"Meltdown"
Copyright 2007 Penn O'Hara
T
Usual disclaimers apply.
Timeline: Sequel to "World Fair", Season Six. I recently rewatched it, and I don't know if anyone else noticed, but Logan suffered deeply from all that he saw through that episode. Kudos to him for not being so tough that he's impermeable to the horrors of his job.
A/N: Logan and Barek are an item in my universe and shacked up in Carolyn's apartment.
oOo
The World Fair Unisphere loomed above and behind him as Mike Logan clumsily keyed a message onto his cell phone. He checked it for spelling errors despite its auto spell feature. His jaw worked with the effort of keeping his frustration disguised from his partner, Megan Wheeler.
Had enough. Going home.
He briefly wondered how Wheeler would key it – had enuf. goin hm.
She seemed comfortably familiar with the latest tech shorthand. Figuring it was hard enough getting through school without forgetting everything he learned during the times he made it there, he put in the extra effort to get it correct. Logan sent the message to Carolyn's number and snapped his phone shut, wondering how she would react. Would she drop everything and come home to him, sensing the hopelessness that was weighing upon his shoulders?
Despite their successful closure of the case, Logan was defeated by the cost in human suffering. A son and daughter dead, a son and father in jail for murder, an uncle in jail for malicious damage and two mothers without their children. Two families utterly destroyed. It was a tragedy of proportions rarely encountered in Logan's two decades as a detective.
He took the wheel of the police vehicle without saying a word to Wheeler and pointed its nose toward home. If Wheeler couldn't guess where he was going, she'd soon work it out.
"This case was the pits." Wheeler put forward her excuse for small talk, giving him a quick glance before resuming her contemplation of the road ahead.
"Yeah." Logan wasn't interested in humoring her. They had an agreement. If talk wasn't wanted or needed, then it was dispensed with.
They'd found their comfort zone as partners. Logan treated his young trainee with abrupt respect, letting her make her own mistakes and bringing her into line with light-scale ribbing and good-natured jibes. He was pleased her youth and slenderness belied a toughness of hide and sharpness of brain, allowing her to educate him in the ways of technology and the mind-set of the younger generation while he developed her street-smarts.
Carolyn turned possessive of him whenever Wheeler was around, but Logan realized that stemmed more from envy than jealousy. His fiery Polish lover admitted she missed partnering with him and he was glad it was her decision to transfer. If it were his, he'd be paying for it. Dearly.
Wheeler said nothing more until he pulled up at the brownstone he shared with Carolyn.
"You coming back to the Precinct later?" she asked, a hand on the door handle.
He shook his head.
She joined him on the sidewalk. "I might start on the paperwork before I go home."
"Yeah, you do that." He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Only, don't overdo it, okay? You need some down–time too."
"I will."
A quick nod and she rounded the car to the driver's side. Logan closed the door on her and watched her drive away. Alone now, he felt worse and regretted not inviting her in for a coffee. Anything to fill this chasm of futility. Two decades on the Force and he hadn't made a difference. Things were worse, not better.
"Shit. Shit. Shit!"
He kicked his heels into his building.
Swearing all the way up the stairs to the apartment, Logan added a few stronger expletives when he fumbled his keys at the door, dropping them at his feet. He stabbed them into the lock, let himself in and slammed the door behind him.
The room seemed to rattle with the force, opening up into an abyss where he was separated, cut-off from anything that was good in life. Carolyn was good for him. The apartment she had designed in heavy antiques felt warm and safe and solid. He needed her and she wasn't there.
"Shit!"
Contemplating a stiff drink or long shower, he went for the latter. He figured he'd try scrubbing the tragedy from his skin instead of drowning it in expensive liquor.
Eons later he was still standing under the piercing jet of a cold shower, feeling no closer to coming to terms with his disgust at the intolerance of people in the name of their faith and convictions.
Anger had given way to confusion and without answers or explanations, his confusion had no recourse but to disintegrate into despair. His shoulders shook, but not from cold, his mouth open in a silent howl, tongue tasting the salt from his tears. It had been a long time since he'd taken one of his cases on board like this, but this one was horrific in its senselessness.
