Title: The Responsibility of Trust
Author: Maddy 51
Rating: K
Pairing: Mary/Marshall
Summary: Marshall reflects on the responsibility of Trust
I own neither IPS nor Mary nor Marshall
The Responsibility of Trust
He drinks more than he used to. Over the past three years, the pace has steadily increased until at least one glass of Scotch a night seems to be the norm. He's unsure how he feels about this and unwilling to examine the motivation behind this habit. It's right below the surface, and he wouldn't have to dig far to figure it out. He can chart his dive into a bottle back two and half years -- About the time he realized he didn't dislike the feisty blonde that had been assigned as his new partner.
He didn't always love her. He didn't always like her. The first six months she had given him hell and he had tolerated it out of professional respect. The distance between professional toleration and love was surprisingly narrow, it turns out. He feels conflicted most of the time, a simultaneous sense of being lost and found. Tells himself that the only way to clarity is through the drink in his hand.
So he spends his nights drinking, thinking, analyzing this relationship he both craves and dreads. Mentally tracing scars, both shared and individual. He and Mary both have them, it's hard to find a law enforcement officer who doesn't. He had discovered long ago that the ones you couldn't see were the trickiest ones. He's constantly skirting her invisible cuts, her abandonment issues, commitment phobias and general aversion to forming connections with the majority of the human race. She, on the other hand, seems to ram through his defenses and poke at him without regard to his boundaries. More often than not she makes him feel like a specimen. The control in a macabre experiment she calls life. And he lets her. He knows she needs him, and more importantly, he knows that she's aware of it. That's what scares him the most. Why he pours a third shot of scotch on Friday nights. This knowledge that she needs him, clings to him psychologically – trusts him not to abandon her or fail her like everyone else she's let in. It's a lot of responsibility. Something he tried to explain to her once, but the sucking chest wound had hindered his ability to properly convey his concerns.
He's afraid he won't ever be able to be what she needs, will inadvertently fail her in some way. Who could live up to her unswerving faith in his ability to back her up? He's certain he would never leave her by choice, would never intentionally hurt her, but who can promise perfection, guarantee forever? He was almost (almost) relieved when Raphael Ramirez came into the picture. Thought surely this was his chance to finally create some distance. Take a break from being the one she leaned on all the time, a task he both loved and loathed. He quickly discovered that, rather than transferring her trust to her new boyfriend, now fiance, she merely added him to the long list of family members destined to let her down.
So when his doorbell rings at 12:34 a.m., pulling him out of his morose trance, he closes his eyes for a moment before levering himself off the couch to answer it. She's brought her own bottle of whiskey, a sure sign that things at home have progressed from barely controlled chaos to trench warfare. It's not the first time she's shown up on his doorstep with a bottle of booze. After Norman Baker, they had sat, quietly sipping single malt and listening to Count Basie on the record player Norman had bequeathed him. She had held him that night as he cried. Held him and whispered heartfelt apologies as though they were incantations to ward off this awful thing that had happened.
This time, there's sorrow, but no apology in her eyes. He realizes that she did place some of her trust in Raph, and something tells him she's been let down, again. So he holds the door open, and when she's settled, she tells him a not so surprising story of mundane accusations of infidelity and repeated ultimatums to leave something she loves to make a life with him. Marshall drinks a silent toast to the Dominican, wishing him luck. It's not his fault, really. He's just another in a long line of people incapable of holding on to Mary Shannon's trust. That dubious honor seems to belong to Marshall alone, and while it's a lot of responsibility, he has come to realize it's worth it to be needed by the person you love.