Bloody Sunday 6

[bedlamsbard]

When she finally left the hospital it was late, and she left because the whitewashed walls held nothing but pain and fear, sending shivers of unhappy memory in waves down her back until she wanted nothing more than to scream. She couldn’t do anything; this was a battle she couldn’t fight, and the realization gnawed at her like acid. It wasn’t until she stopped at a liquor store on her way to Mac’s that she followed the cashier’s gaze down to her hands and saw the dried blood flaking away, caked under her fingernails and in the grain of her fingertips. Aiden’s blood, or Danny’s. It was one and the same to the naked eye, away from the black and white of DNA and A and B and O, and she stared down at her bloody hands until the cashier coughed and she began leafing through her wallet.

Mac had given her a key to his apartment complex months ago; Stella fit it into the lock and hit the up button next to the elevator, standing for a moment with one hand on her gun and clenched around the bottles of bourbon in the brown paper bag she’d been given. Then her patience ended and she swung away toward the stairs, ignoring the looks the college-aged couple that had just come out of the elevator were giving her. She didn’t think she could hold still, not even for the minute and a half it would take the elevator to get her to Mac’s floor. She’d taken a department vehicle for that very reason; if she’d taken the train she would have snapped and killed something from the endless waiting. Too much waiting; sometimes she thought it was all she’d done since she’d woken up. Waited in traffic, waited for some little part of evidence required from the scene to tell her something, damnit, waited for EMS to come with her hands wrist deep in Danny’s blood, trying to hold him together by sheer force of will. Even worse, waited at the hospital outside the emergency with Flack and Val Constantine pacing opposite directions like nervous horses, glaring at each other every time they passed.

cursed building

my sister is dead

She didn’t bother with the doorbell, just banged on the door with her fist until she heard Mac’s voice. “Go away,” he snapped, syllables thick with Chicago laced through them, as if she’d stepped out of New York and into Illinois.

“Mac, open this fucking door or I’ll open it myself,” she snarled, and slammed her palm against it for emphasis.

There was no response. She shoved the second key into the lock and twisted viciously, bulling it open with her shoulder and the kick of one high-heeled foot. “It’s Stella,” she announced, just in case he came at her with a gun. She wouldn’t put it past him; she’d do the same thing.

There was a long pause, and then he said, “I’m in the kitchen.” Another pause, as she relocked the door and made her way down the hall, then he added, “Is Danny –”

“Still in surgery,” she said, turning into the kitchen. Mac was sitting at the battered wood table there, a bottle of Stolichnaya and an assortment of shot glasses in front of him. Decorative ones, mostly, not meant for actual drinking, a few with chips around the rim. Not the sort of thing she’d expected Mac to own, but she remembered what he’d said the last time she’d been over, about a lot of the furniture and cutlery and various accoutrements coming from the previous owner. I didn’t bring anything over from Manhattan, he’d said. Everything reminded me of Claire. I don’t have anything from before – He’d stopped then, face suddenly exhausted, and Stella had slid a hand over his. Didn’t say anything; there had been nothing to say.

Stella swallowed past the lump in her throat. “The doctors aren’t telling us anything,” she said. “Flack’s still there, and Val Constantine and Carmine d’Alessandro, and some Narco sergeant named Messer. I think he’s a brother. I don’t know where Hawkes and Lindsay went.”

“They’re back at the lab,” Mac said. He tossed back a thimbleful of Stoli. “It’s a crime scene now, and they’re CSIs. Since they haven’t worked there as long, they’re not as ‘emotionally compromised’ as you and I are.” He poured himself more vodka, and a little splashed over the sides and onto the table. “What about –”

“She’s at the morgue,” Stella said, suddenly exhausted. She regarded him for a moment, the normally impeccable NYPD detective now exhausted and disheveled, bags under his eyes, his tie wrinkled, his suit jacket nowhere in sight, his dress shirt with the bloodstained sleeves rolled up and dark splotches of blood staining the white fabric. He hadn’t changed it; maybe he hadn’t had a chance. They’d shuttled him away as soon as the ambulances had left, sirens screaming, to meet with panicked NYPD brass demanding to know how a criminal had managed to get close enough to a crime scene to take out two detectives, put one out of commission and kill the other and what, exactly, were the don of one of the Six Families and his underboss doing there, anyway? Was this a hit on the NYPD or the Constantine Family? Why hadn’t Mac and his people secured the entire block? Who could they blame this on and how long would it take to catch the sniper? This was the New York Police Department; how was it that one of their people was dead with so little warning?

