Chapter XXVI
"I'm just looking for an angel with a broken wing." ~ Jimmy Page
Thankfully that minus three stars – could that even have been a rating? – motel had warm water and Gloria was getting dressed just after having a shower, when the door knocked and instantly she got alarmed. It couldn't be Emily. She grabbed the gun that she had left on the bathroom self and approached the door as quietly as she could and she stood by the wall. Two a bit louder knocks were heard. She couldn't even see who it was through the loophole without standing straight in front of the door and she wasn't planning to. It was easy for someone to shoot right through the wood. She was overthinking, she knew it, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Who the hell could be? The voice and the words heard from behind answered that question.
"Stella mia?"
Gloria let an annoyed breath. For one more time these sudden visits had managed to startle her. She put the safety of the gun back on and stuffed it in the pocket of her sweatpants, before unlocking the door and letting Rossi in always staying hidden behind the door in case anyone was passing.
"You really have it in your team to appear unannounced, don't you?", she commented dryly once the door was closed.
"Emily knew I was coming," Rossi replied casually.
"So I'm the only one for the surprises," she said in the same tone.
David looked at her worried. She had no makeup on her face. He could see lines and dark circles under her eyes. Her too pale skin looked even whiter, like that was possible. But what alarmed him were the bruises on her cheek and arms.
"What happened?" he asked.
"My meeting with Brooder wasn't that smooth," she replied indifferently turning her back to him to walk towards the desk at the corner and leave the gun on it, "At least it would have been better to send someone that doesn't have his face plastered on over a million books."
It shouldn't be Dave for a million of other reasons, though, not now, not when she was unprepared. Emily hadn't told her on purpose, Gloria was sure.
She was cold and ready to get aggressive. She could guess that he wasn't there for just the case. Once she was aware that her closing off wouldn't work, she turned harsh having everyone walking on eggshells around her in order to avoid talking. David already knew all her tactics and they hurt him. She knew that he cared, at least that one she knew. She shouldn't be treating him like that. But he didn't blame her. That was how she had taught herself to survive. And just to be honest, he couldn't blame that woman for anything, he just couldn't. However, that time he wasn't going to let those tactics work.
"Nobody saw me," he replied softly.
He noticed the light smell of cigarettes in the room and he checked her as she moved in case her injuries had caused any difficulties in moving. They hadn't. She was wearing a grey pair of sweatpants, the only reason that it was still standing on her hips was the cord around the waist. She had lost weight. He had noticed that before. She used to have fuller curves. Over the sweatpants she had a loose, black, t-back top that was leaving her scars bare. Her damp, already curling hair were covering them but not completely. David had felt them over her clothes, but it was the first time he actually saw those three, thick lines carving an angel wing on her skin.
She was aware that he could see the scars. But she didn't care anymore. He knew they existed. There was no point in hiding them. At the end of the day that was who she was, a woman scarred by her own actions, by how low she had been. They could, also, make him reconsider whatever friendly worry or charitable pity had brought him to that motel.
"And why are you here?" she asked.
They were chatting while walking along the south bank of Thames. They just had their fourth dinner together in a small restaurant with incredibly good cuisine that she had suggested. He was, actually surprised with her choice. There was a well-hidden classy side to that woman. The smell of her delicate and expensive perfume tantalising his nose was reinforcing that notice. She was smiling more spontaneously around him now and her body language had gotten relaxed. Her boots were clicking softly on the pavement, the low heel of them making her hips swing more. She wasn't wearing a scarf. Her pale neck was almost glowing in the dark. She had his mouth watering and she wasn't even trying. Instead she seemed oblivious to the effect she had on him.
"So tell me. Do you normally spend so much time with fans of your books?" she asked half joking half-seriously.
She avoided to meet his eyes, though, and David thought that for a confident woman like her with an assumingly complicated life and an even more complicated job to behave shyly was strange. She was either flattered given his status, overwhelmed by the age difference or he did have an equal effect on her, or all of them together.
"You are not just a fan of my books," he replied softly, "You are far more than that."
"Really? Why?", she asked, clearly surprised with the simplicity of his answer.
The Casanova Agent Rossi knew a million ways to sweet talk a woman. But he didn't know what to tell to that particular one.
