You Weren't Meant To Be There - Tumblr Posts

@febuwhump prompt: "You weren't meant to be there."

***

You weren’t meant to be there.

Words he did not dare to speak aloud could not be silenced in his mind. Jet was still unconscious on the hospital bed - the amount of painkillers in his system was no doubt off the chart considering the damage to his shoulder and the series of surgeries that had been required to keep him alive.

Fad, standing vigil in the recovery room now that Jet had been deemed safe enough to move to a quieter floor, glanced guiltily at his partner.

It was his fault Jet was lying there now. But on the other hand, it was only thanks to him that Jet wasn't being buried in a Ganymede cemetery. A necessary evil, like any number of things Fad had done or turned a blind eye to. Leading a double life was no picnic.

The tension in his throbbing skull and the acidic churning of his gut were commonplace ailments these days. If he didn't have an ulcer by now he would be amazed.

The pain was a sort of penance for his service to the Europa Syndicate. Voluntary service at that. Though he was far from the only cop on the take. In fact, it was easier to rattle off the names of the officers not on syndicate payroll.

One of them was lying here in front of Fad now.

The damn dedicated fool.

He had been close... so close to getting out of the precinct and on his way to meet Udai. It was supposed to be a simple meetup and delivery, just another day at the docks getting his palm greased while weapons and drugs arrived to flood the city streets. The usual.

Instead Jet had shown up right before Fad could peel out of the parking lot. The knock on the tinted window had nearly given him a heart attack and then when the full implication of Jet's presence truly registered... that was when his stomach had begun to tie itself in knots.

The Black Dog was not about to let go of this "lead" that Fad was about to investigate. How easy it would have been to report nothing amiss! But no, Jet was still struggling with the absence of Alisa from his life and couldn't face sitting alone at home for hours. Couldn't miss work. Justice was his mistress and he had to heed her even at the cost of his own relationship.

It had been Jet's commitment to the force that had driven a wedge between himself and Alisa. That was Fad's interpretation of the break up at least. He'd erred when he assumed that Jet would diligently take time off to get used to the emptiness of the apartment. Jet Black wasn't the type to take so much as a sick day.

He was gonna get himself killed by being so damn stubborn and so damn honorable. Udai would have shot him flat out if Fad hadn't scrambled to take control of the situation. Firing on another officer... hell, firing on Jet, the partner who had had his back for years, who had kept Far alive on more than one bloody occasion... it had broken something inside of him.

Previously he had always been able to explain away his reasoning for why he did what he did. There were ways to justify criminal behavior to yourself. This, however, had been an assault that no one was paying him for. This had crossed a line in his mind that Fad hadn't even realized he'd drawn.

He had nearly offed his own partner.

Perhaps it would have been better to let Udai handle everything. Move one of the virtuous pieces right off the game board entirely. No more worries about Jet cottoning on to what was happening right under his righteous nose. No more sweat-soaked nightmares of Jet discovering his duplicity and ruining the good thing he had going.

But he refused to let his partner get gunned down on a darkened dock in the wee hours of the morning. He couldn't let Jet die. He owed his partner too much to stand by and let someone else pull the trigger and take his life.

And Fad couldn't take a fatal shot. Wouldn't take a fatal shot.

So he did the next best (next worst) thing... he crippled his comrade.

It would take months if not years for Jet to recover. All the red tape of getting a prosthetic limb approved of and installed and then the physical therapy to learn how to operate such a thing...

He'd effectively ensured that Jet would stay out of trouble for a while at least.

Yeah, that was the answer. That was how he could turn this around to make it acceptable. He'd done the only thing he could do to not only save his partner's life today but to keep him safe for the foreseeable future as well.

The headache began to fade just a touch. There had been so much stress built up over this whole mess... but he could clear his conscience to a tolerable degree and he knew there would be no fallout from the incident from the ISSP or from Europa.

Fad was in the clear. Jet would be on the mend.

These were the things he clung to as he moved towards the window to open it enough to blow smoke outside and avoid the wrath of the nurses nearby.