Fic: Stay (Part 1) (The Killing 2011)
Title: Stay (1)
Fandom: The Killing
Rating: Eh.
Pairing: Linden/Holder
Summary: A pocket universe that happens post-Reckoning.
Spoilers: Through 3x9. (I am not spoiled for the killer, I don’t think those spoilers exist.)
One of these things is not like the other.
It’s perverse, the way he can’t stop it from looping in his head. Weeks and weeks of staring at girls with long hair and sad, desperate smiles. Staring at their head shots until they all blurred into one, one little lost girl he saw when he closed his eyes or waited in traffic or took a shower.
One girl he saw in his head if he stopped moving for too long.
And then, when he was less ragged, or they’d had a breakthrough, or the universe stopped beating him up for five minutes, the gestalt girl would supernova back into seventeen girls again, their faces all perfectly distinct, vital stats lined up in neat columns in his memory: Name, D.O.B., Identifying Marks...
And then there were eighteen.
One of these things just isn’t the same.
A dark, neat buzz cut instead of long, disheveled hair. A fuck-you sneer, no pleading little smile. Body language that looked for the fight, didn’t shrink from it. Eyes that saw right through your bullshit.
A reflection of himself.
Except she had neither the body mass nor the years to back up the ‘tude. She was tough, but it was a brittle toughness, an exterior facade that cracked if you pushed...
He’d pushed her. Hard. She’d weighed nothing, nothing; he was a tall, angry man, and only Bullet’s own rage had kept her feet under her. She’d stumbled, righted herself, screamed in his face. And she’d run. And that was the last time he saw her.
Standing in his bathroom, remembering this, he puts his fist through the medicine cabinet mirror.
Shards of mirror burst outward and fall, like the faces of eighteen dead girls. It hurts, but not nearly enough.
He’d been so mad at her, an anger that would not have been possible if he hadn’t seen the reflection of himself in her, if he hadn’t been so absolutely sure that Bullet was the outlier: that she’d be the one who got off the streets, the one who held the world at bay long enough to get her shit together. He’d needed to believe she was different, and so when she’d lied to him--he didn’t even know why she had, just that it probably had to do with some little piece of ass, and had endangered Linden--it broke him down in a way he never saw coming.
Linden. In danger. In fear for her life. For hours and hours. Forever. It had felt like forever.
And when Linden turned out to be alive, and still Linden, still remote and untouchable, he couldn’t even feel the relief he needed to feel, because everything was still completely and truly fucked.
So there was nothing but the anger. White-hot, incandescent, all those words you thought of that didn’t really convey jack shit. And Bullet was the vessel for his rage. He poured it out into her, snarling, shoved her, wanting her to run, to never have existed (but also wanting her to fight back, and being secretly disappointed when she did run).
You put my partner in danger. I couldn’t get to her fast enough. All I could do was listen. Listen to her voice, faint and flat, through the radio. Listen to her trying, harder than anyone he ever knew, to save herself.
I couldn’t save her. She had to save herself.
And that was it, the real and true source of his anger. Live or die, Linden had only had herself. In the end, he just couldn't get to her in time. Linden had been alone, all alone. Talking, talking, talking to the man with the gun, hoping someone would hear her, but knowing she might be talking to dead air, and knowing that in that moment, in that car with the man and his gun, she was ultimately alone. Like always.
Like Bullet. Alone with her killer. Alone because Holder wouldn’t answer the phone. Talking, talking, talking to his voicemail. To no one. To dead air.
Holder takes a deep, ragged breath, stares at the blood on his knuckles. It’s nothing. It barely registers after the beating he gave Reddick.
“I called you, dammit!” Reddick had yelled, while Holder hit him and hit him.
Reddick had called him. It was right there in his call history. Next to all of Bullet’s calls and messages. Holder had ignored all of it. He was mad at Bullet, and Reddick never had anything useful to say, and talking to either one felt too much like betraying Linden all over again, so he’d edited both of them out of his personal movie.
Another breath. Picturing the faces of Reddick’s family. Terrified of the big crazy man who had invaded their home. Female voices, screaming, pleading...
He wants the crystal. Wants it more than he ever has. If he only had it, he could leave all the messiness, all the feelings behind; he could ride the pure white beam of energy, he could think so clearly, he could solve this shit so fast...neat and tidy and clean.
His back to the wall, he slides heavily to the floor. He looks at his phone. Looks at the contact list. Wavers.
One number, a guy who knows a guy. Should have deleted that name a long time ago. Hasn’t.
Another number. His NA sponsor.
He’s already lost everything. Bullet, Caroline, his self-respect, probably his career. What does it matter? It’s the expected beat in the story: relapse.
Except...except, he hasn’t lost Linden. Not yet, not quite. Linden will understand everything he is going through right now. Linden doesn’t even need to hear the words. She already knows everything. She knows why he’s running on pure rage, even if Mills is in custody. She’ll know soon, if she doesn’t already, why he beat Reddick.
She knows why he tried to kiss her. Just like he knows why she stopped him.
But Linden, if he goes back to the meth, won’t ever look at him the same way again. She’ll never trust him again. She’ll think twice about everything he says. She’ll think twice about being alone with him.
She’ll look at him with pity. And if Linden ever looks at him with pity, her eyes so remote, everything inside her strung up tight and no way ever for him to get in again, that’ll be the end, he will have really lost everything.
He dials a number. A man answers.
In a ragged, uneven voice, Holder says, “You gotta find me a meeting. And I need a ride.” He doesn’t know what time it is, not sure if it’s even night or day. “Right now.”
***
But he doesn’t go to a meeting, not then. His sponsor picks him up, just drives him around. Refuses money for gas. Lets Holder smoke in his car.
“I take you to a meeting right now,” his sponsor says, “you gonna scare the other junkies.”
