Disclaimer: The characters don't belong to me – they belong to Southern Star and Channel Seven.
Summary: PJ reflects on the one night that destroyed everything that he had struggled to build up. OneShot.
He moved to the window, gently parting the faded old curtains with his hand, blinking back the sunlight from beyond his house. His self-imposed hell. He couldn't leave the place he had once called home, not when her memory surrounded him wherever he went. Her beautiful, silky brown hair, her gorgeous, deep emerald green eyes. Everything he had once admired and, Heaven forbid, loved about her was now haunting him, teasing him every time he dared to close his eyes.
They worried about him. Barely an hour of daylight passed when he didn't find someone new on his doorstep, silently pleading with him to open up, to let them in to help him rebuild his strength, his heart. What they didn't understand was that there was just nothing left to rebuild. The moment she had taken her final breath, whatever was left of everything that had made him complete had disappeared, fading into the night just as she did. He didn't want or even need their well-intended condolences. All he needed was her.
"PJ!"
Amy's voice from the other end of the muster room caught his attention instantly, bringing him over to her in seconds. He set the coffees he had just retrieved for them on the desk nearby, leaning in over her shoulder, their heads just centimetres apart. She motioned to the image on the television screen before them, turning PJ's attention to it. His eyes widened as he stared at the television in complete horror. Amy had been right to doubt Marie Biden and her "good Samaritan" façade. The woman was the focus of the television frame that Amy had paused the tape on, a sharp knife poised in her hand, while her husband soothed the young girl lying on her back on a table in the background.
He closed his eyes tightly, swearing under his breath. He had read about these cases before, everyone had. But they were always the kind of thing you never had to deal with – they were left for the big city investigators, not two country coppers like themselves.
He was suddenly brought back to reality by Amy as she climbed to her feet, grabbing her jacket from the back of her chair as she headed for the door. "We need to get out there," she told him firmly, not bothering to look back to confirm the next course of action with him as she usually might have. "Get that bitch before she kills anyone else."
He nodded, pulling his own leather jacket over his shoulders as he followed her out of the station and out into the cold August night. The breeze licked at his face as he joined her in the CI car, neither of them knowing at all what they were about to walk into.
He'd never realised just how much she had come to mean to him. She had walked into his life during one of its darkest times and, unbeknownst to her, she had carried him through. She had given him something to live for in the aftermath of the bombing and Jo's death. She had done more than just challenge everything he had come to believe about himself and his job in Mt. Thomas – she had made him a better copper and a better person.
At a time when he had nothing left to live for, nothing left to lose, she had given him everything he had needed to find the will to carry on. And over time, the uncertainty and power plays between them had given way to friendship and trust, a remarkable achievement for her. And a remarkable achievement for him.
He hadn't been back to the station since that night. He didn't think he could possibly face the mass of concerned faces and sympathetic voices of his colleagues or the desk that would still be sitting across from his own, a stern reminder that she wasn't going to be there anymore doing the job she had dedicated her life to.
Amy brushed her hair back from her face as she rubbed her hands together in a futile attempt to warm her body against the coldness around them. He followed her over to the unmarked car near the front gate of the Biden property, causing Susie and Evan to emerge from inside, both rugged up as best they could.
"We've found the evidence to put her away," Amy explained as she motioned back to him, as if to include him in what was essentially her hard work. He nodded from where he stood behind her shoulder, pulling his jacket around him tighter.
Evan motioned towards the shed within the property with a gloved hand, sending their gazes off towards it. "She's been in there for the last hour," he explained, "Suse and I thought we'd hold off. We can't do anything, anyway."
Amy nodded, retrieving her torch from her belt, indicating for him to follow her as she headed off in the direction of the shed, slight satisfaction that another murderer was going away present in her eyes. "PJ and I will go collect her from the shed. You two wait here."
He yet again found himself following her as she stormed briskly over to the shed, her head lowered and her hair fluttering along behind her in a curtain of silky brown in the breeze.
He let himself collapse back onto his bed, rolling over on the unmade and creased sheets to face the empty place beside him, the empty place that no longer held the promise of love, but rather the awful weight of love lost. A malevolent spirit seemed to hold him in his state of grief, a spirit that he had long realised to be everything he had hoped that she could be.
His eyes closed, only to return him to the one night that had changed everything, the one night that had knocked everything that he had rebuilt of his heart into a million tiny little pieces that could never be put back together again.
They had found his old fishy hankie among her belongings. Tom, the man charged with the unpleasant necessity that was clearing out the things she had left behind, has returned it to him, not understanding its significance, but knowing that he needed it. The scent that still remained within the hankie's fabric seemed so exclusive now, something that only they had shared. It had been that very smell that had brought them closer than they'd ever been, that had broken down whatever had been left of the barriers they'd protected themselves by for too long.
He'd never be able to part with the hankie, even if one day the scent faded away into a distant memory, just like she had. In their friendship, where physical items had never had much significance, it was all he had left to remind him of the bond they'd shared. She'd never leave his mind, he could never forget her, but the hankie was the only connection he had left to her anymore. The only thing that made him feel a little less like she was completely gone. It gave him hope that maybe, wherever she was, she was safe.
Amy pushed the door to the shed open, her gun poking through the crack as she directed her torch around the small, dirty building. He followed her as she stepped over the threshold, letting his gaze travel every corner of the shed. They each lowered their weapons and torches at the lack of Marie Biden in clear view, yet a sense of apprehension remained. Evan and Susie wouldn't be wrong, she had to be here.
