Many, many, many thanks to Orbythesea and Freiheitfuehlen. They are pretty much the reason this fic exists.
Dreams
He has dreams, lots of dreams. Sometimes, his shoulder hurts too much and he can't move, wakes up unable to breathe, unable to speak - but then everyone knows you can't ever die in your own dreams.
Sometimes, he's faster, better, presses harder on his wounds and he saves him.
His doctor says it's PTSD. Or survivor's guilt. Something.
.
He sees her often. Doesn't know how not to see her anymore. He wants to understand, tries to understand and maybe, just maybe, if they can hold each other up, he'll be able to understand why he and his wife couldn't.
He misses her – Ann – he misses her every day. She comes to see him at the hospital looking like she's worried, like she cares and then leaves and never comes back. In his mind, they're still married; he believes it, refers to her as his wife and sometimes, almost calls her. But then what do you say? 'Hey, I know you wanted to kill yourself after the miscarriage and I'm sorry I could never fix it but I need to talk to you because some guy I barely knew died in my arms and I feel like shit and I need you?' Yeah, right, you selfish douche.
He wishes he could do something for Alicia, too. He wishes he could hug her, throw his arms around her shoulders, tell her it's all going to be okay. Yet, when he faces her, he freezes.
Sometimes, he wonders if he's just asking for people's help without ever being able to give out anything of his own.
(What he doesn't realize is that he helps her, somehow. She seeks him out and he becomes the only person she wants to see, the one person she wants to get out of bed and put on some make-up for; Alicia fights for him, before she fights for herself.)
.
It's been months. It's been months and Alicia, Alicia, she still freezes, sometimes, like he does, in the middle of everything. That, he understands. His eyes close and he's in that courtroom, every day. Sharp noises, the construction next to his building, it makes him jump. Finn, he relives the shooting and wonders what she relives.
They go out for drinks and he realizes he used to feel like he knew her. Through the papers, in court, like a coin with two sides, the wife and the lawyer, the perfect person. He remembers a few days after the shooting, when Dan-from-work came to visit. The TV was on mute; they were talking baseball. And there was Alicia, on TV, Peter chatting with some red-haired reporter by her side. "Fuck, women are heartless," Dan said. "I mean, I get it's sex and she's married but dude, how can you go parading around on TV not even a week after, huh?"
Finn took a gulp out of his paper cup, confused. "What do you mean?"
"You don't know?"
"Know what?" He sighed. There's a reason why Dan's just Dan-from-work, he thought. It's always voices and hearsays in court halls. Sometimes, Finn thinks that if he hadn't met the guy on his first day of work, they wouldn't be friends. Dan seems to think there are things that you need to know about people, in Chicago, while he only barely knows the main protagonists.
"Well, she was fucking him,"
Another sigh. It only struck him a few days later that if he hadn't pushed Dan that day, he would never have known. Would never have even cared. But then he'd been lying in bed doing nothing for four days and well, rumors on a politician's wife was as good entertainment as any. "Fucking who?"
Dan lowered his voice, like a secret. "Gardner. She was fucking Gardner. Dude, really, you been living under a rock? Everyone knows this, used to be her boss or whatever -"
Finn shook his head, automatic, because it couldn't be true. It couldn't - "She's married," he said. "Plus she pretty much stabbed him in the back to create her own firm so -"
"So, maybe they stopped, I don't know. Doesn't make her less of a bitch. All I know is that maybe two years ago, Dana saw Peter Florrick - when he was still the SA - and Gardner outside court and thought they were going to murder each other,"
There are a lot of reasons why people want to murder each other, Finn thought. And sometimes, now, he knows there aren't any. There's no reason why Will died, no reason why on that particular day at that particular time – but no, that's cheap, and that wasn't the issue here, anyway. Here, he was about to shake his head again, tell Dan he shouldn't believe everything he hears by the water-cooler but then - then she'd visited him, that one night. There'd been no reason for her to come and yet, she had. Up to that point, he'd never thought about why.
.
Alicia is drinking a glass of red wine when he slides on the stool next to hers and orders bourbon. They started this a while ago: Alicia doesn't talk much, and he doesn't mind much. He just likes her more than he likes anyone else's disinterested company, these days; she's a puzzle, one he'll probably never figure out, but he can't be blamed for trying.
She's beautiful, too, Alicia.
He doesn't know how to help her. He doesn't know how not to try to help her. He wants to tell her things, tell her about his dreams, tell her about still feeling Will's dead weight on his lap and the fear, the fucking fear that's taken root into his bones. He doesn't tell her, though, because it would only make her grief worse.
