AN: GUYS! This took forever, but this is only HALF of the chapter I have written (for those keeping score, that means I had over 6k worth of Rollisi chillin' on my Mac)! The other half is waiting to be edited, but I figured I'd slacked off long enough and I'd post what I had fixed up so far. Thank you so much for your patience and continued interest in this nonsense. FYI: this bit ties in the request for Book of Esther stuff, to be continued next chapter!
there will be days / when even the strong ones need shelter too / honey let me shelter you
Amanda stared at the television in her New Jersey motel room; HGTV was her other secret, guilty pleasure. The intricate details of modern farmhouse decor were so far from the sorts of things that occupied the corners of her mind on a daily basis, so she couldn't help but be fascinated by people who had the luxury of worrying about it all. Would the apron sink look silly with the marble counter tops? How would the reclaimed wood cabinets contrast against the floors? How many mason jars is considered too many mason jars? Watching a picture-perfect family wander through their dream home, Amanda tried to imagine her own loved ones occupying such a chic and expensive space. Ruby's sippy cup would probably put a few unsightly dents into a five thousand dollar pinewood kitchen table...
A quick knock on the door startled Amanda out of her reverie. Confused, she hauled tired limbs up off of the bed to approach the door. Rising up onto her toes, she attempted to peer through the peep hole, but the old glass was clouded and it distorted the image of whoever was outside. "Real safe," she muttered sarcastically before pulling open the door, allowing a rush of cold night air into the room. Her eyes immediately widened at the sight of her husband, standing tall and lean in his navy peacoat beneath the flickering neon light outside. He was wearing a smug smile, clearly proud that he had managed to surprise her, a dimple making an impression in one of his rosy cheeks. "Sonny!" she exclaimed as she threw her arms around him, her reaction on par with a person who'd been separated from their loved one for a year - not a few hours. "What are you doing here?!"
Sonny's arms encircled her frame as he held her close in a hug. "My parents offered to watch the kids so I thought I'd take a little road trip."
Without breaking their embrace, she pulled back to look at him, their blue eyes meeting. "Baby..." she simpered with a pout, "I'm so happy to see you."
"You just saw me this afternoon!" he chuckled. It was true: hours earlier Amanda had driven back into the city to report her findings regarding the Labott investigation to the rest of the squad.
"I know, it's just..." she trailed off, unable to put into words the precise reason for her intense gratitude.
Sonny shrugged as he grinned down at her; he didn't seem to need an explanation. "Well, I figured you might be wantin' a little company."
She nodded, then tugged at the lapels of his coat to bring him in from the cold.
"As usual, NYPD really spares no expense on the digs, huh?" he quipped, looking around the shabby motel room with raised eyebrows as he shouldered off his jacket. He tossed it onto the armchair in the corner, where Amanda had tossed the clothes she had worn earlier that day.
"Yeah, well, considerin' I'm not even really supposed to be here..." Amanda muttered sheepishly, raking a hand through her hair. She huffed out a sigh before admitting, "since I saw y'all, I've been debating whether I'm gonna go to the Labott's house tomorrow..."
Sonny unholstered his gun from his hip and set it on the table, then dropped down onto the bed, leaning his back against the headboard. He toed off his shoes before stretching his long legs out in front of him. "Y'think their gonna invite you in for tea and cookies?" he asked skeptically as he visibly relaxed.
She started to pace at the foot of the bed as she thought, arms crossed loosely over her chest. "No, but maybe if I can just get Esther alone for a couple of minutes, away from her father-"
"And do what, Amanda? Kidnap her and bring her to our house?" Sonny interrupted, sounding weary. "You gotta focus less on savin' her and more on the bigger picture here."
Amanda stopped moving and sighed. She looked at her husband, who appeared exhausted - maybe from a day at work, more likely from hearing her ramble on about Esther incessantly. "Do you want me to not talk about this anymore?" she guessed.
He used both palms to rub at his face roughly before dropping his hands back down at his sides. "Kinda, yeah," he admitted, "just for a little while."
Even though she was prepared for his response, Amanda felt a little prickle of embarrassment anyway. She gave a nod of understanding as she mumbled, "sorry."
"S'alright."
Moving to the side of the bed, she straddled Sonny's lap. She lazily snaked her arms around his neck and rested her forehead against his, their noses bumping as she mumbled again, "I'm really glad you're here."
"You're not mad I'm checkin' up on you?" he wondered as his arms encircled her waist.
She quirked an eyebrow. "Is that what you're doin'?"
