A/N: Again, the product of too many hours on IM, too many challenge lists, and friends in the CI section, though I do have to admit this came before I got on IM, but still...oh, and CI's not mine.
They'd walked into an ambush. A joint task force, a number of detectives and squads, yet not one of us had anticipated this. I wondered how we'd missed the signs. Wondered how we hadn't realized that something was wrong. How we hadn't seen that we needed to pull out, before it was too late.
Guilt threatened to swallow me whole. I was their commanding officer, I had sent them in. I'd trusted the other squads involved, but my trust in them was waning. Mine had been the ones to walk into the lines of fire, them, and them alone. I wondered how I could have been stupid enough to let this happen.
I had watched cops hanging in the balance, caught between life and death, stuck in uncertainty. So had they. Now I was the one anxiously pacing, waiting for news of their fate. I felt numb, as if nothing could affect me anymore. It was strange, because at the same time, I was upset, and angry…close to the breaking point, but somehow managing to hold it together.
It was for them, and I knew it. Somehow I felt that if I lost it, things wouldn't go the way I needed them to go…the way I wanted them to go. I'd never really liked being in hospitals; too many bad experiences in the past had made me skittish, and wary of sitting in waiting rooms. But if it meant that they would make it, I would sit from now until the world decided to come to an end.
It was the images of them that made me stop pacing, that made me sit down and lean forward, with my face in my hands. I could see them even now, hours later; Goren with an arm out as if trying to reach for Eames, who had fallen mere inches away…Logan, fallen across Barek, his weight keeping her from bleeding out right there and then. I should've been there. Should've currently been in the OR, on the table, for as long as it took. I hadn't been a detective for years, but at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be one again, to be alongside my own.
The silence threatened to drive me into madness, as did the countless pairs of eyes that seemed to be stuck on me. I stared back for a while, before rising to my feet and walking away. I felt their stares long after I left the waiting room, wandering the floors of the hospital with no specific destination in mind.
It was the sight of the hospital chapel that made me stop in my tracks. I hesitated for a moment, debating as to whether or not I should go in. What seemed like forever passed before I got up the nerve to push the door open and walk inside. It was dark, and quiet. The calm was what I needed, though images of my detectives ran through my head.
And with them in mind, I fell to my knees, right there in the doorway, tears streaming down my face as I begged God for a miracle.