Lilly Rush was convinced that somewhere in a past life, or perhaps even in this one, she had done something absolutely awful. There just was no other explanation to all these curveballs and challenges that were repeatedly thrown her way, ever since her birth really; unfortunately she had absolutely no clue about who she might have pissed off up there in the heavenly council or whatever it was that decided these things, and hence she had no hope for any sort of course correction.
Sighing, she rubbed the side of her head, still sore from getting slammed with a closet door back at the Grand Motel; she had no symptoms of a concussion, but if Boss heard what had happened and learned she had skipped any sort of a medical examination even after losing consciousness, she would be in very deep water. It was already a miracle Scotty hadn't forced her to go get a check-up; perhaps he was just in too much of a hurry to find Christina, she thought bitterly, then groaned silently to herself. It was hardly fair to think like this; she needed to find her sister just as much, a lot more.
The pharmacist back in Philadelphia had guided them to this shopping complex, located somewhere between their home town and New Jersey; other than that they had nothing, and Lilly wondered if giving her arm a good pinch might wake her up, might reveal that all this was just some damn nightmare and she was actually at home sleeping, curled up in her bed with Tripod and Olivia by her side. No such luck; the pharmacy remained in front of her eyes even after the quick flash of pain had faded from her skin and she swallowed, feeling a brief, fiery sting of tears in her eyes, desperately fighting to gain control. In the end she managed, just about, dangerously close to reaching a breaking point now; she was exhausted, she was terrified for her sister, and on top of everything she was acutely aware of the man next to her in the car. He was on the driver's seat, the same place he'd occupied hundreds of times over the years, but now everything was different; now he filled her every sense in a way that was making it much harder to focus on the task at was staring out of his window, one eye also keeping tabs on the pharmacy and the cars coming and going; his head was half-turned away from her and from the corner of her eye Lilly could see his chiseled profile, the unlawfully long eyelashes and the full lips that had just a couple of hours earlier been on hers, passionate, demanding. A wave of heat shot through her at the memory but she determinedly stamped it down, focusing her gaze back to a photograph Christina had left behind at the hotel, a snapshot of the rare, long-gone happier times of their childhood.
"Before you even any odds with that street gun…" he spoke suddenly, turning from his window and reaching past her into the glove compartment, his closeness making another little tremble move all over her body. "This thing's still packin' a charge."
He tugged out a taser, pressing a button and momentarily filling the car with sizzling blue electricity; Lilly startled slightly, then offered him a brief smile that was meant to convey the thank you her mouth couldn't right now manage to produce. Scotty replaced the taser, cleared his throat, eyes now firmly ahead, and she forced her full attention onto the reason they were there, tried to think of something to say, to get them out of this heavy silence that gave way too many opportunities to ponder on other things, far more dangerous, tempting things.
"I can't believe she's hooked on painkillers."
Her voice sounded resigned, like she had finally accepted this was the reality now, and despite the way she had blown up at her partner's face that afternoon when he had made her realize her sister's situation, she knew he had been right. After his work in Narcotics, he knew way more about this stuff than she did, and she had no reason to doubt his assessment of Christina's condition; she had been furious earlier, absolutely furious that he had lied to her about not seeing her sister, but now that she could again see reason, she could also see that he had done that for her sake. Scotty always protected her, always put her first no matter what, and the sheer gratitude that washed over her was enough to make her eyes sting again.
"Probably after some injury," he commented, shrugging slightly. "That's how it starts."
"All the crap that we went through with my mum, growing up…" She looked down, swallowing, now overcome with a wave of hopelessness; why was the universe doing this to her? Had it not been enough that she'd had to grow up watching her mother's alcohol abuse, deal with it her entire life and eventually see it destroy and kill Ellen; now she was again facing a similar situation with her little sister, the smiling, little blonde girl that had once been the only light shining in Lilly's dark, dismal childhood days.
