Abeyance by Henabrey
Summary: Time comes to a standstill. Could be seen as LS, but isn't necessarily.
Rating: T for language.
Category: angst? drama/vignette
Disclaimer: I own a second hand car and that's about it. I certainly do not own Cold Case; I'm just borrowing the characters for a bit. Please don't sue me, Jerry Bruckheimer! I'll give them back, almost as good as new, when I'm done, I promise.
Spoilers: vague references to The Woods and One Night.
Author's note: I wrote this ages ago, well before the events of Stalker. I never posted it because I didn't think Lilly was quite in character, but I re-read it last week & liked it anyway. Hopefully you will too.
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Abeyance, n. State of suspension, dormant condition liable to revival
(Concise Oxford Dictionary)
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When the world changes, it happens sloth slow and heartbeat fast, in the blink of an eye, in a millennium of millenniums. No one else sees it coming. Lilly sees it in slow motion. She sees Scotty in front of her, pressing his advantage over the man they are interviewing. She is good cop, Scotty is bad and he's playing it up, standing over the suspect, ramming home facts and suspicions. She sits on the man's red leather couch in his tastelessly decorated living room, waiting for the man to appeal to her, to break down and tell the story they both know he knows. She is patient and understanding with him, tell me and this will all go away with him. Good cop, bad cop, but they're both after the same thing.
Scotty is loud and angry, in the man's face, and the man is loud and angry back. There is a vein in his forehead, throbbing. Lilly wants to tell Scotty to back off, that the vein will explode and drench him in blood, but she says nothing. She just waits.
Scotty is showing the man a crime scene photo, shaking it in his face. The man doesn't want to look - it is a particularly gory photo and if he were innocent Lilly wouldn't blame him for trying to turn away. But she thinks he has other reasons for not wanting to see. Scotty won't leave him alone, shakes the photo at him and says "I know you did this" but the man isn't playing along. His vein just gets angrier and angrier.
Lilly can hear Vera and Jefferies in the kitchen at the other end of the house, talking to the man's wife. They're both good cop with her, polite, because that's the way to get her to talk. Be reasonable, finger your husband for us, you know he wasn't home that night, the night the crime scene was created. The wife is crying, but whether it's because she knows her husband is guilty or believes him innocent Lilly can't tell.
Then suddenly it's all going to hell. Scotty tells the man that they're going to arrest him so they can continue their friendly conversation down at police headquarters. The man's vein doesn't burst, but the look in his eyes goes from rage to something much worse. Desperation, like he's about to fight for his life, and a man who is desperate is a dangerous man. Lilly opens her mouth to warn Scotty, to tell him that the man has turned into a cornered snake, but she's too late. One second Scotty is standing, leaning over the man with the crime scene photo crumpled in one hand and the other reaching into his pocket for handcuffs, the next second the man expands outwards in all directions like he's exploded and one fist catches Scotty's head and he falls.
It happens in one second, two at the most, but it seems hours long to Lilly. The man is yelling but she can't hear him past the sudden panic in her head. She's off the couch and on her feet while the man is flailing at Scotty. He's past being human, fight or flight instinct taking over his head. Scotty's taken the man's fist to the left side of his head and the floor to the right side of his head and he's no good to anyone. He's not even trying to stop the man's punches. Lilly gets out a "hey" while she scrabbles for her gun, wishing for the first time in her life that she were a man so she'd be big and strong enough to just jump the guy and beat the crap out of him, and then she sees the man has reached for a gun of his own. Scotty's gun in the man's hand, the man's hand pointing at Scotty's head.
She should be shouting for Vera and Jefferies, shouting 'freeze' and 'drop it' and other police phrases but the only word coming out of her mouth is garbled and sounds like it might be "no". The word gun mushrooms in her mind like a bomb cloud. Then her own gun is free and she watches her arm swing round in front of her like it's moving underwater.
She's done this before, pulled her gun out, used it before, and she hated doing it. The gun is heavy and deathly cold in her hand, a foreign extension of herself. It's all she is conscious of, that and the man standing in front of her, and Scotty on the floor. Now she finds she can speak and she tells him to drop the gun with a voice that sounds like it's coming from a long way away. There's a sudden silence from the kitchen as Vera and Jefferies realise something has gone wrong.
The man's head whips round and his eyes widen as he realises Lilly has a gun on him, that the good cop has turned seriously bad, and now what will he do with his own gun? He's still got it pointed at Scotty as feet start stampeding from the kitchen.
"Put it down," Lilly hears herself saying. Her training has taken over and she's adopted the shooter's stance without thinking about it; legs braced and slightly apart, arms pointing straight ahead, forming a triangle with the muzzle of her gun at its tip. Her head is whirling, screaming with fright and all she can think is that one trigger-pull and Scotty will die and the last thing she said to him before they started this interview was something stupid about coffee and she can't stand it.
But the man seems to decide that the woman with the gun is a bigger threat than the dazed man on the floor, and now he swings the gun in her direction. She doesn't want to shoot him. She's done this before and it messed her up good and it makes her hesitate. Time, which was moving slowly before, now almost comes to a standstill. She sees his finger clench the trigger and the gun's muzzle spit out its deadly child in an afterbirth of fire. Time moves so slowly she can almost watch the bullet move towards her, displacing air like a special effect she's seen in a movie. She feels it puff past her face at the same time that she hears the sound of the shot.
That silence descends over her head again, that muffled rain on the rooftops silence that she hates. That single moment of her life flashes before her eyes, but she's not ten and riding her bike this time, flying, but sitting at her desk watching Scotty's face. He smiles at her, and then she's back in the suspect's living room, facing a gun, Scotty on the ground and it's the man or it's her and Scotty. No choice and no time to make one as the man's got his finger on the trigger and he's starting to squeeze.
