Disclaimer: Starsky and Hutch don’t belong to me, I'm just giving them something to ponder.
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Now is Ours to See

By

Myrannda

   There are times in my life when I still remember that day. So crystal clear is the memory, that it can send shock waves through to the very core of my soul.

   I shiver, just out of control. My visions, if you will, can materialize at any time. In any instant. At any moment. I may be resting at my desk in the squad room at work with a warm cup of bitter coffee in my hands, chasing a bad guy down a dark, dingy alley, or just standing alone, in my apartment, looking down out of the window onto the streets below me. I watch it, like a movie, myself removed, just an observer to a moment in my own life. I can’t control it and I try to not let it control me. I stare glassy-eyed into space, apparently seeing nothing, but….

   I’ve not told him that this thing is happening to me. Yet. He knows something is going on. I can see it in his questioning eyes when he looks at me after one of my ‘episodes’. Yes, he knows me well enough to not be fooled. So, to cover myself, I’ve lied to him, something I’ve almost never done, and told him that sometimes I get these headaches. They are not very painful, but they come, and after a short time they are gone.

   At least that is what he thinks. Because that is what I’ve told him. And he trusts me.

   Oh, I know he’s still concerned, but now he just lets it pass as he thinks I too am doing. It has never affected my job or the work we do. I can still chase that bad guy down that alley, in fact I’m better than ever because I am concentrating so much more on my actions, trying to forget the vision rolling through my mind.

   Unfortunately, the memory of it usually stays with me the rest of my day. Not the complete flashback, but the lingering of it. Like mist after a rainfall or the dust training behind a comet.

   Oh, the dread I feel.

   And sometimes, late at night, if I have not completely forgotten it, the dreams come. He does not know about that either, and I won’t tell him. He might suspect. He might not. He hasn’t asked me about it, and far be it from me to bring it up. He has been through so much over this entire ordeal that I will not burden him with any of my misery. But doesn’t my misery eventually become his? If I even casually mention the subject of that day, I can see him wince at the thought of it. I don’t think he realizes it, and he would probably deny it. But I see it. What does he see in me? What do I unconsciously show him? I’ve been wondering a lot about that lately.

   And maybe, just maybe a small part of me enjoys the misery, the dread. The memory of it all. For now I am living the outcome. That is my consolation and my comfort. We looked at death and won. We won. One does not forget that. One should not want to forget it.

   Yes, some pain is good, I think. Lets you know you are still alive, still around to fight, and I am a fighter. So is he. That is what has kept us going through it all. That and our love. But the memory is mine, the vision is mine, the dream is mine, the pain is mine. Alone.

   Of course, the alone part is only fanciful thinking, my selfishness with my feelings and my protective nature when it comes to anything involving him. Letting go of that dreadful moment, even for all its ugliness, is hard. Why? Because it has brought us closer together - can I not want that? Letting him go has been even harder. Maybe that is why I am still clinging to these visions. These memories. And have not exorcised them yet. As long as I have them, I can’t completely let go and neither can he, I think. See, I am selfish.

   Then again, I’ve not seen any indication that he’s ready to let go of me either. And I would know, I know him so well. First, he might start out with some gentle ribbing about the way I’m watching out for him on the streets. He would do that in front of our co-workers, other officers, in front of some of our friends or our captain. Next, he would drop the gentle part and start making poignant one-liners. Finally, he would get angry with me in private, in his car, or in my car most probably and really let me have it. I have witnessed him going through this process before. But so far, this time, it’s been different and the old pattern has not emerged.

   We have been back at the job part time for just about a month now. I’ve been back at my apartment for nearly the same amount of time and that was when my dreams started. Maybe that was when I felt I could release some of my tension-filled emotions. When I felt I didn’t need to be so strong for the both of us. Just who am I kidding? He has been strong for the both of us, too. And I’ve really needed that.

   Even though I can release some tension through my dreams and visions, it hasn’t made up for the fact that moving out was extremely hard on me. Even now, I get worried thinking of him alone in his apartment, not knowing what is going on, not knowing if he needs me, unable to do anything for him if something does go wrong. After all this time, he still has bad days.

   My moving out was hard on him, too. We had gotten so used to each other that we had developed a regular, daily pattern that seemed to work for the both of us. I’m still not convinced that it has been the right thing for either of us to do. Our physical separation. But I’m not sure what the solution would be short of moving in together, permanently. Maybe. Some day. We haven’t got much else besides each other anyways. It’s not that I want to sound as though I’ve given up on my dreams of a family. I haven’t, but maybe that family has changed. I’m not sure what I want towards that end. I only know that when we are together now, nobody else seems to matter much. And we are together a lot. We are together more now than we were before the shooting. But since I moved out of his apartment, I’ve missed that extra time I had with him. Seems silly, I know. After all, we still work together.

   Our bond is hard to understand. Even for us. It is one of friendship and something more. I’ve told myself over and over again that there is no real reason for us to stay together as much as we do. There is no blood relationship or sworn vows keeping us together. But along the way to this present point, over all our years together, a dependence on each other has formed. Something that existed well before the shooting and will continue long afterwards.

