A/N: LSM...this is the one that goes along with 'Pain'...kind of explains how Munch knew what Abby was thinking...so, yeah. H:LOTS isn't mine.
Her first case involved a child victim. She'd been temporarily assigned as the prosecutor for sex crimes, which had unsettled her: she hadn't talked to anyone but Rose for the past two weeks. Rose knew why, but neither of them had said. My asking about it had only lead to a near shouting match between them and me. It wasn't an experience that I wished to repeat, which was why I was surprised when Abby asked me to be at the trial's end.
"Why?" I asked. "I had nothing to do with it, I'm in Homicide, for God's sake." Abby cast me a pained look, more for my sarcasm than anything else.
"I know you are," she said, "I just...Oh, for God's sake, John, just come, all right?"
Something in her tone told me that she was upset, so I nodded, not wanting to make things worse than they already were. "All right," I said, "All right. I'll come. When it is?"
"Tomorrow morning. You're still on the night run, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I am. I'll be there, all right? Just calm down."
Abby offered up a half-hearted smile to my reply before turning and walking away before I could say anything else. I watched her go, still wanting to know why she was so on edge, but unable to make myself ask. There were rarely ever secrets between the three of us, her and Rose and me. I figured then as Abby disappeared from view that if they weren't saying anything, they had a good reason for it, but it still bothered me.
Even so, the next morning I Found myself sitting there in the courtroom, listening to closing arguments. Well...really I was only listening to Abby's; the defense meant nothing to me, nor would it ever. The jury left to go deliberate soon after she finished. And while everyone else left the courtroom, I waited. A few minutes passed before she came to sit beside me.
"Nervous?" I asked. It was meant to make her laugh, but instead, she wrung her hands and eyed me intently.
"You think I'll nail him?" she asked. "You think I'll put him away?"
"Of course I do," I said, not sounding as convincing as I might have. Abby noticed this and sighed.
"It was all circumstantial..." she said, trailing off. "God, if I lose this..."
For some reason, I doubted that her worries had anything to do with this being her first case, but she had a point. The State's Attorney's office would have done well to have waited until they had more. From what little I had heard, though, she'd made a convincing enough argument, convincing to the point that if the jury handed back an acquittal, I'd be surprised.
"Abby, no one's going to fault you if this falls through," I started, but she cut me off.
"I'll fault myself," she said quietly. "This guy...he can't get off. He can't."
I wasn't about to tell her that he could and that if the jury was incredibly stupid, more than likely would, so I kept my mouth shut and looked at her. She had her hands folded in her lap and her knuckles were white. Neither of us dared to move. And suddenly, people started filtering back into the courtroom. Abby looked over at me, half-resigned and half-scared and sighed.
"Wish me luck?" she asked, getting to her feet to go back to where she'd been.
"Don't I always?" I asked in reply. And there was that half-hearted smile again, the one that she'd given me just the day before. Rose had given me the same look when I'd seen her that morning and it had only convinced me that there was something more about this case than met the eye.
The jury came filing back in soon after everyone was seated again. I wasn't really paying attention. So I never heard the verdict when it came. All I saw was Abby, fleeing the courtroom in tears. That alone let me know that she'd lost. I moved before anyone else and went after her, catching sight of her just as she disappeared into the ladies' room. Ignoring the stares of those around, I pushed the door open and walked in.
"I let him walk." Abby was bent over the sinks, staring down with her arms around herself and looking for all the world as if she were about to be sick. "I let him walk."
"You didn't let him do anything," I said, in an attempt to make her feel better. "The city knows him for what he is now..."
"Do you think that matters?" Abby demanded, straightening as she turned to face me. "You don't know how these guys work. He'll find another way to get what he wants. It's only a matter of time..." Her voice broke on the last word and she turned to lean over the sinks again, this close to hyperventilating. I remained where I was, not daring to move.
"This isn't your fault, Abby," I started, but she cut me off, a bitter laugh escaping her.
"Tell that to the little girl in there whose abuser just got a walk," she said acidly. "Tell that to her mother, who's probably going to upend their lives and leave Baltimore just to get away."
She was starting to scare me. I had never seen her this upset before, and I didn't think I liked it, either. The sound of sniffling jolted me out of my thoughts and I looked up, not expecting what I saw: Abby was crying. She seemed to have forgotten that I was there, and continued on.
"How the hell am I going to tell Rose?" she asked, speaking more to herself than to me, but I spoke anyway.
"Tell Rose what?" I asked slowly, fearing another near shouting match. "You don't have to tell her anything."
"Yeah, I do," Abby replied, still not looking at me. "It'll be all over the news anyways; she'll probably know by the time I get home."