"Move over, hon."
Logan's distress was so total he hadn't heard Carolyn in the apartment, let alone the room, but worse, he was slow to react. His reflexes were deadened so that when he tried to hide his grief from her, he was too slow.
"Mike! What's wrong? Oh, my love…"
She stepped into the shower with him and her arms tightly holding him made him quake more. His back heaved and the sobs found volume in her desperate attempt to ease his suffering. Her naked body was slick beside him, but he couldn't draw any heat from her.
"What happened?" Carolyn's hands ran over his body in quick exploration. If she were looking for a wound, he could only wish it were physical.
"A…waste," he gasped. "All…a waste."
"Okay, hon, I got it. You're okay. Thank God. But what happened? Is Megan okay?"
He nodded heavily, assuring her of that much.
"It was just the case then. A bad one?"
He nodded again.
She held him tighter, absorbing his shudders so wholly, he wasn't sure if she too was shaking. She finally drew him out of the shower, wrapped a towel round his shoulders and guided him into the bedroom onto the bed. He bowed his head over his bent knees, but she pushed him against the bed head until he leaned his neck back against its hardness and closed his eyes as she smoothed the hair from his face.
"Talk when you're ready," she said. He heard the understanding, relaxed into her warmth and basked in her love.
"I can't…"
"You always say that, but it's time," she whispered, her voice unsteady and catching on the words. "Time you let me see why some things affect you so much."
She misunderstood. He was going to say he didn't want children. Didn't want to bring them into a world so rampant with prejudices, intolerance and irrational principles.
"Today, one person's ideal destroyed two families," he ground out. He tried again to tell her he couldn't be a part of her wish to produce a family. "I can't be a–"
He heard his cell phone ring, muffled by the material of his jacket. Carolyn hovered as if afraid to leave him, tempted to let it ring out.
"Answer it," he assured her. "My coat. It's on the floor. Somewhere."
The mattress moved as she left him, and he continued to hang his head, steeling himself against the feeling that he had shown weakness that was unworthy of him.
"Hi Megan," Carolyn said, her voice lowered but still audible. "Yeah, I'm with him now. He's… we're… well, we'll be fine. Thanks. Can you er, fill me in a little?"
Logan pushed himself from the bed and held out a hand for his phone. His eyes dared Carolyn to defy him and hers wavered under his demand. Slowly, she handed him the phone, and still, holding her gaze, he put it to his own ear.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Wheeler. Goodnight." Snapping the phone shut, Logan tossed it onto the bed. His body was taut with tension and Carolyn must have sensed the danger in the air because she didn't move, nor waver from their locked eyes.
"A youth killed his sister," he began, the quiet of his voice grated with steel, "because she brought disgrace upon the family by falling pregnant to an infidel. The father shot the girl's lover when he was only there to explain…" Logan worked his jaw as his eyes stung and blurred. "After losing her daughter, the mother has lost her son and her husband because I put them in jail." His lip curled with self-loathing. "The lover's uncle is in jail because I had to arrest him for malicious damage against the dead daughter's family business. Two families completely destroyed in a week's work."
"It's not your f–"
"I fucking know it's not my fault!"
He strode over to the dresser and hauled out a drawer. "This is the world we live in! This is the world you want to bring children into!" Dragging out a pair of sweats, he slipped them on, struggling in his temper to pull the sweater over his head. "Children don't have a say in their conception, but I do. I fucking do."
He wheeled around and strode for the door, scooping up loafers on the way. He heard her call his name, but kept on walking, palming his wallet, gun and keys before slamming out the front door.
"Mike!"
Taking the steps down to the ground floor two at a time, Logan kept on going, his stomach sickened by his behavior toward Carolyn but pride disabling him from retracing his steps.
Out of the building's foyer, onto the pavement and into the darkening evening, he walked until he tired of walking, then hailed a cab which let him out at his old apartment. He looked up at his darkened window and thanked the common sense or portent that had restrained him from subletting his lease.
Logan hesitated, swore, then walked into the building.
oOo
tbc...