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Fin pulled the car over as close as he dared to get, grabbing his phone and dialing Olivia without looking at it. “Liv?” he said when she answered. “I found him.”
“Where is he?” Olivia’s voice was sharp with worry, and Fin exhaled heavily.
“Central Park,” he answered. “Bow Bridge. And Liv—” He hesitated before telling her, “He’s got his gun.”
Olivia didn’t hesitate. “Do your best to talk him down,” she ordered. “I’ll call in back up from the local precinct. Rollins and I are on our way.”
Fin hung up without another word and slowly, carefully got out of the car. For a moment, instinctively, his hand went to his own gun, and he hesitated but didn’t draw it, instead heading towards the bridge as cautiously as he could. He got about a third of the way across when he stopped, his hand again dropping to his gun. “How’d you find me?” Carisi asked tonelessly, staring out at the lake, gripping the railing of the bridge with one hand while his other…
His other hand was gripping his gun.
“Tracked your phone,” Fin said.
Carisi laughed, but there was no trace of amusement in it. “Knew I forgot to do something,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Shoulda pitched it.”
Fin shook his head and started to take a step forward, though he stopped when Carisi’s finger moved slightly on the trigger of his gun. “Nah, I think you kept it on purpose,” he said carefully. “You’re a smart guy, Carisi. I think you wanted to be found.”
“You think I wanted you to try to talk me out of this?” Carisi asked, something flickering in his expression. “That I wanted you or Liv or Amanda to come here and tell me how much I have to live for, when my husband was killed not even four blocks from where we’re standing?”
“I think you wanted someone to try,” Fin said, chancing another step closer. “Because you could’ve killed yourself in your car, or in Liv’s office, or anywhere in between. And instead you came here, where you knew someone would see you.”
Carisi shook his head slowly, and he lifted the hand holding the gun to rest it against the metal railing, his grip on it not wavering. “I didn’t come here because I wanted someone to see me,” he said hollowly. “I came here because we came here, together, yesterday.” Fin knew he was talking about Barba. “It wasn’t a good day for him, memory-wise, so I wanted him to get out of the apartment, see if that helped. We took a walk in the park, held hands…” He trailed off. “He kissed me, right here. And—” His voice broke. “And we were so happy.”
He said the word like it broke his heart just thinking about it, and Fin winced, wishing desperately that someone, anyone else was here for this. Liv would know what to say, in her quiet, calming way. Or Amanda, who knew Carisi so well, who just got him on that fundamental level.
Fin didn’t know what to say.
So he took a different tack, taking a step closer to Carisi as he asked, bluntly, “What would the Catholic Church think about you killing yourself?”
The question had its desired effect, startling Carisi from his reverie as he stared at Fin. Then, surprisingly, he let out an almost-hysterical giggle. “I married a guy. You don’t think the Catholic Church has already decided that I’m going to Hell? Shit, I’m sure I’ve got a one-way ticket.”
“Then what would Barba think?”
At that question, Carisi seemed to physically crumble in on himself, his grip on the bridge’s rail the only thing keeping him upright. “He’d think I was a coward,” he whispered. “And God, maybe I am.”
Fin took another few steps closer, forcing Carisi to look over at him. “You’re not a coward,” Fin told him, as firmly as he could. “You’re going through some shit right now, but you haven’t done anything you can’t walk back.” He took another step closer, holding his hands up placatingly. “The way I see it, you’ve got two choices. You can holster your gun and come with me, or you can do something really stupid that you’ll regret.”
“Is Rafael still dead in both those choices?” Carisi asked numbly.
Fin shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, bluntly, knowing that sugarcoating it or lying would do far more harm than good. “Doesn’t matter what you choose — you can’t bring him back.” He saw Carisi hesitate, his expression full of anguish, and he added softly, “You can live without him, Sonny.”
It was probably the first time that Fin had used Carisi’s preferred nickname, but Sonny’s expression didn’t change as he shook his head and looked out at the water. “Can I?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Fin said, taking another cautious step towards Carisi, close enough now that he could reach out and take the gun from Carisi’s shaking hand. “You can.” He paused before asking quietly, “So what’s it gonna be?”
Carisi went with Fin.
