Hello all.
Tina: I think in this case Cal had a lot of guilt, he thought he had it all figured out but Jenkins going after Gillian was not something he had anticipated. He's doing things by his own book, he might buldoz his way to help her but she needs it.
Well, here is another chapter, for the first time we made it to number 4. This is from 'Sacrifice' and it's a stay, sort of...
"Hey," he huffed while opening the door, and she replied with the same absent monotone.
No wonder it felt difficult to make small talk with the day they've had, but Cal never liked when they weren't able to put a few sentences together, especially when he could see something was bothering her.
"How you doing? You all right?"
He couldn't help asking, mostly because there was a long list of reasons for her not to be ok running around in his head. It really had been a horrible day, they've had more violence and tension in that one day than the rest of year, not to mention the weight of their responsibility about it. Most of the time when they worked on a case there were only a few people involved, only a handful who could potentially pay the consequences of a mistake on their part; but that day dozens, maybe hundreds of lives might have been at risk if they had failed. It was a lot to deal with, plus there was the ever present personal toll of having kept such a thing from Torres, putting the greater good ahead of a single friend.
"I'm okay," Gillian lied, rather badly, and as much as Cal admired her strength sometimes he wished she would just let him in.
He knew she wasn't alone in that mulling over the events of the day, he was dealing with a lot himself between Emily's fears, the disheartening notion that they might have won the battle but not the war and thinking about the lives they had not been able to save. Most of the time he managed to mask everything from others - and himself - by just keep going and steamrolled ahead, but that sadly looked like one of those occasions in which he had to put his own problematic thoughts aside and take care of others.
He walked up to her then, gently putting his hand on her shoulder, grateful that at least she didn't seem to feel the need to avoid his touch or gaze.
"You want to talk about it, love?"
He'd never admitted it, to Loker or anybody else, but sometimes the concept of radical honesty was one he could get behind. He could have tried to read it off of her or push her in some way, but he felt that the moment called for a more cautious approach and he'd rather let her know that he was there for her if she wanted.
Gillian seemed to understand that and appreciated the attention, sighing with a sad smirk that wasn't addressed to him before standing up in front of him.
"Alec and I are separating," she dropped that on him with a calm voice, and the surprise on his face was genuine. I'm... I'm moving out."
"I'm sorry."
He really was, in more ways than one. He had been through that and it had wrecked him, emotionally and physically. What he knew but didn't want to share with her, especially at that very moment, was that she didn't know what was about to hit her no matter how much she had thought about it. In his own painful experience he had found that it was the little, smaller things that really killed him at the beginning. Of course they had Emily in the picture but oddly that had been a positive factor; no matter how bad things might have been between him and Zoe at the end, it had been the care for their daughter the reason why they had managed to keep things civil and put their girl first. Anything related to Emily and all the boring admin stuff had slotted into place relatively easily, but it had been the little stuff such as where to sleep the first night, where to keep his stuff and so on that had really gotten to him at the beginning.
He was also sorry because he hadn't seen it coming, meaning that after she had told him about Alec's addiction he had pulled away and respected her wishes for privacy, against his own will and better judgement. Maybe if he had insisted just a little bit, kept observing from a distance, the news of the separation would have been less surprising…but even if he had, what could he have done for her?
Cal kept thinking about his inadequacy as he watched her trying to collect herself, her eyes glistening with tears she managed to push back with a sigh. Then she stepped closer, leaning back on her desk and facing him up close.
"You know, I can't even picture it. Being on my own."
"Well, it's been a long time."
He wasn't really sure what to make of the moment or how to substantially contribute to that conversation so he ventured in another small comforting touch on her arm instead, deciding to make a move and leave the rest up to her.
"I gotta go to the hospital" he offered then.
"To see Torres?"
