FF, how I've missed you. It's been four long years, and I don't know why I ever left. The amazing Rookie Blue has sucked me back into your addictive pages, and I'm running wild with story ideas. Let's hope this sticks!
So this is a one-shot from 3x10 Cold Comforts. Holy heartbreak, Batman. You can look forward to many McSwarek fics going forward, but first, to Traci. And that scene in the Black Penny that almost did me in. Oh, and I imagine the background music as that song they played when she found out about Jerry - One Way.
She came to the Penny because it was what they did. No matter the day - boring, tough, confusing, heartbreaking - they made their way to the bar for a drink. For a friend. For a lover. For comfort, in one of its many forms.
She wants to find normalcy here. She wants the job back, and the drinks at the end of the night, and the exhaustion of a long day's work lulling her to sleep after she tucks Leo in. Any everyday activity would do as a brief respite from the painfully unique experience of burying the man she loved.
But the Penny isn't working its magic tonight, the attempted jokes from a drunk Oliver and a glaringly empty bar stool jarring her back to reality. The stop and start of everyone's attempts at consolation and strength just gives her a strange feeling of guilt. The thought comes unbidden, We'll never feel normal again. She doesn't want to believe it, keeps trying by listening to the boys as they attempt to tie up the loose ends of her unraveling life with revelations of who he was. And then, they show her what he wrote - a speech for their wedding. Despite his passionate, excitable persona, Jerry was always surprisingly prepared. Her eyes begin to skim over his words, her mouth managing a tentative smile as she imagines Jerry reciting this in some alternate universe where they actually had their wedding. Their wedding. Her resolve to finish reading falters completely as her eyes pick up the very same thing he had taken to calling her in the days before - beautiful wife. She knows that if she continues to read this, alone, no one else will ever see it; she can't imagine revisiting this one moment, meant to be one of the best of her life, that will never be.
So before she can stop herself, she finds herself stepping forward and reveals the letter's existence to the crowd, and steels herself: "So, here it goes..."
"Thank you for coming. I'll make it short so we can get to the partying. But who am I kidding? Some of you are probably already drunk - Oliver." A few laughs stutter out from the crowd, but only a few. The joke is too familiar, simply a reminder that he isn't here to say it.
"I am the luckiest man alive." Oh, God. "I don't just have good friends; I have great friends. Noelle, thanks for helping me make the playlist for this little shindig. Gotta be honest, though, when you weren't looking, I did sneak the Macarena back on there." The room largely remains silent, in a grim tribute to this cruel parody she is performing for them. These words weren't meant for another's tongue.
"Ollie, you know you're my brother. I can only hope that I'm half the husband you are - and when the time comes, half the dad." He was, he was for Leo and he would have been for their family. Her voice breaks, and she can't help the wave of embarrassment. None of her colleagues ever sees her like this - When would they ever have occasion to? her heart begs her to answer - and she tries to justify it to them and herself, stubborn: "Just so you guys know, crying or not, I am going to read this whole damn thing." If she can read it all the way through, that will be a breakthrough of some sort. Won't it?
"Sammy - the best man. No truer words were ever spoken. I trust you with my life because no matter what happens, I know you'll always have my back. I love you, man." And she knows what comes next, she can't, she can't...
"And to my darling wife Traci," she begins. But she can't move past it. Doesn't know if she will ever move past the fragment of her life that was supposed to be a beginning, not an end. The pain, the fear, the emptiness, they all overcome her, and she finds her legs about to give way with the suddenly debilitating vulnerability of standing here without him.
But then, she hears it again. "To my darling wife..." It's a stronger voice that rings out, nothing like her own faltering delivery. She clenches her eyes shut as the rest of his tribute is read aloud. From Gail's lips she hears the loving words he said to her again and again, once cliched endearments taking on life in his absence from it.
"You aren't just part of my life - you are my life. You have taken this simple man and made him a king. Until the day I die," No, no. "You will always hold the key to my heart."
Until the day I die, he said. Her heart clenches with an incomprehensible anguish. There is no more until. That day has come and gone. Now she's here without him, thinking endlessly about how their time together could have been.
All that time she spent, wavering about whether she should be with Dex. Those wishes he had, born out of love, for children and marriage and for her to have faith in him. Why did she ever hesitate? How could she ever think that being with him, forever, wasn't right? Nothing could ever be right without him.
Her final words to the bar, attempts at memorializing him, fix nothing. They are just another cold comfort for a pain that she doesn't know how to end.