Title: Senseless
Summary: Hanson muses over Doug's sudden, accidental death
Rating: K+
A/N: This was written a year and a half ago, as therapy following my uncle's sudden death. I was pretty angry at the world and frustrated because it was a random accident. I thought I might as well finally post it. If it seems totally random and… senseless… that's why. (Oh, and extra points to anyone who picks up on the reference in the final sentence.)
Senseless
He walks slowly through the cemetery, not noticing any of the names, his eyes drawn instantly to the dates. Maybe it's just that he's so sick of seeing kids die, but it seems like there are as many young people buried there as older, and that's heartbreaking. His mind does the math automatically – three years old, eleven, eight, six, fifteen, thirteen, twelve, sixteen. It's sad that he wonders how many of the older kids died of drugs or alcohol or drag racing or drive-bys, and it's even sadder that he wonders how many of the younger kids, if they'd made it to high school, would have lived through to graduation. His job is getting to him, he knows; it has been since the day he started, and only now he's realizing it.
Twenty-two.
He stops there and this time he reads the name even though he already knows what it says, and part of him dies a little. He lowers himself down to the wet grass, ignoring as the gentle mist around him transforms into a light rain.
Fuller's words echo through his mind, the reminder that it's okay if he needs some time off, that death is hard on everyone, that the department shrink's door is always open, and he ought to talk to her before he comes back to work. But every time he looks around the Chapel, the words are displaced by the expectation that he should get over it all and put it behind him and jump back into work with both feet.
But they don't know that every time he closes his eyes, he sees his partner, his best friend, lying on the ground. They don't know that the entire image is tainted red by the blood that covered his hands, his clothes, even his face as he tried to revive him. They don't know that when he does manage to sleep it's only because his body physically can't keep going. They don't know that even those bouts of exhaustion are interrupted constantly by nightmares filled with blood-red memories.
They don't know that the only time he feels any peace at all is when he's here, sitting by this stone.
He leans back, knees bent, letting his head rest on the soft ground, and gives in to the tears that he holds back in front of everyone else. He closes his eyes and for once doesn't see Doug's face, doesn't see his broken body at the foot of the stairs, doesn't wonder what happened and why his friend is dead and why it happened like that.
Most people feel uncomfortable in a cemetery, but he doesn't; he's calm here, and while he wouldn't ever tell the others, there have been a couple of nights he's actually slept here. For all the spirits they say lurk around gravestones, all the rumors he remembers from school that if you breathed near a cemetery, you'd inhale evil demons, this is the one place he doesn't feel haunted. And as morbid as it makes him feel, he'll take what he can get right now if it means holding on to his sanity.
For a moment, he wonders if these thoughts mean he's lost the last of his sanity.
Out of all the thoughts running through his head, the one that comes to the forefront of his mind over and over again is simply, It isn't fair. None of it is fair. It isn't fair that anyone should die at 22. It isn't fair that it should be Doug. It isn't fair that he should die like this.
Doug told him once, when they were talking about Tom's dad, that he didn't think he'd survive police work. He told him he had dreams about one of the kids they dealt with every day finding out he was a cop, dreams about all the 'deals' they made ending the way a lot of the street deals tended to go down, only it'd be him, the cop, left on the ground instead. Tom had asked him then if it was really a good idea for him to stay with the Force, and Doug told him he wasn't scared; he just knew it was going to happen and had got used to the idea. He said it made him a better cop; he didn't take risks, but he wasn't afraid either.
As much as he knows it would have killed him to see Doug go down when they were on a case, he thinks it might be killing him more that he died like this. There's no reason for it, not that he can see. And all the words in the world do nothing to make him believe there's a reason.
Senseless. He usually applies the word to their cases. Senseless violence – all the gang-related crime, the shootings over drugs. Senseless death – the overdoses, the drunk drivers. Jenko's death had been senseless too.
But this is different. Doug is different. 22. Just like Amy. Amy. Her death was senseless too. They say it's always different when it's a young person who dies. It's always harder, more shocking, more... he doesn't know what. Crippling. But it doesn't really matter. None of it makes sense; none of it has a reason. They're just gone….
He feels the rain on his face and sighs. So much for finding religion.