"It's the bitter taste of losing everything

That I've held so dear"

-Fallen, Sarah MacLachlan

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Morning

This must be hell, she's sure of it. She's not a damn bit religious, never was, and even though she goes through the motions of taking Noah to some sort of religious gathering at Christmas, she doesn't usually give the concept of a higher power a thought any other time until she's trapped in this damn review board meeting, expected to sit mutely by McGrath's side while he gives a futile, half-hearted defense of her squad's resolution rate.

He's blaming the victims, of course he is, because if they were better at reporting things or could just get attacked in front of a well-lit store where a security camera could capture evidence, or, for fuck's sake, if they were just better people they wouldn't be so hard to believe. Normally, she'd ignore the quiet command he whispered in the hallway just before they walked in because the condescending hiss of don't say anything, let me do the talking would have pissed her off enough to not give a flying fuck about her job, but it's not normally. She's sick as a dog and she's sure there's still whiskey sloshing around in her stomach because she hasn't managed to even gag down toast to help with the hangover and her eyes are red from being up all night, replaying everything over and over again in her head and because she was afraid she'd have nightmares about Lewis, and her head is fucking pounding and she wants to put on sunglasses and pull a blanket over her head and hide in a dark closet for a few days or at least until she can get the paint out of her hair.

She could speak up, argue that sex crimes are notoriously difficult to prove, to prosecute, to even discover since so many victims are scared or ashamed and she wants to point out that a lot of the victims' reluctance to come forward is due to Neaderthals like McGrath who think the length of a woman's skirt somehow affects her ability to consent. There's also the fact that she's woefully short staffed because it's a hard job and she's always getting shit from everyone in charge, especially McGrath, about the amount of overtime her detectives are pulling, but it's not a job for the vast majority of the NYPD and so she has a hard time filling the few positions she gets approval to hire and therefore the people who are willing and able to investigate these shit cases are working all the fucking time. She'd really like to stand up, dare them to find someone else to manage this shitshow better and storm the fuck out.

Instead, she's just trying not to lay her head down on the table and take a nap.

As it is, she's barely even listening anymore and while she's ascertained that it's somehow more McGrath's fault in the eyes of the board, she knows he's going to take that out on her later and she doesn't care. She doesn't want to retire. She doesn't think it's necessary. She doesn't even think it'll help. But honestly, if that's what it comes down to, she's not sure it's the worst idea she's ever heard.

She's vaguely aware of the way the meeting shifts focus to the man on McGrath's other side, a chief with whom Olivia is not familiar who is there taking the blame for his apparently incompetent narcotics captain's equally shitty track record, and she's irritated that she has to stay because there's obviously a lot of work she should be doing to manage her squad, but she doesn't speak because she's trying not to die from a hangover that never felt so bad in her thirties and that's probably because she drank a lot more often then and because she'd never tried to keep up with Elliot doing shots.

Allowing Elliot to cross her mind is a terrible idea and she bites back the groan. Her hands squeeze into fists in her lap and she swears she can still feel the sting of the slap in her palm. Fuck. She'd hit him. She'd fucking hit him. He'd asked for it and she was drunk, but still, she's disappointed in herself. Not just for hitting him, for resulting to violence, but for clinging to her irrational - ok maybe not completely irrational - anger until it boiled over and she felt justified in hitting him.

And there was no justification, no matter what she'd drunkenly convinced herself last night, because all he'd done was kiss her, which she knew was likely to happen when she sought him out and agreed to drink with him and so she'd gone into the situation with her eyes wide open and she really hadn't been at all averse to the idea of kissing when it happened. And if she's being honest, which she rarely is with herself anymore especially as relates to Elliot, it wasn't the kissing that pissed her off, it was the way he really thought that the kiss happening meant they were moving forward and the way he thought she was actually going to make decisions on their relationship when they were both drunk off their asses and really, she'd slapped him because he'd left her and she's wanted to knee him in the balls ever since he came back and slapping him seemed less cruel and less likely to wind up with her ankle sprained because her balance was sorely lacking in her intoxicated state and there was no way she could have stood on one leg long enough to lift her other knee that high without falling, hell she could barely stagger to her Uber with the help of a brick wall on which to lean.

