route_1065 | “Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”

It was good be to out of jail. Sitting around with nothing to do but think about how you got there got old fast, even when it was just for part of a day. No wonder the guys Blake put there were so angry.

He'd gone straight for Jack and Coke. It wasn't the kind of day to screw around. It wasn't bad, even if it was technically with Jack Beedrills.

It was doing its job and taking the edge off. Lee was good company. Didn't talk too much, or try to chew him out about what'd happened.

"How'd you end up with her, anyway?"

Edited 2013-07-27 04:49 (UTC)

Lee figured that if there was one thing Blake had heard enough of today, it was about how bad he'd fucked up. There was no way that Carter was gonna listen to him this way if he tried to tell him anything but what he wanted to hear.

He finished his bourbon, knocking the rest back in one go.

"Found her hiding in her treehouse. Her parents were in Savannah. They...didn't make it."

Blake wasn't so sure about the zombie part, but it's clear there was some sort of big disaster back where Lee came from.

"Oh."

He tipped his glass, watching the ice slide to the side.

"She must be a tough kid to get through it on her own for that long."

"She is. Toughest kid I ever met." He used the bottom edge of his glass to idly spin circles against the wooden bar. "She's been through more than anyone her age should ever have to. Shit nobody should have to go through."

He rubs his head with a heavy sigh.

"You know how it feels, man. One minute, you've got nothing, and the next, there's this little girl looking up to you to protect her. And whatever else you might think you know one thing - it doesn't matter what happens to you anymore, so long as she's safe." He goes quiet for a moment.

"I do understand why you did it."

"Whole lot of people go through shit nobody should have to."

Blake used up all his rage when he was sober. When he was drinking he tended to turn either laughing and laid-back or quiet and moody. Looked like tonight was going to be the second.

What Lee said hit home a little too hard. He traced his finger in the condensation left by his glass, drawing marks against the grain.

"I don't even know why she picked me. Usually kids are scared of me. Probably because I'm one of the ones around when something real bad happened and Daddy's not coming home. But she showed up on the network and somebody had to show her the ropes. Then at that dance, she ran right up to me. Like she knew I'd look out for her. I don't know a damn thing about taking care of kids, but 'Nope, sorry, not my problem' wasn't exactly an option."

She hadn't even asked. She'd been all ready to keep going out on the road alone.

Blake tipped his head back to gaze up at the ceiling.

"When I saw that lady with that bow, I thought, finally, I can do something."

He rested his forearms on the bar, and his head lowered, sunk down between his shoulders. He knew how this would sound.

"...thought I could save somebody for once."

"You can say that again."

Lee was thinking about Kenny, Katjaa, Duck, Carley, Doug, Ben, Chuck... There wasn't a single damn person he'd met in the last few months who deserved the kind of shit that they'd been put through. But again and again the world proved that it didn't give a fuck what people deserved or didn't deserve.

He liked to think of himself as a good listener (and a champion flag-setter, as far as that goes), so he stayed quiet and just listened as Carter told the story about how he'd met the little girl he'd been looking after.

But the last bit took him a little by surprise, and he actually looked up and looked over at his drinking buddy, took in the defeated posture, remembered that guys like this were the ones who dealt with both sides of what Lee had been through - like he said himself, Carter was the guy who they called when Daddy wasn't coming home.

Lee gestured the bartender over and got Carter another drink, this time on Lee's tab.

"Can't imagine the kind of shit you've seen," he murmured empathetically. "That kind of job ain't easy, I know that much." His mind went back to a little boy coughing up blood in his mother's arms, to a teenager with an iron pole through his chest telling them that he was gonna be okay. "...But yeah. I know where you're coming from there, too."

"Thanks," he said vaguely as his drink was refilled.

Blake picked it up and sipped without much attention. He was seeing the old, smoky bar he used to go to with the guys back home, when a case was ugly. You laughed loud, threw darts, and yelled at the football on the TV, and maybe by the time you went home you'd forgotten a little.

His eyes slid over to Lee.

"You know, a lot of guys, they try to act tough, like they've seen it all. They minute their open their mouth, you can always tell they're yanking it all from their ass or from a Tarantino movie. But you."

There was something that'd been nagging at him, and now he's had enough to drink that it seems like a good chance to ask.

Blake waves his hand at Lee as he goes back to his drink.

"You've seen people die."

Lee didn't look back at Carter until Carter started talking and it was obviously to him. He ordered another bourbon and nodded his thanks when it was given to him. Truth be told, he was putting off answering.

"Tarantino flicks were never my thing," he murmured into his glass, then took a sip. "Saw Pulp Fiction and haven't seen a one since."

