'Detective'

'Lilly'

'You okay?'

'I've been staring at the little swirls in the scotch for about an hour.'

'I've been there.'

'I haven't had a drink in eight years.'

'Don't start now.'

'But I never forgot how good it feels knocking one of these back.'

'It turns bad real quick.'

'Thanks for coming so late.'

'We get into trouble all times of the night.'

'I was wondering about that.'

'There was a point right when we met.'

'Yeah…'

'This is a bad place, let's go.'

'Not sure we should.'

'I am.'

'Isn't it against the rules?'

'Don't worry Lilly.'

'Oh so that's how it works huh?'

'What?'

'Girl calls you in the middle of the night, weak, needy, that's when you score?'

'That's not what's going on here.'

'You know I looked for you tonight, at the meeting in your area.'

'Yeah.'

'They said you hadn't been there in years.'

'I go to a chapter near where I work.'

'They said you're not welcome at any meeting, cos they don't trust you with women.'

'Well, you're obviously getting hostile.'

'Did Sloane get hostile? She call you out on your act?'

'Sloane?'

'Well she called you that night.'

'No.'

'Phone records Rick, she asked for help, and a good sponsor always comes running.'

'I tried to help her!'

'Like you tried to help me?'

'Yeah, and she was ungrateful too.'

'Good reason to bash someone in the head.'

'I don't have to talk to you.'

'Well my boss and my partner are right outside, wanna talk to them?'

'I didn't know she was gonna lay there all night. In the snow.'

'How could you?'

"He touched you didn't he?"

"No Scotty, he didn't." Lilly replied for what seemed like the twentieth time that hour, but was closer to the third or fourth. Scotty fixed her with a piercing glare and she finally cracked - in her defence it was almost midnight and they were doing paperwork. "He held my hand and pushed my fringe off my face.' The pencil in Scotty's hand snapped in half. Lilly didn't look up from her paperwork, just rolled her eyes and passed him another pencil.

"Lil' you can't let people treat you like that!" Scotty scowled.

"Treat me like what?" Lilly snapped, "He touched my face and my hand, okay, nothing more!"

"He's a murderer!"

"And?" Lilly asked him, "How does that make that big of a difference."

"It makes everything of a difference!" Scotty shouted, his voice echoing in the empty office.

"Worse people have done worse things to me!" Lilly shouted before grabbing her things and running out of the precinct.

"Lil'!" Scotty shouted after her, running his hands through his hair, though he knew it was pointless following her.

Lilly had practically ran to her car before slamming the door and driving home in almost tears. The lights flashed before her eyes as she drove fast, too fast; in an effort to stop the tears falling before she arrived home. When she got home, she slammed the door, sank to the floor, and cried. She kept her back to the door and her knees curled to chest, but after a while she threw her bag full of case files across the room before pushing her face into her knees.

She couldn't help herself, this case had hit far too close to home. She hated the way she couldn't stop the flashbacks that raced across her mind whenever she heard about an alcoholic being killed. She hated the way she couldn't help the feeling of vulnerability that snuck into her self conscious whenever she had a case that reminded her of her past.

No matter how many cases hit home the pain never lessened. She had told herself that she'd get over it after a while, that each case would hurt less and less, but they never did. No matter how many victims she saw, she could never stop herself seeing the little golden swirls in the scotch, teasing her head and drawing out her emotions to the point where she was sure they would snap.

The pictures would swirl in her head, fuzzy and dark in her sleep-deprived mind. She would take another slug of the cold coffee and wince as the liquid slid down her throat. Others would put sugar and milk in their coffee to weaken the taste but she liked it strong – strong like she was.

She knew she was strong, but sincerely doubted herself sometimes and whenever she would her mind would always flash back to the times when she wasn't strong. The times when she was younger.

The times when a Barbie doll would make up for her mother's shouting in the night, when some extra food would make up for working and when her sister's sleeping form comforting her in the night would make up for having to look after her.

But even the whole toy store couldn't make up for what happened that night, the night her mother ran out of drink and she was sent to the store. She was sent to the store because she was a good girl; the stronger one. Not strong enough to fight back, not strong enough to run fast enough to escape him when he caught her and hit her, over and over again. Not strong enough to suppress the screams that leaked out as his hand struck her face, over and over again.

She anxiously fingered her jaw, remembering exactly how tender and sore it had felt. How her mother had instantly felt so sorry for her, then forgotten her the moment she snapped open the top of the next bottle. Lilly had cleaned up after her that night but found herself mesmerised by the swirls in her mother's half-empty glass of scotch. She wondered why her mother did it, drank herself into a mess. She was confused, the swirls in the scotch weren't that pretty, so what was the attraction?

Her head instantly snapped from her knees when she heard a knock at the door. Scotty's anxious voice rang through her ears as she eased herself off the door.

"Lilly!" he said, "Open up?"

She wondered how long he had been standing there, and then realised he wouldn't leave no matter what she said or did. Slowly she opened the door, millimetre at a time. The second he saw her face his own face dropped and he wrapped her in his arms.

She sobbed quietly in his arms as he shut the door behind them, and finally felt like she had someone who she could depend on. Someone who could decipher the swirls in the scotch.

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