He edged towards the trap door in the centre of the floor, passing his gun and torch back to Amy as he reached down to undo the lock that Evan had put there earlier that day after they had first found the torture chamber. He hadn't even had a chance to lift the trap door open before hard metal collided with his head, sending him crumpling forward into the torture chamber, losing consciousness as his body hit the floor. He could only imagine what was happening to Amy…
He could hear the sound of the doorbell ringing from beyond his bedroom's four walls, no doubt another colleague had arrived to try to offer him comfort in what they perceived to be his ultimate time of need. He curled tighter into a ball amongst the sheets, burying his face in the stiff white pillow case beneath his head.
They always came and the few times he had found the strength or kindness not to send them away, he had found them to be quite understanding or as close to understanding as they could possibly come. They offered him support and shoulders to cry on. Some offered less useful things, like cooked casseroles that were more likely to give him food poisoning than anything else and flowers. He didn't understand why they brought flowers. He knew they were trying to be helpful and supportive, but the flowers only depressed him more. He couldn't bear to see the brightly coloured things, symbols of life and beauty, when all his heart saw was a deep and depressing black. They always found their way to the bin before too long.
He tried to keep every second that they'd spent together in the fore of his mind, just so that he couldn't forget. So that the memories didn't just fade away into the dark nothingness that was his heart. Yet somehow, all the warm and tender moments they'd shared seemed to be so much harder to remember than that scream. That final, ear-piercing scream that had been the end. The end of everything.
He could hear a scream. A loud, ear-piercing scream. He knew that scream from his many years in the job – it was the scream that indicated the end, the final release of pain before the world just faded to a painless black. He'd heard it too many times to count, too many times to want to count.
His vision blurred as he opened his eyes, his head pounding with pain and his body aching all over. He could barely even remember what had happened, before finally the woman approaching him, leaning over him threateningly with her blood-covered knife came into focus.
He couldn't see past the imposing figure, but his heart was giving a sickening lurch in his chest. He didn't think he needed to see, not when he could just feel it deep inside his body. Involuntary tears welled in his eyes as he realised that she was gone, all while he'd laid unconscious on the floor.
Marie bore down upon him, knife drawn and eyes glinting with pleasure. A part of his soul considered just letting her have her evil way, just letting her do to him what she'd just done to the only thing that had any meaning in his life and just be done with it. But the memory of the girls that they'd been digging up for the last couple of days was too strong. Nameless faces, their bodies disfigured and destroyed through Marie's sick agenda. Not her. He was never letting that happen to her.
Before Marie had managed to use her knife, he had managed to retrieve his gun from his holster, firing blindly at her. He didn't know how many times he had fired. Twice, maybe three times. He didn't count and didn't care. She was lying on the floor; blood pouring from her lifeless body. How many bullets he fired was irrelevant.
He continued to lie on the cold floor of the torture chamber, his gun still aimed at the empty space where Marie had once been. His eyes were fixed beyond where Marie had been standing – they stared at a much younger woman, her body covered in large pools of crimson blood and held in place by leather straps around her wrists.
He slowly lowered his weapon, letting it come to rest on the floor of the torture chamber – the hell that had claimed its final victims. He somehow found his way to his feet, slowly making his way across the room to where Amy hung from the leather straps, her eyes closed and face drained of all colour and life.
Tears filled his eyes. He slowly placed a hand under her chin, raising it so that he could clearly see her lifeless face beyond her curtain of hair. She didn't respond to his touch. There was no tingle of emotion or rush of excitement overwhelming them. Just the grief and disbelief that this was it. He could feel the hot tears in his eyes making their way slowly down his cheeks, his whole body threatening to fall to pieces.
He reached up, barely managing to undo the straps around her wrists through the tears in his eyes. Almost as soon as he had released her from the bindings that had held her in her final moments, she became a dead weight in his arms, falling into his chest awkwardly.
He collapsed to his knees under the sudden added weight of her in his arms. He pulled her bloodied and limp body into his arms, burying his face in her hair, finally giving into the desperate sobs that overwhelmed him. He rocked her back and forth in his arms, reassuring her that she'd be fine and that he cared about her deeply between heart-wrenching sobs. There in that torture chamber on a cold August night, the world of crime had swallowed her whole as she had gone about trying to do what she'd dedicated her life to. Now all he could do was cry, his heart breaking slowly and painfully in his chest as he held her, the bond between them gone despite how closely he held her in his arms.
He could never tell how long he stayed there in the torture chamber with Amy in his arms and Marie Biden lying dead on the floor nearby before eventually, Evan and Susie found him, a sobbing wreck, feelings for Amy that he could never have controlled having destroyed everything that was left of his heart.
He waited in the silent sanctuary of his room until his colleague had given up on rousing him and left. As soon as he heard the squeal of tyres disappear along the road beyond the front gate of his house, his prison, he climbed to his feet, numbly making his way to the living room to once again peer beyond the window to the world beyond. It taunted him, teased him. It had offered him sunshine and all the love in the world but had delivered only darkness and pain.
Finally, he let the curtains close again, blocking the world outside yet again, before he headed over to the set of drawers sitting in the living room, the top one half open and a piece of old fabric hanging over the edge. He reached down, letting his hand close around the old fishy hankie, raising it to his tear stained face to draw in its familiar scent. The day he had decided to put that tuna sandwich in his pocket alongside his hankie, he could never have anticipated what meaning it would come to hold to him in time.
He let the smell that he and Amy had shared waft across his face, only serving to start the tears in his eyes anew. Maybe one day, he'd find the strength again to step outside of his hell and out into the sunshine again. Maybe one day, he'd even have the courage to open his heart again to let someone try to pick up the pieces that Amy had left behind when she went. But for now, it was the little things, like the smell of an old tuna sandwich, that mattered most. When he felt so alone in the world, he had to hang onto the only thing he knew was real – what he had felt for Amy. He had to hang onto the fishy hankie and the memories of a bond so powerful that time and space could never destroy it. He had to hang onto it until he had something real again.