A/N: Officially written for a challenge over on LJ...like, a month ago. I'm really bad at balancing fandoms and muse of mine got caught up in another one, so there you have it. Don't own CI. Muse of mine dictated that this be set quite a while after the events of "The Good", but I'm not so sure how many years have passed between then and the time in this fic, so have at it.
For every year he'd been a cop, there was always something that stuck in the back of his mind.
It all added up after a while, mostly because he couldn't forget, but partly because remembering things was what he did for a living. Crime scene photos, court dates, keeping track of his detectives…It was all there in the back of his head, more additions to those things that he either couldn't forget or didn't want to. He suspected that most of it was that he didn't want to forget, though he couldn't for the life of him figure out why this was. Definitive answers were hard to come by in this line of work: for every 'what', there were at least ten different reasons 'why' and for every 'who' there was at least one other person who'd known what was going on.
He could remember the beginning years of the first drug war, when they'd thought that they were invincible and could do anything, only to find out that they couldn't. He could remember who'd said what, and when, and why they'd said it, and he could remember everything that he'd said in reply. He could remember the days in the academy, the promotions, the move from the 8th Precinct to the 11th floor of headquarters; which case were open, which ones were closed, and which ones he still needed the paperwork for. There were court dates, and keeping track of who was where and in what squad car; dealing with the brass and keeping Internal Affairs at bay.
It was funny, he thought, how he could remember all of this and find a way to deal with it, and yet he couldn't for the life of him remember why it was that he'd wanted to become a cop in the first place.
This, of course, was probably because he'd been one for so damn long that it all seemed to melt together into one long year that never ended; one thing after another, just like that. He figured that he could separate the years if he really wanted to, but every time he tries, it all ties together, bit by bit. The late nights, early mornings, stakeouts that none of them ever really wanted to be on…all of it is one big blur with a few things that stick out.
Nothing sticks out as much as the last years, though.
Those are the years spent at headquarters, dodging the brass on one hand and trying to figure out exactly what made his detectives tick on the other.
The latter didn't take long. By the time the first year had gone by, he knew all of his detectives well enough to really work with them, and from then on, it had worked the same way it had until those last few weeks when everything got turned upside down.
Oddly enough, he didn't mind it much. Things got turned upside down so infrequently that when it happened, all he could ever really do was watch to see what would happen next. Usually, it turned out all right and no one was hurt, and all they had to do was the paperwork before they could move onto the next thing. That, too, was just the way it went. There was no time to dwell on that sort of thing; or at least, not in the squad room. Outside the squad room, it was always open for him to wonder, but the on-duty hours left him far more important things to worry about.
It was almost strange, how that worked. He could remember every little detail of the cases that stuck in the back of his head, how someone he'd once called partner had fallen hard and fast without anyone else noticing, but he couldn't remember what he'd said the last time he'd left the squad room.
Part of him was tempted to think that it was because it hurt too much to remember, and honestly, it did. He didn't want to remember that things had fallen apart at the seams, didn't want to remember the scene that had unfolded in the squad room when it had all come to an end. Nor did he want to remember the sight of the greatest cop he'd even known being led away in handcuffs, because that little scene alone had meant the end of an era for both of them.
But it wasn't only that.
Granted, that had been a big part of it, but there were a lot of things that led up to it. Years after the fact, he could still remember those conference rooms with those floor-to-ceiling windows that Internal Affairs liked to use for interview rooms. The faces, the department records, all of it was still there in the back of his mind, ready to come forward at a moment's notice.
The notice never came. There were plenty of things that stuck in the back of his mind, even after he'd gone: sticking Goren with a temporary partner, the aftermath of Eames' kidnapping, handing in his resignation…but at the same time, there were those things that he didn't think about, ever. It was only right, or so said the voice in the back of his head. After all those years on the lines, it was up to him what he wanted to remember and what he didn't want to remember, but the problem was that he didn't want to forget anything.
At the same time, he didn't want to remember.
He didn't want to remember taking on Harold Garrett and the fallout that came afterwards; didn't want to remember the request that Eames had made and taken back. He didn't want to remember the effect that everyone knew Nicole Wallace had on Goren, or the night spent at the back of a bar with Logan after the interrogation of Chesley Watkins. But he did remember.
That was part of the problem in some ways, but in others, it was all he had left to hold onto.
Out of those he worked with, there were only a few left in the city, and they rarely ever saw each other. Out of those he loved, only one of his children remains close to home. The wedding band he wore for close to 67 years before losing the one he'd given his heart to was still on his finger, and he can't remember a day without it there to remind him of why he did what he did. Of everything he knew and everything that he'd thought he'd known, there wasn't much left. Those faces and things that still existed kept him going, but every now and then, he found himself wondering how much longer that would work.
Once upon a time, he used to think that he was invincible, that he could do anything, and nothing would ever go wrong, because that just wasn't possible.
Now, of course, he knew better; knew that things did happen, and would happen, and there still wasn't a thing he could do about it.
He'd loved and lost and spent most of his life with his heart out on his sleeve, just because it had always been impossible not to get personally involved in one way or another. He'd heard everything there was to hear, and saw everything that there was to see, as far as he knows, but that part of his life was over, and now it was only him, and what little there was left.
He tried to forget once, just to see what would happen if he didn't think about any of it for a long period of time, but he kept slipping up, because it was impossible to forget. For every year that he was a cop, and every year after he retired, there was something that stuck in the back of his mind.
And he had every right to feel old and tired now.
Not because he was, but because as the years have gone by, he'd found it impossible not to notice that he was the only one left behind.