops of doing and hated them for. And if any of them know, they aren't saying anything. Don't they care? What the hell have I been fighting for all these years? Shouldn't I be rottin' in a cell? How am I any better than he was?"
"I have the great luxury of lookin' at the balance, and sayin': because you are." Grady replied. "Ye've spent your whole workin' life trying to do good. Man, you have to know you're not the only copper to have found himself in the position of having killed a truly evil man without bein' in mortal danger - and to have nobody call them on it. I've talked a few good, decent men through it in my time here. In its way, it's a worse punishment."
"Then what do I do? What the hell do I do? I'm not even fit to be a cop. To go my entire career, my entire life, just waitin' for someone to bust me on it and run to the papers?"
"Of course you're fit to be a cop. How can you know what that man might have done? You knew how dangerous he was. You're going through a terrible reckoning on top of a terrible personal tragedy. Ye've got them so muddled in your head that you can't think straight. But you will. I'm not here to absolve ye - only you and God can work that out - but I will say this: I'm as proud to know you today as I was yesterday. I'm heartbroken for you. And think about this: If the people you respect most, that you trust with your life, have a idea of what happened, and they're keepin' mum, don't ye think they might've already tried you where it counts? Their silence is on their heads, too."
Grady stopped speaking, and looked as though he was having to replay his own words to sort out where they'd come from. Don sat in silence, letting Grady's words sink in. That's why Grady's a priest, and I'm a cop, he thought.
I hear you," he said. "I hear you."
* * * * *Within moments of meeting with Mac, the next day, Flack realized that Grady was entirely right. Mac knew everything, and had been as decent as he knew how to be, for as long as he possibly could. It was a terrifying graduation to a new level of his police career. He couldn't help but wonder what acts other cops on the force had had to deal with privately, unable to turn to understanding confreres or legal advice.
He was still a good cop. He knew it. And if making things right for Jess had turned out horribly wrong, then at least he could keep trying to make Jess proud of him, and prove to his colleagues that he was truly back in command. It wasn't resolution. But it was a start.
He wasn't expecting any sign of approval from on high, but he had to admit that bringing in the piece of the jigsaw that gave them the Compass Killer's identity was a nice touch. If Jess had been with him at the end of the day, she'd have thrown her arms around him and kissed him soundly in congratulation, even as he protested it was just his job.
Because, after all, it was.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x"You sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. Why?"
The artist shrugged, examining a bundle of needles under a lens. "Just don't seem very NYPD, is all. Pretty woo-woo, innit? An infinity symbol?"
"Actually," Flack explained patiently, as he stripped off his undershirt, "It's what's on the Métis flag."
"Mighty who?"
"Métis. It's like a, a part-Native group from Canada. Part Indian, part French or Scottish, mostly."
"Really. Huh. You don't look at all like you got blood."
"Not me, my girlfriend's family..." Flack began, and stopped. He took a breath to try to continue, but the guy just nodded. He'd heard stranger reasons by far.
"You want it, you got it, man. Here?" he hovered over Flack's left pectoral with his marking pen.
"Right there. Just the outline, on an angle. This long," he indicated an inch and a half, between his fingers.
A small figure of the timelessness of the few short months they'd had together. The infinite possibilities of the child they would have had. Right where Jess used to rest her head, and listen to his heart. A solàs mo chroi.
"Wicked scar," said the artist, eyeing the hilly mass of scar tissue that extended from ribs to hip. "You get shot at?"
"Blown up at."
It was fitting, Flack thought, that this tattoo should be so close to the scar. Wasn't that where it all began? If it weren't for his incapacitation after the bombing, he might never have met Jess.
"Dude," said the guy, impressed. "Hey, you want for this to look flat, or, like, with a 3D twist?"
"Oh, definitely twisted," Flack replied, and cracked a grin.
"So tell me about your girl," the artist suggested, as he set to work.
Flack was surprised to find he was glad to paint a picture of Jess for someone who hadn't had the privilege of knowing her. "Third generation cop. One of the best," he said, "Smart as hell, but funny, and just gorgeous like you wouldn't believe. There's this great story about her, from when she was in training. Just a cadet, still a kid, really. They used to call her The Princess..."
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xIt was funny, how sometimes the small tests of one's human progress only appeared in hindsight, and other times, there was a large blinking neon arrow pointing to the fact that it was a test.
He was handing out gifts to a room of shrieking children and their parents, along with Hawkes, Danny and Lindsay, all in cartoonish elf hats and scarves. He always did enjoy kids, being a big kid himself, and it was fun to get off his investigative high horse and be silly for a while. He was beginning to laugh more, and he realized that Mac was usually lurking nearby when it happened. Secret Santa indeed: Mac had not only pulled many official strings on his behalf, after Jess' death, but was taking steps to pull the team back together again as a solid unit, CSI and Detectives both, after a hellish year.
He glanced up, and saw Jess watching him on the other side of the room, one hand on her heavily pregnant belly.
He blinked and looked again. There was a woman standing there who looked like Jess from a distance, about seven months along, leaning back against the wall and smiling at a dark-haired toddler knee-deep in shredded wrapping paper. As her daughter jumped and hollered along with the other kids, the woman closed her eyes for a moment, and Flack saw her face crumple.
"Danno, I'll be right back," he called. Danny, more or less steady on his own two feet again, waved a hand in acknowledgement, and kept chatting with a small boy in big glasses.
Flack walked over to the woman. The gift in his hand was labeled "Boy 2-3 years", but he could improvise.
"Hey," he said, "I won't tell Santa if you open this one early."
She gave a half-sob, half-laugh, and smiled at him, taking the gaudily wrapped package, and turning it in her hands. "Sorry. I'm okay. It's just - this is my first Christmas without my husband. Gerry McIntyre, from the 18th precinct."
"Gerry. Yeah. I remember hearing...I'm sorry, Mrs. McIntyre."
"We're having a boy this time. Gerry would've been so...it's just hard."
"Yeah, I know," Flack said quietly. She looked harder at him, and nodded.
"You lost someone?"
"Yeah. In the spring. She was a cop, too. She...she would have been just about as far along as you. For a second there I thought you were her."
"She was the...it was on the news..."
"Yeah."
She didn't cover her mouth, or say "Oh, my God, how awful," or anything he had become used to. She simply gave him a look of deep understanding, and laid her hand on his arm.
"Life has a way of going on." she said. "Whether we want it to it or not."
