Inamorata (11/36) – WMC fic

PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy
DISCLAIMER: Characters, not mine. Story, mine.

Jill and Claire were absolutely insistent that they ride along, and, in the end, Lindsay simply didn’t have the energy to fight with them, so they had crawled into the back of her SUV, after the detail went to the, what she considered, now pointless chore of inspecting it first, and went with her to the hospital.

But nobody contested her decision to go alone to Jacobi’s room.

When she walked in, Jacobi was behaving entirely unlike himself, engaging in an intense verbal clash with the nurse. Due to the fact that they were talking on top of each other, Lindsay couldn’t make out the words, but the lack of congeniality was plain.

“What’s going on?” Lindsay asked them.

They both stopped talking to look over at her. Jacobi’s eyes stared surprisingly attentively in her direction, but her own eyes were drawn to the tubes and the bandages and the bag on the IV pole dripping fluid down through a tube into Jacobi’s arm. It was unnatural to see him like that. So broken. So helpless.

“He’s refusing the painkillers,” the nurse said, clearly fishing for backup in the dispute.

“I need to be alert,” Jacobi pleaded his case, his jaw clenching tightly.

She would have taken his side instantly. It was her instinct to do so. But Lindsay could see the pain. It was flagrant.

“Maybe just a little something, Jacobi.”

“No,” he responded quickly, and she knew better than to fight him.

The nurse seemed to realize it was a lost cause as well, dropping her arms in defeat.

“Call me if he changes his mind,” she said, leaving the room and pulling the door closed behind her, effectively shutting out both Lindsay’s detail and the officer left to guard Jacobi’s door.

Once alone with her partner, Lindsay felt uncomfortable. It was so incredibly wrong, but everything felt wrong now. She guessed she’d get used to it. Jacobi just kept staring at her, which didn’t ease the feeling any. She slowly approached the chair by the bed and sunk down into it, feeling entirely too weak to stand.

She didn’t know what to say to him. Jacobi had been shot. He could have been killed. Where the bullet hit, he should have been killed. And it was all due to her. She’d carried the obsession too far, an obsession that everyone had tried to warn her about, and as a result, the fixation had been turned around on her. On her and every person that she cared about, all of those people who had tried to warn her against it in the first place.

“I’m sorry.”

Lindsay was surprised by the apology, because it didn’t come from her mouth.

“For what?” she responded.

She should have been apologizing to him. She should have been apologizing to more than just him. She owed apologies to every person she’d maintained contact with after she was threatened. If she’d let them go, they would all be safe.

“Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention,” Jacobi exhaled, then sucked in a breath, clenching his eyes tight against a sudden twinge.

“Jacobi, please let them give you something,” Lindsay pleaded with him. She didn’t understand how he was even lucid. A weaker man would have been unconscious.

“I had a glass of wine with dinner,” he divulged as if it somehow proved his liability for what came after.

“A glass of wine?” Lindsay reiterated, feeling the anger starting to build at where he was trying to go with this. He had no right to this guilt. It was hers alone. “I’ve seen you do four straight shots on an empty stomach and still walk a straight line.”

“I was on the job, and I treated it like it was dinner out with a friend.”

“It was dinner out with a friend.”

“I’m sorry, Lindsay.” Jacobi’s eyes begged forgiveness.

“Don’t be sorry,” she countered.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, his lower lip shaking as if on the verge of tears.

“Don’t be sorry!” Lindsay shouted.

Then she sat gasping for breath. It was as if she was underwater. She felt dizzy. But she wasn’t crying. She didn’t want to. She needed to stay focused. She needed to stay strong. For Cindy. She had no more time for breakdowns. Not while there was still a chance.

Her eyes trailed back to Jacobi. That guilt that she wanted to think that he had no right to, that she wanted to think belonged to her alone, she couldn’t take that away from him. Of course he felt guilty. He liked Cindy, he was supposed to be looking out for her, and she’d been taken on his watch. He was furious with himself, of course he was, and Lindsay was the only person who could truly empathize.

She wasn’t going to question him about what happened. She needed to know, but not yet. He was suffering enough, with more than just the physical pain. But, apparently, she didn’t have to ask.

“I looked around, I did,” Jacobi started on his own. “Back and forth. Up and down. Between cars we passed in the parking lot. Front of the car. Back of the car. I only turned away for a minute, to open her door. Cindy got in. She was teasing me about being so chivalrous.”

