Gail

They are 'doing' lunch.

This is something her mother likes to do every now and then, especially when she wants to play a bit of Mother of the Year. Ensnared by an adamant, no-one-here-gets-out-alive phone call, where Elaine claimed to have checked her schedule to ensure she would be free, Gail had no choice to accept her mother's invitation.

One moment was happily immersed in the tender mood brought on by her morning conversation with Holly, still at her apartment long after Holly left for work, dividing her time evenly between tracts of daydreaming and reading the report she wants to finish before work tomorrow, and the next she was dragged mentally kicking and screaming into reality by Elaine Peck.

Now here they are, eating lunch in one of those business-y but not too upscale modern restaurants that Elaine loves and Gail despises, eating ladylike meals of seafood and salad and discussing the latest gossip up and down the ranks. As they talk shop, Gail doesn't mention the investigation and Anca to her mother although she has probably heard something of it already. She doesn't want her mother near it. Because if Elaine finds out she has any aspirations, she'll start pushing things at her end, and Gail wants to get this one on her own.

Elaine is on her best behaviour this afternoon, too, which makes Gail nervous. She hasn't commented on Gail's clothes, her hair or even the way she eats once during the entire meal. This is not normal. Gail braces herself for the worst, but it doesn't come. By the time dessert rolls around, and Gail is drinking coffee and watching her mother pick at a piece of pear tart, she has started to relax.

And that is, of course, when it happens.

Putting her fork down and patting her stomach, Elaine sits back. "Ugh, I am going to regret that later," she moans, like she always does when she eats something she thinks shouldn't. She picks up her tea, sipping, looking over at Gail with a one of her benevolent, pre-lecture looks. Gail recognises it instantly.

"Honey, remember that therapist you saw, after all that dreadfulness with the kidnapping?"

"Yeah," Gail narrows her eyes. Where in hell is this going?

"You liked her, didn't you?"

"Uh, as much as anyone can like a therapist." Gail mutters, sipping her coffee.

"Well, sweetheart," Elaine leans forward, over the table. "I was thinking you might want to think about going and checking in with her again.

"What?" Gail puts her cup down. "Why, exactly?" Of course, she knows exactly why. She sighs. "Is this because of Holly?"

"Well sweetheart …"

But then she doesn't even let her mother finish. Fighting the bitter combination of humiliation and anger, she smiles grimly at her mother, trying for sarcasm. "You know, it's been half a century or so since they thought of this as a psychiatric problem. I learned that in high school, Mom."

"Oh sweetheart," Elaine places her napkin on the table and soothes it flat with her fingers as she speaks. "I am not saying there is anything wrong with you, or it." She pauses. "It is just a very … abrupt change. And erratic behaviour can be a sign of depression, or problems, especially after all you have been through in the last year."

Gail shakes her head, slowly expelling a weary breath. When the inevitable reaction finally came, she'd expected angry Elaine, or perhaps even shocked Elaine, but certainly not concerned Elaine, to show up for this particular coming-out party.

"All I have been through?" she repeats, frowning and fiddling with the ring on her finger, her hands pressed against her lap. "All of a sudden you want to be concerned about all I have 'been through'?" she looks up, lifting her hands only long enough to hang air quotes around the phrase. "You know, Mom, the other day we helped a girl who has been taken from her country, basically locked in a house for years, forced to be a domestic slave. She has been through something. She needs therapy. The couple who kept her, who made her to work for them, who beat her if she got sick, but refused to take her to a doctor, those psychos need therapy."

"Gail, there's no need to be dramatic about it." Elaine says, her voice tightening. She looks a touch nervous now, as she refolds the napkin she just flattened into a tight knot, as if maybe she didn't expect Gail to fight back, like she's dived into something she hadn't completely thought through. "I just want to..."

"Mom," Gail sighs, interrupting. "You didn't even think I needed therapy after the kidnapping. You said I would just get over it, like all cops do. You certainly didn't think I needed one when Nick dumped me and started dating my friend. Why now?"

"Like I said, darling." Elaine quickly regains her composure, back on familiar ground. Gail can tell by the way she sits up straighter, setting her shoulders and placing the napkin neatly on her plate. There is nothing like a 'bad parent' accusation to make her mother rally. She doesn't like to be bad at anything. "But this is a very sudden change. I mean," Elaine adds in a low tone, "Turning around and announcing you are gay. At your age?" she shakes her head and takes a sip of her tea before launching into an additional defence. "And I am worried that you don't even seem to have found any direction at work." She waves away an approaching waiter, not even making eye contact. "You seem a little lost."

"Do I?"

Gail can't help smiling at that one. It's funny, because she hasn't felt this un-lost in a long time. And for the first time in a long time Gail knows exactly what she wants. She wants two things. She wants to work on this investigation and help arrest these people. And she wants to be with Holly. But her mother doesn't know either of those things.

But she could know if she just asked, instead of telling all the time.

But this is just another example of her mother being eternally in her face but never really seeing her. This is always what is so confounding about her mother. She has an ability to say these kinds of things, to loudly and adamantly register her pushily maternal concerns, but the concern never really seems to be for what Gail wants or needs. It is for an idea of what Elaine thinks should be happening, what Gail should be doing or feeling or being. Sometimes it feels like this act of mothering has no real connection with Gail herself.

She pushes her coffee away and sits back in her seat. And another thing she wants? Gail wants not to have to discuss this with her mother any more. Not today. Not this day that started tasting of potential and is now falling to ruins in one swift lunch. She refuses to surrender this time to the king tide pull of her mother's aggressive maternal ministrations.

