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Terry should have known better than to drag Rosa's past into her present. He could have made his point without bringing the fact she went to ballet school not only known but revisited. Rosa's body remembered the drills performed time and time again, how Ms. Miriam called her an ox, lazy, incapable of making it, how the other ballet students noticed the teacher's disdain and took pleasure in provoking Rosa until she lashed out.
"I was kicked out of it for beating up ballerinas, did your research reveal that?" Rosa had said in the aftermath of Terry finding out her school history, and yet he not only brought that up in front of a kid Rosa was meant to be mentoring, but assumed Ms. Miriam had been a nurturing presence in Rosa's life? What about Rosa gave off any indication she had ever had a nurturing presence in her life? Okay, that wasn't entirely fair - she had Jake, Charles now that he wasn't a textbook sexual harassment case but rather kind of her friend, and for a while Marcus, all men who wore their emotions on their sleeves like badges of honor rather than signs of weakness that could be used against them later. Rosa doubted anyone ever had used Jake's or Marcus' emotions against them - Jake's damage was abandonment, not abuse, and Marcus was so in touch with his emotions, that was part of why Rosa had to break up with him. Rosa would never be able to be as open or vulnerable as Marcus expected, though he had lowered his expectations substantially, as shown by how he rented out Shaw's on Rosa's birthday (but he had still tried to work out why Rosa hated her birthday so much instead of letting her have her privacy. Rosa snapped at him, one question too many, a joke about childhood trauma, and the hurt look Marcus gave in response was part of when she knew this relationship was doomed.)
Rosa Diaz had two sisters. The majority of her coworkers knew not even that much, never mind whether Rosa was a middle child, youngest, or eldest. They didn't know why Rosa kept enough weapons on her even as she slept that she couldn't sympathize with Gina after Gina had been robbed and scared. Rosa Diaz didn't get scared, not really, not at work. Even when she had narrowly missed a bullet that ended up in Charles’ butt, the fear didn’t kick in until afterwards, until safety.
In her personal life? Rosa was plenty scared then, but she usually avoided it by not having a personal life - ignoring her parents and sisters until that became impossible, like with her sister’s pregnancy, and doing the bare minimum then (a thumbs up emoji). The Diaz’ never talked about the past, about the culture of violence that created someone as strong, as unrepentantly herself, as Rosa.
No, nobody at the Nine Nine would have ever expected Rosa’s violent tendencies to have begun in a situation that usually spawned more criminals than cops, but that’s where it had begun. Fighting for her life, her older sisters vicious and two-against-one, Rosa always the one at fault for fighting back because their parents didn’t care who started it, so eventually Rosa realized that she had to finish fights before they started. She collected and learned how to use her weapons to protect her stuff and herself from her sisters and later their boyfriends. Rosa wielded her body as a weapon, one ballet had sharpened by refining her gracefulness and making her immune not only to physical assaults but also emotional ones as well. Ms. Miriam, and the effect her comments had on the students surrounding Rosa, ensured Rosa’s career in dance would be short and lonely.
Most of Rosa’s relationships could be described similarly. Short and lonely. Rosa’s experiences sleeping with weapons always on hand stemmed from far too many times when she had woken up to her sister’s boyfriend doing sexual acts with Rosa in her sleep. Just the memory made Rosa’s face burn in humiliation. So Rosa avoided the memory, overwhelmed it with other gory, gruesome imagery, dead bodies and police brutality as a joke, horror movies for fun, rage rooms.
Luckily, that boyfriend was not the one who eventually became a brother-in-law. Unluckily, though, he did live in Rosa’s precinct. He was dragged in one February afternoon, drunk as a skunk, Terry having caught him committing some crime and taken him in. Rosa didn't know nor care to know specifics, wanting nothing more than to pretend she didn't know this guy. Unfortunately, he began making that impossible.
“Diaz? Oh shit, I didn’t know you were a cop! That’s a surprise, what with your fag of a captain and all, how the hell did Rosa Diaz make detective?” The room’s temperature dropped as every other person on duty seemed to freeze in their seats. Liam continued yelling about all he knew Rosa Diaz was good for, even as Terry eventually continued shoving the man towards the holding cell.
“You know this creep?” Jake questioned, but Rosa wasn’t hearing any voices except the one who had been screaming about what he had done to her, before another asshole in holding told Liam off, vomiting on his shoes. Then Liam’s shouting had another target, but Rosa wasn’t hearing anyone’s voice anymore. She was years in the past, holding herself upright by leaning on her desk.
Rosa’s body began reacting as soon as the name Diaz, no, as soon as she saw that man’s face, truly, the memory of his lips on her, his hands on her breasts, on her body, rubbing against her, laughing and wrestling her knife away those first few fumbling efforts at using it in her early teens, Rosa’s grip in one hand was on the knife hidden in her leather jacket’s pocket, the other on her desk, holding herself upright. “Rosa? What’s going on? You alright?” Amy tried next, but when she stepped closer, Rosa revealed her knife.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t come closer or I will - I don’t know what I’ll do, but someone will be bleeding heavily afterwards.” Rosa’s voice was deceptively steady, not at all betraying the fear, anger, and uncertainty she felt from being confronted by this situation. Rosa blinked and blinked, trying to suppress the overwhelming urge to cry, and then she realized that she didn’t have to stay here, so she fled. She ran and ran until she in the safety of Babylon. Then Rosa was safe.
