Message: XXVI

"Dana, I'm telling you, there's something really wrong with her." Chyler leaned on the counter to take some chips from the bowl.

"What the hell are you talking about? That Aria of yours, again?" her friend looked at her with a bit sad eyes, but Toussaint decided to ignore that. If they started talking about the night the other day, she would not be able to think about anything else. And she really didn't want to think about the fact she might have slept with her best friend. "What did she do now?"

"We were on the crime scene. Imagine a carnage around, a lot of blood, massacred corpse, and she, as if nothing happened, started to joke around about that. And let me tell you, none of those were funny in those circumstances."

"I don't think the victim paid any mind." Dana shrugged, sipping from her glass.

"Oh, et tu, Brute, contra me?" Chyler sighed. "She's deprived of any sort of empathy, Dee. She just comes closer, looks, nothing happens to her, not a single swallow, not a single emotion in her eyes. She's a psychopath."

"Or you want to see her as such." Dana shrugged, observing her friend carefully. "Why bother, though? Is she not carrying out her duties because of those behaviors?"

"Oh, she is. And, again, even more joyfully than anyone ever could, she joined the autopsy. Adaman is delighted with her."

"That's the pathologist, right?" her friend asked, munching the snack, and Chyler nodded, confirming her words. "Isn't that the oblivious one?"

"What do you mean?" the detective raised her eyebrow and Dana cleared her throat.

"That even if Aria was fucked up and snarky to her, she wouldn't notice. People tend to ignore the sarcasm if they can't pinpoint it, Chy."

"Ignorance's a bliss in that moment." She sighed, shaking her head disbelievingly and zeroing her glass. "But, then again, something's not right there. I mean, with Callaghan."

"And why now? Because we already have the snark that probably is just her complexes speaking through her. We have her edginess which is just the reason of her tough past or something, at least I guess so. And you have the lack of empathy that you mark all the time. Isn't that something that actually should be there when you're dealing with corpses?"

"Ehm, maybe, if it wasn't for the fact that it's developed to the point of rudeness. You should have at least some basic respect for the deceased, and she has not even that." Chyler grunted, rubbing her temples. "You need to have empathy to, at least, be able to feel respectful towards what happened and whom it happened to. And she doesn't."

"Yet she still does her job."

"Whose side are you on, Dana?" Toussaint raised her eyes at her friend and when she saw a spark in Dee's, she knew that she wouldn't be able to dodge that topic any longer.

"At the moment? I think hers." She admitted. "Since you're speaking about having empathy, not having any yourself now."

"Dee..."

"No, Chyler. You just... argh, seemed more than happy to receive me in your sheets, and then you just seem like pretending nothing happened was better than talking about it." She seemed angry and bitter, with her eyes squinted and her lower lip bitten.

Toussaint sighed.

"I was drunk, Dee." She stated, looking at her with caution. "Did it... did it mean anything to you?"

"No." the answer was too fast and too roughly said to be true, but Chyler decided to believe it at the moment. She couldn't do anything else, if she didn't want to have more problems than she had already had. "Did it for you?"

Toussaint didn't answer, but a slight shake of her head was one enough for her friend. Dana nodded.

"Then that's that." She shrugged, her voice cracking at first, but then regaining its strength. "One night stands weren't your strong suits, I guess."

"No, not really."

"And now all you're talking about is Aria. What the hell is between you two?" she squinted her eyes, pushing away the thought that maybe if she was as abrasive as Callaghan, Chyler would think about her as often.

"A vicious cycle of snark and hatred." She shrugged. "What else did you expect?"

"Attraction." Dana gave her friend a side glance and then saw Chyler almost spitting the wine on the counter.

"To her death, maybe."

"You say that, but I haven't seen you going to your boss and asking him to give you another partner and get rid of her."

"She's effective. Also, Rogers knows Courrier. They're friends. He would just kick me out of his office right away."

"But you didn't try." Dana fixed her eyes at Chyler and her friend just averted her gaze. "Why?"

The answer didn't come.