A/N: I would like to apologize for the ridiculous amount of time it has taken me to update my other story "Fin". I was hoping I could post the next update today but while I was trying to finish it, this little one-shot came to my mind and had to write it down. I promise the new chapter of "Fin" will be up either tonight or tomorrow. So read back a chapter or two of "Fin" so that you can pick up where I left it.
Disclaimer: Dear Dick Wolf: Aren't they lovely!?!?!
She walked into the bullpen with her habitual stride, just like any other day, but this time it was different. He looked at her, waiting for a sign that would let him know everything was okay. He searched in her for a sign that would tell him that they could overcome this; that things wouldn't change. Instead, the first sign of it being the complete opposite was immediate. She wouldn't look at him.
She sat in her chair and ignored his presence, not even a good morning glance, or an acknowledging nod. She rearranged the files on her desk, smoothed out corners, and tucked in papers; anything seemed like a better option than lifting her face to him. Finally a file made her stop the erratic movements.
He saw her take a deep breath before she stood up. She brushed a stubborn hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. His eyes followed her hand and then stopped in the small bruise that had made a temporary home in her neck. It was a little lower than her earlobe; at the height of the dangle of her earring. It made him wonder. How many more marks were left in her body?
She walked slowly around their desks, file in hand, and then leaned her body so that she was almost sitting in the corner of his desk. She hands him the file which he reaches for promptly. She's now looking at him and he sees it; the sorrow in her eyes.
"This one is yours," she states, as he takes it.
He flips through it to make sure, but of course, he knows it is. She wouldn't use that as an excuse. It just happened to be convenient.
He can feel the faint scent of her as he pretends to study the file. He wonders. How long did it take her to get up from bed and take a shower? Did she take a shower or did she bath? How well did she wash the remainders off her body? Then it strikes him that he never asked if it was okay, but of course, at the moment that was the last thing in his mind.
Her voice startles him but he did catch what she said.
"I'm sorry," and then she moves back to her desk.
His wife notices the change immediately. She doesn't even ask. She just looks at him as he came into the kitchen, and then she moves past him and goes upstairs. The sound of their bedroom door locking behind her is a clear sign that he's not welcome there anymore. He hadn't been home in two weeks. He had only lied about his whereabouts 14 days ago.
This morning he woke up in the cribs and when he headed downstairs he found his partner's desk empty. She was gone, and somehow he wasn't entirely surprised by that. It was more a surprise that she had stuck around for so long.
Nobody asked him about her. Nobody dared to. He doesn't ask about her. He doesn't deserve to know.
A month later he receives the divorce papers and he signs them without questions. He has failed. He lost his wife. He lost his partner. All he has left is his job and he'll be damned if he loses that too, so for his own sake he makes an effort to adjust to his new partner and things start to run smoothly.
As the months go by, he thinks about her every now and then. She must still be in New York, he concludes, because she would never leave this city. This is her home. This is where she feels safe. But he never looks for her, because if she wants to be found he'll find her and if she doesn't he never will and that will only break his heart more.
His new partner can be a great man, but a sorry son of a bitch. When he loses another bet against him; he finds himself leaving the surveillance car and walking two blocks in the middle of the scorching mid-day heat, to get the asshole his favorite coffee.
He's just coming out of the coffee shop and he feels a sudden chill run up his arms and down his spine that almost makes him loose his footing. He stops and looks to his right, balancing the two tall cups of coffee as he feels his hands go weak, he sees her.
She's looking through the buckets full of lilacs and peonies pulling her choices outs and placing them on a willow basket. He can only see her face and has to close his eyes to focus and look again, because it looks like her but she looks so calmed, refreshed and glowing. She makes her last selection and looks straight at him. A hint of sorrow fills her eyes again, but is overshadowed by the fullness of her face. She looks much healthier. She has been taking care of herself.
An older woman approaches her and she turns her attention to her for a few minutes. She reaches into her purse and pays the woman for the flowers. Then she walks around the mid height store display filled with buckets of water and flowers, and now he can see her entirely. She still dresses the same. The fitted trousers, the dressy shirts, but the roundness beneath the flowing ruffles of her shirt gives her away.
He realizes it has been more than 6 months since he last saw her. The visions of that night run like an old film in his mind. His drunken state; her touches; her kisses and the way she pulled him into her apartment and begged him to love her as she led him into her bed.
She's not the kind of woman that gets pregnant by accident, and everything starts to make sense. A part of him enrages and burns his insides, but for the most part he wants to cry. He ponders how that would look like. A grown up man, frozen in the middle of the sidewalk holding two tall cups of boiling hot coffee, and crying like a baby.
She stops three feet away from him and waits. The way she lets her head fall to a side lets him know that she's waiting for his move. He has only two logical options, let life go on as if this encounter never happened, continue to the new life that he's starting to get used to and is predictable and secure; or move toward her… to the unknown and the unexpected, to what will never be the same again.
He keeps his eyes in hers for a minute and then he drops them toward the two cups of coffee in his hands. He walks towards the nearest trash can, letting them go, before moving toward her direction.
"I'm so…" she starts to say, but his mouth on hers interrupts her words.
He doesn't want to hear it. He knows why she did it. He gave her no choice. He'd like to think that if she had asked he would've said yes. That he would've given her everything she would've asked for, but that wasn't true. So she took what she needed and left, and as much as he knows he should hate her right now… he doesn't.
He feels the saltiness of her tears, leak into their kiss. He knows she's sorry, but the truth is that she has no good reason why to feel sorry. She did what she had to, and she got what she wanted. She made the choice for him, and somehow he couldn't have made a better choice.
He pulls back and holds her face between his hands, stroking the apples of her cheeks with his thumbs drying the tears that keep spilling out of her eyes.
"I'm sorry," he says and he grabs her hand and the willow basket full of flowers and leads her into the café.
*FIN*