Don't Read the Last Page
I published it on AO3...and then shit went downnn.
Disclaimer: I don't own these two characters. When AO3 comes back up, you can go read the actual disclaimer and note I wrote.
Rating: T (the f word is in here) | Word count: 1000
Don't read the last page.
In all the years she's been handed a report, she has never found herself in the position where someone has written a postscript on a sticky note and underlined it; she can't not be curious about what's on that last page that one of her subordinates didn't want her to read.
But it's not just anyone who wrote the note, it's Fin.
Fin had taken over this case when she suddenly found herself in the middle of something pressing.
She flips to the last page.
Follow-ups to NYPD liaison: Det. Elliot Stabler.
She can't breathe.
+
She thinks there's been a mistake, as she stares down at the line once more.
NYPD liaison: Det. Elliot Stabler.
She can hear the blood pumping through her veins.
She feels like her whole body is vibrating with every beat of her heart.
She presses her palm there, in the middle of her sternum, willing and wishing for the violence of the beats to subside.
Her eyes look up and out of the blinds, to the empty squad room.
She feels the tears prick the corner of her eyes as she finally sucks in a breath.
What the actual fuck?
+
She closes the folder, pulling the sticky note off and tucking it into her drawer, glancing once at the stack of folders left to get through.
She glances down at her wrist, shaking it slightly so that the face of her watch is visible. It's too late to deal with this revelation tonight.
It's not like she hasn't spared a moment to think about him in the last few years – because she has.
She's definitely thought of Elliot here and there, but not as frequently as before.
She wonders how long he's been back in the NYPD fold.
Seriously, Italy?
+
She packs up the folders into her bag and slips her laptop in, grabbing her coat from the rack and pulling her mask out of her pocket as she shuts out the light switch.
Her footsteps echo in the nearly empty squad room.
The night shift detectives nodding solemnly as the phone rings and they answer it with the practiced greeting that she has to avoid speaking when she gets a personal phone call.
A greeting she used to give across the desk from the man whose name she'd seen for the first time in years on that last page.
+
She places everything in the passenger seat and takes a steadying breath as she sits in the driver's seat and wraps her fingers tightly around the leather steering wheel cover.
She doesn't know how she's functioning.
Her heart is still pounding.
Don't read the last page.
Why didn't she listen to her Sergeant? Why is it affecting her so much?
It's not like he means anything anymore. He's just a memory; the memory of him is sharp, painful, and it's never gone away.
Kind of like the blue glitter from Noah's last assignment for his virtual art project for school.
+
Liaison: Det. Elliot Stabler.
Fuck him.
He never had the decency to call her back all those years ago. He never had the decency to send her fucking flowers or a goddamn email.
Fuck.
She shakes her head.
Fuck him.
Don't read the last page.
She thinks about the last page of the journal she'd written in after the shooting all those years ago.
Last pages are endings. Last pages are nothing more than the inevitable closing out of an era or a memory. He's a memory. Nothing more and nothing less. He was everything - now he's nothing.
A ghost.
+
He was just someone she once knew, or - someone she thought she knew. She stops at the red light, behind a yellow cab. The traffic isn't as heavy as it used to be and most of the city streets are empty.
This last year has been hauntingly eerie and yet busy as hell for them. People at home with one another more often meant people at home with truths that they'd gotten used to ignoring. Truths and tempers and fear and regrets.
The last year has been one of unrest and evaluating whether they should hold on or let go.
+
Her eye catches the handwritten sign at the place she and Elliot used to eat at. She clenches her jaw, reaches for the water bottle in the cup holder taking a sip before placing it back in its place and accelerating when the light turns green.
Liaison: Det. Elliot Stabler.
It’s almost as though the four words are burnt into her very retinas. She wishes she wasn’t such a curious person because if Fin hadn’t have written don’t read the last page on the post-it note, then she wouldn’t have flipped to the last page.
But, he was warning her.
+
How does someone go from someone who knows you best to being the person who is a stranger? Would she recognize him in a room if he were standing there in front of her? Would she recognize the sound of his laughter if they were in a crowded room?
Deep down, she knows the answer is a resounding yes. She would absolutely recognize his laughter in a room because she’d grown accustomed to it during the decade plus that they were partners.
They’d shared so many midnights in the car, driving around New York City streets. Talking. Laughing. Making memories.
+
Maybe she’d be better off if she just forgot that she’d read that line.
Maybe she should heed the advice of her Sergeant the next time. Maybe she should just sign off on the file, trusting him that he had everything detailed. Maybe she’d bring him to her next meeting so he could summarize the case. Maybe when the white shirts ask why she isn’t aware of the facts of the case she could point to her second-in-command and inform them that she was not a part of this investigation.
Maybe she should let the past stay in the past.
#End.