Lindsay’s eyes closed. It was hard to imagine such a lighthearted Cindy now.

“I was walking around the back of the car, and…” He broke off, gritting his teeth. Lindsay didn’t even bother to bring up the painkillers this time. She knew that he would refuse. He wanted to get this out. “I heard the gunshot from behind. That was it. I didn’t see anything.”

He shook his head in frustration.

“It’s okay. I have the report. I can figure out the rest,” Lindsay uttered, dropping her gaze to her knees.

She couldn’t take hearing about the gun and the car and the darkness. She thought that she could, but it was too much. Because it made it a real event that actually took place. She really wanted to pretend that none of this had ever happened.

“Do something for me?” Jacobi asked quietly.

She lifted her head to nod up at him.

“My phone’s in the closet. Will you get it?”

It was the very least that she could do. She’d actually been expecting a bigger favor. Maybe she’d been hoping for one, something to serve as penance.

She got up and moved over to the closet, digging through Jacobi’s few belongings until she found his phone in a jacket pocket. She carried it back to the bed and held it out to him, but he weakly waved for her to keep it.

“Go to the pictures.”

Lindsay turned on the phone as she sat, flipping through the menus until she found the photo section. She selected it, and the first picture that came up on the screen was of Cindy and Jacobi. It was clearly taken with Jacobi’s outstretched arm, and cut off part of his face, but it was very clear that they were having a good time together. Just hours before Jacobi was shot and Cindy was taken away from her.

“There are more,” Jacobi told her.

She flipped back through four more pictures, all of Cindy alone; Cindy blowing a kiss at the camera; Cindy mugging seductively; Cindy in a fit of laughter; and a more demure shot, the first one taken, when Cindy was still clearly shy about the fact that Jacobi had asked to take it. She’d gotten a little more open with each pose.

Barely twelve hours ago, this was Cindy.

“She looked so beautiful, I thought you’d want to see.”

Like a fairy tale princess. The thought went through Lindsay’s mind unbidden, and she shuddered.

She moved forward through the pictures again, stopping on the one of Cindy blowing a kiss, and ran her thumb over the screen.

“You got a chance to talk?”

“Yeah, we did,” Jacobi replied softly. “She’s both crazy about you and pretty amazing in her own right. I give my sincerest approval. Not that my disapproval would have stopped you.”

Even as she smiled a little for the first time since her life turned into a vibrant nightmare, Lindsay felt a tear roll down her cheek.

“It was a nice dinner?” she asked, unable to take her eyes off of Jacobi’s phone.

“Very nice,” Jacobi answered.

“What did she eat?”

Of course Jacobi knew where it was coming from, because he always knew where she was coming from. It was his lot in life to live partially inside her head.

“It was not her last meal,” he stated vehemently.

“He has her Jacobi. And the things he does to people…” Lindsay looked up at him, the tears now falling unchecked. “Maybe I should be praying that he makes it quick.”

She sobbed then, because the idea that Cindy might be better off dead than enduring whatever she could be enduring was the most unbearable part of all.

“She’s tough.”

And it was a fair assessment. There were a lot of times when Cindy earned such a description. Before, Lindsay would have described her the same way without hesitation. But now she knew her so much better, and while she could still be as tough as Jacobi was giving her credit for, there were also times when Cindy was overly sensitive and overly vulnerable, and she was bound to be those things now. She was too smart not to be scared.

“She’s not that tough,” Lindsay shook her head, wiping away the tears.

“I wish I could have done more,” Jacobi whispered.

“I know,” Lindsay asserted, finally feeling comfortable enough to grab onto Jacobi’s hand. “I’m glad that you’re okay.” She meant it. “I just wish that I knew which fairy tale she was in… because some of them aren’t that bad. And some of them are.”

“Lindsay, we are going to find her… before anything has a chance to happen to her. We clear?”

Instantly, Lindsay flashed back to the night when she’d told Cindy, Jill and Claire about Kiss-Me-Not’s threat. It was the same question Jill had asked. Back then, it all seemed preventable. It felt so remote. It was still a fable then, not their reality.

Nothing is going to happen to you. Are we clear?

“We’re clear,” Lindsay whispered.

And, just like then, she couldn’t even sound like she believed it.