April 24, 1940
This case had gotten to Jen. They usually didn't. Usually she could put the horrific deaths aside when she went home at night. Compartmentalizing her life had become second nature after being undercover with the FBI. She hated it, but it was a good lesson to learn. At least now she didn't have to pretend to be someone else along with locking things away into a little box in her mind.
But sometimes she just couldn't escape it. The ones with kids always gave her trouble. She knew the brass would look down on her for it, being a woman and showing vulnerability and weakness like this. Jennifer didn't see it that way, and she wouldn't let them change her thinking. Jen was one of the only women in the police force, which made her different. That difference was her power, and she knew it. She looked at things differently than the men did. And it was in looking at things differently, she had seen the break-in and murder of a war veteran as more than just a robbery gone wrong. They'd found their killer, a boy of only fourteen, who had been out on the streets and threatened by gangsters into committing murder. And it nearly made Jennifer sick.
"You did good today, Jen," Matt said softly.
She stared out the window of the passenger's side of the car, not wanting to see the way he was looking at her. After being partners this long, she knew Matt well enough. She didn't want to see his eyes shining with pride and affection she did not return. Well, affection she might return. She wasn't quite sure. Nothing really made sense with Matt. He was kind and gentle and a good man. A good cop. And maybe if Jen wasn't so mixed up about everything, she might want to give him a chance. But she was still trying to get over Nick, whatever it was she'd had with him—it all felt more like an impossible dream, now, than anything else—and she was still new to Homicide and had a lot to learn. Stepping out with a colleague was out of the question.
"Let's go out for a drink later. Blow off some steam," he suggested.
His voice shook her out of her swirling thoughts. "Yeah, fine," she agreed flatly. Vaguely, she knew she was undermining her own insistence that she not give Matt the wrong idea. Nothing could happen between them and nothing was going to happen between them. But she'd had a shit day, and he really was so nice, and…well…
Probably assuming that Jennifer was just fine, Matt started chattering about something. Jen only half listened. She wasn't over this case, and it would take more than just agreeing to a drink after work to move on from it.
A memory infiltrated her mind all of a sudden. When she was a very little girl, probably not much older than four or five, she had found a stray dog in the alley behind their apartment building, and she started feeding it and giving it blankets to sleep on. Her mother wouldn't let her take the dog inside. But it died only a week or so later, and Jen learned a very hard lesson that day. "You can't save everyone, Jenny," her mother had said. And even as a small child, Jen hadn't wanted to accept that. She did know it was true, that she couldn't save everyone. But that didn't mean she couldn't try her damnedest to save as many as she could. Today she hadn't been able to save anyone, and it stung.
Matt parked the car a minute later. Jen still felt out of sorts. But she walked with her partner into the precinct building and up the elevator to the Homicide floor. There were reports to write before they could go for that drink, before Jen could start trying to put this awful case and awful day behind her.
"What's going on over there?" Matt remarked as the elevator doors chimed and let them out.
Jen's gaze followed where he pointed and saw a small crowd around her desk in the bullpen. "I dunno," she answered, curious.
As they approached, Duncan started laughing loudly, and Jen smiled at the sound, unable to help herself. Simon turned to see them approach, and he shouted, "Matt, look who's back!"
Simon and Duncan and two uniformed officers moved aside to reveal a tall but unassuming man. He was smiling and joyful. And Jennifer felt her heart stop.
Nick turned to see his old partner, Matt, and saw that he wasn't alone. His breath caught in his throat to see the unexpected and miraculous vision before him.
"Hi," she said softly. She was wide-eyed and beautiful. She was always beautiful.
A beat too many passed as Nick failed to discover the power of speech.
"Jen, have you met Nick?" Matt asked, oblivious as usual.
Nick had it in his mind to mention that they'd seen each other at crime scenes a while back, but she spoke before he could come up with anything to say.
"No," she said quickly. She held out her hand to him.
