Author's Note: This story has been simmering on the back burner of my mind for about two years now. (Maybe even three.) It's a wonder the thing isn't stuck to the pan! I've always been struck by the scene from "Homo Homini Lupis" in Season 1 when Goren decides that arguing with rape victim Maggie Colter is a great approach to get her to help the case; her break is so total and startling when it comes and his transition from jerk to supportive so stark that the only way to describe it is "fic-worthy." So there you have it. Spoilers for "Homo Homini Lupis" (naturally) and anything that comes after.
Also, special (very special!!) thanks to Alamo Girl, the world's most enthusiastic beta and flail-er, to whom this story is dedicated for her excellent encouragement and inspiration and without whom it wouldn't have seen the light of day. You rock, girl!
In each age, men of genius undertake the ascent. From below, the world follows them with their eyes. These men go up the mountain, enter the clouds, disappear, reappear. People watch them, mark them. They walk by the side of precipices. They daringly pursue their road. See them aloft, see them in the distance; they are but black specks. On they go. The road is uneven, its difficulties constant. At each step, a wall; at each step, a trap. As they rise the cold increases. They must make their ladder, cut the ice and walk on it, hewing the steps in haste. A storm is raging. Nevertheless they go forward in their madness. The air becomes difficult to breath. The abyss yawns below them. Some fall. Others stop and retrace their steps; there is a sad weariness. The bold ones continue. They are eyed by the eagles; the lightning plays about them: the hurricane is furious. No matter, they persevere.Victor Hugo
I don't talk about it if I don't have to. I mean, sure, when I go to my rape survivors group meetings the subject inevitably comes up, but that's an entirely different situation and it doesn't count. Group is all about me talking about my experiences with women who know exactly what I felt back then and exactly what I feel now when I walk down the street or sit in class listening to a professor who's supposed to be teaching a graduate level course drone on about something he's never really observed firsthand because he's always been in graduate school and I wonder if anyone else in the room has endured anything in their lifetime like my own experience.
Sometimes I even wonder if people sitting in restaurants can look at me and just know – but that's pretty paranoid and only happens when there's an incredibly long and awkward lull in the conversation. For the most part, I live outside of my past just like everyone else in the world – or at least that's what we talk about in group, which I've come to cherish as a safe place - one where my history, my experiences, and I are accepted with no question because we belong there. But outside, I don't talk about it with anyone – not the cashier at the grocery store, cab drivers, my friends, or even my mother and sister (and they were there when it happened; they endured it with me).
I mean, think about it. It's not exactly socially acceptable to bring up the fact that, when you were fifteen, you were held for ransom by a guy sent to collect money owed by your father and that, while you were in his custody, he raped you. It kind of kills any good mood that's floating through the room at the time and gets you branded as "that" girl.
No one wants to be "that" girl for any reason.
I never wanted to be "that" girl when I was fifteen and now, seven years later, I'm not exactly dripping with perspicacity to earn the label for any reason. (Thus, it's pretty fitting that my online screen name is "don'tbethatgirl" - a snide moniker, to be sure, but one that reminds me daily of my own strength.) What we want isn't often what life and fate want to give us, so I make the best of mine and don't give myself the opportunity to behave otherwise.
And I don't talk about it if I don't have to.
It's funny, though, because on those occasions that I do talk about it, I never talk about him. In seven years, I've never talked about him with anyone.
I know what you're thinking: you think I'm talking about 'him,' as in my rapist. 'Him.' The inhuman bastard masquerading as a normal human being. And if you happen to be thinking that, then you happen to be wrong. My rapist was Simon Matic and believe me, I've talked a lot about Simon Matic in group meetings and with therapists and I haven't been afraid to say his name once. A name has power; if you give something a name, you can exert power over it because you have named it. You have made it what it is by labeling it. So even though I wasn't the one who named Simon when he was born (or spawned, whichever term you prefer), I still have power over him because I named him as my rapist. I went to court, pointed to him, and gave him the name "rapist." So he's not Simon Matic anymore, he's "Simon the Rapist" or "Simon, the Man Who Raped Me." And I was the one who did that. I, Maggie Colter, changed his name so I am the one in power, not him. He doesn't frighten me anymore.
