14 ad valoreum

Being in Internal Affairs is like a hell scape and a purgatory rolled into one, and office work is the least of your fucking problems, I couldn't trust myself or my instincts, I didn't want to run the risk of being betrayed again and yet, when I was assigned to Det. Gary Wald, I never imagined that one day, he would use our friendship against me and destroy the life of someone in such an unforgivable manner. It's funny how people can step into our lives and easily leave it in another breath. And the fear of being alone, yes that was a fear that still haunted me like a specter in the deep dark night, I investigated against dirty cops and I found so much corruption, it shocked and disgusted me, it made me so fucking sick that cops could take bribes to look the other way for whatever reason, but to me, there was never a good reason to ever take bribes or ignore the fact that we were supposed to be the guardians of the law, the enforcers of the law and yet so many of these men and women were betraying their oath to themselves and to the city. I never could have imagined how widespread it was and how tolerated it was even amongst the higher ranks. 

Another thorny issue was that of police brutality, there was clearly no doubt about it that it was a widespread epidemic and it needed to be addressed immediately and urgently, and at this point, two names constantly popped up on my list all the time: Olivia Margaret Benson and Elliot Stabler. These two names were problematic and one of them were people I had slept with...This made my job harder and harder than ever, to constantly investigate them and for them to push back against me was frustrating as hell, it was easier to investigate aliens in space than these two bastards. The first time I met them, I was not amused and was frustrated to hell and back trying to investigate a cocaine smuggling ring and it was bringing me back to my days in Narcotics, my experience here told me that smugglers tend to refuse to speak unless you threaten them with prison time and offer them a deal in exchange for information and it led me to realize that Derek Pffefer was not the guy, and what I did to the SVU was absolutely unforgivable but in order to lure in the smugglers, I needed the guy to be released so that they would think that we had lost track of them, because if the smugglers realized that we were onto them, they would start erasing evidence and that would destroy the case before I could even get near the guy. But soon Derek ended up murdered anyway and Captain Cragen grabbed the case from me and threatened to strangle me, I very rarely felt fear, but in his presence, my veins turned to ice as he glared at me and grabbed me by my collar, my heart pounded with absolute terror as I was trying to not have a fucking panic attack. My hands were about to go numb as I told him that he needed anger management and he shot back "And you need to kiss my ass."

I inwardly rolled my eyes as I took a deep breath and the numbness in my hands went away, we soon found the head of the drug smuggling ring finally after some arguments and heated words thrown each other's ways and I ordered Stabler onto Modified Assigned Duty AKA the Rubber Gun Squad, every cop hated MAD, but it was procedure after a shooting to put them on Modified Assigned duty, unofficially so that they could decompress after what they had seen, I was sincerely worried for him and put him on MAD because I knew that shooting and killing someone in real life was nothing compared to shooting and killing someone in a game. It is a event that can easily destroy you inside and out and can eat you on the inside for years. I had been there several times and it nearly made me wonder if I wasn't meant to be a cop, that maybe I wasn't cut out for being in Narcotics. At some point I wondered if life was a fool's errand, that all of this in the grand scheme was all but useless and the fact was that we could battle all we wanted to, but we couldn't stem the avalanche of cases and the stream of victims that came in constantly with stories and people who have had their lives destroyed by drugs, either directly or indirectly. It felt so frustrating, even here in Internal Affairs, there was a constant stream of complaints and I was swamped and overwhelmed by the stories and the fact was, I was drowning, I was drowning and yet I was able to breathe, I was dead inside and yet my heart was still beating, I felt like the living dead inside. Ever since I was raped when I was thirteen, I was dead inside, I felt like a walking carcass, I felt dirty and disgusted with myself and I hated myself inside. I hated everything about myself and yet there was no time for me to pity myself, but I couldn't call myself a survivor of rape. I was not a survivor because what happened to me killed me inside and murdered my innocence. I wanted the emotions to stop feeling so overwhelming so I went to Forlini's and drank, I drank to forget my rapes, I drank to forget my pain and my sorrow and the betrayals that I endured, I drank to forget that my parents were self-centered assholes and that my rapists were bitches and scumbags, I drank to purify myself and absolve myself of my past and yet the more I drank, the more I seemed to contaminate myself even more. It was a vicious cycle I seemed destined to never escape.