Brenda visits Natalie Part 1
Brenda's viewpoint
I called Andy in and let him know I was going to be upstairs for an hour or so, but I'd have my cell with me if he needed me.
I could see the wheels turning in his head, upstairs normally meant Pope's office, he was probably wondering if that was why I was in a mood.
"Is there anything wrong Chief…" I smiled.
"Not at all Lieutenant, I'm just popping up to see Ms Dearing" At Natalie's name he smiled.
"Oh, Ok, no problem Chief"
Grabbing my cell phone, I strode out of the squad room, sure there were a few curious eyes on me.
As I arrived at the elevators, Jane Rizzoli walked out of one, startling me.
"Detective Rizzoli, do you have a moment?" Jane looked surprised, but nodded to Provenza, who wandered into the Murder Room, leaving Jane and I alone near the lifts.
"Jane, I wonder if you might be available to have a word later" I paused, that was too formal, especially given what I wanted to talk about. "I mean, would you be available to meet up later for a coffee, say after work, around five, if you don't mind"
Fortunately she gave me that huge Rizzoli smile.
"Sure Chief, its fine, I'll let Maura know I'll be home a bit late tonight"
With that we smiled and went our separate ways.
As I rode the lifts I looked back on the conversations I'd had with Maura and Anastasia. They'd both been… informative. Both of them had sought out someone who had meant something important to them.
Maura had been driven by her growing love for Jane, built up over several years working together. Based on previous comments both Jane and Maura had made, she had been a far cry from the charming, confident person I knew and admired when she and Jane had first met, Jane had brought her out of her shell and helped her blossom.
On the other hand Anastasia had sought out Natalie, seeking something she had lost and had, with Natalie's help and love, reclaimed her soul. I honestly still had trouble reconciling the lovely, happy and outgoing woman she was now, with the damaged and empty person she had been.
The consistent thread was that the other person had completed them, given them something that they desperately needed but lacked, in Maura's case love and acceptance, in Anastasia's case love and nurturing. The fact that the person offering it had been a woman apparently meant little compared to the love they freely offered.
I was trying not to read too much into it, as both had previous experience with women, something I most definitely had not. I wanted to get the perspective of Jane and Natalie, as they had come from the same position as me, straight women being pursued, after a fashion, by someone who was not.
Deep down I wondered if I had already made a decision and was simply seeking a justification for that decision, there was a very good chance of that, so why was I seeking more information?
I'd found the discussions with Ana and Maura to be intensely enthralling, they were both beautiful, strong, admirable women and I'd always found people watching fascinating.
The fact that they had both been so completely honest with me had only made it more compelling and I hoped that both Natalie and Jane would also be equally honest and open.
Stepping out on the corporate services floor, I looked around, wondering which way to go.. I'd very little reason to come here before and needed to ask for directions to Natalie's office.
I was surprised at how the woman I asked recognised me immediately and led me to Natalie's area, where she was busy chatting with a young Asian woman.
Natalie must have spotted me approaching as I saw her look up and smile at me, waving me in.
"Brenda, lovely to see you, this is a surprise, but a welcome one. This is Lilly, my incredibly organised assistant; I don't know how I'd get anything done without her, Lilly, this is Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson" Lilly smiled at me and stood, offering her hand.
"Ah yes, Major Crimes, lovely to meet you Chief" We shook hands and I took a seat, smiling.
"Please, finish what you were doing, I can wait. It was more a social call than work"
"Of course, won't be a minute" They continued their discussions, working on Natalie's schedule and forward calendar, as I took in her office.
It wasn't nearly as big as mine, but it was very neat, with the walls and shelves holding a few pieces of LAPD memorabilia. A framed image of the LAPD values on one wall, a framed list of all the fallen officers of the LAPD on another. An Air Support flight jacket with patches hung on a clothes stand, hanging next to her suit jacket, with a LAPD ball cap on another hook. There was a framed photo on her desk of Anastasia and Natalie standing with their arms around a London Bobbie police officer, all three laughing happily together.
An electronic photo frame on a bookshelf cycled through a long series of images, mostly candid shots taken as she went about her job.
Natalie standing in a group shot with pilots and techs from Air Support division around one of the LAPD choppers; with the divers of Harbour division; chatting with a group of media, with a group of people who must be the LAPD media team as I saw Lilly amongst them; standing in full SWAT gear with the assault team; with a group of techs gathered around the new police cruisers the LAPD were bringing into service; with the Mayor and his media team; shots with dozens of groups of officers from across the force; there was even one with Pope, standing with him in close consultation before a media conference.
It occurred to me that Natalie had met more people across the whole range of the LAPD in two months than I had met in years. It left me both surprised and quite frankly, a little embarrassed.