Chin trembling slightly – she’d held dead flesh and bone often enough, but never one of her friends – she stepped away from the door, holding the bag of liquor up. “You shouldn’t be drinking by yourself,” she said, as the bourbon clinked and splashed in her hands.

Mac tilted his glass at the chair next to him. “I fucked up,” he said, as she dropped down into a seat. He repeated the words as Stella picked up the Stolichnaya and wafted it under her nose, shaking his head. “I fucked up.”

“I don’t remember you being on that street,” Stella said.

He closed his eyes and shook his head again. “I shouldn’t have said those things to Danny. If I hadn’t –”

“Mac,” Stella said gently, capping the vodka and moving it down to the other end of the table, “if it was a hit, it wouldn’t have mattered what you said to Danny. They would have shot him as soon as he stepped outside the building. Him or – or Aiden.”

“Or me,” Mac said looking faintly bemused as Stella pried the cap of the Mount Gay off with her teeth and took a swig straight from the bottle. It burned going down, and she licked away residual rum from her lips before offering the bottle to Mac. “It could have been me. Or you, or Hawkes, or Flack – or any detective. It could have been any one of my people.” He didn’t bothering pouring it into one of the shot glasses, just tilted the bottle back and drank, throat working silently.

“Bullshit,” Stella said, taking the bottle back. She swallowed before drinking, then said, “It doesn’t matter who it could have been, just who it was. You couldn’t have stopped a sniper, Mac.”

Mac waited for her to finish before reaching for the bottle. “But if I hadn’t yelled at Danny, he wouldn’t have gone out. He wouldn’t have committed to – to whatever it was he committed to with Valentine Constantine. And if Danny hadn’t walked out, Aiden wouldn’t have –” He shook his head, said very carefully, “This wouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have accepted –”

“You never had a fucking choice in the manner,” Stella snapped, more forcefully than she meant. She rubbed furiously at her hands; dried blood flaked away and floated down to Mac’s table. “Danny’s always been – been wild. You couldn’t have stopped him saying the things he said –” Yes, you could have, you bloody idiot, if you hadn’t pushed him into it. “– and you couldn’t have stopped that bastard shooting.”

“But he wouldn’t have gotten shot if I hadn’t pushed him into resigning,” Mac said. “Aiden wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t said the things I said to Danny. She’s dead because of something I said to Danny – to one of my detectives – and that was – that was out of line. I shouldn’t have told him those things.” Softly, “You were right, Stella.” He stood the bourbon almost straight up to drink.

“No,” Stella said. “You shouldn’t have. No matter what he does, Don Valentine Constantine is Danny’s family and you can’t expect him to avoid his own blood just because of who signs his paycheck. Mac, you couldn’t have done anything.”

“Couldn’t I?” he whispered, eyes wide and blue.

“Even if you could have – even if I could have – it’s – that didn’t happen. None of that happened. We can’t – change that. That didn’t happen. What happened happened, and we – we –” Aiden, on her knees with blood dying her white shirt crimson. Danny on the dirty gray sidewalk with his arms splayed out, eyes close and looking far too much like a corpse despite the blood sprayed across his cheeks like freckles. Blood. So much blood. How could one human body – how could two human bodies – hold so much blood? How could he be alive, and she dead? Why hadn’t she and Mac been able to get out there in time, or been the ones on the street instead of Danny and Aiden? Or Flack, or Hawkes, or even Monroe? Why hadn’t they realized there was someone out there with a high-powered rifle and a grudge?

cop-killer

you killed my sister

And Aiden wasn’t – hadn’t been – not by blood, but by something deeper. Band of brothers, and of sisters too.

