Chapter Text
Prison was way harder than Rosa expected.
The fights and the threats she could deal with; her whole thing was specifically designed to let her stare down people she’d otherwise have been scared of.
Four years in Vice were plenty of time to get it perfect. Amidst the constant danger of New York’s drug scene, she shed the giddy, girlish excitement of her youth for a cloak of violence. Ballet and gymnastics became hand-to-hand combat; touches and affection became a careful, respectful distance; sharing became secrets. She liked it. The power of fear, the respect of stoicism and the privacy of a blank mask let her keep all her thoughts and dreams safe and hidden away in a cocoon of her own making. It was necessary to stay alive and sane when the threat of being stabbed in your sleep was always just a little too possible, and the possibility of having to hurt an innocent man was always just a little too threatening.
When the East Coast branch of the Claymore gang were brought down, she kept all the tough trappings of Rosa Garcia as she sunk back into Rosa Diaz. She never spoke the name again, but felt safe in Garcia’s leather jacket. She kept that too.
She smirked when she remembered Jake’s face when she transferred to the Nine-Nine, morphing from shock to confusion to quiet acceptance as his old Academy buddy strutted in with a whole new look and attitude to match. He never mentioned the difference. Now, the things that once brought her comfort were reserved for the sanctity of her apartment. Complete separation. Rosa Garcia was gone; Emily Goldfinch was chatty; Lucia Rodriguez taught ballet; and Rosa Diaz was a hardass cop who didn’t flinch.
In jail, “cop” made her a target, but “hardass” got her left alone. Never trusted; never bothered. So yeah, the fights and the threats were fine.
Everything else though? Everything else sucked. The injustice of the whole thing stung, the food was bland, and the interior decorating was awful. Was it a requirement that whoever designed these places had to have no grasp of colour theory? She hated the way the guards looked at her like dirt, and had held herself back from beating them into a pulp more than once lest she end up in convicted for an offense she’d actually committed.
She could have dealt with all of that if it weren’t for the total lack of privacy. Everyone here knew everything: her name, her “crime”, where she slept, what she owned. She tried putting a lock on the cabinet beside her bed from commissary, but knowing that the slimy guards could get in any time they wanted kind of ruined the effect. Besides, it only took two nights for her roommate to break the damn thing off. Rosa wasn’t sure what she was in for, this tiny woman with the buzzcut and eyes that always seemed glazed over, but she guessed theft.
She hated feeling exposed. The lights never switched off completely at night, so she could always be seen, and every flickering shadow felt like some angry perp she’d put away coming for revenge. She could take them in a fair fight, obviously , but her sharpened toothbrush wasn’t much compared to what she knew some of the women in her block were packing.
She missed her knives.
She’d bought a really nice one, before everything had gone down, with a single ruby in the hilt. She wasn’t normally one for fancy furnishings in her weapons, but with the new taskforce everything had finally seemed to be looking up. It wasn’t her sharpest, or her strongest, or her most accurate, but it was... pretty. It made her feel pretty. At night she imagined twirling it between her fingers, watching the light catch it and feeling like Rosa again. Diaz or Garcia, she wasn’t sure. Instead, she lay in her plain uniform, in her beige surroundings, and ground her teeth until morning.
Really though, she’d take any form of weapon sharper than the plastic beneath her pillow: anything to feel like she wasn’t about to get jumped; like some dealer wasn’t about to put his hand on her knee; some homophobe about to spit at her.
It was reassuring to know that her whole collection would be waiting for her when she got out: there were only two detectives in New York smart enough to find where she’d stashed them, and the NYPD had falsely imprisoned both of them.
Okay, three. It wasn’t like Amy was going to rat Rosa out anyway.
As the days rolled by and “when she got out” became “if she got out”, she was less and less reassured.
---
Jake was trying to count his blessings.
- Now that he was in GenPop, he was probably less likely to get eaten than when he was alone with his cannibal roomie.
- He only had to count to two.
There had been a moment when he nearly considered doing whatever he needed to do to get protection from Romero’s gang. Kill the guard; get out of this whole ordeal alive. If it were between him and an abusive guard, surely he should save himself?
The horror had clamped down on him like a vice immediately after. Guilt followed, and shame stayed. John McClane would never have thought about giving in, and Jake Peralta would never kill in cold blood. At least, he had thought he wouldn’t.
He was just so scared.
