This is VERY dark so take this as your warning. Review replies are in the works, just gimme a day.
I. Just. Can't. Do. This. Any. More.
I work, so fucking hard, day in and day out for what?
There will always be more killers, more rapists, more monsters to terrorize women, men, children, families. Everyone that is locked away means that there are ten, maybe a hundred, more of them out there. They are like rats, uncontrollable, unpopular, disgusting.
And yet, there are the moments when the perp isn't any of those things. There are times when they are just kids, pushed beyond their own boundaries of control and you know what, it's not their fault. It's not their fault that there are so many pressures from the outside world that they just can't cope with it. It's like their lives are these carousels and at some point it just starts to spin faster and faster until it's all they can do to hang on.
Today, I shot a kid, a kid who just couldn't hang on any more.
He lost it.
Lost control of his life.
Found a gun in the gutter, bought some bullets and started killing people. Teenagers, just like him, dead because, in his eyes they had the good life. They had everything he didn't have, had everything he wanted and I had to shoot him.
I remember those amber eyes, looking at me, tears of anger and confusion streaming down his face as he begged to me why?
"Why couldn't it just go right for once?" He shouted "One day" he sobbed "One, fucking day." He repeated but this time he brought the gun he was holding to the girls head and rested his finger on the trigger.
I heard the click of the safety and the sanity left his eyes as he closed them, preparing himself for what he was about to do.
I fired.
It was a clean shot, IAB knows that, the squad knows that, I know that. But I just can't forget those eyes, the look of utter confusion as some part of him realized what he was doing, wondering what went so wrong that he was forced to this.
They haunt me, like no one else I've ever killed before has. That list isn't very long, I know that, but still, the single word echoes around my empty apartment, his face, tears still streaming down his face, appears whenever I close my eyes.
He could have been helped.
Could have.
Because I shot him, ended his life before it was time.
I feel the weight of my gun at my hip, Cragen had given it back to me after I was cleared with IAB on the shooting. It's like rock, dragging me deeper into the depths of my own darkness, the place where the faces of the other three people I've shot reside, the faces of the victims, so scarred by their experiences, the children, crying as they realize that the monsters are no longer just under the bed. My own mother, hurling a half emptied bottle of red wine at me as I ask who my father is for the first time.
I never asked after that.
Eight years in SVU is a long time, a lot of cops in other precincts think that I just 'have a thing' for sex crimes. Most of them don't know my past. Those that do are still amazed that I haven't yet burnt out, haven't yet lost my mind. They don't know how lost it is. The only people that truly understand are those that I work with, those who have been there just as long as I have. The problem is, there is a separation between work and normal life for them.
Elliot has his kids and wife.
Fin has his son and, if I'm correct, he's dating Casey now.
Cragen, the father of our strange bunch, with his AA meetings and old friends from college, he has an escape.
Even Munch, divorced, cynical, Munch, has his conspiracy theories to go home to. Everyone has something.
Everyone except me.
I'm the product of those whom I bring to justice.
A product of rape.
So disgusting my own mother barely looked at me, when she was sober anyway. When she was drunk, which was more often than not, she would just look at me, look at me and tell me how much I didn't look like her. How much I then must look like him. Her tormentor. Her nightmare. Her rapist.
She served as a constant reminder of just where I came from and where I was going.
No where.
There is no line, no separation. It just doesn't exist for me.
It can't exist.
And because of that, I just, can't do this anymore.
The gun feels light in my hand, lighter than it should considering the life it took, I took. The barrel is cold against my temple, comforting in a twisted way but I relish it because I'm probably going to hell anyway.
I'm considering a follow up piece to this, short as this onet is. The follow up would involve Alex coming to the rescue, saving Olivia from herself per-say. Any takers?