The Life We Chose (Ain't Too Many Happy Endings)
Author's Note: This is a re-imagining of a scene from episode 2x15, "The Life We Chose." It is cross-posted as a stand-alone one-shot, as well as chapter seven of my ongoing story "In the Moonlight," since I think it works quite well for both. The story contains major episode spoilers, obviously. The title of this story is gratuitously stolen from a Nas song of the same name. Also, a word to my fellow Jamie-lovers - keep the faith, friends. Keep the faith.
Danny Reagan was used to long hours and tough days, so when he finally dropped into bed for a few treasured hours of rest, he rarely dreamed. He knew a lot of his fellow cops had trouble with dreams, and he knew several in particular who couldn't even get to sleep without help from Jose Cuervo or Jack Daniels. For him, though, sleep had always come hard and fast, pulling him under to a place so deep that neither dreams nor nightmares could find him.
On most nights, anyway.
But on this night, Danny dreamed.
...
"Reagan and Curatola are gonna be your ghosts tonight, all right?"
It was quarter to twelve. In the shadow of the George Washington bridge, lit in cool tones of blue and green against the backdrop of a cold night and skyscrapers washed in gold, Danny stood alone, his knit hat pulled low over his ears, his jacket undone. He listened, because that was all he'd been given clearance to do. The unit commander had been explicitly clear about that, in no uncertain terms and expletive-studded language. Don't interfere with this case, Reagan. It's your turf and that's the only reason you and your partner are here. You've gotta let him work, Reagan. Don't get in the way.
The commander was an old friend of the family. He'd served as a sergeant under Frank Reagan himself back in the day.
He knew Danny too well.
"Next corner, make a right." "Up here on Pulaski?" "Yeah."
Danny had tried to talk him out of it, but he'd known it was hopeless before he ever opened his mouth. You just couldn't talk a cop down from undercover work once he'd gotten a taste for it. Plenty of guys never made it past the initial panic of trying to be someone they weren't, and feeling sure that anyone and everyone could see straight through them. But the ones who did, who got inside and got smooth, got good - it was like a first sip of spring water on a scorching summer day. Talk until you're blue in the face and make all the sense in the world, and you're still not going to pull that gleam of self-assurance out of their eyes. There was nothing thoughtful about it. He would have just as much luck trying to talk a cat out of stalking birds.
"They must've turned down one of these streets..." "Yeah, but which one?"
He remembered sneaking out of bed once when he was about five years old because he heard his mother on the telephone, her voice high-pitched and afraid, spitting questions in rapid-fire volleys. He had crept down the staircase until he heard the television, and the solemn voices talking about a police officer who had been shot. At the time, the only police officer Danny had known had been his own father, and he had crawled back to bed and pulled the covers over his head and cried until he had to stop, because crying wasn't going to make anything better. His nightmares that night had been about his father, dying over and over again.
"I'm not getting them in the walkie, Jack." "Okay, okay. Where the hell are they?"
Two gunshots. One, two. Firecrackers in the darkness.
"They're hit, Jack. They're hit!"
Down on his knees, Danny wrenched open the passenger door and barely caught the limp body that had been slumped against it. "Come here, come here," he gasped, pulling the dead weight up in his arms with a strength he didn't know he possessed. "C'mon, c'mon kid, don't do this."
He pressed two fingers into the warm, exposed neck. He knew where the jugular vein ran, where to find a pulse.
There was nothing.
Maybe he was doing something wrong. He was doing everything right, but maybe he was doing something wrong.
Danny stared down into the still face, unable to make sense of what he was seeing. He looked so young. He was so young. "Don't do this to me," he whispered.
Nothing.
Jackie was screaming into her radio behind him, her voice cracking. The winds lifting off the Hudson were cold and crisp, stinging his face with a thousand needle pricks. A larger spike of pain, silver and sharp, corkscrewed into his bones, warning him of what was coming, the inevitable truth lying pliant against his chest.
No. He wouldn't stop. He couldn't give up. "Look at me," he begged, and adjusted his hold, pulling the limp body closer to himself. He smelled blood now, thick and pungent. "Can you hear me?"
It was unreal.
It was a beautiful night, prettier than any New York City night had the right to be.
And his little brother was dead in his arms.
Danny still had every birthday card Jamie, Joe and Erin had ever given him. Nobody knew because he had a reputation to uphold, but he kept them in a box along with one of his mother's rosaries and his honorable discharge papers, and he never looked at them but it made him feel warm and sort of goofy inside to know they were there.
