Chapter Sixty Six: So Complicated

As usual the locker room was cold, Maggie could feel the goosebumps breaking out upon her pale flesh as she stood in front of her locker in a pair of black skinny jeans and a grey tank top. Her shoulder length hair fell loose just past her chin shielding the profile of her face from the world as her fingers fumbled with the zipper of the baby blue hoodie still perched on the hanger from this morning.

The past eight hours had been both an emotional and physical roller-coaster. Her brain was still struggling to process the events no matter how many times she seemed to relive it in her head. Her hands were trembling now, she watched them with a morbid fascination before withdrawing them from her locker with a frustrated sigh and dropping into a sitting position on the bench behind her. There wasn't a chance she was getting that hoodie on until she rode this out. She hated this part.

It was in the moments after that the rush of adrenaline ebbed out and when it did, it was like being smashed in the face with a rock. You had to face up to everything and deal with the intense frightening emotions that you had somehow managed to bottle up at the time.

Maggie straightened her spine and closed her eyes for a moment, drawing in a deep breath that filled her lungs as she placed her hands upon her knees clenching them into tight fists.

she told herself.

She repeated it like a mantra in her mind, taking slow even breaths in an attempt to steady her frayed nerves. She kept seeing Sean lying there, splayed out, all of that blood leaking from his head, his azure eyes closed, his chest unmoving.

, she reminded herself, trying to get a firm grasp on her mind before it could run rampant once more.

Sean had survived and was at the hospital being kept overnight for observation. He was being treated for bruised ribs from the beat down amongst a host of other injuries and a severe concussion. She opened her eyes and cast her gaze towards the bench on the other side of the room, she remembered sitting there with Antonio not too long ago after he had killed Adrian Gish.

Maggie rubbed her quivering hands over her fatigued features, feeling a sob catch in her throat as she thought of that adoring smile of his. He was right, she lived in her own head too much, she constantly questioned herself and her decisions in the aftermath and it didn't do her any good. Her eyes burned, she swallowed hard past the lump that was growing in her throat at the thought of his absence.

Christ she wished he was here right now, he always knew the right way to handle things like this. Antonio was never afraid of confronting his feelings, he was strong and compassionate and those were just some of the things she loved about him.

"Shit." she muttered under her breath.

She couldn't go to pieces right now, she couldn't allow that loneliness to overwhelm her because the moment it did she knew it would eat her up inside. She didn't want him to come back to that, she wanted him to know that she wouldn't fall apart the second he was gone. Maggie inhaled deeply and forced herself to straighten up again, this time laying her quivering palms down upon her knees.

You are alive and Roman is alive.

"Hey kid, how you holding up?" that gruff, familiar voice broke through the reverie as Maggie tilted her head up towards Al, exhaling deeply through her nose.

Their eyes met, her cobalt on his soulful black. He could see right through her and Maggie knew that she couldn't hide the discord that was vibrating through her form right now. She tore her gaze away from his, instead coming to focus on the slight tremble to her hands before Al took a seat alongside her on the bench. His hip bumped against hers reassuringly as he tucked his hands between his knees as if in prayer.

"I just keep going over it in my head." she told him, her stare becoming distant once more. "One minute I'm eating a Twizzler, then suddenly we're fighting for our lives."

Al bowed his head close to Maggie's, taking in the profile of her exhausted features for a moment before giving her more context. She needed to rationalize what happened and the circumstances of what her and Roman had stepped into earlier today.

"The smuggling ring you broke up was exporting baby formula to China." he began, pausing for a moment to allow that information to sink in. "The Chinese government have put restrictions on it but a lot of people in China don't trust local food sources after that scandal last year."

"Which one?" Maggie responded as her mind flicked back over a couple of articles in The New York Times. "The one where they found resin in the powder or the one where they found Mercury?"

Al pursed his lips together, hiding the smile that threatened to break out across his grizzled features. That sounded more like Maggie, it seemed she was taking the first steps to getting out of her own head again.

"Doesn't matter." Al said shrugging his shoulders in response to her question. "All that does is that baby formula is big business in China. Effectively you walked right into the center of a dispute within the smuggling ring. The Chicago crew tried to leverage the Chinese for money and all hell broke loose."

"That explains why a guy with a bullet hole in his back came to answer the door when we knocked." Maggie surmised before turning her head so that she could meet Al's eyes, her expression earnest. "Thank you for coming for us. I don't know if I said that at the time."

"You never need to thank me for that." Al scolded her lightly, his black eyebrows furrowing into a frown. "And for the record I wasn't the only one that put the pieces together that something didn't feel right."

A small smile crossed Maggie's lips and Al was glad that he could put that smile back on her face. She needed to know she had family standing behind her and he thought today proved that more than anything. He was fiercely proud of her and he knew that Platt and every other member of her cop family was too. The Sergeant had made her very much aware of that fact when she had first entered the station house. Al's gaze lowered to her dainty palms, observing that the shaking had now stopped, she seemed to be in control of herself once more.

"We can't tell Antonio about this yet." Maggie said quietly as they shifted onto a more serious conversation. "It'll only distract him."

Al nodded his agreement at her words. They both knew that having one foot out of the door could mean the difference between life and death when you were undercover and the last thing they wanted was Antonio preoccupied when he should be focusing on keeping himself alive.

"You going to be alright tonight?" Al asked Maggie, the two of them finally raising to their feet. He watched as she reached into her locker and pulled the baby blue hoodie off of the hanger with no trouble at all. With Antonio not around, he could see that Maggie may regress into herself once more.

"I'll be ok." she reassured him, closing her locker and pulling that battered brown leather satchel over her head so that the bag came to rest on her hip.

Al wasn't convinced. That smile of hers was a little too strained, there was a hollowness to her words, as if she couldn't quite make them ring true. It would be different if Antonio was here but he wasn't, instead he would be robbing Fulton Labs tonight under the careful supervision of their unit.

Maggie bade Al goodbye before leaving him standing alone in the locker room. He tugged his phone out of his coat pocket before selecting the contact he wanted and typing out a text.