A/N Spoiler on "Day Game"
No Marina. To be honest I did not trust her to argue with Greg the way I wanted.
I do not own "Flashpoint", but thanks to Stephanie Morgenstern, Mark Ellis and their team giving it to us.
And a big Thankyou to Stephanie-BB-JISBON-CASKETT for reading, correcting and editing my story.
"Aunt, look, uncle sits in the car and he isn't moving!." Her housekeeper's little daughter looked at her wide-eyed..
"Thank you, dear. So I'll have to see what's going on". Sally was scared. She ran out of the house to the car in front. Indeed Greg was at the wheel and gazed into space. He clutched something in his hand. Sally opened the door carefully. Greg didn't move. He was withdrawn and looked a thousand miles away.
"What happened? You hurt? Your team?"
"No, that's ok." He obviously didn't want to talk about it.
She examined him shortly. He didn't seem to be wounded. So what had happened?
"Don't you want to come in so we can talk?"
After a moment he slowly got out of the car and went with her into the house. Sally was very scared. She had never seen him like this.
She steered him to the couch and sat down beside him.
"What do you have there?" He opened his hand. It was an USB drive.
"Greg, please talk to me. What's on?"
"I killed a man today."
"Oh my god, Greg, that's horrible. What happened?" Sally embraced him, but she sensed his thoughts still weren't there.
"It's all on the stic. The recording of today's call. I shouldn't have ... I killed him."
"Please tell me what happened."
He pluged the grive into the laptop.
"No, tell me. I want to be able to visualize the situation."
Greg told her reluctantly and with pauses about the beginning of the call. About the man who was caught while robbering the ice rink, the hostage taking, wounding the hostage and about Gil Collins, who had set up all this to regain his reputation by intervening and saving the day.
When it went wrong, he took Greg hostage and forced him on top of the score board, high over the concrete floor.
"You know I have a problem with height. And then he cuffed me and let me down half over the edge of the board, only held by a rope he held in his hand."
Sally got goosebumps. She sensed how he tensed by this memory and held her breath. She could imagine how he had struggled with his fears and she felt for him.
"My team couldn't do anything. Whatever they had tried cost me my life."
"But what did he want?"
"He said: 'Talk me down.' I had rejected his applications with the SRU because he wasn't good with negotiations. He now wanted to show me my limits and prove me that I wasn't able to negotiate the way I had demanded from him. He saw himself as a man who was attacked from all sides without cause. In his eyes it was my fault, the world was against him. I was the cause for his failure in job and relationships, responsible for everything bad that had happened to him.
First I tried to get a connection to him. He wanted me to tell him how I saw him. I recognized some similarities to my early years and told him, but he fended this off. With a jolt he let me down far more. I was almost hanging horizontally of the scoreboard." Greg swallowed and went on very quiet "that was horrible".
"You were really afraid" Sally hugged him a bit tighter.. She had tears in her eyes and felt how mad she was at this Gil,he had abused the man she loved, but she didn't react because she wanted to help Greg.
"I didn't know what to do." Greg now looked at Sally openly.
"I couldn't use tactics any longer. It only occured to me what went wrong in my life - how I dealt with my team, things I should have done better but could not. I told him that. I didn't care what came out. I felt trapped and I got angry. In the end I furiously screamed that I had my own problems and that he had no importance to me and then that if he killed me he would be the monster he thinks of me. Then he suddenly stopped and after a moment he lifted me up. I was completely done.
Then I saw that I had insulted him and that he was different now. I recognized that he wanted to commit suicide, because he could not deal with what I told him. I tried to hold him back, but I wasn't able to reach him. He just said that I was right, looked into my eyes and let himself fall down backwards from the edge of the board." Greg breathed hard and his face showed his pain. "I killed him."
"What?"
"I shouldn't have become furious, do you understand? See, I did not connect - I cut off all connections. That was completely against the rules."
Sally breathed deeply to calm herself down. "Greg, please, will you listen to me?"
Greg turned to her. She really got his attention.
"Before you went furious- do you believe he would kill you?"
"Yes, I think so."
"You felt to be at your limit. It was the last moment of your life."
Greg looked at her expectantly.
"And in this last moment of your life you let yourself go. You were completely yourself. You were true, honest. There was no tactics, no head negotiatior - only the man Greg Parker. And that's why you blame yourself?"
She saw that Greg thought about it and noticed that he relaxed a little bit.
"Don't you think you have the right like every human beeing, to be yourself in what you thought to be the last moment of your life?"
"I understand what you're trying to say, but I can't see it like that" Greg answered thoughtfully, "I should have stayed calm. I should have found a way to connect with him and save him. I should've done my job."
"He cornered you and the situation he had set up hit your most vulnerable spots. Even for that I could hate him - no, ok, you don't need to say anyhing. But please consider: Did you really have a chance to reach him if you've not become furious, if you were not yourself? Did he not only listen because of this?"
Sally sensed that he relaxed in her arms. She nursed him a while and he finally could weep and let go.
"Love, I admire so much who you are and what you do. I love you for that. But you are human. You are vulnerable. You must not give up your life for somebody who wants to kill you. - You're not Jesus" she whispered.
A/N So this is my first and I'm not sure about writing more. I have some pieces on the story how Greg and Sally met but it will take some more time.