Rosa was safe, away from Liam, from her colleagues’ confused, concerned glances that made Rosa want to punch something, that had her throwing her knife across the room to where it now was stuck within the wall. Rosa was crying. Rosa Diaz didn’t cry, but Rosa was crying. Weak, pathetic, lazy ox. No, oxen don’t cry. Crybaby.
“Rosa?” Why the hell was - fuck, Rosa had shown Charles Babylon months ago, and Charles had an amazing sense for directions. So now he was in front of a crying Rosa. “Shit, crying and Rosa are not usually seen together. Hey, it’s going to be okay, Charles Boyle is here now.” Charles sat next to Rosa, who was on the floor under her likely-now-unusable knife.
“Don’t fucking touch me, Boyle, I swear, I’ll… fuck, wait, I still have my hammer. I’ll break every bone in your hand.”
“Okay, okay. Playing with one’s hair is proven to reduce stress levels, but if you want to stay stressed by whatever happened, that’s fine by me. I’m just here to support my friend, Rosa.”
“Right, yeah, your friend.” Rosa spat sarcastically. “You sure you’re not here because you just heard how goddamn easy I am and wanted to shoot your shot again?” Rosa’s wiped her eyes with the 3-ply toilet paper, relieved she had chosen Babylon to hide out in, though hoping Gina didn’t make an appearance.
“No! Rosa, I have been over you for months now! Do you really think I would have helped you text Marcus if I still wanted you? Besides, that pervert upstairs was drunk, he could’ve been talking out of his ass.”
“He wasn’t, though. Everything he said was true.” Slut, whore, so easy to turn on it was like she was begging him to rape her, good girl, and Rosa had leaned into it at first, before she had learned where being 'good' got her. Nowhere she wanted to be. Carmen had beaten Rosa up when she found them together, the memory of broken ribs making breathing more difficult than the other memories had already.
“No, Rosa, snap out of it, you need to breathe, calm - follow what I’m doing,” Charles inhaled and exhaled exaggeratedly, and Rosa took some deep breathes, but her mind was still stuck in the past few minutes upstairs, the past Liam had broadcast to the entire precinct. Dear God, Hitchcock would be insufferable now, and Rosa…
“I need to change my name and identity, I still have my Mexican passport, I can rebuild a life down there.”
“Rosa, no, you don’t need to run away from your past. Whatever that asshole was to you in the past isn’t changing how anyone feels about you.”
“Rosa? It’s Jake and Amy, we tried following Charles down here but got a little lost, you okay?”
“Seriously? You think this would happen if everyone here was still terrified of me?”
“No, but this is better. We care about you, Ro-ro.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Can I let them in?” Rosa wiped her face again, eyes dry, body still half-in-flashbacks but that would likely last the rest of the day. Thank God, Rosa had taken to wearing waterproof mascara after her breakup with Marcus. Otherwise her eyes would sting like a bitch right now.
“No, I’m going out, I don’t want them to know how to get in here and start using it for quickies.”
“Good call. I’ll follow you.”
“No, go ahead of me.” Rosa needed to not have another body behind her. Charles did as he was told.
“Rosa, are you - obviously you’re not okay after what that dickhead said about you, but is there anything we can do to help?” Amy asked once Charles and Rosa had left the bathroom and began leading the couple to the filing area, where Amy did her shame-smoking.
“No, I don’t - I don’t think so, anyway. Why is it always fucking Terry who drags my past back here?”
“What do you mean?” Jake piped up. “Did Terry know this guy knew you?”
“No, but the other day he brought my old teacher from - promise me you can keep your mouths shut?” Jake, Amy, and Charles all nodded, Charles nodding so intensely he looked like a bobble head, likely remembering the fiasco that was when he had learned about Babylon. “Ballet school, I used to be in ballet school.”
“Wow.” Amy reacted first, followed by her boyfriend.
“Cool, cool, cool, cool.”
“That was supposed to be secret? It’s obvious from how you carry yourself so elegant and gracefully that you had some form of formal dance training.”
“Anyway, he had operated under the assumption a ballet teacher would be a warm nurturing presence in a young person, as if anything about me has ever given off ‘had a warm nurturing mentor figure in past’.”
Jake laughed at that, just the absurdity of how off-base Terry’s assumption had been, and that laughter caught onto the other three, including Rosa. Laughing was better than crying by a long shot, Rosa thought to herself, still having preferred to never experience emotions entirely. “And now, I know he didn’t know, but Terry still dragged Liam into holding, and I just know as soon as I go on up there, someone will say something. Hitchcock is going to be horrible, and I’ve had too many HR incidents this month to threaten him without being suspended.”
“I can get Gina to do it for you.”
“Yeah, and then she’ll expect to be paid in the ‘hot goss’ that is my past.”