Coming back to the conversation, I realised they were discussing invitations to attend meetings, events, participate on boards, speak at conferences, advise on media strategies and many more 'get to know you' invitations. There was a drinks invite from the LA Fire Department's media team, lunch with a local TV news anchor, an invite to a gallery opening, a request to address a journalism course at UCLA, invitations from many of the LAPD division heads to visit their teams and many more.
I was surprised at how busy she actually was, having never really thought about it, I suppose I'd thought she sat around waiting for something to happen then turned up to distract the media, which on reflection was a bit silly.
Natalie accepted every invite she could, advising Lilly to flag those she couldn't so that she could ring them personally and apologise and discuss rescheduling.
It took a couple of minutes to work through, but I didn't mind, it was interesting to watch her work. Finally, they wrapped up, with Lilly taking her leave with a smile at both of us.
"Sorry about that Brenda, we normally run through the forward schedule at this time each week, otherwise it gets away from me"
"I had no idea you were in such demand Natalie" She shrugged.
"Some of it's because of the role, some of it's because I'm seen as having an in to the Chief's office, some of it is simply because once you accept one invitation and the word gets around that you're interested in what people do, then everyone wants to chat" She smiled and spread her hands, indicating the building and beyond.
"Honestly, I don't mind, I like dealing with people and you learn so much, not just about the LAPD, but how this city works. In some respects the non-LAPD invites are some of the most interesting, as you start hearing some of the gossip and who has the real power in the city" She leaned back in her chair, smiling at me.
"Anyway, you didn't come here to listen to me prattle on, how can I help?"
"I suppose you know what I'm here for?" She considered me for a moment.
"Ana mentioned that you'd spoken and you may be round to visit. When she left it at that I knew it was something I'd hear from you in due course"
"You weren't curious?"
"No, if I needed to know, she would have told me, as she didn't, I knew I'd hear it from you"
I paused, realising how much trust and understanding was contained in those couple of statements. Ana's words came back to me, 'two halves of the same brain'. I nodded and tilted my head to one side.
"Why did you seek out a relationship with Anastasia?" She sat looking at me for a good fifteen seconds with a quizzical expression on her face, before she smiled at me, getting up and shutting the door to her office. As I watched she sat back and nodded at the door.
"For your privacy, not mine. Everyone out there knows about me but I'm sure you'd prefer a little discretion" I smiled in thanks.
"So, you're wondering how a nice straight girl from Wyoming ended up a raging lesbian and whether it's contagious"
'Oh my god' With a lot of effort I kept a straight face.
"Well… yes" Her smile seemed to stretch from ear to ear.
"I thought as much. How about I tell you it's because Ana makes me scream most nights and no, unfortunately it's not, otherwise we'd be throwing buckets of cold water over you and Sharon"
I couldn't help it; my face must have been as red as a beetroot. It took a few seconds before I was able to compose myself enough to reply.
"Thank you for that explanation, but that's a consequence, not a reason" She leaned back, a grin on her face.
"Ok Brenda, I'll explain, but don't blame me for any embarrassment that ensues. If you wanted prim and proper you should have asked Maura"
"I did, we had a long chat and she suggested I needed to get other people's perspectives, including yours"
"Hence the discussion with Ana"
"Yes"
"Have you spoken to Jane yet?" I shook my head.
"No not yet" Natalie nodded.
"Jane will probably be a bit more circumspect about it than I. I'm actually happy to be out, it shuts down a good half of the people who might hit on me, the rest learn that I belong to a FBI Special Agent and that scares them off. That's a good thing, by the way, as Ana shooting them would really kill the mood" I smiled to myself, two could play this game.
"We wouldn't want that, would we?" One eyebrow lifted as she regarded me.
"No we wouldn't. Being investigated by FID is a serious passion killer and I'm sure that's not the type of hands-on investigation you're looking forward to Sharon undertaking" I felt my face start to redden again.
"I thought we were discussing you?"
"I suppose we were, weren't we?" She smiled a tiny smile.
"You were telling me about you and Anastasia"
"I became friends with Anastasia because I thought she was an admirable person doing a difficult job well. You heard about how we first met, during that siege. Well seeing her reaction to what happened made me feel like she was a kindred spirit, so I rang her and asked to talk" Natalie shrugged and leaned back.
"I hadn't even thought about a relationship with her, just friendship. I wasn't gay; I'd never even considered it, after all Cheyenne Wyoming isn't necessarily the gay pride capital of the North West"
"So what happened to change that?"
"Anastasia happened. I found the person she was to be someone I really liked, she's giving and strong and vulnerable and protective" Natalie paused for a moment, as if wondering what to say.
"The more I saw of Ana the more I respected her. She was everything you could ask for in a friend and a confident. She was there when I needed her, but gave me space without question when I needed it. Loyal and supportive, but equally there to keep me grounded and pick me up when I fell. But as time went on I realised that she was the one giving, the one who would be there for me, but would never let me be there for her. It was only later that I understood she somehow didn't think she was worthy others time and energy" Natalie slowly shook her head.
