Archer Avery (arcarius) wrote in horror_story, @ 2013-02-26 16:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | archer, complete, cycle002, o'brien |
Screw that Guardian Angel Crap
WHO: Archer (and O’Brien...?)
WHEN: 1AM, 3 January
WHERE: police station
WHAT: Either Archer is losing his mind -- he’s not discounting this possibility -- or he’s seeing a ghost. He thinks he might actually prefer to lose his mind. Maybe.
WARNING(S): Archer feels emotions. Actual emotions. And they show on his face, sometimes.
Archer Avery was tired. Not his usual tired, which was a constant companion never to be discounted. ‘Tired’ in his lexicon meant he’d been busy, had worked hard, had something to show for it at day’s end. This, what he felt now, wasn’t that. This was not some well-deserved fatigue that would be met with some actual sleep. This was an exhaustion that pushed on him, socked him in the gut and expected him to keep that forward motion shit going. There was too much to do to be tired.
There was too much to do to feel anything but numb.
It was all too much. When you got down to brass tacks, that was how it was. That kid’s suicide, the Wilson body and the swirling mass of what-the-fuck-ever surrounding the death, Wren Spengler’s head getting caved in (they’d been talking a week ago at the fucking York party and now she was in a fucking coma and it didn’t look good), the missing little girl, Sully winding up in the hospital, the something-bad-is-going-on vibe around town that even Archer felt. The thing was, he was here for all of that shit. Sometimes he was a few steps removed -- information from his officers and the occasional CI, paperwork and word-of-mouth -- but sometimes he was right there watching Frankenbrit cut into a body, listening to parents sob, walking silently through too-loud hospitals and too-quiet streets. This was Archer’s town, and beneath that stoic facade he poured his heart and soul into it, and lately all it had given back was mystery and misery.
And it hadn’t given him back his fucking best friend alive, either; Archer Avery was so beyond angry about that, about Brannon O’Brien not being alive, and so busy trying to keep up that hazy numbness that had been fucking aces all week-of-tragedies long, that he didn’t even realize how much it hurt.
How it hurt to be standing on the side of the road in the cold, being able to put two and two together just from the marks on the ground and the guard rail being gone, having that gut feeling that it was gonna be O’Brien’s squad car down there in the ravine. How it hurt to know that O’Brien wasn’t gonna come climbing up the side, battered and bruised but grinning in some sort of triumph, chattering about mountain roads and wicked curves and man, hadn’t that been some wreck, Archie? How it hurt to see how he really looked before O’Neill got his hands on him and would work to make him look some sort of human again. How it hurt to be the one to call Brannon’s parents. How it all just fucking hurt.
Not sleeping and barely eating weren’t Archer’s way of punishing himself for all of it, not really; he did that anyway, sometimes. Sitting in his office past midnight and letting the last couple of days catch up with him, though... that was punishment, richly deserved. He’d kept a level head and a level voice when talking with people up ‘til now, and maybe only the O’Briens and his sister Penny knew how much that cost Archer, but he did it, because a cop was always a cop, even when his best friend was dead on New Year’s Day. No, he didn’t know if Deputy O’Brien was drunk but he doubted it because O’Brien was fucking never drunk on the job, never, and there was a fierceness in Archer’s eyes when he quietly said that that made people in the immediate area back away from that line of questioning. Yes, his music was probably too loud. It was always too fucking loud. Yes, O’Brien knew how to handle the curves in the road; he’d done it a million times before, maybe, and how would New Year’s Eve have been any different than any of those other million fucking times?
Archer didn’t know. Not knowing ate away inside him the same way the anger did, the same way the hurt did. So he sat in his office long after everyone else had gone and glared at paperwork. Glared at it like maybe if he just wrestled the truth out of the evidence, maybe it would bring Bran back to life and then Archer wouldn’t have to sit here and feel confused and angry and hurt.
He didn’t know he was crying, even after the forms in front of him were blurred by tears; Archer was ready to blame exhaustion for that, blame anything for that, because Archer Avery just didn’t cry.