Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Fandom: The Departed
Characters: Billy & French
Prompt: Reliable
For: revelininsanity
A/N: Goes AU after Billy runs out of Sullivan's office


REWRITING HISTORY

The lawyer leaves that morning after dropping off a box from Costello and an envelope from French. Funny that these two men, who’d never seem to fully trust him in life had both given him something after they’d gone.

He opens the envelope from French. A check, far greater than any bonus that he would have received from the Massachusetts State Police, is enclosed. There’s no note, only writing on the memo line - For reliability and faithful service. That’s unexpected. In all those years in Costello’s gang working alongside French, he had thought the older man didn’t trust him. Now he sees that maybe, he was the only one French trusted.

The box from Costello is cautiously opened. He doesn’t put it past the old man not to have slipped a disembodied arm amidst the packing peanuts. But that’s not what the box holds. There are hundreds of compact disks inside, each labeled with a date. No names, but he can figure them out well enough. He hears them in his sleep.

He finds the Sullivan recording quickly enough, debates sending it directly to the cop in question. Maybe with a little bit of blackmail, he can get his place back in the system.

But does he really want that? Both Queenan and Dignam told him that he’d never be a cop. It surprises him a bit to realize that they were right.

In the end, he makes a copy and sends it anonymously to Captain Ellerby care of the Massachusetts State Police, Special Investigations Unit. He doesn’t know and doesn’t care if anything will be done, but he has closure.

Nights pass, he dreams of them all – Dignam and Queenan, Costello, Fitzy and Delahunt. He mostly dreams of French – riding in the car from one job to the next, hearing French’s subtle humor in his stories about Uncle Jackie or the digs he makes against Cousin Sean, offering you some cranberry juice.

Days are spent rewriting history. He listens to the tapes, each day begins with the conversation that happened the day after he’d first met French. He’s listened to it so often that he can practically recite it from memory.

“You meet the kid?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“He’s something of a hothead. Could have been putting on a show, if he knew what he was there for.”

“Think he’s still a cop?”

“If he is, I’ll take care of it.”

“What’s your gut tell you?”

“He can be an asset. There’s control there. No nervousness. You don’t see guys that steady after a fight.”

“All right. Give it a week, then set something up.”

He stops the cd at that point, and thinks this is where my life began.

Time passes, Dignam and Queenan fade from his dreams. French is there, every night, reliable as clockwork.

“Think you figured it out yet?” French asks.

“Yeah,” he says and smiles.

Cops and criminals – there’s really not much difference.