Rot the Brain, Poison the Heart, Break the Soul
(Notes: This chapter takes place before he goes to Canada but after dinner with his dad. An emergency case pops up and he is forced to take it before finishing his dad’s. This entire five-shot will alter the events between Captain Peralta and the season 2 finale. Trigger warnings for drinking and controversial topic discussion. When there is a video, play the music for atmosphere or clip for reference. Enjoy! ~ Fear Itself)
“Mr. Holt?” The captain met eyes with the doctor. “Peralta wants to see you first.” Raymond was quite surprised to hear this, he assumed he’d be towards the end of people that Jake wished to see. After taking a bullet for Amy, he ended up in the hospital, the metal just being short of his upper rib cage. Jacob survived but would have to be here a bit, making Holt feel slightly guilty of the massive paperwork he’ll have to finish as soon as he returns.
“Peralta?” Holt quietly opened the door, as to not frighten the half-asleep detective.
“Sup cap?”
“Are you feeling alright? Want me to get you anything?”
“I’m a bit woozy, numb and sore but other than that just generally tired. Did anything funny happen while I was out?”
“Among us, no, we’ve all been here for the past several hours on our phones or reading. Though Charles claimed to see someone trip over their shoelaces on his way back from the bathroom and Gina laughed at something called Vine? She wouldn’t let me watch one, saying it wouldn’t be my kind of humor.”
“Oh ya, those things are great. Wanna see one?”
“Sure.” Holt almost certainly had no interest in this but searched up the ‘Talk dirty to me vine’ on his unused Google account.
“I’m not sorry.” The captain’s face blanked at the sight of this.
“What have society come to?”
“The lowest point that’s what. I’m proud to call myself a liberal follower, though I do vote conservative.” Jacob replied, thankfully turning off the phone before he probably ended up burning the old man’s eyes. “Anyway, when should I be able to go back to work?”
“Maybe a week or two? For now, you should rest.”
“A week or two? I still have my dad’s case to finish!”
“You took a bullet for someone, I think he’ll be proud of you. I could get Amy or Rosa to work the case for you though.”
“No no, I’ll just talk to him about it first.”
“Your dad is here now, would you like me to bring him in?” Holt noticed hesitation in his eyes, but he agreed.
“Tell the crew they can go now, I’ll talk with Amy later but I just wanna sleep.” Covering him back up with the blanket, he replied.
“Very well, your dad will be here in a couple of minutes.”
“Cool cool cool, thanks, Cap.” Holt never knew what to say for goodbyes, so he wordlessly closed the door behind him.
“How’d it go?” Amy asked, looking up from the ground.
“Good, wanting to go back to work as usual but quite tired still. His dad’s visiting him but then he’s going to nap again. He promised he’d speak with Amy later.”
“Oh ok then. Though speaking of his dad, isn’t it a bit weird he didn’t sit with us right?”
“Well, perhaps he didn’t want to feel as if he was intruding on us?” Terry offered. But Holt, despite his associate’s logical deduction, thought it was strange himself.
“Who knows, but Jake did say that we could leave now.”
“You sure? At least me, you and his dad could stay.” Amy mentioned.
“No, we can visit a couple of times tomorrow. It’s late and we should all get some sleep.”
“It’s only 10′o clock.”
“Exactly right Gina.” The captain yawned and reluctantly, everyone began saying goodbye, filing out. The girls appeared to be leaving together, most likely to get a drink, Charles somberly left alone and Terry was busy on the phone with his wife. Holt vowed never to speak with her again since he seemed to only cause chaos for them, even with the best intentions.
“Look I’ll do better next time ok?” Holt’s eyes darted to the source of the sound, the hospital room of Jake.
“You will, what’s at stake is something you don’t want to lose.” Now curious, he couldn’t help but eavesdrop.
“Alright I’ll try again, I got one more chance before...”
“Ya, but make it quick, two weeks top or else I’m doing the deed myself.”
“Very well da- er sir.”
“Damn straight, don’t even try calling me that again.” Hearing Jake’s dad stand up, he quickly began speed-walking down the hall before he heard a voice.
“Captain Holt.” Turning around he locked eyes with the other.
“Captain Roger Peralta.” Staring down each other, the two went unblinking for several moments. What was going on inside that man’s head? They turned around and went to their separate destinations.
Paranoia began to consume Raymond Holt.
***
As expected, the girls didn’t return home. Instead, the three-headed to the local dive bar, laughing and messing around.
“So you’re saying you can drink a whole BOTTLE of Vodka in one go?” Rosa asked.
“Hell ya, I’m Gina with a G for go!”
“Bad idea dipshit, we’ve got work tomorrow.”
“Too lattttte!” She began chugging the entire glass bottle, smashing it onto the ground once finished.
“Your gunna be hungover...”
“So are you.”
“GUYS!” The two turned over to face Amy, who was scribbling down notes in a journal, the pages lightly stained with an unknown assortment of drinks.
“Do you think 911 was staged?”
“Huh?” Rosa asked, hovering over the notebook to find random notes on controversial topics.
“Or what about the moon landing? Does Area 51 actually have aliens or is the government just paranoid? I bet you all those godforsaken democrats are trying to liberalize the country so they can dominate over our rotting corpses!”
“Amy chill the fuck out.” To Rosa’s dismay, Gina was taking photos.
“What I figured out seven drink Amy after all this time, she becomes a theorist.”
“What this isn’t *burp* 7 drink Amy...” The two gave Amy a look of concern.
“How much alcohol have you had tonight?”
“10...”
“10 what...?”
“Bo *burp* OTTLES.” Gina and Rosa looked at each other before meeting eyes with Amy, who was back to writing theories.
“Dude like did you know weed saved us in World War 2...?”
“Yep time to go home, despite our better judgment, we’re supposed to be against that.”
“Well, who’s driving?”
“I’ve had five shots,” Rosa replied.
“Then it’s you, I’ve had nine.” On three, the girls picked up Amy.
“Alright Amy let me see that notebook,” Gina said, hoping to find light blackmail material inside. But she held it closer to her chest.
“No! You’re a liberal! You’ll take me to the stupid leaders and have me executed!”
“Dio Christo the worst I’ll do is use it to get some food off you.” She managed to pry it out of her hands before placing her in the back of the car as she slowly drifted off to sleep, cursing Obama’s name to the winds. Once they began driving, Gina mindlessly paged through the book, laughing at her strange rambling.
“Anything interesting in there?”
“Ya, get this! 10 drink Amy thinks that your webcam will listen for keywords and send you advertisements based off of your conversations.”
“Woah that’s freaky, and not even far from unrealistic too.”
“Oh, and FaceBook will apparently mark the faces of people who don’t even have an account, making them a shadow profile and learn as much as they can about them.” It went silent as she turned the page when she suddenly gasped.
“What did you find?”
“Facebook knows my sexuality? I DON’T EVEN KNOW THAT!”
“Chill out you don’t have FaceBook so they might not know.”
“Shadow profiles?”
“Right... We should try to get Amy off FaceBook.” Towards the end of her messy writing, she found something much stranger.
I think Jake was actively looking for someone to protect.
Confused, Gina closed the book an stared out the window into the endless black night. 10 drink Amy was just drunk, right?
