A/N: A little self-introspection never hurt anyone…

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DON FLACK JR. / DON'T FORGET ME

Must forget everything, can I forget who fled in the already forgotten the times of misunderstandings and lost time, forget how those hours were sometimes viewed as the sacred heart of happiness

Life's supposed to be simple. You are supposed to be able to see it in terms of black and white, before and after, yesterday and today. There's no room for grey areas, in between moments and musings about the future. Or there shouldn't be, anyway.

But why do I feel like I've been stuck in those precise areas? The shrink I was forced to see after the bombing kept telling me that near-death experiences such as mine force us to face our own immortality, which is hard for common people and even harder for us public servers that are used to be seen as something close to semi-Gods. Problem is, we buy the whole "we're invincible" bullshit after a while; after all, we dodge bullets for a living.

Whatever lessons we learned after 9/11 regarding our fallibility have been forgotten with the passing of time. We get the bad guys, we dodge the bullet, we manage to go home in one piece, all so part of a routine that you start taking it for granted… until you get almost blown to pieces by a bomb.

And then you cannot longer see your life in terms of black and white. What ifs start falling form your lips as easily as mirandas used to do, and you learn to put up a new face, very different from the ones you wear when you're interrogating a suspect and want him to do as you wish him to do, and on the inside you feel like your cheating even on your friends and family for putting on a brave face and act as a tough macho guy when all you really want is to bawl your heart out and be comforted as if you were a small child who just scraped a knee on his first solo bike ride.

But you manage to cling to life and your cop stubbornness helps you nurse yourself back to "normal", whatever people call normal these days. And then you start a whole new game called second guessing. You second guess everything you do: did I use to run at this speed before? Did I use to take this long to draw my gun? Did my voice sound so wavering when I ordered a suspect to stop? And the worst of the whole lot: did my coworkers used to look at me like that?

And you realize you're not the only one playing the second guessing game. You can read it in the faces of those around you, as well. Was he ready to go back into the field? Is he going to bust something in there running like that? Is he the same cop he used to be? Wouldn't it have been better to grant him early retirement? Is he fit to keep working homicide?

And you resort to that new trick you learned at the hospital and you start putting up new faces, confident, cocky faces, so they stop their mental flow of questions and you can pretend that everything is back to normal when deep inside you know it just isn't so. And you start pushing yourself farther and farther, ten more reps at the Nautilus machine here, fifteen more push-ups there, and pretty soon you're running solely on momentum and it's okay, cause if you don't stop you don't think and you don't want to think, at least, not right now, not today, and you promise yourself you'll take a good long hard look at yourself and your life tomorrow.

Except that "tomorrow" gets pushed into the next week, and the next week gets pushed into the next month and before you know it a year has gone by and you haven't stopped to catch your breath, and you know that sooner or later everything is bound to catch up with you and there's going to be hell to pay and there aren't enough places in New York to hide for long.

And still you keep going. You keep going because you have a family name to uphold, and a reputation of hero to keep adding to. You keep going because people out there are counting on you to keep their backs safe and their lives moving on. You keep going because you think that if you go far enough SHE will see you in a different light and perhaps that would make everything else worth it. You keep going because you have no other choice.

But there are days when you're getting tired. You get tired of running. You get tired of putting up that optimistic face for the entire world you see. You get tired of doing the right thing, what's expected of you. You get tired of pretending you don't care that she's standing within an inch from you and you can't reach out and touch her.

And you wonder what would happen if you simply stop. If you admitted that the whole thing was bigger than you and that you gave your best but can't do so anymore and you're stepping down and allow others to play hero for a while. If you told them you felt like shit whenever they ask you how you're feeling. If you were to announce that you no longer wished to be a cop, and maybe 30 wasn't too old to start doing something else. If next time you stood next to her you pulled her closer instead of pulling away…

You're a cop, and a damn fine one, as well. Some even go as far as calling you a hero, but you feel undeserving of that title.

You're a good son, having tried to keep up the end of the bargain that came with the last name you inherited, a big responsibility and you've pulled it off time and time again, no matter how crushing it felt at times.

You're a good friend, you hurt when your friends hurt but, most important, they know you've got their back and you know they've got yours.

And you're a good man. Life has thrown you curve balls now and then and you've managed not to fumble too badly, and you've tried to behave like a gentleman whenever you've had he chance, so maybe it isn't asking for too much to find the right woman to love and be loved by. Maybe it isn't too much to ask to be loved by her…

Maybe it isn't too much to ask to get your life as it was pre-bombing, either.

But I know I'm kidding myself. I ain't going back to being that old me, because I'm simply not that man anymore, and being blown up has nothing to do with it. I am who I am by choice, not heritage; by own volition, not mere chance.

I am who I am. Don't forget that. Don't ever forget that.

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"Ne me quitte pas" by J. Brel is one of those songs that always make me feel like crying, even though I don't always understand the lyrics (it's in French) but the feeling used to sing it… pure melancholia.