Complicated

Chapter Twenty: Fallen

Truth be told I've tried my best
But somewhere along the way
I got caught up in all there was to offer
And the cost was so much more than I could bear

Though I've tried, I've fallen...
I have sunk so low
I have messed up
Better I should know

Sarah McLachlan - Fallen

The coffee was cold, Angell winced as she took a sip from her cup before setting it back down again on the corner of her desk. She had been sitting at her desk for the past hour processing the paperwork for the shooting, it never ceased to amaze her how when every cop in the city was out searching a would be cop killer she would be the one stuck manning the phones and chained to the desk.

Part of her thought maybe she deserved this as punishment for not having Grace's back in the diner. Her attention had been too focused on getting that slimeball Connor Dunbrook to safety instead of watching her own ass or that of her friends. It was part of the job and because of that she had reacted instinctively, preserving the witness instead of saving her own skin.

Over the past months Angell had come to see Grace as a friend, the other woman was understanding and attentive when the two of them discussed the tolls the job was taking on Angell's own life out side of work. Grace had pointed out it wasn't just that the job was a full time gig, it was that it swiftly became your life.

The few times they'd worked cases together Grace had made her laugh with her wisecracks and awed her with compassion to empathize with a victim. She saw the victims as they were when they were alive, every crime scene she attended she plucked up the details of their lives and filed them away until they made the picture of the living person whose corpse lay cold and lifeless in the morgue. It was one of the reasons she couldn't help but think that Grace Sullivan deserved a lot better than the raw deal she was getting right now.

Angell raked both hands through her loose curly tresses, she couldn't get the images from the diner out of her head. The other woman's expression of resignation and agony as she went down, Grace's blood seeping through her fingers, the sound of her strangled sob at the sudden increase in pressure.

She couldn't face Flack right now, she was responsible for this mess, if she had been faster she could have prevented it. If her focus hadn't been Dunbrook she'd have been able to back up Grace. It killed Angell to hear the sincerity in his voice when he had been trying to sooth Grace, she had never heard his voice dip so low before, she had never heard such tenderness in his tone. She'd never heard him panic before today.

God had a sick sense of humour twisting fate like that and putting Grace in the diner today. They didn't deserve this. For the first time since their partnership had started Angell had seen the spark that was in Flack's eyes, he grinned a lot more, his life had more weight to it and Angell knew that no matter what evil perverse things they had seen during the course of the day that her partner would be returning for the next shift with a smile on his face and a refreshed attitude towards their duty.

Sitting here gave her all the time in the world to think and she couldn't help but brood on the events that had occurred this morning. She'd heard down the grapevine the news of Grace's condition. The outlook didn't look good.

The bullet they had pulled out of her had been a fifty calibre hollow point, it had blown a sizeable hole in the other woman's abdominal cavity, penetrating through her left kidney and lacerating her liver. The other woman was lucky to have survived a shot like that in the first place, and then to battle with the odds through surgery...

Angell was just really glad that Grace was living and breathing at the moment. A gunshot did a lot more damage than people knew, Angell blamed the entertainment industry for half the idiots that toted weapons around them. Seeing someone walk away after being shot was common place in the movies and on TV. Experiencing it was something completely different.