"I'm beginning to get that." he nodded. He noticed she still wore her wedding ring, and felt a renewed sense of rightness that he'd gotten his tattoo. Something real to hold onto. Mac hadn't taken his wedding ring off for many years after Claire's death, and even now, sometimes kept it in his jacket pocket, for comfort. It didn't matter if some other woman saw the tattoo, someday, and asked him about it. He'd tell them about Jess, and explain that she was part of what made him the man he was trying to be.
"Listen, it's none of my business," he began, "But are you and your daughter okay? You have everything you need?"
She smiled. "We're fine," she said. "I've got a lot of support. I was going to ask you that, actually. Not about having everything you need, but...being okay. You're not used to strangers asking you that, are you? I guess in your job you're usually the one taking care of strangers. But once you've been there, you can always see it in other people."
"I'm lucky," he told her, "Those people up there in the stupid hats like mine? They're part of my family. I know they're thinkin' about Jess, too, this Christmas. And that guy over there, in the black suit, he's a sneaky son of a bitch, and if he catches me in a mope, he'll drag me back feet-first."
She laughed. "Good. You know, I have to say - lots of people have come to check on me, over the last few months, but just now when you came over, it was the first time I could honestly feel that I was okay, for real. Not just saying the words, or figuring I'd get there someday."
"Me too, actually," he said, realizing as she spoke that it was the truth. "Spirit of the season, maybe?"
"Or maybe we were both put here so we'd have a chance to realize that we're not just going to be okay someday. I miss Gerry something awful. But I'm okay."
He nodded thoughtfully, and for a moment, he stood with her and watched the children. He doubted he'd ever see Gerry's widow again, but that was fine. He had a strong feeling she was right about the reason for their meeting.
He had no doubt he would get thoroughly toxic and cry his eyes out at some point during the holiday, like the big sentimental sap Jess had proven him to be, but that was all right. He'd go to dinner with his mule-stubborn family, whom he loved irrationally, despite everything, and he'd think of some Jess story he hadn't told them a dozen times before. He'd call Cliff and Chérie on Christmas Day, after making his command appearance at Mass at Grady's church, and tell them he was thinking of them. And he'd call Sam every day, and somehow they'd haul each other through the holidays.
Because that's what human beings had always done, from the very beginning. Muddle through together, as Grady would say.
Somewhere, far down the road, his children waited, the family he would come home to. He couldn't see the way to that place, from where he stood, and he didn’t want to. But for the first time since Jess' passing, he could accept that it was there, and that it would appear when it was meant to. Life did have a way of moving on. And Jess would have his hide if he didn't keep moving with it. There was too much work to do, and a city to keep safe, and people to watch out for.
"Yeah, I'm okay," he agreed. "Things are actually...pretty good."
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xEpilogue
October 2012
Amy DaSilva was five and a half years old when she died, with a puzzled look on her face, her little life slipping away right under Flack's bloodied hands.
That's the second kid that's died on me. We're supposed to be able to deal with this crap, but God, sometimes I don't know how...
It might be time to call Rick and Aislin again, he thought. Jess' brother and sister-in-law were close friends of his now, drawn together both by loss and mutual liking, and a shared understanding of a life spent in emergency services. As EMT's, they sometimes lost people, innocents and gang-bangers alike. They'd understand.
He stared blankly at his computer screen.
His statement on Amy's accidental shooting had been taken, and Senator Hamilton's interview was out of his hands now, being transcribed by the clerks. His constables had finished uploading the file documents onto the server, and the Court Liaison clerk would send it over to the prosecutor's office in the morning. There was nothing to do unless he wanted to crack open some other current file or cold case, but he knew that after nineteen hours without a letup, he would hardly be an asset to any investigation.
Home was not a a good option though. Too quiet, and he didn't feel like blotting it out with overnight TV or a shoot 'em up video game. Not tonight. He'd do himself an injury if he tried to work out this exhausted, and there wasn't anyone around for a drink. Danny was home with his girls, exactly where he needed to be, Mac couldn't drink with all the meds he was on, and everyone else was sensibly home in bed.
"Hey," said a voice. "Thought you were off today."
He jumped. Jamie loped towards him through the bullpen in black jeans, killer boots that somehow looked both classy and deadly, and intriguingly, something lilac and fluttery under a neatly-tailored black leather jacket. Her hair was a riot of messy waves around her face, but she swept them back and did something complicated with a hair clip as she walked, that turned her into put-together professional again. He couldn't think of a good reason not to watch her, so he did.
"You on the grave, Lovato? It's one in the freakin' morning."
"Nah, I'm on RTO. Just got back from dropping off my girls after a night out. Thought I'd see if there was anything new on Lindsay before I went home."
"She's fine, or she's gonna be. She's back home now, but it'll probably be a week or two before she's back. Takes more than a cracked skull to stop a Messer. Even a Messer by marriage."
"That's good news. So how some you're still here?" she asked, leaning her hip against his desk. She crossed her arms in a jarringly familiar way and looked down at him. Apparently this was not a time for banter or deflection.
"Shitty, shitty day. You heard about Amy DaSilva, I take it."
"Yeah. I'm so sorry, Don. That's about as bad as it can get," she said softly. She pulled herself up slightly and went on: "So you're stuck between going home and beatin' yourself up some more, or working till you fall asleep at your desk and try to blame being a fuckin' miserable dick tomorrow on a sore back."
It wasn't a question. He glanced up at her, and then wondered why he should be surprised. Jamie played at being a sweet little badass of a cop, but she was a family girl and a fiercely protective friend. She watched her people very carefully.
"Something like that," he agreed quietly, "But yeah, I guess I gotta take off sometime."
"D'you gotta go straight home?" she asked. "It's my night off, and I ain't even had a single drink. I've been playing babysitter all night."
He took a deep breath and hesitated, and felt Jess in some dark corner of his mind, rolling her eyes at him and mouthing GET ON WITH IT.
"I know just the place for an Irish coffee." he suggested. Jamie flashed her dimples at him like he'd got the right answer, and he felt a flutter he hadn't felt in a long, long time.
He got to his feet, reached for his jacket, and walked with her to the door, grinning like a damn fool as she pasted him about his neverending Irishness, every step of the way.
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Fin.
And so at long, long last this tale is done.
I had thought I would tell you all about Jess' surprise wedding (on the beach, of course) at Rockaway - her return to school, Don's promotion to Sergeant, and the arrival of Sadie and Tommy. To go deeper into Sam and Grady's friendship and the decisions they helped each other make, and even how Lucy Messer's first major preschool tantrum turned into a budding career as a peewee ice-hockey player. But it'll keep. There's only so much sugar a person can take, and the canonical story - not the Wrinkle-in-Time version in which Jess lives and everything is beautiful - needed closure at last.
