Assault With a Deadly Weapon || N.H / 1D

29.

Song recommendation: Georgia by Vance Joy
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"Niall, are you there?"

'Always.'

"Am I a bad person?"

The water in the bath tub sat stagnant around me, cooling down to an uncomfortable lukewarm temperature. I'd been sitting there for two hours at least, but honestly I wasn't watching the time. It could've been four hours for all I knew.

'Of course not.' He acted like what I was asking was nonsense.

"Don't do this to me." I pleaded. "You've seen what I've been doing these past two weeks."

'You've been doing your job.'

"I've been killing innocent people!" I exclaimed.

'Ophelia you know they weren't innocent.' Niall told me. 'They're just as much of criminals as the people back at the precinct.'

"But I'm working for the criminals! They're not trying to keep the city safe, they're trying to keep their business running. It's crime control within a criminal operation!" I showed him the opposing side. "It's just made me think too much. I don't even know if I'm the good guy anymore. I don't know if I was ever the good guy."

'Now you're grasping at straws.' He sounded fed up.

"Just listen to me." The emotions were welling up inside me to an incontrollable extent. "When I first came to the precinct all I wanted was power. I wanted to be sergeant, I wanted the praise and the glory, and I was so cruel to so many people because of it. I was power hungry. I lied to you, and I lead you on, and I was so goddamn mean. Who does that? And now, when I outsmart Julian, or when I prove a suspect guilty, I feel a little too happy about it, and I don't think that's normal. I am a power hungry monster, and now I'm self aware and I'm realizing that I've lived my whole life like this. I put power above people Niall."

'Carter...'

"And you just used my last name which means you see it too. You know exactly what I'm talking about." I sat up in the bathtub, letting the cold water roll off of my shoulders. I hugged my knees close into me.

'The thing about having such copious amounts of knowledge means that you're always in your head. There's so much shit in there that it's like a maze trying to figure out who you really are. You've been involved with so many crimes that you're starting to see yourself in the criminals. Do you know why that's happening?'

"It's because I'm evil!" I shouted.

'It's because you're human.' He countered softly.

"It barely feels like it anymore." I shook my head. My hair was dripping down my back, and it was cold, but I didn't care. I couldn't move.

'You're seeing past the system. It's what so many detectives can't do. You're not a bad person. You're sacrificing your own integrity for the good of a much larger case. I just need you to remember that every person you've proven guilty while working for Julian in the past two weeks, would've gone to jail anyway. You're speeding up the inevitable. You're not working for the criminals, Arabella is.'

"Niall..."

'Plus, do you really think a smart guy like me would stay with a criminal?'

"Maybe you would. I don't know." I shrugged loosely.

'I wouldn't.' He assured me. 'I have high standards. I know a lot of shit about a lot of shit. I study the universe for fuck's sake! It's one of the most unexplainably incredible, hauntingly beautiful ideas in existence. Nobody can quite explain it fully. We know bits and pieces, but it's impossible to ever completely understand the reasoning behind it. I thought that no other entity could spark as much wonder and adoration within me. As it turns out, you can, and you're just a little firefly right? Good or evil, a firefly will glow, and you're glowing with a light as pure as the stars.'