Chapter Text
Everything is cold. The night air. The revolver he failed to use. His partner’s hand. The pool of blood on the floor.
And afterwards, everything is even colder. The pair of handcuffs his shaking hands place on a criminal whose already gotten away with too much. The change in his pocket which his distraught mind has him convinced is the last bit of dirty money he never spent. The buttons of a uniform he knows he’ll be turning in within the week. The expressions of every officer he’s ever worked with. The tone of his commissioner as he announces his dishonorable discharge at a hearing of his peers. The sharp slap of a woman’s hand as she wails at him, demanding to know why he let her only son be killed.
The people on the street have always been cold, but it bothers him even more now than it ever did before.
And then everything is frozen. First, his assets because it’s suspected there’s more bribe money there than he’s admitted to having taken. Then his apartment when they cut the power for non-payment. And finally, as the guilt eats away at him, his heart.
He drinks, trying to get warm again. It only makes him sick and bitter.
He stops going out during the day. He doesn’t want to be reminded that he can’t feel the sun.
He takes to wandering at night. He keeps drinking. He grows out his hair and changes his clothes.
He sits at the foot of his partner’s grave and apologizes, but the words lack the warmth of sincerity and he feels even worse for having said anything at all.
He’s standing out in the pouring rain, soaked to the bone and inebriated. There’s a man in a neat white suit standing across from him, asking him if he can talk a minute. He starts to shake his head ‘no’ when the man reaches out and touches his hand. His refusal dies in his throat.
The man’s hand is warm.