"I don't know why."
"There is something regarding the case. And then there is this," he replied steadily putting her badge open with the note visible on the small desk of the room, making her turn towards him again.
She knew that her note had him made him upset. She shouldn't have left it. But in the rush of the moment she felt the need to tell him something. She didn't want to go and probably not see him again and without at least writing him a 'thank you' and a 'sorry'. Possibly that need derived from the same feeling as her thought in front of Brooder's barrel.
"I don't know why."
She raised her eyebrows, even more stunned. A 'ladies' man' without an answer? And then his hands sneaked around her. For some reason he felt right, warm. She hadn't let anyone to touch her for so long. When she lost 'him', she had thought that whatever she was able to feel was gone forever. But something was stirring, something known but different. His body was pulling hers and when he bent his head towards her lips she was pulled to fill that gap between them.
Gloria took a deep breath discretely. She had to control her emotions and not make a fool of herself all over again.
"So what about the case?" she asked.
David decided to get along with it. It was better to finish with the practical aspects in hand first. He couldn't tell how the second subject would end.
"Hotch thinks that what is happening now is related to a series of attacks that happened in New York four years ago. They started with shootings of random people, civilians, and the endgame was a bomb at a hospital with a high-rated patient. They put a bomb under an FBI jeep, injuring Hotch but killing Agent Kate Joyner. She was the one using the jeep."
"What? Kate is dead?" Gloria asked shocked.
"She was seriously injured at the explosion. They took her to the hospital. She didn't make it."
"She was an excellent agent and a good person."
"I didn't know her. Hotch knew her better. Back then the theory was that they put the bomb in the jeep, in order to be able to get the bigger bomb to the hospital by using the ambulance as the hospital was in lockdown by Secret Services because of some patient. There is a possibility that that wasn't the only reason. Was really Joyner the one aware about undercover mission in her office?"
Gloria nodded. Another person connected with that initial undercover operation on Paradise Demons was killed around terrorists' acts. It was apparent why Hotch had made the connection.
"Was there any possibility that she knew anything about the Blackmore issue?"
"No. That's impossible. Only me and Clyde ever knew about it."
"Did something happen while you were there, something related to that guy? Did Joyner get knowledge of something that could have made her a target?"
"I don't know, Dave. I've been thinking about that operation all the time," she replied frustrated, "Apart from Brooder there is no other connection."
"OK. Let's start from her," he said and sat down on the wooden chair, "She was mentioned in the notes. When you said that you met her, it rang alarms. How did you come across her?"
"She was doing what she still does now, at least that was the façade: importing guns and other stuff and dealing them here. Apparently she had history here and the people from the other side of the pond had approached her along with two others. We knew about the other two. We didn't know about her but we went along. The plan back then was to draw a line between the competitors of the business, make all three of them believe that another competitor fooled them. When these people start to fight each other, it opens many routes."
"And you were the one that was going to fool them all," he assumed.
"Yeah. A facilitator from the FBI was everything that these guys had dreamed of. All of them were happy, thinking that they had the best connection. However, all of them had the same connection but competition means nobody shares information. And it worked. With the two it worked. Brooder was the one that created the problems."
"How did she do that?"
"She didn't buy that one of the others stole her stuff. She put the blame straight on me."
"Because she had the informer. She knew she was being set up."
"Probably. We had no indication of a snitch at that time, though. And I don't think she knew I am an agent. After what happened today, we wouldn't be here talking, if she did," Gloria said again what she had to Emily.
Rossi rubbed his goatee. She had already done what he was afraid of. She had trend the waters baiting her life and he didn't like at all the casual way she said it.
"And you were pulled out to avoid anything going wrong," he said instead.
"That was the reason but to be honest, even the things turning like this, she didn't make any threatening moves. Instead she had just asked to prove myself by killing someone," Gloria added neutrally.
"Who?" Rossi was surprised.
"That was the strange part of the story. The person was the CEO of a security firm. That's why I got so intrigued when the name of Black Cross got involved so fast in this case."
"Did you know the firm or the name?"
"I didn't get to learn the person's name. The company was called Clear Skies. They were a respectable company, unlikely to be involved in any illegal transactions. Actually there was a political scandal about funding a few months later and it closed. No CEO's killed in any way."