Holder looks down. He forgot to clean the blood from his knuckles.
“Yeah,” says his sponsor. He wrinkles his nose. “And in, like, a more general sense, I want you to think seriously about taking a shower, bro."
Holder finally laughs, a hoarse and foreign sound.
And they drive around some more, his sponsor doing the whole routine. Forgiveness. The forgiveness of others, the forgiving of oneself. Work the program. Let go and let God. A whole lot of things that, at times like this, mostly sound like bullshit to Holder, except that if he doesn’t have them, he has nothing at all. Isn’t that the whole idea of religion, of salvation, of forgiveness? Believe in the invisible, because in the end it’s all you got?
His sponsor’s voice is soothing. The words blur together, like a television show you’re only half-watching. Not important, but better than silence.
The sun comes up over the water, burning away the clouds, just for a little while
***
Eight hours later, he’s had sleep, after a fashion; he’s had food, he’s had a shower. He’s swept up the broken mirror pieces. He’s at the station, waiting to find out if he’s on paid leave, unpaid leave, or just plain suspended.
But no one really looks twice at him, no one except Linden. In a fraction of a second she takes in everything--the bandage on his hand, the clean clothes, the resignation in his body language. Her eyes flicker. He knows she’s thinking of everything at once, even the almost-kiss. He approaches her.
“Where’s Reddick?” he asks. It stands for a lot of other questions, like Am I suspended? and Are we okay, you and me?
Linden’s voice is a low murmur. “He says you owe him. He says get your shit together and do your job.”
Holder stares at the ground. “His wife, his kid...”
“They know he’s a cop.”
Holder shakes his head. That’s not enough and they both know it. But nothing is ever enough. He keeps staring at the ground until Linden reaches out, almost touches him. She plucks at his sleeve, thumb and forefinger pulling him a millimeter closer before she lets go. No words, just catches his eye.
Time for the next thing, her look says. Pay attention.
“Mills?” he asks.
“He’s denying doing the murders.”
“How’s he explain...” But he can’t finish the sentence. Bullet’s body is not a thing he can say. Bullet wasn’t supposed to be a body. Bullet was supposed to grow up and be a person. Out of all the kids crawling the streets, Bullet was the one he hadn’t worried about.
“He says someone planted her body in his trunk.”
Holder shakes his head. Nothing about this case has ever made sense. This doesn’t. All they can do is keep working the evidence.
“You make the call on Seward?” he asks, meaning did she try to get a stay of execution.
“No,” she says. “He’s got twelve hours.” She looks bleak. Seward doesn’t really matter to Holder, except that he matters to Linden. But there is nothing to say, nothing to do.
He inches closer to her, sliding sideways down the table they both lean against. “Last night,” he begins.
She doesn’t want to talk about that, looks away. “Forget it,” she says.
“Caroline’s gone,” he says. Caroline isn’t why Linden wants to forget it, but it’s still true, still information to be shared.
She nods impassively. But all of a sudden, she does want to talk about it. “The night I showed up at your place...”
Holder shakes his head. “I forgot she’d be there. I forgot what day it was.”
“I didn’t mean to screw things up for you,” she says, taking on way more responsibility than she is due.
“Things were already screwed.” And he cracks a smile at her, and she gives him a little fake smile in return, which flickers into a real one, just for an instant.
Everything is always screwed, when you’re us.
Finally he says, “What’s next?”
“It’ll be weeks before they’re done processing the taxi and the storage unit.” She frowns slightly, considering her words. “But there’s something weird going on with one of Seward’s prison guards. Becker.”
She tells him a story: a dead lover, a young son behind bars, a wife who is hysterical, a prison guard who, according the grapevine, wasn’t home a lot. His wife reacted the way a lot of police wives and husbands did: finding something else. A hobby, a dog, a string of lovers. But it didn’t stop her calling, coming by, looking for him. It was an embarrassment for the whole department. The rumors got to the convicts, who needled Becker about it. It was all logged.
“The kid say why he shot Romeo?” Holder asks.
“The Beckers got him a lawyer,” Linden says. “But I get the sense he was protecting Mom’s honor.”
“Doesn’t want people to think his Mama’s a whore?” Holder muses. “He learn that at home? Being Daddy while Daddy ain’t there?”
It happens at once, on the next breath: they both grow still, silent. Not daring to look at each other. Don’t say it out loud. Pretend you don’t notice, or it might disappear. Their minds running down the same path: Bullet saying she knew who did it. Bullet being terrified of the information, too scared to say it in a voicemail message. Why be afraid of even leaving a message? A voicemail message for a cop?
Unless you think other cops are in on it.
Their eyes meet.
“I’ll drive,” says Holder
***
They can’t go to Becker’s house, not now, but they can get to one of the other guards, an exhausted, hollow-eyed man named Henderson.
“We’re just trying to help his son,” Holder lies smoothly.
Henderson is still nervous, but Henderson has almost no guile.
“Becker and his wife, I don’t know what their deal is,” he says. “Becker lies to her, says he’s pulling double shifts. We don’t pull double shifts here. So he disappears. She sleeps around. I don’t know which part came first. I don’t know the kid, really. Real quiet.”
Linden must have spotted something underneath Henderson’s words that Holder missed, because she asks “She ever try to sleep with you?”
Henderson sets his jaw. “I stayed out of it.”
“But she tried.”
He pauses, nods.
“Trying to bang your hubby’s co-workers,” mutters Holder. “That sends a message.”
Henderson looks offended, and Holder knows he’s gone too far. “Look, man, we don’t judge. We’re just trying to figure out what happened, maybe help this family out.”
Linden picks it up smoothly: “You have any idea where Becker goes during his time-outs?”
Henderson sighs, defeated. "I heard him mention a cabin once."
(Part 2)