(Last week, he was in her office, she was opening mail and froze again. It was an envelope, he almost saw her stop breathing right there and then, tears clouding before her eyes; she practically ran to the bathroom. He wishes he hadn't but he looked – couldn't not look. An invitation in the trash, GULC's twentieth reunion.
What he doesn't know is that she wasn't crying, back then. She was throwing up.)
.
He's noticed recently that she twists her wedding around her finger when she's thinking about Will. She doesn't ever really talk about him, but she thinks. When she opens her mouth, she stops herself halfway through her sentences. She's a bit lost, Alicia, he thinks.
He takes her hand as she does it again, one night. "Stop," he says, takes his hand away. "It's obvious."
She freezes at his touch. Fakes a laugh, careful not to touch her ring again. She must think she's a fucking cliché, he thinks, she must think she's being weak and if he'd known her – really known her, not through TV and court, back then - he would have known curses never used not to be part of Alicia Florrick's vocabulary, Before. "I need to -"
"You're not being weak, Alicia," he says, quick, honest. She's not a cliché; she's grieving; it's different. At least, he thinks it's different. And for a moment, he wonders what she was about to say, before he stopped her. I need to go. I need to drink. I need to get laid. It's what everybody thinks; it's so common, so every day, so not her. Alicia stares ahead, at the bottles behind the bar and he thinks he'll still feel the touch of her hand against his fingers in the morning.
"I," she starts and he lets her talk, this time, doesn't interrupt, hopes - fears - she'll say something. Her gaze descends from the wall to the bar, from the bar to her fingers. "I shouldn't play with it. Peter and I, we're not - it's been a while since we - but it's just better for us to stay married, professionally."
She says it slowly, but in a way that he finds extremely matter of fact. It must mean that she trusts him and yet, her words are chosen carefully, she never actually says they're separated, like she doesn't want to be quoted. It's sad, so sad. "Because of Will?" He asks.
For a moment, he thinks he's gone too far. She turns sharply towards him, eyes narrowing. Alicia's hurting. He knows she is, and he's sorry. It's in a sigh, a shake of her head. "Because of a lot of things," she says. He's ready to believe her, really, because as acutely aware as he has become of how complicated it can be to keep that two-people-boat afloat, he also knows how hard it can be to jump out into the cold water. Sometimes, he wishes it hadn't been a choice that had slipped through his fingers. But then Alicia thinks about it, really thinks about it and she adds, "Yeah, because of Will. Mostly because of Will."
"What happened?"
Alicia laughs, too loud. "Well, he died. For starters," she closes her eyes, strong and heavy. "You know, it's weird, when I think about him, I always think of Georgetown. I wonder if it'd have made a difference, if he'd known he only had twenty years left to live." She looks up like she doesn't expect him to answer, like she's being a bit drunk, a bit crazy, like she's being stupid. "Probably not," she answers herself, laughs, again. He listens to her, she says, "Will used to say I had a good laugh," and she does have a good laugh, when it's sincere and not hurting. "Will said a lot of things," she tells him. Finn wonders about the things that Will may never have said, how they all must be eating at her, now. Her hands cross over the bar; she lays her head upon them, for a moment. "I'm so tired," she mutters.
Finn? Well, he wants to tell her that she's beautiful, that Will probably thought she was beautiful, too. More than anything, he wishes he'd understood what Will was trying to say, back there, when he tried to talk. He wishes he could lie to her about it. Sees Alicia sit back up, staring at her hands, her fingers reach for her ring, play with and twist it a bit before she pulls, slowly at first, tentative. It sticks over her articulation; he almost thinks she's not going to do it, but then she does, slides it off, stares at it. "Will thought I wasn't that kind of girl," she tells him.
He's not sure what that's supposed to mean, either.
.
Eli calls her cell; she lets it ring silently on the counter. He wonders when that'll happen to him, too, when he'll stop caring about Eli's phone calls, about the campaign he feels he's starting to win over Will's dead body. He dragged it through the courtroom, that's something he remembers, and the irony is that with his shoulder, he probably wouldn't be able to do it again, now. Will left his DNA all over the floor; it wasn't touch or transferred DNA: it was blood, pouring out, everywhere. Finn had never thought about it, never thought about the fact that the sound of a gunshot wouldn't ever be enough, that it would be the memory of the sound of a bullet going through someone else's flesh that would get him, every single time. The way Will staggered backwards, stood for another five seconds before dropping onto the floor. Alicia stares at her phone and waits for a voicemail from Eli that never shows up on her screen. Maybe the guy cares, Finn thinks, maybe the guy genuinely cares every bit as much as anyone else around her does.
She watches her phone like it's about to burst into flames. "I can't delete it," she explains. It takes him a moment to figure out what she's talking about; he sees his name written on the list of her voicemails. It's the only one there, perhaps because he deserves to be left alone, or perhaps because no one else could ever say what she wanted him to say.
