The detective walked into the bar. It was the start of a bad joke, and that was about how he felt these days. Like a bad joke.

The woman had gotten her kid back. After that stunt on the roof he hadn't thought any family court in the world would give her custody of a minor child. He'd talked her off that roof, he'd seen the look in her eyes when she'd picked up her kid from their squad room, and even if he knew they were doing the right thing that didn't mean DCS would be able to see it. Suicides who were living on the margins of society at best didn't get children.

"Ah, I'm getting cynical." He slung himself onto the stool and leaned against the bar. "Whiskey. Straight up."

The bartender gave him a look like he didn't think the detective knew what he was doing. John spared half a roll of the eyes and rolled his glass between his palms.

It wasn't that he didn't drink. Or that he drank too much, as with almost everything he did, John was meticulous and careful. Never to the point where anyone could call him compulsive, but he knew what his weaknesses were.

Maybe working in Special Victims was getting to him. Sitting around doing nothing would have been worse, but days like this he started to think it couldn't have been that much worse.

They'd saved Amanda. They'd saved Julie. Two down. Who knew how many hundreds to go.

He started to drink and put it down again as yet another image of what could have happened surged into his head. Brains on the sidewalk. Blood on his shoes. Little almost-white footprints where he picked up his feet and squelched them back down again.

She'd put her own father away. That took courage. Why was he being such a goddamn coward about doing a good day's work? People who have tried to commit suicide once are more likely to try again. She'd tried three times.

But she was out of that situation now, he reminded himself. Her father was behind bars. Her brother was in therapy. She had a decent job, her brother had a decent job, between that and government assistance they could get back on their feet.

"Come on, John. They're hanging by a thread, and you know it."

The mother was still out there, too. What a family. No mother should be jealous of her daughter, not like that. And to take it out on her. She'd had to hold her family together.

Plate glass window. Blood on the sidewalk. It had been gone by the time he'd got home but he knew what the stain on the steps meant. Shards of glass.

Some detective he was. His job was over. Couldn't leave it alone.

"Can't save ‘em all, John." But everyone at SVU had their little stable of people they kept in touch with, didn't they? Stabler had his priest buddy. Even Fin had his drug addict.

The hell with it. The job didn't stop when he left the squad room and he had a phone number burning a hole in his pocket.

He left a ten spot on the whiskey, amused at how much better he felt, and was out the door.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.