So here, finally, is the last chapter, with my sincere thanks and respect to the actors and writers that made it so damn easy to love these characters, and so hard to let them
AUTHOR: fixomnia
PAIRING: Flack/Angell
RATING: It's an M. Adults dealing with adult things.
SPOILERS: Various Flack/Angell scenes from Season 3-5, and Flack's season 6.
Chapter Summary:
Being the final installment in this tale. Flack burns his wings and hits the ground. And gets up again, with a little help from his friends.
---------------------------------
Chapter Six
Calling All Angels
---------------------------------
...bring on the axiomatic
round sound midnight drumroll fury-ocity
velocity
squeeze beat angel wings
'til they sing sweet
drink the bebop sax
the wing-drip wax
of them that flew too close to the sun
fillin' holy souls and tongues
with the ever-changin'
always in the now...
- T.Paul Ste.-Marie, "Invocation"
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x
The sixth night.
"No, man, don't do it, I don't wanna die here."
"You're gonna."
He pulled the trigger. Cade's face disappeared in a pash of splintered bone and strawberry-jam brains, but his mouth still moved.
"Help me," said the mouth.
He looked at his gun, and the tiny LED's down the grip were flashing red.
"Help me," said the mouth, high and fast.
Flack sat bolt upright, his face and chest clammy with sweat, his heart thumping. "Shit." He scrubbed at his face and looked bleakly around his bedroom, which had not changed since the last time he saw it two hours ago. And two hours before that.
He padded to the kitchen and squinted into the fridge, shivering as the cold touched his skin. Ignoring his mother's voice telling him to try hot milk - he didn't remember the last time he'd bought any, and certainly didn't trust whatever was in the fridge - he picked up the bottle of vodka on the counter and poured a healthy measure into a mug. He thought about adding orange juice, and shook his head. No point dressing it up.
He was, however, not so far gone as to curl up in bed drinking alone, so he took the bottle and the mug into the living room, and clicked on the TV, feeling ridiculously like an outtake from The Wall.
The CNN overnight news ticker scrolled by his unseeing eyes.
Mother, will they tear your little boy apart? he singsonged grimly to himself, in his head.
At least, he hoped it was in his head.
* * * * *And in between the nights, the days wove into one another in a hazy palimpsest of movement, occasionally pierced through with too-bright stabs of light, like an old fashioned tin lantern, sharp-edged glowing reminders of the world beyond his head.
"Flack, Grady here. Fourth message. Call me, willye. Don't matter what time."
"I'm here, Grady."
"Sure you are. Where's here?"
"Someplace in hell."
"I gathered that much. Am I too soon?"
"No. No, but I'm...I'm nowhere near talkin'. Not yet."
"Then I'll wait a while longer. But not too long, mind, or I'm tellin' your Ma."
"I don't doubt it. Grady, thanks. I'm sorry, I'm just..."
"No apology needed. Will you at least ring your sister? She's that worried about you, and you know that's not good for her."
"I will."
"Honour bright?"
It took Flack a second too long to remember the old Irishism for, You promise? and to remind himself that Grady had never, and would never, judge him.
"Honour bright."
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x"Hey, Donnie, I know you're not...I just thought, maybe you wanna come to a meeting with me? I know it's not like you're, y'know...I thought, just to get outta your head and remember we're all going through shit together. And that you don't gotta do it all by yourself."
"I ain't doing that bad, kid." Not too far off, though, Sammy. "But I'll come with you if you want company."
"No, no...I'm okay. I got friends there now. It's cool. You want to maybe get lunch, though?"
"Yeah, soon, okay?"
"Okay."
They hung up. Flack recognized the twofold note of relief in his sister's voice, that not only did he and Sam understand one another's habits and could talk about them, but that he would not be intruding on the place of fragile safety she had created. He mentally raised a thumb to her. She was tougher than he was, to sit among strangers and reveal the most sensitive of her frayed nerves to them, to let them in deep enough to call them her friends.
He knew there were any number of AA meetings he could attend, some specifically for cops, but that in itself seemed to deflate any interest. Alcoholism wasn't his problem, and until this last week, he'd pretty much stopped reaching for the bottle out of habit, but this was special circumstances. This was mental pain relief of a legal form, and he didn't intend to let it go on for long. He'd ease up soon, he told himself. Just as soon as he could take a deep breath without wincing at the kick in his gut whenever he remembered.
No, this wasn't about falling into a bottle. It was about Jess, and what they had: unique, sacred, and not to be nodded over by well-meaning fellow cops and trained shrinks.
Pride may have been the first of all sins, and a major obstacle to his seeking out any help, Flack knew, but at least he still had some.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xIt was Stella who kicked his bony ass into getting out of the apartment.
She came by every few days with takeout, and caught him up on cases and office gossip, and let him ramble about Jess. If she noticed the dried-up takeout trays from her last visit, barely picked over, she simply swept them into her deli takeout bag along with the trash from whatever lunch she had brought, not mentioning how little he had eaten between her visits. In Stella's company, he could eat a few bites without choking, and even savour the garlicky, tangy taste of a meatball sub now and then.
In time, with Stella keeping up a running commentary of thoroughly normal cop-talk, he was able to start sorting through Jess' belongings that she kept at his place, and was even able to cry now and then. Stella didn't pretend not to see his tears, nor did she offer pity. She simply gathered him in her strong arms and pressed him against her shoulder, comrade-to-comrade, and let him rest for a minute or two. He was caught between the stinging raw relief of it, and the voice of self-reproach that told him that a murderer had no right, no right at all to weep.
He never knew whether she called in advance of her visits to give him a chance to tidy up a little and hide the bottles, or just to check on his state of mind, but he was grateful. If Stella knew just what a stew he'd fallen into, she'd have bullied him into...something tiresomely healthy and active and distracting, after which he'd come back to his solitary apartment, where Jess wasn't, where Jess and their baby weren't, and it would all start over.
On her fourth visit, two weeks in, she'd realized that he hadn't been to Jess' apartment yet, and had not, in fact, even seen Danny or Lindsay since the shooting. He'd been faking it, going along with her updates on Danny's recovery as though he knew all about it. She strung him along with a few planted half-truths, pegged him with a look, and then stood up, fists balled on her hips.
"Don, I love you, but you're full of shit. You didn't get shot and fucking paralyzed from the waist down. Danny did. Your best friend, remember? Jess wasn't just taken from you. That bastard took her from all of us. I know you don't want to hear this, but you are not alone. You're ours, Don. We're your family. Be an asshole, get angry, get depressed, but we are not walking away. You and Danny need other more than I can even tell you, and he's being an jerk about waiting for you to call him, and Lindsay's at the end of her rope, and you're just drinking yourself into oblivion, don't think I don't know - "
She trailed off, sounding near tired tears herself.