When I refer to 'him,' I'm talking about a very different man from Simon. In fact, he's different from any other man I had met previously or have met since. 'Him' is Detective Robert "Bobby" Goren of the NYPD's Major Case Squad. He was the first one that I was able to open up to after it happened, the first one who got me to admit the truth of what Simon had done to me. And he was the one who made me see the light at what seemed like the end of a very long, very dark, and very frightening tunnel and made me feel as though I could actually emerge from my experience with some semblance of myself intact.
Yet seven years later, I don't talk about him and I think the reason for that is that I'm not exactly sure what I'd say. I've evaluated and re-evaluated everything surrounding my kidnapping and rape except for him; he is the shining beacon of hope that helped me begin to recover but still he remains a mystery.
I hadn't actually thought that much about him recently, however, save for reading about his latest feats of detective prowess in the newspaper: Goren and Eames Arrest Accountant Suspected in Corporate Fraud, Goren Outwits Art Thieves, Goren Cracks Socialite Murder Case. Upon perusing these tales of his vocational life, I immediately conjured his image in my mind's eye: I could see him interrogating a suspect or chatting with witnesses, always dressed in a black suit with pinstripes and carrying a battered leather notebook in one hand while looking very much like a well-dressed tree (an image that pretty much was my initial impression of him when he came to interview me). I could hear his voice when he introduced himself to me; even though I didn't pay him much attention until he spoke, I remember that I was surprised that such a large man could speak so softly.
"Hi Maggie. I'm Bobby Goren. I'm a police detective."
Funny, I don't see his partner Detective Eames the same way in these flashbacks to my life's lowest point. Despite her small size, she managed to strike me as the type of woman who would never be in anyone's shadow, no matter what the circumstances, and yet she doesn't figure as prominently into my memory of that time. She was the one who interviewed me first – broke the ice, if you will – and I recall that she wore a suit of funeral-esque black that made the pale cast to her skin stand out sharply. And I remember that I thought, She looks broken somehow – and learned the reason why when Goren revealed to me that she'd shot to death one of my captors less than twenty-four hours before.
"You know, one of the men who kidnapped you? Well, he's dead. He pulled a gun on Detective Eames and she shot him. Poof!"
It was absolutely callous and cold the way he described the taking of a person's life – even a person I hated so much – yet it was the lack of emotion from the tall detective that somehow jolted me back into full and conscious awareness of my own emotions.
Irony, thy name is Bobby Goren.
It was strength I discovered from within myself during the ensuing conversation – nee, argument – with him on that day, strength he praised me for when I broke through my defensive wall and sobbed into his bear hug of an embrace: "You're not weak; you're strong. You lived through it." It was strength that I felt radiating from the pair of them: the oversized man with the name of a little boy who didn't pretend to know what I was going through but admired my courage from afar and the undersized woman who looked as though she could be easily shattered but seemed to have threads of iron beneath her fragile exterior. It was the strength to put a name on my rapist and words to my feelings and get out of bed for the first time in days.
It was perhaps that mysterious well of strength that I saw in Bobby Goren that left him swirling in a haze of inscrutability in my mind seven years later. How did he do it?
So imagine my utter surprise when, having not thought about Detective Bobby Goren (or my rape) in a matter of months (a new record for me), I walked into a diner two blocks from Hudson University and saw him there, seated customarily across from the diminutive Detective Alex Eames. I didn't recognize them at first, so bent was I on securing coffee, an omelet, and some rye toast as well as a booth where I could spread out my class notes. And yet when I'd arranged everything before me on the white Formica table, placed my order with the waitress who was already familiar with my Tuesday routine, and looked up, there they were, in 3D and Technicolor.
