Trigger warning: mentions of death, 9/11, suicide
Don pushed open his office door. "I'll keep that in mind the next time you use hyperbole!"
"Piss off," Elliot hollered. "I'm going home to spend some time with my wife and kids, assclown."
"Enjoy," Don hollered back. He closed the door to his office and put down the stack of Post-Its he was holding. He didn't particularly feel like joining everyone else at Hang Chews, and didn't know if they'd even be there still, so he just turned off his desk light and grabbed his coat off the rack. As always, he paused before leaving for the night, doing a mental check. Lights off, light before-bedtime work in hand. All was quiet.
Except all was not quiet, because he could hear someone crying. He removed his head from his office—it wasn't coming from the bullpen. He put his head back in his office.
"Hello," he said cautiously.
A loud sniff was the only reply he got.
He closed the door to his office, hung his coat back up, slung his bag onto the floor, turned on the light, and walked around his desk. Violet was sitting in his chair, knees drawn up to her chest, head ducked. The source of the crying.
"Hello," he said again. Less of a question, but still cautious. He had no idea why she'd be crying in his office. Why was it that women kept crying in his office? First Sloan, now her. Did he project a safe environment or something? Did no one ever come in here? Did they just happen to choose his because it was empty?
"My entire family is dead," she said to her knees.
He felt his eyebrows shoot up of their own accord. Slowly, he sat down on the edge of his desk.
"My parents died in 9/11," she said. "Both of them. Mom was dropping off some paperwork he'd left at home. She was going to be there for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. What are the odds?"
Don closed his eyes against the images of the towers burning.
"My brother committed suicide a year later," she said. "He had severe depression—clinically diagnosed. I had no idea."
All of a sudden he felt very out of his depth. He didn't know anyone who had committed suicide. He probably knew someone who knew someone who did, but . . .
"We told each other everything," she said. Scoffed, a sad, wet sound, eyes roving the office but never landing on him. "I thought we did. We trusted each other. I don't know why he didn't tell me." She took off her glasses and scrubbed at her eyes. "He blew his chest out. He used Dad's old shotgun. But apparently that wasn't fast enough, so he put another shell through his head. At least, that's what the police said. I couldn't tell."
There was something frightening about the way she was speaking, cold and detached from what she was describing. But even if she didn't sound affected, she certainly looked like it, fresh tears streaking down her face. He pictured it: a younger, softer her coming home to her brother's body and blood on the floor, a gaping hole in his chest and half his head blown off.
He felt like he was going to be sick.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Finally she looked at him, the red lining her eyes making them look much greener than normal. "It's not your damn fault."
"It's not yours either," he said.
She shot him a look carved from pain. "I don't feel guilty. I'm not torn up about my last words to him like everyone is in overromanticized trash heap novels nowadays. We had a good relationship. We said I love you at the end of every conversation because we didn't get the chance with Mom and Dad. I was leaving for a job interview. He said good luck, I said thanks, we both said I love you, and when I got back, I couldn't figure out where he stopped and the blood began."
Don swallowed back a wave of nausea. He couldn't tell which was making him more nauseous, the imagery or the way she was presenting them. Like she'd died with her brother.
"It's not my fault. I know it isn't. I was as good a sister as I could have been. He didn't tell me anything, didn't show it, so I tried to muddle through losing Mom and Dad and he gave up." Now she showed something other than broken tears, slamming her palm down on the armrest of his chair, face wrinkling in anger. "He fucking gave up. I don't understand it. He didn't even give me the option of being there for him. He just—I don't fucking understand."
Her face crumpled with her last word, and Don searched for something to say. Everything seemed inadequate. Fake. He fiddled with this thumb, watching through his eyelashes.
"Not a whole lot of experience with dead siblings?" she said, caustic and grieving.
"Well," he said, trying for something other than anguish, "I absorbed my twin in the womb, but I don't think that really counts, being dead before you were ever born."
Fresh tears grew in her eyes. She said, "I feel like that sometimes."
And the heavy, tired way she said it hurt him to his core.