"You know, people think they can just take it. It ain't that easy." Scotty sounded slightly bitter, and briefly she wondered about everything he must have experienced in Narcotics, especially the undercover stint and Ana Castilla's murder that he still refused to really talk about, at least on any deeper level. Not that they talked that much about anything that wasn't strictly business; he'd been her partner for nearly seven years, and she could count any personal conversations with just one hand. Most of the time it was work only, one or both of them quickly becoming nervous and flustered if they ever drifted into anything more meaningful, touched on matters closer to the heart; it wasn't due to lack of trust or anything like that, as she trusted him with her life and vice versa, it was something else entirely. She had often wondered about how they were so close, how they knew each other so well without really talking; somehow they had always been able to read each other in a way that words weren't needed at all, ever since first becoming partners, and after this afternoon's events, Lilly was quite sure they had avoided anything deeper out of mere self-protection, in order to prevent what had happened today from happening. It was as though both of them had instinctively known they would immediately be catapulted from the safe zone of just partners into something else, something far deeper, if they strayed into personal matters.
Well, that line had now been crossed quite damn handsomely, but she couldn't think of it yet, couldn't think of the kiss; Scotty seemed to carefully avoid bringing that up as well and she appreciated that, appreciated the fact he was giving her time and space, wasn't making demands like a lot of other men might have.
He really did know her so well.
"These pills going straight from that pharmacy to the street," she muttered, turning her attention back to the photograph; he commented something but she tuned it out, her mind traveling back in time, back to the beach. Two little blonde girls laughing, waves splashing to the shore, sun blaring down… Way too soon, however, she was yanked back to the present moment, the bright sunlight fading and getting replaced by the dark evening; Lilly hesitated for a moment before deciding to share. The line had been crossed already anyway.
"I found this in the room; she tried to show me this." She watched a smile drift over his face as he looked at the picture. "Said she remembered that swimsuit; she was only like, five."
She knew Christina had used the photo merely as a tactic to get Lilly to soften, to get her to open her heart and preferably also the front door of her house to her sister, but as much as she hated to admit it, the ploy had worked, at least partly. There had been a time when they were family, dealing with their childhood together, although Christina, always their mother's favorite, had never really understood what Lilly was going through. Still, things had been okay between them, until that fateful day a week before her wedding when she had come home after a late patrol and found Christina in bed with her fiancé Patrick; something had broken inside her then, painfully and possibly irreversibly, but despite that, she for some reason kept giving her sister second chances. And every time she did, Christina ended up destroying something close to her, someone close; last time it had been Scotty, and she didn't even know how to start dealing with the tangled mix of emotions thinking of them together was still causing in her. God, would she ever be able to get past this? She had forgiven him, she truly had, but this afternoon had brought all that pain back again, had reopened all the old wounds.
"I got photos of me that age," he said, eyes still on the picture; then he looked up, gave her a little smile, enough to slightly soothe her inner turmoil. "Makes you think you… remember bein' there."
She made a non-committal sound, took the picture back, looked at it for a couple of seconds longer before directing her attention back to the pharmacy again; just then, a black car came to a stop in front, and she determinedly pushed everything from her mind, both her and Scotty snapping into attention.
"That him?"
Some time later they were back on the road, the car making its way through the pitch black night towards Jersey City Heights; she was reeling from everything they had just learned, alternating between deep worry and waves of annoyance towards Christina.
"She's got this deranged boyfriend after her?" Lilly tossed her hand up, just about managing to control the urge to hit something. "She really knows how to pick them."
"Easy," Scotty grinned, clearly trying to ease her tension, to make her feel better, but she was too far gone, suddenly wanting nothing more than to ask him to turn the car around, return to Philadelphia, leave Christina to fight her own way out of this newest mess.
"I don't know why I should care anymore." She really didn't, was balancing even closer to the end of her tether now; from his face she could see he understood, at least as far as it was possible for him to understand, considering their relationships with their respective siblings were like night and day.
"Still blood," he said quietly. "Still hurts."
Suddenly a wave of guilt overcame her; there she was, once again expecting her partner to support her through all this crap and knowing that he would, no questions asked, whereas she had been… had she ever really been that supportive of him? She had tried to be there for him, with Elisa's illness and subsequent suicide, most recently with his mother's assault, but he hadn't really allowed her to, and even if he had, she wasn't sure if she could really have done much. She was too damaged, too much in her own head to really shoulder anyone else's problems, to offer adequate help, whereas everything Scotty had done for her… Lilly found herself honestly wondering where she would be if he wasn't her partner, if he hadn't stood by her every damn day for the past seven years.
Would she even be alive anymore?