As a graduate student in psychology, I'm pretty familiar with the inter-workings of the human memory. A video recorder with perfect playback it is not. Shapes, colors, sequences all alter between the reality of the moment when events occur and when we store them away in the dusty recesses of our cerebral cortex. People from our childhood reappear to our adult forms as shrunken versions of their formerly behemoth selves. What we believe we recall with crystal clarity is later contradicted by new and irrefutable evidence that reveals shameless editing on the part of our psyche to preserve a memory the way we wished it would have been rather than the way it actually was.
And people who appear so stoic and heroic in the moment at which they enter your life can be weathered by time until they no longer appear invincible and you see their humanity oozing through the cracks of age and time.
Thus, the Goren and Eames I spotted from across the span of brick red booths and white tabletops were altered from those treasured and remembered forms. They were older – to be expected, certainly - but they were also somehow diminished. Goren in particular looked haggard and careworn, his once burly physique gone a bit soft and spread out and his dark hair faded to a mouse color that promised to be silver soon. Twirling a coffee mug absently in his long fingers while he spoke softly to Eames, there was no outward appearance of the brash confidence I'd seen in him when he sat at the foot of my childhood bed and told me that he and his partner would punish those who had hurt me. The swagger was gone and he looked beaten.
Where was the tall tree of a man who beckoned me out of the darkness by telling me I was strong?
The pair were not in their usual working attire of suits with gun holsters and badges, so I had to assume that this was a day off for them – or else an off day. (Perhaps both.) But their conversation appeared no less serious and their faces were not relaxed into the weightless expressions of those with no duty propelling them. I wondered what could be so serious about coffee and breakfast in a diner on a day off and then mentally chided myself for being nosy.
(Still, when you've put a person on a pedestal for nearly a decade and you realize that they somehow fell off and shattered while your back was turned, it brings to mind a great many questions.)
Yet I receive an answer to a question that it hasn't yet occurred to me to ask as I sit in silent and unobserved observation of Detectives Goren and Eames, eating an omelet that is quickly assuming the texture of a snow tire as it cools and ignoring the notes that are supposed to form my thesis. It's a question that I've never thought to ask previously and thus takes me by as much surprise as their sudden appearance in my usual haunt this morning: If we create heroes by assuming our strength from them, what do we leave in our wake; what is left to sustain them? How do they go on?
The scientist in me starts to wonder how this line of questioning might translate into a a later section of my thesis, but the human side of me – the side of Maggie Colter that will always be a scared fifteen-year-old girl who thought her life had ended – immediately feels guilty. Am I partially to blame for this shrunken personage before me? Did my case and the thousands of others like it that he must have given over his entire heart and mind in the solving of manage to zap him of his seemingly endless strength?
My appetite wanes at the thought before I begin to notice something else about the pair while a buried piece of memory from that day seven years ago pokes out from its hiding place like a piece of shipwreck suddenly revealed by the displacement of the sand around its resting place:
Goren reveals that Eames has killed one of my captors with a sense of frivolous abandon and I turn to the woman seated beside me for confirmation. Her gaze is level and unblinking, though she has blanched a bit at his insensitivity, appearing paler than when she entered the room. Goren seats himself at the foot of my bed to point out the dead man's face amongst the photographic line-up on my quilt and I take a cursory glance before sliding my eyes back over to his partner's still expressionless face.
She killed someone. It takes a moment for the idea to set in, but in the soft lines around her mouth, I can easily see where she could become stony and impassive enough to do harm. But a killer? I just don't see that – just like I don't see how her own partner can be so cool about the whole thing. Are New York detectives a special breed of person that they can kill with absolutely no second thought, no guilt, no remorse?
It's only now, looking back that I remember clearly what happened between the two of them next. The human memory may not be a video on playback, but mine is pretty close at this very moment:
Before he began the rant that would ultimately pull me from within the cocoon of myself, before he pulled me into a hug that allowed me to feel safe for the first time in a week, Bobby Goren apologized to his partner with a look. It was a quick glance – a split second – between the two pairs of eyes that spoke volumes:
"Sorry about that. You know I didn't…"
"It's all right. You had to. Go on."