(She's keeping the sound of his voice, doesn't want to forget it ever existed.)
"My Mom kept all of my sister's school stuff."
It sort of spills out and Alicia's eyes settle on him, focus, like she's waiting for him to say more. "I'm sorry," she finally says, but what for? He's very tempted to ask, but doesn't. Sorry for his sister, maybe, for Will, for the press bringing it up; it's something Will knew that Finn doesn't, how Alicia's only sorry about the things that aren't her fault.
"They aren't even hers," he says. "Not anymore. We hadn't, we hadn't really known her for years. My mother, she keeps believing this fantasy." He trails off, reconsiders. Maybe that's harsh, maybe that's just his own insecurities talking, the way they always tried to save her. "I don't know."
"Will's father killed himself," she declares. There's no gesture to accompany it, no glass to down or TV to gaze at. She just tells him and it feels oddly uncomfortable and invasive: he shouldn't ever have known. They weren't friends, Will and he, and if Will hadn't died in that courtroom, he shouldn't ever have known. Alicia must sense this; she apologizes, again. She retreats and all he wants is for her to tell him, to tell him what's going through her head, as if knowing could fix the mess in his own.
"No," he says. "Don't be." It hurts, saying it, and he doesn't know why.
She smiles, shy and discreet. She reminds him of Ann, sometimes, of the way she shut down, away from him, after the baby. He doesn't want Alicia to shut down, not again, not when she's become the only person in his world. "Tell me," he says, softly, like he didn't just put his whole fate into her hands.
"There's not that much to say, it wasn't my story."
"Then tell me about him," he says.
It's a loaded request, the kind of request she can make anything of. He waits, signals the bartender for another drink, for the both of them.
"No," she mutters, her fingers hiding her lips, chin resting in her palm. He thinks her lips are trembling, he thinks that's why he almost doesn't hear her. "I want to stop crying about this," she says, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders; she's accommodating to his touch, now.
.
He's heard things. Things about Lockhart Gardner, things about Diane Lockhart missing meetings and losing clients, desperately trying to hang onto Will's lifework for everybody who was incapable of saving him. He wonders if there's anyone, anyone at all in this city who wasn't affected by Will Gardner's death, wonders why Will Gardner feels more like a presence to him now than he ever did before. But then this is his microcosm, his new microcosm, the one he doesn't seem to be able to get out of, one made out of people who were in Will Gardner's life before he, himself, came into theirs. The reason he's here is because Will died, and all that happens to him now is because Will died, and everyone in Cook County might even get a new State's Attorney because Will died.
.
It's two weeks later, three months after the shooting, she spends the evening buying him drinks claiming he'll pay her back when he's elected. The least he can do is make sure she makes it home safely without too much public embarrassment. Finn's quiet when he opens her door, shushes as not to wake her kids. She steps inside and signs for him to follow as he stands awkwardly on her doorstep. "It's okay, they're all in Springfield."
(She says it like something dirty, like a curse.)
He follows her in; her apartment feels oddly familiar by now, like the dreams he has and the feeling that washes over him every time he sees her. He wonders how many times Will stepped in here, if ever. Perhaps it was just hotel rooms and his place for them, with Peter and the kids; it makes him oddly sad. Empathetic.
"Let me just get some more wine," she says. He's about to object but she's already walking into her kitchen, retrieving two glasses and a half-full bottle of red. He stands by the couch, looking at her; she asks, "What?"
He looks up to the way her eye glisten under the fading shade of the streetlights outside. "Nothing," he says and she comes to sit on the couch next to him, handing him a glass, laughs.
"He said that, too, you know?" She pauses, drinks. "He said that once, he stared at me and I asked 'what?' and he said 'nothing.'" Her eyes look straight ahead, to the furniture and the windows; he turns to her.
"You need to stop being like him, Alicia. You can't always half-say everything."
"Everyone's like that." She shrugs, sort of drunkenly. "I'm not sure he ever wanted to say more."
And "you're beautiful," is what he says, then.
It slips off his tongue before he can think, before he can say he probably did, or he probably didn't, whatever helps her sleep better. She puffs, awkwardly looking down, insecure. "I'm not even sure he thought that," she says, feigns a laugh, takes a gulp of wine.
He knows she's about to ask him to leave, to skirt around the subject so he forces her to look back at him, with a hand on her knee. It stays there for only a couple of seconds, enough for her to turn her head and meet his eyes. "Alicia," he says, begs.
"Will's string of girlfriends," she lets out, her eyes to the ceiling. "In law school, there was Carla, and Deb and that girl on the second floor of our building and then someone else, and someone else, Celeste, Giada – we were almost forty years old, she was a law student, for God's sake – and Tammy, and that yoga instructor who showed up at his funeral," she pauses, tries to stop the slur of alcohol from tainting her voice. "All young, all beautiful, all – He was a jerk to them, though, you know? Like he was trying to hurt."