After he took Carisi’s gun, Fin walked him from the bridge, past the unis just arriving on the scene, steering him to Fin’s car and opening the passenger door, looking expectantly at Carisi. “Get in,” he said, and wordlessly, Carisi obeyed, sliding inside.
It was only then that Fin let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
He quickly told the unis to clear out, that it was a false alarm, and the look on his face coupled with his sergeant’s badge was enough that they didn’t even bother arguing. When they were gone, he called Olivia again. “Liv, I got him,” he said. “He’s…” He trailed off, not sure how to put it, since Carisi wasn’t ok or fine and probably wouldn’t be for a very long time. “He’s safe.”
“Oh, thank God,” Olivia sighed, relief clear in her voice. “Where are you taking him?”
“That’s why I was calling,” Fin said. “I’ve got his gun and I don’t think he’s gonna try anything else, but protocol…”
He trailed off, because Olivia undoubtedly knew the protocol better than he did, and she sighed. “Emergency mental health evaluation,” she muttered. “Immediate risk to self or others.”
Fin glanced at Carisi, who was sitting in the front seat of his car and just staring blankly ahead of him. “I don’t think he is though, Liv. Not anymore.” He turned away from Carisi and sighed. “Lemme take him home. Stay with him tonight.”
Olivia was silent for a long moment, undoubtedly weighing her options. “You really think he’s not going to try to hurt himself?”
“I do,” Fin said, with as much confidence as he could manage. “And I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Ok,” Olivia said, finally. “But take him back to your place, Fin. I don’t think he should be in his and Barba’s apartment right now.”
Fin nodded in understanding. “Got it,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.”
He hung up and walked around to the driver’s side of the car and got in. Carisi didn’t look over at him. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“I’m taking you to my place,” Fin said, starting the car.
Carisi did look over at that, something like dulled surprise in his expression. “No 48 hour hold?” he asked. Fin just shook his head and Carisi blinked and looked away. “You’re breaking protocol.”
“I’m not,” Fin said calmly. “I was the officer on the scene and in my professional opinion, you’re not a danger to yourself.” He chanced a glance at Carisi. “Right?”
“Yeah,” Carisi muttered, looking out the car window. “Yeah. Right.”’
They spent the entire ride to Fin’s apartment in silence, headed up to his apartment in silence, settled into his living room in silence. The silence was broken only twice: firstly, by FIn asking, “You want pizza?”; and secondly, after the pizza arrived and they ate their fill, Fin asked, “Video games?”
Which was how two grown men spent the evening playing violent, first person shooter video games. Still in silence. Fin knew that Carisi was grieving, was heartbroken, was so many things that he couldn’t bear to discuss at the moment, so the best thing he could offer was distraction. And silence.
Finally, Fin yawned and glanced over the clock. “Alright,” he said decisively. “Bed time.”
Carisi stood, awkwardly, and glanced around. “I’ll take the couch,” he offered, but Fin waved him off.
“No way. You take the bed. But if you sleep in the buff, you’re washing my sheets tomorrow.”
Carisi managed a half-smile and shrugged in acquiescence before shuffling towards the bedroom. That in and of itself spoke volumes to his state of mind, since Carisi wouldn’t have just let it go without an argument. Not normally. And honestly, Fin would normally have let Carisi take the couch, since he was way too old to be sleeping on the couch like a twenty-year-old.
But it didn’t really matter, since Fin’s desire to sleep on the couch wasn’t borne strictly from courtesy or some misguided attempt at being a good host. He could handle waking up with a sore back tomorrow. He wasn’t sure that Carisi could.
Besides, truth be told, he was trying to put himself between the bedroom and any sharp objects in the apartment.
He trusted Carisi. He didn’t think he was going to try anything stupid.
He was still going to sleep with one eye open. Just in case.
And if, at 2 in the morning, Carisi woke him up with sobs so loud and broken that it physically pained Fin to hear, he was going to roll over and let Carisi cry himself back to sleep.
Because he knew that he wasn’t the one that Carisi needed to see.
The day of the funeral was bright and sunny, and Sonny himself was anything but.
He got through the service by sheer willpower and a vice-like grip on Olivia’s hand. It was a simple, understated affair — an ill-fitting end for such an ostentatious man, but Carisi understood. For someone larger than life, it was impossible to sum him up in a eulogy or a few tasteful hymns.