   Even believing that, knowing that, down deep in my soul, sometimes I would feel abandoned by him. Sometimes, he would shut me out. I started waiting for what I had come to convince myself was the inevitable. That he would leave me. I couldn’t just do nothing and wait for that to happen. I needed control. So I decided to push him out of my life instead by, among other things, sleeping with his girl of the moment. I knew he didn’t love her, even though he said he did. I mean, he couldn’t! It was an internal hell for me. I’d never seen him so mad. But instead of leaving me, transferring, asking for a new partner, like I thought he would have, like maybe some small part of me wanted him to, he stayed and looked into me with his soul-searching eyes and saw right through to what I was trying to do. To him and to us. I could see that he wasn’t going to be a pawn in this new game of mine. A game in which even I wasn’t sure of the rules or how to win. But I knew what the prize was.

   And where did I get off feeling I had to do that? Simply put, I had an increasing need to control any situation we were in. I had felt that my own life was spiraling out of control. The only constant I’d had in the last decade of my life was him. Thus, if I could control us and our actions, I could control my life again. And controlling my life included controlling his, naturally.

   Truth was, as I eventually came to realize, he controlled me and didn’t even know it. My challenging his control is what caused our problems. He controlled me so well that I can’t even begin to explain half of the stuff I had done before the shooting. It seems now like it was someone else.

   His control and my resulting actions eventually sent me running. I almost got away from him one day as I got ready to toss my police badge into the invitingly blue ocean. It was the perfect opportunity to escape him because I could hide it under the guise of losing faith in our justice system. We had separated earlier in the day, and I hadn’t told him where I was going. But he found me. Maybe he knew? He ended up following me that day, but really he was unknowingly controlling me again.

   Exactly when did I start to notice his control? It’s not entirely his fault. I allowed it to happen. It was after Van had been murdered. He took over that whole mess and helped me to escape it in many ways.

   However, I wound up violating his trust in me. The truth of the matter was that he could have left me anytime before, during, or after the mess I was creating around us. And that would have left me lost. He has a lot of friends and a family, if a bit flaky, that love him. It ended up being me who couldn’t let go of him. It was me who needed to see his need of me in his life. I needed to make sure his loyalty still existed (like he hasn’t shown me countless times over the years!). Because I knew that if he did ever truly leave me, it would be me who would suffer the most, it would be me who was lost because I did not have the network of family and friends.

   But then his control was violently stripped away, when he was shot. I found myself all at once free of him and his control. I was truly free. But at what a cost! And In reality I wasn’t free - I was lost, like I had known I would be. And not only did I find myself lost but I was alone too. ‘What do I do now?’ I asked myself. ‘And what do I do if he… well, if he really leaves me?’ I tried to console myself by telling me that it wasn’t his choice! He didn’t choose to leave me! It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t push him away! He was being taken from me. Neither of us had control. But wait! Please! I’ve changed my mind! I want him back!

   As the world came crashing down around me, I found myself at a loss at how to deal with the sudden change in our lives. Generally, I’ve always been leery of changes with us. This change was so quick and indecisive that at times, months later, I’m still stunned by it. How the hell did we get here? Do I take control now? But maybe that’s not so true after all. Sure our daily routines were different for awhile there. I obviously didn’t spend most of my time in a hospital before (even though I could argue about that), but just the same, I did spend most of it with him, just in a different place, in different ways. Before, I didn’t need to help him take care of himself, but there were things I did or at least attempted to do like get him to develop better eating habits. A lost cause at best.

   I’ve learned to accept change now, as long as we are together. For him, he has suffered extreme physical changes. From the pain he was in - which is mostly gone now - to the constant reminder of the incident by those ever-present scars. Emotionally, we have both changed. Part of it has stemmed form his physical dependence on me. It has lead to a greater emotional dependence as well. It’s a change we have yet to explore together. But the time is coming soon. I can feel it around us.

   So for now, for that is all we are assured of, we share the control over each other equally. Just as true partners should. We both give and take, finding a balance that benefits us both. I’ve shared enough things with him to know that we are in fact separate, but equal, sharing thoughts and ideas and our feelings and our souls. He is my soul mate. Of course, we’ve always known that. How lucky I was to have found him. But it is a fact also that we are individuals as well, as individual as our dreams that come to us at night. And my dreams are mine and so are my visions. Maybe I’ll tell him…

   As I look over at him now, his eyes taking in the blue of the ocean and the brilliant red sunset in the sky, I’ve decided I’m going to tell him something new that I have just discovered about myself, about us. I know he’ll listen because I know he has figured out part of it for himself too. And just in case he hasn’t, I now know that he’ll love me, stay with me, regardless. That’s the meaning of the word. Guard - Less. With my guard down, he’ll still stay. Just like I want him to. Always.

   So the Pacific breeze whispered these ideas around our faces and we were about to find if not peace, each other at last.

THE END