A single shoe
The room looked frozen in time. Her eyes tracked over the scene, registering papers that had blown loose, caught under desks where they'd stuck, or dried to the floor with…
Her eyes shied away. She swallowed against a dry throat.
There was glass in crumpled heaps by the doors she stood at and more scattered out from the blast zone where it had been flung.
She felt able to look again now.
Her eyes followed the trail of glass back into the room, until they hit an object so out of place they stuck. Her insides turned to ice. A brown leather shoe. Abandoned. It lay on its side in the turmoil and the blood, alone and without its partner. Blood marked the leather in large drops and smeared across one side. It was a ruined shoe.
Her mind processed and rejected over again that she knew who it belonged to.
Shoes looked so wrong alone, without their partner.
Diane without Will. A shoe without its pair.
She had seen those shoes just yesterday.
Will without Alicia. Alicia without Will.
Could she fix it is she were able to fetch it? Could she remove the stains? Save the shoe?
Would it save Will?
Will's shoe.
She steadied herself against the wall as the acknowledgment punched her stomach. She had too much to do to cry right now.
"Nice shoes."
"Urk, yeah. A baby threw up on my others."
Her fingers were dialling Kalinda's number even as she went in search of the judge.
"Alicia?" There was no hi. There was only a strain, a thread ready to snap. Too raw.
"Kalinda, I need to ask you something." Alicia heels snapped loudly against the polished floor, echoing.
In background of the phone she could hear the murmur of voices. "Alicia, where are you?"
"It doesn't matter." It did matter. It wasn't allowed to matter to anyone else right now. "Kalinda, was Will missing a shoe?"
It was a stupid question. An unimportant question. Yet she needed to know.
"Why?" One word conveying so much caution, even through the grief. Alicia would have found it angering from Peter, but she knew Kalinda had been punched as hard as her.
"I haven't asked you what you are doing," she replied, voice edged, but not accusatory. She almost heard the investigator's strained smile, one against her will, an appreciative curl.
"All right." A pause. "I'm not sure how…"
"Please, Kalinda," she interjected abruptly, cutting off the voice. There was a resigned exhale.
"He was…but Alicia…"
The rest was momentary white noise. Alicia pressed her hand to the wall, letting the coolness ground her.
He needs to have his shoe.
A laughing face under bed sheets. "Alicia, what are you doing?"
Her own teasing response. "Its lucky you have me, I'm not sure anyone else would stick around once they found out your little…quirks."
Hiked eyebrows. "What quirks?"
She lifted her finger to the shoes, neatly abandoned amongst the piles of clothes. "Who pairs their shoes up before sex?"
He peered around her arm, eyeing up the offending items. "Huh, would ya look at that, so I do." He kissed her arm, all the way up and she giggled.
The judge's chambers were in front of her. "Kalinda, I'll call you back."
In the courtroom he talked her through what happened. Shapes of blood that were once people. Living, breathing people. That one was Will's. That was Will's blood. No longer in his body. Her mind stalled, tripped. The shoe was still there. A piece of the narrative. Lost in a wreck, not parted with willingly, like a hand slipping from a grasp in a crowd. He would have hated it, lying in a hospital bed with only one shoe.
"Shoes are meant to be paired, Alicia. You are vulnerable with only one shoe. You're vulnerable with none, but with one you're vulnerable and you look like a complete…"
- We need to get Will his shoe –
She sent the text to Kalinda with panic in her heart, suffocating her chest. As much in desperation to be believed and taken seriously, as the thought of Will lying there, one shoe missing…
DEAD.
Her head smashed it down her throat into her chest.
DEAD.
She waited for the reply that would tell her to let it go. She could almost hear Kalinda's voice saying it…
- He wouldn't want to wear it -
Alicia's fingers stilled, mind abruptly silenced, Kalinda's understanding leaving her momentarily lightheaded. The little '…' showed. The next message slipped onto the screen.
- He hated it when they got messed up -
"Nice shoes."
"Urk, yeah. A baby threw up on my others."
- He would rather wear trainers with a suit than dirty shoes -
She hit send before overthinking. It was too early for this to be a fond remembrance, something to be laughed over. She recognised it for what it was. Two people clinging to tattered shreds, gripping tight enough for it to hurt, desperately remembering because it kept him alive a little longer. If they could send messages like this then maybe it meant he wasn't really gone.
Silence on the other end before…
- I'll ask his sisters to get his favourite pair. I'll tell them which ones -
It sounded like Will could just be off sick, like he just needed something to make him feel better. She wished she didn't really know what Kalinda meant. For the funeral.
Reality stepped in with another punch.
Alicia sank down onto a bench inside the courthouse and shut her eyes. She needed to get to the hospital. She needed to find Finn Polmar and ask about the last words she was supposed to hear. She needed to talk to the man who'd tried to save Will's life, who'd seen it all happen.
For a moment though, just a moment, she let one more memory invade, let it play out, taking her away from this reality and hiding her where she could not be hurt.
Sitting on a sofa with Will, him lying across it, sock coated feet in her lap, his eyes laughing, mouth serious, as he notices what she's done. Across the room, just in their eyeline, one of Alicia's shoes pairs with one of Will's shoes. She casts him a challenging grin, teasing. He allows his lips to quirk.
"Hey, as long as the other two are paired as well, I've got no problem with it. After all, a shoe needs a partner." He reaches across and brushes a hand through her hair, his voice dropping low and warm, and achingly sincere. "I'm pleased mine's paired with yours."