He didn’t cry.
He had assumed that he would, that he would lose it before the (mercifully closed) casket even made it to the front of the church, but he didn’t.
He just felt numb.
Because there was no world in which any of this was actually happening.
That numbness got him through the service, through the countless people coming up and telling him how sorry they were for his loss. He grimaced a smile and shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with everyone, glad beyond words that the burial was going to take place at a later time and place and he didn’t have to be there.
He wasn’t sure he could take the sight of them lowering Rafael into the ground and covering him up with dirt.
Someone clasped his hands with both of hers and Carisi was forced back into the present, blinking at Lucia Barba, whose smile was small, and soft, and pained. “Mijo,” she said, reaching up to kiss his cheek. “How are you holding up?”
“As well as I can be,” he assured her, squeezing her hands before letting them go. “How are you?”
Lucia waved a dismissive hand. “I am…” She trailed off, her smile fading. “I am heartbroken, of course. Which is why I can only imagine what you’re going through.” She closed her eyes for a brief moment before managing another small smile. “Anyway, what I wanted to tell you is that I know that it hurts you too much to see me right now—”
“Of course not,” Carisi interrupted, seeking to reassure her, even if the words felt hollow as he said them.
Lucia reached up to pat his cheek lightly. “It’s fine,” she told him. “Because it hurts me too much to see you as well.” Carisi closed his eyes for a brief moment, feeling the tears welling in his eyes and forcing them down, and when he opened his eyes again, Lucia continued, softly, “But you’re all I have left of him.”
Carisi realized with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that she was right, that Lucia had no other family, not in New York at least. So he said nothing, instead reaching out to pull her into a wordless hug. After a long moment, he told her, his voice thick, “I promise I’ll call you. When...when I can.”
When she patted his cheek this time, it was a little clumsy, and he could see the tears shining in her eyes. “He loved you,” she told him, simply. “For longer than either of you realized at first, I think.” She reached out to squeeze Carisi’s hand. “You should have had more time with him.”
“So should you,” Carisi told her, honestly.
“Oh, mijo,” Lucia said, her voice sad. “I had the joy of calling him my son for 52 years. You should have had at least that many with him.”
And Carisi couldn’t find it in himself to disagree.
Rollins lingered awkwardly in the doorway, watching Carisi as he poured himself a cup of coffee in her kitchen. “I’m goin’ to work,” she told her, her accent thicker than usual as it had been pretty much ever since Barba died. Thick with concern and worry, mostly, and the genuine fear that Carisi may never get better.
Carisi glanced up at her. “Ok,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “I’ll be here until Jesse’s done with school when I’ll go pick her up.”
There was a question in his tone, like he was waiting for her to get to her real purpose, and Rollins forced a smile on her face. “Perfect,” she assured him. “I’ll see you later.”
He’d been staying at her place for the past couple of weeks, mainly because she was the only one with a pullout couch, and granted, Carisi had been a godsend, picking up Jesse from school and looking after her while Amanda was at work, but it felt hollow. Rote. Like everything he did, from getting up in the morning on, was done solely out of obligation.
Not that she blamed him, not be any means. But it was still hard to watch Carisi drift through the motions of life, and harder still to hear him crying at night when he thought she and Jesse were asleep and wouldn’t hear him.
She just wished there was more that she could do.
Instead, she went off to work, and she did her job, and she tried not to worry about the broken man haunting her apartment.
One day, he’d be her Sonny again. And until he was, she was willing to let him stay as long as he needed. And not just because he loved her daughter almost as much as she did.
When she came home that night, later than expected, she was surprised to find Carisi and Jesse sitting in the living room together, the TV off for once. Amanda paused in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt whatever was going on.
“Uncle Sonny?” Jesse asked, leaning her head against Sonny’s shoulder.
Carisi looked over at her, a fond smile on his face. “Yeah, squirt, what?”
Jesse scowled at him. “I’m not a squirt,” she protested. “I’m seven years old!”
“You are?” Sonny asked, pretending to be surprised. “Why, you’re almost a grown-up, aren’t ya?” Jesse giggled at that and Sonny pressed a kiss to the top of her head before asking, “What’s up?”
Jesse hesitated for a moment. “Uncle Sonny, why are you so sad all the time?” she asked finally.