And while he held the sobbing mass I had become, I felt his arms tighten around me in an extra squeeze that I now realize was meant for her. He had worried for her safety – had a gun been pulled on her too? Had she shot in self-defense? Yet he wasn't allowed to hold her then, whether because of departmental regulations or some invisible line between the partners that didn't make itself readily visible to the uneducated eye, I wasn't sure. What was certain was that playing it off as nothing for my sake had served a double purpose: it had re-written the story in their collective memory to one where she hadn't nearly been shot to death in the line of duty, one where the serious life-and-death element of their work was nothing more than a joking matter. Treating the incident thus was an act of naming – or renaming, rather – wherein a deadly situation became "no big deal" and the where the careful editing allowed them to live with the soundness of mind that came from knowing that they still had each other to count on.
I knew that remembered vision in my mind to be true now. I knew it because, though I hadn't seen the look that passed between them over my shoulder that day, I had a clear view of what was passing between them now and suspected that it was a pretty close facsimile.
Four diner tables away from me, Goren shook his head and muttered something to Eames, continuing to twirl the cheap ceramic mug in his hands, the sheer size of them dwarfing the cup so that it appeared to be two sizes too small.
In response, she leaned forward and told him something, tugging gently at the sleeve of his beaten flannel shirt as though to emphasize her point and causing the cup to still in his fingers. His eyes lifted to meet hers, though his chin remained down so that he looked at her from beneath a furrowed brow. He seemed to be searching her face for something – an answer, perhaps, or maybe just some comfort and reassurance. And he must have received it – whatever it was – because he allowed a small smile to appear and his countenance lightened.
She patted his arm one last time and jerked her head in the direction of the counter where they'd need to pay their bills. He nodded in acquiescence and set the mug down before sliding out of the booth.
I wasn't aware that I was going to move until I was already on my feet and halfway across the diner to them. And when I realized what I was doing, I nearly froze because I realized I had no idea what I was going to say. Uh, hey there. You probably don't remember me – I was the quivering puddle of self-piteous goo that you yanked back into reality seven years ago. That was really amazing so, uh, thanks...
"Detective Goren?" the voice I heard was mine, so obviously my subconscious was running this operation on its own without informing my conscious mind of its plan. Not very reassuring…
He turned and I found myself standing before him, marveling at his height and shocked to realize that I had never actually stood beside him in our previous encounters; we'd always been seated. "I don't know if you remember me, but you worked my case several years ago. I'm Maggie Colter…"
My voice trailed off at the end while I waited – and hoped – for recognition to pass over his face, and all the while wondering if maybe I was just another case number to him, maybe he'd forgotten all about me and he was trying to concoct his best, "Oh yes, of course" face.
No. There it was. Clear recognition. Realization. His eyes widened and he appraised me in a swift glance that seemed the visual equivalent of checking a person for fractures. But I wasn't broken anymore – in fact, it seemed we'd reversed roles.
"Maggie Colter," he nodded. "The survivor."
I smiled. "Yeah, that's me."
He said, "If you're over on this side of town and," he craned his neck to peer past me to my cluttered booth – ever the detective, "doing homework, you must be attending Hudson University."
"I am," I smiled. "Graduate studies in psychology with the hope of going into some kind of therapy, working with women's groups most likely. I'm doing a thesis on Stockholm syndrome right now…"
I blushed and looked down when I shared this particular piece of information, at once recalling the way I'd once defended the actions of Simon Matic to him while in the throes of the illness, but when I looked back to his face, he nodded his approval, as did Detective Eames. And it felt right to say the words that came next, felt like I was giving back something that I'd only borrowed seven years before.
"Look, I don't want to keep the two of you," I began, "but I just wanted to say thank you for everything you did for me after my rape. I don't think I would have survived – or at least been able to go on and do the things that I've done – if it hadn't been for you being assigned to my case."
