Fearless

A Prisoners [2013] Drabble Collection by DoctorHarleyQuinn


Disclaimer: I don't own Prisoners. This is just for fun (and a little bit of therapy) and I'm not profiting off of it.


words.

He talks like a cop.

Not that unusual. He is a cop, after all—worked the beat for six years before moving up to Detective two years ago. Still, he finds himself employing the familiar phrases even off the clock. "I hear you. I understand what you're saying. Here's what I need you to do for me. Okay? You understand what I'm telling you? Everything's under control." All phrases trained into a cop, designed to reassure, to control, to establish authority over the situation at hand.

He supposed it was inevitable that they would eventually bleed into what little personal life he has. He spends so much time on the job that his work self is more his real self than the person he is at home, alone in his shitbox apartment. Besides, he's never been much good at talking to people. "Brusque" is a word that social workers frequently used on their reports about him even in his childhood—and when it wasn't that, it was "quiet," though that was something of an understatement. Put it this way: if he was a doctor, his beside manner would be atrocious. Probably even horrifying.

He isn't a sociopath. He feels empathy, too much of it, even, but he never learned how to express it—and even if he'd known how, there was no one to express it to. When he was a child, a teenager, the weight of it all would inevitably manifest in silent, destructive rages, but that almost never happens anymore. The cop talk helps. Though the phrases might sound stiff to some—unconcerned, impersonal—for him, they're a useful tool.

A way for someone who never learned how to properly express the sentiment to people to say he cares.


A/N - I know I'm supposed to be on hiatus writing more Batman fic, and really, I have no idea what I'm doing. I just... really liked Prisoners, David Loki climbed unexpectedly beneath my skin and wouldn't leave, I couldn't stop thinking about him, wondering about his background, his day-to-day- one road trip later and I was left with several short character study pieces and a rough plan for some more. I figured as long as I was writing it down, I might as well share, yeah? It isn't exactly poetry, but it's the way I achieve catharsis after a movie like that, so maybe it'll resonate anyway. Expect a few more short chapters. No idea how long it'll turn out to be.