A/N:
I see 1000 ways for the first time. This one is set to Castles (Acoustic) by Freya Ridings. I think I wrote this in a furious, crazy 45 minutes because of that song on repeat.
Shelter
When she walks out of her office, she doesn't stop.
She hears her name; she hears them asking after her. There's concern in their voices, but she can't process it. She can't assuage them. She doesn't have much time before everything inside of her comes apart and this can't be a public kind of splintering.
Her feet pick up their pace, and briefly she thinks about heading straight for the bathroom, but this isn't even going to be that kind of a break. This is going to be bigger than four walls could ever hold.
She is unseeing on the elevator. No coat, and she doesn't care. Her lungs are closing in on her, as if they are compacting, leaving her without air.
Her irises sting. She's shaking. Nine goddamned years, she thinks. Nine.
Her throat joins in the rebellion. Two floors left, then one.
She's out of the box faster than anyone else, and then she is hitting her stride. The front doors are the goal, the double paned, bulletproof glass won't withstand the explosion growing in her chest.
When her palms hit the glass, when the air hits her face, she gasps loudly. She turns her chin up to the heavy gray sky, and she keeps moving, away from the building. The cry is going to be loud. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be a wail, a scream up to the heavens. A plea, to just make it all go away.
He wasn't supposed to ever come back.
She'd processed his disappearance, his extrication, as a complete loss. She had only managed to box up the pain because she'd never expected to have to deal with it again. There would be no reconciliation, no chance to ask him questions, no reason to have to heal from these wounds. He was gone and buried so deeply within her that a few years into his absence, she had finally learned to sleep.
And everyone knows there is no reason to dig up the dead.
Only he's back now. He's entering her orbit. An irreverent, irrational meteor that is careening towards her. The impact of him will spin her out of her holding pattern. He's a threat to every survival skill she's ever known.
It's Stabler. His case. He'll be here soon.
Garland had told her so simply. No fanfare. He'd watched her reaction and when she had instantly frozen and then remained stoic, the man hadn't known her well enough to know that he'd just lobbed kryptonite at her.
She feels like she's being watched, so she keeps barreling forward. Further and further from the house, and if she wasn't expected back at the squad she would walk all the way home at this furious, desperate rate. She can't shake the feeling of surveillance, and the last thing she needs is any of them coming for her. She doesn't want their help.
They can't help. She's going to rage, and she's going to pray it's enough to let it all out.
When she's two blocks from the station, she finally sees an empty alley. She charges into the sanctity of it, and when she's far enough in, her hands slap the brick wall. Once, then again. She braces herself, hangs her head, blowing out a hard breath. It's the smell of trash and old food and the darkening skies have started to open, they are beginning to weep with her, too.
It comes on fast.
The first sob is gentle, so is the second. They bubble out of her, involuntary and inevitable. And then that's it for trying to contain anything. As it rains down on her, she feels the brick against her forehead now, she feels the demons yawn out of her on the next cry, stretching as they awaken. Arrive. She might get sick at some point, but right now, it's just…this.
She protests, but the containment fight has been lost.
She lets it all go. Catharsis.
She feels her body cracking in half, she feels every ounce of every day without him. The archangel has arisen, and she's going to have deal with this, after all. She's on fire from the inside out, and the inferno within her is fueled by the dry, dead fields of her endless grief. She had spent nine years walking in one direction, away from him, only to be spun around and faced with him without warning.
He'd walked away. She'd accepted that. But he hadn't left the job, he'd only left her.
She wishes she could blame him, but she understands the need to run from memories.
Her legs give way as her cries grow louder. She's choking on it now, the rain no match for the mess of her. She sinks to her haunches, bracing her weight by pressing her forearms against the wall. No one will dare walk down this alley, this kind of pain is too clearly one that is solitary.
He'd left.
She curls over herself, sobs harder. She tries to cover her face, she tries to raise her eyes to the skies, praying the water will wash her, soothe the burn. It just feels like Mother Nature is crying with her.
She had loved him.
She had loved him in a way that was bigger than anything she had ever wanted for herself. She had protected him, needed him, wanted his world to remain intact at any cost. She had been grateful for him, even if she had only been given the fringes of him. She would have lived without love forever, if only she could have been granted the right to protect him.
That's all that she had wanted.
The right to watch him live.
He's the one who still holds her mind at night, he's the one who had carried her out of a house of horrors years ago. His absence had crystallized the truth of her feelings for him, and she doesn't know if she can ever negotiate herself out of them again.
He's a legend of her past, and he should have stayed there.
Only he's back.
The want that instantly courses through her fraying veins is a betrayal. The need, it's a disappointment. There's no reason he should elicit this response, and yet…yet…
Yet.
Her lips are swollen, her eyelids nearly shut from the ache. She's turning her insides out by crying like this. She chokes, trying to stop herself. She uses the heels of her hands to swipe at her face, but it's useless. She presses her cheek against the cold, wet brick, praying for a reprieve.
She tempers down the nausea, battles the urge to just vomit in this alley and leave her guts here.
The crawl on her skin intensifies, and she realizes then that she's being watched. The observer has decided enough is enough and she hears the footsteps coming towards her. She should be afraid but, in this moment, she doesn't mind a fight. She needs to hit something, scream at it, destroy what is in front of her. When those steps arrive, if they come for her, she's going to haul off and fight.