Carisi stilled, his expression blank, before he reached over to run a hand through her hair, a gentle, soothing motion. “Squirt, I’m sad because I miss Uncle Rafi,” he said, his voice rough. “I know your mom told you—”
“That Uncle Rafi went up to heaven?” Jesse supplied. “Yeah. She told me.”
“Right,” Carisi said, and he was silent for a long moment. Amanda knew that it was because he was struggling to get his emotions under control before he continued. “Right, Uncle Rafi went up to heaven. But you know that me and Uncle Rafi were married, right?” Jesse nodded. “Well, when you’re married to someone, it’s because you love them a whole lot. Like, even more than you love your mommy.”
Jesse wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “That’s not possible,” she said firmly. “I love my mommy more than anything.”
Carisi laughed lightly. “That I believe,” he said. “But I loved Uncle Rafi more than anyone else in this whole entire world, and I’m sad because I miss him, squirt. I miss him like—” He broke off, unable or unwilling to put it into terms that a seven-year-old could understand. “I just really miss him. And that’s why I’m sad.”
For a moment, Jesse was quiet, then she leaned over to press a clumsy kiss to Carisi’s cheek. “I miss Uncle Rafi, too,” she said, and Carisi sighed heavily.
“I know,” he said, gathering Jesse to him and kissing the top of her head again. “I know.”
Standing there in the doorway, witnessing that moment between Sonny and her daughter, Amanda could feel her heart break, but as much as she wanted to cry, to sink to the floor in despair, she knew that wasn’t an option. She had to be strong, for both Jesse and Carisi.
And she would be.
So she forced a smile on her face and strode into the room. “Hey baby girl,” she said, grinning when Jesse shrieked and practically dove off the couch to launch herself at her. “How does pizza sound for dinner?”
“Sounds perfect,” Sonny said, genuinely, even managing a small smile, just for a moment.
And for Amanda, as she gave her daughter a hug and shared a small, tentative smile with Carisi, that was enough.
Carisi seemed frozen, bent over the doorknob, his key in the lock, and Amanda, in a desperate effort to clear the tension, asked lightly, “Is it gonna reek in there?”
It did the trick. Carisi looked over at her, startled, and Amanda managed a small smile. “I’m just sayin’, no one’s been in there for, like, three months. Any food that you have in there has to have spoiled by now.”
Carisi managed a laugh at that, though it was short lived. “I think Lucia’s been by, a few times,” he said softly. “I’m sure she cleared out the fridge.”
“Well in that case, better in than out,” Amanda said bracingly, and Carisi took a deep, shuddering breath before finally turning the doorknob and opening the door to his apartment. His and Barba’s apartment. The apartment he hadn’t set foot in for months.
They were there to pack, to go through Barba’s things and start boxing up the things to get rid of and the things to keep and sort out his life much more neatly than he had ever lived it.
Carisi had asked her, quietly one morning over breakfast, if she would come with him, if she would help him. “I can’t do it alone,” he had told her, softly. “Honestly, I’d rather not do it at all, but. I have to. Eventually. Finally.”
She had agreed almost instantly, but now, watching Carisi drift through the apartment, paler than usual, looking like he was seeing a ghost at every turn, she wasn't sure that she should have. Amanda cleared her throat. “Where do you want to start?” she asked.
Even though Carisi still looked lost, like he was drifting through time and space and memory, he still managed to come back to himself enough to suggest, “The living room, I guess. I dunno if I can face, uh, the...the…”
“The bedroom,” Amanda supplied, with a gentle smile. “I completely understand. Going through Barba’s ties alone would probably take you a month.”
The joke was gentle, and Carisi even managed a smile, though his eyes still tightened with pain. “Right,” he said. “So let’s start with our books, cuz we can probably get rid of all of them.”
A half hour later, after sorting through their books and the DVD and record collection and moving on to a set of CDs that Amanda was frankly embarrassed on Barba’s behalf that he had kept long past the point where CDs were a thing one held onto, she cleared her throat, wanting to break both the silence and the permeating mood of despair that had settled over them. “Tell me about him,” she suggested lightly.
Carisi gave her a look, three different Billy Joel CDs in hand. “Tell you about who?” he asked, tossing two CDs in the ‘trash’ pile and one in the ‘keep’ pile.