Lilly has time to think no before she pulls her own trigger. Such a little action, just a squeeze of her index finger towards her palm, but it produces such big results. She feels the gun kick in her hand like a racehorse jumping from the starting gate and then it explodes outwards. She watches as the bullet traces its path towards the man, straight and true. He has time to draw in one breath and then the bullet catches him high in the chest and blood sprays in a fountain. His gun - Scotty's gun - flies out of his hand as he falls. Behind her, Lilly hears Vera and Jefferies arrive in a flurry of surprised alarm, their guns drawn. She can feel them thinking what the fuck? and holy shit.
Her gun, cold as an Arctic winter before, is suddenly too hot to hold. She has shot a man with it, again, and the knowledge burns her skin. She lets it fall to the floor, knowing she shouldn't because who knows if the man is still alive, still capable of harm. Vera and Jefferies move forward, their own guns pointing.
It seems to Lilly that there should be a lot of noise. The man is yelling, not dead but thinking he's going to be. The man's wife has arrived and she's screaming. Vera and Jefferies are shouting, shouting at the man to stay down and shouting at Scotty and shouting at Lilly and shouting for somebody to call for backup, an ambulance. Lilly can see everyone's mouth moving but the volume's turned down. All she can hear is the silence in her head.
Scotty's helping himself to a sitting position, unhurt but clutching his head with both hands. Lilly can't feel relieved. She can't feel anything. She watches Vera kick the loose gun to the other side of the room and Jefferies pull out his cellphone to call for help. The man is writhing on the floor but neither detective seems sympathetic. The man's wife has taken two steps towards her husband and then stopped, like she's remembered that he's maybe a killer. Her mouth is still making screaming motions that Lil can't hear. Scotty turns to try and catch her gaze but she can't seem to focus on anything.
She is the still, quiet eye of a hurricane of activity. She's frozen to the spot. I'm in shock, she thinks, and she can't breathe. She can't feel her heart beating.
Scotty makes it to his feet, unsteady, and seems unsure what to do. He takes two steps towards her, two steps towards the man's wife, then finds the red leather couch and half-sits, half-falls onto it. He reaches over to where Lilly is standing and picks something off the couch's seat. He is holding a lock of blonde hair in his hand - her hair - and has turned a sickly shade of green. She realises then how close she has come to being shot. The bullet meant for her body has shot off a lock of her hair. Later she might want to laugh - who ever heard of being shot in the hair? But now she is a shaky kind of numb.
Suddenly the room is far too small. The walls close in on her and she has to get out. She's forgotten all about being a cop and having to do cop things like securing the crime scene. She just needs to be away from the metallic stench of spilled blood.
Lilly brushes past the man's wife, who's progressed onto tears and hiccuppy sobs, and finds her way to the back door, fumbles with the handle and just when she thinks she's going to pass out from the constricting air in the house she's outside, standing on the back step. She still can't breathe. Her whole body has stopped, in a standstill. Can't think, can't feel, can't pull herself together and put her precious walls back up where they're supposed to be. There's a breeze out here, rustling the trees, but she can't feel it on her face. She stumbles down the back step to stand on the lawn, wanting but unable to feel the spongy, rustly bristlebrush of grass under her shoes.
I nearly died back there. It's an enormous thought, a screaming headline, that breaks through the cloud in her head. She nearly died. Again. Then she thinks maybe she did die and that's why she's so numb and why she can't breathe. Maybe if she goes back inside she'll see her body on the living room floor with her blood making a slick on the tiles.
Then suddenly Scotty's face is in front of her, looking into her eyes, and she knows she's alive. She can't feel happy about it. His mouth makes a shape like the word Lilly but she can't hear it. How can she tell him she can't breathe? His mouth makes the Lilly shape again and the look in his eyes shifts from something like dazed shock to deep concern. I'm frozen, she tries to tell him, but the words won't come out. Her mouth won't even open.
Time for her has stopped; she's lost. Her eyes grasp at him, like she's drowning and he's her only chance at life. His eyes hold her. She feels something inside her rise, clawing at her throat; black, shapeless, grotesque and for a moment she thinks it will consume her. It's fear, grief, tears. It's I nearly died and I nearly lost him.
He touches her, then, on her shoulders, gripping them as he repeats her name, and Lilly realises she can feel the warmth of his hands through her jacket. The thing inside her escapes, dissipates, in one long silent shuddering breath. One of his hands comes up to her neck, plays with the newly shorter lock of her hair, cups her face, and she can feel him do all of it.
"Christ, Lil," he says, and she can hear the words. Slowly, very slowly as he no doubt expects her to fight him, he steps towards her. He wants to hug her, she can feel it radiating off him in waves, that urge to protect and comfort, but he knows her too well. Instead his hands find her arms just above the elbows and grip gently, rub care and concern softly into the fabric of her suit and through it into her skin. She still can't move; he must feel like he's touching solid stone but he doesn't seem to mind. "Too damn close," he says against the side of her head, and she feels his breath tickling her hair.
He's warm; she can feel it flowing into her, thawing her out. She can feel his heartbeat, hammering against her ribcage, and a second later she can feel her own, quick and unsure but there, pushing her blood through her veins. She breathes out against his neck. Perhaps she's been breathing all along, she can't tell, but now she can feel herself pull air into her lungs, scented with Scotty's aftershave. Her arms reach out and shyly embrace him. His arms, given permission, hug back.
She wants to thank him but isn't sure what for. All she knows is that she can feel, think, move again. Time has restarted. Time will give her back her walls and she'll shove them back in place and be the same she's always been. For now, though, she'll stand in his arms, feel his heart beating against her, feel herself breathe in and out, feel the world move around her, restarted. Oh, how it moves.
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