A/N Intala; You didn't expect that? Neither did I. Sometimes they write themselves in a direction I hadn't even remotely foreseen. It has been something I have wondered about, I didn't think she really felt she needed to tell him, she felt she had told him enough...until she found out it was her cries that haunted him and the unknown...I hope it helps him sleep too...maybe it will ease her worry about him too...
MrsChilton; always, every word you write to me means so much... I know how easy it is to read and say to yourself, 'hmmm I enjoyed that', or 'why?'. So the fact that you so often take the time to tell me what you are thinking...in all of my stories...means a lot more than just a lot.
W.S.C. Magica De Spell; thank you for the favorite, it means a lot...
I didn't expect Liv to say all she did to Fin in the last chapter, so it surprised me, I guess there wasn't another song to express all that she has going on, so this is based around "4 seasons in one day' by Crowded House...
'Finding out wherever there is comfort there is pain
Only one step away'
As always Fin seems to know when not to push anymore, and so he just nods softly, leaving our dialogue to continue at another point in the future.
I can see he wants to tell me he's here for me again, but he seems to know I can't even hear that right now, so he just nods, gives me a long, meaningful, supportive look and heads back to his desk.
I take a very brief moment, before I head back around my desk, hiding in my work.
I'm flying through paperwork and juggling calls, whilst getting updates and directing the guys, and I feel like master of all I see.
Sometimes there is nothing as good for a morale boost, as slipping into my work persona and leaving everything else behind.
This is where I feel I belong, I know I'm good at what I do, I can think on my feet, deal with any crisis, I can do this...
Lunch ticks around and Carisi heads out to pick up our orders.
As we sit around eating, taking a short break, I don't feel like I'm being babied as Fin continues to tell a disbelieving Carisi about the old days, regularly forcing me into laughing denials that I had ever done any of it. I have no doubt that Fin, Amanda and Carisi are all conscious of looking out for me at the moment, but they also respect me enough to treat me as normally as they can, at the same time. On a couple of occasions, Fin looks to Amanda to dispel my denials, she just turns it back on him and Fin gladly takes full credit for whatever mischief he is being accused of...
I feel so comfortable, so relaxed here, despite the raw emotion of the last couple of days, I feel a calm peace as I return to my office, happily watching my squad return to work with smiles on their faces.
I suppose I am in a reflective mood, as I consider how few days I can look out and see my team smiling and laughing. There is always teasing and playful squabbles but too often it is borne from a need to disperse the overly heightened emotions from what we do.
We see and hear things that cannot be left behind when we clock out for the day. The voices and faces follow us long after a case is closed. And when the case is never closed, the way the faces linger, and haunt our waking and sleeping minds, is even worse.
When you have seen the horror that we deal with every day, it can't not affect you.
I love what I do.
I feel that in whatever small way, I help make a difference. Every day I go to work, brings something new, I am always challenged, challenges can be both mental and physical. I feel that I can use all of who I am, when I work, and I can't imagine doing anything else.
Perhaps that is where the problem lies, I cannot imagine doing anything else.
I can't imagine finding this level of satisfaction in any other job.
I cannot imagine being content to go do a job that doesn't fulfill me, the way this does.
I also know it takes a huge toll on me.
I hate it, but I must admit that my job is what led to my assault. With Harris and Lewis.
'Four seasons in one day
Lying in the depths of your imagination
Worlds above and worlds below
The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the
domain
Even when you're feeling warm
The temperature could drop away
Like four seasons in one day'
Apart from the horrors and tragedies I have come to witness through what I do, my choice of career has led to me suffering what I strive so hard to fight.
Oddly though, after all the changes that both of my assaults precipitated in me, in my life, the one thing I have never really never given much thought to, was the one thing that perhaps could have made the most difference...my job.
After Harris, I partly didn't disclose or report my assault to my superiors, to Cragen, because I was fearful my job would be taken from me. When PTSD made me feel that I could barely live, I still tried to put on the face I kept for work and headed to the precinct.
When Lewis was done with me, the first time, I was forced to take some time off, I had too many physical injuries that needed to heal to even argue to return to work, and when the day came around, I was so nervous walking into the precinct, the place that had always been my second home, that I wasn't sure I could do it. What gave me the strength to face all the people who would be there, was that I knew that my job awaited. It was the stability that was lacking in every other area of my life.
When Lewis had left me with nothing, after his second attack threatened to take my job as well as everything else, the fight to keep it was all that kept me going when the darkness was too much for me to bear.
'Blood dries up
Like rain, like rain
Fills my cup
Like four seasons in one day'
In all the people that have come and gone in my life, my job has been a constant. Although things have changed, I always have a strict set of rules to work within, I know where I stand, I know I am good at what I do and the results seem to consistently show that fact.
I love what I do...but is that enough?
It has brought a pain I cannot begin to describe, into my life.
Nightmares where battered women plead with me to find a man who has hurt them so badly, and even if I do find him, I can't always secure a conviction for them or ensure that they receive an adequate punishment even if they are found guilty.
Children so scarred that their young minds can't even begin to understand that what they have been subjected is not normal.
Victims that have no tomorrow to heal, whose lives were torn from them, along with everything else their attacker took.
And more personally, my job has brought two monsters to my door.