“Barba,” Amanda said, throwing all four ABBA CDs in the ‘trash’ pile. “Tell me about him.”
Carisi’s brow furrowed. “You knew him longer than I did,” he scoffed. “I doubt I have anything to tell you that you don’t already know.”
Amanda shrugged. “I may have known ADA Barba longer, sure, but you got to see the parts of Barba that none of the rest of us were able to.” Carisi shrugged slightly, and Amanda nudged him with her shoulder. “So c’mon. Tell me about him. What was Barba like when the suspenders and the tie came off?”
“I dunno,” Carisi said, reluctantly, but a soft sort of smile was tugging at his lips. “I mean, most of our relationship was spent at work, you know? We didn’t have a whole lot of time together, even after we got married. That was just — I mean, neither of us expected otherwise, but…” He trailed off, his smile disappearing. “Maybe we shoulda spent more time together, I dunno, but what we had, we made the most of.” His smile returned, sharper and dirtier now. “Ya know, early mornings with coffee and sex, late nights with scotch and sex, mid-afternoon breaks from work with—” He broke off, his grin widening. “Well, pretty much just sex.”
Amanda laughed and rolled her eyes. “I’ll be honest, when I asked to hear about you and Barba, I didn’t expect it all to revolve around sex.”
Carisi stuck his tongue out at her, but he was still grinning. “Just because you can’t handle the thought of me and Barba having an active sex life…”
The next hour passed in a blur of stories, of Carisi sharing the little moments that he and Barba had shared, the little moments that had made up their life together, had filled their apartment with laughter and love and life.
There were tears, of course, as was only to be expected, both from Amanda and Carisi, but there was also laughter, especially when Amanda made an ill-timed joke. “Lordy, don’t tell me you and Barba had sex on the table!” she practically shrieked, scooting away from the kitchen table as though it had personally offended her.
Carisi’s answering grin was sly. “Honestly? It’d be a helluva lot easier to tell you where we haven't had sex in this apartment.”
“Eww,” Amanda groaned, wrinkling her nose, and both she and Carisi dissolved into laughter.
At least, they laughed until Carisi stopped, abruptly, his expression darkening. “This feels wrong,” he admitted, his voice low. “Laughing, joking. I just…” His jaw tightened. “I keep looking up at the door waiting for Rafi to come in, for Rafi to come home, and every time he doesn’t, every time I remember—” He broke off, and Amanda’s heart broke all the more to see the pain written clearly across his face. “Every time I realize that he never will, it's like losing him all over again.”
Wordlessly, Amanda reached out to Carisi, gathering him to her and holding him tightly, as tightly as she was able. After a long moment, Carisi asked, his voice hoarse, “Will I ever stop missing him?”
Amanda rubbed his arm soothingly and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Sweetheart, I don’t think you ever will,” she said softly. “I just think that one day, maybe, it’ll hurt less.”
She had to believe that it would. For Carisi’s sake, she had to believe that one day, it wouldn’t hurt as much as it did for him to remember Barba and the life they shared.
She had to believe it. Because she wasn’t sure that Carisi ever would.
Olivia folded her hands in front of her as she looked closely at Carisi. She felt a pang as she realized too late that this, her office, was where Carisi had gotten the call that had changed his entire life, and for a moment, she had the wild thought that they should have this conversation somewhere else, anywhere else. “I’m sorry,” she started, wincing when the words sounded worse than she intended. “I didn’t think that this — that my office—”
Carisi waved a dismissive hand, and the smile he gave her was almost genuine. “It’s not a problem,” he assured her. “I’d be thinking of Rafael no matter where we are.”
It was undoubtedly true, and Olivia inclined her head slightly. “How is therapy going?” she asked lightly.
Carisi shrugged. “It’s hard,” he admitted, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “But it’s not any harder than, ya know, not going to therapy.”
Olivia had to smile at that, just slightly, because she knew that feeling well. “I didn’t ask you in here to just ask how your therapy was going,” she told him, even though he undoubtedly already knew that. “I actually wanted to talk with you about your future.”
Carisi’s expression flickered slightly. “My future?” he asked cautiously.
