Title: Sucker Punch
Rating: Probably T. No cussing or anything but definitely some serious emotional upheaval.
Author: Anna2
Author Notes: So I haven't written in over a year. The plot bunnies abandoned me. Not to mention, I was really let down by the second half of this season. And then I read the spoilers for next season and this was born. It fits in with the end of Season Four and while it follows the format of my previous pieces, the tone is quite different. You have been warned now. And as usual, if you can't figure out the names, you don't watch enough to be reading fic.
WARNING! THIS FIC IS BASED UPON SPOILERS FOR SEASON FIVE! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! DO NOT FLAME ME BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T READ THIS PART.
She wasn't sure how she got home.
It had been two months, three weeks and six days since she'd set foot in his apartment. He hadn't let her in there since that day, not even after the funeral when the bartender at McGinty's had called her to come pick him up and haul him home. Despite passing out in the cab, he'd managed to get inside while she was paying the driver.
She wasn't sure she could breathe.
Nothing had reached him after That Day, as she'd come to think of it. She'd tried to give him his space. She'd tried to talk to him. She'd even tried screaming at him, anything to provoke a reaction. Anything to get more than a brush off. Anything to see if he'd stop acting as though he couldn't stand to be in the same room with her. She didn't want much really, just to not be treated like he couldn't stand her anymore.
And finally, she hit her limit. She had to protect herself in the end and she drew the line in the sand. The walls went back up, higher than before. She'd been right about how he could get in, how he could hurt her.
She wasn't sure how this had happened.
They'd finally been making some progress. After the killer cheerleader, he'd finally started talking to her again. He started to smile a little and crack a joke here and there. He really tried.
And she started to let down the walls. Because this was him. The same person who flew across the country to hold her hand because his instinct told him to. Who'd been her verbal sparring partner since she'd moved to the city. Who'd introduced her to the best pizza in Brooklyn and patiently explained over and over again how to understand the bus system.
She wasn't sure when she started throwing up.
In the two months, three weeks and six days since she'd been in his apartment, she'd done laundry countless times. And all her bra's were accounted for. Which meant even before she'd looked closely at the garment in the bathroom corner, she knew. Even before he'd shamefacedly confessed.
She wasn't sure she could stand this kind of pain.
After that night in the diner, she'd been sure she'd never feel pain like that again. She was wrong. She'd feel worse.
Because this time it wasn't a psychopath on a bender. A random event that in the end, wasn't personal. No matter what else about that night, she'd always been able to take comfort in the fact that none of them had done something deliberate to bring Death down upon their heads.
This was personal. Intensely personal. There was no way it wasn't.
She remembered the way he couldn't look her in the eye. The way he'd mumbled and she'd needed him to repeat himself. She remembered that it had taken her a moment to process the words, because he couldn't possibly be saying what she thought he was saying. And then she'd been doubled over, unable to breath. Like a sucker punch to the gut.
And she was pretty sure she'd slapped him in the face. The way her hand was stinging, she might have done it more than once.
She wasn't sure she cared, to be honest.
At 9 am tomorrow she had to work a 12-hour shift with him. And she'd already gotten in trouble once for let her personal life into the lab. No matter what, she was going to have to be professional and pray like hell for separate assignments. Or at least a scene that could be split, lab work that required total concentration and a good deal of silence, anything really to keep them as far apart as possible. At this point, she'd take an emergency court hearing.
She couldn't quit. This was her dream job, the one she'd spent her entire adult life trying to get. There was no way she was giving it up now. Besides which, quitting meant moving. It wasn't like there other crime labs in the city.
There was no way he'd quit either. His response to stress was to bury himself in work. Which meant she couldn't do the same.
She just had to make it through tomorrow. And then she'd take every second of vacation time she had coming to try and figure out what came next. Mac had been on her to take the time anyway. She was about to max-out again and HR hated when anyone did that.
She wasn't sure what to do now.
She didn't even want to stay in her apartment. Everywhere she looked there were reminders of him. The tee shirt on the dresser, the deodorant in the bathroom, the beer in the fridge that she never drank but bought because he liked it. All the little things that screamed out his name and made her want to start screaming again. She was pretty sure she'd been screaming before from the way her throat felt now.
She lay on her bed that now felt far too big and foreign, she began to sob again. And as she sobbed, she replayed the last two months, three weeks and six days back in her head, over and over again. Trying to gain some sort of insight, some sort of understanding. Had she done this? She didn't give him what he needed so he found it somewhere else? Was there something she should have done differently?
She wasn't sure she'd ever have the answers to those questions.
There was only one thing that she was sure of. The walls where back up now, for good this time. He would never get past them again and she cried for that as well. This was truly the end; it would now be him and her but never them again.