(Forsaken) Can't cry anymore.

[akonken.livejournal.com]

The place is a wreck.

It doesn't look as though much was done while I was gone, but I know that's not true. There's only so much Dan can do, after all, with me in the hospital and Simon on sick leave too (which I don't begrudge him; there isn't much more stressful for a normal person than a rampaging werewolf).

Raph wouldn't look at her. He wouldn't look at her.

I go back to my desk and sit on my chair. I don't open or close the door; I don't have to. There's no door left. The frame is buckled where Raph charged through it. That's going to cost a pretty penny.

"That's pretty much like saying you were asking for it."

Well, I have pretty pennies, don't I? I mean, I wasn't considering them to be mine - "everything you have, everything you are belongs to the People" my father always, always said - but they are, really, aren't they? I'm the one that earned them.

"It was great! Almost like a holiday."

I have earned them. I've taken my licks. I've paid my dues. All those cliches, they're true. It was time I stopped seething, stopped holding back. It was time I started living. My own life. Not for other people, but for me.

"Jay Pathfinder has a spirit following the three of you."

I think, for the first time since I was 17, of leaving. I dismiss it this time, too, but for different reasons. This time nobody's going to chase me down and lock me in my room for three days. This time I'm staying because I belong here.

"I need you to tell me what my ex-wife is doing. What she's not telling me."

I sigh and start to sift through the paper that Dan at least picked up from where it was sprayed across my office floor, putting it into files. Maybe I shouldn't have stayed that extra week in the hospital. No, I needed to. It's fine; I'm not really in a hurry, am I? I have savings. I have a new case to start whenever I'm up to it. I'll have more.

Raph wouldn't look at her.

I can go back to my old life with new eyes now. And a new back, and a new leg. It belongs to me now. Just me.

[Forsaken] - TFC

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

I'm sitting across the breakfast table from a self-confessed multiple murderess... and I'm okay with that. Not with what she's done, nor even why she did it, but with her.

What she's done makes me sick to think of it, and what was done to her to bring her to that point fills me with horror. I know that she can't understand why I'm angry about the first two deaths, any more than she understands why I am sort of okay with the last, but she accepts my words without question.

A part of her is a frightened child, a part of her a killer, but every part of her trusts me. It's implicit; absolute. A part of me deplores what she's done, a part of me can't help but admire her strength, and every part of me trusts her.

I ask to see the body and she says yes. She seems okay with it; death doesn't bother her at all, just the fact of her crime.

She only recognises the one.

I ask her to meet me at the usual place; tell her to finish her breakfast and she does.

A child. A killer. A dreamer of dreams. The Uratha girl.

The lone wolf, looking for a pack.

My friend.

My partner.