A/N: This is what I get for having too much sugar. I get the weirdest ideas when I'm hyper, I swear. Oh, and CI isn't mine.
He's always hated cases that involved children. Even back in Homicide. Then, it had been even worse: every child he came across was dead. Staten Island wasn't as bad, even if he'd hated being out there. But this…he shakes his head in disgust, staring down at the paperwork he's now faced with. It's the last thing he wants to be doing. He wants to be anywhere but in the squad room. He wants to be in a place where he can think about what he's seen, where he can be alone, without anyone trying to ask him what's wrong.
Barek left a while ago. Goren and Eames are out on another case, and Deakins is in his office with the door closed and the shades drawn, more than likely arguing with either Carver or another member of the brass. Logan leans back in his chair, closing his eyes as a low sigh escapes him. This is one of those cases. It's going to bother the hell out of him until he manages to pick it apart, just like he always does in situations like this one.
He should have known. He should have known the minute he and Barek walked into that damned apartment to find that so-called mother sipping from an all-too-familiar bottle. But he'd given her the benefit of the doubt. For all he knew, things might have been different. He'd hoped against hope that they had been, and he'd been wrong. And now the one eyewitness to the murder he and Barek were trying to close was dead herself…dead at the hands of a drunken mother that was supposed to love her.
Scowling, Logan opens his eyes and shoves himself backwards before grabbing his jacket, rising to his feet and leaving the squad room without so much as a word to Deakins. He wants to make it go away. But he knows that it won't. He's tried it before. No matter what he does, the painful memories of his childhood always rise to the surface. And this time, he's determined not to drown it in a bottle…so he walks, with no specific destination in mind.
Before he knows it, he's standing on a ferry, on the way out to Staten Island. He doesn't know what's driving him to go there. All he knows is that he needs to get away…he needs to be as far away from Manhattan as he can be, without getting too far. The night is cold, and windy; he pulls his jacket closer around him as he stares down at the glassy surface of the water. It would be so easy to forget all of this, to get so drunk that he can't remember what he's done the next morning. But he knows better. He knows the effects that alcohol can have on a person, and he doesn't want to get there, even though he knows he's done it before.
When the ferry finally stops at the Staten Island dock, he gets off, turning back to look in the direction of the borough he's just left behind. The streetlights illuminate the night sky, making the stars pretty much obsolete. He stares for a long moment, before turning, once more disgusted with the world and everyone in it.
And as he walks, he wonders how something as simple as a drink can change a person so completely that they start to forget who they really are.