"Yeah, I remember that story. Some formal authorities used to hire them for security tasks."
"They did offer private spying and I assume they did some spying for authorities."
"Really?"
"Well. I do know my job market. That was, though, the only piece of information that Kate did know. I can't understand how this was dangerous."
"Only if Clear Skies and the person that was the target at the hospital were connected."
"Nobody ever told you."
"We were invited in. A local agent like Joyner would have insisted more. Hotch will have it figured out in some hours."
"I'm sorry I can't help more," Gloria looked outside of the window, "But I wasn't left around any longer to learn something else. Probably we should have gone on back then, we could have staged it or something... If..." she shook her head.
"I told to stop the if's. Brooder was a different case. The risk was too much. What was done was the best at the time," David said more firmly and rose from his chair.
Gloria didn't answer. David knew what was going on in her head and he wouldn't let it drop again. That was the very reason he was there.
"And now we come to this," he said pushing the badge and the note to her.
"There is nothing about this," she replied indifferently, "I just wanted to apologise for what happened in your office. It was unprofessional and stupid, anyway. I know how I behaved."
"I was more than a willing participant. It wouldn't have helped you and that's the only reason I stopped it."
Gloria shook her head dismissively, smiling to the side ironically. He couldn't be meaning that.
"You don't need to be the gentleman with me."
"I'm telling you the truth, something that you are not doing, Gloria. We both know what this note means and it has nothing to do with that incident," he said firmly.
She wasn't telling the truth indeed. But there were some things that could not be told to anyone without the other person realising that she was damaged goods beyond fixing. At that moment the aggressiveness was the easiest. It was easier to bite than to break.
"What's going on?", she said with sarcasm in her voice. "Did you come to do a psychological evaluation of me? Did your 'lady friend' send you here to be sure that I won't blow up her case? I won't!"
Rossi was for short surprised. The way she had spat the word 'lady friend' sounded a lot like jealousy. He ignored her attitude, though. She tried to turn her back to him but he held her arm forcing her to stay put and cornering her between the wall and his body. He knew he had an effect on her. He was going to use it. That time she would talk even if he had to use every bit of strength he had. He could already see beneath her cool surface the wild animal trapped, looking for escape. He noticed her chest, only inches away from his, rising and falling a bit quicker, the chain of the cross disappearing under her blouse.
His mouth was going south, pushing her gently to lie on the king-sized bed of his suite, unzipping the zip of her blouse, dropping wet kisses to the newly exposed flesh. When he reached the valley between her breasts, he saw the celtic cross lying there and then all his assumptions were confirmed. She didn't look like a very religious person. No, that cross was a gift and, given the fact that she had already told him that her family was never for the family of the year award, not from a relative. He knew then the reason she looked so reserved, so difficult to be approached. She got alerted when she realised what his eyes were looking at. All her movements froze.
"That's..." she tried to talk.
"You don't need to say anything," he said reassuringly kissing the skin beside the pendant with respect.
His face went to hers and looked deeply in her eyes.
"But it's me," he said with meaning, it was him and not whoever ghost that held her heart with him for a long time.
"I know," she replied with sincerity.
"Stop it! You know that attacking is not going to work with me. Talk to me, please," he replied in the same tone.
"What do you want me to say to you? What?" she raised her voice annoyed, she couldn't put up her walls, when he was that close…
"Anything! You know that you can tell me anything!" he said louder, too. "All these last months you can't sleep without having nightmares. You don't eat properly. You smoke more and more. You are cyclothymic and nervous more than the usual. You are acting out. You are not well, Gloria, and whatever is going on with this case, everything that's brought up, is too much on top of it!"
"Now don't you go all profiler to me?"
"No. I don't know you as a profiler," he said with meaning looking at her intensely.
Her tongue invaded his mouth. The whisky they just had tasted so more deliciously mixed with her taste. She was sucking his lips, her hands pulling up his blouse, caressing and massaging the bare flesh they were finding. He broke the kiss, getting rid of his blouse and undershirt together. He never had a six-pack. But he was keeping himself quite firm. Probably his 'good life' habits and his love for good food had added a couple of pounds on his belly. She didn't even notice, as her fingers ran through the thin, greyish hair of his chest. David Rossi knew for a long time that showing a six pack around was never enough for a woman. The man had to meet the needs of her body. Most of all he had to meet her soul. With that woman he could achieve both. He just knew it.
