Chapter Text
Ramus took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the SLD office. It had been two days since the incident. Fire-Fly – real name Renee Fournier – had spent six hours in surgery to repair the damage from the multiple energy blasts she had received in the fire fight. And that didn’t even include the traumatic amputation of her right arm at the shoulder. At the moment she was in protective custody at the hospital until she recovered enough to be sent to prison. Ramus frowned: for all of that, Fire-Fly had gotten off lucky. Mansart had received second-degree burns on his arm. The civilian she had burned had suffered worse – he had spent even longer in surgery and was looking at a much longer recovery period, including reconstructive plastic surgery to repair the damage to his burnt face.
Élodie looked up at him in surprise as he entered the room. “Lieutenant! You’re back! How are you?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t exactly sit at home forever,” he told her.
She gave him a quick hug and nodded sympathetically. “It wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could.”
He frowned. “Doesn’t exactly feel that way.”
She sighed. “If you ever need to talk…”
“You’ll be the first one I call,” he promised.
“The Prefect left instructions for you to report to him the moment you return to duty,” she informed him, consulting her computer quickly. “His schedule is free at the moment; I’ll send him a message to expect you.”
Ramus nodded in resignation. “I figured he would. Can you let Vernant know that I’ll be down later so he can replace the grappling hook winch?”
“Not a problem,” she assured him, picking up the phone.
With a sigh, Ramus backed out of the office, retraced his steps through the Records Office, past the woman at the counter, and strode across the City Hall atrium toward the large marble staircase. He glanced up in surprise on seeing Gouger in front of him. “Sergeant,” he greeted her with a formal nod.
Gouger cocked her head and stared at him. “Everything okay, sir?”
He pursed his lips. “Everyone asks me that…” he muttered under his breath. Louder he told her, “It’s fine.”
She nodded in acceptance. “Join me for a drink after shift today?”
He hummed. “Why not?” he agreed, shrugging. He turned away from her, toward the stairs. “I’ll see you then.”
She put a hand on his shoulder as he passed, but withdrew it when he paused. “What the paper said…” she began hesitantly. “They’re wrong.”
He made a face. “At least we know that…” Ramus felt her eyes following him as he ascended the stairs, passing two officers as he went – members of Mayor Bourgeois’ security detail. That was technically his assignment right now: officially the officers of the SLD were part of the Mayor’s security. But instead of following the Bourgeois family around all day (he did not envy whoever was stuck with Mme Bourgeois), he and his team spent their days patrolling the city for super-criminal threats like the Fire-Fly. And sometimes those super-criminals fought back.
Prefect Raincomprix’s office was at the far end of the hallway, set back in an alcove. As he opened the reception room’s door, Jeanne, the Prefect’s secretary, waved him past her and into the office beyond. Steeling himself, Ramus stepped inside and carefully closed the door. He stood ramrod straight and waited to be acknowledged.
Prefect Raincomprix’s desk faced the front door with two wooden chairs for visitors and a small number of personal effects sitting alongside his computer. To one side of the computer was a picture frame showing four people – Raincomprix’s family, along with a boy Ramus didn’t recognize. On the far side of the desk, Raincomprix had given pride of place to a lighter with a dent in it that a few of the officers had given him when he was first promoted to Lieutenant; it had saved his life a couple months later when he’d been shot by a suspect. Raincomprix looked up the moment Ramus entered and nodded for him to sit. “Come in, Luc!” he greeted him, shaking his hand.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Ramus perched on the edge of his chair.
Raincomprix nodded. “A follow-up to the incident the other night.” He grimaced. “I’m sure this is exactly what you want to be doing right now, but…” He shrugged. “Thanks for coming promptly.”
“Of course, sir.”
Raincomprix gave him a severe look. “After fifteen years, you don’t have to stand on ceremony when we’re alone in my office, Luc.”
Ramus let out a breath. “Okay. So… what can I do for you, boss?”
“It’s more like what I can do for you.” Raincomprix leaned forward and laid his hands on the desk. “After any incident like this – especially one where you shot a suspect – you need to take at least some time to process everything that happened. So… how are you feeling about it?”
Ramus eyed him suspiciously. “This about what that reporter said?”
Raincomprix raised an eyebrow. “I would’ve thought you knew me better than that,” he chastised him. “No, this is not about that article – I’ll handle the Mayor on that. This is about you.”
Ramus shrugged. “I mean, it was pretty hairy there for a couple minutes, but we all lived. I’m fine now.”
“Spoken like a true police man,” Raincomprix observed wryly. “Now pretend you’re not a macho-man Robocop trained to lock your feelings away and answer the question again – honestly.”
“I’m fine.”
Raincomprix frowned. “I know you don’t like doing this kind of thing – hell, I don’t particularly enjoy it either. But it’s important for you to face your feelings. I can’t put you back in the field if I don’t know 100% that you have your head together. The last thing I need is an officer going off the rails – or hesitating and getting someone killed.” Ramus’ stomach clenched. “Now you are going to talk to someone. And if you insist on giving me the runaround, I will order you to talk to a therapist before you can return to duty.”
