Every now and then, he thinks back on the ones that they have lost.
It isn't necessarily the ones that have been taken by someone else's hand, or even by their own hand as it was before they left. Most of the time it is. Other times, he thinks of those that he still sees on the streets, because they are still there, even though they're not. Those are the days where he wonders what might have been if they'd stayed. Speculation, he thinks, is one of those things that you can get called out on in court, but he isn't in court and so he thinks of it anyway.
There are too many faces, he realizes, after a moment. Too many they have lost, and for what?
The bottle is the bottom drawer of his desk, where it's always been, and where it's probably going to stay for the duration of his run as District Attorney, because heaven only knows he's going to need it every now and then. It used to be that the bottle was an easy escape, when he didn't want to think about it anymore, when he didn't want to think about anything. Over the years, however, he's gotten better about not yanking the drawer open, pouring a glass and downing it all in one swallow when it gets to be too much. But every now and then…He pours a glass, and stares at it.
The trouble with being a prosecutor, he muses wryly, is that the world isn't always black and white; you might not like what the defendant has done, but every now and then, you understand why.
He knows that he isn't the only one who remembers that day when Ben Stone left, or the morning after the accident where Claire Kincaid was killed by a drunk driver. There are other prosecutors who have been around as long as him, if not longer, though nowadays, he'd be hard pressed to think of any names. He isn't particularly sure why he's chosen to think of all this now, when he knows that he's the only one in the office, because this is exactly the time where he shouldn't be thinking about it. Serves him right, though, he thinks, for allowing himself to be poked at by that defense attorney whose name he can't really remember and doesn't really care about.
There really are too many faces, he thinks, ruefully, and wishes that there were something that could have been done about it.
They go into it with eyes wide open, or so they'd like to think. They become prosecutors thinking that they're going to be able to change the world (or at least he did, before he figured out that you weren't always going to get what you wanted, and what you thought was going to happen isn't always the same thing as what actually does happen). And the next thing they know, they're disillusioned with it all. They want something different. Every now and then, he does, too, but he stays because this is what he's used to. Claire was disillusioned, he thinks, especially after the execution, and maybe Ben was, too, and maybe he is now, and doesn't even know it.
On the other hand, there are the ones who weren't disillusioned at all, they just left.
There are reasons for staying, and there are reasons for going, just like there are reasons for everything else, but the revolving door that is the Manhattan DA's office over the past few years seems to be going around and around a lot more than it was before. There was Claire, who stuck around for two years before her life was taken, and then Jamie, who stayed for another two years before she left, for want of more time to spend with her family. And then there was Abbie, for another two years until she left to join the US Attorney's office in New York, and then Serena, who was there for four years, before she left after being fired.
And then there are the ones who left by someone else's hand.
This number includes Claire, he thinks, and at this point, finally reaches for the glass, sipping once, and putting it down again. It also includes Toni Ricci, who was taken by the hands of Russian criminals who killed her the same night they killed the mother of a witness and very nearly, the witness himself. He wonders, then, as he thinks about her, about Toni, what it is about the law that makes people willing to give their lives to defend it, and uphold it, and everything else that goes along with the first two things. In all his years as a prosecutor, he still hasn't figured out why it is that he stays, though he gets the feeling that to leave now would be more than just a little bit wrong.
He wonders why it is that he has been allowed to remain where he is, as he is, and why others have not.
And as he thinks on this, another face comes to the front of his mind, one that was smiling the last time he saw her alive, before the papers hit the next morning and there she was on the front page, the victim of yet another crime organization. Casey Novak has long since taken Alexandra Cabot's place, but every now and then, he can't help but think of the latter, and he knows that on some level, the SVU detectives can't help it, either. Another face comes to mind as well, that of Alexandra Borgia, who the last time he saw her was in the trunk of a car, murdered by another set of criminals who hadn't liked what she was trying to do.
The stupid thing about this is that all they'd ever wanted to do was make sure that people knew if they broke the law in New York City, there would be consequences, just like there are always consequences for everything else.
But that is beside the point, though what the point of this particular train of thought is, he hasn't yet managed to figure out. Night has fallen over the city, and when he finally bothers to look out the window, he can see that the sky is dark. Picking up the glass again, he finishes what little is left in the glass, startled by the fact that he'd been sipping steadily from it without noticing. Even so, it hardly seems to matter now; he doesn't want to drive anywhere, and so he isn't going to, but he is going to walk. Pulling on the jacket he discarded at the beginning of the day, he picks his keys up off of his desk, and heads out of the office, turning the lights off behind him, and closing the door.
The lights never go out in Manhattan, he thinks, once he's out of the building, and there on the sidewalk, staring up. There is a reason why they call it the city that never sleeps, but at the same time, no one ever stays awake forever.
Every now and then, he thinks of the ones they have lost along the way, and says a silent prayer for them, because it is the only thing left for him to do.