“Yes, your future,” Olivia said, nodding. “It’s been six months since you returned to work here, and honestly, your work has been exemplary. I certainly can’t complain. But honestly…” She trailed off, a little unsure if she wanted to go where she needed to, but knowing that in the end, it was for the best. “Honestly, I think that you’re better than what you’re doing here, and it’s time that you started considering next steps for yourself. Personally, I’d recommend that you take the sergeant’s exam or—” She hesitated. “—or consider putting that law degree of yours to good use. The Manhattan DA’s office is hiring.”
“I can’t,” Carisi said, the words coming out automatically, and he took a moment before continuing, “I can’t be a lawyer. Not...not now, anyway. I don’t think that I could do it. Not without….not without Rafael.”
As desperately as Olivia wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true, that he could do so much more than he thought he could, she nonetheless nodded in acceptance before asking, “What about the sergeant's exam?”
“Maybe,” Carisi allowed, hesitantly, like he didn’t want to agree to something without being able to back out later. When Olivia merely raised an eyebrow at him, Carisi elaborated, “I’m just not sure that I want things to change. Not yet, anyway.”
Again, Olivia wanted to tell him that things had already changed, that trying to keep everything exactly the same wouldn’t bring Barba back, but she settled for telling him, lightly, “Well, take your time. You have time to decide what it is that you want — or at least, what it is that you’ll settle for, since I think I know what you want, and I can’t give you that.”
Carisi smiled slightly at that and nodded. “Thanks,” he told her, standing. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
With that, he left her office as Olivia stared after him, her expression troubled, before she looked down at the framed picture of the squad from Barba and Carisi’s wedding. She couldn’t get what she wanted, either, but all she could do was try to push Carisi, to keep him going.
She had assured Rafael, all those years ago, that she would always look after Carisi. And she wasn’t going to let him down now.
Carisi’s smile was genuine as he held the newest of Bella and Tommy’s little ones, his little nephew whose face was still red and scrunched and tear-streaked from having water poured over his head. It was the third of their four kids that he had stood as godfather for at the baptism, and he tried to forget that the only other godfather they had ever chosen was Carisi’s dead husband.
Nothing killed the mood like remembering something like that.
When Bella came over to fetch her son, Carisi gladly handed him off before joining his other sisters at the back of the church. “It was a beautiful service,” Teresa offered, dabbing at her eyes with a kleenex, and Carisi bit back his retort that she must be getting old to be so affected by it.
Besides, Gina was tugging at his arm and he followed her away from their family, his brow furrowed. “What?” he asked, confused.
“I have something for you,” Gina said, a little breathlessly, and she held out a scrap of paper with a name and number written on it.
Carisi scanned it blankly and tried to hand it back. “I’m already seeing a shrink, thanks,” he said, as lightly as he could.
“It’s not a shrink,” Gina told him, her voice unusually soft. “It’s a friend of a friend — a widower like you. I thought...I thought maybe you could call him.”
For a moment, Carisi wanted nothing more than to yell at her, to scream in her face at her assumption and whatever else that made her think that this was a good idea. But he didn’t. Instead, he took a deep, calming breath, and said, “Thanks, Gina. I appreciate you thinking of me, but, uh, I’m not ready to date right now.”
Though Gina nodded, her expression twisted like she knew he was making the wrong choice, and frankly, Carisi didn’t want to hear it. Instead, he headed back to where his sisters and his mother were waiting.
And maybe, if it had just been Gina, it would’ve been fine.
But instead, Teresa and Bella and even Carisi’s own mother tried to slip him numbers or names of men they thought he might like, might want to date, and when his mother casually mentioned that Jimmy Cacciatore from down the street had just gotten a divorce, Carisi lost it. “I’m not interested!” he practically shouted at his siblings and his mother, his temper getting the best of him. “I’m not ready, ok? So keep your names and your numbers and your suggestions to yourself because I can’t deal with it right now.”
He broke off, his chest heaving, and his sisters and mother were all staring at him, wide-eyed, and Carisi took another deep breath before telling them, in as gentle a tone as he could muster, “I miss my husband so badly that it hurts, still, and, frankly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to date to again. So while I appreciate what you’re doing…”
His family seemed to understand, shifting awkwardly, and it was his mother who spoke, gently, reached out to grab his wrist. “We know,” she said, softly. “We just don’t want you to be alone for the rest of your life.”
