I hate funerals.
The feelings of loss hanging over your heart like an executioner's axe. The feelings of guilt gnawing away at your insides, threatening to consume everything. The solemn faces gathered together, crowding the pews with strangers. Everyone's filled to the brim with grief and morbid thoughts of their own mortality. Not to mention all the religious propaganda being spewed at you everywhere you turn.
Damn, he must've rubbed off on me some.
Not even the satisfaction of solving the case had eased the pain of his absence, ironic what fate derives pleasure from. The perpetrator was shot by a stray bullet in the convenience store, shot by a robber's bullet in the leg. It was during the interviewing later at the hospital that the perp had a sudden attack of conscience and confessed. I'd like to believe that seeing the mass of blue uniforms spooked him into spilling his dirty little secret to those Robbery detectives, but maybe it was guilt. Guilt is a funny thing, you know. It also has to be one of the most powerful of human emotions, I know that better then anyone.
My new partner's good, but she's not him. I'm sure she's a good cop and a good person, but she's not him. Maybe everyone's right and I'm too set in my ways, but that can be a good thing. I can't help but think that if I had insisted, put my foot down on accompanying him to interviewing the witness up in Brooklyn, that he'd be alive today. Heung had encouraged us to 'talk about our feelings,' which was departmental code for 'mandatory head shrinking.'
To be honest I don't recognize half of the people here, they must be from his old unit. Now that's devotion, loyalty, friendship. Call it what you will, but that man was loved. He loved us back, though he could never truly find the words to say it. We knew though, we knew. I smile slightly as I listen to the voices behind me. They had to be from his old unit, the story they were telling had to be pre-SVU. As they laugh quietly at the tale of my partner knocking a pair of perps' heads together, I can almost picture my partner. I chance a glance at Elliot and Olivia, and notice that they're trying not to laugh out loud. The captain's own body is shaking from the contained laughter as tears stream down his rosy cheeks. Whether they are tears of sorrow or of laughter, I don't know.
God, it feels good to laugh.
Sitting here, waiting for the memorial service to conclude, I can't help but think that I never had the chance to say "goodbye." That he won't be there to snuggle up with after a long, arduous case or hear him call my name in bed. His voice will never say "I love you, you know" again. All I could think of when the captain broke the news to me was "my partner's gone."
In more ways then one, he was my partner. Its been two days and .......its official, I'm cursed and my partner's gone.