She sounded miserable. I wanted to move, to hug her, to do something. But something told me that I shouldn't, so I didn't.
"You could have taken another case," I remarked finally. "You didn't have to let them shove this off on..."
"Yeah, I did," said Abby. "I had to put that bastard away...I had one chance, and I blew it."
"Why do you care so much?" I demanded, more upset than anything else, and Abby turned so that she was looking at me.
"We were eight," she said quietly, "But it had already been going on for two years...for Rose."
"What are you..." I started, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand and closed her eyes, determined to finish.
"She had the flu one night...Mom had to work. Asked that bastard boyfriend of hers to watch us. He said he would." Abby faltered there and cut herself off for a long moment. Her eyes were still closed but now her hands had clenched into fists, to the point that her knuckles were white.
"Rose got sick right after Mom left. We were seven...he came into my...into my room when he realized he wasn't going to get what he wanted from her."
A cold feeling settled over me at this. Now more than ever, I wanted to move, to try and comfort her, but that same feeling kept me frozen where I was.
"I didn't...I didn't know until that night what he'd been doing to Rose because he came in and did it to me...held me down and..." Abby swallowed, not bothering to hide the tears streaming down her face. When she started talking again, there was a hollow note in her voice and she was speaking so quietly that I had to lean towards her to hear.
"There was blood all over the sheets when he was done...he fell asleep. It hurt to move, but I got dressed and walked into Rose's room...she was crying. She'd heard it all. Abby took a shuddering breath before going on. "It kept going like that for another year. Neither of us ever told. He kept saying to me that he was gonna kill Rose if I told, said to Rose that he'd kill me...we kept our mouths shut."
Suddenly I was glad that we were where we were. I felt sick, as if nothing in the world was ever going to make me feel better again, and I didn't want to hear any more, but Abby went on.
"I heard him in Rose's room one night." she said. "I couldn't just...just sit there, so I walked in. And he was holding her down, and she was crying, and then she saw me, and she said, 'Abby...Abby, help me...please help me'." She cut herself off again and turned away. I wondered for a moment whether or not she'd lost her nerve, but she hadn't.
"I went for him," she said. "I just...something in me snapped. I knew he could kill me if he wanted, but I didn't give a damn anymore. I don't...I don't know what I did or even if I got him off of her...he shoved me and I fell, and Rose just started screaming because I'd hit my head...he hit her, but it was too late...Mom heard me fall and she came running in...she found us and he tried to play it off like it was nothing, but she knew better. Told him to get the hell out, that she was calling the cops...but he wouldn't go. So she...she grabbed Rose, pushed her towards my room, told her to grab my clothes and get dressed. Then she picked me up and we walked out."
I could hardly make out what she was saying through her tears, but I could understand enough. Suddenly, I could move again, and I walked over to her, putting my arms around her and expecting her to push me away, but she didn't. Instead she turned, openly sobbing, and hid her face in my shirt.
"We must have driven for hours," she said, her voice muffled by the fabric. "I didn't know...didn't care. My head was hurting too much...started raining...I must've fallen asleep, because the next thing I Knew, Mom was picking me up again and we were at your place."
I remembered that. It had been midnight when I'd found myself awake and wanting a glass of water, just in time to hear the doorbell ringing. My mother had walked out of her bedroom and told me to go back to sleep before going downstairs, but I hadn't. Instead, I'd waited on the stairs, long enough to see who'd been at the door. And there was Janice Williams, holding what had looked to be a sleeping Abby, with a numb-looking Rose standing beside her. I'd gone to bed only when I'd heard their footsteps on the stairs.
But I'd never known why they'd showed up that night until now...had never known why Abby punched me in the face when I went to wake her up for school a few hours after they'd gotten there, why for weeks afterwards, Rose wouldn't talk to anyone but Abby. Now it all suddenly made sense...why Abby had been so on edge lately.
"It wasn't your fault," I told her, finally, unable to think of anything else to say. "You couldn't have..."
"I should have," she said bitterly. "I should have known the first day Rose wouldn't talk to me, but I didn't, and she went through it alone for a year before that bastard decided he wanted me too." She sniffled and looked up at me, her eyes red-rimmed and miserable. "If I hadn't walked in that night, it would've just kept going and going...neither of us would have been able to stop it."
I hated this...hated the fact that Abby sounded so broken and that for once there wasn't anything I could do to make it better except stand there and hold her, and hope that she would trust me not to hurt her any worse than she already had been. Everything was a lot clearer than it had been, and I found myself wishing that it wasn't. Abby moved so that her face was hidden in my shirt again and we remained where we were, neither of us saying anything.
There had never really been any secrets between the three of us...her and Rose and me...but as I stood there holding the elder of my two best friends, I almost wished that there still was.