He's tried for a really long time not to think about it and he hasn't. Not with Adena, not with any of them until now. Maybe it was the marks of the belt, how it wasn't just any belt, but could have been a hundred belts. Maybe it was the burn marks or the bruises or the broken bones. Or maybe it was nothing at all except for the people who refused to see, refused to step up when the truth was right there in their face.

They're good hands. They're big and yet slim, tapered fingers. Women like them. He uses them to in life and in work, in love and in death. He uses them to pick up women, to pick up clues, uses them to write down phone numbers and the names of suspects. They are the tools of his trade, and he can disassociate himself from them, pretend they're separate, apart.

They used to be small. He can remember the first time. He was excited about his first year in kindergarten. Excited about using his hands to cut and color, to glue fake feathers on the turkey they'd made for Thanksgiving, the same one that was sitting in the middle of the table, listing over against the cranberry sauce, a blue feather dangling dangerously over the cold maroon. He'd been excited about telling everyone about his life, his new life and all the things he was discovering, but instead he'd spent the day in silence, staring down at his fingers, thinking maybe they belonged to a stranger.

It's why he does what he does. Not the abuse. There has always been abuse - physical, emotional, sexual - and there always will. And there will always be people who don't admit to knowing about it, who turn a blind eye, who honestly don't see. No one believes the children, because children lie. Everyone believes the adults because no parent could ever lie about their child, about love. No, it's not the abuse that brought Tim to the badge.

It's the hands. He sees them wrapped around flesh and flashes back to unwanted memories. He can't ever get them clean, like Lady Macbeth, desperate for the blood to wash away. He sets them on his gun and he can see death better than anyone else, like a sniper desperate for the next kill. He is what these strangers' hands have made him and he will be a cop until he finds what he's looking for.

He'll find them someday, he's sure. His own hands, maybe on a victim or maybe on a killer. He'll find them, still child soft, dirty under the fingernails because they haven't been washed since Thanksgiving when he was five. They're out there somewhere, and he'll find them. He is what was made of him, so he'll keep searching because he doesn't have a choice.