But of course that wasn't what Carter had asked.

"...Yeah. I have." He sighs and stares into his glass. "Killed some, too."

Carter was opening his mouth to give Lee crap about missing out on the classics. He shut it.

He gave Lee a long, long look. That could mean a lot of things, and the last conclusion Blake jumped to didn't work out so well.

Voice balanced carefully on neutral ground, he said, "That end of the world thing, huh."

He readjusts after a second. He sure as hell couldn't judge anybody for defending themselves. The reason, that's the important part.

"Anybody coming after you, they deserve what they get, especially when you have a little girl to look out for."

Lee noticed the neutral tone and realized that he better answer in a somewhat quick manner so as to not arouse suspicion.

However, the alcohol in his system was working against that wise idea, and for a long moment his only response was silence.

"...Yeah." He agreed with the sentiment but his own guilt kept him from saying more.

Blake took a good swallow, then gestured at Lee with the glass.

"Well, come on. It's the time of the night for war stories. What happened?"

It always got there sooner or later. You started drinking, you got to bullshitting, then you ended up talking about the things you couldn't during the daylight.

Lee looked up and over at Carter in surprise.

"Nah, man, you don't wanna hear it," he said finally, leaning back and smoothing his palms over the polished wood of the bar.

Blake shrugged. If Lee didn't want to talk about it, he didn't want to talk about it. For his part, though, now he was on the subject, the old memory was tugging at the back of his head.

"First time I shot a guy, hell, it was the stupidest fucking thing. Some idiot trying to rob a bodega. We come in, he turns around, gun in his hand. Like he was surprised we showed up. Maybe he was gonna drop it. Maybe he was gonna shoot. I don't know."

He picked at a coaster, breaking off little pieces of damp cardboard.

"Dead now."

Lee winced when Carter recounted his story. For one thing, his own experience had nothing on that. For two, no matter what all he's been through, he still hated hearing about people killing other people.

That seemed to be where this conversation was stuck, though, whether Lee wanted it to be or not, so he might as well get his dirty laundry out there. ...If he was sober he would never tell the story he was about to spill.

He turned his face up to the ceiling and heaved a heavy sigh.

"I walked in on this guy and my wife in bed together," he said, and his voice was almost imperceptibly quiet as he looked back down at the bar. "Next thing I knew, I had a bloody lamp in my hand and he was sprawled out on the floor, blood everywhere, and my wife..." his voice cracked and he squeezed his eyes shut tighter at the memory, still able to hear her screaming even after everything that had happened.

"She was the one who called the cops. Looking at me like I was gonna come after her, next, and god, I was so mad I could've, but I still loved her. Eight years I never laid a hand on her once in anger, and I didn't start then." He buried his head in his hands. "I dropped the lamp and I just sat down on the bed, and that's where the cops found me when they showed up."

Blake was half absorbed in his own memories as he looked down into his glass. Maybe he should've kept his mouth shut. Nobody really needed to hear about that kind of thing. But every once in a while, you needed to say it.

Things were going unfocused at the edges, exact details a little harder to hold onto. It took a second to follow what Lee was talking about. Then, it cut right through. For an instant his skin was hot all over, like he was scalded, then he went cold.

No, come on, it couldn't be. Not him.

Blake's eyes moved slowly to Lee, as heavy as if they were dragging iron behind. He was slumped over the bar. It was hard to see his face around his hands.

His voice came out slow and deliberate.

"You're telling me you're a murderer."

Lee had shoulders that had borne more than their share of burden, and right now they were slumped under the weight of reliving that particular tale. He would've thought much, much better of it if he were entirely sober. It was a story that he'd never even told the people whose lives depended on him. Not in its entirety like he just had.

Everything that had happened before the world went to shit just didn't seem to matter as much when there were walkers everywhere.

He didn't notice Carter looking over at him until he heard the slow and heavy conviction. He let his arms fall, tracing the wood grain of the bar with a finger. He couldn't meet his gaze - he knew that the words were true.

"I'm telling you I killed a man."

For a second Blake was perfectly still. His eyes bored into Lee.

"You son of a bitch."

In the next instant he was on his feet. The stool clattered to the floor with a bang that cut through the low music and murmur of voices.

"You son of a bitch!"

Rage reddened his face and made cords stand out on his neck. He was shouting, and was distantly aware that the bar had gone silent. He didn't give a damn. He wasn't seeing anybody except the killer.

"You had me fooled, didn't you? How long were you gonna let me think you were my fucking friend?!"