For a second he wanted to tell her everything. About just waiting for the right moment to ask Jess to marry him. About the shadowy dry crack in Sid's voice as he told Don about the baby that would never be.
About killing Cade and telling himself he felt no remorse, regardless of his nightmares.
But he couldn't do that to Stella. She'd cry with him, she'd console him, and then she'd march him to Professional Standards and then to the police shrink. He wondered if that wasn't exactly what he wished would happen. It would be easy to say that learning about the baby had been the final push over the edge, but it was more than that. It wasn't a moment of madness. If anything it was a moment of crystal clarity, seeing the sum total of everything he and Jess could never have, could never be to each other, after working their entire adult lives to do some good in the world, and that the human race would be better off without people like Cade in it.
He thought it would be clean and decisive. It wasn't.
"I suppose," he said heavily, after a pause, "I got no right to tell you about what losing people you love does to you."
"You better fucking not."
"Or what?" He shot back, feeling an oncoming smirk for the first time in a couple of weeks.
"Or I withhold finikia."
"You wouldn't."
"You wanna try me?" she aimed her finger at his chest. "At the very least go give Lindsay some time off from sitting with Danny. She needs some time with Lucy. And for herself. She doesn't get to take any time off. D'you even know which hospital he's at?"
"Uh. I actually do have it all written down somewhere."
"Uh-huh." Stella took in the slurry that was his apartment. "Gimme your arm." she sighed, and reached for a ballpoint in her bag,
He wandered into Danny's hospital room two days later, showered and shaved, with a greasy paper bag of buttery-warm pizelles and a few seasons of Red Dwarf on a thumb drive.
They blinked at each other.
"You look like shit," they said in unison.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xHer name was Hannah, and she was a nice looking blue-eyed blonde whose date was being a prick, trying too hard to impress her, and then telling her how lucky she was to have him all to herself all night. Fed up, she'd smiled sweetly, said she had to go to the bathroom, picked up her purse, and kept moving out the back door. She walked straight into Flack, who was ambling down the alley to the subway station after leaving Gracie's Tavern, and they stared at each other before grinning and apologizing.
He'd showed her his badge and offered to walk her to wherever she was going, since a dark alley behind a row of bars probably wasn't a good place for a pretty girl to be. She'd blushed and thanked him, and really, it was ridiculously easy after that. They weren't exactly drunk, but they definitely weren't sober. She told him about her lousy date. He offered to run a crim check on the guy, and she laughed at the silly tale he wove of the insurance frauds, wives in six states, and the string of snot-nosed woebegone children he'd left scattered across the country.
They came out onto the street. He asked her which train she needed to catch, and she hesitated.
"I know a way to get back at him," she said. "What would piss him off more'n walkin' right under his nose with a nice guy I just met?"
"You think I'm nice?" he frowned clownishly. She giggled.
"You're a cop, ain'tcha?" she asked.
He wondered which small town she'd been raised in. Her freshness was completely unaffected and charming, as, incidentally, was her smile. "You wanna 'nother drink?" he asked. She put her head to one side and looked at him for a moment, and then smiled.
"Sure. Yeah."
Instead, they got a room at the Crystal Court as they walked by. She wasn't at all used to hooking up, but damn, clearly she was enjoying her new life in the big city. Her touch was tentative and sweet, and he was slow and gentle with her. It felt good to take care of someone. She was gone by morning, leaving a little note that said only, "Thanks".
He'd slept, though. He awoke feeling a little clearer in the head, and physically, the better for the human contact, but now he had to contend with Jess in his head all day. He knew damn well it was a concoction of his own mind. Cheating on Jess had never entered his mind, not once, and he was still crazy in love with her, but Jess was gone, so...was it cheating? It had been clear from the first that Hannah, while attractive in her own right, was also as different from Jess as could be.
If Jess were alive, she'd have sandblasted the skin off him verbally, removed all traces of herself from his apartment, and never spoken to him again. Was that what he was trying to get not-alive Jess to do? Holler at him, give him hell, and then get out of his head and leave him alone?
He found himself trying to shut Jess out of his head nearly as much as Cade. If only they'd all just go away, he thought during the day. At night, he found himself panicking, wondering if he could still reach out and feel her nearby, as if she would come from her bath at any moment and crawl in beside him.
But if he could still feel connected to Jess, as if she had never left, didn't it mean that Cade could touch him, too?
Hence the vodka, and when he was sick of the sting, the Ballantyne’s, and then the straight-to-hell Jack Daniels.
And then there was Jill, who'd invited him back for coffee, after he'd interviewed her about a shooting near her apartment, and artsy Efrat with her many social causes, and Serena, the vivacious Korean grad student who'd been hanging out at Gracie's since she moved nearby...
Really, any girl who didn't look like Jess would do.
He ran into Devon one day, running errands in downtown Manhattan. Strangely, his spirits sank, and he felt a sudden emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Devon's warm smile and flying hug were genuine, and he realized that while she must have heard about the female cop recently killed in action, she probably didn't know it had anything to do with him. Thousands of cops in the city, after all. He didn't try to explain his distance, but he couldn't lie to her. And he certainly couldn't lie with her, not anymore, and not in this state. No matter the look in her eyes, or the quirk of the corner of her mouth when she asked him what he was up to for the rest of the afternoon. He made his excuses and promised to call her sometime.
He swore he heard Jess snickering at him.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xIt wasn't that he'd expected Monroe not to say anything, but he still felt a wave of irritation as Mac approached. What was so wrong about not opening fire on a suspect? The girl was unhinged. She was going for suicide-by-cop. Monroe had her tackled and on the ground in seconds. Nobody died. Wasn't that the point?
He felt a cold wave in his stomach as the thought process of that moment echoed in his head. You shoot her, there'll be an automatic inquiry, like always. And you think they won't ask about Cade? They know. Everyone knows. They'll spin it as revenge for Jess, and say you're an unreliable cop. You shoot this girl, you're done, man. Done.
It was the quiet little voice saying, and would that be such a bad thing? that actually stopped him firing. If he was going down, they'd have to come get him. He wouldn't deliver himself into their hands.
He only wished he knew which voice to trust: the one that rebuked and reviled him all day and pursued him into his dreams, or the faint one that whispered, you're a good man, and you have good friends around you.
"Don. Everything okay with you?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"I'm not convinced."
He eyed him. "Why'd you need to be? Did I do something wrong?"
"It's what you didn't do. Could've got you killed."