"Ti voglio.Non hai idea di quanto ti voglio," (I want you. You have no idea how much I want you.) he whispered hoarsely going back to his task on her breasts.
He could feel her lips and teeth on his ear and neck. Her body moved like a snake against his. The way her hips were gyrating, her back arching, her skin getting warmer and warmer… David felt like he was drunk, like he was high, like he was in heaven. He couldn't describe it. This hadn't happened to him ever before. For a man like him that had been with so many women to say that would sound like a superficial compliment, but it was true, it was the absolute truth.
He had to control her, to tame her a bit otherwise she could drive him to lose control too soon. He pinned her lower part on the bed firmly, stopping her twists. His hand found the clasp of her bra, it was a front one and he didn't fail to notice that it was sensual and of top quality lace. Yes, there was a well-hidden classy side in that woman. His fingertips pushed the fabric aside, brushing with a bit of pressure the hard nub they found, eliciting a loud moan from her. His mouth went to that same spot pressing the most affectionate kiss of all. She dropped her head back while her body shivered for a moment. Then he could tell exactly what she needed it.
It was Gloria's turn to get taken aback. They never talked about those nights in London, not about the few nights of the years after. It was a silent agreement between them. Those nights were somehow sacred to them. Why did he have to bring them up? The monster in her was telling her to use what he did against him and push him away. She could tell him that if he thought that by sleeping with her he knew her, he was fooling himself. There were far too many facts to support that. But she couldn't because it wouldn't be true, with him it wouldn't. She had already brought those nights to a pedestrian level, when she threw herself at him. She couldn't step on one of the few good things in her life twice.
On the other hand, for Dave it was just time to stop pretending. They weren't two acquaintances or even two long distance friends. He didn't know what they were now. For sure they weren't those. They were a man and a woman that had known each other in the purest way.
"I'm fucking screwed up! You know it! I know it! What more do you want? I can still do my job! That's all that matters!"
"It's not all that matters! Not when you may make choices that can get you killed!" he replied intensely.
"If you worry that I'm going let myself die, then don't! It didn't work out the last time," she said abruptly and she regretted it instantly.
David froze, feeling like his insides were getting torn apart. He was scared that, given the circumstances, she could neglect her own life. But he hadn't imagined that she had already reached that point some time ago.
"What?" he managed to ask.
"Just leave me alone, Dave! I am not another person for you to console or to save! I am not your charity case!" she exclaimed.
David didn't know if it was the shock from what was said and implied, his anger because she was refusing help so stubbornly, Hotch's words that he had to shake her to make her understand, his complete inability to resist that urge for her, his fear since she left Quantico or all of them together, but he regained control of himself only to lose it immediately.
He firmly closed his arms around her slim figure. It wasn't a friendly hug. It wasn't a lover's hug either. It was a rough hug. It was a man's eager effort to talk some sense to a woman that hadn't learned words. It was the desperate grabbing of someone just before they get drowned.
"That's what you think? That I feel sorry for you? That I pity you?" he replied shocked and in desperation, shaking her a bit, "I can't stand seeing you hurting! Damn it! I can't stand any of this..." his voice broke and he rested his forehead on hers, "I'm not leaving alone because you are not alone... Your pain is hurting me... I care, Gloria... I don't pity you... What have you done to yourself, cara?... You are driving me crazy..." he said incoherently, tears rising to his eyes, "I'm here for you, stella mia... I..."
"David..." Gloria breathed weakly.
"David... David..."
Her palms, even though they had gone against his chest, never tried to push him away. She was completely stunned by his reactions. She could have never imagined that David Rossi could be brought to that stage for anyone, even less for a woman like her. Was he about to say what it sounded like? Was she imagining things? What mattered, though, was that David was so devastated that her heart broke. She shouldn't have said what she said. She shouldn't have treated him like that, but she, also, didn't want to be a burden because she was broken.