Lee looked over at Carter when the man yelled, knowing better than to leave his back turned to someone who was that pissed off. There was a small part of him that was confused - earlier, he'd told Carter that he'd killed the Stranger and the man had practically congratulated him.

But the confusion passed in an instant, replaced by a grim acceptance. The look on Lee's face as he carefully dismounted his stool and stood straight in front of Carter, was one that said without him having to say a word: "Hit me."

"A wise man told me there'd come a day when I would have to depend on the honesty of others, and if I hadn't been honest with them, I could wind up in some serious trouble." His voice was level and calm - one of his best traits was being able to put himself in danger and keep a straight head. "I've regretted killing that man every day of my life since I did it - and not because I got caught, because I shouldn't have done it. But regretting it don't undo it."

There was killing people and there was murder, and in Carter's head they couldn't be more black and white.

He snarled up into Lee's face, hands balled into fists at his sides. How the fuck could he be so calm? This changed everything about who Carter thought Lee was, and the fact that he could be so wrong burned down to the bone.

"You're full of shit. You don't regret it, it was all to prove some fucking point! Was it worth it? Are you proud of yourself for getting away with it this long? Huh, are you?!"

Funnily enough, the madder Carter got, the calmer Lee got, to the point where Carter could yell all he want and Lee would just stand there and take it.

Until he opened his mouth again.

"Man, fuck you, you don't know shit about what happened. Getting away with it? You think a guy like me could get away with killing a senator? I was getting put away for life when the world went to shit!"

"I know plenty!"

Every muscle in Blake's body was knotted tight with rage.

"You piece of shit, I helped you, and you were laughing in my goddamn face! You were who I was looking for the whole time, and you knew it!"

He was seeing all of them, one after the other. He needed to hurt somebody.

Carter got up in Lee's face, then shoved him back hard.

"Ten-year-olds, you son of a bitch!"

Lee was just about to start yelling back, now more out of confusion than anger, when Carter shoved him hard and made that last statement. Like that, all the angry tension left his body and his expression changed to one of confusion and a little sympathy.

They weren't...talking about him anymore.

"Hey- Carter, man, whoa." He reached out and put a hand on the older man's shoulder, trying to meet his eyes and get him to calm down. "The fuck are you talking about, man?"

Blake's voice was still ringing in his ears. It wasn't Lee he was yelling at.

The anger that was keeping him going drained away, leaving him disoriented and cold. He shrugged off Lee's hand and turned away.

The bar was silent. Blake met all the eyes turned toward them and growled, "What?"

He took a stool and slumped down, leaning heavily on the bar. He stared at the wood grain for a long time.

It was with him all the time, just under the surface, like he was standing on a glass-bottom boat with sharks beneath his feet. There's only so long you can keep from looking down.

After it turned out there wasn't going to be a fight, the others went back to their own fun and their own problems. The background murmur was almost at the normal level again when Blake spoke.

"Did I ever tell you about the last case I was on?"

Lee let Carter do all the work of scaring away the staring patrons, didn't protest when his hand was shrugged off. He knew that look the same as he knew the look of anger that had just been on Carter's face. He'd seen the worst of a lot of people, and he knew the face of a man who'd been through hell.

He took his seat again, watching Carter as the older man righted his stool and resumed his seat as well. He was waiting for him to speak, if he was going to.

What came out of his mouth wasn't what he was expecting.

"No, you didn't." But he could guess. And he didn't like the taste that that guess left in his mouth.

Blake had a talent for scaring people away. It didn't seem to work on Lee, though. He couldn't get himself to look at him, but he was right there.

His voice came out soft, with any feeling leeched out. The way you talked about these things was you put all your attention on pretending it didn't mean anything. You put your shoulders down and shoved through.

"There was a serial killer. There were eight victims, all between the age of nine and thirteen, all boys. Drowned in rainwater. It'd been going on for two years.

"By then there were a lot of people trying to track this guy down. Police, obviously, they even brought in the FBI. A couple civilians trying to do it on their own. A private eye, old friend of mine. Used to be a cop."

There was something in Carter's almost defeated posture that reminded Lee of Kenny, and if he'd failed so bad on being a friend to the one, then the least he could do would be make an effort to do better with the other.

He listened without judgment as Carter told his tale, watching the man carefully as he spoke. And he was horrified at what he heard.

"Jesus..." was the most coherent response he could come up with for that. After the kind of world he'd been living in for the months preceding his death, it was hard for him to remember and all too easy for him to imagine how fucked up people were even in a world that still had laws to stop them.

Blake rubbed his thumb on the outside of his glass. He nodded without looking up. "Yeah."

On the darker nights, he wondered if laws ever did stop anybody.

Even people you trusted could be murderers.