Ramus scoffed. “A therapist? What therapist can I actually talk to about something like this? The perps we deal with aren’t exactly fit for public consumption, even if that reporter got a picture of us ‘Fire-Fly-Fishing’ to go with that stupid article on that stupid blog. Our department technically doesn’t exist. Hell, most of the Mayor’s staff doesn’t even know about us! And I’m supposed to talk to some therapist about the fact that I blew the arm off of a woman who was flying around with a flamethrower?”
Raincomprix’s lip curled up in amusement and his eyes drifted to the picture on his desk. “Don’t worry,” he assured him. “If you need to talk to a therapist, I already have one our people can talk to.”
“Wouldn’t he be a security risk?”
“Actually, her ‘security clearance’ is higher than either of ours, so no!” Raincomprix smiled fondly. “And you wouldn’t be able to hide anything you’re feeling from her, either.” He fixed his eyes on Ramus. “You are going to talk to someone about this before you go back out in the field. Now you can answer the question for me, or you can answer it for her.”
Ramus narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I guess you thought of everything,” he finally observed. He sighed. “It sucks,” he admitted, staring at the lighter on Raincomprix’s desk. “Not shooting Fournier – she had it coming. But we hesitated. We could have stopped her sooner, before she could hurt anyone else, but we didn’t. We didn’t act fast enough, and people got hurt. And it’s bad enough that one of my team was injured in the line of duty; we all know this is a dangerous job. But my hesitation allowed a civilian to get hurt, also.”
Raincomprix nodded solemnly. “It’s not an easy thing to live with,” he agreed. “We try like hell, but sometimes they act faster than we can. Walk me through the decisions.”
Ramus closed his eyes, drifting back to the moment his phone rang. “I thought this was our best chance to catch her,” he finally began. “All the evidence pointed to the Fire-Fly, and I thought we could bring her in with a minimum of trouble, as long as she didn’t realize we were looking for her. That’s why I wanted my team there in plainclothes and told Girardot to hold back.”
“Makes sense so far…”
His hand drifted down to his prosthetic. “I almost hit the button when I arrive,” he admitted, “but I hesitated. Seeing Ryoku or Ladybug – or any of the heroes, for that matter – could have spooked her. And if that happened things could have gotten worse. I figured that we could handle it ourselves.”
“This didn’t quite meet our threshold for calling in reinforcements yet,” agreed Raincomprix, nodding pensively.
Ramus frowned. “Do you think I should have done it anyways, looking at the results?”
Raincomprix let out a breath. “It would be far too easy to make a snap judgment after the fact and say you were wrong – hell, I could have done the same thing at least twice last summer!” He grimaced, and Ramus’ hand drifted up to the spot where his prosthetic merged with flesh. “But no, I don’t think you were in the wrong, based on the information you had at hand – I’m not certainly going to take disciplinary action. Based on your reports, we would have had an entirely different outcome if you’d only had a couple of better breaks. But I do think we need to reconsider our criteria for calling in the Heroes of Paris, particularly when civilians are at risk.”
Ramus nodded, the knot in his throat easing fractionally.
“What have you been doing to cope?”
He shrugged. “No more beer than usual, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“That’s good, but it’s not the only thing I’m asking about.”
“Well, I’m going to see Theo after we’re finished here,” Ramus told him. “The winch burned out trying to reel in Fournier and it needs to be replaced. I’ll probably visit the shooting range while I’m down there and melt through a few dozen targets.”
Raincomprix hummed. “It does sound like you have a handle on this,” he acknowledged. “With how busy I’ve been lately, it’s been a while since I took the time for target practice; perhaps I ought to join you – after I meet with the Mayor, that is… For now I’m going to clear you for light duty until Christmas; normal duty starting after the first of the year. But if you think that seeing the counselor would help, I will arrange it.”
Ramus shook his head. “No, I think I’m okay.”
“Well, from the reports, your team is handling itself admirably in the field,” Raincomprix noted approvingly. “But what has been your observation? Are there any other resources you might need in the field?”
Ramus frowned, stroking his chin in thought. “We have been handling our cases just fine so far,” he admitted, “but I think this particular case highlighted one thing we are lacking: specialists.”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t really have the expertise to investigate arson,” he explained. “Wilson has a little experience from the military, as does Theo, but not on the same level as the fire investigator we were working with. We could use some specialists to help with specific aspects of the investigations.”
“You want to recruit this fire investigator? Binoche?”
Ramus nodded. “If not her, then someone,” he confirmed. “And even if we don’t recruit them away from the Fire Inspectorate to join our department officially, it would be good to vet some of these specialists who are part of other groups – fire inspector, crime lab, medical examiner, and so on – and be able to bring them in when we need them. That was if we have another arsonist on our hands, we can work with ‘our’ fire investigator that we trust, rather than having to either muddle through it on our own or work with someone we don’t know and trust.”
Raincomprix hummed pensively. “I will take that under advisement,” he finally agreed, nodding. “It certainly has merit.”
“Thanks.”
Raincomprix glanced down at his watch and stood up. “You know, I actually have an hour before I meet with the Mayor. Shall we get in some target practice in the meantime?”
“Of course.”