Chapter 77: A Blind Spot No More

His breathing was still labored, still heavy, still weighted. Still dumbfounded and standing after his sergeant vanished, Barnaby had collapsed into his own chair, half tempted to follow Troy into the hallway. These last few minutes, his heart had nearly pounded through his ribs, threatening to shatter the bones with each pulse. The clock clicked on second after second, minute after minute, ticking away from one moment to the next. And now as the silence fell around him, it was nearly suffocating and lonely. Empty.

As I was walking up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. Leaning back, he folded his hands behind his neck, lacing his fingers together. I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today—I wish, I wish he'd stay away. He sighed, finally releasing a tight breath into the quiet room around him—maybe even more. I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

Perhaps he shouldn't be so surprised after all, Barnaby wondered, his eyes rising to the ceiling and the dimples in the plaster. There was no question where Troy was going, whose arms he was eager to find. After all these years, all these moments when when he watched his sergeant watching his daughter, perhaps it was inevitable. Even when he had been married as a young man and Cully had been madly in...something resembling love with Nico, Troy's eyes never quite moved from her the moment they met, like something that was destined and unavoidable. I met a man who wasn't there.

He wrenched the phone's receiver from its cradle, slamming his thumb against the small button labeled with his own home phone number, the plastic clammy against his ear. He knew where Troy was heading...and there was no place for him now, not alongside the man. It was shrill in his ear, one ring, two, three, four—

"Hello?"

He found a deep breath, just loving the sound of his wife's voice. For very nearly thirty years, he'd taken endless solace in her voice and touch, through the dark valleys and emptiness of everything they'd faced together. The long days and nights were always eased by her, soothed and made better by the simplest touch of her hand, all while he often dreaded the calls that might break into their world. "Hi, Joyce?"

"Tom..." It was a question in a way things had not been over all these long years through.

"Is everything all right?"

"I—" Her words stopped, like she was muttering something in the background, no doubt to Cully. About what...there was no guess. "I'm not sure. Sergeant—I mean, Gavin rang a few minutes ago—well, he rang Cully, that is."

Of course, Barnaby thought, still leaning back into his chair, the wood firm against his spine. The last few minutes had been just as harsh, like he was desperate to shatter what lay before him. "Did he?"

"What happened?" Joyce asked quietly. She had always known, she had always seen everything he was unwilling to see.

"I don't know what you mean," he muttered. Perhaps all that distance, the differing world where she lived in his life, allowed her that clarity. "I just thought I'd let you know, I'm still going to be here for a while. We ran behind on some paperwork—"

"What happened, Tom? Cully didn't tell me much, but she said he was rather upset."

Maybe he should be glad of that. If he endeavored to chase Troy from his daughter, and instead his sergeant only struggled to hold her closer than ever...well, perhaps it promised a brighter future than the one the young man had known in the past. "I'm not entirely sure what—" But that was hardly true, and Barnaby never even kept anything about the unpleasantness of his work from Joyce, even if he had always endeavored to shield Cully; he loved his wife too well to hold anything back from her. He didn't quite understand why it burdened him now. "I don't know when I'll be home. I'll talk to you then."

"You may need to talk to her, too."

His daughter had struggled with him this morning, shoving his worries aside, finally having an answer for him, for later this evening. Well, now the answer lay out in the open, bare for the world to see. "Probably."

"How much paperwork is there?"

"Quite a stack, I assure you."

She laughed quietly. "Two pages?"

"I think you don't believe me," Barnaby said, but he couldn't quite hold back his own smile, like she sat beside him, her hand twisted into his as it had been for so many years. Perhaps Troy had even allowed his own thoughts to drift along that path, wandering into the future? Something better and stronger, delicious and lovely: something more. As I was walking up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there...Or just a man I didn't expect to meet, there.

"You're the detective."

"I'll see you later, love."

"Don't get too caught up."

He heard what Joyce did not say: he needed to talk with Cully—mayhap even Gavin Troy!—one or the both of them very, very soon. "I will not forget."

"I'll believe you when you get here."

He laughed for a short second, dropping the receiver back to the cradle after a whispered, "Bye." And suddenly, the little world crashing onto his head was quiet again, without even his wife's voice to soothe the wounds that Troy might have been right to so newly inflict. Cully had made her own choice, just as she always had, stubborn to the very last. Standing again, he took a few short steps to the other man's desk, finding the abandoned paperwork. Here and there, the tip of his pen had scratched through the pages, the usually precise writing messy. Angry—or simply passionate?

Bringing it back to his own desk, Barnaby sighed, falling back in his chair, a pen of his own twisting between his first finger and thumb. Well, who would have imagined that: my sergeant and my daughter. Certainly not me. And he should have seen it earlier, and clearer. Joyce had told him time and again that he only knew his sergeant, there was something he wasn't seeing. "Well, you were right," he whispered, wishing she sat beside him, sometimes the wiser of the pair of them, "like you always have been through this, Joyce. I wasn't really seeing him—and I didn't expect to see him fall in love with her. Or see her do the same."

He may have long ago given up the struggle to protect her from her own decisions, but he had hoped for a little while longer to shield her from the darkness and inconvenience of a policeman's life—hoped she'd remember it herself. Barnaby glanced at his watch, the ticks of the tiny hands the only sound in his life, now. Just gone nine in the evening. Had Troy found his way to the house yet, for that was undoubtedly where he meant to go. "You can't be the first one to hear it."