“I know,” Carisi sighed, and he leaned in to kiss his mother’s cheek. “And I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life either. But right now, I’d rather be alone than be with someone who isn’t Rafi.”
Carisi offered his hand to Lucia, who laughed lightly and teased, “Mi héroe”, even as she accepted his hand and let him help her out of the car. Once she was out, she smoothed her dress and looked pointedly at the shiny sergeant’s badge on Sonny’s hip. “I’m so proud of you, mijo,” she said, reaching up to pat Carisi’s cheek. “And you know Rafi would be as well.”
“Well, we’ll find out, won’t we,” Carisi said with a smile. “C’mon. I can’t wait to show him.”
Together they wove through the seemingly endless tombstones that dotted the cemetery, tracing the familiar path to Barba’s grave.
In the first few weeks after Barba had been interred, Carisi had visited him daily, even though he knew that there was nothing under that mound of fresh earth than the rotting corpse of the man he had loved. Even so, he had found himself more able to talk to Barba, to pretend that he was still there, at his gravesite than anywhere else.
As time went on, he had cut down on the visits, from once a day to every other day, from every other day to once a week, from once a week to every other week, to, finally, once a month.
It was as long as he could go without seeing Rafael. Even if all he got to see was his name carved into marble.
When they got to Barba’s grave, Lucia let go of Carisi’s arm to press her hand against Barba’s tombstone. “Hola, hijo,” she said lightly.”I’m going to go say hi to your abuelita, but I’ll leave you with tu Soleado.”
She turned and gave Carisi a kiss on his cheek before taking her leave, going to visit the grave of her own mother, who was buried not too far away, but far enough to give Carisi some privacy.
Carisi turned back to Barba’s headstone and smiled, a genuine smile. “Hey, babe,” he said lightly, reaching out to rest his own hand against the stone. “I, uh, I wanted to find a better way to tell you, but — I made sergeant.” He turned slightly to show off the shiny badge on his hip, imagining the way that Barba’s eyes would light up and his lips would curve into a proud, almost possessive smile before rewarding him with a kiss. “I couldn’t have done it without you, without knowing that you have always supported me without question. But still, I’m pretty proud. And I’d like to think that you would be, too.”
He crouched down next to Barba’s headstone, to brush a few weeds away from where they stubbornly grew at the base of the stone. “God, if you were here, Raf, you’d be having an aneurysm at our latest ADA, I swear to God—” He launched into a story about SVU’s latest case and about all the different ways that the ADA was bungling said case, and he ended with a sigh and his hand pressed flat against Barba’s tombstone. “God, I wish that you were here to kick some ass,” he said, laughing, but then he was suddenly somber, his smile fading away completely.
“I just wish you were back,” he whispered, honestly. “I miss you. So much. More than I could ever say, just like always. But—” He broke off with a grimace that might have charitably be considered a smile. “I miss you. But I also know that I’ll see you again someday. And honestly? That’s what gets me through the day sometimes. So in the meantime…”
He raised his hand to his mouth and kissed his fingertips before pressing them to Rafael’s tombstone. “I miss you. I love you. And I’ll see you soon.”
If only Carisi had gone with Fin that day on the bridge.
If only Carisi had hesitated long enough for Fin to disarm him. If only backup had arrived sooner. If only Rollins or Olivia had been there.
But they weren’t.
But he didn’t.
Fin took a step closer to Carisi, his hands held up placatingly. “The way I see it, you’ve got two choices,” he said. “You can holster your gun and come with me, or you can do something really stupid that you’ll regret.”
“Is Rafael still dead in both those choices?” Carisi asked numbly.
Fin shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, bluntly, knowing that sugarcoating it or lying would do far more harm than good. “Doesn’t matter what you choose — you can’t bring him back.” He saw Carisi hesitate, his expression full of anguish, and he added softly, “You can live without him, Sonny.”
It was probably the first time that Fin had used Carisi’s preferred nickname, but Sonny’s expression didn’t change as he shook his head and looked out at the water. “Can I?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Fin said, taking another cautious step towards Carisi, close enough now that he could reach out and take the gun from Carisi’s shaking hand. “You can.” He paused before asking quietly, “So what’s it gonna be?”
Carisi shook his head again. “Maybe I can,” he acknowledged softly. “But I don’t want to.”
And he raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.