"Was he a jerk to you?"
It doesn't fit with the Will he knows, the Will she's been learning to talk about, with baby steps. "No," she says, shakes her head. "Maybe, but not, not before I left." He guesses she means when she left his firm. "And even after, he… He said I was linking two things together he never did."
He loses himself in her voice, in this game of he said she said, analyzing, deconstructing, until she says, swallowing the rest of her wine: "I miss the sex."
Finn almost chokes on his own wine; it's not that the admission is shocking, per se, it's just shocking coming from her, because Alicia barely ever shares anything and it's always half-truths and whispered confessions and this, this is something else. It's weird, but even if it seems to have unwillingly slipped out of her mouth, it feels like the most intimate thing she's ever said to him. "That's not –" she starts.
"That's not what you meant?" He laughs, makes her laugh with him, watches her as she sets her long calves against the table in front of her couch. "I'm pretty sure that's exactly what you meant."
She smiles, crosses his gaze, then lets hers drift off when her head hits the back of the cushions, glances at the ceiling as she looks for her most accurate words. "He had this way of making it into this beautiful thing,"
It's contradictory, really, the way she describes him and the way he made her feel loved. He wonders if that's what happened to all the men in his life, what they all told her: that they loved her too much to stick around.
"It's horrible, isn't it? That I think about sex when he's dead? It's selfish that I dream of –"
He turns sharply towards her, then. "No, Alicia, it's not selfish, it's normal, you're grieving."
(It's become his motto, sort of, like it excuses everything. It's also becoming weaker and weaker by the second.)
He wonders if she feels selfish for talking to him, too. He's about to ask just that when she tries to justify, "it's just that a week before he died, we –"
His hand goes in front of his mouth without him realizing. "What?" she says, "Did I say –"
"No. No," He tells her, quick, insistent. "It's just," He frowns, frowns at all the things he said, might have asked lately, that may have been ignorant, or invasive, or disregarding. It's because he doesn't know her, doesn't know how much he can push before she shuts down and - "I didn't know you were still -" together, he thinks, pauses, "I'm so, so sorry Alicia,"
She closes her eyes, shakes her head softly. "No, don't be."
She looks at him straight into his eyes, lets him see; it's a bit condescending, maybe. "We weren't even – I don't know. It was New York and I can't make sense out of it." She's facing him, sitting on her couch, her face inches away from his and her voice filled with tears when she adds, "Nothing ever came out of us."
(We could never make it work, she remembers. And every tangible part of them died with Will and his version of the story. Now, it's all in her head. Or it could be. As it should be.)
He doesn't know anything but she's on the edge of tears and he thinks he's going to say something – anything – existed, because for all he couldn't save him that day, maybe he can save her. He stops, though, because Alicia gets that look on her face. That look girls get when they know something is about to happen and they're wondering whether to go along with it.
"Peter thinks I'm sleeping with you," she whispers in the dead of the night so low he almost doesn't hear, and he kisses her softly on the lips, like it could ever be about him.
She moans against his mouth, lets his hand wander under her shirt; he pulls out of the embrace first, but eventually, he knows she was pulling out, too. Alicia sighs, almost silent, looks at him like an apology. Smiles, shy. "I don't even know who I'm being faithful to."
Finn smiles, too, locks his arm around her shoulder; her head rests in the crook of his neck. "You'll know," he says, looking down at her. "One day, you'll know."
He doesn't know how long they stay like this, intertwined on her couch. Later, she looks at him and says, "You don't have to do what Eli says, you know?"
He chuckles. "About what?"
"Using your sister, the tough on drugs attitude, I don't know."
"No," he says, "I'll do it."
"Yeah," she whispers. It sounds like she's understanding something he isn't. Her mind drifts off to somewhere else, like she's not talking to him or anyone in particular. "Will never talked about it," she says and he looks down at her, makes her find her way back to him. "His Dad. He never said a word about it again."
She stays silent for while; he thinks he knows where this is going, fears where this is going before she even goes there, doesn't know what he'll answer, doesn't know what he should say when he simply doesn't know. "Finn? Do you think he –" her voice trails off, like she can't breathe, terrified as he is, because she thinks she knows something he doesn't and it makes him say,
"No."
No. Alicia, No.
"But maybe he didn't – Maybe he didn't really care, maybe he –"
"No," he tells her, again, firmer, this time, like he knows, like he's sure. "He tried to save that guy, he tried to save Jeffrey."
She looks at him with a look he can't really identify, late, in the dark.
That night, he dreams he saves her.