It ended in the box.

His box, home, a home that smelled of stale cigarettes and sweat, furnished with a dirty table edged with the oil and grime of a thousand hands, that used to be his surgical theater. Embers to the tips of his fingers, nah nah nah nah nah... translating the Greek the Jesuits taught him, promising senators they wouldn't be charged by him. No sir, no ma'am, not by Frank Pembleton, resident hand of God, going day to day without any doubt. He spoke for the dead. They deserved his voice.

Orange and brown and one-way glass, dirty, hot, and loud with tiles on the walls and linoleum on the floor, it's just a box now. Four walls that don't echo his sermons: the choir's gone home, nobody brought their hymnal, faith is for fools and children. Just Frank, stuck on the wrong side of the table, disciple Falsone at hand, oh, and the Irish sinner across the table. Chin held high, arms splayed out, not a golden boy anymore. No jokes or car theft or Marlboros left in him now, and no caffeine for Frank.

Standing there, watching Kellerman's hand forget to raise a gun, remembering the sound of his partner's blood rattling in his throat, talking with a drug dealer's tongue... no. Through the looking glass, out the window, virtue and vice holding hands... no.

Frank demanded, with a corpse voice he never wanted to mouth. The gun was down. The gun was down. Not even listening to Kellerman's arguments, because they don't matter anymore. The gun was down, good thing Gee never sat on Frank's back to put down Gordon Pratt, because he would have. He would have lent that racist little shit his words, because that's the job. The deal. The law.

Wrong. He'd been wrong. Heart had everything to do with it.

It ended in the box.