"I couldn't understand her thinking, I respected the job she did, the commitment she put into making the world a safer place for everyone, the strength of character she possessed and the inner strength that had carried her through two war zones and some pretty horrible things. I also really, really liked the person I saw, the friend I had come to really trust and rely on" Natalie shrugged at me.
"To be honest Brenda, I didn't think I was worthy of her. She's a much stronger, much more honourable and more worthy person than I. I really wanted to be there for her, the way she was for me, but she was always the strong one. Never showing weakness, never one for giving less than her best at whatever she did; I wanted to be the friend for her that she was for me"
"What happened to make you want to move from friendship to lovers?"
"We were out clubbing and she saved me from an ex, it was a seriously terrifying incident. The guy who was pawing me was a line-backer, he weighed more than Ana and I combined, he was drunk, angry and wanted to make me pay for dumping him. There was no security anywhere in sight and he had half a dozen of his teammates there, all as big as he was. I was afraid I was going to be assaulted or raped" I nodded, remembering hearing the story at Jane and Maura's.
"Without hesitating Ana stepped in and saved me from him, when he didn't back down and went to hit her she left him smashed and bleeding on the ground, then stared down all of his friends. They actually got out of her way when she led me out of there" She looked straight at me.
"I didn't find out until later that night that she wasn't carrying a gun either. She stepped in unarmed and without backup to save me" She sighed. "Brenda, how could you not care for someone who put themselves on the line for a friend?"
"Anastasia obviously cared for you deeply"
"Yes, and it was reciprocated, I cared so much for her. As I told you last weekend, I came to realise that she was everything admirable in someone that I had been looking for"
"And you ended up in a relationship"
"Not that quickly, it wasn't fall into bed that night and fuck ourselves stupid, that came later" She winked at me, while I was sure she said some of this just to embarrass me. "Once we realised we cared for each other we started to talk, about everything. We used to sit on a sofa and chat for hours, well, kissing and chatting, lots of kissing" She grinned at me.
"We worked through a lot of issues, covered a lot of ground over a couple of weeks, between both of us. By the time we had moved from the sofa to the bed, we were a lot more comfortable with whom we were and what we meant to each other" She shrugged.
"When it came to the sex part, well Ana had some experience and I'd watched a few videos online to get the general idea. Still, I wasn't prepared for what happened. I'd had plenty of sex in my life, I get a lot of offers and I'd taken up enough of them, but that was sex, this was love" She smiled softly.
"It wasn't great, it wasn't amazing, it wasn't acrobatic, it wasn't anything like that, that's the physical. Making love to Ana simply blew my mind into tiny pieces. That the person I loved more than anything loved me the same way, that she wanted it to be perfect for me and I wanted it to be perfect for her. We didn't get any sleep that night, simply because making the other person happy and loved and totally complete meant more to us than getting off" I smiled, Natalie made it sound like bliss.
"Besides, we got to the paint-peeling, bed-breaking sex soon enough" I couldn't help it, I had to laugh.
You're incorrigible!" She smiled sweetly.
"I try"
"So it just grew from there"
"No"
"Oh?" I was confused; she'd just announced that she had fallen in love. "What went wrong?"
"Me. I didn't realise it but I had my own set of insecurities which undermined our relationship. To be honest, I really didn't think she would stick it out with me. Don't get me wrong, I loved her, but I thought she would tire of me, get bored and leave"
"Why for ever for?"
"Brenda, for the first 12 months, I kept wondering when she would leave, find that while the exterior was nice, the person inside was too superficial, too flighty to be worthy of the love she so freely gives. Basically I didn't think I was the sort of person who was good enough for her" "Natalie stared at the photo on her desk for a few seconds.
"I thought someone better, a more, I don't know, a more worthy person would enter her life and be the right match for her" She glanced up at me and indicated the room around us.
"She's the reason I'm here. When I heard about the job with the Seattle Police, I applied for it, partly because I wanted to be more like her, doing something more meaningful than being a talking head on the news" She shrugged again.
"I would have ended up being some bimbo news anchor, skilled in not fluffing my lines and looking good on camera, while she was out there putting her life on the line each day. That wouldn't have been the act of someone who was worthy of her, so I changed"
Natalie looked up at the list of dead officers on her wall, contemplating the names there for a moment.
"I wanted to do something that had more meaning, but I don't have a tenth of her bravery, to be honest, I'm a bit of a coward, violence scares me, I have the greatest admiration for you and Sharon and Jane and Anastasia for putting yourselves on the line, risking your life to protect others. I couldn't do that. So I tried to help in other ways"
"You do that, the media seem to be responding much better than when Taylor was making a mess of it" She grimaced.