His hands slid beneath the fabric of her shirt, his palms sliding over the warm skin of her back as he admitted sheepishly, "maybe a little bit."
"Well..." Amanda lifted her head to meet his eyes with a teasing grin. "You wouldn't be the Sonny Carisi I know and love if you weren't." She cupped the side of his face with one of her hands and admired his familiar, handsome features. "Thanks."
"You're thankin' me?" Sonny asked with both skepticism and amusement in his tone. "You usually hate it."
"I know, I do hate it," she insisted quickly, as if she was afraid he might think she had changed. With gentle fingertips, she unnecessarily fiddled with strands of Sonny's hair that had fallen against his forehead, nudging them back upward. "It's just... this Esther thing's been taking over my head lately and..." She dropped her hand down with a sigh, putting her arm back around his neck loosely as she concluded, "I could use a distraction."
He nodded, his palms making slow, soothing circles against her back muscles. "Y'wanna go out and get a drink or some dinner or something?"
Amanda shook her head before sinking her teeth into her lower lip sheepishly. "I know it's not much to look at, but can we just stay here? I kinda just wanna be with you."
Sonny pressed a kiss into her lips as his hands gave her waist a squeeze. "'Course."
She leaned in and met his mouth with her own again, fingers wandering down between their bodies so she could begin to tug his dress shirt out of his pants. All at once, a realization flashed through her mind and her hands paused their work as she pulled away once more. Eyes narrowed, Amanda gave Sonny an expectant look. "Did you finish your homework assignment?"
He furrowed his brow in confusion. "I had an assignment?"
"Yeah," Amanda replied, using a finger to poke at his stomach emphatically. "Leo's middle name."
Sonny perked up instantaneously at the reminder. "Oh, yeah." He reached beneath himself to pull his phone from his back pocket, swiped through it with his thumb, then turned the screen to face her. "Here, I made a list," he told Amanda proudly.
With a smirk, she took the device and looked down at the small list he had typed into the 'notes' section. A grin lit up her features at the first name she read; it sent warmth straight to her chest. "Leo Michael," Amanda recited, lifting her gaze to meet Sonny's. "That's a perfect name."
"Y'think so?" Sonny smiled, "I liked it a lot. It just... came to me."
She set his phone down on the nightstand. "What if he doesn't look like a Leo Michael?"
"Then we'll think of something else," he assured her easily.
Amanda put a palm against her flat abdomen thoughtfully. "It's so weird, Sonny, talkin' about this baby and not... having him inside of me," she confessed. Her brow furrowed with a realization: "I'm never gonna feel that again."
Sonny tilted his head slightly as he studied her, a shadow of concern crossing his face. "Does that bother you?"
"No," she answered him honestly after a moment of consideration, shaking her head. "The end result is the same."
Heavy and warm, Amanda felt a gentle nudge against her shoulder that allowed conscious awareness to float to the forefront of her hazy mind. Her eyes fluttered open to see Sonny's tall form hovering over her, shrugging his suit jacket over his shoulders.
"Mm, y'goin'?" she rumbled from beneath the cheap sheets. She burrowed deeper instead of making an effort to get up and join him, but she stuck an arm out to fumble for her phone. Bleary-eyed, she blinked at the time on the device's screen - five-fifteen a.m. - then tossed it back on the nightstand.
"Yeah," Sonny replied, slipping his tie around his collar before he began to knot it with practiced hands. "Traffic back into the city's gonna be hell."
She let out a yawn. "K."
"What are you gonna do?" he wondered.
"I'm goin'."
"Goin'...?"
"To the Labott's house."
"Remember: we don't have any bedrooms left for Esther," Sonny quipped.
"Very funny," she grumbled.
He leaned down and took her chin between his fingers, tilting it upward so he could kiss her. "Love you."
"Love you," Amanda murmured.
Storming out of the interrogation room, Amanda's anger was barely contained by Liv's office. She was boiling hot with it, mere seconds away from putting her hands on Labott in the most unprofessional yet satisfying way. She knew her lieutenant would pull her out of there for getting out of control - hell, maybe she had been counting on it - but it felt good to at least express even just a fraction of the disgust she harbored for a man who had enslaved, tortured and brainwashed his entire family. She was willing to endure the consequences from Liv - again.
"Amanda..." Liv's tone was warning as she eyed the blonde detective pacing her office erratically. "I know that this is hard-"
"Hard? Just imagine how hard those kids' lives were!" Amanda exclaimed indignantly, "and then to have to sit there and listen to that zealot use God to justify it!"
"I get it, Amanda," Liv assured her levelly, "but I need you to get your head on straight."