"They called in the FBI to take over. This guy shows up, he starts pushing me around and getting in my way when we were finally on the trail and on the edge of bringing him in. Everything's pointing to the kid's father. All we have to do is get him to talk and it's all over. The FBI dick, he keeps saying, you're wrong, you're wrong."

Blake took a long breath and let it out.

"He was right. It took him four days to crack a case I'd been on for two years. But you know what? That I could deal with. Would've pissed me off, but I'd get over it.

The worst part is who it was."

Lee listened with a patient silence as Carter recounted his story, leaning his forearms against the bar and doing him the courtesy of not watching him as he spoke. Being a history professor, he could only imagine how frustrating it had to have been to have someone else called in to do your job for you.

The last part was what confused Lee, and he looked over at Carter with a wary, curious expression.

"Who was it?" he asked, after it seemed like Carter wasn't going to continue without prompting.

Blake's jaw clenched tight enough to ache. He could feel a muscle there twitching.

He stared down at the wooden bar, thinking about how it would feel to put his fist through it. Crack and splinter with a gunshot sound.

Say it, you pussy.

His lips drew back. He pushed the words out like forcing grit through his teeth.

"Old friend of mine."

It was low and guttural. He didn't know if Lee could even hear him.

Say it.

"His name was Scott."

Lee didn't say anything. Hell, he knew what it looked like, what it felt like to miss what was right in front of you. To let your feelings get in the way of your rationality, but god...

Nothing he'd been through could compare to finding out that an old friend killed six- no, eight kids. Kids. Jesus.

The phrase stuck in his mind, though, bounced around in the respectful silence that the words fell into.

Old friend. He'd used the same phrase.

"The private eye?" he asked hesitantly, disbelievingly. That the same man could work with the cops investigating the case and turn around to be the killer... Shit.

Blake answered shortly, "Yeah."

He should have known, he should have fucking known, but he never would have. If he'd had a thousand years he never would've gotten there, any more than a blind man could read you a sign on the wall. Scott? If anybody had brought him up as a possible suspect, Blake would have laughed in their face.

His hand grips the counter until the edge digs into his palm.

"He said he was looking for the killer. He was lying through his fucking teeth the whole time, right to my god damn face. He acted like a good guy, the kind of guy you can trust, when he was a murderer all along."

His voice is thick with an anger that's only gotten sharper and purer with time.

Blake turns his glare to Lee.

"What kind of a sick son of a bitch can do that, huh?"

It was low and nasty, and right now that was perfect.

When Carter turned his glare to him, Lee immediately raised his hands in a defensive gesture.

"'Sick' doesn't even begin to cover it," he agreed. He looked away, up at the ceiling in what he hoped seemed non-threatening enough that he didn't get decked off his stool.

"The way I see it, you're not any less a person or a cop just because you made a human mistake. This FBI guy... He got there first because he had no horse in the race. No one's going to fault you for not suspecting an old friend. I mean, it's not like you got rid of evidence that you knew pointed to him."

You know, like fingerprints at a crime scene or something like that.

Lee didn't rise to the bait. Too fucking bad. Blake could have used an excuse to hurt somebody. Would've felt good.

What Lee said next dried up all the anger that covered his mistakes. He could feel his face gray out and turn to a texture like old driftwood.

He looked down at the floor and didn't say anything.

What kind of voice of reason would he be if he rose to that bait? Besides, it would be basically equating what he did with methodic and premeditated child murder, and that just wasn't right.

Lee noticed the shift in Carter's expression, but he was just impaired enough that he didn't attribute it to guilt.

"Hey... You okay, man?"

He'd said enough, hadn't he? He didn't have to tell the rest. Fuck, wasn't that plenty? He could have one secret. What good would it do anybody else to know?

Say it, you son of a bitch.

He thought of words, and before he knew it his head was in his hands. All he could see was the top of the bar with its pattern of rings of condensation. His head swam, and it was out of his mouth, his voice sounding foreign to himself and far away.

"I let him go."

Lee sucks in a breath through his teeth, but has the good sense to stay silent for a long moment. There's nothing judgmental about it. You don't live through the end of the world and come out without an appreciation for humanity's flaws.

And besides, it's clear from the tone of Carter's voice and his defeated posture that he's already been beating himself up about it.

"Before you knew it was him?" Because just from what he knows about Carter, that has to be it.

Blake's head jerked up and his temper struck out. "Of course before I fucking knew it was him, idiot!"

It couldn't last long. There was nothing for anger to hold onto, and it was only a second before he was left burned out.

His voice was hollow as his eyes dropped.