Her voice brought him back to reality. He breathed deeply. At least he was stopped at the very last moment. Even if for the first time he found himself ready to shout how he felt for her from the rooftops, he shouldn't overwhelm her. She was in a bad psychological state, his own emotional turmoil wasn't a reason to force his feelings on her. He had to keep it together to manage to help her. She was the priority, not him, not his feelings. He pulled his head back a bit and stared in two confused, green orbs.
In David's eye, there was something Gloria hadn't seen for years. No, she wasn't imagining things. And she found herself eager for it. Every single fibre of her body and soul was asking for it. At that moment her feelings weren't a mess anymore, but crystal clear. What she had been feeling all that time, what she had been thinking became raw.
After her losses, she had closed herself off. Then she met Dave during that presentation of his book and she had accepted his offer to go for a drink more out of curiosity than anything else. And she accepted his next offer, too. Their talks were relaxing her and she was flattered. Even if he could tell that she was a bit shady, he was so kind and soft with her. Gloria had felt like a normal woman around him. Despite his 'player' attitude, he wasn't trying to push her into anything, he was just spending time with her. Most of all, his 'I am an all too important' ways were just pretend. He had values, strong ones. All those things had broken through her walls finally. David had made her heart stir. If she had needed just anyone to flirt her, to jump her, whatever, because she was lonely, there would have been others before him. No. She had fallen for this man. That was why she had given herself to him. And it was easy. He couldn't stay. She couldn't follow. She could have a taste without him knowing everything about her. The facts that he had guessed were already enough. He didn't have to put up with the darkness that she had in her.
But that feeling hadn't changed. Every time they talked, every time they saw each other in the following years, it was coming to the surface. It was in front of her every day since she had come to the US. She always used to talk to him more and more, because of that warmth that was sipping out of his skin and eyes and went straight to her soul. He never judged. He just offered her comfort through his soft talks, through his touches, those touches, even their casual aspect, were awakening her body in ways that only reinforced that feeling. His thought kept her company during many lonely and sleepless nights. She knew that she was losing any chances with him with what he was hearing from her. She didn't have any anyway. Whether Rossi was with someone else or not, it wouldn't make any difference. Nobody wanted to be with a woman that had never lived normally, that had been in every hole of lowlifes, that had slept with criminals. With Richard it was different. They were somehow the same kind of people and she was younger, she had done less. But David? Now? She just had to tell him everything. Probably he just had to know. 'Stella mia', derived from 'la mia stella cadente' (my shooting star)... Probably it was time to remind him that shooting stars fall. Sometimes they make an explosion when they collide with a planet. Most of the times, they just get burned and pulverised in the atmosphere.
"Gloria?" David tried worried, due to her lack of any response and she was completely motionless in his arms.
"I'm not worth it… I'm trash…" she murmured dropping her head.
"Don't say that ever again. Do you hear me?" he said more firmly, squeezing her more. How could the woman that once taught him again the meaning of his life say that for herself? "How can you? Why can you?"
"You are asking me why? For starters, you know what I did all these years," Gloria raised an eyebrow.
"What you did was catching criminals."
"I wish it was that simple."
"No, it wasn't. For none of us it is. But somehow we have to stop them."
"And how many means can this reason justify, Dave? Because for me it had justified more than enough. But in Rome those 'means' became even more."
She hadn't raised her eyes again and she was talking with difficulty. She had told him some things about that last mission. It was on human trafficking rings. She had mentioned some things vaguely but he could imagine the rest. Things were getting uglier and uglier in south Europe. People coming with nothing from war torn countries. Already victims of traffickers many of them fell victims to other types of organised crime afterwards, women getting sold for prostitution, men for slavery, children for organs and to paedophiles. On top of those criminal and mafia mobs didn't hesitate to beat, rape and kill whoever dared to fight back and policemen got paid to turn a blind eye to the situation. And she was in too deep mainly for the last six months.
"If it's for the drugs..." he started.
"No!" she cut him off, shaking her head frantically negatively.
Suddenly the situation became too much for Gloria to handle. David knew her past. He knew about the drugs. He could imagine other degrading acts but he had almost lost it for her, he had her in arms trying to sooth her and she was about to say things even worse. Even if she needed his tenderness and his understanding, she didn't deserve them and soon he would realise it. She hated herself so much that she couldn't understand how he wouldn't.