The way she'd left, hearing him call out to her, listening to the sound of his broken voice issuing apology after apology across the space between them as she ignored him, the way she'd told him not to call her again, it plays on repeat in her head and she wants to go back, to change it, to leave him with some kind of hope that she might eventually forgive him because she desperately wants to, she knows she's working on it, and knows now that it wasn't his choice not be there when she needed him but that he really didn't know and she doesn't want him to stop trying even though she very much left him with the impression last night that it's completely hopeless.

The meeting breaks for lunch and she gets herself a fountain soda from the cafeteria in the hopes it will quell her nausea and hides in a dark corner in the stairwell because everywhere else in 1PP is too brightly lit and promises herself she can survive the rest of this meeting and then go home and call Elliot to apologize. She'd like to see him in person, to meet his eyes when she tells him she really is sorry for slapping him and that he wasn't wrong to think what he thought and maybe even that she was enjoying it too, but she knows with almost twenty-four hours to ruminate on it, he'll be onto the anger-masking-hurt stage and he'll refuse to give her the satisfaction of listening to her apology and probably slam the door in her face and that'll just piss her off more and she'll say something that she doesn't mean again and so a phone call is the only option.

As if it heard her thoughts, her phone vibrates in her pocket. She immediately reaches for it, some near-dead hope inside her saying it might be him and she'll be able to apologize now and if he's calling her already, then maybe the damage isn't as bad as she fears.

But it's Fin's name lighting up her screen and she's too sick and upset and angry to deal with him right now. He knows she's in a meeting with McGrath and she'd warned her sergeant that it wasn't a good meeting, so he shouldn't be bothering her because he's perfectly capable of handling anything that comes up and if this meeting keeps going the way it's currently going, he's going to be running the damn place by next week. She stuffs the phone back in her pocket and leans against the wall and hopes like fuck the hangover starts to fade soon.

The lunch break is over and she forgot to drink the soda and her stomach is this close to heaving and her eyes are even more sensitive to the fluorescent lights in the hallway after the relative darkness of the stairwell and her phone is vibrating again and she flips the button to completely silence it as she falls in step behind McGrath and his counterpart to walk into the conference room.

She's convinced the hangover is getting worse and she feels like this meeting is about to get worse too because the board probably discussed things during their lunch and will be on the same page and maybe she should have sat with McGrath and had a similar discussion but fuck she doesn't even care. She hears McGrath joking with the other chief and she thinks maybe the meeting isn't going as badly as she initially suspected because he's joking, but she hears his words and her first thought is how the fuck could he be joking about such a thing.

"Already made dinner plans. We're getting done early. They've got their hands full with that shitshow this morning on Long Island."

The other chief responds with an equally jovial tone. "Oh yeah, Collins is going down for that. Three dead detectives? We're off the hook for months while they investigate that mess!"

"It's up to three now? Shit, I thought it was only two! Collins is definitely done. Bell too. Getting half your task force killed is certainly worse than this he said she said bullshit!"

She's certain her heart stops. She speaks up for the first time in hours, her voice thick and choked from disuse, her hand grabbing McGrath's arm. "Ayanna Bell? Her task force?"

McGrath looks annoyed at her presence and pulls his arm out of her grasp. "Yeah, didn't you hear? It was a fucking blood bath early this morning serving a warrant. You worked with them a few times, didn't you?"

She's moving towards the door and ignoring McGrath's inquiry as to where the hell she thinks she's going and she's holding her phone in her hand and it's still on silent but she sees the screen telling her she's now missed eight calls from Fin and she can't call him back because she can't speak right now. She texts him instead what hospital and she realizes after she sends it that he might not be at a hospital although they usually transport cops anyway, but she's choking on her tears as the message comes back that he's on his way to get her because he knows she doesn't have her car.

Because fuck her car is still parked outside Elliot's apartment where she left it the night before.