He grinned disbelievingly. "Am I being second-guessed for not killing someone?" Mac remained silent, and he prodded: "I thought that was a good thing."
"It is. If it was a choice." Mac's gaze was steady, and Flack looked down as if to check on some papers. "People are concerned about you, Don."
"Tell people I said thanks. But I can take care of myself."
"I wish that was true." Mac said. "If it weren't for Lindsay saving your ass today, we might be having this conversation in an Emergency room. Or maybe not at all."
The cold, shut-it-down reflex he'd learned from his father served him well. "Unless you want to make that official, I got nothing else to say."
Mac held his gaze, unfooled. Flack picked up his files and walked away.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xSomething was going to give soon. He felt it.
He couldn't keep living in a gray swirl, not forever, but in the meantime, it felt so much better to stay tucked away inside his head. Or to keep himself well-buffered against reality. There were moments when he saw himself clearly, and saw how the fragments of his life had fallen like leaves around him, waiting to be swept up and sorted. Generally those moments were followed by an RTO-day of determined drinking, so that even the memory of his father, nodding over the last half-finger of whiskey, was dulled. He'd be sobered up and presentable by the time his next shift rolled around.
He knew it had to stop sometime. He just didn't know how it would come about.
He thought he was being a dignified drunk. He was on days off, after all. Minding his own business, not doing any harm. Perfectly in control, ambling down the subway stairs, navigating the turnstile and the train doors as they slid open. Just minding his own business, smiling politely at an elderly Chinese lady laden with her shopping. She eyed him warily, less than charmed. As did a cute young brunette a few seats down, who glared at him and turned away. Whatever. Not like he had anything to say to them.
The two wannabe gangstas that got on two stops later couldn't have known who they were about to deal with. He felt them zero in on him, and found himself anticipating a satisfying and completely defensible fight. If they so much as touched him...he carefully set his bottle beside him, in preparation for a quick reaction.
But he was slowed down. He remembered all the moves he was supposed to make, but, as if he were stuck in a dream, the laws of physics were all messed up, and his legs didn't work right. Kicked in the ribs, bashed in the temple, he slid to the ground, and felt more hard, punishing blows to his gut. He reached for the Sig in his ankle holster, but the asshole closest to him kicked it skittering away from him. He managed a clear hard kick to the side of the guy's thigh, and heard him curse as he fell. Yeah, motherfucker. NYPD.
Things went weird then. He was sure he saw a flick knife, and he somehow couldn't move away, his eyes riveted on the shining blade. Was this it? Stuck like a pig and left to bleed out on the subway, just another drunk? But then he must have been dreaming, because Terrence was there, holding the fallen Sig like a pro and ordering the two punks to drop his wallet and back away. And they did.
In another blink, he woke on a leather couch in an apartment he'd seen once before, a dreary place that a couple of overly-expensive pieces of furniture did nothing to disguise. Terrence was sitting across from him, watching him with an expression between dread and disgust. Flack raised his head to ask what happened, and the room spun and he started retching. Terence got him on his feet and pointed towards the bathroom. The puking cleared his head a little, but made him painfully aware of his ribs, which seemed to be one large bruise. He pulled up his shirt and confirmed this to be so. If he hadn't cracked a rib, he'd be lucky.
"Why you let yourself get beat down like that?" Terrence asked, and there was real concern in his voice. "That's not mournin'. That's somethin' else."
Flack couldn't begin to frame an answer, but he was spared, sort of, by the loud knocking of a couple of Terrence's boys. A flash of fear cut through the worry on Terrence's face, and he shut Flack in the bathroom with an injunction to stay quiet. Flack heard the scuffles and loud negotiations, and was glad to be out of it in his current state. Looking out into the open apartment, he spotted his backup Sig Sauer lying on the table, and his stomach turned cold and tight. No-self respecting homeboy would miss the fact that it was obviously law issue. He knew Terrence had taken a lot on, hauling him up here, but the reality slammed into him. Terrence wasn't his informant any longer, but the timing wouldn't make a difference with anyone who had a grudge against him.
But Terrence was up to the task. Within minutes, his two boys were gone again, peaceably, but with muttered warnings. Flack breathed again, and leaned on the bathroom sink, looking into the mirror. Fuck, he was a mess. He grabbed the least grungy hand towel that was slung over a rack, and rinsed it out with plenty of soap before beginning to mop at the laceration on his temple.
"Hey Terrence, this has been fun and all, but you might wanna get some new friends," he called, by way of thanks. "Your boys are like walking parole violations." Silence from the outer room. "What'sa matter, I hurt your feelings?"
Sill no answer. Where was the backchat? "You get sensitive all of a su - "
Oh, shit.
Mac Taylor, large as life, stood watching him quietly. Flack was acutely aware of how bad he must look. Unshaven, yesterday's clothes, the sour reek of yesterday's alcohol sweating out of his pores. Mac was as immaculately groomed and straight of spine as ever. And coldly, furiously pissed. This was not going to go well.
They sat down.
He gave Mac the choirboy look he used to use to send his father's blood pressure up. "What you wanna hear, Mac? Just one of those days."
"You can do better than that."
"All right, fine, it won't happen again," Flack rattled off, according to the old, well-remembered script.
"You're damn right. I'm making it official."
Well, it was about fucking time someone did something.
He shrugged and stood up. "Do what you gotta do." he said.
Mac stood up too, and faced him. "Let's be clear." he said, in a voice Flack had never heard before. "Part of me wishes I could take off this badge and settle this another way."
Flack was tempted to push him there, just to make it real. "Get outta my face." He brushed Mac's arm away, remembering too late that Mac kept up his military bearing as a matter of pride. Mac strongarmed him back against the wall like a pesky fly.
"Hey! We're in the middle of a murder investigation, and you go AWOL?"
"I can handle myself."
He'd apparently reached the petulant stage, which was where he usually went down in flames.
"Oh, yeah? Is that what you're doing here in this apartment?" Mac held up the small Sig. "Is that why I had to get this from Terrence? Is that why I had to have Stella triangulate your phone - and Danny check the ER's to see if you turned up dead?"
Stone cold sober, hurting all over, and aghast, Flack couldn't do much more than stare, and then slump back into his chair.
"You can keep telling people you're fine," Mac told him, "but that won't work."
It was an opening. Mac would listen to him. Whatever he felt necessary to do afterwards, Mac would hear him out. Flack had been choking on the truth for months.
"It's been eatin' at me, Mac. When Angell was killed. All I wanted to do was make it right."
"We did that. Justice was served because we did our jobs."