"They made me watch! They killed innocent people and raped children right in front of me! And I didn't react!" her voice broke and that time she finally broke away from his arms.
He wanted nothing more than to keep holding her at that moment but he let her go to avoid her struggling. She had fresh bruises on her, he didn't want her to get hurt.
She turned her back to him. She folded her arms and pressed them on her body trying to control her emotions.
"And I know I would have been next, if I had reacted. All the effort would have gone down the drain. That's what I had to do," she said before he said it himself, "But you know what? I was doing exactly what the monsters I was trying to catch did. I was seeing all that and then acting like nothing had happened, hanging with those thugs, baiting cops and doing drugs. I always knew what those people were capable of, I never had illusions. That didn't put me off of 'befriending' them, of… I was never any better than that, no different from them!" her voice rose with the last sentence and she bit her lip, "No wonder why all of my life I didn't bring any good to anyone," she finished quieter.
"It's not like this," Rossi tried softly, "Dolcezza, stop blaming yourself for things you are not responsible for."
"Am I not responsible that instead of standing by my father I was in a gang doing favours? Am I not responsible that I was sitting on this story for a decade letting a monster unpunished to kill other people? Am I not responsible that I can't treat one person right, like you, Emily, even Clyde? Am I not responsible that a man died to protect me while my own body was unable keep our child inside of me? Nothing good comes from me, Dave. Nothing!" her body shook from long-buried sobs, water was rising in her eyes.
"And you thought you were better off gone?" David asked, 'and you still think' he wanted to say but he couldn't because it was hurting him more than a bullet through his chest.
"I couldn't handle the situation in Rome," she replied after some moments, never turning her eyes to him and hanging her head more in shame, "I couldn't tolerate myself anymore. I just wished everything would end, end in any way. Damn I was praying to. Then I got suspicious about that serial killer. I told Clyde and asked him to pull me out because it had brought thoughts of… The case was finished formally, they were just buying time. I wasn't needed, but I knew it wasn't… It wasn't right," she struggled to speak, "I knew there was a danger out there and that night I was walking in the streets mindlessly, high like no other. I don't even know how much consciously I was provoking it. All I know that I just wanted everything to end…"
She had wanted everything to end back then and sometimes she still did. After she survived, she had tried to push it down, get better, heal her friendship with Emily, change her life, change country. But deep down, she was still aching. She couldn't take the screams and images out of her head. She couldn't have good dreams anymore. She couldn't ask for help not only due to her character, any kind of twisted pride or shame, but because she couldn't lose her job. She couldn't confess her situation to anyone without disappointing them. But she couldn't handle it on her own either and she had only learned to escape. They used to say that death was the ultimate escape. She knew it was a sin. She knew it was ungrateful, ungrateful to the man that once got killed to save her, to Emily, to David, to those a few people that had tried to help her those last months.
David was a profiler that had all the answers to why she had reached that point. She had never learnt to heal her wounds. From whom could she? From a father that never showed his motherless daughter how to deal with her emotions in a healthy way because he couldn't himself and hadn't even tried for her sake? Thankfully she didn't imitate his drinking and gambling, but she was projecting guilt on herself which was self-harming in the same way. That was the source of the problem. Alone and sorrowful, blaming herself for everything – he didn't know about the baby but it finally explained every last detail – and exposing herself to more and more darkness, honestly it was a matter of time to reach the edge. But that was no time to play the shrink. At the same moment Dave was a man listening to the woman he kept in his heart for so long describing nothing but pain and guilt, telling him that she had almost died on her own will. His eyes watered all over again. He had to try to take some of the burden that so unfairly she had put on her shoulders. He had to take her out of that road she was going down. Otherwise the results that time wouldn't be just scars.
"Come on! You wanted to know what's wrong! Come on! Say something! Say that I deserved it! It should have been me nine years ago, I am living on borrowed time anyway! Say that on top of all I am an ungrateful bitch and a coward!", she finally burst and her body shook more.
Drops started slipping out of her eyelashes. She wasn't so sure if she could stop them that time. David shouldn't have come. She shouldn't have drowned in the darkness. No, not now. She heard steps behind her. Of course, he had decided to leave, she assumed and she couldn't blame him.
