She thought she saw a ghost today.
Not the kind that hides in alleys and around street corners or the bottom or her mother's vodka bottles.
No, those ghosts may be real, but they're not tangible.
This ghost has blue eyes. This ghost has scars and a heartbeat. This ghost is tangible and infuriating and relentless and he's always out there. Somewhere.
She and Carisi had been rushing to St. Catherine's to check on Amaro, wading through the sea of reporters that had already caught wind of the shooting. Vultures, she had been thinking. And then she saw him.
It has been years and she's not delusional. She doesn't keep the contents of his old desk in her spare room or see his face when she looks across the bullpen. Her spare room now holds a crib and a rocking chair, and she has her own office overlooking a room of mostly new faces. She doesn't think about him. Not anymore.
But she remembers a time when she did. She remembers the days when every free moment was spent thinking and hoping and wishing he would just fucking call her. Just tell her he was okay and that he didn't blame her for anything. She doesn't remember those days vividly because her senses were numb for a while and everything was enveloped in a blurry haze, like trying to look through a fogged up window after a hot shower. She remembers, but mostly the worst days that cut through the haze with gut-wrenching feeling, like the day her captain pulled her into his office and told her about the retirement papers.
After that, she started to see him in crowds and at the grocery store, in offices and apartment buildings. She saw him everywhere for a while. But it's been years since then. Centuries, really. It's been so long now that when she's tired and needs to pine, she thinks of her son, safe and warm in her apartment while she's pulling a double shift at work. She's older and wiser, and things are different now.
So when she sees him there, handing money to a street vendor in exchange for coffee, she stops cold. She stops dead in her tracks and closes her eyes for a moment just to be certain that this isn't her mind playing its usual sick games and that This Is Really Happening. When she opens her eyes, he's still there.
Once upon a time she would have gasped. Once upon a time she would have rushed toward him, drawn to his presence like a moth to a flame. Because he had been a flame to her, bright and beautiful and dangerous.
Everything is different now. All of her energy is spent on work or her son; she doesn't have time to waste on him anymore. And her life is good and she's happy, really. She's happy.
She has exactly 4 seconds to stare before Carisi is yelling ahead of her that he has a cab, and she is brought out of her trance. She blinks twice and starts walking again, and although Carisi is giving her a questioning look, no one else has noticed her moment, not even Him. Her ghost.
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