Author: Ruth
Disclaimer: I want them to be mine, and I've been really good this year. So I'm sure Santa will leave them under my tree tomorrow morning. Until he does, those people who ignore them own them.
Warnings: Minor spoilers for Rogue
By Angels Guided
by Ruth
Joel sat in the quiet, empty church, his eyes looking through the gray stone walls to the white-shrouded graveyard beyond. He'd have preferred to be out there, but she would have scolded him for sitting out in the cold, the snow drifting down to cover his shoulders and bowed head. In warmer weather, when he came to visit, he joined her there, the scent of flowers or the sharp cleanness of autumn air filling his lungs.
The church would be crowded later, people gathering to celebrate Midnight Mass and the birth of Christ, but for now Joel had it all to himself. He'd come, as he always did on Christmas Eve, to tell her what had happened over the past year. Other visits were for silence, for memories of her. This one was different. They had always made their plans for the coming year on Christmas Day. Christmas Eve had been for reliving the past one in all its joys and heartaches. He saw no reason to change that now that she was gone.
He sighed, sitting back a little. His eyes shadowed with remembered pain, he began to speak.
"I almost retired this year. I can see you looking at me, your eyes laughing as you tell me I'd never leave the force. But I almost did." He wet his lips, then continued.
"I got scared, Elaine. I came close to dying, and I know that's happened before. But this time was different, somehow. I saw it coming, and there was no escape. There was no way out. I've never felt that way before. I'd always seen a loophole, even if I didn't think I would make it, I knew there was a way to. I don't know why this one felt different, because there was a way to get out of it. But..."
He shook his head, still not sure what had happened to him in Lee Brackett's rented house. The panic that had rushed through him, the dread that had made his fingers clumsy and his feet slow... where had that come from?
"When it was over, and I knew that I had survived, I also knew I couldn't do that again. I went back to the station, and I sat in my office. I pulled my gun and my badge out and set them on the desk in front of me. I stared at them for the longest time, then I began to write. My letter of resignation. It felt wrong somehow, but I didn't know what else to do."
"Then..." his voice trailed off as he remembered the noise and commotion that had erupted through the station's halls. Curiosity had driven him to his feet, leaving the half-written letter unfinished on his desk. Opening his office door, he had been swept up in the jubilation felt by the Major Crime unit.
"They'd done it, Elaine. Jim Ellison and a civilian had stopped Brackett dead in his tracks. And I looked at that young man's face and I saw," he swallowed, remembering Blair's shining eyes and shaking hands. "He'd been afraid, too. But he kept going, and so could I. Not on the Bomb Squad anymore, but I could still be a cop. Because that young man was the reason I had become one in the first place."
"You'd have liked him, I think. He's a student, working on some research project about police society. He does something for Ellison I didn't think anyone could do - he makes him human. They're best friends. Kind of like you and me. I'm working Major Crime now. I like it there, even if it did mean a cut in pay. I don't need the money." He smiled sadly. "I don't know what I'd spend it on, anyway."
"Ellison and Sandburg are having a party tonight. Just for friends, they said on the invitation. So I'm going. Because, just like you taught me, it's all about friendship."
He sat for a minute longer, then rose as the minister entered the church. Nodding to the man, he made his way slowly to his car. Standing by the open door, he looked back, his eyes going easily to the graceful angel guarding the woman he'd come to visit. Sadness and love mixing with quiet contentment, he smiled at his best friend's grave.
"Merry Christmas, Mrs. Taggart."
END