|| Inevitable ||

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"I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary." 

~ Margaret Atwood

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Lounging back in his favourite chair, the brilliant lights of the city below him, Elijah Durant dreams of a better life. One where murderers and gangs don't face him every day, and he doesn't have to come home each night to an empty house.

But dreams are for the weak, and Elijah is anything but weak.

"Sir, we have a lead on the Sanderson murder," the young sergeant passes a thin file to his superior.

Elijah quickly flicks through, examining the report. "It says you found DNA possibly belonging to the suspect, almost two days ago?" He narrows his eyes and turns to look at the man. "And at the crime scene. Why wasn't I notified earlier?"

"I'm sorry, Elijaaaahh," a lazy voice interrupts as a familiar head of brown hair strolls into the office; a thick file tucked securely under his arm. "That was my doing. I know how important this case is to you and I didn't want to risk getting your hopes up over a hoax."

"It's Eli," he snaps back at the man. "You know not to call me Elijah, Miles. Makes me feel old."

Miles winks at his partner. "You got a soft spot for me. I can get away with calling you that."

Eli simply rolls his eyes and ushers the man over with a wave of his hand.

The lighting in the office, or lack thereof, as Eli often preferred to think in the dark, causes Miles' eyes to strain in the dismal glow. "Jesus Christ man, I'm going to need to wear my glasses full-time if you want to keep lurking in the dark like some swanky knock-off of Bruce Wayne," noticing his friend's dark mood, he adds on, "and what has got you so wound up tonight?"

"My ex-fiancée called."

"And?"

Eli sighs heavily. "And she's pregnant."

"Is it yours?" Miles slides into his own seat, opposite Eli's, and begins reading over the ballistics and lab reports for the case. He looks up, concerned etched on his face, when his friend doesn't reply. "Eli? Is something wrong?"

Elijah holds his head in his hands, praying his closest friend won't see him crying. The baby isn't his. But that isn't what troubles him; it's the harsh truth glaring him in the face. Trina, his ex-fiancée and once high school sweetheart, is six months pregnant, and she left him only two months ago. She wanted a baby so badly when they were together, someone to keep her company on the lonely nights when his rising career came first, but he could not financially provide for another person. He refused to give her what she had wished for her all life, and so she went to someone else to get the job done.

She had an affair, got pregnant, and left Elijah behind in the dust.

"How long have you been seeing him?" Eli had asked her over the phone, his voice breaking with each word. He loved her. Not a passing love or wild romance - real love. He loved her with all his heart and soul, and she honestly thought she had too.

She paused to breathe. She was on the brink of tears hearing him in such pain. "Since April. It started four months before I finally decided to leave you."

Her voice was an ice shard straight through his chest. Elijah couldn't take it anymore. He had hung up without so much as a word and broke into tears. He kept a tight lid on his emotions, you had to in a profession like his, but hearing her confirm his worst fears was too much to take. Years of restrained anger and unshed tears came spilling out in a violent outburst in which he trashed his home and nearly drank himself to death. He got behind the wheel that night, determined to kill himself.