"Why thank you Brenda, if I couldn't do a better job than that ass I should go back to chasing ambulances in Seattle. I think I'll be insulted now" I realised I'd spoken tactlessly; again.
"Sorry, I didn't mean it like that" She grinned at me as I realised she was teasing me. "And you know it!"
"Yes I do; and thank you. Anyway, I was suffering from some pretty poor self-esteem issues, I'd always attracted people who said they loved me, but who really just wanted to have me. Ana wasn't like that, she actually felt she wasn't worthy of me, and that she had to protect me from the unpleasantness that some of her life had dumped on her. She actually wanted to keep me safe from her" Natalie slowly shook her head.
"Ana wanted to protect me from her, from her life and whatever pain it might bring me, I'd never encountered someone who was willing to deny the love she obviously felt for me, to cause herself pain and anguish, to protect me and keep me safe"
"I couldn't let her do that to herself. I'd be a pretty miserable friend, let alone lover, if I let that happen. So I simply refused to let her do that, I forced her to open up and let me in and when she did I learnt something truly scary" I looked at her, as she lost herself in the picture of them in London, obviously deep in thought. I waited until she came back to me.
"Brenda, Anastasia loves me, completely and wholeheartedly, she truly loves me, not the shell everyone else sees, but the person I am inside, with my own insecurities and despite my flaws and failures and fears"
"I didn't truly understand how deep her commitment to me was, until she took me to meet her father. Her father meant everything to her; he'd raised her alone since she was seven. I knew she was terrified that he wouldn't accept me or that his daughter was a lesbian; that the thought of disappointing him scared her"
I nodded, understanding the fears a child has for disappointing her parents.
"But she also told me that if he couldn't accept me, then her life was with me, not him. If he didn't want her to be happy with me, then she would turn and walk away"
"How did he take it?"
"He looked at us both, where we were sitting on the couch side by side, holding hands, scared stiff after telling him. He asked Ana to go outside and come back in a while because he had some things he had to ask me. She didn't like it but she went"
"Was he angry?" She shook her head.
"No, he was very calm actually. He asked me if I loved his daughter, if I would protect her and cherish her and love her till we died. I told him I would and would spend every day trying to be worthy of her love. We talked for a while as he asked me about my parents and whether they accepted Ana, how we saw our life growing together, our future, children, old age, a lot of things" She smiled.
"Then he finally called Anastasia in from where she was waiting and told her that he was very happy that she had brought home his other daughter, his dochka" * I could see some tears forming in her eyes as she spoke.
"He also told her that she had good taste; that we would have many strong, beautiful children who would grow up surrounded by love and happiness and he looked forward to bouncing those wonderful grandchildren on his knee and telling them how lucky they were to have two beautiful mothers to make sure they never lacked for anything" Natalie opened a draw and pulled a tissue out, wiping at her eyes.
I was quiet as she dried her tears, though I didn't understand why, I realised that something had happened which had affected her deeply.
"Sorry about that Brenda. It's just that he died less than six months later, he had a massive stroke that almost killed him. We flew there as soon as we were called; got there in time to say goodbye, it was as if he held on long enough for us to be there, then he let go. It left Ana pretty devastated, she has no other family; all she has is me now"
I realised now why it had hit her so hard. The loss of her father must have been another bitter blow to Anastasia, coming not long after they had found each other; it must have been hard on both of them, especially given all the other people Ana had lost.
'I'm so sorry Natalie, I didn't mean to dredge up bad memories" She smiled sadly at me.
"It's alright Brenda. It was very hard, especially on Ana. After the funeral, we sold her father's farm and we both took some time off and travelled to Europe. She wanted to share some of the things she had experienced there with her father, so we visited England, Germany and Italy, plus we spent a week in Paris"
"Did it help?" She nodded.
"A lot, we needed to get away and just be together, far from the stress of work and being what everyone else expected us to be. It was important we go away for a while" I nodded; sometimes the anonymity of travelling gives you a chance to reflect.
"It was on that trip that I realised that Ana and I were destined to be together for the rest of our lives. She kind of fell apart a bit and I had to be the strong one for her, the first time she had let herself rely on me. I also realised just how much Ana loved and cherished me, to let me be there for her when she needed it"
"It was on that trip I also realised that we needed each other, we each made the other person whole. Life without her wasn't worth living and Ana felt the same way" She glanced at the watch on her wrist and smiled.
"C'mon Brenda, this's got a little heavy, so let's go grab a coffee and I'll tell you what you should be doing to Sharon" I frowned.
"Don't you mean doing WITH Sharon?" Standing up she favoured me with a wickedly evil grin.
"I know exactly what I said. C'mon, I'm buying"
Translation
* Daughter