He tried to joke through it, drawing on the charm that had saved him so many times before, but nothing about this was funny. Prison was not a game he could win, or a puzzle he could solve. Nobody here was playing.
Even at his most bruised, it was the shame that hurt the most. Amy and Charles’ visits brought brief joy, and briefer hope of being cleared, but the idea that he wasn’t even the same person they loved floated in the back of his head. Apparently, he was someone who entertained the idea of killing a man. He’d never been good enough for Amy - or Charles, for that matter - but this was a new low.
He didn’t even want to think of what Captain Holt would say.
A month before he’d have dismissed anyone who killed or conspired to as a gross murderer. Now, he kind of got it. Every perp he’d put behind bars swam in front of his eyes for days on end. What if they were innocent? What if he’d screwed up like the officers on his case, damned a human being to the same constant trapped fear as him? And even if they were guilty, how was he any better? Where was the line between good guy and bad guy?
Cool motive, still murder. Hypocrite.
Obsessing over his case kept his thoughts in a vaguely logical order, working it again and again until he could almost see the word “Detective” in front of his name again. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see any new leads at all. In fact, it was seeming more and more likely that he’d be here for a long time. More importantly, it was seeming less and less likely that his name would ever be cleared.
He bet Rosa wasn’t having any of these problems. She always knew what to do, right from wrong, who she was. She was probably loving prison.
---
When the warden approached her cell, she didn’t tell Rosa that Hawkins has been arrested. The two of them had reached an understanding of mutual silence. At least, Rosa thought they had an understanding. It’s possible the woman just didn’t speak.
Rosa got up and followed her.
She crept through newly opened doors with her shoulders raised and muscles tensed. When given clothes she put them on without complaint, recognising them as those she entered in - the leather jacket was safely stashed far, far away from the prison. It was only when she was presented with a form to sign and her mother’s many stern lessons on reading the small print rose to her mind, that she began to understand. Words like “acquittal” and “apologies” swam in front of her eyes.
Then she made eye contact with her dad.
Rosa smirked as the guards behind her took an unconscious step back, wilting at her dad’s expression. She wondered what they’d do if they knew this was his ecstatic face. All those years ago she had modeled her persona on his silently intimidating presence. She could never tell if he was proud of it or not. They never spoke about it. Now, as he opened his arms for her to step into, the one welcoming part of his body language, she realised for the first time in far too long that she really cared. As used to protecting herself as she’d become, as expertly as she could attack in defence, the acceptance of her father made her feel safer than she had in years. His arms were strong, though she knew from the last time she’d seen him - Christmas, about 6 months ago - that she could bench more than him. He smelt the same as he had done since she was a kid.
Her mom hadn’t changed a bit either. She thought her hair might be a little greyer, but as she brought Rosa into a hug, much tighter than her dad’s, her whispered affections washed over her and held her more firmly than her arms. She felt some of the tension in her shoulders relax.
She felt the ghost of Rosa Diaz tap her on the shoulder. Not the right one, the cop she’d moulded herself into, but the little girl she’d long since left behind. The child who took after her mother. It was a vulnerability that sent an uncomfortable twisting down her spine, but with her mother’s hand rubbing between her shoulder blades, she almost didn’t mind.
---
Jake had been in solitary for far too long when news of his freedom reached him. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the conversations he’d been having with an imaginary Amy; his twice daily reenactments of Disney classics; or his newfound tendency to blank out while staring at a wall for long periods of time. He was just so lonely.
Being an only child had not gotten him used to time by himself. Gina’s constant, loud presence throughout his childhood - plus some issues that he never liked to try to identify but which were definitely his dad’s fault either way - had left him only really comfortable when surrounded by friends. Maybe there was just too much going on in his head for him to be alone. Maybe there wasn’t enough.
All things considered, Jake was not a man who could withstand solitary confinement easily. His brain felt weird and his mouth always tasted like copper. As he left the box that had become his home, he felt his lungs expand for the first time in months. At least it was finally over.
The tears were already falling by the time he saw his mom, her mouth twisted in love and pity and pride. His vision tunneled as he rushed forward to hug her. He’d missed her while inside. He saw her about as often as he did while he was working, his schedule - and, he’ll admit, his forgetfulness - keeping him from visiting even as a free man, but prison had given more time to think about everything he couldn’t have. He never thought that a hug from his mom would be high on that list, given that he was a cop in his thirties, but he guessed this need never really went away.
