STATUS: Complete
SUMMARY: He doesn't understand what this is.
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATIONS: Anderson/Dredd
SOUNDTRACK: "No Light, No Light" (Florence + The Machine)
ARCHIVING: Do not archive. Thank you.
NOTES: Unbeta'd.
WORDS: 1,015
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Don't sue.
Copyright
anr; April 2013.
Some Kind of Resolution by
anr a revelation in the light of day
you can't choose what stays and what fades away
(and I'd do anything to make you stay)
1.
He still has the badge she handed him after Peach Trees.
12.
In his quarters, in the morning, she stands beside his bed and secures her holster with an efficiency he can appreciate.
"Shift in five," he says, watching her. They're on a staggered schedule -- he has the time she doesn't, he knows.
"I'll make it." She runs a hand through her hair and picks up her jacket. "See you, Dredd."
He nods.
She doesn't look back as she leaves. He should probably feel proud about that.
2.
He expects the Chief to assign her to one of the cleaner sectors, one of the areas where the crimes are more discreet, more expensive -- corruption sheathed by a thin veneer of respectability, seemingly invisible (but maybe not to a mind-reader) -- but she ends up in sector thirteen.
His sector.
8.
His quarters are dark as he moves them inside, the only illumination coming from the glow of the city lights outside.
His door closes behind them and she turns in his grip, wrenching her arm free and placing both of her hands on his chest. She shoves hard and his back hits the door.
"Fuck you, Dredd," she snaps, and then her hands are on his helmet, pushing it up and off his head, and this has to be her, has to be her screwing around in his head, because if this was real he thinks he would probably be stopping her and he's not he's not he's not even trying.
3.
(He doesn't believe in coincidences either.)
6.
He's too far away to assist when her call goes out for backup so it's not until his shift has ended and he's back in the Hall of Justice that he's able to track her down. His sense of urgency bothers him, but -- not as much as it should. He's getting used to it -- her -- this, he knows.
(He doesn't understand what this is.)
"Dredd," she says, surprised, when she exits the Medical wing and sees him standing there, waiting for her. "What --"
He gestures roughly. "Follow me."
She does.
4.
The first time he sees her again, after Peach Trees, it's another day just beginning and she's waiting outside the Sternhammer tower for Intake to come and collect a perp for the iso-cubes.
"Distribution of pornography," she shares, unasked, when he pulls up beside her on his bike. "Twenty years."
Twenty years is extreme for a distribution charge, he thinks, even for this sector, but before he can say as much, she continues, "child pornography." She looks at him curiously. "What are you --"
Even as she's talking, Control radios for a Judge needed two blocks away. He calls it and pulls away from the curb without thinking twice, without ever saying a word.
He doesn't look back.
(But -- he thinks he wants to.)
10.
He grabs her again and it's almost unnecessary because her mouth is already on his now that his helmet is gone and her fingers curling tight around the edges of his armour and maybe this is all just in his head because a regulation is a rule is a law and he is the law -- they both are -- so this can't be happening can't be happening it can't.
Her armour sheds easily, then his, and then she is the one against the door as his mouth slants hard over hers, his fingers digging into her thighs as he lifts her up and presses inside her, a rough slide, and he can't breathe can't breathe can't think as she clenches around him, as he shifts out and pushes back in, deep and there and she's breathing out something he can't understand because there's no oxygen left in this room just her and him and her and him and her.
7.
He knows she's going to be good at what they do -- he wouldn't have passed her otherwise -- but one in seven Judges don't survive their first month alone and she's still a day short.
"You're angry at me," she says while they walk, head tilting a little to the side as she considers him, "because you think I broke regulation. That I --"
He cuts her off. "That's enough."
"The anti-rad shot?" She gestures to her neck, to the bruise forming there. "Was a precaution. I never even touched the wall."
Touching has nothing to do with it -- Judges don't go to the wall, period. With law enforcement mortality rates already high enough just from keeping the law, chasing the shadows for low level thug's who won't survive the sickness long enough to cause any real damage anyway is nothing less than a criminal waste of resources. She should never have taken that call.
Stopping outside his quarters, he turns and steps into her personal space. "Enough."
She gives him an annoyed look. "It's not like the shot was even necessary; I'm already a mut--"
He grabs her.
9.
He doesn't believe in love.
He doesn't know what that is.
5.
He remembers everything that happened to them at Peach Trees but what he remembers most is the expression on her face when he told Control there's nowhere for us to go.
(He thinks, now, he should remember more what he said because the next time they work a call together it's all history, high-ex and narcotics, and he's unnerved to realise how much he wants to know if the wound he patched for her in the Peach Trees elevator scarred.)
13.
In the dark of his quarters, in the silence of her absence, he pulls her badge out of his lock box and runs his thumb over the raised letters of her name.
11.
Anderson, he thinks.
The End
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