ABC.
Words: 807
Couple: Sam Swarek and Andy McNally.
TV Show: Rookie Blue.
Disclaimer: All characters you recognize do not belong to me.
AU.
Established Andy/Sam.
…
Anton Hill.
She'd spent four years feeling guilty. No matter how hard she tried, there was this part of her that felt guilty for arresting him that day. For bringing him to the barn where Jerry Barber blew his cover, making eight months of his life worthless.
He'd forgiven her. He'd forgiven her a long time ago. She knew this, but there was never a time where she thought about those eight months and how much he'd given up for a case that went down the drain with a blown cover and a USB stick handed over to a man who could have killed him for crossing him.
"Anton Hill was found dead last week."
Andy McNally couldn't hear anything else after Frank Best had said it. Her eyes flicked to the detective by the door. Watching him as he flicked through a file that Traci Nash had handed to him when she entered Parade after him.
He hadn't told her. It hadn't come up at all. The weekend she'd had off with him had passed without a mention of work from either of them and it made her realize that he hadn't known either.
When everyone around her rose and began moving, the young officer stood still at the back of the Parade Room, a frown on her face in confusion wondering why he hadn't told her.
"McNally, Shaw is waiting for you," Frank Best told her, stopping to stand a foot away from her.
"Yeah, I'll just, uh, I've got something to do first," she stuttered, blinking before she met her Staff Sergeant's eyes.
"I'll tell Shaw you'll be about twenty," he smiled, "He's in the D's office. Go easy on him McNally. He only found out this morning as well."
With a nod, her eyes followed the older man as he left her alone in the Parade Room. Taking a deep breath she finally made her way from Parade, a direct line towards the D's office, her eyes spotting him seated at his desk before she even made it halfway through the desks.
As Andy stopped at the door, she felt all her other senses go into over-drive. She could hear him muttering underneath his breath, swearing to himself that he was going to go crazy if the detective with 34th Division didn't pick up the phone. She could smell the left-over Chinese take-out food that Traci Nash had obviously been eating that night when Anton Hill's death first hit her desk. She took in his tired state, hunched shoulders, struggling to get his jacket off while reading the case file in front of him. The frantic, annoyed but so, so, relieved state of his emotions were rolling off him in waves and it almost made her feel less anxious than she had been before leaving Parade. Almost.
"Sam?" she whispered hesitantly, taking a small, cautious step into the office.
No matter how much time they'd spent alone the past few weekends, no matter how much they had actually talked about what they were, Andy still found it hard to even think about approaching him in state of raw emotion like this.
"Hey," he gave her a tired smile, turning around in his chair to face her.
"So, it's uh, its true then."
"Guess so," the detective shrugged, "It seems sort of surreal, yanno?"
"Too good to be true, sort of," Andy agreed.
He pulled the chair around from the desk behind him, gesturing for her to sit down. A few hesitant steps later, she'd let him pull her in the chair so that she was sitting with one knee between each of his.
"Does it feel like a waste?" she questioned quietly, leaning into the touch of his hand as he slowly pushed a strand of hair that had fallen loose from her face.
"Does what feel like a waste?"
"Your undercover assignment. The one I blew. Those eight months that you spent without as much as a glance at photos of your family, or people from Toronto. Would you have gone if you'd known it'd just end like this?"
Watching him frown, Andy reached to rub her neck nervously, knowing that he was going to remind her again and again that it wasn't her fault, when it felt so much like it was.
"I would have gone," Sam told her, "I would have gone, because if I hadn't Andy, things would be so much different and there is not a single thing that I would change. Even if I had the chance."
Nodding slowly, she returned the smile he gave her. Letting her head fall forward and her forehead rest on his shoulder, the brunette officer closed her eyes and took another deep breath and piece-by-piece she could feel some of the minute traces of guilt she'd been harboring all these years wash away.
…
There are 26 letters in the alphabet, and every sentence, ever story is just a different pattern of those letters. And when you look at it like that, it sort of puts things into perspective, huh?
Yeah. We need more letters.
But other than that. Yes! Paige has begun a new McSwarek story! (Note. This Author's Note was written at 2040 on the 22nd of July 2013.) Even though I have a re-write of 'Just a Chance' and an AU McCollins story stuck somewhere on my harddrive to finish, this has sort of become a hobby for me.
The words I use for this McSwarek based list have been chosen off an even bigger list of words that I created for the entire Rookie Blue fandom. (When I get the actual links I'll put them in a later AN). So those who helped create the list, thank you! To the anon people who sent in words who weren't credited (because they were on anonymous and I couldn't really credit the one Anonymous because it would be confusing and everything) also thank you!
(The full list is somewhere on my Tumblr. Well. The up-to-a-certain-date version I should say. Get my Tumblr URL from my profile and just add /tagged/rookie+blue )
Now because I didn't post the list as a chapter (Because it keeps changing and who knows if any of it will be the same by the time I finish this story.) I will have at the end of each AN the next prompt and a small sneak peek (granted that I've actually written the next chapter. Which I should have. I've told myself I can't post this until I've written 99.9999999999999999% of it.) If there isn't I'll write like a big apology in the next chapter.
Note! Not all of these chapter/one-shot thingys will be set in the same AU/Canon story line! They'll be scattered across timelines and some will contradict the others. If a chapter is a tag/different-POV to an earlier chapter, I will say so at the top where I state all the warnings and general time-line stuff. Regarded, from what I've written, a good 50% of this may be Post-Marlowe and set towards the end of Season 4, start of Season 5 and completely AU.
At the time of posting I'm currently still asking for McSwarek-ish prompts for the letters: K, J, I, X, and Y.
If you have any, either send me PM here or on my Tumblr - url: paigeeisaunicorn - or write it in a review!
Will try for weekly updates! Hopefully every either Friday or Saturday, given what ever shifts I get at work. (Most likely Friday).
So I guess that's all folks!
Thank you (for putting up with a super long AN, but they're generally needed at the start of a new story)!
All mistakes are mine.
Review?
Next Prompt: Boo Radley.
"I was just taking your dog for a walk and I was in the neighbourhood." "Sam, I don't have a dog."