He didn’t even have time to be disappointed that his father wasn’t there when he heard a familiar throat being cleared.
“Captain Holt!”
Shit, his voice was hoarse. When had he last spoken to someone?
“Detective Peralta. It’s good to see you.”
He thought he could hear the relief and affection in Holt’s tone, but it was never easy to tell. Either way, the tears fell faster than ever as he too fell forward to hug his captain. His chest heaved, sobbing in disbelief as a single, stiff arm came up to rest lightly on his back.
His mom cooed at him in a way that was slightly uncomfortable, no matter how young he felt , and rambled something about taking him home, about home cooked food and his old bed. Bile rose in his stomach - not at the thought of his mom’s cooking (though he inherited his incompetence in this regard from her) but at the idea of going home to that empty house. He needed noise, and laughter, and voices babbling at him from every direction. He needed hands reaching out in comforting touches. He needed Amy. He needed his friends.
Somehow, Captain Holt got it.
“Peralta, your squad would like to see you. I’d be happy to let them off a half hour early if you’re well enough to meet them at the bar. It’s up to you, of course. Karen, I hope you don’t mind?”
A smile broke out through his tears.
---
Rosa was in one of her storage units, digging out her jacket from beneath the thirteen framed photos of David Hasselhoff and three different “kitten of the month” calendars she’d placed on top to throw off any suspicion of her ownership, when she got the call to come to the bar. She fired off a text to her mom to tell her she’ll be late for their reunion dinner, still somewhat embarrassed about her earlier emotion. The relief she’d felt on seeing her parents hadn’t lasted, the familiar feeling of potential threat rising and her heartbeat rising with it. She had stepped back before they could recognize her fear.
The thought of the noise of the bar, of all the strange bodies brushing past her, sat uncomfortably in her stomach. Still, it was this or go home - surrender further into childish vulnerability and lose the hardass exterior she’d worked so hard on. She needed to bite the bullet. Besides, refusing to come would have been essentially admitting she was scared to her colleagues. Losing their respect.
So she strode onto the subway and rode three stops over. Legless Jimmy (still with two legs attached, she’d never asked about the nickname) was in his usual spot, playing a harmonica in the awning of an abandoned butcher. As she approached from the side, he tensed.
“Annie.”
“Jimmy.”
He dug a dirty coin out of his back pocket, tossing it at her in a flurry of candy wrappers and lint. She picked it out of the sticky mess, lips pursed. In return, she took a hundred dollar note from her shirt pocket and threw it in his general direction. Thank God they hadn’t been able to freeze all of her accounts - what the NYPD didn’t know can’t hurt her.
With a nod to Jimmy, she turned and left, snapping the coin in half as she went. The aluminium disc broke easily, and she carefully extracted a note from inside one half, memorizing the coordinates written on it. Only 20 minutes by train.
The longer journey allowed her to really take in the noises of her surroundings - the bodies pressed against her, the shifting eyes and sullen looks she was getting from left and right. Noticing her foot tapping against the carriage floor, she pressed it into the ground firmly, eyes fixed straight ahead.
When Rosa finally arrived at the graffiti-covered shipping container, hidden inconspicuously between two dumpers and behind a brutal block of an office building, she was impressed to see how deceptively secure it was. She wasn’t sure even she had bolt cutters strong enough to get through the padlocks on this thing. They were dirty, but as she took each one in hand and inspected them, she saw no scratches or dents. Brand new. Smiling approvingly, she keyed in the codes she’d muttered to Jimmy in a skeezy dive bar months before and swung the door open.
Her breathing quickened as she crept towards the single item in the place - her bike. Her real one: the one with the worn down leather on the seat and the chunk of plastic missing from the handlebars. The one with the single scratch along the body, half the length of her arm, revealing the bright red paintwork she’d covered over in black the day before she transferred to homicide.
She wasn’t sure how Holt and Terry had failed to notice she’d given them an entirely different bike to “keep warm” while she was inside (it wasn’t even the same shade of black, more of a burnt charcoal than midnight shadow), but she guessed cousin Roberto had done a pretty good job of selling the whole thing. He was one hell of a bluffer. Besides, he probably could have given the Sargeant a moped and the poor man wouldn’t have known.
She still couldn’t believe he’d actually ridden the damn thing. He had children .
The engine purred as she kicked it into life, feeling the slight warmth against her calves. Leaning forward, she rode off in its embrace.