I drew a deep breath and looked Bobby Goren directly in the eyes. "You told me I was strong and I believed you. I still believe you and believing that has made it so, even if it wasn't before. So thank you for that, Detective."
He colored slightly, embarrassed, and from the corner of my eye, I saw a small, grateful smile on the face of Detective Eames as she looked from me and to the tall man before us. It was as though she was giving him a telepathic, See? I told you so.
Finally, he said softly, "I wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true, Maggie. But I'm glad to know that you're doing well."
"Good luck with your thesis," Eames added with a smile that lit her features from within. Standing beside her, I could still feel the coursing strength she emitted, but somehow the smile made her far less imposing. I remembered the way I'd glared at her when she'd first questioned me, the way she'd pulled over my purple desk chair and seated herself beside my bed, a file across her lap and a tired, nervous smile on her lips.
She said, "I'm Alex. What we need, Maggie, is to see if you can identify the men who kidnapped you. We don't need to go into what happened or what they did. I'll start by showing you some photos and you can tell me if you recognize anybody."
Hearing this, I thought," You're kidding with the nice act, lady. This isn't about me; it's about you doing your job well. How selfish is that?"
But she had meant well then and she meant well now and I was kind of surprised that I hadn't picked up on her capacity for empathy in my past observation of her. I think I was too focused on my own inward struggle and the actions of her partner at the time.
The pair had turned away from me, Goren pulling his partner's bill from her fingers and taking both up to the cash register before she could protest, but I reached out to touch Eames's elbow before she could follow him.
In a low voice, I asked, "Is he alright? He looks…"
She frowned thoughtfully as I trailed off and I could tell that she was preparing a politically-correct answer that would be thorough enough to fulfill the requirement of my question without actually answering it. While she ruminated, her eyes followed her partner's retreating back as though to make sure he hadn't vanished while she was distracted; a gesture that demonstrated true concern and my heart lurched.
"He's…" she began, then thought better of her word choice and started over. "He's gone through a bit of a rough patch. But he's getting through it. He'll be okay."
The final sentence was more a command than an observation and I didn't doubt that she'd make it so if it was the last thing she did. And that's the exact moment I realized that I'd been played seven years before: Goren's bluster had been a mask; he wasn't the strong and forceful one in their partnership. He was the magician, the illusionist who kept you focused on his left hand while his right – in this case, Alex Eames – pulled rabbits from hats. It was Eames – Eames of the "we just want to ask you a few questions; it's no big deal" approach to police work – was the real strength, the one with the iron will that was worthy of fear. I had sensed its presence, but hadn't understood its full extent, hadn't understood that, of the two, she was the one who would shoot to kill if it meant protecting someone she cared for.
In short, Bobby Goren was in good hands.
"He really did…" I struggled to find the words while grappling with the idea that someone so strong could be reduced to a shell with seeming ease. "I mean, I…"
She touched my sleeve in the same way she had touched Goren's moments before. "I know. And he knows too. It means a lot to him to see you doing so well. Trust me."
The "trust me," also sounded like a command, so I did. And as I watched them through the window as they made their progress down the sidewalk, I affixed their new images in my memory, careful to place them back up on the pedestal from which they'd fallen and display them proudly, cracks and all.
Somehow, without meaning to, I'd unraveled the mystery of Bobby Goren in my mind. It wasn't that he was a particularly strong person in his own right; it was more that he was able to identify the strengths – and no doubt also the weaknesses – in others. And, though it seemed that the application of this gift had robbed him of some of his own fortitude, I suspected that he'd find a way back to becoming that shining beacon of hope for someone else down the road. (Or at least he would if Alex Eames had anything to say about it.)
I returned to my breakfast of cold eggs and dry notes and thought briefly of my support group meeting later that afternoon. Today might just be a good day to talk about Bobby Goren for the first time. Today I might lend him the power of his own name and see what happens.
FIN