Instinct
By: MusketeerAdventure
Summary: Wanting to protect your mum is a good instinct.
He had come here to be sure. To not place all of his eggs in one basket based on a hunch.
The young man he was here to question walked stoically toward him, and without warning the uniform affected him more than he thought it would. The camouflage worn proudly was a harsh reminder of fire, blood and agonizing physical loss.
He knew he was being irrational, but he could definitely feel a phantom tickle at the bottom of his foot, that was not there. The sensation was driving him to distraction; and insidiously crawled its way up his missing leg; pass his thigh, over his hip; and then burrowed deep into his spine. A smiling boy flashed before his eyes; that wink of satisfaction he would never escape; forever wondering if death – no mercy, would have been better than this living cruelty.
He closed his eyes briefly to dispel the image….to will it away.
Sitting heavily in the unforgiving, ornate chair Strike studied the young soldier carefully, attempting to divert his attention away from the need to scratch the illusive; delusionary itch.
Then he was speaking of Lula; and the flashback of war dispersed; replaced by something else.
Instinct…..yes. His was nudging at him now.
It whispered in his ear that this young soldier seated in front of him was innocent. Jonah Agyeman did not kill his sister. Someone else killed Lula. Someone else who professed love, but held no such emotion.
"This is my fault. If I had only gone up she would still be alive." The pain etched in his voice cut Strike to the quick; and he sucked in a breath at the familiar litany.
Maybe Jonah Agyeman was not so much innocent of misguided guilt; but of this crime he was positive.
Leaning back a bit in the uncomfortable chair, he recalled saying almost those same exact words after Leda's death. "If I had just stayed home; not gone off to school, she would still be here – alive. It's my fault."
Those words spoken to Shanker all those years ago still reverberated in every thought, move, and decision he made. He was of two minds. There was his life…who he was before her death…then who he was after. Two different people – the Cormoran before so lost to him now, he wasn't sure that he even existed.
"Do you even know how that feels?", the soldier continued, his voice cracking with emotion, his face frozen in some sort of mixture between grief and anger.
"Yes I do", is all he could say. His throat constricting, making it difficult to swallow; his own grief so weighted that it threatened to derail him here and now.
"Do you" Jonah spoke again – his tone harsh; searching his eyes for something Strike wasn't sure he wanted found.
Looking away from that intense glare and down at the mahogany table, he sighed deeply, and hoped the exhalation would expel his swirling thoughts. He needed to concentrate on what he was doing – on this case; whereby this conversation brought him one step closer to confirming in his mind, who he knew killed Lula Landry – not who killed Leda Strike.
Peering up into the sad, tortured face of Jonah Agyeman had him traveling light speed back in time; hearing the news on television that Leda had killed herself – that she was gone…her drug addiction getting the better of her. Her life as a roady; model; Jonny Rokeby's lover and mother of his bastard child revisited, dissected and rehashed for the world to laud over.
How everyone at school, especially Charlotte, looked at him with horror, sorrow and pity…the breaking news, breaking his heart.
That was his face looking back at him – stony, hurt ….bewildered.
He remembered all too clearly the media frenzy; flashing bulbs; Rokeby's silence. How the unanswered questions and police ineptness led to Lucy's anguish; Shanker's anger and his own descent into temporary insanity. His flight to join the military, in order to remove himself from prying eyes was his only solace.
Those early days; months and years of anguish and depression after Leda's death were always there lurking in the back of his mind. The unbridled pain of it, comparable only to his experience of war.
Usually, he could keep his feelings, his revengeful plots to take down her murderer secreted away into the darker corners of his psyche. But when her name was meligned; or when something like this happened; some injustice – she peeked out from the shadows and clamped painfully down on his heart.
Lula deserved better. Leda deserved better.
"….to protect my mother"…the words brought him back to the here and now.
"Yes, the instinct to protect your mum was a good one", he answered – the response automatic. One he should have heeded with his own mother all those years ago. Only then, he wanted a way out; to get an education; to meet new people, to see new places. He felt trapped, and wanted to expand his mind; to move beyond the specter of his father, who didn't want him, and his home which felt like a prison.
His home; more a hazardous minefield than anything, was in the grip of the controlling nature of Leda's most recent love. Her need to fix people and the combative dislike he felt for the man was a never ending battle.
Shanker's, "Go on then Bunsen. I promise to look out for her.", was the only push he needed to follow his dreams. His thought then was that if he stayed – he would kill the bastard. Instead, he had killed her.
He would never forgive himself. "It was my fault", echoed around him like a beating drum – a sense of inertia overcoming him. He was lost in time and space.
Waking from the past, the room was strangely quiet; and across from him, Jonah's face had morphed from stony grief to concerned curiosity. He supposed sitting here in silence had worried the young man. Hadn't he come here to ask questions; get some answers about Lula? Not sit here in muted stillness reliving moments that could not be changed.
How long had he just been sitting here? Lula's file a solitary presence on the buffed and varnished table between them – closed; waiting. Her fall to death imprinted forever in horrid Technicolor.
Strike frowned slightly. He never let his mind wander like this. Wander back to his frantic race home to Lucy's hysteria; Shanker's all-consuming range and that prick's denials of what he had done. Of how he had stolen his mother; murdered her and gotten away with it.
Standing up with some effort – Strike gathered up the folder, as well as his thoughts and held out his hand. Pushing down his own guilt, he gripped Jonah's hand, held on tight and placed Leda and that terrible time back into the shadows.
Wordlessly; and with every ounce of sincerity he could muster – he resolved, no… promised Jonah Agyeman that he would find justice for Lula- whatever it took.
Thank you for reading. Please review and let me know what you think. CB Strike has finally aired here, and I thought Cuckoo's Calling was wonderful. Tom Burke was fantastic, and the scene where he sits with Jonah Agyeman and says "nothing" was some great acting on his part. During that scene, I wondered what he might be thinking…and this is my take on that.