Tyger, Tyger-Epilogue
Title: Tyger, Tyger
Author: mm_thibault
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Season 3 with drabbles of other seasons, too
Summary: Marshall meets an interesting woman who changes up his whole life, and who will lead him to find the love of his life, or at least, act on it.
Pairing: Mary/Marshall
Shoutout: To Bujyo for her endless help. Seriously.
Ch1 Ch2 Ch3
Ch4 Ch5 Ch6
Ch7 Ch8 Ch9
Chp10 Ch11
Epilogue-What You Won't Do For Love
"Some people go around the world for love
But they may never find what they dream of
What you won't do, do for love
You've tried everything but you don't give up
In my world only you makes me do
For love what I would not do…"-Bobby Caldwell
Marshall's day could not have started off any better if he scripted it. He awoke with Mary sleeping with her arm thrown across him, they had a leisurely shower together, and he was going to stop off and grab some coffee, a couple danishes, and a croissant for them to enjoy at work. He'd picked up three, since he knew Lily would be there already. Early was considered 'on time' in her world.
Arms laden with caffeine and pastries, he rode the elevator up to the top floor, wondering if the change in his life would be obvious to anyone but him… and Lily. She would probably smell it on him when he gave her the coffee.
The elevator opened, and he cocked his head to the side at the sight just beyond the doors to the office. Lily was at her desk, looking as cool as a julep in July in her tailored shirt and vest with her long denim-encased legs on the desk next to the monitor, cross at the ankles, and Charlie?
He swiped his card and walked in seeing that, yes, it was Charlie leaning up against Lily's desk, trying to look all casual as he hit on her in the middle of the office.
"Bonjour, chère Lily," Marshall said as he put the tray of hot drinks and bag of goodies down on his desk. After pulling her coffee from the tray, he sauntered over to her desk, standing between her and Charlie as he handed over the drink and croissant.
She took her presents with a raised eyebrow and looked him over closely before a slow grin spread across her face. "Merci et bonjour à toi, aussi, Marshall. Ça va?"
Oh lord, how to answer that? The tone of her voice told him that she knew exactly how he was doing and why. Her discretion in the matter was never in question, but that still didn't tell him about Charlie. Surely he wasn't the one she had gone out with on Saturday. "Ça va trés bien. Et le petit homme?" He didn't look at Charlie as he asked, because he had been raised better than to be so indelicate, but still, there was no way she was courting the attentions of someone she could break so readily. Why the hell was Charlie at her desk fawning like an awkward twelve year old boy over the hot seventeen year old sitter?
"Stan est dans son bureau. Est-ce que vous avez besoin de parler avec lui? Je puis le prendre, si vous voulez, " Charlie answered in letter perfect French, sending Lily into a torrent of maniacal giggles. What he needed was for Charlie to go crawl back into his junior detective cubby hole and let the grown-ups work, not volunteer to get Stan from his office for him.
"What in the hell just happened here?"
That was the same question in Marshall's mind. The fact that Marshall didn't even hear Mary approach him from behind spoke to his level of bemusement. He moved back over to his desk to get her coffee ready as Lily smiled wide enough to make a shark proud and said, "Nothing at all, chère. Mornin' Mary."
Mary looked instantly suspicious. "Morning, TL. Charlie." After a brief stop at his desk for her beverage, snack, and to exchange 'wtf' glances with Marshall over the desktop courtship across the way, she adjourned to her desk.
Charlie finished up shortly after that with many fearful glances at Mary as he hustled past her desk like his feet were catching fire. Marshall wondered if maybe he'd been beaten as a child. He returned shortly with a stack of files for them to go through as they plotted out their targets for the day.
Lily kept the conversation light, and work related, even as she gave him knowing smiles every time he caught her eye. On the one hand, it was nice to have the knowledge out in the open; however, work was definitely not the forum that he would have preferred.
***
The trio finalized their plans and started gathering their gear to go to a Task Force briefing, another Monday in full swing. TL's last Monday in ABQ, which was great, because that meant that she'd return home to her life and her partner, but kind of sad. She'd had a good time here. Her thoughts drifted back to Saturday night and she smiled, met interesting people.
She stood up to grab her guns from her desk when the coffee hit her all at once. She'd forgotten the adage that coffee, like tea and beer, were only rental. "Please excuse me."
The office bathroom was a postage stamp sized affair, two stalls, she'd bet they'd been placed there as an afterthought or as a token acknowledgement of the growing place of women in the Marshal Service. After she left, the estrogen quotient would be back down to two, which was probably all poor Marshall, Stan, and Charlie could cope with.
TL was leaning over the sink to wash her hands when the door came open to the bathroom and Mary walked in, looking… pensive. That was probably not a good thing. "May I help you?" she asked as she stood up and reached for a paper towel.
The crack of the slap is what registered in her mind, much moreso than the actual strike. Full, open palm with extended fingers across her left cheek, hard enough to turn her head. TL closed her eyes and took a deep breath against her first inclination, retaliation. She figured she'd had this coming, so it was reasonable. Mary's need for vengeance over a perceived wrong was legendary, and not at all unexpected. When she opened her eyes, she looked at Mary whose eyes were no longer full of fury, but questions and recriminations.