His face fell, he knew it did. Luckily his face wasn't all that expressive most of the time, so he couldn't have given away too much. Except to Jennifer. She would know. She always knew. Didn't she? It was hard to know, now. He tried to focus on the fact that she was standing right there in front of her. He shook her hand firmly, just as he would greeting anyone else. "Hi, I'm Nick Buchanan," he managed.
"Hi, Jennifer Mapplethorpe," she answered. She let go of his hand, and Nick immediately felt her loss.
Matt spoke, completing the end to the spell between Nick and Jen. "Nick was my partner until he went off to Albany for a year. More than a year, wasn't it?"
Nick just nodded. He was very aware that it had been thirteen months since he'd left Homicide to go to the FBI. Thirteen months and six days, actually, since he'd first met Jennifer in that conference room.
"Jen's my partner now," Matt explained.
Now that was surprising. Obviously the FBI had rigged something, since Jennifer Mapplethorpe had never been to the police academy or worked as a cop anywhere before. And now she was a Homicide detective? Well, he knew better than anyone how good she was. She deserved to be on Homicide, thanks to her skill and brilliance, even if she didn't have the proper training or credentials for it. Though Nick was surely the only person who knew that.
And Jen had set the tone between them now. She had told everyone they'd never met. And so they'd met each other 'officially' just now for the first time. Nick was going to have to pretend like he didn't know her. Like he hadn't spent four months pretending to be her husband. Like he didn't still go to bed each night and dream of her. Like he wasn't still in love with her now.
That time in Bushwick felt like a dream, thinking of it now. He'd been Wesley Claybourne for a whole year, and less than half of that was spent with Jennifer as his wife, Trish. Had they really shared that time? Had it really been like he remembered, him so desperate to learn about her, to be close to her, to touch her and kiss her, to share his very soul with her? Nick wasn't really that sort of guy, and even with her standing in front of him right there, he had trouble recalling what it really felt like when they were undercover together. And maybe that's all it was, they were just overwrought by the pressure of working for the FBI and keeping their cover around all those criminals. Maybe it was a crazy whirlwind that wasn't meant to last.
And oh Jesus, she was on Homicide now, as Matt's partner. He was supposed to get his job back after he was done undercover, the FBI had promised. Supomo assured him of that. Captain Wolfe wouldn't have given his spot away, would he? This was Nick's squad. He was coming home after being away for more than a year. Wasn't he allowed to come home?
Thankfully, Wolfie solved that problem almost immediately. "I'd like my detectives in the briefing room, if you don't mind," he said loudly, breaking up the reunion party.
The five of them—Nick, Matt, Simon, Duncan, and Jennifer—all filed into the conference room after their captain. Nick immediately took his usual chair. Matt sat beside him, just as they always used to, and Simon and Duncan sat a couple seats over. Jennifer sat by herself off to the side. Nick shouldn't have paid it any attention, but there was a twinge in his chest at seeing her exiled off on her own.
"Now that Buchanan is back," Wolfe began, "we've got five detectives. And we'll need all of you. We've been backlogged for months. But because there's five of you, no one has an assigned partner anymore. Everyone will rotate, case by case. Ryan and Mapplethorpe just got back, so next call will be Joyner and Buchanan, then Freeman and Ryan after that, got it?"
"Yes, sir," they all murmured.
"Right. Back to work. Matt and Jennifer, I want those reports on my desk first thing in the morning."
They were released at that point, and curiously, Jen was the first one to vacate her chair and hurry out of the room to go back to her desk. Which was Nick's old desk. He'd have to go elsewhere, he supposed, because she was already hammering away at the typewriter by the time he got anywhere close to her.
He'd have to talk to Wolfe, he knew, but for a fraction of a minute, Nick just stood there and stared at the back of her golden-blonde head. There was going to be a mess for them to work out, but he needed to take a second to just revel in the fact that he'd get to work with her again. They were together again.