The Good Wife fanfic: "What's Past"
What's Past
Fandom: The Good Wife
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG
Format: One-shot
Word count: 750
Trigger Warning: References to sexual and physical assault
Written to prompt "Cary, Kalinda - what if Cary hadn't listened to Kalinda to stop in the season five finale?" in sweetjamielee's "Everything Changes: 2014 TGW Ficathon".
What's Past
Cary winds up in the hospital that night, three broken ribs and a whole lot of bruises. They want to know who did it, telling him he should press charges, but he refuses to say who hurt him and in the end they figure he was at the hotel with a hooker and they leave him alone. His testicle is just badly contused, they tell him, not ruptured; he won't lose it. Through the haze of pain medication he tries to feel good about that, but right now it's hard to feel good about anything at all.
Ten blocks away Kalinda is ensconced in one of her dive bars, putting back another tequila. Her phone is on the bar, a few inches from her hand. Four or five times she almost picks it up to call Cary, see how he's doing - she hadn't looked back once he hit the floor, had called the ambulance from the street. Each time she forces her hand to stay put. Then, five tequilas in, she finds her hand's picked up the phone on its own. She's halfway through dialing Alicia's number when she jabs the off button, throws back the last shot, and heads home.
Kalinda can hold her tequila, but she can't hold six of them, and by the time she gets home the world is reeling in an unpleasant way. The alcohol hadn't taken the edge off the way it was supposed to; it had thrown everything topsy-turvy, and things she'd kept safely boxed up in secure dark corners for years are spilling out around her now, breaking open. She stumbles to the bathroom to pee and a figure leaps out of the mirror at her, a figure with blond hair and crazy eyes, and she cries out. It takes a minute for her to realize that the movement in the mirror was hers, that there's no one blond in the room. She's safe. Everything's fine.
In the bedroom she pulls the gun clumsily out of her nightstand drawer, re-checks it to make sure it's fully loaded, then clicks the safety off and puts it back on the nightstand. She can see that there are bruises already beginning to form on her wrists. Familiar-looking. Kalinda, just shut up, she hears in Cary's voice, and she shakes her head, shaking it off. Then, again - Just shut up - but in a different voice this time. Just shut up, Leela.
“That's over,” she mumbles, sliding under the covers and pulling the duvet up to her chin. Because it is. No one is ever going to force her to do anything she doesn't want to do again. Cary sure hadn't been able to manage it. She'd hurt him, she'd left him on the floor, she'd kept herself safe. Tonight was proof that she was different now. What happened ought to have felt like triumph.
But when she falls asleep it's Cary's whispers of What, you don't like it like this? that follow her down. And when she's fallen to the bottom of the well, walls closing in around her, she turns and it's Nick there, sitting up straight in that white-sheeted bed. He beckons to her, and she wants to tell him no but wonders if she'll get hurt less if she says yes from the start. And then he starts to get up to come after her, and she backs up against the rounded wall of the well, and he grabs her by the shoulders and she screams, and then she wakes up in her own pristine bedroom with the scream still echoing in her ears. The clock says 3:37 am; she'd been asleep for maybe 20 minutes.
Not this again, she thinks. Please, not this.
But it is this again, it's always this the night after something happens that threatens her the way Nick used to. Giving up on sleep, she sits straight up in bed and reaches for the gun, patting it to make sure it's right there. She flicks the TV on to an infomercial to give her eyes something to do and reminds herself of all the reasons why Nick can't come back, reminds herself of all the reasons Cary is no threat to her. They're good reasons. Nothing bad is going to happen.
But Nick's eyes still watch her from the shadows. And by now (staring bleary-eyed at a hand-held blender commercial, massaging a bruised wrist and patting the gun compulsively) Kalinda is pretty sure they're never going to leave.
Fandom: The Good Wife
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG
Format: One-shot
Word count: 750
Trigger Warning: References to sexual and physical assault
Written to prompt "Cary, Kalinda - what if Cary hadn't listened to Kalinda to stop in the season five finale?" in sweetjamielee's "Everything Changes: 2014 TGW Ficathon".
What's Past
Cary winds up in the hospital that night, three broken ribs and a whole lot of bruises. They want to know who did it, telling him he should press charges, but he refuses to say who hurt him and in the end they figure he was at the hotel with a hooker and they leave him alone. His testicle is just badly contused, they tell him, not ruptured; he won't lose it. Through the haze of pain medication he tries to feel good about that, but right now it's hard to feel good about anything at all.
Ten blocks away Kalinda is ensconced in one of her dive bars, putting back another tequila. Her phone is on the bar, a few inches from her hand. Four or five times she almost picks it up to call Cary, see how he's doing - she hadn't looked back once he hit the floor, had called the ambulance from the street. Each time she forces her hand to stay put. Then, five tequilas in, she finds her hand's picked up the phone on its own. She's halfway through dialing Alicia's number when she jabs the off button, throws back the last shot, and heads home.
Kalinda can hold her tequila, but she can't hold six of them, and by the time she gets home the world is reeling in an unpleasant way. The alcohol hadn't taken the edge off the way it was supposed to; it had thrown everything topsy-turvy, and things she'd kept safely boxed up in secure dark corners for years are spilling out around her now, breaking open. She stumbles to the bathroom to pee and a figure leaps out of the mirror at her, a figure with blond hair and crazy eyes, and she cries out. It takes a minute for her to realize that the movement in the mirror was hers, that there's no one blond in the room. She's safe. Everything's fine.
In the bedroom she pulls the gun clumsily out of her nightstand drawer, re-checks it to make sure it's fully loaded, then clicks the safety off and puts it back on the nightstand. She can see that there are bruises already beginning to form on her wrists. Familiar-looking. Kalinda, just shut up, she hears in Cary's voice, and she shakes her head, shaking it off. Then, again - Just shut up - but in a different voice this time. Just shut up, Leela.
“That's over,” she mumbles, sliding under the covers and pulling the duvet up to her chin. Because it is. No one is ever going to force her to do anything she doesn't want to do again. Cary sure hadn't been able to manage it. She'd hurt him, she'd left him on the floor, she'd kept herself safe. Tonight was proof that she was different now. What happened ought to have felt like triumph.
But when she falls asleep it's Cary's whispers of What, you don't like it like this? that follow her down. And when she's fallen to the bottom of the well, walls closing in around her, she turns and it's Nick there, sitting up straight in that white-sheeted bed. He beckons to her, and she wants to tell him no but wonders if she'll get hurt less if she says yes from the start. And then he starts to get up to come after her, and she backs up against the rounded wall of the well, and he grabs her by the shoulders and she screams, and then she wakes up in her own pristine bedroom with the scream still echoing in her ears. The clock says 3:37 am; she'd been asleep for maybe 20 minutes.
Not this again, she thinks. Please, not this.
But it is this again, it's always this the night after something happens that threatens her the way Nick used to. Giving up on sleep, she sits straight up in bed and reaches for the gun, patting it to make sure it's right there. She flicks the TV on to an infomercial to give her eyes something to do and reminds herself of all the reasons why Nick can't come back, reminds herself of all the reasons Cary is no threat to her. They're good reasons. Nothing bad is going to happen.
But Nick's eyes still watch her from the shadows. And by now (staring bleary-eyed at a hand-held blender commercial, massaging a bruised wrist and patting the gun compulsively) Kalinda is pretty sure they're never going to leave.