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You love her.
It’s pretty simple.
She’s always been different.
It threw you for a loop at the start.
You were full sure you’d get the legacy. The nepo kid. Make you either stick to the rules or eat shit at the feet of IA.
Then the forty year old rookie arrived and you knew it - you knew it. You’d get paired with that mid-western dummy until you could either wash him out of the station or it drove you to an early retirement.
But no.
No.
The Powers That Be had their own inscrutable logic, and instead they stuck you with her.
For five minutes you weren’t sure how to take it, and then BAM.
You hated her.
College kid.
Posh kid.
Rich kid.
Something about backpacking and a masters and psychology and that was quite enough for you. Out of the car with her. Let her see what The Streets were really like. If she was here for kicks, you’d get her kicks. And scrapes. And punches. A few close calls with a concealed weapon ought to shake the privilege right out of her.
It didn’t though.
Day one, and you landed her into the middle of the messiest mess your personal life had acquired since you came back from the Middle East.
Your broken marriage.
Your lost wife.
Your reason to stay on patrol.
…
You were the one who introduced her to UC.
After that, you were sure she’d be out. Straight up to Watch Command or the Captain, reporting your multiple infractions (she could definitely list them verbatim from her Rook Book), demanding a blue sheet in your file and a transfer request for her.
That wasn’t how it played out though.
She came after you. She looked out for you.
At the time you didn’t understand it.
You had friends, but they didn’t know. You had family, but they weren’t here.
No one had ever put you first like that.
Told you to protect yourself.
It took you long enough to even understand her. She had to remind you to look out for her too. She was your rookie. Your responsibility.
Your pain in the ass.
You made the mistake of telling her too much about your own ass one time, and she swiped your wallet when you weren’t even looking. Dumped you with her drinks bill another time.
She was becoming an expensive habit. One you found it increasingly difficult to break.
You even had an out, once. After the Sergeant’s exam. Eighth on the list. An easy ride to North Hollywood.
What had stopped you?
You could have given any excuse. Your colleagues. Your house. Your girlfriend.
What did you actually say?
Your rookie.
You wouldn’t leave her.
You weren’t finished with her.
Boy, did you underestimate yourself.
She was almost taken from you and it shook your whole world.
Of course, any reasonable, nurturing TO would have felt the same horror. The same dreadful panic. The fear that something you had failed to teach her had resulted in her kidnapping. Her torture. Her burial.
Except that wasn’t true.
You were surrounded by reasonable, nurturing TOs, and even they could see you were losing your mind. See you were falling into the same pit of self-blame and self-reproach that was so familiar.
Later on, she saw it too.
She scolded you for it. Mildly. Gently. Took your hand and brought you right out of that pit with her. The most natural thing. As if you’d fallen in together and she had the lantern and the layout and the ladder to get you both back out.
You’d engraved a groove in the palm of your hand with her ring.
The stone was smooth, but the edges were sharp, and you ground it against your flesh like a talisman. She was okay. She was okay. She’d left you a sign and you’d found it. You found it and you followed it and you dug her out of the ground with your bare hands.
Something like love swept across you then. You didn’t know what to do with her.
Training took over; muscle memory and instinct. Breathe. Compress. Listen.
She burst into life under your fists and you gathered her into you. Tight. Tight. Don’t let her go.
…
Years later, she’d turned that around on you.
Pulling you in unexpectedly, tight, tight.
Her lips were sweet. Soft. Exactly as you remembered them.
Strange. That you even remembered. It didn’t occur to you until hours after you’d scurried away from her apartment. That you’d felt her lips before.
All of a sudden, all you could think about were her lips.
Her lips.
Her cheeks.
Her hair. Loose and silky and flowing softly through your fingers, just as you’d always imagined it would.
Because you had always imagined. You’d lie your ass off if anyone ever questioned you - but of course you’d always imagined it. How could you not?
And suddenly, she was yours.
In your arms and in your bed and in your mouth.
And it was exactly where she was supposed to be. Where you were supposed to be.
The Powers That Be had known what they were doing after all.
And you, who’d been married, who’d been successful, who’d been freed… You never knew you could feel like this. Because she was always different. Always surprising. Always herself.
Some days, you don’t know what to do with her. Kiss her, or pinch her, or taunt her. Feed her, or tease her, or drag her into the bedroom. Tell her you love her.
All you knew - all you knew since that day in the desert - without doubt, without question: I can’t lose you.
You were the one who introduced her to UC.
She’d have found it anyway, but you never put up any road blocks. Despite what you knew. Despite what you’d gone through. Despite what she’d seen.
…That wasn’t true.
When she’d been pulled by Fresno PD, you’d argued yourself into a fit. Threw a strop across the bullpen in front of all the detectives. Fought against everything you were told about her wits and her wiles and her wisdom. Even though you knew better. Even though you knew her. “I thought you said she needed rescuing,” you said. Yeah. Throw it back on someone else. As if it wasn’t you that sounded the alarm, that called in the cavalry, that requisitioned four hundred cops to find her in the middle of the night.
And here you were again.
In the middle of the night.
Her dark eyes bright against the glaring streetlamps.
Your full heart aching with love, with sorrow, with desperation.
I can’t lose you.
Because she’s different. She’s serious. She’s it.
She’s it for you.
Her mouth moves - a breath, a word, hard to tell - and your mind plays a reel of golden highlights: her face, her eyes, her hair, her lips her lips her lips…
I. Can’t. Lose. You.
You don’t know if you say it aloud, but as you run through the gathering vehicles, the rain slanted and harsh and beating against your face, it’s all that you can think.
I. Can’t. Lose. You.
She’s kneeling in a puddle, her hands dipping into the water, dark streams running down her arms and across her palms and pouring her life into the pitiless concrete of the city below her.
I. Can’t. Lose. You.
You reach her and grab her, and she’s already cold and stiff, and it has to be just the night air and the rain and you can feel it in your own knees as you mouth the words into her hair.
I
Can’t
Lose
You.
…
You love her.