He mumbled a quick yes, using the sentence as a prompt to gauge her reaction. He knew she could see through it, the words and the tone of his voice going along with the way he was looking at her. He might have 'had' to go but he could wait, as much as he cared about Torres and Dupree his best friend took precedence over them, especially under the present situation, and he wanted her to know that. Cal knew that if he had straightforwardly offered to stay she would have told him to go, so instead he wanted to let her know that it was an option if she wanted.
Gillian held his caring gaze for a few seconds, their eyes scanning each others' in silence but with frantic movements, and Cal was baffled by the light smile coming to her lips for a brief second. She was probably thinking that it was nice of him to go check on Torres, she knew that it hadn't been an easy decision to keep the truth from her for so long; knowing her, Cal strongly suspected that she was rather pleased with his attention towards their employee. Of course, she was the kind of person that even when her own life was going down the drain would find solace in someone else's kindness.
"I'll be alright," she said then, on cue with Cal's thought, gently resting her hand on his chest in a gesture that was comforting while also pushing him away. "You should go."
She had to say that twice to get the message across and even then Cal took his time, staring her down softly with his eyes going all over the place as his mind raced with equal confusion, looking for something to say that wouldn't disobey her order while also respecting the obvious subtext that she didn't mind being on her own.
When he realised he wasn't going to get anything else from her, and that she didn't expect anything from him, Cal reluctantly pulled away and stepped back, leaving the room.
Separating from her didn't do much to ease his mind about what he had just found out, nor about what Gillian's state of mind might have been. Like most people, when he said things like 'I know what you feel' it felt a bit far-fetched, but in that situation he most certainly did. It didn't really matter what the circumstances of the separation were: it was the end of something that was supposed to last forever, it was a failure to deal with it and something incredibly private that yet was easily going to become public domain sooner rather than later. He already knew how it was going to play out; rumours were going to spread, inevitable once people would have started to notice that Alec wasn't coming around the office anymore, or they would have noticed something off with Gillian or that suddenly her personal correspondence and communication needed to be redirected somewhere new…and he already knew he was supposed to pretend there was nothing going on with her.
It was the damn line all over again, except this time he felt it was even more useless: he had respected the line knowing there was something big on the plate and it hadn't help any, and now there it was again despite something so big and life-changing happening to her and a likely request for him to act as if he didn't see how much she was hurting. Lots of good had done to both of them to ignore the previous signs, he thought sarcastically as he drove to the hospital: then why keep repeating the same mistake?
For the second time that night Cal thought about Loker's approach and came to appreciate it, in that way human beings come to realise the value of something they can't attain. Sometimes it really was easier to just be out with it, say things as they were and spare everybody painful misunderstandings…but he also liked to stay true to his own moniker, that you could either have truth or happiness but not the two combined. Worse still, most of the time you'd get neither; he hadn't talked to Gillian about his suspicions on Alec's potential infidelity hoping to spare her some grief but he had still let her down; he had stopped asking her about it and things had gotten dramatically worse and he had missed it all because he had stopped looking.
What was the point in being able to do what he could then, if he couldn't help the people closer to him?
Those thoughts were still in his head as he navigated the hospital looking for Dupree's room, and they would not get out even as he spoke with Torres. Well, argued might have been more precise, although not for his own choice: he hadn't expected her to be welcoming and warm, she was entitled to be upset with him for withholding the information about her boyfriend, but he had not anticipated that level of resentment and personal attack. He thought he was being fairly decent about it, apologising sincerely and trying to sneak in an honest compliment for the catch on the imam, and yet in the blink of an eye she was attacking him. Not only that, she was jumbling other people into it and given the conversation he was just coming from when Torres accused Gillian of indulging him Cal quietly lost it.
Indulging him? How was cutting him off from her personal business, outright threatening him not to read her, indulgent in any way shape or form? And by the way, it took an incredible amount of guts and confidence to 'indulge' him and yet keep exercising some sort of control over him, something that Gillian was a master at. Torres was young, she might have been a natural but she was still raw and she still didn't understand what she could do, not enough to know the consequences. While talking back to her Cal easily remembered how she had applied her talent in trying to read him, how she had confidently called out what she had seen about Alec, unable to control herself: that was what she didn't get yet, control. She liked the thrill of a good read, she liked the power…but she wasn't ready to deal with the consequences and then resented others for having reached that level of comprehension.
