DISCLAIMER: I don't work for anything related to Rookie Blue. I own nothing. Which is obvious since I'm posting on FFN but apparently this still needs to be said.
She didn't feel anything.
That was the problem.
And frankly, she wasn't sure she wanted to.
She didn't feel anything with him at all and honestly couldn't remember the last time she had. She wasn't sure she liked him as more than a thing to have when she wanted something. Except she didn't want either. Right now, if she'd been remotely suicidal, someone might have worried, but there wasn't anyone to worry. No one worried. No one cared like that.
She'd shot herself in the foot by trusting. She'd opened herself up and had her heart and guts ripped out, stomped on, and damn it all, she was loyal so why the hell was she always the bad guy? The time she hadn't cheated and the time she had were the same. Both times the men shoved her away.
When he rolled back into her life, she'd been depressed over the way things ended with Chris, feeling lost and abandoned. Everything had hurt for so long, to have Chris throw her away like that was a betrayal. She thought she'd become the woman he wanted, a good girlfriend, a better person. But the moment she'd done what he wanted, the damned moment she let someone in like he said she should, he stabbed her in the heart and left her for dead.
And then there was Nick. Nick and his comic book hero looks, chiseled jaw and blue eyes, and the motorcycle and the bad-boy with a heart of gold, the soul you could trust, demeanor. He'd been an acceptable rebellion to her parents. The marriage, perhaps, might not have been quite as okay, but that hadn't happened. Nick had run. The bastard had run, leaving her with a complicated explanation for how she was in Vegas with no money all on her own.
She lied, told them she'd lost her ticket gambling. The jerk had taken hers as well, stranding her. When she called him on that, years and a drunken night of tequila later, he swore it was an accident. He apologized. She wasn't buying it, but the sex was good and she was okay with that. But he started to get clingy. All that bad boy shit was gone and she just had this nice guy.
She missed the bad boy, just a bit. The boy who took risks besides jumping off bridges. No, she wanted the guy who wanted dirty sex and uncomplicated physical connections, and had her back when shit happened. But that boy wasn't Nick anymore. He'd grown and changed and wanted more things than just having fun. And again she was the weird one, because women clearly weren't allowed to want a relationship based on sex. She started to wonder if it was her that was wrong, that she should have grown and changed more.
She wouldn't let him see her cry when they broke up. After all, she still didn't cry at funerals. What was the point? They were still dead and it didn't make her feel better, and frankly there was nothing wrong in being about making herself feel better. No one else was going to make that effort for her, apparently, so it was up to her to take charge of her own life. Her own happiness. Or what passed for it these days.
And then, one night when she'd been more honest with a mark than she'd been with anyone in years, she decided she had changed. She wasn't the Gail she'd been. She was something different, someone different, and she wanted more from him than just sex. She called him and asked him to come to Andy's, thinking they could talk and maybe establish some sort of new ruling, a new place where they were more than just sex-friends.
But Nick didn't come when she called. Later on she found he'd not even known she'd called until Jerry told him there were three calls from her right before she'd been kidnapped. He'd seen the calls and not thought about it as important. He hadn't even listened to them, not even when he knew she was kidnapped.
That was when she should have known they weren't right. But after the kidnapping, she was desperate to feel. Because she didn't. She was numb. She was empty. She felt nothing except guilt and pain, she wanted nothing except to be left alone. Traci knocked down that first wall, asking her to be a friend, telling her she wasn't guilty. But that only meant she could only trust Traci.
She swallowed that feeling whole. That lack of feeling, really. If people found out she was that dead inside, she'd be worse off than she was before when they just thought she was an ass-kissing sociopath. Which she was, but that was hardly the point.
Nick proved that was lack of trust was right when she was suspended. None of them stepped up for her. None of them admitted their mistakes. None of them even said a goddamned thank you for taking the hit for them. They hung their heads, they looked guilty, and only Traci told Gail she was sorry. So screw them all. And especially Chris for making her connect with people and Nick for disappearing in the first place.
And then that rat bastard did it again. He did it a-fucking-gain. He vanished. Third time was the charm, she really, really shouldn't haven taken him back. But she spent six months dead inside while he was gone, struggling to get back to where she was before the shooting, before Perik, that she thought maybe he would be safe. Maybe she could lean on him.
Stupid, stupid, Gail. So damn stupid. He was there for Andy. He'd been there for her before he left, he was there while they were gone, he was there for her now. And Gail saw it. She tried to ignore it and then Chloe rubbed her face in it and she shot it dead.
Of course she shouldn't have cheated on Nick, but she did it to make herself feel something. It didn't work. She didn't care so much how it might make Nick feel, she just wanted to feel something for a night, even the guilt would have been alright, but she didn't get that. She didn't feel guilty for cheating, she just felt confused and surprised and wondered who she was.
When he found out, he was done. No second (third? maybe fourth) chances. No more. Not for her, the girl who took him back twice, no matter how many times he fucked off. She cheated. He was done. Bastard. There was no going back after that. Never. Never again would she trust him, or anyone else, with her heart. They all sucked. They all used her, tried to shove her in a mold, and they all hated who she was when she didn't change.
And through it all, she felt nothing. She didn't feel happy or guilty or sad. It was like the day she saw her grandmother die in the hospital. Gail hadn't cried, which her father said meant she was strong. Everyone else cried. Steve cried. She didn't feel anything. She'd cried when Chris was hurt, though she couldn't remember why. After he discarded her, not girlfriend material; after Nick refused to give her a second chance, not girlfriend material. She had nothing. She felt nothing anymore. Maybe it was better that way.
She learned to fake it a long time ago. Fake it so therapists didn't see you were a sociopath. Fake it so people thought the smile was real. Those were lessons she'd put aside when Chris tried to get her to warm up. She relearned them after Perik, tried to put them away again, found them in the agony of nearly losing her career after the shooting, lost herself within them after Nick abandoned her when all she wanted was his shoulder.
He left her without a second chance, without the truth, without anything except goodbye.
So now she wanted nothing. She needed nothing. She cared for nothing.
She felt nothing.
Except maybe a little annoyance right now.
She sighed and spoke up. "Hey. Lunchbox. You're not allowed down there."
Because one more dead guy wasn't going to change her life at all. One more death wouldn't make her feel anything. One day with the nerd with a forensic box that looked like a lunchbox and silly boots and a bunch of smelly bones wasn't going to make a bit of difference to the disaster that she was. She didn't need to connect or feel.
And then the weirdest thing happened. Then she felt a thing. A something. A tug at her lips that made the shield of sarcasm and the defensive snark slide away just a bit. After that whole, long day, she had someone who took her at her normal 'worst' and was amused by it and she found herself wanting to warn her that she, Gail Peck, was a hot mess and not a friend and not a girlfriend. Loyal. Hah. What had that brought her? She had tried to chase off this new person, this weird person with her usual methods, but that's not what happened. Instead she kept engaging and being funny and smart and against all odds... Gail kind of liked her. But she needed to know.
"I'm like a cat, Holly."
And, mirablé, Holly smiled and listened and gave up something of herself.
Hours later, alone in her bed, Gail realized what she'd felt.
For the first time in a very long time, years and years, before the cheating and the vanishing and the shooting and the kidnapping and the job and Vegas and all the things that made her a Peck, she felt this thing ... The last time she'd felt this was from before all that. What she had was a feeling of happiness.
Maybe she could risk feeling something. Maybe she could risk friendship.