The truth is sharp and bitter, the scratch of bile rising until Art is forced to swallow it back as he stares at the frozen image on the security surveillance monitor.
Beth is dead.
Worse than that – or in some ways, much better – Beth has been dead for a while, Sarah Manning walking around in shoes she has no right to fill. But that's not something he can deal with while two station employees are awaiting further instruction, so he forces himself into detective mode for another couple of minutes, long enough to thank the men for their help and request a copy of the recording for his mostly-official-not-at-all-personal file.
It's not until he's in the hallway outside the security office that the squeak of his footsteps on the linoleum provides the invitation for another wave of nausea and betrayal, his anger begging to be released. He feels the cracks in his façade, bits of him falling to the floor even as his face remains schooled. Fresh air and sunshine greet him when he shoves his way through the exit, but he's in no position to be grateful for the light. Not when his world has fallen to the shadows.
Art hurries to his car, vacillating between desires to mourn his loss and seek revenge for his partner. But one option is far less messy, so he nods once to acknowledge his choice and pretends he isn't driving a little too quickly on his way to request an arrest warrant for the woman who has been living a life that doesn't belong to her.
It doesn't really belong to anyone now.
Hours later, he toes off his shoes and kicks them to the corner of his living room, grateful Maya is at her mother's for the night, unwilling or unable to maintain the kind of energy that has brought him this far. He shrugs off his coat in the next second, delaying nothing when it falls to the chair he steps past on his way to the kitchen.
He needs a drink and it's clichéd and he wants to be better than that, but he's not, so his fingers find their way around the bottle of whiskey reserved for the roughest days.
Detective Arthur Bell. The title itself would indicate some level of skill, the ability to answer riddles and solve puzzles. A knack for detecting bullshit and providing closure for those left in limbo after the death of a loved one.
The death of a loved one.
Fuck.
A quick gulp of liquor burns as it spills down his throat, but it's far less penance than what he owes for failing Beth. How had he so carelessly overlooked Sarah's charade, excusing her behavioral missteps just as he'd excused too much for Beth in the weeks before? Smoothing the dangerous edges with the shrug of his shoulders and the palms of his hands had helped ruin her, and he unclenches his empty fist as though he might discover a scar there from everything he'd been so eager to press away.
Falling to the couch, he manages to slide his glass across the coffee table just before his head tips back, his eyes shuttered as though his guilt has any intention of being dismissed. The darkness brings other emotions to a mind already crowded, offering the backdrop for images of Beth joining him on this same couch. More than once. Never enough.
There was no more remorse for his role as The Other Man; he'd resolved that conflict with excuses of partnership and loyalty and everything he could give Beth and everything Paul could not. All the times she'd needed him, he'd set aside his armor and allowed his own weakness to mute hers. The first night he had feigned surprise, though he'd suspected it would happen for a while, probably long before she'd ever considered knocking on his door.
So much of her was lost before she came to him, and there was no way he could have expected to salvage what remained.
It hadn't stopped him from trying.
Art had spotted a couple of wayward tears as she'd rested on his couch that night, but he'd been eager to deter the rest, giving in when she'd wrapped her fingers around his arm. When she had leaned toward him with desperate eyes and parted lips.
Now, he forces himself forward in search of his drink, refusing to look anywhere but the bottom of his glass as he swallows more of the whiskey. To his dismay, the cursed amber only reminds him of the swirl of sadness he'd found surrounding her blown pupils as she'd whispered to him.
See me.
He can still hear her, thinks her voice might echo in this room forever, and he empties the tumbler in an attempt to quiet the memory. Instead, he feels her mouth on his.
The handful of nights they had spent together were each distinct in their own ways, but that first time remains so clear to him, even as he wishes it would be blurred by the discovery that she's gone, wants to pretend it was all a dream. He remembers the sweep of her tongue in search of something he was too willing to give, and the vibration of the stifled moans neither one of them would acknowledge. Beth's hands had guided him as he'd hurried to learn, their roles seemingly reversed from those they'd held in their professional relationship, though he had always known her wellbeing was still his to defend.
It had been no surprise they'd found a rhythm so effortlessly; the time they'd spent getting to know each other at the station had given them a head start on whatever illicit thing led them to claw at buttons and hemlines and zippers and clasps.
See me.
His eyes had roamed, searching the surface of her skin for signs of the damage that reigned so much deeper. He'd seen nothing, of course, found nothing with the rough scrape of his fingers, so he had moved above her, rocking into the subtle give of the leather beneath them as her legs fell open. Beth had left ten tiny half-moons along his shoulders, but the pain had been ignored in his quest to make it better for her.
What "it" was, he still didn't know. And at this point, maybe he never would.
She'd continued to mumble against his neck as had driven forward, determined to break her apart, to feel her fall into pieces that he could put back together, one by one, until she was whole again. Weeks of observation – and those detective skills that had abandoned him in the end – had suggested she was set on destroying herself, so he'd made sure he would be the one there to rebuild from the rubble. Protecting her outright had no longer seemed like an option.
See me.
Just before she'd finally tensed in his arms, when much of his conscious thought was gone and his instinct and need had taken over, Art had found the strength to summon a plea of his own.
Let me.
The morning brings another round of anger, fueled by the discomfort of a whiskey hangover and a night spent on the couch; he can't recall how many times he'd refilled his glass or allowed himself another flash of Beth's unhappy smile before he'd finally passed out. Then Sarah Manning's face – the version he'd frozen on the Huxley Station surveillance feed – had taunted him in nightmares he can't quite shake, and he knows he has to suppress his immediate desire for revenge while he questions her.
Business first, perverse pleasure later. A plan born of logic and the inexplicable sense that there is more to the story than a stumbled-upon con.
The interrogation comes and goes. In the following weeks, so do an ongoing 'good cop' routine and the stages of grief, confessions of clones and too many sleepless nights. It's all part of a something he doesn't understand, a game he didn't ask to play, but he's treading water with the rest of them now and isn't looking to be rescued from anyone on the distant shore.
Beth has been dead for over a month when Art offers a tired nod to Sarah; she slips into the booth across from him, not for the first time and probably not the last, and returns the silent greeting. They're working together now, partners in a more honest way than he'd managed with the sister she never knew. When his guard is down, he picks up glimpses of Beth in Sarah's intensity, in her wit and unwavering stare.
It leaves him breathless.
He finally sees.
"Why are you still helping us?"
There's no reason to ask what she means. He had answered the same question for himself long ago, halfway through another glass of whiskey and another bad dream.
"I couldn't save Beth. I'm not sure anyone could have," he sighs. "But I'll be damned if I walk away from the rest of you without doing everything I can to make things right."
A/N: Well, this is my first attempt at something for this fandom, and I am eternally grateful for those who support my writing here, there, and everywhere. It means more than I can say.