It was at work that both Harris and Lewis were introduced to my life. It was the role that my job forces me to play, that enticed each of them, for very different reasons, to attack me.
Over the last few months, events have been such, that memories have been painfully sucked out of the past. Things have happened that have left me feeling exposed, vulnerable and in danger, in a way I haven't felt since just after each of the attacks.
I hate to admit it, even to myself, but I am struggling.
The things that once came so easily are now more difficult. I am conscious of situations, of who is around, what dangers surround me, who is around to back me up, should I need it, and how confident am I in that back up?
I understand that circumstances have precipitated these changes. My feelings are not borne out of some abstract fear of bogeymen. I am afraid of a replay of what has already happened. It is no abstract.
Is doing what I love worth this?
'It doesn't pay to make predictions
Sleeping on an unmade bed
Finding out wherever there is comfort there is pain
Only one step away
Like four seasons in one day'
I no longer have a boss I can turn to, when I need a little consideration or support, I am the boss.
I have never played the 'I'm a girl' card. I have always strived to do my job with no differentiation between me, and my mostly, male colleagues. I am as capable of handling myself as they are, given fair odds. The problem is that when trouble comes, the odds are seldom fair, and whether I like it or not, I make a more attractive target than most of my colleagues do, to many of the sick minds that we encounter.
That's not to say that my fate couldn't befall any of them, it could...no one is safe from things like this, but as an adult female, the odds are not in my favor.
I'm delighted and proud of myself for rising in my chosen career. I'm aware that my achievements have been substantial, and I have not allowed my gender, or any perceptions of weakness, to hinder my talent. I have garnered a certain respect, sometimes grudgingly, from my colleagues as I have worked away as diligently as I could.
I like to think that I have made some differences to the women who follow behind me.
I don't know if it is some twisted evidence of a breakthrough, or advance warning or a prospective breakdown, but lately I'm not sure if any of it outweighs the pain.
Simply by going to work, I am forced, sometimes in ways that are discrete; to face effects I am battling to deal with. So I consider quitting and doing something else...
But what can I do? It feels like my hard won skills have very few uses, other than how I am using them. I am too old to consider starting again in a completely new industry where I have to learn the basics and start at the bottom alongside fresh-faced school leavers.
I am an educated, intelligent woman, should I just let men like Harris and Lewis win? Should I allow their bad behavior, their inability to comply with society's rules of how to behave in civilization, to take more from me? Have they not taken enough, already? With all that has been stolen from me, should they be allowed to take more? Is letting their assaults beat me, and force me from a job I love, not betraying the women I have met in my time here, even further than I have? How can I look myself in the mirror, when after counseling numerous, hurt women to pick up their ruined lives, to not allow the man who assaulted them to have any more influence, I throw away all I know to escape my own pain?
I have been forced to reveal more than I ever wished, to colleagues, peers, superiors and strangers, in probing, embarrassing, questions in an attempt to seek out a justice that was no where to be found.
I have suffered the questioning looks from people I know and those I don't,...Can she really do this job, now?...Is she too damaged to be trusted?...Do we need to treat her differently?...Do we need to be careful of even the most simple physical contact, for fear she misinterprets it?...How do we deal with her?...Do we say something or pretend it didn't happen, that we don't know all those personal details?...If we do say something, what the hell should it be?...She's the one...Do we believe that her version is really what happened?...Surely if that really happened...?...She looks ok, I suppose...?
Some of their doubts and speculation, vocalized in barely disguised, almost-whispers and unsubtle nudges or gestures.
I have listened to people judge me, and my veracity, when I reluctantly, put my personal hell on display for them.
I have left myself open to ridicule, to judgment, to supposition and speculation, when I was forced to defend my personal life when it was twisted to suit the purposes of the man I was accusing...
I have listened to well meaning, but hurtful comments when people tried to comfort me but instead left me feeling even more shattered; like the man who compared my embarrassment at describing the sexual details of my attack, to how he wouldn't want everyone knowing all about what he does with his wife...or the woman who suggested that my pursuit of my attacker would somehow make things even harder for women trying to do my job, because they'd be seen as more at risk, and therefore more 'difficult'... or the man who sneered slightly, telling me he bets I wished I had said nothing now, when my attacker was not found guilty of all he had done...
'Smiling as the shit comes down
You can tell a man from what he has to say
Everything gets turned around
And I will risk my neck again, again
You can take me where you will
Up the creek and through the mill
Like all the things you can't explain
Four seasons in one day'
As I remember how badly these comments hurt, I also cannot forget how, over time, some people made me feel a renewed hope with their brave kindness; like the man who bravely tabled the discussion, to tell me he was disgusted not only by his actions, but also how he didn't pay a high enough price for what he did, and pleaded with me to not allow him to have any more influence over me, to please live my life, when his gentle enquiries into how I was doing led me to tell him, it was hard and that I don't feel comfortable in a lot of situations anymore... or the woman who just simply understood the betrayal I felt at him not being found guilty...
The job that sometimes feels like it sucks out my soul, has also brought me the only friends I have. It has brought me my son. It has brought me the man who is helping to ease some of the pain. It has brought me the only confidence it feels like I have anymore... it is the only place that I feel in control.
Is that a fair exchange though?