Pairing: Slightly Bolivia.
Rating: K
A/N 1: I'll say it right now, Im not happy with this. I think its a bit shoddy to be honest, and definitley not my best attempt. I just want to see what the general consesus is.
Olivia always hated the filing system.
A person.
Someones mother.
Someones brother.
Someones child.
Someones everything.
Reduced to a cardboard folder and a serial number.
They had told her at the academy that emotions had no place in investigative work.
She never knew how they expected her to use her instinct without emotions.
Was it possible to have one without the other?
Sometimes she wondered if that was the purpose of the bland beige sleeve.
If they objectified the victim enough, would you forget that the person had actually ever existed beyond the cold facts?
It didn't.
It couldn't.
Because sitting right next to those facts was a picture.
Usually a happy smiling person.
Looking out into eternity,with no idea of their fate.
She thought she would never feel worse than when she was handed it.
Scott, John, #294632
Her face remained passive, never betraying the fraction of her soul that was dying inside her.
She walked away and carried it like any other file. It would never have been known that she had loved him.
Her carefully crafted mask stayed intact. She didn't break.
Why then, by chance, alone in the lab sifting through Walters extensive old notes,did she come across the one thing that terrified her more that any of the crap she'd seen?
Bishop, Peter. #748032
The picture.
A smiling dark haired boy,with the same penetrating green eyes she'd come to know.
And a woman with exactly the same eyes.
Her arms around him, laughing at whoever was holding the camera.
Oh god.
The file fluttered to ground, a single piece of paper slipping out.
She didn't move.
She had no idea how long she stood there.
Staring at the piece of paper, the terror for this man that had become so integral to her life, clawing at her insides.
It was her nature to look. She was a cop. It was what she did.
This was different. This was a piece of paper that had the potential to change all their lives.
She picked it up, fixating on the underside of it, not daring to turn it over.
It could be nothing. A crayon drawing, filed away by a proud father.
And observation of his abnormally high intelligence manifesting itself in a simple child's picture.
Even Walter wouldn't conduct experiments on his own son.
She told herself that without absolutely no certainty. Given what she'd already witnessed of him, she was starting to wonder was there anything Walter would'nt do.
She put it back.
He was fine. Fine.
It was nothing.
For once in her life, she didn't need to know.