It had all happened in the blink of an eye, yet it felt like it lasted a lifetime.
He...really did it... she thought to herself, trying to make sense of the past few minutes. There wasn't any sense to be made. Opening her eyes slightly, but not making out any object in particular through the blurriness that were her tears, she didn't know what to feel. Shock, guilt, anger... or relief?
She laughed nervously for a moment, denying reality to its extent. It was over... everything was over. Or was it?
She was in shock, and nothing was real. It couldn't be. This was all some sick and twisted game. Or better yet, she was dead. Yeah, that's it. She was dead, and this was hell. That was her only rational explanation.
Drying her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, she tried to focus on the grain of the wooden floor, but try as she might, she couldn't see anything. Her mind simply refused to process the images in front of her. He had killed himself, she could almost feel it deep within her bones, yet she couldn't bring herself to actually believe it.
For the few moments she remained standing there, as an eerie ambiance settled itself in the air of his small apartment. She could smell the distinct odor of a freshly fired gun, and she knew she was likely covered in residue. Great. One more thing she'd have to clean up she noted as the stray thought poked its way into her racing mind. What was she supposed to do now? Was she to run, never looking back? However, she couldn't make her legs move regardless if she even tried. She felt... paralyzed.
Only once before had she experienced such uncertainty, such fear... such loneliness. As she cowered there, memories of her mother lying lifeless on that cold hardwood floor flashed before her eyes. That image... that shade... Blood red, there's no other crimson like it. The funny thing was that she saw it daily, but she couldn't bring herself to visualize that color surrounding him now. She couldn't do this. She couldn't see this. Hell, she couldn't even breathe.
Instead of facing whatever picture was behind her, she chose to think about how it all could have come down to this. She had seen it before—fresh off the street, rookie detectives suffering horribly from premature burnout. It had happened to him, she knew, but there was so much more to it than that. She was at fault here too. The grief was substantial—the guilt? Unbearable.
She could remember just two years ago, how a jovial man who bounced unwittingly into her life made her smile. She remembered how things finally felt right (or at least less wrong), and how it seemed not so scary somehow, to let someone see a side of her that she had buried long ago. She recalled feeling safe around him, and he had been a source of comfort for a while. And there was the way his eyes once glistened in the dim lighting of the Pogue as they shared many a dance. She had fallen for him, little by little, and for once she was beginning to think it might have been okay to.
But then their lives had changed. It simply wasn't the same after the entire Malden mess. Sure, they acted like everything was fine... and he eventually stopped by the pub again—resuming some sort of normal routine. They tried to push it all in the past, go on like nothing huge had ever happened. In fact, it was silently declared taboo to even speak of it. However, the tension between them remained an ever constant reminder that the past doesn't simply go away. And if left without confrontation, it never would.
She had subconsciously pushed him away when she needed him the most... exactly like she had done to anyone and everyone else who had come too close. But she never really got over him. Even now, she felt as though there was still a vacancy in her heart that only he could somehow fill. Why couldn't she have simply told him that when she had the chance?
He had taken on a heavier caseload after the Cahill crisis, and her soft country detective had begun to grow a hard shell. Over the past seven months, he became... distant. He no longer asked for those dances, and his smiles gradually became increasingly less frequent. In fact, she was hard pressed to even recall the sound of his laughter. She realized now that he had become increasingly withdrawn, and rarely talked about anything other than what a case may demand. He had thrown himself into his work more fiercely than ever, and it had been slowly eating away at him, much like a parasite feeds upon a host. She would have noticed it sooner, if it weren't for that damn brick wall always holding her an arm's length away.
The fact that something was indeed wrong did become apparent to her a few weeks ago, when he had broken off all contact with the city of Boston. It had been one night at the bar, when he mentioned something about feeling lost. He confessed to her that he wasn't sure that he'd made any of the right choices in his life, and that he was almost certain his parents were disappointed with his career path, though they never expressed any of the aforementioned disappointment. She hadn't said much of anything, but simply lent him a sympathetic ear. And the next day when she went to check up on him, maybe buy him lunch, he was gone. No goodbye, no nothing.
She had held this intense resentment at the way he left. She felt like he had given up on her somehow, and grew to begrudge that feeling in a very short amount of time. But looking back at that now, she knew it wasn't fair of her to snap at him like she had. Their argument and the bitter words they tossed out would be forever etched into her mind. And the sad part was starting to dawn on her—she had been so wrong. He had told her that he loved her just an hour ago; that he needed her, and she shot him down.
And now he shot himself down.
Between the guilt, the grief, the shock, and the anger, she began to wonder just where he ran to for those few weeks. She had planned on utilizing Nigel's powers for evil once again, but it occurred to her that maybe he hadn't wanted to be found. In fact, she was so upset with how he had left, she didn't really care. At least that's what she had told herself at the time. And she had promised herself that if he did ever come back, she wouldn't fall into that trap again.
She didn't know what had happened to him, but if the gradual wear and tear on her farm boy wasn't enough, he had learned that both his parents were killed in a multiple motor vehicle accident not three weeks prior. That's why he had left without explaination—to bury his mother and his father, together. He wanted so badly for her to come with, to be there for him, but he couldn't bring himself to ask. He just didn't have the heart to tell her, and he figured they were only friends anyway. It wouldn't have been fair of him to further disrupt her life simply because his was all upside down.
And now he had gone and scared the crap out of her... she was just standing there, shaken, probably thinking that he was dead.
She sighed heavily and began to crawl toward the door as he emptied the rest of the clip into his armchair. Had she not been there, he'd likely have followed his first impulse, and all she had thought to be true, would have been. But fate, it seemed, was finally on his side. Damn, now he needed to get a new recliner.
But soon the despondency hit him like a jackhammer pounds pavement. What had he just done? And in front of her no less? It was all a big mess. His life was one huge jumble of crap.
With a gasp, she turned to face him, noticing a desperate figure that was still alive, but far from well. The sound of his sidearm falling upon the wooden floor was music to her ears. He wasn't dead, at least not until she was through with him. Her mind raced as quickly as her heart was, and she began to feel infuriated all over again. But not without a hint of relief...