Welcome to Gaia! ::

"I'm sorry I pushed you." She honestly felt remorse for putting him on the spot like that. "Take what time you need."

Erica hesitated. A part of her felt like it would be wrong to stay, like she had just invited an elephant into his house and now it was difficult to breathe. She didn't know what words of comfort she could offer him because, in all honesty, she was as uncertain as he was.

Say he did pass and he was permitted to come back to work, everyone in that precinct had failed him. He would be well within his right to tell them to piss off or go ******** themselves and leave if he really wanted to. It would be a career ending move but she wouldn't blame him.

"What you did, you saved that person's life." Erica shifted the bag on her shoulder. " It's up to you to decide if all of this," she gestured around the room, at the empty bottles of beer in the recycle bin, "is worth it…" It wasn't something that she could help him decide, her voice in the matter wasn't even worth two cents. But there may be a day when he is asked to do it again.

"I'll be waiting for you when you come back." Whether it was to take a seat in a desk near hers or to put his badge on their chief's desk and resign, she would support his decision, whatever it may be.

"It's not about owing each other anything, I brought the food because I felt like I needed an excuse, or a bribe, to see you two and make sure you're both ok." Erica's expression softened. "If you want me to stay, I'll stick around for a bit longer."

She set her bag back down before walking over to the fridge to grab a cold soda. "Why don't you find something on Amazon Prime or Netflix for us to watch?" At least that would fill the void of awkward silence of not knowing what to talk about.

Erica took a seat on the couch beside him, "Unless there's something else you want to discuss."

Erica laughed, “Speaking of Fluff… you should look up Gabriel Iglesias, or Fluffy, on Netflix. He’s a pretty wholesome comedian, I think he can make you laugh.”

“As for the cases, I’d like you to look over what I have first, see if you see something I don’t. The Captain would probably be pissed if he knew I was still looking into the disappearances since the call-ins were either canceled or the missing persons have all been found. It’s not my job to know why they vanished or what happened, all I need to know is that they’re back..” Her voice deepened in order to mimic his grouchy exasperated tone.

“The other two, however, are still active and open cases,” even if she didn’t feel inclined to help out Lil Ricky, he would undoubtedly owe her one if she could help retrieve his belongings, less the drugs of course.”

Erica shrugged,” I haven’t heard anything about possible promotions.” She paused for a moment as she opened the Netflix search option and typed in the comedian’s name. When she found the video she hit start but turned the volume down so they could still hear each other.

“With you on mandatory leave and Franklin and Weis out sick, we are a bit short staffed. Going into the holidays there are more officers out on patrol, especially with Halloween and the drinking parties around the university campuses.” Without a doubt, even with what happened recently, Jeremy would be promoted before she would; that is, assuming he stayed with them.

He had tenure, and easily doubled her years at the Destiny precinct. Although it would be nice to some day make Lieutenant, Erica had been considering a career shift from Officer to Detective or Investigator and this was proving to be a good opportunity to get her feet wet. With that in mind, unless they were promoted together, she would probably turn down the offer.

“It’s a distinct possibility…” Erica chewed on her lower lip in contemplation. It was a thought she had considered, albeit briefly, but went along with it anyway. In the three years she had been at the precinct she had never really done anything to make herself stand out; listened to the chain of command and regarded everyone with similar respect. Anything to reduce the risk of becoming a target or give the Captain a reason to look over her shoulder.

“Perhaps I should take those with me when I leave. If I am being set up for something, I don’t want to drag you through the mud with me.” he was probably the only one, outside of Drew, that wouldn’t think her theories were crazy. But what happened to Lil’ Ricky happened to another civilian at the Star Festival right before the person who assaulted them vanished through a mirror.

“My guess is that they probably are, at least some of them anyway.” The ones that weren’t were probably just civilians like they were who got entangled in the mess unintentionally. One of those, now that you know either join us or we kill you sort of things.

“It makes me wonder how many of them are out there, the ones that can do magic like Myles,” Either they were great at evading the police, there was an amazing cover up going on, or there weren’t really that many of them out there.

“If I can ask, in the ten years you’ve been at the precinct, how many have you encountered?” Erica had gone three years without really running into any and then in the last two months there have been three, four if you count Drew but she didn’t know what he looked like in his other uniform.

“I went three years almost completely oblivious to this magic crap. But in this last four months I’ve ran into not one, but three with a fourth being Drew who I haven’t actually seen him in his other outfit yet.” To be honest, she wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to.

Might be wise to at least be aware of what he looked like in case a day ever came where she took aim at him by mistake. However, on the other hand, wouldn’t that break the code of theirs. He had been so adamant that Myles should be cautious with his alternate identity that it seemed like this magic thing was taboo or something.

Perhaps when she saw him next, Erica would bring it up and get his opinion on it.

“One had one of these ghost like monstrosities floating by him. He fled the scene, left someone unconscious on the ground behind the dumpster. I thought I had him but then he jumped through a mirror. Not though like shatter it but like into it, it rippled like water and he was gone.” She blinked and shook her head, reimagining the moment all over again. “I honest to God thought I lost my mind.”