"You weren't there, with me and Simon Cade! I stood over that bastard. I looked him in the eyes, and I - "
Mac cut him off. "Whatever happened is between you and your God. I'm not your priest. What I do need to know is whether I can count on you."
Mac stared down at him, and Flack could only look helplessly back, and try to control his breathing around the pain in his ribs. As Mac strode out of the apartment, Flack tried to rise, unsure if he should follow him, but Mac was gone in seconds.
Flack sat, feeling sick, disgusted with himself, and alarmed. How easy it had been to just slide under the water and let it close over his head - and how badly he wanted to fight like hell to breathe again, once he was finally called on it.
He clasped Terrence's hand as he left, and promised to send him and his current girl to a nice restaurant for dinner. Not wanting to deal with the harsh afternoon daylight, not wanting to see anyone, he took a cab all the way home, and slunk upstairs to his apartment.
His place was a mess and smelled like a fratboy's dorm room, but that could be dealt with. He might have to make some uncomfortable phone calls about arranging payment for the pile of bills, but everyone could wait a day or two.
He sat heavily on his couch, and thought, for the hundredth time that week, of exactly what Jess would be yelling at him. He could hear her tone of voice and see the precise angle of her finger, and he wondered if she really might be out there, up there, around here, watching him. Sober, the thought gave him the shakes. No wonder he'd been staring at the bottom of the bottle all this time.
How the hell would you feel if you knew I'd done something like that? she hollered. We're cops, Flack. We do not deal out justice! I lost a fight, but at least I kept my integrity. That was a wounded man who was never going anywhere but jail. I never asked for vengeance, and you know I never would.
He was an inhuman hired killer. He killed you, and the baby, and how many others? And how many would he have gone on to kill? He took away the best part of me.
No - you handed it to him.
In his mind, her voice softened.
What's done is done. All you can do is move forward, or be stuck here forever. How long are you going to let this go on?
Much later, after a long shower and an exhausted deep sleep, he realized that Mac had managed to lay out his position - the position all his superiors had apparently chosen to take - as clearly as he could without admitting anything concretely, or damaging anyone in the process.
It was, as Mac implied, between him and God. The NYPD was deep in a state of cultivated ignorance, and nothing would be said. Nothing would be written. No action would be taken. And he realized that the reason he still had a job, acting and looking as he had been doing, was that this was all old hat to the top brass. They knew exactly what level of acting-out to expect from him, and as long as he didn't get into more trouble that they couldn't overlook, they'd simply keep his desk tidy and stop him killing himself until he sat back down again.
What the hell did that say about the Force, that they'd let someone who gratuitously took a life, back within ranks, and even sympathize? What did it say about his father, who must surely have witnessed more than one good cop go down for less, while others walked free? And Cliff Angell, who had been more of a father to him this past year than his own? Flack could never tell him.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x"St. Augustine's Church. May I help you?"
"Hey, Helena. Don Flack."
"Why, hello, dear. It's been a while. Father's around here somewhere - will you hold?"
"'Course."
"Father Grady,"
"Grady. Flack."
"Hey, boyo! You took your own sweet time. H'are ye goin'?"
"Not so good. But I think I've got my head pulled out now. Does Helena still keep those jam cookies in the jar?"
"Oh, for sure. There was some unpleasantness to do with someone suggesting oatmeal, but I think that's all over now."
"Aw, she's a peach."
"She is that. When will I see you?"
"Tonight sometime?"
If Grady was surprised at this sudden desire for a meeting, after a couple of months of silence, he didn't show it, but then, Flack thought, that must be part of his job.
"I'm hearing Confessions 'til nine, but if that's not too late, come on by."
"I'll be there."
* * * * *"We used to joke about just coming to work one day with wedding bands, and seeing who noticed. And then it wasn't a joke anymore. We were right there. I was just waiting for the right time to ask her. And it turns out she - she was pregnant. Just, like a week...we didn't even know yet."
"Jaysus." Grady swallowed. "You have been walking through Hell."
"We were a team," he said simply. "We were going to go away for her birthday weekend next month. I thought I'd ask her then. You know, do it nice, by the ocean and everything. And we'd have known about the baby by then."
"Maybe she had an idea. Women sometimes do, right from the very beginning."
"I don't know. I doubt it. She took on a hired gun, with only her service weapon, not even a vest. If she knew, I think she'd've hit the floor and tried to work from there. But then, I dunno, that was Jess. If she was gonna go down, she was gonna look him in the eye and go down fighting."
"You haven't begun to let her go."
"Not even close. Coming home, not seeing her there, or her desk at the office...it's like she's just gone away for while. Like I'll wake up one day and she's gonna be there."
"Donnie," Grady said gently, "She's not. That doesn't mean you ever forget. It's a lot of good, you have, to hold onto. Ye've changed since you met her. Hold on to that. But she's not comin' back."
"I know. But I need her. Grady, I need to talk to her so badly..."
Grady reached over for box of tissues and handed it to him.
"Do you talk to her?" the priest asked. "D'ye tell her what you need her to know?"
"No!" Don said, between shaky breaths, "I mean, wouldn't that be crazy?"
"Not at all. Look, Don, you say you haven't let her go. It's very clear you haven't. That means she's still with you, in a very real way. Call it her soul, if ye like, whatever you want, but she's with you still. Talk to her. What if she needs to hear from you, before she can move on? If you were gone, boyo, and she was actin' like y'are, would you leave her be? Not till you saw she was on the mend, if I know you."
"You believe that?"
"I do." Grady was firm. "I believe in the teachings of the Church. But given how attached we are to our earthly lives, I don't think we suddenly just shed them and reappear wherever we're goin', the moment we pass on. If there's a Purgatory, I like to think there's maybe a kinder waystation for Heaven, too. To get our bearings, like."
"That's so not what I need to hear right now."
"What is it scares ye?"
The quiet question shook him to the bone. He swallowed reflexively a few times, and somehow answered Grady back just as simply: "Because I killed the man who killed her. We took the warehouse they were using. They opened fire, and we fired back."
Grady waited.
"I hit him once already. He was already down, he wasn't goin' nowhere. Then I realized it was him. He was the one who killed Jess. And the baby."
Comprehension dawned on Grady's face.
"And here's the thing: I can't even convince myself that what I did was wrong. God knows how many people he killed, or how many more he would have. I've tried to think of his family, what he might have wanted to be when he was a kid - but I can't. He was a stone-cold killer, he killed a cop and I killed him. If I'm honest, what I feel worst about is that I let everyone down. The law, the entire Force, my family...I did just what I've suspected other cops of doing and hated them for. And if any of them know, they aren't saying anything. Don't they care? What the hell have I been fighting for all these years? Shouldn't I be rottin' in a cell? How am I any better than he was?"