“Well, if you don’t want to tell her, you could tell us and then I can pass on the least detailed version possible?” Jake suggested, earning a glare from both Amy and Rosa. “What? As someone who knows what created the Gina Linetti we know and love, I know how to manipulate her into not digging further into people’s pasts. I don’t use that ability very often, but I do have it.”
“There’s not much to say. That fuckface upstairs was my older sister’s boyfriend."
“Ooh, you have some sort of tragic affair?” Charles joked, this time earning glares from Jake and Amy. “What? The guy said Rosa was easy, so clearly he didn’t stay Rosa’s sister’s boyfriend for long.”
Rosa was avoiding eye contact with everyone else in the room, the physical flashbacks still keeping her half-trapped in a state of hyper vigilance. She could feel phantom hands, the memory of waking up to a tongue in her mouth, unable to breathe. The memories didn't, couldn't, keep her from speaking though.
“No, he stayed with Carmen for three years. Everything he said about me was… true, but -“ the tears returned, goddamnit. “I wasn’t a homewrecker. I didn’t help him cheat on my sister, not on purpose, anyway. I didn’t even know what he was doing until I woke up to him on top of me, and before you ask, yes that means exactly what you’re imagining it means. I was raped and molested by the perp upstairs. Don’t fucking tell Terry, I don’t want to live with him feeling all guilty and pitying me. I don’t want you morons to pity me either, but I’m trusting you’re smart enough not to.”
Amy was the only one with enough experience not to pity Rosa but instead be focusing on the immediate future, how to keep Rosa’s job safe and her privacy somewhat intact. "Rosa, you're going to have to tell Captain Holt. Terry said something about this not just being a public hazard case while the guy was shouting, and since it appears you know him, Terry might encourage you to interrogate the guy. If Holt knows what the reality of the situation is, he will talk Terry out of it."
"Fuck. Fuck!" Rosa kicked over a pile of boxes in frustration.
"If you want, one of us could be there for moral support," Jake suggested, but Rosa just shook her head, hating the thought of having to admit weakness in front of her boss. Not just weakness, but victimhood.
"I can't - I feel bad enough you all know, and I can see your concerned worried expression, Charles, which isn't all that much better than pity! I know you can't control how you feel, so I guess you all should go process your feelings and I'll report why I left my station early to Holt."
"Cool cool cool cool, no doubt, no doubt." Jake was evidently relieved, in spite of his offer. On any other day, the silliness of Jake's repetition would have Rosa rolling her eyes fondly as Amy was currently doing, but this wasn't any other day. This was an overwhelming, traumatizing day that was about to get worse.
To return to the bullpen, Rosa and the others had to pass the holding cell. The memories Rosa had barely pushed away when talking to her friends returned with a vengeance, and before Rosa thought, she was running into Captain Holt's office, closing and locking the door behind her as though she were home.
Rosa's mind blanked for a moment, the weight of having used that word for the first time to refer to what happened outside of her own head. "I was raped and molested by the perp upstairs."
When Rosa returned to reality, Captain Holt was waving his hand in her face and Rosa flinched, relieved he hadn't tried to obtain her attention by touching her. "Detective Diaz?"
"Captain, I need to tell you something. Please return to your side of the desk."
"Certainly." The Captain's concerned, confused face only further reminded Rosa what had occurred earlier.
"what with your fag of a captain and all, how the hell did Rosa Diaz make detective?"
Of course, Captain Holt hadn't been the one to make Rosa detective, but the guy who had wasn't attracted to her either, or at least never outwardly showed any signs of it. Rosa knew she was detective because she was a damn good cop.
"Sargent Jeffords brought in a perp who made a scene when he saw me, due to..." deep breath, exhale, you're safe here, Rosa reminded herself, as one hand held her hammer inside her leather jacket pocket (the one that hadn't been holding the knife). "Due to past involvement in criminal activities I was aware of prior to entering the police academy. I can't be involved in his case, as my bias makes me a textbook conflict of interest case."
"Hmmm. Never thought you would be the first to have a conflict of interest suspect. Can I ask what the suspect is being interrogated for now? Is it the same type of crime he had committed before?"
"I don't know. I left, as he had been screaming obscenities, not just towards me either. He called you the f-slur. I'm sorry, sir."
"No need to apologize, Diaz. Just, can I ask the nature of the crime you're aware of?"
"Sexual assault against a minor under the age of fourteen."
"Rosa -" That look, that pitying, almost character-breaking in how sincerely devastated he looked, caused Rosa to feel even more overwhelmed, as did the specific crime she named. She had been thirteen when she started sleeping with a knife under her pillow. "Were - was - I apologize, I am having difficulty verbalizing my questions."
"Take your time. I have no desire to go anywhere."
"Was - were you the minor in question?" Rosa nodded, unable to speak past the panic that again gripped her. She didn't talk about this, she didn't acknowledge this, but here she was, crying for the second time in as many hours.
"Alright, you can have the remainder of today off." Rosa squeaked out something resembling 'thank you,' and took no time for niceties as she exited the building, returning to her motorcycle. Returning to the civilian world, where Rosa Diaz was a villain, not a victim. She didn't know what she would face the next time she returned to work, but she was relieved to no longer be there.