AN: Hey guys, after watching Pursuit I couldn't help but start writing a fic! So if you haven't watched it yet don't read! Everything from before Pursuit is fair game!This is what I shall call my first 'proper' fic in that any that I have attempted previously were rushed, incredibly out of character and basically fell prey to every sin of the fanfiction world. I hope this is better.Thanks to the lovely MissMandi who has offered to be my Beta throughout!The title is currently Change but it's a WIP at the moment and may (funnily enough) change. Any suggestions for a title are welcome!Constructive criticism is always welcome.
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Chapter 1-Silence and Noise.
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Silence.
It invades every room of her apartment; it washes over her from head to toe. Its grip is tight and she attempts to hold on to it just as firmly as it grasps her.
She's comfortable with silence; in silence there is less pain. There are no sobs of heartache, screams of agony; the silence and its associated nothingness comfort her. She hasn't uttered a sound since she left the prison earlier in the evening. There's nothing to say. He had waited for her outside Rikers, driven her home as if it were any other case. Only it wasn't and if she's honest with herself she's not sure why. He'd asked her if she was okay, if she wanted him to keep her company. To verbalise her feelings made them real and she wouldn't do that – it was her grief, her guilt, her cross to bear. She had offered him a stiff smile and quietly slipped out of the car seeking the solace of her apartment.
The harrowing details of Adams' crimes wreak havoc in her mind. It's days like today when she doubts her ability to fight and protect. She thinks of the victims she has helped over the years, and for what? In helping one she feels like she sacrifices another. She knows that it's not possible to save them all, and that's what tears her up. Enough isn't enough. It never will be.
It's that thought that breaks through the dam of emotions locked within her chest, and so the silence ends. Her sobs echo through her apartment. What was once peaceful, calm and quiet is now the soundtrack of despair.
She can't be sure why exactly she cries. She encounters a whirlpool of emotions, each coming to the surface for a split second and then just as quickly being replaced by another. She cries for the forty-four victims, for Sonya, her guilt, her loss, her mother and her inability to be a saviour to them all.
Though her relationship with Sonya was never that of 'girlfriends', they had a mutual respect and admiration towards the other for their hard-line attitude. They knew how to work a case together, how to spur the other in to action and both knew how to rile the other to wound, scar and inflict maximum pain.
She cries for Sonya but if she's honest, for the first time in her life, she cries for herself.
''How long did you search for the man who raped your mother?''
The words hang in the air, twist in her gut.
Sonya had known it would sting, her words carefully chosen to inflict maximum damage. Olivia had watched her, in the instant the words left her mouth Olivia had seen it. A moment of self satisfaction, Sonya had wanted to damage, to destroy and she had succeeded.
Olivia tries, everyday she attempts to battle her past, to fight her demons but when it comes down to it she knows they will always catch up with her. The ghosts of the past will forever haunt her and so her tears continue. They fall down her face and her breath catches in her throat.
Once again the silence returns when a gentle rap on her apartment door sends her back into her shell, her armour on and her tears now dry.
Silence reigns once more.
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Noise
They're different now. He knows that, and he assumes she does as well. Where she likes silence, he thrives on noise. In silence there is too much opportunity to think, to reflect on what has been said, what has been done and more importantly what has not. He runs from it, if he thinks for too long the guilt consumes him and he's not sure that he can take much more.
They've both come too far now. What was once a crack has over time become a fault line, he knows a quake is coming, and soon. The ground on which they stand as partners has been rocky for too long; the quake building beneath the surface is ready to upturn what little stability they have left. It's already too late to rectify; like tectonic plates their relationship has been shifting and changing for as long as he can remember. Or so he likes to pretend. But in this moment of solitude as he sits in her doorway, he knows the exact moment when their paths changed and became intertwined.
Gitano.
That moment in the bus depot he knew that things had changed. He just didn't have the foresight to see how much it would affect him. It was never a choice, to save her or to save the boy. Given the same situation he'd make the same mistake again. He would save her every time. No questions asked.
The guilt still suffocates him; he had rounded on her, made her feel at fault. Told her that she needed to do her job and so she left him, and by Christ he's not sure he has ever felt such acute pain.
When he had separated from Kathy he felt pain, he felt sadness and yet he can't recall a pain as severe as knowing Olivia had gone. That she had made the choice for them both, she ran to save them. He knows as he sits in her hallway that had she not made the decision they would have long since tumbled into the abyss. They've been teetering on the edge for too long, one wrong move and they're sure to fall. He doesn't know if they'll make it if they do.
He still fails to understand why she came back. She made the choice to leave. She decided she didn't need him and so the anger bubbles, he feels it most when it's silent. He quickly inhales and remembers; remembers that she returned to him and he is sure that he has to be the luckiest bastard alive because as much as he needs her, he doesn't deserve her.
Christ, he hates the silence.
He listens. He hopes for noise, anything, to distract his attention.
The silence lingers.
He's a bastard. He liked Sonya. They argued, disagreed more often than not, but she was ballsy and he admired that. Yet in her passing he cannot conjure up the emotions that he knows he should feel. He's comfortably numb. He should feel grief, he should feel sorrow, he can only assume that these emotions will eventually present themselves and when they do he will mourn, silently and stoically but at the present moment he feels nothing other than relief. Relief that it wasn't Olivia.
He had bargained with God. In those few seconds when the call came over the radio, he had negotiated with his Creator, 'Please don't let it be her. In that moment he had willingly sacrificed Fin, Alicia and Sonya, and if he is honest with himself, he didn't care who it was as long as it wasn't her. He couldn't take it. He had lost her twice before, he was sure the third would kill him.
As a Catholic he knows it was wrong, God is to be feared, His word is law. Mere mortal should not try to alter or influence it and yet he has bargained with God more times than he wishes to remember.
The car crash.
Kathleen.
Gitano.
He was raised to worship and to fear God, but now the threat of eternal damnation for attempting to reason with His divine power seems a small price to pay for her safety.
Forgive me Father for I have sinned.
He feels it now as he reflects on everything that occurred at the Church – a burning so severe in his chest he is positive it will engulf him. And then he is calm because he remembers: It wasn't her. She is safe. She is still his.
The silence remains.
He strains to listen; he's desperate for any hint of movement to reassure him that she's in there and is as okay as the situation will allow. Through the hardwood door he hears it, the low, ragged catch of her breath in her throat. He can count on one hand the number of times he has heard her make that sound and yet he knows immediately that she is crying. He realises that he would welcome the silence once more if it would end her pain. He's a selfish bastard; in all his thinking about her he never thinks of her.
He quickly moves to his feet and turns to face the door. He pauses before he knocks, for he can still hear her muffled cries. For the first time in living memory he wishes for silence.
He knocks and waits.
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