Suddenly she felt fingers reaching up and wandering around the uneven skin of her scars. Dave hadn't walked towards the door, he had come closer to her. She flinched. But instead of taking his hand away, he fully caressed her back. He started massaging it. He knew a thing or two about cut muscles. He knew how to do it without inflicting pain.
"No. I'm not going to say any of that because none of it is true," he spoke gently.
His other hand went to her cheek making her look back to him. Even if many times David Rossi could tell that he had seen the troubled woman beneath that tough and aggressive façade, that time was the one that touched him the most, because there was no façade. There was just the troubled woman, written all over her face, stained by the couple of tears that had managed to escape her hard effort to keep them in. For a moment, he felt guilty. He felt guilty that he left London six years ago, that he never said anything to her any other time. He could have spared her all that torture she was going through.
"You are in pain and everything is confused in your mind. It's the pain that makes you think like that, not the reality."
Gloria only saw sadness and care written all over his face, no disappointment, no anger, not even pity. She didn't even have the energy to be surprised.
"How can you not be...?" she only managed to ask.
"Be what? How can someone be any anything with someone that's suffering, tesoro (sweetheart)?" he replied simply.
She couldn't understand what was going on, why he was still there, how his fingers on her scars felt like they touched the darkest part of her soul and still had the power to warm it up. But she was at the brink of breaking down completely and his warmth was the only thing keeping her together.
He pulled her towards him softly, never stopping his ministrations. Her side fell on his chest and he nested her face on his shoulder. She didn't offer any resistance. On the contrary, unconsciously her hand reached up gripping his shirt in her small palm and he covered it with his.
"Stella mia, you are hurting so much," David started quietly, placing a kiss on her forehead and tying to make his unfallen tears not break his voice much, "and you are bottling everything up. You saw all that violence, raw and mindless, in front of you. Exactly because you are not like those thugs, eventually you couldn't process it. Your mind broke. You were on drugs. You weren't thinking straight anyway."
"I still..." she murmured.
"You are too hard on yourself, cara," he put a little bit more pressure on her back checking her face for any discomfort, "You are blaming yourself for what? For acting out while not knowing how to do deal with how bad you feel? We understand, Emily, me, even Clyde I think. For your father? He was the adult, you were the child. He was the one that had to stand by you and he didn't. For this story, I told you nobody could make the connection before. I didn't say that to make it easy for you, but as someone that has worked far too many cases. In this job we often need more clues and more clues sometimes mean more victims. We have no control over it. As for the rest, it's fate. It's God."
Things always sounded better when he was the one telling them. She wanted to believe him. She did.
"He chose himself to go into that farm, not me... while I was the one with the faulty body and he knew it, I was..."
"He did what he felt he should do," he stopped her kindly, "And given what happened, it's a weight on your shoulders. But you didn't cause it. You didn't want to lose your baby. It happened. I know what you've been through. It cost me my first marriage. My wife passed away a year ago. When we were married we had a son. We were aware that he may not be fully healthy, there were complications at the end of the pregnancy. During birth many things went wrong. He died on the first day of his life."
"I'm sorry…", she whispered and he noticed a couple of more tears falling from her eyes. She was in that condition and she still managed to feel for his own loss and that touched him a bit more.
"I'm sorry for your baby and Richard. You think that there are all these misfortunes around you, then there is something wrong with you. There isn't. We don't provoke them. We are not responsible. We are not able to. We are not God. Bad things just happen and sometimes more of them to good people."
"I am no good... I enjoyed the rush, the dirt…"
"Of course you did. It's normal. I chose to analyse killers. I have sat in front of them for hours as they made me picture how they killed five, ten, fifty innocent people. I understood them. I managed to predict how other killers would act like I was in their shoes. Should I think that there is something wrong with me?" he asked and she shook her head negatively immediately, "The truth is that we have dark skills, Gloria. None of us is a saint. The purpose is what defines us, what separates us from the monsters we face. We are just trying to do the right thing. You never forgot that purpose. You lived in temptations. You didn't slip. You never did anything for your own profit, not even for money or gratification from your own job."
"This doesn't mean much," she dismissed it.