"Are you really so sure, Troy?" he asked himself. But he could hardly protest, not after how he and Joyce met all those years ago—

A few gentle knocks against the wall brought his eyes to the door. After his last disagreement with his sergeant—argument, he needed to be honest with himself—even the smallest sounds around the squad room had vanished, and each new one shattered his ears. But she was there again, Audrey, still clutching those same files as before, reluctant to take another few steps in. Did she suspect he might bite at her as he had Troy? Barnaby couldn't convince himself that she hadn't heard it; everyone without sense to flee had heard those wild words thrown at Troy, all the anger twisted in them.

"Is everything all right, sir?" she asked quietly. I don't know, was the only answer Barnaby had, but how was that an answer at all? "Sir?"

He drew a deep breath, trying to smile at the young sergeant, her eyes wide in her pale face. "I'm sorry?"

"I—saw Sergeant Troy leave a few minutes ago in a bit of a state."

Of course. "I don't think it was avoidable." How much had she heard, Barnaby couldn't help but wonder, the reckless words and accusations still sharp in his brain: "Stop acting like I'm blind and stupid." "Don't tell me another bloody lie." "Inappropriate and uncalled for." "My apologies, Audrey."

"Please, sir—"

"You needn't always keep the peace, you know." Not that there was much chance of that a few minutes ago, but perhaps it wasn't what she hoped to do now. How many times, even during her years as a WPC, had they sent her in to sit beside a wife or girlfriend, mother or daughter, devastated by death and fading dreams, tasked her with quietly holding a hand they could not, too strong and sharp? "And you don't always have to be the comforter."

"Just—I couldn't help—"

"Well, it was a bit of a ruckus, wasn't it," he muttered, nearly laughing. Really, he had lost his head over Cully and...it drew another harsh breath in his chest. But now his gaze wandered past her, to the ever more grey hallway behind her. How many reckless turns had the man made, his destination of no question to Barnaby anymore. When I came home last night at three, the man was there, waiting for me. "He has a lot on his mind right now."

She peered down at the floor, her fingers running over the edges of the folders she clutched. "Do you, sir?"

"Oh yes." He just needed a long breath, the deepening understanding finally permitting his heart to slow. Cully Barnaby and Gavin Troy: somehow in love, eager for that struggle to find happiness in a world that was often bereft of it. And after these long months—years, really—his stomach didn't churn and roil at the thought, though his chest remained tight. Old habits die hard, I suppose. "Rather something similar." But when I looked around the hall, I couldn't see him there at all! Always careful, even hiding, weren't you both? Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.

"Is it—" She stopped, taking a step back. "I mean—I couldn't help but notice that, at least until tonight, he's been happier than he has in a long while. Especially when I've heard him on the phone with..." Her voice faded away, like she was uncertain whether she was ready to provoke his wrath herself.

"Indeed," he said. Go away, go away, don't come back any more! Go away, go away, and don't slam the door. But I don't suppose you'll do that, Troy. "You certainly aren't blind, Audrey, not like me for longer than I'd care to admit. You'll be a good inspector, when they finally see it."

Even in the gloom of the empty squad room—a glance to his watch let him know it was now ten minutes past nine—he didn't miss the faintest color on her cheeks. "My fiancé tells me that at least once a fortnight."

"As well he should." Peering back at the paperwork, Barnaby crumpled the first few pages and tossed them in the rubbish bin. Torn as they were by Troy's unusually heavy penmanship, they were useless; he might as well just start again. "And start again, and see Cully and Gavin," his wife might tell him. If he'd once snapped at her for indulging the idea of the pair of them together, he certainly owed her an apology now.

"I can do that," she said suddenly, "finish it if—if you'd like to go—"

"No, I think it's best that I stay," he said, shaking his head. "At least for a bit."

"Is—everything going to be all right, sir?"

"Yes, Audrey, I think it will be." There were plenty of new copies of those mangled forms in one of the many filing cabinets lining the walls of the room, a task to occupy his mind rather than allow himself to think of what was happening elsewhere in Causton. "I think it is."

She said her goodbyes quickly, and he was back to the silence and the words melting together on the papers before him, yet to bother grabbing fresh copies of the blank reports. It didn't matter, in the end; one or the other of them could manage this tomorrow morning. Instead, he again leaned back in his chair, almost tempted to prop one foot up on his desk as he had done so many times before, simply searching for his thoughts.

As I was walking up the stair, I saw a little man who wasn't there.

"But he always was there," Barnaby whispered, finally unafraid to say the words aloud to an empty world, words he wasn't quite as afraid to say. They didn't burn as harshly in his chest, didn't sting as horribly.

He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away.

But perhaps, he couldn't quite hope for that any longer, not if he loved his daughter as much as he knew he did. Or at least, he would have to try, and shove it all aside for her.

A/N: The poem Barnaby quotes in canon is Antigonish, by William Hughes Mearns, later adapted as a jazz song, or at least that's the version I found. (All this according to Wikipedia, so please...pinch of salt.) He did mangle it in his attempt to quote it, so I simply mangled it further for him.