"I have the great luxury of lookin' at the balance, and sayin': because you are." Grady replied. "Ye've spent your whole workin' life trying to do good. Man, you have to know you're not the only copper to have found himself in the position of having killed a truly evil man without bein' in mortal danger - and to have nobody call them on it. I've talked a few good, decent men through it in my time here. In its way, it's a worse punishment."
"Then what do I do? What the hell do I do? I'm not even fit to be a cop. To go my entire career, my entire life, just waitin' for someone to bust me on it and run to the papers?"
"Of course you're fit to be a cop. How can you know what that man might have done? You knew how dangerous he was. You're going through a terrible reckoning on top of a terrible personal tragedy. Ye've got them so muddled in your head that you can't think straight. But you will. I'm not here to absolve ye - only you and God can work that out - but I will say this: I'm as proud to know you today as I was yesterday. I'm heartbroken for you. And think about this: If the people you respect most, that you trust with your life, have a idea of what happened, and they're keepin' mum, don't ye think they might've already tried you where it counts? Their silence is on their heads, too."
Grady stopped speaking, and looked as though he was having to replay his own words to sort out where they'd come from. Don sat in silence, letting Grady's words sink in. That's why Grady's a priest, and I'm a cop, he thought.
I hear you," he said. "I hear you."
* * * * *Within moments of meeting with Mac, the next day, Flack realized that Grady was entirely right. Mac knew everything, and had been as decent as he knew how to be, for as long as he possibly could. It was a terrifying graduation to a new level of his police career. He couldn't help but wonder what acts other cops on the force had had to deal with privately, unable to turn to understanding confreres or legal advice.
He was still a good cop. He knew it. And if making things right for Jess had turned out horribly wrong, then at least he could keep trying to make Jess proud of him, and prove to his colleagues that he was truly back in command. It wasn't resolution. But it was a start.
He wasn't expecting any sign of approval from on high, but he had to admit that bringing in the piece of the jigsaw that gave them the Compass Killer's identity was a nice touch. If Jess had been with him at the end of the day, she'd have thrown her arms around him and kissed him soundly in congratulation, even as he protested it was just his job.
Because, after all, it was.
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x"You sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. Why?"
The artist shrugged, examining a bundle of needles under a lens. "Just don't seem very NYPD, is all. Pretty woo-woo, innit? An infinity symbol?"
"Actually," Flack explained patiently, as he stripped off his undershirt, "It's what's on the Métis flag."
"Mighty who?"
"Métis. It's like a, a part-Native group from Canada. Part Indian, part French or Scottish, mostly."
"Really. Huh. You don't look at all like you got blood."
"Not me, my girlfriend's family..." Flack began, and stopped. He took a breath to try to continue, but the guy just nodded. He'd heard stranger reasons by far.
"You want it, you got it, man. Here?" he hovered over Flack's left pectoral with his marking pen.
"Right there. Just the outline, on an angle. This long," he indicated an inch and a half, between his fingers.
A small figure of the timelessness of the few short months they'd had together. The infinite possibilities of the child they would have had. Right where Jess used to rest her head, and listen to his heart. A solàs mo chroi.
"Wicked scar," said the artist, eyeing the hilly mass of scar tissue that extended from ribs to hip. "You get shot at?"
"Blown up at."
It was fitting, Flack thought, that this tattoo should be so close to the scar. Wasn't that where it all began? If it weren't for his incapacitation after the bombing, he might never have met Jess.
"Dude," said the guy, impressed. "Hey, you want for this to look flat, or, like, with a 3D twist?"
"Oh, definitely twisted," Flack replied, and cracked a grin.
"So tell me about your girl," the artist suggested, as he set to work.
Flack was surprised to find he was glad to paint a picture of Jess for someone who hadn't had the privilege of knowing her. "Third generation cop. One of the best," he said, "Smart as hell, but funny, and just gorgeous like you wouldn't believe. There's this great story about her, from when she was in training. Just a cadet, still a kid, really. They used to call her The Princess..."
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xIt was funny, how sometimes the small tests of one's human progress only appeared in hindsight, and other times, there was a large blinking neon arrow pointing to the fact that it was a test.
He was handing out gifts to a room of shrieking children and their parents, along with Hawkes, Danny and Lindsay, all in cartoonish elf hats and scarves. He always did enjoy kids, being a big kid himself, and it was fun to get off his investigative high horse and be silly for a while. He was beginning to laugh more, and he realized that Mac was usually lurking nearby when it happened. Secret Santa indeed: Mac had not only pulled many official strings on his behalf, after Jess' death, but was taking steps to pull the team back together again as a solid unit, CSI and Detectives both, after a hellish year.
He glanced up, and saw Jess watching him on the other side of the room, one hand on her heavily pregnant belly.
He blinked and looked again. There was a woman standing there who looked like Jess from a distance, about seven months along, leaning back against the wall and smiling at a dark-haired toddler knee-deep in shredded wrapping paper. As her daughter jumped and hollered along with the other kids, the woman closed her eyes for a moment, and Flack saw her face crumple.
"Danno, I'll be right back," he called. Danny, more or less steady on his own two feet again, waved a hand in acknowledgement, and kept chatting with a small boy in big glasses.
Flack walked over to the woman. The gift in his hand was labeled "Boy 2-3 years", but he could improvise.
"Hey," he said, "I won't tell Santa if you open this one early."
She gave a half-sob, half-laugh, and smiled at him, taking the gaudily wrapped package, and turning it in her hands. "Sorry. I'm okay. It's just - this is my first Christmas without my husband. Gerry McIntyre, from the 18th precinct."
"Gerry. Yeah. I remember hearing...I'm sorry, Mrs. McIntyre."
"We're having a boy this time. Gerry would've been so...it's just hard."
"Yeah, I know," Flack said quietly. She looked harder at him, and nodded.
"You lost someone?"
"Yeah. In the spring. She was a cop, too. She...she would have been just about as far along as you. For a second there I thought you were her."
"She was the...it was on the news..."
"Yeah."
She didn't cover her mouth, or say "Oh, my God, how awful," or anything he had become used to. She simply gave him a look of deep understanding, and laid her hand on his arm.
"Life has a way of going on." she said. "Whether we want it to it or not."
"I'm beginning to get that." he nodded. He noticed she still wore her wedding ring, and felt a renewed sense of rightness that he'd gotten his tattoo. Something real to hold onto. Mac hadn't taken his wedding ring off for many years after Claire's death, and even now, sometimes kept it in his jacket pocket, for comfort. It didn't matter if some other woman saw the tattoo, someday, and asked him about it. He'd tell them about Jess, and explain that she was part of what made him the man he was trying to be.
