Fandom: Rookie Blue
Pairing: Luke/Jo
Category: Romance
Rating: K+
ONE-SHOT
Disclaimer: I don't own Rookie Blue or its characters.
Synopsis: But more than ever, she wants the years between Luke and her to melt away, to fade away, and she wants to erase all the mistakes of the past that she's made. Spoilers for 2x01 "Butterflies", 2x05 "Stung"
Author's Note: I don't know why I wrote this… because you know, I don't like Jo. And I most certainly don't like her and Luke together. But then, I felt kinda sad for her, because I've been in her position and I sort of understand how she feels and this morphed out of nowhere. Plus, I thought it would be interesting to have a fic from her POV, since no one really writes about her. If you're reading, do let me know what you think!
It's been so lonely without you here,
like a bird without a song.
Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling
Tell me baby where did I go wrong?
I said nothing can take away these blues,
'cause nothing compares to you.
~ Sinead O'Connor, Nothing Compares to You ~
It's been three years, eight months, a week and five days.
She doesn't know why she even bothers counting, or even remembering. She should have forgotten the day, washed it away with the storms that came after, but somehow, she's always brought back to the moment when it all happened.
Brought back to the moment when she pushed him away.
Being back here, within the vicinity of 15th Division, is threatening to open the wounds that she has so tightly and desperately bandaged; the wounds she inflicted upon herself, thinking she was strong enough to survive it but later realizing that self-inflicted injuries are the worst to get over because in order for the healing to start, you need to face up to the reality of your mistakes.
And Jo Rosati doesn't want to face up to the reality of her mistake, not when that mistake was leaving Luke Callaghan.
So she doesn't quite know why, when the call came in this morning from Jerry, she said yes without hesitation. Was it because she heard the urgency in Jerry's voice, the worry in his tone, over the possibility that one of his officers had been targeted in a shooting? Or did she just feel obliged to help out an old friend, a colleague she left on amicable terms with, and a team mate who once had her back?
Or is it because of him – and the slim possibility that their paths might cross, even just one more time?
She breathes a sigh of relief when she arrives at the scene and Luke is nowhere to be found. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows that it is wishful thinking for him to be on site; he is obviously unavailable and tied up elsewhere, otherwise Jerry would have turned to him first and not her.
She is secretly grateful that she's been granted the opportunity to take stock of the situation, take control, before Luke invades on her private space. The crime scene is under his jurisdiction and no doubt he would want to lead the investigation. Then there's the other fact that she doesn't know how he would react to her presence on the case; after all, they haven't seen each other since the day she stomped all over his heart and walked out on him. Meeting Jerry and Frank before dealing with Luke bolsters her confidence that when she finally does meet him, it will not be as bad as she expected, and it wouldn't hurt as much as she had always imagined.
But she's wrong again, just as wrong as the day she packed her bags, looked up and towards the corporate ladder and turned her back on the one man who loved her.
Once again, life has thrown her a curveball that catches her unprepared; because no matter how many times she's imagined the day she would come face-to-face with Luke again, never in a million years did she expect their next meeting to take place in the women's locker room, with him in a lip lock with another woman.
And at the precise moment he turns around, at the sound of her voice, she feels her entire world crashing down, her hopes and her secret dreams shattering into pieces.
Because while she lays in bed, every night, tossing and turning with his face in her mind, torturing herself with memories of his touch, his kisses, the way his breath lingers on her neck, the feel of his hands as he explores her body… while she's living in their past, he obviously has been moving forward.
Into the future. Without her.
It's never crossed her mind that Luke, instead of being crippled by her absence, would move on. All her wishful fantasies about him waiting, patiently, for her have just been that – a fantasy.
In that moment, she wishes against hope that the woman in his arms isn't the rookie, McNally, because God knows, she actually does like the woman, and she feels sorry for the woman who's obviously so new and so fresh at her job and has to deal with the difficult aftermath of being shot. She doesn't want it to be McNally, because she's been shot before and she knows the pain and the memories will haunt you long afterwards, and she doesn't want that in common with Andy. She doesn't want to be in the same league as Andy; hell, she doesn't even want to call the woman Andy because she doesn't want to form any sort of camaraderie with a fellow officer who's been senselessly shot in the line of duty.
She wants to hate Andy McNally.
She wants the jealousy that's pitting in the bottom of her stomach and moving upwards, taking over her completely, poisoning her heart, to go away. She wants the dull ache that is spreading and blossoming into a fresh pain to stop and go away. She wants the anger which she has bottled up inside, directed at herself, to dissipate.
But more than ever, she wants the years between Luke and her to melt away, to fade away, and she wants to erase all the mistakes of the past that she's made.
She wants everything to be right between them again. She wants to be his partner on the job, the woman in his bedroom, the woman who wakes up next to him every morning, who yells at him because he left the toilet seat up again, who straightens his tie when it's gone askew after a long day at work, who shares secret smiles with him and cheers him up with insider jokes that only the two of them get.
She wants to be everything that Andy McNally is to him now.
She's heard rumors of Luke picking on a fresh recruit every year, and in the beginning it hurt her so much that she found it painful to keep drawing the next breath, but those relationships never lasted for long and she found herself inhaling and exhaling with much more ease. Those relationships were easier to stomach, easier to digest, because she knew that they were his way of dealing with her leaving, and he latched onto any woman who came along because that was all he knew how to do.
But when Jerry lets slip that Andy – no, Officer McNally – isn't just another one of Luke's two-month deadlines, that they've actually bought a house and they live together, she knows the dreams she's been holding onto is so much further, out of her reach than ever before. Because Luke has only ever lived with her, and even then he's never bought a house with her, and now he's playing house with another woman and she knows there is nowhere left for her in his life.
She wants to continue fighting, to struggle against the odds for that one last chance, because she knows that whatever is between her and Luke is something that is she'll never forget and she doesn't want him to ever forget.
Because if she can't have him, then she never wants to forget him.
And she never, ever wants him to forget her.