Archive of Our Own ^beta

There were times when my jealousy, my possessiveness escaped unbidden.

I didn’t like to spend too much time analysing my behaviour, it was a side of my character I wasn’t proud of, and yet I couldn’t stop.

Thinking about it meant facing up to the fact that I always tried to own people, holding onto them so tightly until I suffocated them, drove them away. I feared being alone, yet I always ended up that way.

And now there’s Barbara, and how I feel about her brings me nothing but confusion. Her presence unsettles me in ways I can’t name. I want to hold on tight, yet I’m terrified of what that might mean. She’s the calm in the storm, but sometimes I wonder if I’m the one causing the chaos. The more I try to figure it out, the less clear it becomes.

What I do know is this: to lose her would kill me.

She’s always been mine; my sergeant, my friend, my sanity, my refuge. But now, after Helen’s death, my brush with alcoholism, the Thompson case, after everything, we stand on new ground. Not lovers, not strangers. It is something fragile and undefined.

I find myself searching for the right words, trying to map what she means to me without cornering her, without pushing her away.

She’s the steady hand in chaos, the voice that cuts through the noise. She’s my home. But where does that leave me? Can I carry on without being those same things to her? Could I ever be? Would she let me?

Perhaps it’s not about possession or certainty, but about holding space — for her, for us, however that might look.

And maybe, for now, that has to be enough.