He knew it was time to tell her. She had to know what she had meant to him. She had to know that she did bring good, actually to the right people she only brought good.
"I did forget the purpose. I've been to war, I transformed criminology. But since I had no success in anything else, my ego got the best of me. It became more important than doing the good. I screwed up. Then I met you and in the short time I got to know you, you changed me. You, Gloria, made me the person doing the right thing again. Just like you do. Instead of all you kept doing the right thing. You don't even realise how far you are from any monster. You are special, stella mia, very special."
Gloria was more dumbfound and confused. She couldn't even believe that someone could ever speak so highly of her. Was that man, that man better than her, looking with wet eyes and so much care and appreciation at her, the woman that she had just spoken only of darkness, saying that she had changed him? That she was 'special'? She couldn't process the words fully anymore. All that mixed with the pain only brought even more tears in her eyes.
"Then why none of this makes me feel any better, Dave?" she asked in low voice.
"What you've been witnessing all these years were traumas. What you have lived were traumas. By following a purpose they are not going to magically disappear."
"I don't know what to do… I don't know if I can do anything anymore…"
"You can, dolcezza, you can. Even if your mind reached a breaking point, you survived because your heart kept beating. Even when you felt touching the bottom, your heart kept carrying on, didn't give up, that heart that you don't let express the feelings. Just let your heart do it," he felt her tears wetting his shirt, "Let it out, stella mia. Let go…" he instructed gently, his other hand going to her cheek.
"Relax... Let go, stella mia.", he whispered in her ear, coaxing her deprived body to pulse violently around his for the first time.
And like that and there, Gloria started crying. It had been so long since she had let herself cry. She hadn't shed a tear since that frozen day in Northern Ireland, when she had screamed and cried like any normal woman who had lost the closest she ever had to a family. But after that, she had never done it again, never let herself just be a normal woman. At that moment she was crying not only for everything that got torn from her, but for what she had witnessed all those years, for being able to live in that dark, for allowing cold, indifferent hands to touch her, for what she had just listened to and she wasn't sure if she could believe, even for being in a man's arms that was the only one more that she had ever let in and he never knew it.
"David... David…" she breathed between sobs.
"David... David...", she was saying with every breath, as her skin was burning with a fever that had turned it into a blushing pink.
Then he knew. It was him.
"I'm here. It's OK... It's OK…" he soothed.
Her sobs grew stronger and he felt her losing her balance. He moved them softly a little back towards the bed. He sat down taking her with him.
She curled instantly in his lap, her hands flew instictively around his shoulders, clinging on them, her face pressed on his neck. She was literally glued to him, holding on him for dear life, while her whole body was shaking. She had to cry, she had to let go. He knew it from himself, even if they say that men don't cry. She had stared in the abyss for so long that she had actually fallen straight into it. That was the worst nightmare for all of them, the moment that you are so much in the dark that the only way out is a gun and ironically there's one just at your waist. There was a long road ahead of her to heal and he would be there. She could take from him anything that she wanted. He was there to offer her simply everything.
"Shhh… Breathe. Just breathe, stella mia."
"'La tua stella'? (Your star?)" she asked still in the bliss, he had called her like that far too many times.
"You know the shooting stars that come and go? You are la mia stella cadente.", he looked into her eyes that, he could swear, were glowing, pushing her hair from her sweaty forehead.
Men don't cry, but as he tightened his arms around her, rocking her like a child, whispering soothing words in her ear and dropping kisses in her hair, David Rossi finally let a few tears slip.
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand." ~ Henri Nouwen
Hello again after a long time and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I am so sorry for another delayed update! I was busy and it was a hard chapter. There was almost nothing about the case and the others, I devoted it to my other favourite couple, but it dealt with something far too serious. I wanted to describe Gloria's situation realistically to an extent, to match the situation with the characters and to avoid making David and Gloria's bond look fatherly (they have this age difference and she has some daddy issues so this is a matter I have to be careful with). For starters I hope it is not cheesy...! You'll tell me how it came out, won't you?
Spoiler (not exactly): The reason this discussion was put in the middle of all is to put some limits to Gloria so she won't do anything mindless in the future.
Leave a review for me to know that you are still with me!
HAPPY 2016 with all the best for everyone!