we’re a family

Stella tilted the bottle back, let the last remnants of rum trickle down her throat before setting it down on the table and reaching for a new one. “Screw the brass,” she said thickly. “Screw ‘em. We lost one of our people today, we –” Aiden, falling. Danny, splayed on the sidewalk. The screams Stella hadn’t been able to stop, from her herself and the uniforms and the civilians on the street. The sounds of gunfire echoing in her ears like thunder. Aiden, and the blood that coated her sweater like paint. Not the sniper – who was he, goddamn him to hell – but the destruction he’d wrought. The lives he’d splintered and destroyed. Her grip on the bottle faltered and it fell to the floor, shatter edon impact and spread thick pools of amber rum across the cracked linoleum floor. Not red, thank God, she didn’t think she could stand to see pools of blood again today. Not after the last ones she’d seen on the streets of her own city, justice outside the rings of yellow crime scene tape and blue police cars, born of her coworkers’ – her partners’ – blood. My people, damnit. Mine.

So much blood for two bodies to hold. So much blood for one to lose and still be alive.

Mac reached for her as she stared blindly at the spilled alcohol on the floor, his bare hand warm and real against her cheek. Stella reached up and caught at his wrist, felt his pulse point jump beneath her fingers. Sudden guilty relief washed through her – I’m all right. My partner’s all right. We’re both alive.

Poor Danny. Poor Flack. Poor Aiden.

“Stella,” Mac said softly, and she reached out with her free hand and brushed her fingers over the stitched up cuts on his face. Flack, lunatic and insane, scratching at Mac like a mad cat, like Mac had shot Danny down. Carmine d’Alessandro had pulled him off. She hadn’t known he had it in him. “Have you had those looked at?”

He shrugged. “They’re not deep.”

“Yes, they are.”

He swallowed, and she could feel the movement reverberate through her hand and down her arm. “Danny was more important.”
“Danny’s not here right now.” Struck by a sudden urge she leaned forward and brushed her lips over the half-dozen cuts shattering the smooth surety of his jawline. He shuddered beneath her. “And you are.” She cupped her hands around his face and kissed him, letting him run his hands up her back as she lowered herself gently into his lap.

“I let her die,” Mac whispered brokenly against her mouth. “I let her –”

Stella turned her lips against his ear. “No, you didn’t.” She kissed him again. “You fought for her, and you fought for Danny, and you didn’t come away unscarred.” She brushed her fingers over the nearest of the cuts, felt an edge of skin brush loosely at her thumb.

Mac closed his eyes. “That wasn’t from fighting a murderer,” he said. “That was from someone who couldn’t stand seeing his partner down. You’ve never been a soldier, Stella, you don’t know –”

“This isn’t the Marine Corps, Mac,” Stella told him, feeling one hand settle heavily on the small of her back. “This is the New York Police Department. We don’t expect to lose our partners when we go out into the street.”

“Neither do we, Stella.” Mac cupped his other hand around the back of her head, fingers buried in her curls. “But it happens.” He drew his thumb up around her chin. “Stella, I’d – I’d like –”

She dropped her head and kissed him again. “Mac,” she said quietly. “I’d like to forget today. Will you help me?”

“Yes,” Mac said breathlessly. “But not here, Stella, not – in a bed, at least. Not on the kitchen table.”

“Picky,” Stella said and let him push her off his lap, wavering a little when her feet hit the linoleum and slipped a little in the spilled bourbon. “You’re going to have to clean that up.”

Mac just gave her a patient look. “Just tell me you brought another bottle.”



*sneaks away*

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/stellaluna_/]

This is...heartbreaking, really, and I can't seem to come up with a better word for it than that. Harsh. Relentless. And these are all good things, that it *hurts* to read this. They're both so hurt and so exhausted, and there's so much futile struggle to reach out to each other through all of this.

*hearts*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! Most of this had already been posted before, I just needed to rewrite parts so that it fit what actually happened, instead of what was supposed to happen.

It's not the battle that's the strain, it's the aftermath, trying to hold everything together while it's all breaking apart. And they're trying to do that, trying to hold on to their sanity, but the storm's battering down their doors and they're not ready yet. And, of course, it gets worse.