"Look, I'm sorry I dragged you into this mess," she told him quietly, knowing that even her apology was so inadequate; his dark eyes turned to her, portraying worry, genuine caring and something that she didn't dare to analyze too much, something that was perhaps new, or something she had just been too damn blind to see previously.
"Nah, I… should have told you before," he said carefully, shrugging a little, clearly still worried she would renew her earlier attack on him; Lilly opened her mouth, then closed it again, tried to desperately tell him that she understood, that she knew why he had lied to her, but the words just refused to come. Instead she watched him silently for a moment, then scrambled back to more secure ground.
"I feel like I'm still responsible for her." The words sounded stupid, were stupid; Christina was well into her thirties, an adult, a grown-up, but despite knowing that perfectly well, Lilly was still stuck in the role that had fallen on her from a very young age: the eternal caretaker, the responsible one, the young girl that carried the family on her slender shoulders because her mother wasn't able to.
"But I don't know how to keep doing this."
She wasn't quite sure what she was hoping to achieve, some sort of redemption perhaps, for Scotty to release her from the burden of having to take care of Christina; on the other hand she was absolutely terrified he would choose to take that burden on himself, would again get tangled into her sister's complex web of lies and deceit. That was his way of operating, really, she thought mournfully; he seemed to be drawn to women that needed saving, women that needed him to be strong for them, to run to their aid, to fix everything.
I need help too, a little voice whispered inside her, trapped somewhere behind her mile-high, impenetrable walls; for a moment she experienced the tiniest urge to tell him that, to see how he would react, what he would do, but it was very fleeting, disappeared fast.
"She went through what you did too," he said matter-of-factly, and now Lilly had to suppress the urge to scoff, to roll her eyes and tell him no one had gone through what she had, even when she had just been thinking about the very same thing earlier. He was right, of course, even if it stung to admit it; their terrible childhood had affected Christina just as much as it had affected her, but they had such different personalities, had chosen to deal with their experiences in such different manners. Lilly buried herself into work to avoid thinking, dedicated herself to helping those who no longer had a voice, while Christina held onto her freedom with everything she had, never tying herself down permanently with a job, with a man, with anything. Well, there was at least one thing they had in common: they were both woefully unable to make relationships last, to settle down, to hold on to anything meaningful.
"You'd think it would have brought us closer," she muttered, again directing her attention onto the beach photograph. "I can barely remember a time when we got along. When we were just… sisters."
Waves splashing, seagulls screaming, Christina's tears when the merciless water swept away the sand castle they had just built; Lilly remembered telling her sister everything was all right, that they would build the whole thing again. That was all she had been doing for so many years, telling her little sister everything would be all right; would there ever be anyone who would tell that to her? Anyone who would get through the wall that was around her heart, who would take it down brick by brick, dismantle her and then rebuild, who would care enough, love enough as she experienced that rebirth?
"One weekend dad came back; he took us to the beach." She glanced up from the picture, saw Scotty's lips form a small smile. "Christina was so happy, but I knew."
"Knew what?"
"He was just gonna leave again, and he did." She forced a nonchalant tone into her words, like none of this bothered her in the slightest; his smile disappeared, the muscle in his cheek twitching slightly, and she gathered all the courage she managed to find within herself, in order to finally convey at least a tiny part of her appreciation.
"Whatever happens, Scotty… thanks."
She wasn't referring only to Christina anymore, but also to what had taken place between them earlier; for a little moment she allowed her mind to drift back to it, to him so close to her, pressing her into the wall, the way his eyes had burned her, turned into pure ebony just before his lips had captured hers in what had definitely been the most surprising, but also the most incredible kiss of her life. She didn't even know why she was surprised, really, as there had always been some sort of an attraction between them, ever since day one, some sort of an undercurrent, a flame flicking directly beneath the cool, professional surface they maintained without fail. Perhaps that flame had just been waiting for the day when one of them would set it free, would stoke that fire and let it build; still, she somehow hadn't expected that day to ever come, certainly hadn't expected it to be today.
Scotty seemed to understand her deeper meaning, his eyes turning to hers briefly, then moving around the car in an almost wild fashion; his lips parted as though he was trying to say something but couldn't find the right words, the car's tires splashing water around as it continued towards its destination, to whatever awaited them there.