A Delicate Balance

The red and blue lights of the ambulance blur together against the hazy, wet backdrop of the rainy sky. Lauren keeps her gaze on them as the vehicle speeds up the street in the direction of the hospital, and continues to stare long after they disappear. Her ears are ringing from the wail of the sirens, chest still burning from the adrenaline of the pursuit, and all she can do is fucking stare. Patrol officers and other detectives move around her, but they might as well be ghosts.

She should be used to this by now. After so many years as a cop -as a detective- she should be used to blood and carnage, used to the unfathomable cruelty that some people are capable of, but she isn't.

Especially not with cases like this.
Every time she blinks, all she can see is broken glass and upturned furniture; a bloodied nose and a busted lip on a face not much older than her daughter's.

She sees the battered form of a desperate mother holding the lifeless body of her child, staring down into equally lifeless brown eyes as she pleads for him to just wake up.

It's an image Lauren knows is going to haunt her dreams for months to come, but all she can do is stare at where the ambulance had been, trying to contain the rage that's broiling just under her skin.

She wants to scream.

She wants to go and rip the pathetic waste of life that's responsible for this nightmare out of the back of the cruiser that he's tucked into and beat the shit out of him until he's nearly unrecognizable, the same way he had beaten the dead little boy and his mother.

It's no more than what he deserves, but doing so would make her just as bad as him.

It's not fair, nor is it right, but she should be used to it.

"Penny for your thoughts, Lauren?"
Lauren merely glances over at her partner, Detective Marcus Collins, and glares. His jovial tone and attitude only makes her foul mood worse.

"See, Wolffe, that's why the rookies are afraid of you. That look, right there."

Lauren rolls her eyes. They've had this conversation a hundred different times before. She's not in the mood to deal with his bullshit.

“Cut the shit, Marcus.”

“Oh, come on, Wolffe, would you lighten up a little? I’m just messing with you.”

“There’s a time and a place for that, Marcus. This is neither,” Lauren replied sharply, slowly making her way towards their unmarked vehicle. Marcus follows behind her, hands buried in the pockets of his leather jacket against the chill of the early fall weather.

It seemed they were going to have this argument yet again, with him insisting that she needed to loosen up and stop taking everything so seriously.

So, in other words, stop being professional. Marcus had a talent -or whatever the antithesis of talent was- for blurring the lines of what was and what decidedly wasn’t professional. Lauren could tolerate it, most of the time. She got where he was coming from, really, she did; in their line of work, they had to have some form of stress release. A lot of cops were fond of witty banter, and many of them had incredibly dirty minds and an even darker sense of humor, including her. But shared laughs over stories about hilariously bizarre and or disturbing things seen on the job were reserved for the break room back at the precinct, in patrol cars on slow days, or at desks during lulls between cases, not at a crime scene.

Especially not one like this.

“And just why the hell not?” Marcus questions and for a brief moment Lauren’s temper flares before she reigns it back in. “‘Ren, if-”

"In case you somehow missed it, Marcus, a little boy was just murdered and his mother is on the way to the hospital. This isn't something to take lightly."

"Well, maybe if it wasn't such a common occurrence," Marcus mutters under his breath, and this time, Lauren can't temper her rage.

"Are you fucking serious," Lauren growls, stopping dead in her tracks as she turns on him. Marcus merely shrugs, looking back at her with such a neutral, unbothered face that Lauren wants to deck him for it.

"What? It is," he insists, and Lauren has to grit her teeth. Turning on her heel, she picks up her pace, practically marching towards their SUV.

"Come on, Wolffe. How many times have you seen a case like this? Mom leaves her kid with her shitty boyfriend, boyfriend treats the kid like shit, and then the mother has the nerve to act like she did nothing wrong when the kid gets hurt!"

"Yeah, sure," Lauren hisses, practically seething with rage as she wrenches open the driver's side door. "Except that she tried to protect her son from that asshole."

"Is that what she told you," Marcus questions as she slams the door shut.

"She didn't have to. I followed the evidence," Lauren retorts, shoving her keys in the ignition and revving the engine once it's started up. Realizing that she might just leave without him (or run him over) Marcus darts around the front of the SUV, yanking the passenger door open and quickly climbing in.

Lauren absentmindedly wishes she had an 'eject seat' button.

"You and I both know that just having evidence doesn't mean we know the truth."
"And what do you think the truth is?"

"For all we know," Marcus starts, and Lauren has to brace herself, "It could've been the mother that was beating the kid. We've seen stranger things happen."

Lauren laughs in disbelief before she can stop herself.

"Jesus Christ, you're such a fucking cynic," Lauren mutters, shaking her head as she pulls out onto the street.

"And you're a bleeding heart."

Lauren can't help but roll her eyes at that. She'd learned long ago that if you wore too kind of a heart on your sleeve that you'd only get taken advantage of.

"Look," Marcus says softly after a few moments of silence. Lauren glances over at him, arching an eyebrow at him as she waits for the red light they're at to turn green.

"All I'm saying is that I know better than to think that she's telling the truth just because she got the shit beaten out of her."

"Yeah," Lauren answers softly with a nod of her head as she turns onto 39th street. She can see where he's coming from.

Kind of.

"But you're also not a parent. You didn't see the devastation in her eyes; you probably wouldn't recognize it if you did. The thought that your kid is hurt or suffering because of something you did… that's a soul crushing feeling." At that, Marcus glances over at her.

He's given her shit about needing to loosen up and have more fun since they became partners, but he doesn't understand that she can't, why she won't.

Lauren had made her fair share of mistakes in the past, and she'd paid a high price for them, too.

"Yeah, I guess you have a point," he concedes, and then -because they can’t just ride back to the precinct in a peaceful silence- asks, "you speaking from personal experience?"

Lauren doesn't reply as an image of her daughter, pale faced, terrified, and hooked up to several different monitors flashes in her mind. Her past was something she rarely discussed, not even with her previous partner, and certainly not with her current one. She knew he was fishing for information, trying to coax out some sort of insight into who she really was.

Lauren wasn't too keen on giving him anything. While most would chalk it up to him just trying to get to know her, there was something about Marcus that was just a little too earnest that set her teeth on edge.

It was probably nothing to worry about. Her previous partner had made her feel the same for a while, before she'd finally warmed up to him. Two or three years later.

"Yeah," she eventually replies, figuring that she might as well say something. "You could say that."

"Care to elaborate," Marcus questions, and the hopeful look on his face makes Lauren wish she hadn't bothered opening her mouth.

Wonder how much it would cost to put an ejectable seat in this SUV? Would the department even pay for something like that?

"Nope."