"It was some old watchmaker guy. Nothing to do with the case. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time. We had our hands full with the serial killer, we didn't have the manpower to waste prosecuting somebody for bad luck."

He didn't know whether he was trying to explain himself or mocking his own fucking stupid excuses.

His eyes closed, lines deepening around them.

"I let him walk, for old times' sake."

If Lee was affected by the outburst of anger, he did a damn good job not showing it. He simply listened without eye contact, sipping some of the water off the melted ice in his glass. The thought of more alcohol made his throat burn at this point.

"Man, you couldn't have known what he turned out to be," he half-muttered against the glass. "You know now you should've stopped him, but then? No one could blame you for just doing an old friend a favor."

Blake waited for what he knew was coming. How could you be so fucking stupid? to start with, maybe a What are you, blind, or just the shittiest cop on the planet? or something like that. Nobody who hadn't done the job realized that watching each others' backs was how you survived. Even a few people who were cops didn't get it. He was ready to snarl and fight back.

He wasn't ready for understanding.

"Jesus." His shoulders crumpled inwards. "You could have given me fingerprints, photos, and a hundred fucking years. I never would have said it was him. I knew him."

Maybe before the apocalypse, Lee would've gone off on him. Maybe he would've called him a dumbass for a pretty human mistake. Maybe Professor Everett would have held Blake to a higher standard just because of his badge.

But after everything that Lee's been through...a cop is no more or less than any other human on the planet. He's seen human goodness come back to bite people, he's seen living breathing human beings fuck each other over just to survive. He's seen people make innocent mistakes that cost multiple lives. He's not going to nail Blake to the wall over something he's already seen before.

He's too tired for that.

"Yeah. I get that. Sometimes it can be damn hard to see something you just don't wanna see." He heaved a sigh. "There was a guy I knew, a good guy. ...He caved a man's head in with a salt lick to keep him from turning into a walker, but when it was his own little boy that was bit..." A knot came to Lee's throat, and he bit out a choked "Shit." as he rubbed his eyes.

Blake was staring at the bar for a long time, seeing every single one of his stupid mistakes. For a while there wasn't any sign he'd heard Lee.

Finally, his shoulders rose and fell. "Salt lick. That's a new one."

Lee didn't sound like somebody making up crazy stories to make his life sound more important. He sounded as beat and tired as Blake felt.

"Talking like that, I could believe you seen the end of the world." He knew he shouldn't ask, but it was already out. "What happened to the kid?"

Now that he'd opened the gate, his thoughts couldn't stay on a path for long without veering back to Scott.

"Back home, I swore I'd take that to my grave. Said a lot of things I've gone back on. If somebody'd accused him in front of me, I would've fucking defended him. I would. I'd've beat the shit out of any asshole who suggested it."

The look he gave Lee was stark and nakedly lost. "Cops don't do that, Lee."

The silence was fine by Lee, it gave him a chance to compose himself. Now he was thinking about all the people he'd seen die, and shit, te total added up pretty steep. He responded with little more than a shrug to the remark about the salt lick, but at what Carter said next, Lee scoffed.

"You mean you didn't believe me before?" he asked wryly, not really expecting an answer. He traced his finger along the wood grain, not looking at his drinking partner. "We put it off as long as we could. Prayed for a miracle. Wasn't no one praying harder than Ken, either. But in the end there's only one way to save someone from turning after they got a bite." He looked up at the ceiling.

"His mom shot herself rather than live without her son." He lifted his glass to his lips and wet his tongue on the melting ice. "Can't really say I blame her, either. But losing his wife and his kid? Kenny wasn't the same after that."

Lee listened when Carter started talking, but didn't look at him except out of the corner of his eye. Even with his brief stint in the southern criminal justice system, he knew a lot of cops who'd beat the shit out of someone for worse reasons than that.

Instead, he said: "Cops are human too, man."

"You think I don't know that? Drugs, whores, that piddly vice shit, playing a little fast and loose with the rules, you see that all the time. Nobody cares. But this..."

Carter lowered his head. All he could say was, "Fuck."

He spun his glass around on the bar, watching it wobble. He'd seen uglier things happen, but not by a whole lot.

"Eight kids," he said down to the bar. "More than one of the parents ate a bullet, after."

His hand clutched around the glass.

"That's on his head, too."

A drop of condensation rolled down and over his hand. His shoulders were held tight. There was a long silence. The murmur of everybody else in the bar felt like a radio transmission from Mars.

Abruptly, Blake said, "I've been doing this for a long time. You know what the thing about dead kids is?"

His thumb moved back and forth over the glass.

"You get used to it. Same as anything."

“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”

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