"Okay. I'm fine," she insisted insincerely.
"Okay? Do you think you can do that?"
"Yes."
"Because when this case is finally over-"
"It is over," Amanda said, tone brash as she finally came to a halt in front of the lieutenant's desk.
Liv's features turned stony. "I wish that were true."
She furrowed her brow in silent confusion.
"Preliminary ballistics came back on the siege of the Labott house," the lieutenant continued.
"That was fast," Amanda murmured.
"You fired the bullet that killed Esther Labott."
All of the air left Amanda's lungs. "No..." she gasped. The anger she had felt moments ago was replaced with breathless horror - how could she be the person that had ended Esther Labott's life? "Oh, God..."
Liv took a cautious step toward her. "Amanda..."
"Oh, my God..." she wheezed as she dropped to sit down onto the nearest available surface: the edge of the coffee table. Her limbs felt weak, tremulous and woefully ill-equipped to support her.
"You know the drill. You're gonna talk to the Force Investigative Group and you're gonna talk to IAB," Liv explained coolly, bending slightly to speak to Amanda at eye-level, "and I am confident that you're going to be back on the job in the next few days."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Amanda moaned as tears slid down her face, although she didn't even know who she was apologizing to. Could Esther hear her, wherever she was? Each of her hands gripped hair on either side of her head, shaking fingers threatening to tear out blonde strands. "Oh, my God..."
Liv pressed her lips together; she appeared a combination of sad and stern before she slipped out of the room, leaving the detective alone. By herself, it gave Amanda the opportunity to allow more of the tears burning her eyes to fall, but seconds later she heard the door to the opposite interview room swing open.
"Hey, Lieu, I-" Sonny came bursting into Liv's office appearing energized and eager to report his discussion with Mrs. Labott to his Lieutenant, but skidded to a halt at the sight of Amanda crumpled over in the middle of the room. "'Manda? What's wrong? What happened?" he demanded immediately, rushing over to crouch down in front of her.
"It was me, Sonny," was all Amanda could manage.
Sonny gently gripped both of her wrists in an attempt to get a better look at her face. "What was you?" he urged her, "What happened?"
"I killed her," she croaked, her fingers releasing their vice-like grip on her hair and instead trembling around her head. "I shot her. I killed Esther." Saying those words out loud sent Amanda's stomach lurching; she barely kept herself from vomiting all over Sonny.
"Whoa, whoa, wait a second," Sonny stammered, obviously stunned. "How do you know that?"
"Liv, she just told me. The ballistics report just came back," Amanda was able to explain as she shakily stood up straight, although her voice didn't sound like her own. "I fired twice. And one of the bullets... the bullet that killed her came from my gun."
Sonny winced as he rose slowly to his feet, too. "'Manda, oh God..." he breathed in disbelief, dragging his fingers through his hair.
"Dead-Eye Amanda. That's me, right?" she remarked huskily, her sarcasm painful to her own ears. It prompted another onslaught of tears. "I was only trying to help and I killed her," she choked, "how could this happen? How could, out of all the... how could it be me that did that?"
"I don't know. I don't know, but this is a freak thing, a thing you couldn't control," Sonny insisted almost frantically, grabbing at both of her forearms to look her in the eye. "You could have never known this would happen. I mean, the odds of this..."
"I just wanted to help her escape from, from that hell hole she was trapped in..."
Liv suddenly reappeared in her office, her brown eyes wide with confusion before they narrowed on Sonny. "Carisi, what are you doing out here? Where's Labott's wife?"
Sonny instinctively let go of Amanda but remained by her side. "I just finished with her in interview two," he explained distractedly. "What's goin' on? The ballistics came back? Are you-"
"Rollins, I need your weapon," Liv interrupted him briskly, her attention focused on Amanda as if she had never asked Sonny any questions at all, "somebody from the Force Investigative Group needs to talk to you upstairs now."
"C'mon, Lieu, can't that wait till tomorrow?" Sonny pleaded, his decision to insert himself a bold one.
Liv shot him a warning look, one that wordlessly indicated that he was absolutely overstepping his bounds.
"It's alright, Sonny," Amanda insisted, hastily wiping away the tears she had been freely shedding just moments earlier. She would be damned if she let any administrative officers see her crying. "I'll go, I'm going..."
xx
Amanda didn't return home until nine thirty; every bone in her body felt like lead as she dragged herself through the darkened first floor. She was grateful it was quiet, but sad that once again she had missed the benign chaos of a normal weekday night with her family. The Force Investigative Group didn't challenge her about the siege on the Labott house - no protocols had been broken - but Amanda still felt emotionally drained. She hadn't been worried about formalities or procedures - she was worried about the life she had unintentionally stolen. She couldn't seem to get her stomach out of her throat or the crushing weight off of her heart; she felt tremulous and nauseated with the sheer effort it took to keep from replaying her last moments with Esther over and over again in her mind.