Taking the thin thread of calm left of her mood from this morning, and the bravery that her mother's uncertainty has given her, she tries to weaves it into something bigger, a protective veil of serenity between her and the anger that is so easy to succumb to when her mother talks like this. She leans forward, her hands in her lap, speaking as slowly and calmly as possible. "First, Mom, I have never said I was gay. But yes," she smiles at Elaine, "I am dating a woman. Please live with it."

"But Gail, you must barely know her." Elaine sounds plaintive now, using her actual name instead of an endearment. "How do you know it is right for you? You haven't exactly been careful with your choices thus far. I mean, Nick …"

Gail interrupts her. "Mom, you're not listening. Please listen." She lifts her arms and places her hands down flat on the table, looking her mother square in the eye, telling herself to remain calm, to give away as little as possible and all the while marvelling at her own self-possession. "I am not asking you what you think of my relationship with Holly. I don't care if you think she is right for me or not. I know she is. In the past I might have wanted your opinion, but right now, I don't." She leans forward over her hands. "What I want is for you to be okay with her, so we can move on and you can get used to it. Because you can't change this one. You can't touch this."

Elaine opens her mouth, but before she can speak, Gail continues, "Second, I haven't decided what I want to do yet at work because I don't know what I want to do yet. And I was raised, "she adds pointedly, "To be certain about my choices. And if you could just give me some headspace to think about what I want to do, maybe I could do that."

"But honey," her mother says, beginning to sound plaintive, "Time is ticking on the work front. Even Holly told me you hadn't been making any decisions about that lately. I just want to help."

"Mom," Gail says slowly, taking a deep breath. How does her mother find the energy for all this relentlessness? "All I need you to do for me right now is to back off, okay?" She turns and waves the waiter back, making a sign for him to bring over the bill.

Lunch over.

Holly

"She tried to tell me, get this, that I should go and see a therapist."

"What?" Holly drops her scalpel onto the bench and walks over to her desk, sitting down and blinking into space. "She did not." Of course she did.

"She thinks I am lost," Gail tells her laughing. "Because I am dating you and because I have no direction at work. She even tried to tell me that you told her I had no direction at work."

"I told her no such thing!" Holly growls. "She tried to interrogate me about your career plans at that lunch. I told her we didn't talk about that stuff. Even if we did, I'd never tell her anything, let alone sell you out to her, Gail. Know that."

"I know, Holly. It's okay."

"Well good," Holly grumbles. "I don't want her getting you drinking the Kool-aid about anything to do with me."

"Never."

"So, what did you say to her?" Holly leans back in her chair, swinging it from side to side. Right now she'd love to kill Elaine Peck.

"I told her to back the hell off and let me make up my own mind."

"Good. I'm glad." Holly smiles. Gail sounds pretty darn pleased with herself. And so she should be.

Holly is pleased, too. More so, she is relieved to know that Gail can defend herself when she wants. After seeing the way she had reacted to her mother's taunts at that lunch, she couldn't help but be a little bit worried. Gail seems to lose all her moxie around that woman. And it is her feistiness that makes her so gorgeously Gail.

Gail sighs loudly into the phone. "Holly, can't I just disown her?"

"No. You know that." Holly smiles picking up a pen and scribbling on the notebook on her desk.

"Are you sure? I could be an orphan? I'd make a great orphan."

Holly laughs. "No you wouldn't. You'd miss your Dad, anyway."

"Yeah, I would," Gail concedes.

Holly hesitates, biting her lip, considering the consequences of speaking, before ploughing in. "I haven't been wanting to, you know, interfere, but can I say something?"

"Say away," Gail tells her.

"Your mother is not like any other mother I have met. For some reason she seems to really want to undermine you. It's not normal. But," she says hurriedly, "At the same time, she seems to really fiercely love you. Don't doubt that part, Gail."

"Hmm," is all Gail says.

Holly continues, not able to stop now she's started. "I don't think she is going to change her behaviour. If you keep telling her to back off, and she really hears you, she might try, but she's never going to stop being the kind of woman she is, which is …" Holly searches for the nicest way to say it, "Kind of controlling. People don't change. But she's also clearly brilliant and driven and I'm sure there are other great things about her. I don't really know her. But you'll probably have to learn to … manage her, like you did today. Just… just don't give her any power. She has too much. But she hasn't earned it, Gail, not the way she treats you."

Holly knows she is kind of rambling, but she doesn't stop. She wants to get it out while it seems like an appropriate moment. Besides, saying all this is less about how she feels about Elaine, and more about how she feels about Gail, so she feels she has the right to say it.

"See, if my mother ever wanted to criticise me, or tell me I am doing something wrong, unless I was being a brat, she said it kindly and she didn't say it in public. Then, my mother always worked by the old adage, if you can't say anything nice, or at least constructive, don't say anything at all."

"My mother clearly didn't get that particular memo."

"Which is why I want you to meet my mother one day," Holly tells her.

"Education by comparison, huh?" Gail laughs.

Holly is surprised now to find how much she now wants Gail to meet her mother. She wasn't sure before how Gail would go over with her mother. Her Dad, she knows, would probably dig Gail. He likes feisty. He finds it entertaining.

But now she just wants Gail to see a normal mother. She wants her to see what a relationship that is based on affection— without all that power play — looks like. She thinks Gail might like it.

One day. One day, she'll take her there.

To be continued...

Author's note: Thanks so much for you reviews so far. I'll try and update a bit quicker with the next chapter.

BTW, I've a Tumblr now, and will post links there, and maybe some one-shots and some TV (and Rookie Blue) related pieces I am messing around with, so if you you like to play over there, check the link on my author's profile.