Her fingers scrape down the rough stone. She might punch the wall in the meantime, she can feel the tearing of her knuckles as she balls her hands into fists. Maybe she understands his physical rage for the first time, because she would gladly trade the agony within for the agony of torn skin, broken bones.
Her breathing shortens. Maybe it's the only way. A controlled bleed. A diversion, body over mind. One good smash of her fist into the rock in front of her and the pain inside of her would become secondary. Her hand closes, prepares.
"Don't."
She shuts her eyes.
His raspy voice washes over her. She tucks her head in between her arms, leans forward and lets her forehead once again brace against the wall. He can't see her like this. Tears are still falling, and in the cavern of her body, she blinks fast, praying they will stop.
Then again, she doesn't care what he sees. He's already proved that he is far better at hiding than she is.
She feels the air shift, and he's moving, but he isn't merciful. He isn't leaving. Instead he's coming closer, and it's only as he lays the heavy weight of his warm trench coat over her shoulders that she realizes her clothes are wet and obscenely inadequate against the cold.
The rain must have picked up.
The rough wool falls over her body, saturated with the energy and smell of him, and it's like a fire blanket laid over the blaze. The churning in her stops almost instantly, overpowered by something more powerful, more complete.
Safety.
She hadn't known how vulnerable she'd felt for years until this moment. Maybe she's been living in shock for all these years, and only now is someone noticing. She shudders, adjusting to sudden shelter of him.
He doesn't crouch next to her. He doesn't say anything. He lets her sit there on her haunches, face covered, protected fully simply by the sheath of his coat.
She takes a deep, trembling breath. And then she wants the completeness of him more than she wants her privacy. She shoves her arms through the coat and wraps it around her like a comforter, nearly keening from the relief from both the cold and the pain. She swipes at her face and stares at the grout between the stone, the glue that holds the wall together.
She feels his hand encircle her elbow, gently and silently coaxing her upwards. His touch is too instantly familiar, too easily accepted, wanted, craved. Brick by brick, handhold over handhold, she starts to pull herself up to a standing position. When she's sure she won't teeter, she pulls herself out of his grip and scrubs again at her face – smoothing out over her eyes, her cheeks. She brushes her wet hair back off her face, pretending he isn't watching her.
She turns to face him, but her eyes instantly move beyond his shoulders. Her gaze lands on the street behind him because she can't take too much at once.
She nods silently then, to herself, to the universe, to him. The breaking is done. That's all the time she will get to process this. Now the job will win out, and she will have to shift into acceptance. She has to get ahold of herself. Function. Lead.
So this is it, she tells herself as she watches the light traffic start to navigate the wet, reflective streets.
He's watching her intently; she can feel that much. He is probably taking in the swell of her eyes, the streaks of her makeup, the disarray of her wet, curling hair. He's probably noticing the way she isn't young anymore, the way the fire in her has become a slow burn. She doesn't care. He's seen it all already.
She nods again, one harsh movement of affirmation to herself. Time to gear up. There's a case waiting for her – his case – and she won't let this job or this city down. Not even when faced with the monument of him.
She shifts her gaze, finally meets his.
It knocks the breath out of her. The haunt in his irises is so deep, she wants him to close his eyes so she doesn't have to see it. But he doesn't even blink. He's deliberately letting her look all the way into him and there are empty spaces so wide she thinks he's stolen the power of gravity.
She's sucked in, just like that.
"I'm sorry," he says softly, barely moving his lips, still unblinking.
She hears the broken in his whispering voice, and it's the same loss of volume and clarity she's experienced in all the years since he left.
Just like that, they are equal again.
But she's compelled by her determination to limit the destruction this time. She needs one last attempt at self-preservation. He has to know she won't fall into him this go-round. They are no longer inseparable, they can't be. Nine years has proven the opposite. It's impossible to meet his eyes, so instead she watches the rain pool along the far curb. "You need to know that it won't be like it was. You and me."
He's silent for so long that cars pass by, then stop. The light must have changed. She counts her breaths, tries to even them out, relentlessly visually tracking those that walk by on the opposite sidewalk.
The cars move again before he finally speaks. "Yes," he says. "It will be." There's no inflection to his words. They are simple. Absolute.
Then she's looking into him again, because she hasn't looked at anyone who felt like home in almost a decade. The walls of her life have always been blue. His eyes, her personal thin blue line.
His expression is sad, apologetic. It's as if he knows what he is drawing her into, simply by his proximity. "It's not up to us. It's just how it is."
She squeezes her eyes shut.
It's futile, there is no way to keep him out. She knows his words are inexorably true.
"We should get back," she manages. "We've got a job to do."
"Okay." It's one, simple gravelly word of acceptance. They won't talk of this alley again; they might never talk of his absence at all. But it is enough. Life is about bearing witness to another, and he's just seen all he needs to understand. He knows.
When she opens her eyes again, he's buttoning his coat closed on her. She looks down and watches his rough fingers, pushing the resin disks through the holes, one-by-one.
She doesn't tell him no.
And when he's done, without a word he steps back and gives her room to start walking.
He joins her, and in just a few steps their pace and strides match again.
They are once again both heading back to the 1-6, to a unit that had once taken everything and in exchange, bound them to a fate of this.
-o0o-