Title: Insomnia
Rating+ for some slight swearing.
Disclaimer: The characters below belong to Alliance Atlantis, not me. I'm just borrowing them for a little while
Summary: 5 am in a lonely hotel room and sleep won't come.
This is something that popped into my head after last night's episode. After the lovely reviews I got from my piece City Hall, especially from Rainbow Stevie, I figure it couldn't hurt to see if my luck holds out for second piece. This is not connected to City Hall. I think it's done but you never know for sure. And once again, if you can't figure who these characters are, then you don't watch the show enough to be reading the fic.
It was too damn quiet here.
She was still amazed at the silence, even though she grown up in a place quieter than this. Bozeman seemed to die at 10 pm; the only noises left outside were the occasional cars. There were no voices, no unending traffic, no sirens, no garbage trucks, no construction noises. No lights shining through the drapes, no feet moving overhead, no voices floating up from down below, no cell phone ringing at obscene hours.
When she'd first come to New York, the noise of the city had completely unnerved and overwhelmed her. It had taken a triple shift and utter exhaustion to be able to sleep without popping a Tylenol PM or a half dose of Benadryl. And now that she'd returned to her native stillness, she was just as jumpy and sleepless as she'd been two years ago.
Somehow the noise of the city had become part of her psyche, one she was sorely missing right now. Outside the hotel window the snow was falling on a sleeping city and she was wide-awake.
The time change wasn't helping. It was 5 am here, the exact time she should be arriving at work back in the city. She'd awoken two and a half hours ago and couldn't get back to sleep, despite her exhaustion. She'd already counted sheep (stopping somewhere around 5266), established that she had none of her old sleep aides in her suitcase (and there was no 24 hour pharmacy to raid), mentally organized her desk, linen closet and storage unit (that she really needed to clean out and shut down while she was here) and was now contemplating checking her email.
At 5:24 she gave up the fight and powered up the laptop.
There was nothing in her personal account except bills that had been paid before her flight and spam that had slipped past the filter. After checking the news sights and the weather, she remote accessed her work email.
She hadn't wanted to think about work. She wasn't sure she was going to make it through the trial and thinking about her massive caseload and the amount of paperwork that would be waiting for her when she got back surely wasn't going to help.
That lasted until her first meeting with the Bozeman PD and district attorney.
Relieving those memories over and over again, going through the details time after time, had left her a wreck. She was so shaky when she got into her rental car that she didn't dare turn the key for nearly 1/2 an hour. And that was only the first day. There were more days of this. Questioning by the police, reviewing her testimony with the DA and eventually she'd have to face her attacker and the make the ID in a line-up. The public defender knew he couldn't defeat DNA evidence but thought a shaky eyewitness ID might be the ticket. Little did he know that she had that face seared on her brain. And once all the meetings and reviews and questioning was over, there was still the trial to survive. Work was an outlet that she craved, an oasis of sanity in the desert of her madness. She'd mentally reviewed every case file that she could think of, gone through the Times online to keep track of what might be on the radar when she returned and reviewed her day planner incessantly to assure herself that she would return. She had her schedule memorized through July. She'd distracted herself to the point where she stopped hyperventilating three times a day.
Work email was more interesting. Follow up from the DA and possible trial dates on a couple of cases, requests from Mac and Hawkes about where she'd left evidence or info, a joke from Stella. And a note from him.
He never emailed her. Their desks were in the same room; there was no point in emailing. And the last case they'd worked together was in the hands of the prosecutor; there was no more evidence to process. And therefore, no reason to be contacting her.
The note was brief.
And personal.
The unwritten, unspoken agreement between them said that personal queries and information were off-limits. Conversation was limited to work and work-related topics. They'd been abiding by this détente since the ice queen case and that was the way she wanted it. Because he was dangerous. He could get past all her walls, all her barriers, with ease. And she wanted him to. She wanted to let him in so badly that it nearly hurt and it was the last thing she could do, not until this mess was behind her. There was no way she could risk letting something with this much potential to be something truly great, get messed up because of her past issues. She would give in on her terms, when she knew she could handle it. Unfortunately, telling him this would violate the agreement.
The way this note did.
He had the outlines of the case from Mac. He hoped she was well and that she kicked this guy's ass at trial. He missed her. And if she needed anything at all, she was to call day or night no matter what the time difference was.
There was absolutely no mention of work or professional responsibilities. That was not part of the agreement.
Her reply was just as brief and formal.
She was fine. She was confident about the trial. She would call if needed. She missed the city.
It was too damn quiet here.