"You have a talent," Cal granted her, honestly looking forward to swiftly quashing the satisfaction on her face with the weight of the ugly truth. "But it comes with sacrifice, believe me."
His voice was heavy with honesty as he said that, thinking about Gillian back there in the office alone, dealing with the demise of her marriage after months of suffering and frustration: all things that he was aware of but had done nothing about, because she hadn't want him to.
So much for indulging! He cursed in his head as he warned Torres that she ought to remember what she could do was a public service and not a selfish solo act, then he left knowing the conversation didn't need any further follow up.
Removing himself from the situation helped him to calm down a little, he wasn't one to tolerate any kind of disrespect towards his science and Torres' lack of understanding of what it could achieve certainly was a form of that. But then, as he walked the way back and outside to his car, Cal started to feel a different kind of frustration mounting inside him again. He had meant to go home after the hospital, call Emily and make sure she was going to get a good night of sleep, but in the state he was in it would have hardly been a comforting conversation and before he knew he was driving back to the office.
He prayed that Gillian was still there, she hadn't mentioned the details but it was fair to assume that she was not staying at her home that night and he hoped that she hadn't left yet. He was going to call her if that had been the case, he wasn't going to back down on that, but thankfully her car was still in the parking lot when he arrived. It seemed that it was the only one, which wasn't surprising. It was really late by then, and Loker had not been the only staffer he had ordered to go home earlier: every single person at the group had worked their ass off that day and he had been very serious about sending them home to get some deserved rest and distraction.
He'd told the same to Gillian if given the chance, but she was probably going to stonewall him if he'd tried. That was partly why as he marched back inside the office, checking rooms and making sure nobody else was there, Cal felt ready to have the confrontation she likely didn't want to have.
It helped him that she didn't see him coming, quite literally since she nearly stumbled on him while coming out of the breakroom. Cal managed to avoid the crash and stepped back, the long hems of his coat floating briefly in the air as he moved, then he looked at her feeling somewhat further annoyed by the surprised look on her face.
"Cal, what are you doing here? I thought-"
"You have to talk to me, Foster." He cut her off, his hand raised in the air cutting invisible lines with gestures as nervous as his words. "You're separating from your husband, we both know there's hardly an outcome other than divorce for that. I've been there, it's not the kind of thing you keep to yourself and don't talk about. I was a mess when Zoe left me…but I had you." He held her gaze for a second then quickly looked away, masking his true feelings with his frustration and hoping that she wouldn't see what he truly meant with those last words and urging to move away from an angle that might have caused her more problems. "And I know it's not the same, clearly I'm not you when it comes to this kind of stuff but you have to let me try to be there for you the way you were there for me. It's gonna hurt Gill," he warned her, his voice suddenly a little softer. "No matter what, it will hurt and you shouldn't go through this alone." Gillian was speechless, mostly because he seemed unstoppable in that quiet but very pointy rambling of his. "Not tonight, you wanna be alone and that's fair enough but just so you know, you shouldn't. And I've kept my mouth shut when you asked me to but now it's not the time-"
The gentle touch of her hand on his stopped the flow of words pouring out of him, slowing down his heart beat but also throwing him into a sudden panic as he tried to go through what he had just said, fearing he might have said too much. But Gillian was smiling, that sad smile he had seen way too often on her recently but still smiling, and the expression on her face further softened when he finally calmed down enough to look at her.
Then she took his hand and tilted her head on one side, briefly looking over at the couch in the lobby before asking if he didn't mind sitting with her for a while.
What do you think of the way I made Cal come back?
And the next one, get ready for it, is from Honey: we all know where the episode left us, but will Cal stay or go?