Title: Bring in the Clowns
Fandom: New Tricks (TV Show)
Characters: Sandra Pullman
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst
Summary: But it’s Jack’s word against your memories and you love him too...
Length: 512 words
Status: Complete
A/N: Post season four's; 'Big Topped'.
Bring in the Clowns
You watch from the doorway and you hate them. You try not to, you try to rationalize that after everything you’ve found out during this case you’re wrongly lashing out. But you hate them. Hate her.
You were happy before, the world made a little more sense. You were part of a team, you had friends, a family fading too fast but with memories you clung to of a time you were loved. And she destroyed that.
Oh, she didn’t mean to, although you’re sure if it could have helped her she would have used it against you. But she made you start to wonder, made you consider things so many people had helped you ignore.
She spoke of answers, justice, the aching need to know a father absent. And then your Mother collapsed and your emotions span and here you are.
You looked for the right questions and then you asked them and when your world started to crumble you kept pushing back; trying to find another truth behind all the ones you can’t accept.
And now you know more than you ever dreamed and you still don’t want to believe it, because he was your dad and you love him. But it’s Jack’s word against your memories and you love him too.
That’s what makes it so hard, because it’s Jack. It’s Jack who you know you looked to as a Father so many years ago. And it’s Jack who’s been making your team into something more. It’s Jack you trusted to prove that Brian and Gerry are the men you know they are, it’s Jack you’ve lost promotions over, risked prison and your life for. But he was you Father, and he committed suicide and it was Jack’s fault.
You can’t see a way passed that and it’s killing you from the inside out. Because you let your guard down, you started to trust that your boys wouldn’t lie to you like everyone else. You were wrong.
You know you’re glaring at them, and part of you hopes she looks up at you and sees. Because she’s the reason you’re here alone with tears across your heart. She’s the reason you got curious; she’s to blame for Strickland’s backward comment. She’s the reason for everything and worst of all; she’s found her twisted happy ending.
After all the manipulation, the lying. After everything you’ve discovered she has her father and her mother and you’re left looking on from a life you barely know anymore.
You’ve started to question why the world is so cruel. You wonder when you forgot that lesson; you suspect it was sometime with the boys. You wonder just how long it will take you to go back, to be who you were before the betrayals started to hurt.
You watch the happy reunion and realise that if you can’t forgive Jack for this you’re going to hate yourself just as much as you hate her. The tears fall and you wish for an ending you can live with.
End.
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