After Joe had died, Jamie started sending him two cards every year, and the second one was never signed with a name but with a big, exaggerated smiley face instead. It was probably the stupidest thing on earth and yet it always made him grin. He didn't know why.
"Jamie, you hear me? Don't, don't..." Danny's voice broke around the words, falling to pieces of despair.
"I know you don't like it, Danny... Dad's not a big fan, either. But it's good work. I like it. I'm good at it. I feel like I'm making a difference when I do this. Isn't that what being a cop is all about, making a difference?"
Danny's eyes squeezed shut as if he'd been slapped in the face, and grief heaved within him, sucking the air from his lungs. He curled his right hand into a fist and struck the back of the passenger seat once, twice, as an inhuman sound wrenched itself from his chest. "No! No!"
It changed nothing.
When he pulled his hand back, it was covered with blood. Danny knew it was not his own.
And in the horror born from the enormity of what had just been lost, Danny put his arms around Jamie's body and sobbed.
...
He awoke with a jolt, the world lurching around him, and for a sick, ebbing moment he had no idea where he was. The darkness closed in, and he pulled his arms around himself defensively.
Jamie. Where was Jamie?
He swallowed, fighting down a sudden swell of nausea.
A nightmare. It was a goddamned nightmare.
Throwing back the covers, Danny stood and retrieved a rumpled T-shirt from the floor. He pulled it on quickly, moving to remind himself that he was alive and trying to ward off the sudden chill that struck him in the darkness, chilling him straight through his skin.
It had been a long time since he'd had such a dream, and even though the details were already beginning to blur, he couldn't shake the coldness that coated his stomach like a sickness, like slime.
He glanced at Linda, but she slept on, undisturbed by his movements. It was just as well.
Rubbing his hands briskly up and down his arms, Danny slipped from the quiet bedroom, checking the time as he went. 2:29 a.m.
He padded into the kitchen, running a glass of tap water from the faucet. He downed it in a few short gulps, letting it flush out the nerves in his stomach. Setting the glass down on the counter, he walked toward the living room, hesitant. Going back to bed was not an option, and he didn't feel much like television either. His choices were increasingly looking like staring out the window or sitting in the dark, and neither held much appeal at the moment.
"Daddy?"
He jumped, pivoting around. A small figure in white was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. He squinted to make it out. "Jack?"
His oldest son nodded. He was dressed in flannel pajamas, skinny legs drawn up to his chest, chin resting on his knees. "Yeah."
Danny stepped over to him quickly, dropping into a crouch. "What are you doing up, kiddo?"
"I couldn't sleep," the little boy confessed, then paused. "What are you doing up?"
"Couldn't sleep," Danny said with a rueful grin. "Or, couldn't stay asleep, at least."
"Yeah," Jack said softly. "I... had a bad dream."
Danny swallowed, batting away the demons that fluttered to life at the words. "Well, let's see. You got an A on your spelling test at school, right?" Jack nodded. "So that was good. And, uh... mom said that you got to play outside for a few hours after you finished your homework. And I know your favorite show was on tonight. Right?" Another nod. "So that sounds like a pretty good day to me."
"Yeah."
"What kind of bad dream could you have after a good day like that, huh?"
Jack sighed. It made him sound much older than his years. "I was thinking about you."
Danny swallowed again in a throat gone suddenly dry. "What about me?"
Jack ducked his head, pressing his forehead into his wrists. "And Uncle Jamie. And Uncle Joe."
A tendril of dread tickled the back of Danny's neck. "Okay."
"I dreamed that you were gone, daddy."
His heart lurched, and without thought, Danny leaned forward and gathered his son to himself. Thin arms wound around his neck with surprising strength, and he let himself bask in that for a moment. "Hey, kiddo," he whispered into his son's hair. "It was just a bad dream, okay? I'm not going anywhere."
His son's voice choked up. "Promise?"
"I promise I'll always do everything I can to come home to you and Sean and your mom," he replied. It was the same vow he made to Linda every day; the same vow he carried in his heart. "You have my word on that."
Jack drew back, his expression disappointed. "But that's not the same."
"I know," he sighed. "I know."
And Danny Reagan did the only thing a father could do at 2:29 a.m.
He held his little boy close, and tried his best to push the nightmares away.
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