TL had her reasons, for sleeping with him, for not telling the whole world, and for moving on. She didn't answer to Mary, regardless of what the blonde woman thought. She ran a thumb over the corner of her mouth, making sure that if she was drooling and/or bleeding, she wasn't going to do so onto a white silk blouse. "You done?"
Mary crinkled her eyebrows, completely thrown off track by the question. Apparently she'd expected a fight, some protracted brawl that would spill out of the bathroom and into the office, becoming endless fuel for Marshall and Charlie's lascivious adolescent fantasies. She was looking in the wrong place. "Um… yeah?"
TL nodded, and turned to check her cheek in the mirror. Other than a little redness, nothing too terrible to report. Probably wouldn't even bruise. "D'accord. We good?" TL offered her hand to shake on it.
Mary eyed her warily and then reached out her own tentatively. TL shook her hand and had to fight to suppress the grin at the fact that Mary had kept her green nails. "Yeah, we're good."
TL's smile was sunny as she held the door for Mary. "Excellent. Let's go out and kick in some doors."
***
The last house of the day was substantially more than any of them bargained for. Sprawling single story with an unkempt yard that bordered on a reclamation project, the wild foliage hiding cars, refrigerators, and other weirdness, it was like the trip down the rabbit hole all at once, especially as the sun set and the shadows lengthened across the area.
"Bad juju," TL murmured as she and Mary made their way around the back of the house and encountered a dead chicken that had been strung up upside down and hung over one of the windows.
Mary stopped and gave her a narrow-eyed glare. "You're not gonna go all Voodoo priestess on me now, are you?"
TL pressed her lips together in a tight line. "More Catholic than you are, chère 'tite. Just saying, I don't like this in the slightest."
"He's wanted for murder in at least two states. What's there to like?"
"Fair enough." They got into position and radioed the rest of the team.
Everything went really fast in the next few moments. They got the green light to go in, and the suspect opened fire immediately on the officers in the front. He then ran immediately to the back of the house where TL and Mary were coming through the kitchen door. He saw them as he rushed through the doorway of the dining room and raised his gun. TL and Mary dropped him where he stood, each hitting him several times as they emptied their clips into him. As soon as he hit the ground, Mary ran over and kicked his gun away, under the counter somewhere and TL knelt to get a pulse from his neck. Mary raised her eyebrows in question and TL shook her head. The guy wasn't even gurgling.
Their attention was immediately drawn to their radios, the shouts of 'Officer down! I need a medic!' TL's heart dropped to her stomach and Mary was halfway to the front of the house when she came back to TL and the dead suspect. She looked like someone on the verge of flying apart like so many shards of glass.
TL waved her off. "Go. Find him. I got this. He's not going anywhere anytime soon." Mary nodded and turned on her heel, already in a full sprint out the front door past the officers and medics who were now filing into the residence.
As soon as the body was secured, TL went out front and hit up one of the detectives for a smoke, with as much charm as her harried nerves would allow. She lit up gratefully, something she did only in the direst of occasions, and cast her eyes around to find her friends. They were somewhat hidden off to the side of the yard and only faintly illuminated by the light rigs that had been brought in by the crime scene investigators, so she didn't see them at first. There was a movement that caught her eye, and she could make out a single silhouette: Marshall leaning against a vintage '56 Chevy chassis that was more rust than car, his arm wrapped possessively around Mary's waist and his chin on top of her head as she leaned against him. The movement she had seen was him pausing every now and then to kiss the top of her head. Good for them, she smiled as she exhaled the smoke through her teeth and tossed the cigarette to the ground.
"You can't seem to help finding trouble, can you, Lily?" Bobby asked as he came over to stand beside her. She was convinced the man woke up looking perfect, because he made the t-shirt, jeans, and shoulder holster thing look positively delectable.
TL looked down and scuffed the ground with her shoes. "C'est possible. I think it's more likely that it's stalking me, though." She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans, shifting her weight from foot to foot. The adrenaline had ebbed for the most part, but in its wake was a certain level of antsy discomfort that had her all but pacing.
"Not to tell you your business, but you might want to look into a restraining order." His smile warmed her all over. It was going to be hard to leave him, even if it was only for a little while.
She chuckled quietly and checked his shoulder with hers. "I'll add it to my list."
Bobby stared off in the same direction she had been and then turned to her with a look of confusion. "Are they-?"
TL raised one shoulder and then reached out to take his hand. "I believe the correct answer to that question is, 'Nothing to see here, folks. Let's move along.'"
He resisted for all of a second before taking a step towards her. "As you wish, Inspector. Any chance of us finding someplace that dark and out of the way?"
"Not tonight, I have a headache. When's your vacation again?"
Lao Tzu said that being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. To that thought TL added the words of Tennessee Williams, that Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person. A warrior poet and a drunken playwright who wrote about people broken by life, most often beyond repair.
Sometimes redemption came when you weren't even looking for it anymore and had given up on finding it. And while she was far from finding complete redemption, she had helped someone else get further on their own road there, and that had to count for something. Right?