With heavy footsteps, Amanda slowly made her way up the stairs until she reached the silent second floor. When she nudged open the master bedroom door, Sonny practically leapt off of the bed where he was laying down watching television.
"How'd it go?" he asked her anxiously. He appeared wild-eyed with worry, out of his suit and tie in favor of his old Staten Island precinct t-shirt and basketball shorts.
She closed the door behind her and shrugged. "It went."
"Did you talk to IAB?" he wondered.
"Not yet." She took her watch off and set it on the bureau. "Tomorrow, probably."
"Y'want some dinner?" he offered eagerly, "I saved you some."
She shook her head, which was pounding. The thought of eating repulsed her.
"How 'bout a drink?" Sonny tried.
For some reason, as Amanda's eyes flickered around the room, they settled on a photograph of Ruby and Sonny on their bookshelf. She remembered taking the picture: both of them were asleep on the living room couch, an infant Ruby in the crook of Sonny's arm, Sonny's head lolled to one side with exhaustion. Hot tears sprung to Amanda's eyes, suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that Esther would never have a child, or get married, or do anything at all ever again. She felt bile rise in her throat in disgust, because Esther's lack of a future was all her fault.
"Hey, c'mere," Sonny coaxed her gently, taking one long stride to Amanda's side, "it's okay, Amanda. It's alright." He reached for her, tugging at her arm and guiding her to the edge of the bed. "Just sit down, alright? Take a deep breath."
Boneless, Amanda complied and dropped down to sit on the mattress as tears escaped her sore eyes. "I just wanted... to help her..."
"You did help. You... you, you connected with her more than anybody else ever had, probably in her entire life," Sonny insisted, voice strained with the obvious effort to convince her that this was not her fault, "you went totally above and beyond for her, Amanda, and you advocated for somebody who didn't know how to ask for the help she needed." His put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her into his side. She leaned into him willingly and his lips grazed the top of her head as he continued to speak quietly, "she had a miserable existence. She was a slave to a... a screwy version of faith that kept her sick and isolated and, and totally stunted. You fought to try to free her from all that."
"And now she's dead," she sobbed freely into his t-shirt, "I connected with her, I, I advocated for her and then I killed her."
He pulled back suddenly, gripping her shoulders with his hands so he could look her in the eye, even though her head was hung. "You fired into that house like everybody else, tryin' to protect your fellow officers while keepin' the Labott family safe," Sonny told her sternly. His palms moved to cup her face, thumbs grazing over her cheek bones to brush her tears away, although his efforts were futile. "There's no good explanation for this, 'Manda, okay?" he concluded softly, "all I can say is, all I can say is that at least Esther died knowin' somebody was in her corner."
She felt her features crumple in Sonny's palms again at his words. Her mind flashed to the image of Esther's lifeless body on the ground and the sensation of the younger woman's small and fragile hand in her own; she could have sworn she felt it in her grasp right then and there. As guilt twisted her stomach again, Amanda yearned to take solace in what her husband was telling her. "I just feel so sad for her. Why'd it have to happen this way? Why'd she have to, have to, be tortured her whole life just to die like this?" she whispered, "for me to do this to her?" She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. "I keep thinking about our kids," she croaked, "out of all the shit I've done, this is something I'd never want them to know..."
"All they know is that you're a great mother and a great cop," he promised, "this doesn't change that."
"I don't feel like it," she said pathetically, roughly rubbing at her running nose with the back of her hand. "I feel like a piece of shit."
Sonny reached up and smoothed her hair away from her face with the kind of gentleness that reminded her of the way he cared for any of the children when they were upset or sick - with complete, genuine compassion. Through her sore and bleary eyes she watched him frown and shake his head. "You aren't, 'Manda."
Amanda met his eyes and shrugged. "It's over now," she concluded after a moment of silence. Her words sounded hollow but she wanted to say them, because maybe that would make them true.
He nodded slowly, cautiously, as if he wasn't sure if he should agree. "Yeah, it is."
She sunk her teeth into her lower lip and felt her eyes begin to prickle with hot tears again. Even if it was over, it still happened - and it was still her wrongdoing to atone for. She just wasn't confident that she ever could.
