Work Text:
Working as a victim liaison officer was hard.
One of the worst day to day tasks was that of informing families that one of their loved ones had died. It was usually caused by some sort of traffic accident or sudden onset of a medical condition, heart attacks, stroke aneurisms were common and once a child that had choked on a grape at school.
That one had been particularly bad.
Phayu could still hear the screams of the mother even now. Nothing could prepare you for hearing something like that. The senior staff tried to train you for days like that down at the police academy but there's something so acutely terrible about not being able to do anything to make the situation better that needles you even months later.
Less often, he filled the role of go between for victims, their families and the investigating officers. A familiar and hopefully comforting face, who could get all sides the information they need about their case. This was sometimes harder than informing about deaths. Murder cases were bad. Anything to do with a sex crime was also bad.
Those were the cases that took a long time to get through the system and mean that he would be spending multiple days with everyone involved. It's easy to build a bond with whoever Phayu's been assigned to in that time and it could be devastating leaving them to whatever their life was going to be moving forward. The only consolation he's left with was something that they weren't alone in that dark period of time just after the crime was committed. That Phayu had managed to do even the smallest thing to make them less stressed, lonely or upset.
Mostly, Phayu hoped that the people he's interacted with could remember that they aren't alone even if he couldn't be there to ensure that they got the best outcome. Not everyone gets the justice they are entitled to. Sometimes by the time the law managed to identify the perpetrator it's too late or there just wasn't enough evidence to get the case into the courtroom. There are times where they had enough evidence, the perpetrator in custody and a victim who despite everything managed to perform well on the stand and the jury was unable to see what's right in front of their faces and lets them go free.
Phayu once put his fist through a wall on one of those days when he saw the confused look on the child victim's face and knew, that the adult now free to leave, free to roam without sanctions did what they did. Being a cog in a flawed judicial system left a bitter taste on his tongue but he stayed for the times it does work, for the people he can help.
Right now in his precinct things were crazy. There's been three different shootouts, two murders, four violent sexual assaults and twelve cases of domestic violence he'd been rushed off of his feet. Everyone has been. There weren't enough staff to properly deal with everything that's going on. That's what lead to Phayu being put into the position as a victim liaison officer for two young men that have just escaped a living hell.
'They both should have died.' Phayu thought when he saw them both at the hospital. Thin, bruised and mentally... well those scars were going to take a lot of therapy to help heal.
Sky was the one that saved them, somehow escaping whilst their captor was at work. He'd ran down the street screaming for help.
Phayu had heard the Chief Inspector talking about the carpet tape they'd had to cut off of his hands and feet. In the hospital it was easy to see some of the other physical injuries but he's not here to stare at the cigarette burns that litter Sky's neck and collarbones, or the finger shaped bruises that wrap around Rain's calves an explosion of red, brown, blue and yellow like some sinister rainbow of sadness.
He's here to let them know that the man, who owns the house they've been held captive in, attempted to flee when the officers turned up at his place of work to arrest him. That they got him, put him in the car but in a freak accident he managed to escape, vaulted a wall and ran across the freeway and got hit by an articulated lorry full of gravel.
He's there to tell them that the uniformed officers and the fire brigade had just spent an hour shovelling gravel trying to find him.
That he'd been crushed beneath it and rushed to the hospital.
Victim Liaison Officer Phayu was here to tell them Gun was dead. He handed a pack of tissues to Rain who silently wept tucked into Sky's side. Sky himself merely burst out into hysterical laughter.
Phayu doesn't judge them.
Sometimes the only true freedom from a perpetrator was knowing that they will never hurt you again.
For some victims that freedom only comes when they know the person who hurt them is dead.