"Listen, it's none of my business," he began, "But are you and your daughter okay? You have everything you need?"
She smiled. "We're fine," she said. "I've got a lot of support. I was going to ask you that, actually. Not about having everything you need, but...being okay. You're not used to strangers asking you that, are you? I guess in your job you're usually the one taking care of strangers. But once you've been there, you can always see it in other people."
"I'm lucky," he told her, "Those people up there in the stupid hats like mine? They're part of my family. I know they're thinkin' about Jess, too, this Christmas. And that guy over there, in the black suit, he's a sneaky son of a bitch, and if he catches me in a mope, he'll drag me back feet-first."
She laughed. "Good. You know, I have to say - lots of people have come to check on me, over the last few months, but just now when you came over, it was the first time I could honestly feel that I was okay, for real. Not just saying the words, or figuring I'd get there someday."
"Me too, actually," he said, realizing as she spoke that it was the truth. "Spirit of the season, maybe?"
"Or maybe we were both put here so we'd have a chance to realize that we're not just going to be okay someday. I miss Gerry something awful. But I'm okay."
He nodded thoughtfully, and for a moment, he stood with her and watched the children. He doubted he'd ever see Gerry's widow again, but that was fine. He had a strong feeling she was right about the reason for their meeting.
He had no doubt he would get thoroughly toxic and cry his eyes out at some point during the holiday, like the big sentimental sap Jess had proven him to be, but that was all right. He'd go to dinner with his mule-stubborn family, whom he loved irrationally, despite everything, and he'd think of some Jess story he hadn't told them a dozen times before. He'd call Cliff and Chérie on Christmas Day, after making his command appearance at Mass at Grady's church, and tell them he was thinking of them. And he'd call Sam every day, and somehow they'd haul each other through the holidays.
Because that's what human beings had always done, from the very beginning. Muddle through together, as Grady would say.
Somewhere, far down the road, his children waited, the family he would come home to. He couldn't see the way to that place, from where he stood, and he didn’t want to. But for the first time since Jess' passing, he could accept that it was there, and that it would appear when it was meant to. Life did have a way of moving on. And Jess would have his hide if he didn't keep moving with it. There was too much work to do, and a city to keep safe, and people to watch out for.
"Yeah, I'm okay," he agreed. "Things are actually...pretty good."
+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xEpilogue
October 2012
Amy DaSilva was five and a half years old when she died, with a puzzled look on her face, her little life slipping away right under Flack's bloodied hands.
That's the second kid that's died on me. We're supposed to be able to deal with this crap, but God, sometimes I don't know how...
It might be time to call Rick and Aislin again, he thought. Jess' brother and sister-in-law were close friends of his now, drawn together both by loss and mutual liking, and a shared understanding of a life spent in emergency services. As EMT's, they sometimes lost people, innocents and gang-bangers alike. They'd understand.
He stared blankly at his computer screen.
His statement on Amy's accidental shooting had been taken, and Senator Hamilton's interview was out of his hands now, being transcribed by the clerks. His constables had finished uploading the file documents onto the server, and the Court Liaison clerk would send it over to the prosecutor's office in the morning. There was nothing to do unless he wanted to crack open some other current file or cold case, but he knew that after nineteen hours without a letup, he would hardly be an asset to any investigation.
Home was not a a good option though. Too quiet, and he didn't feel like blotting it out with overnight TV or a shoot 'em up video game. Not tonight. He'd do himself an injury if he tried to work out this exhausted, and there wasn't anyone around for a drink. Danny was home with his girls, exactly where he needed to be, Mac couldn't drink with all the meds he was on, and everyone else was sensibly home in bed.
"Hey," said a voice. "Thought you were off today."
He jumped. Jamie loped towards him through the bullpen in black jeans, killer boots that somehow looked both classy and deadly, and intriguingly, something lilac and fluttery under a neatly-tailored black leather jacket. Her hair was a riot of messy waves around her face, but she swept them back and did something complicated with a hair clip as she walked, that turned her into put-together professional again. He couldn't think of a good reason not to watch her, so he did.
"You on the grave, Lovato? It's one in the freakin' morning."
"Nah, I'm on RTO. Just got back from dropping off my girls after a night out. Thought I'd see if there was anything new on Lindsay before I went home."
"She's fine, or she's gonna be. She's back home now, but it'll probably be a week or two before she's back. Takes more than a cracked skull to stop a Messer. Even a Messer by marriage."
"That's good news. So how some you're still here?" she asked, leaning her hip against his desk. She crossed her arms in a jarringly familiar way and looked down at him. Apparently this was not a time for banter or deflection.
"Shitty, shitty day. You heard about Amy DaSilva, I take it."
"Yeah. I'm so sorry, Don. That's about as bad as it can get," she said softly. She pulled herself up slightly and went on: "So you're stuck between going home and beatin' yourself up some more, or working till you fall asleep at your desk and try to blame being a fuckin' miserable dick tomorrow on a sore back."
It wasn't a question. He glanced up at her, and then wondered why he should be surprised. Jamie played at being a sweet little badass of a cop, but she was a family girl and a fiercely protective friend. She watched her people very carefully.
"Something like that," he agreed quietly, "But yeah, I guess I gotta take off sometime."
"D'you gotta go straight home?" she asked. "It's my night off, and I ain't even had a single drink. I've been playing babysitter all night."
He took a deep breath and hesitated, and felt Jess in some dark corner of his mind, rolling her eyes at him and mouthing GET ON WITH IT.
"I know just the place for an Irish coffee." he suggested. Jamie flashed her dimples at him like he'd got the right answer, and he felt a flutter he hadn't felt in a long, long time.
He got to his feet, reached for his jacket, and walked with her to the door, grinning like a damn fool as she pasted him about his neverending Irishness, every step of the way.
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Fin.
And so at long, long last this tale is done.
I had thought I would tell you all about Jess' surprise wedding (on the beach, of course) at Rockaway - her return to school, Don's promotion to Sergeant, and the arrival of Sadie and Tommy. To go deeper into Sam and Grady's friendship and the decisions they helped each other make, and even how Lucy Messer's first major preschool tantrum turned into a budding career as a peewee ice-hockey player. But it'll keep. There's only so much sugar a person can take, and the canonical story - not the Wrinkle-in-Time version in which Jess lives and everything is beautiful - needed closure at last.
So here, finally, is the last chapter, with my sincere thanks and respect to the actors and writers that made it so damn easy to love these characters, and so hard to let them